White House officials believe that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence ordered the killing of Pakistani investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad whose body was found on 31 May. Shahzad’s death followed after warnings from Pakistani security...

US will prosecute Brits who pirate US-based media
The US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) is shutting down websites based abroad that break US copyrights and and prosecuting their owners. Even if the server is not based in the US, so long as the website's address ends in .com or...
Syrian journalist Omar al-Asaad arrested
Officials arrested Omar al-Asaad, a Syrian journalist and activist, on Sunday evening (3 July) at a funeral for a fellow protester killed in Damascus. Asaad wrote for a number of Arabic newspapers, including Al-Hayat and Aljazeera. Earlier in the...
Ethiopia: Two Swedish journalists arrested
Swedish journalists, Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye, were arrested by troops in Ethiopia when they were found travelling with rebels from the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The Ethiopian government has branded the ONLF a terrorist...
Belarus: Protesters arrested, journalists targeted in teargas attacks
Over 300 people were reportedly arrested on Sunday in nationwide demonstrations against President Alexander Lukashenko’s government. Teargas was also fired to disperse the crowd. Some journalists have claimed that they were targeted in the attacks...
Ethiopia: Detained journalists planned ‘sabotage’, say police
Two journalists detained on 19 and 21 June are suspected by police to have planned terrorists acts in Ethiopia. The police chief accused Woubishet Taye, from Awramba Times, and Reyot Alemu, from the Feteh newspaper, of recruiting others to...
Journalist arrested in Puntland
Authorities arrested Faysal Mohamed, a reporter for Hiraan Online, on Wednesday morning (29 June) in the semi-autonomous republic of Puntland in northern Somalia. Police told journalists that Mohamed was arrested for a "false news report" on...
Mexican journalist receives death threats
Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho told Mexican authorities on Thursday (30 June) that she has received anonymous death threats via phone and e-mail for revealing the names of sex traffickers. Authorities claim they have leads on the source of the...
Belarus cracks down on ‘silent’ protest
Belarusian police have grabbed and beaten over a dozen reporters, broken their equipment, and detained another 150 protestors at a political rally in Minsk and Brest on Wednesday. Over a thousand people assembled to protest the repressive policies...
Ahead of Party anniversary, China poisons the internet
Today, 1 July, is the Communist Party's 90th birthday. In celebration, Chinese web censors have been working feverishly to tighten their control of the internet. Those of us who try to sidestep the Great Firewall with a VPN, a service that allows...

Kiwi journalist in Yemen prison
The arrest and detention of a Kiwi journalist lays bare the risks and calculations taken by foreign journalists in Yemen. Iona Craig reports from Sana’a
US: Judge refuses subpoena for blogger’s identity
Ronald Papandrea, a former assistant attorney of Warren, Michigan has dropped a libel case against an anonymous blogger known as 'Robert' after the local judge turned down his request to obtain the blogger's name. Papandrea claimed the blogger had...