Reporters Without Borders today praised speedy action to solve last month’s robbery-murder in Mexico City last month of two women journalists and said it hoped the authorities would show the same efficiency in clearing up killings of other journalists targeted because of their work. Two men - Oscar Yair Quiñones Emmer (29) and Lázaro Hernández Ángeles (26) - were arrested on 30 September and 1 October suspected of killing journalists Ana María Marcela...

(Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Saturday he was praying for Libya's deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi and also sent a message of solidarity to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against "Yankee" aggression. Chavez -- who has inherited Fidel Castro's mantle as Washington's main irritant in Latin America -- views the wave of uprisings in the Arab world as Western-led destabilization and has been a strong ally of Gaddafi. "The Libyans are resisting the invasion and...

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al Malki said Thursday that he would soon visit Bosnia, while PA President Mahmoud Abbas would visit Colombia and Portugal in October, as part of efforts to secure the necessary nine votes in the UN Security Council to pass a resolution recognizing a Palestinian state as a full member in the world body, The Telegraph reported. Bosnia, Colombia and Portugal are three of the 15 nations currently sitting on the UN Security Council that must make a...

The decapitated body of María Elizabeth Macías, the editor of Primera Hora, a daily based in Nuevo Laredo (in the eastern state of Tamaulipas), was found on 24 September. Aged 39, she was the fourth woman journalist to be murdered in Mexico since the start of the year. The previous three women victims were former Televisa reporter Rocio González Trápaga and Ana María Marcela Yarce Viveros, the editor of the weekly magazine Contralínea, who were killed...

A controversial documentary that cast a harsh light on the Mexican judicial system won an Emmy on Monday night. The film, “Presumed Guilty,” showed the unjust prosecution of a Mexico City salesman, José Antonio Zúñiga, who was accused of a murder he did not commit and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In a ceremony from the Lincoln Center, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced that “Presumed Guilty” had won the Emmy for...

Mexico City, Sep 23, 2011 (EFE via COMTEX) -- No one was hurt when a homemade bomb exploded here early Friday outside an office of Mexico's CFE electric utility, the state-owned company said. The blast occurred shortly after midnight Thursday near the door of a customer service office in the capital borough of Iztacalco, the CFE said in a statement. The explosion damaged the office's facade and entrance hall, according to the statement, which said authorities are investigating the...

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad plans to visit Venezuela after attending a meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in order to "strive to reform world management." Before leaving, the Head of State told reporters that his agenda includes "bilateral meetings with the Heads of different States, exchange of ideas and dialogue with several US groups," Efe quoted. "Our principal goal is being present at the General Assembly and make every endeavor to...

The bloodied bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a bridge in the northeast Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo Tuesday, along with two posters left nearby warning social media users about reporting on the drug war. Bloggers who write about Mexico’s ongoing drug war have been threatened in the past, but this is believed to be the first time that users of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have been targeted by the cartels. The posters also called out by...

Medardo Flores, a radio journalist who supported former President Manuel Zelaya, was gunned down on the night of 8 September, joining the long list of journalists who have been killed since Zelaya’s ouster in a June 2009 coup. Employed by Radio Uno in San Pedro Sula, he was slain in an ambush near his home in the Caribbean coast city of Puerto Cortés. Regional finance manager of the pro-Zelaya Broad Front for Popular Resistance (FARP), Flores was shot just two days after another...

President Rafael Correa Delgado Carondelet Palace Quito, Ecuador Dear President Correa, Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that defends freedom of expression, recently referred to the mounting tension between you and some of the privately-owned media, tension that was exacerbated by the daily ’s prosecution at your request. We fear that this polarization could affect not only editorial pluralism but also the needed debate about media and communication in...