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CHICAGO: After spending a year in jail without charges, independent Cuban journalist Armando Betancourt Reina was sentenced to a 15-month prison sentence last week after a five-hour trial on charges of "public disorder," the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported. CPJ, citing an interview with Betancourt Reina's wife Mercedes Boudet Silva and other family members, said the charges stemmed...

Andrei Kalitin is an investigative reporter for Russia's Channel One television station. He recently completed a book about the murky aluminum industry in Russia of the 1990s. On June 14th, an unidentified gunman shot him in the shoulder outside his apartment building. Kalitin says he is convinced it was not a robbery. He believes the attack was connected with his job. "I am convinced it was an...

LONDON, July 7 — With his picture splashed across the front pages of British newspapers, Mohammed Asha, a doctor in the National Health Service, over the last few days became the human face of a suspected plot to bomb a London nightclub and an attack at Glasgow Airport.According to the British police, the photos should never have appeared. Britain has some of the tightest restrictions on reporting...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today accused Iran of "creating a climate of intimidation against press freedom" after the authorities in Tehran banned a pro-reform newspaper and a news agency. Ham Mihan, a pro-reform newspaper, and the ILNA online news agency were both shut down by the authorities last Tuesday. At the weekend Culture Minister Hossein Saffar Harandi accused media...

ISLAMABAD: Lal Masjid deputy chief cleric Abdul Rasheed Ghazi invited reporters to a press conference in Lal Masjid on Sunday, but security forces refused entry to journalists and later, ARY Television reported, entered the Rawalpindi-Islamabad press club and harassed the journalists there. Ghazi had invited journalists for a press conference, pledging safe passage, but security forces believed it...

Telegraph.co.uk has launched a new blog with the aim of rapidly updating developing breaking news stories. Making News will offer "updates and commentary on the day's stories" throughout a news day. There is a difference between niche comment blogs and breaking news, suggested site editor Marcus Warren. So the new site launched in test phase last week. "I, for one, was more than conscious of the...

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, July 9, 2007 - A prominent broadcaster covering public reaction to a large-scale government security crackdown in the commercial district of the capital, Mogadishu, was raided four times over the weekend by Somali government troops, according to news reports and the National Union of Somali Journalists. In four separate raids since Friday, troops searched the offices of...

RIYADH, July 9 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is blocking one of the Arab world's most popular online news outlets because of pressure from religious conservatives who are "fighting the future," the site's Saudi editor said this week. Since it was launched in 2001, Elaph ( www.elaph.com) has become a prominent source of political and entertainment news in the Arab world with around 1.5 million hits a...

MOSCOW: Three years after the American journalist Paul Klebnikov was shot in a contract murder in Moscow, his family and the American ambassador to Russia gathered at an Orthodox church Monday to mark the anniversary, in a ceremony that also drew attention to the fact that the murder is still unsolved. At the afternoon service at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the same church where...

There is a long tradition of rich guys overpaying for trophy media properties. But when Wall Street wizard Bruce Wasserstein nabbed New York magazine at the end of 2003, he seemed to be setting a new standard for vanity acquisitions. The Lazard banker, who owned a number of trade publications, not only paid $55 million for a title earning only $1 million a year but also bested Mort Zuckerman in...