The Cuban government has blocked an online newspaper launched by well-known dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, hours after it went live. Web users in Cuba are being diverted to another website, which accuses Ms Sanchez of having hidden political interests. Ms Sanchez said her website, called 14ymedio, would provide daily news about the communist-run country. She insisted it would not be a platform against the government. But web users in Cuba reported that they were being diverted to a...

For the first time ever, Reporters Without Borders is publishing a list of profiles of “100 information heroes” for World Press Freedom Day (3 May).Through their courageous work or activism, these “100 heroes” help to promote the freedom enshrined in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” They put their ideals in the service of...

Reporters Without Borders condemns independent journalist Juliet Michelena Díaz’s detention since 7 April, three days before the publication of a by-lined report she wrote for the Miami-based independent news platform Cubanet about a case of ordinary police violence she had witnessed in Havana. Michelena, who was arrested in a heavy-handed police operation, is a member of the Cuban Network of Community Journalists (RCCC), an organization that defends freedom of information. The...

Reporters Without Borders reiterates its call for the release of , a writer who completes a year in detention today and who began a blog in 2008 called that was openly critical of the government. Santiesteban-Prats was arrested on 28 February 2013 to begin serving the five-year jail sentence on trumped-up charges of “home violation” and “injuries” that he received at the end of a hasty and arbitrary trial on 8 December 2012. No hard evidence was produced in support of...

Iran has built an infrastructure of terror in Central and South America in order, among other goals, to target Israelis and Jews there and have a base from which to attack the US, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday. Ya’alon, meeting with Guatemalan President Otto Fernando Perez Molina, himself a former director of military intelligence, warned that Iran, which operates the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah as a proxy, was using diplomatic cover to spread terror in the...

Mario Echevarría Driggs, David Águila Montero and William Cacer Díaz, arrested in Havana last week, were freed on 14 October 2013. Two correspondents for the Hablemos Press news center, Denis Noa Martinez and Pablo Morales Marchán, were arrested last Sunday. They were freed at the same time. “Reporters Without Borders is relieved that all five journalists have been released. Hopefully, news providers will be able to continue their work without fear of...

PANAMA CITY - Panama's president said the country has seized a North Korean-flagged ship carrying what appeared to be ballistic missiles and other arms that had set sail from Cuba on its way to the Pacific. Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli told RPC radio on Monday that the ship had been headed for North Korea. There were no immediate details on the quantity of arms aboard. Martinelli said the undeclared military cargo appeared to include missiles and non-conventional arms and the...

Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez said in New York that she’s afraid of the reprisals in store for her when she returns to Cuba from an international tour she began last month after five years without being allowed to leave the island. “Afraid of going back? Yes, I’m very afraid of what will happen when I go back,” the blogger told a press conference at New York University, her second appearance in the United States after attending a symposium on Thursday at...

Venezuelan students protested in chains outside the Cuban Embassy in Caracas on Thursday, condemning what they say is the Caribbean nation's meddling in their country's affairs while President Hugo Chavez remains on the island undergoing cancer treatment. Some students exchanged shoves with police in anti-riot gear outside the embassy. Protesters sang the Venezuelan national anthem, wearing chains and cords wrapped around their bodies and bound with locks in a representation of what they view...

Human rights defenders across the Americas are facing escalating levels of intimidation, harassment and attacks at the hands of state security forces, paramilitary groups and organized crime, Amnesty International said in a new report today. The report Transforming pain into hope: Human rights defenders in the Americas, is based on around 300 cases of intimidation, harassment, attacks and killings of human rights defenders in more than a dozen countries primarily between January 2010 and...