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Salvadorian President Elías Antonio Saca’s has pledged to intervene personally in the case of journalist María Haydee Chicas arrested and held for alleged “terrorist acts.” Saca's promise comes in wake of the appeal made by the El Salvador Association of Journalists (APES) and civil society organisations. Rosalia Nunez, left, and Elizabeth Torres, members of the 'Journalists United for

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, July 13, 2007 - A San Antonio Express-News reporter has been temporarily reassigned from his posting in the border city of Laredo after a U.S. law enforcement source warned that an unspecified American journalist is on the hit list of a Mexican criminal group, the newspaper's editor said today. The Association of Foreign Correspondents in Mexico also issued a warning today...

(MFWA/IFEX) - "Air Info", a bi-weekly privately-owned newspaper in Agadez, about 1,000 km from the capital Niamey, was suspended on 29 June 2007 by the media regulatory body (Conseil Supérieur de la Communication, CSC) for covering the activities of a rebel group in the northern part of Niger. The CSC has also frozen the newspaper's annual subsidy provided by the government to the media under...

(CENCOS/IFEX) - On 29 June 2007, after 33 years on air, Radio Monitor radio station broadcast its last programme, becoming the first national media outlet to disappear during the mandate of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. With this closure, both an avenue for freedom of expression and a source of work for journalists are being lost. The station broadcast from Mexico City, and its news...

BUKAVU, DRCongo, July 11, 2007 (AFP) - The trial of the alleged killers of a prominent radio journalist resumed in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday with the presentation of eight new suspects. The six men and two women joined two existing suspects in the defendants' box at a military court in Bukavu in eastern DRCongo, as proceedings into the murder of Serge Maheshe restarted after a...

July 12, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The government of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is increasingly impatient with what it sees as a front of unjustified criticism in the media. It has impugned critics as motivated by either domestic political grudges or the discreet machinations of foreign powers. The sum of reports in recent days gives the impression of a government exasperated by -- but intent on...

The upper house of the Russian parliament Wednesday approved a package of amendments that would expand the definition of extremism to include public discussion of such activity, and give law enforcement officials broad authority to suspend media outlets that do not comply with the new restrictions, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The package, proposed by deputies from the

Reporters Without Borders today deplored the arbitrary and repressive methods of a regime whose culture minister recently accused the media of promoting a “creeping coup” against the government. Judicial officials have in the past 10 days ordered the suspension of the daily Ham Mihan and the permanent closure of the daily Moshareket, while the new agency ILNA’s future seems uncertain after...

Reporters Without Borders said today it had been shocked to learn of the murder of photographer Jorge Alejandro Castañeda Martínez, who was gunned down in Guatemala City on 5 July. The 35-year-old had just dropped his sons, aged six and four, off at their school when gunmen opened fire, shooting him a dozen times. He was talking to his wife on his mobile phone when he was killed. Moments before...

The detention of María Haydee Chicas, a journalist employed by an NGO who was arrested along with 13 other people during a demonstration in the northeastern city of Suchitoto on 2 July and charged with “terrorism” is a “grave abuse of authority,” Reporters Without Borders said today, calling for her immediate release. The El Salvador Association of Journalists (APES) said in a statement that, “the...