Héctor Cordero, a correspondent for TV Guatevisión in Quiché department (northwest of Guatemala City), says he has received phone calls threatening to kill him and warning that his family would pay the consequences for his work, Prensa Libre reports.
A Lima court acquitted Luis Valdez Villacorta, the former mayor of Coronel Portillo, on charges that he had ordered the killing of journalist Alberto Rivera in 2004, the Associated Press reports.
The 16-year-old son of TV and radio host Eduardo Maldonado was released 27 days after he was kidnapped from his home in Tegucigalpa, EFE reports.
Guatemalan investigative journalist Marvin del Cid Acevedo, who works for the newspaper elPeriódico, has received several death threats recently, after writing about official corruption and serving as a witness in a murder trial against security forces, reported Amnesty International.
The killings of three Mexican journalists in January alone, and the news that 15 people, mostly teenagers, were killed at a birthday party in Ciudad Juárez have called new international attention to Mexico’s drug-related violence, which is reported to have killed more than 1,000 people in the first 34 days of this year. Meanwhile, Mexican media workers brace for more attacks.
Jorge Ochoa Martinez, editor in chief of El Sol de La Costa newspaper, was assassinated with a gunshot to the face, becoming the third journalist killed in Mexico this year. His body was found in a car parked close to City Hall in Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, the Latin American Herald Tribune reports. Read this report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
U.S. soldiers had been in Haiti 11 days before they got the first copies of Stars and Stripes, the newspaper that operates independently within the military structure and follows troops to war fronts. Editor & Publisher and The New York Times both report on the logistics of getting Stars and Stripes into the hands of military women and men who are deployed overseas.
The vehicle of Adriana Aguirre San Millán was set ablaze outside the radio chain's offices in in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, and a message left beside it warned that the same will happen to all other journalists, La Jornada and El Universal report. Aguirre owns the radio chain Organización Impulsora de Radio (OIR).
Jose Luis Romero, a reporter for the Línea Directa radio station who was known for his broadcasts on drug trafficking, was found shot to death Saturday on a highway a few miles from Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was kidnapped two weeks ago. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reuters and the Associated Press have stories in English, and many sources have stories in Spanish.
The rash of attacks on Mexican journalists has resulted in the first assassination this year. Two reporters from the newspaper Zócalo Saltillo were kidnapped Thursday night, and one of them, Valentín Valdés Espinosa, was found dead outside a motel this morning (Jan. 8) with a warning note on his chest, the newspaper reports. The message's contents were not revealed.
Ecuador's 14 indigenous nationalities will be able to present proposals that will help them get low-frequency radio permits for at least one citizen-based, "community radio" station in each nation, El Telégrafo newspaper reports. Guidelines should be available in two weeks.
A military policeman (Carabinero) will stand trial for the assault in May 2008 of Victor Salas, a correspondent for Spain's EFE news agency, The Santiago Times reports. Salas was covering a protest outside Chile's parliament in Valparaiso when he was struck in the head by a mounted police officer. He later lost his vision in one eye.