US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that the United States has “expressed our concern about Maziar Bahari’s confinement and trial” to the Canadian government and offered to help. Newsweek’s Tehran correspondent was detained on 21 June as part of Iran’s post-election crackdown on the media. This week her husband, Bill Clinton, returned from North Korea having obtained the release of two imprisoned US journalists. Read more here
Six journalists in Gambia have been jailed for two years each after being found guilty of criticising the country’s president. The journalists from the newspaper Foroyaa and weekly publication The Point were convicted of sedition and defamation for comments critical of President Yahya Jammeh. Read more here
On 1 August, Hamas screened its first feature length film. It documents the life of Imad Aqel, a Palestinian militant accused by the Israelis of killing 13 soldiers and settlers. Hamas already owns a satellite television channel, a radio station and several newspapers. The director of the film has said he hopes to show the film at Cannes Film Festival.
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Social networking site Twitter has come under a denial of service (DNS) attack, the site reports. The source of the attack is unkown. Twitter was a key part of reporting on unrest after Iran’s disputed elections.
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