PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) - A police beat reporter at a newspaper in northern Mexico and her infant son are missing and they are feared kidnapped, a newspaper official said Tuesday. Reporter Stephania Cardoso works for the El Zocalo newspaper in the city of Saltillo, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the U.S. border. She has been missing since Friday, said Eduardo Mendoza, El Zocalo's editor. She was last seen at a party with colleagues Thursday night. Mendoza said she called a...

Like other observers, Reporters Without Borders is not entirely convinced by the Oaxaca state attorney-general’s announcement last week that a former public education employee, Lenin Osorio Ortega, has been arrested for the fatal shooting of US journalist Brad Will, an Indymedia cameraman, in the southern city of Oaxaca in October 2006. Coming nearly six years after Will’s murder during a wave of unrest that was crushed violently by the Oaxaca state authorities, this new...

Nursing a bullet wound but looking healthy, French reporter Romeo Langlois emerged from the jungles of southern Colombia on Wednesday after being held 33 days by the nation’s largest rebel group. Released to an international delegation and brought to the village of San Isidro in the department of Caqueta, Langlois, 35, said the guerrillas shared what little food they had and treated him with respect. “Other than being detained for a month while I was wounded, everything was...

The tortured body of a Mexican police reporter has been found on the side of a road in the northern state of Sonora on Friday. A day earlier he had been kidnapped by gunmen while waiting at a car wash. Marco Antonio Avila Garcia's body was found inside a black plastic bag near the city of Empalme, about 68 miles south of Ciudad Obregon where he was abducted, said Sonora state prosecutors' spokesman Jose Larrinaga. Larrinaga said police found a message signed by a cartel but would not...

Another journalist has been killed in Mexico, this time in the central state of Morelos. Police on Sunday found the body of Rene Orta Salgado in the trunk of his car in a suburb of Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos, located 90 kilometers (55 miles) from Mexico City, Spanish news agency EFE reported today. His face was covered with a bandana and there were no apparent gunshot wounds, El Pais newspaper reported, citing the Morelos Attorney General's office. Orta Salgado, a former reporter...

Three photojournalists who covered the perilous crime beat in the violence-torn eastern Mexico state of Veracruz were found slain and dumped in plastic bags in a canal on Thursday, less than a week after a reporter for an investigative newsmagazine was beaten and strangled in her home in the same state. Press freedom groups said all three photographers had temporarily fled the state after receiving threats last year. The organizations called for immediate government action to halt a wave of...

Venezuelan NGO "Espacio Público" (Public Space) counted 244 reports of freedom of expression violations, registered in 201 cases/events during 2011, which represents an increase of 16% over 2010. According to a report presented by the NGO, "Each week of 2011, (in average) 4.3 cases of violations of the content and scope of the right to freedom of expression occurred in Venezuela. These data point out to continuous freedom of expression violations." The most...

VERACRUZ, Mexico -- Authorities in the Mexican state of Veracruz say the body of a journalist with the national newsmagazine Proceso has been found dead inside her home. The Veracruz Attorney General's Office has released a statement saying Regina Martinez's body was found in the bathroom of her house in Xalapa, Veracruz, and that authorities believe she was murdered. The statement said that the journalist's body showed signs of "blows to the head and body" and initial evidence...

The Mexican senate unanimously passed a law on April 24 that requires the national government to protect journalists and human rights activists when they receive threats, the legislative chamber said. “The senate approved the Law for Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists, which will allow the government to implement preventive measures to guarantee the life and security of those in these professions and who are in an at-risk situation,” the chamber added. The...

Attacks against press and freedom of expression in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia are less serious than violations occurred in Mexico, Colombia and Honduras, said Roberto Viciano, a Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Valencia (Spain), in a meeting of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) which is held in the Spanish city of Cádiz. Participants in the meeting discussed "The new Latin American constitutions and their impact on press freedom," Efe...