Tomorrow, the Cinema Office of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance must decide on the country's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2012 Oscars. The obvious choice would be A Separation, director Asghar Frahadi's...
Lebanese blogger Imad Bazzi was denied entry to Egypt on 5 September, 2011, and sent back to Lebanon. Bazzi, who is also director of CyberACT --- an NGO which advocates the usage of social media tools in order to create reforms in the Middle East...
Well known journalist Hadia Al-Mahdi was found dead at his home in Baghdad on 7 September. The body of Al-Mahdi was found in his home in the Al-Karada district at around 7pm. He had been shot twice in the head. It is believed that his murder was...
On Monday, Iran prevented filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb from boarding a flight to Paris in order to attend the Toronto film festival, where his documentary about the detained filmmaker Jafar Panahi will be shown. The film shows a day in the life of...
Military rulers in Egypt have frozen licenses for new private satellite TV stations, claiming they are inciting violence in an “increasingly chaotic media scene.” Activists are claiming that these restrictions on freedom of expression are similar...
Two Yemeni journalists were attacked by armed men on Monday. Abdul al-Hafeez al-Hatami from news website Al-Sahwa Net and Raafat al-Amiri, cameraman for Suhail TV, an opposition news station, were covering the rising prices of oil in the western...
Iranian magazine Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was closed this week for after publishing a satirical front-page image depicting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being lectured by his Chief-of-Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. The image, published last month,...
A Syrian journalist has been arrested by security forces in Damascus. Amer Matar, from pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat was arrested on Saturday, though reasons for this are still unclear. Before his arrest, Matar emailed a friend a copy of his will,...
A journalist claims he was kidnapped and expelled from Azerbaijan. Yafez Hasanov, an Azerbaijani correspondent from Radio Azadliq, part of Radio Free Europe, was in Naxcivan investigating the death of airport technician Turaz Zeynalov, when he was...
Iranian publishers are reeling after measures to save money when printing the Koran backfired this week. In an attempt to make cheaper, mass distribution editions available, the Holy Book was produced and printed in China. But the copies, already...