In Veracruz, the Mexican state where nine journalists have been brutally killed in 18 months, state legislators approved the creation of the State Commission for the Care and Protection of Journalists, according to the newspaper El Universal.
Numerous journalists in Peru have been attacked in recent days. On Wednesday, July 4, police attacked at least five journalists who were covering the state of emergency declared in the region of Cajamarca.
Brazilian radio sports commentator Valério Luiz was shot and killed on the afternoon of Thursday, June 5, while leaving the building of the radio station Rádio Jornal 820 AM, where he worked, in Goiânia, reported the news portal R7.
The suspect that confessed to killing Brazilian journalist Décio Sá in April, Jhonathan Silva, narrated the details of the crime during its reconstruction organized by the Public Safety Secretariat of Maranhão on Tuesday, June 3, reported G1.
Mexican police arrested journalist Sanjuana Martínez in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, according to her colleague, Lydia Cacho, who reported the arrest via Twitter the morning of Thursday, July 5.
On Tuesday, July 3, the Argentine Journalism Forum (FOPEA in Spanish) released a proposal to limit the financial amount of moral damages that could be claimed against journalists.
A Guatemalan photographer that was seriously injured during a confrontation between police officers and student protesters is healing well, reported the Center for Informative Reports of Guatemala (Cerigua in Spanish).
During the first six months of 2012, 72 journalists were killed worldwide, a 33 percent increase over the same period the year before, according to a report published on Monday, July 2, by the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC).
On Sunday, July 1, an Ecuadorian journalist was shot nine times and killed by two men on a motorcycle close to his house in the town of El Triunfo, about 38 miles from the coastal city of Guayaquil, reported the Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called the Venezuelan Supreme Court's decision to seize the assets of the TV station Globivisión for not paying a fee in 2011 a "blatant attack on press freedom."
A legal appeal for protection in support of the Chilean journalist that was suspended for satirizing a tribute to former dictator Augusto Pinochet, on the TV channel Chilevisión on June 8, was presented by the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees.
Authorities in Veracruz, Mexico, said they arrested nine organized crime suspects, at least one of whom is suspected of killing Mexican reporter Víctor Báez Chino, according to Milenio, the newspaper for which Báez worked.