27 Apr 12 | Africa, Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Access to the website of Ethiopia’s leading weekly newspaper has been blocked within the country. The website of privately-owned weekly, The Reporter, has been inaccessible since 21 April, other than through a proxy server. Though the reason for the blocking is unclear, it has been speculated that the block is being carried out by the state-owned company Ethio-Telecom, the only ISP in the country. The site usually has 30,000 visitors per day.
27 Apr 12 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
A prominent Honduran TV presenter was murdered on Monday morning. Noel Alexander Valladares, host of popular show El Tecolote (“The Owl”) on Maya TV, based in Tegucigalpa, was shot as he left the station. Eyewitnesses report that four men jumped out of a white van and opened fire on the journalist and his companions. Valladares was accompanied by his uncle and bodyguard, who were also killed in the attack, and his wife and co-presenter was seriously injured. Valladares is the third journalist to be killed in Honduras this year.
25 Apr 12 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
A rapper has been sentenced to a minimum of three months in prison after releasing a violent music video in the UAE. The singer, known as Dangour, was arrested in June. In the footage, Dangour raps about drug abuse and his hatred of white people. A clip went viral on messaging service BBM, and several people complained to the police. The court ruled that the rapper created the video to make people scared of him and issued the “light sentence”. They added that it “harmed public decency and order and spread terror and panic among people”.
20 Apr 12 | Azerbaijan Letters, Azerbaijan News, Europe and Central Asia, News and features
Index on Censorship joins the call for an immediate, independent and transparent investigation into the brutal attack on investigative journalist and Index award winner Idrak Abbasov
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