World Cup 2010, expected to be the most-watched TV event in history, got under way Friday (June 11) in South Africa, with reporters cursing the spotty Internet access at the International Broadcast Centre.
Two local police officers and a third accomplice were indicted for last month's kidnapping and torture of journalist Gilvan Luiz Pereira, editor and owner of Jornal Sem Nome (Newspaper Without a Name), in Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará, the Diário do Nordeste newspaper reports.
In a new round of trials for crimes committed during Argentina's military dictatorship (1976-1983), the editor of Clarín newspaper, Ricardo Kirschbaum, and journalist Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú testified about the disappearance of 22 people at a clandestine detention center in the northern city of Tucumán in 1976 and 1977, Clarín reports. Among those who disappeared were journalist Eduardo Ramos and his pregnant wife.
Nearly five months after the Jan. 12 earthquake, more than one million Haitians are living in tents and under tarps in some 1,322 camps. Hundreds of thousands have no access to radio or TV, but outdoor screens are going up across the capital, Port-au-Prince, and 16 camps are screening a series of informative, entertaining soap operas that are filling needs for information, The New York Times reports.
Carmen María de Finol, a reporter for La Mañana newspaper, says she and photographer Yunior Lugo have received anonymous phone calls threatening to take legal action against them. The calls came after the two had reported the burning of tons of expired food that the government had purchased abroad to distribute to the poor, El Nacional and Europa Press report.
Mexico’s growing drug violence is a leading topic of news around the world, making headlines this week, for example, not only in English and Spanish, but in Arabic, Japanese, Russian and Urdu.
President Laura Chinchilla has appointed veteran journalist Eduardo Ulibarri to be Costa Rica's new representative to the United Nations, La Nación reports.
A lawsuit to determine whether the owner of Argentina's Clarín press group, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, adopted two children 34 years ago from parents who disappeared during the military dictatorship took a crucial step Monday (June 7). Scientists began DNA tests on clothes surrendered by Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera to see who their birth parents are, BBC reports. The Christian Science Monitor and London's Independent also cover the story.
A group of people in a car threw five Molotov cocktails at the headquarters of the Capriles newspaper chain, one of Venezuela's leading media conglomerates, Tal Cual and Últimas Noticias report.
Crítica newspaper of Buenos Aires stopped circulating more than a month ago when its 190 employees went on strike April 29 over not receiving their paychecks. Fearing the closure of the paper, the journalists united in a resistance movement, which includes a 24-hour camp-out in the newsroom and demonstrations in the street. (See this vídeo), and campaigns in a blog and on Twitter.
The debate over criminalization of opinions and information was swept under the rug again in Ecuador. The lawsuit against the opinion editor of El Universo newspaper, Emilio Palacio, ended in surprise after a high government official withdrew the libel charges against him, El Comercio and EFE report.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has written to President Felipe Calderón to express concern over several attacks and cases of harassment by federal forces against journalists who cover law enforcement.