Indian journalist Chandrika Rai, his wife and two teenage children were found beaten to death in their home in Umaria, Madhya Pradesh state. Rai, 42, who worked for two Hindi-language dailies, Navbharat and Hitavada, had been investigating illegal mining in Umaria. Some local news reports have suggested that his murder could be linked to the kidnapping of a local official’s son or with a personal land dispute.
Marie Colvin, veteran war reporter for the Sunday Times, was killed this morning with French photojournalist Remi Ochlik when a shell hit a makeshift media centre in the besieged Syrian city of Homs. Two other journalists are reportedly wounded, named as British freelance photographer Paul Conroy, who was working with Colvin, and Edith Bouvier of French newspaper Le Figaro. Citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed, who streamed live video footage from Homs, was also killed this week in the shelling of the Baba Amr district of the city.
Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs has been named in court for the first time as the Premier League footballer with a high-profile privacy injunction against the Sun. At a hearing at the high court today, Giggs agreed to lift the anonymity part of the injunction that he brought in April 2011 to prevent the tabloid from publishing claims he had an extra-marital affair with model Imogen Thomas. Yet the footballer was widely identified on Twitter and was named in the Commons by Lib Dem MP John Hemming last May. The footballer is trying to claim damages for distress from the Sun — alleging the paper breached his right to privacy — as well as for subsequent re-publication of information in other newspapers and online.
The entire print-run of two Sudanese newspapers were seized by The National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) yesterday. Al-Tayar and Al-Youm Al-Tali newspapers Monday (20 February) editions were confiscated after they published statements made by Hassan al-Turabi the leader of the Popular Congress Party (PCP). Turabi alleged that his office had been wiretapped by security services, and showed journalists some of the listening devices he found. Security agents arrived after midnight at the newspaper’s Khartoum offices and seized the Monday edition. Twenty newspaper reporters protested the confiscation in front of the National Press Council, which licenses newspapers.