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(Adil Soz/IFEX) - Adil Soz has expressed its alarm over the disappearance of Oralgaisha Zhabaktaikyzy, a journalist with "Zakon I pravosudie" newspaper. The journalist was last seen getting into a sport utility vehicle on 30 March 2007 by a friend. According to another "Zakon I pravosudie" reporter in Almaty, Mukhit Iskakov, the journalist began receiving telephoned threats shortly after the...

Reporters Without Borders today called for a rapid response from the federal authorities to last night’s abduction of Saúl Martínez Ortega, the editor of the Diario de Agua Prieta Sonora newspaper, in Agua Prieta, in the northwestern state of Sonora. He is the second newspaper journalist to disappear in suspicious circumstances in Mexico this year, following Tabasco Hoy reporter Rodolfo Rincón...

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic: A panel of Dominican judges has upheld decades-long prison sentences for three men convicted in the 1975 murder of journalist Orlando Martinez. The judges upheld maximum 30-year sentences for former Sgt. Mariano Cabrera Duran and Rafael Alfredo Llubere, who have already spent a decade in prison since their arrests. Former Gen. Joaquin Antonio Pou Castro's...

(WiPC/IFEX) - Dzamshid (Jamshid) Karimov, held under psychiatric detention since September 2006, has reportedly had the order extended for a further six months and is now not due to be released until mid-September. The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN fears that Karimov is apparently held in retaliation for his reporting on human rights issues and for his criticism of the...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the two-year prison sentences which a Bangkok court imposed on two TV talk show hosts on 12 April after finding them guilty of defaming deputy Bangkok governor Samart Ratchapolasit by saying on two different occasions that he had taken bribes. “We are not claiming that the allegations made by the two TV presenters were in any way based on established facts...

(RSF/IFEX) - A total of 16 journalists were physically attacked, mainly by lawyers, while covering a demonstration organised by the Karachi Bar Association (KBA) on 12 April 2007 in Karachi in protest against the dismissal of Supreme Court president Iftikar Mohammed Chaudhry, said Reporters Without Borders, condemning the violence. It was the third time that journalists have been targeted during...

MEXICO CITY, April 17 (Reuters) - Gunmen snatched a Mexican crime reporter outside a police station near the U.S. border, the latest journalist victim of a deadly drug war in which traffickers are stepping up attacks on the media. Four armed men dragged Saul Martinez from his car in the city of Agua Prieta early on Monday morning as he sought refuge in a police station, said his brother Edgar...

LAS VEGAS--The Internet is the cause of much fear and loathing here at this gathering of broadcasters. Some attendees of the National Association of Broadcasters conference this week are worried that local television affiliates will be the next business species to be endangered by the Internet. The warning signs are ominous for local TV outlets. Last month, NBC Universal and News Corp., parent...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Police questioned two top editors and two directors of Kenya's oldest newspaper for seven hours Monday about a front-page report that an unnamed Cabinet minister was trying to arrange the assassination of former president Daniel arap Moi's son. The Standard newspaper described what it said was a taped confession by the would-be assassin in Monday's story. The alleged target of...

(HRinfo/IFEX) - HRinfo fears for the life of the journalist blogger Abdel Men'em Mahmoud, whose residence in Alexandria was broken into at dawn on 13 April 2007 by security forces seeking to arrest him. The incident appears to be part of a campaign carried out by the police in Cairo and Alexandria to arrest 42 Egyptians suspected of belonging to the Muslim Brothers Group. Mahmoud, a reporter for...