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(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has condemned a 12 May 2007 attack by members of the MQM (an extremist party that supports President Pervez Musharraf) on the offices of Aaj TV and the "Business Recorder" daily (a member of the same media group) in the southern city of Karachi, in which gunmen opened fire on the building while the station was providing live coverage of the MQM's violent, pro...

(PPF/IFEX) - Aaj TV, a leading television channel in Pakistan, came under gunfire attack for almost six hours on 12 May 2007 during clashes between government supporters and opposition activists that took the lives of 36 persons in Karachi, the country's largest city. The attackers also set ablaze vehicles in the parking lot of the television network. Elsewhere in the city, a number of journalists...

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladeshi authorities have released a journalist, detained hours earlier, who had written about alleged human rights abuses by the country's security forces, his wife said Saturday. Tasneem Khalil, a journalist at Dhaka's Daily Star newspaper, was picked up early Friday from his residence in the capital by four men in plain clothes. Khalil was released later Friday after being...

The Pakistani Supreme Court should immediately withdraw the alarming press directive issued on Wednesday that is designed to stifle coverage of a controversial issue involving the court, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said. The court warned print and electronic media to avoid “any interference” in the high-profile dispute over the ouster of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, May 11, 2007 - The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that police in the southern Russian city of Samara have raided the local bureaus of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and the independent news agency Regnum. Three journalists with other news organizations were also detained and interrogated, according to news reports. The police actions come one...

(HRinfo/IFEX) - Hrinfo has expressed dismay that Judge Abdel Fatah Murad has asked the Administrative Judiciary Court to block 29 websites, in addition to the 21 he had previously requested be made inaccessible. The judge amended his original list of websites following a 5 May 2007 investigation of the case by the court, resulting in a total of 50 websites presently vulnerable to closure as a...

(AJI/IFEX) - On World Press Freedom Day on 3 May 2007, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) Indonesia received the sad news that the state is seeking the arrest of journalist Risang Bima Wijaya, who has been in hiding following a 2005 Supreme Court ruling rejecting his appeal against a libel verdict handed to him by a lower court. The Supreme Court sentenced Risang Bima Wijaya, former...

QUITO, Ecuador – President Rafael Correa is suing a local newspaper for libel over an editorial that said he was leading the politically unstable nation with “mobs, rocks and clubs.” Correa said the La Hora editorial was “unfounded” and offended “the dignity of the country's foremost authority.” But he added he would drop the lawsuit if the paper's president, Francisco Vivanco, who is named in the...

(FLIP/IFEX) - Adamis Guerra Bermúdez, photographer for the Valledupar edition of the newspaper "Vanguardia Liberal", was assaulted on 9 May 2007 by informal gasoline vendors protesting a recent decision by the national tax authority. The incident occurred near the town hall of La Paz, 15 minutes from the city of Valledupar in Cesar department. The photographer and journalist Edgardo Mendoza were...

New York, May 11, 2007—Plainclothes officers raided the Dhaka home of prominent journalist and human rights advocate Tasneem Khalil early this morning in an action that the Committee to Protect Journalists called “an indication of the fragile state of press freedom in Bangladesh.” Four men identifying themselves as a “joint task force” came to Khalil’s house after midnight and said they were...