Middle East & North Africa

In two separate sessions on June 6, 2013, the Specialized Press and Publications Court found a Yemeni daily guilty of defamation charges in one case and innocent in another, according to news reports.

Lohini Rathimohan, a former television journalist from Sri Lanka, faces an unclear future. The 28-year-old is among 15 Tamil refugees still sheltered in a single room of an aluminum factory at Dubai's Jebel Ali port whose official statuses remain uncertain.

New York, June 6, 2013--Sudanese authorities have banned the publication of at least three newspapers in the past two weeks despite statements by government officials to curtail censorship practices, according to news reports.

New York, June 3, 2013--The Jordanian government announced plans on Sunday to block more than 300 websites for failing to register under the Press and Publications Law, news sources reported. Access to several of the sites has already been blocked within the country, the reports said.

The Al-Dokki Criminal Court on May 28, 2013, sentenced Islam Afifi, former editor-in-chief of Al-Dustour newspaper, to a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (US$1,431) after convicting him of libel against Essam al-Eryan, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Eryan filed a complaint against Afifi after the journalist published a report in June 2012 that alleged that some leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood had held secret meetings to plan violent acts in the event that Morsi did not win the presidential elections.

Algeria's Ministry of Communications on May 18, 2013, ordered two newspapers, the daily Mon Journal and its Arabic counterpart Djaridati, to remove two pages from their next day's editions that focused on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's health, according to news reports.

New York, May 28, 2013--A Syrian correspondent working for the pro-government TV channel Al-Ikhbariya died Monday after her crew's vehicle came under sniper fire, according to official Syrian news sources.

One day, every journalism school in the United States and beyond will offer a full three-credit, 15-week course in digital safety, along with more advanced classes. But that day has not yet come. Only a year ago, Alysia Santo reported in the Columbia Journalism Review that no American journalism school offered formal digital safety training. A number of groups, including CPJ, have tried to fill the void with digital security guides. This week, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University added to the resource stockpile with the publication of a guide that I've written, Digital Security Basics for Journalists.