A European court has awarded damages to an investigative journalist whose home was raided and computers confiscated after he published articles alleging fraud within the European Union. In its ruling for the German reporter, Hans-Martin Tillack, the European Court of Human Rights said Tuesday that the right to protect the identity of sources is an essential [...]

The Sri Lanka military air strike last week on the Voice of Tigers, the radio station of the Tamil Tiger rebels in the north of the country, is being described as a war crime. Three of the station’s staff, who had not been given any warning, and six other civilians were killed in the bombardment [...]

Kazakhstan will become the first ex-Soviet state to assume the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev passes by the guard of honor during a welcoming ceremony before his meeting with his Hungarian counterpart Laszlo Solyom, not seen, in Budapest, Hungary Friday, November 23, 2007. Nazarbayev arrived [...]

A journalist’s claim that 11 of his close relatives were murdered in Iraq last weekend is false. Amman-based Iraqi journalist Dia al-Kawwaz had claimed on November 26 that 11 members of his immediate family were shot by gunmen the previous day in Baghdad. “We are obviously relieved to learn that the Kawwaz family is safe and [...]

The US military is to finally bring a court hearing against Associated Press (AP) photographer Bilal Hussein on December 9, 606 days after the Iraqi was first taken into custody, the agency has reported. The move would be the first legal step in initiating formal charges against Hussein, who was seized in Ramadi on April [...]

The International Press Institute (IPI) has appointed IPI Deputy Director David Dadge as the new director of IPI. He will succeed Professor Johann P Fritz, who is retiring at the end of 2007. Dadge (41) has worked at the IPI secretariat in Vienna, Austria, since April 2000 as the editor of the IPI World Press Freedom [...]

On October 7, 2006, after a six-month trial, the three hired assassins who killed Marlene Garcia-Esperat, a Filipino newspaper columnist and radio commentator who probed government corruption, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Marlene Garcia-Esperat was an accidental journalist. A chemist for the agriculture department on the southern island of Mindanao in the early 1990s, she [...]

An inquest report has established with great detail that the Indonesian army was responsible for the death of five British, Australian and New Zealander journalists in East Timor in 1975. The report clearly shows they were eliminated because they too much about Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, which was just getting under way. Shirley Shackleton, widow [...]

She is a fearless journalist, she has endured numerous death threats because of her uncompromising professionalism, and her journey to bring out the truth has been the full of roadblocks. Yet, the passion doesn’t seem to die in the courageous Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, a 44-year-old Mexican journalist. Cacho received Courage Award by International Women’s Media Foundation [...]

The civil war, internal displacement, limited access to information and restrictions on journalists’ freedom of movement have proved to be great obstacles to press freedom in Sri Lanka, particularly in the country’s eastern provinces. These are some of the findings of the fact-finding mission by representatives of the International Press Institute (IPI), the International Federation of [...]

All four journalists arrested recently have been released by the Senegal government in a bid to “defuse relations” between the press and the government, but the storm has far from blown over. All four were released Thursday. People pass by a newspaper kiosk in Dakar, in 2004. Authorities in Senegal on Thursday freed four journalists detained [...]

US Internet giant Yahoo has settled a Californian lawsuit brought by the families of journalist Shi Tao and pro-democracy activist and blogger Wang Xiaoning, who were convicted and imprisoned on information which Yahoo! gave the Chinese authorities. Chief Executive Officer of Yahoo Inc. Jerry Yang answers a question with Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan (L) before [...]

The Georgian government shut down two popular Tbilisi-based television channels shortly before declaring a state of emergency Wednesday night. Imedi, considered the main Georgian opposition television and radio broadcaster, was raided by special forces and taken off the air. Kavkaziya, a small independent channel, was also shut down. A Georgian MZE channel TV grab shows Georgian [...]

On a sweltering summer day of August 11, 2003, Reda Helal left his office like any other day, but this time never to reach home. No one knows where he disappeared, nor is anyone bothered to know. Today, Reda Helal, a senior editor at Egypt’s daily Al-Ahram, has been long forgotten. For all his unpopular political [...]

Newly elected Argentine President Cristina Fernández is already a star in Santa Cruz, the southern provincial capital and hometown of her husband and former President Néstor Kirchner. Getting constant media attention, only the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005 pushed her and Kirchner off the front page of daily El Periódico. All [...]