Freedom of expression activists spoke out against the island’s Legislative Assembly for trying to prosecute Brent Fuller, a journalist for the Caymanian Compass, for an article criticizing a plan to review the country’s information access laws in closed-door committee hearings.
Editors of Ecuador’s Vanguardia magazine have petitioned a court to order the return of 40 computers confiscated during a police raid on the magazine’s Quito headquarters. See reports in English by the Inter American Press Association and the local NGO Fundamedios.
Ciudad Juárez has been characterized as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. However, this border city also is home to more than 1 million people who are witnesses to positive actions and extraordinary acts that deserve to be told and recognized, according to a project started by the Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States.
Brazil’s National Newspaper Association (ANJ) and Google have established new rules for how Google displays and indexes Brazilian news content, O Globo reports. Now, users of Google News will only see one line of each listed story instead of three lines.
A court's decision to shut down an online parody of Folha de S. Paulo has drawn international criticism. The site’s name and address parodied Folha de S. Paulo (The São Paulo Journal) with “Falha de S. Paulo” (The São Paulo Failure), which featured criticism and humorous fake headlines from the newspaper. It was taken offline by a September court order, and last week, a São Paulo court upheld the ruling, Portal Imprensa reports.
The deaths of 81 inmates in a prison fire in Santiago this month have brought angry response by users of social networks, who criticized prison conditions in Chile and accused the media of insensitive coverage, Global Voices Online reports.
A group of truck drivers in front of the printing presses of Argentina's La Nación and Clarín newspapers delayed the distribution of the Dec. 14 editions for more than two and a half hours, the two newspapers report.
The National Assembly has expanded the powers of the Venezuelan Executive by granting the president decree powers and the authority to further regulate telecommunications, The Associated Press and Reuters report.
Pakistan became the most deadly country for journalists in 2010, with eight colleagues killed during the year in connection with their work. In a year when 42 journalists were killed worldwide, Honduras, Mexico and Iraq also ranked high, the Committee to Protect Journalists says in a year-end analysis. See more world news coverage of CPJ’s report.
An unprecedented legal ruling announced this week holds Brazil responsible for the forced disappearance of more than 70 opponents of the military dictatorship (1964–1985) and says the government has violated the right of family members “to seek and receive information and to learn the truth.”