NEWSWORTHY
Journalist and critic of Duterte posts bail after libel arrest
The award-winning head of a Philippine online news site that has aggressively covered President Rodrigo Duterte's administration was freed on bail Thursday after her arrest in a libel case. National Bureau of Investigation agents served the warrant against Maria Ressa late Wednesday afternoon and escorted ...
Lawmakers back bill to isolate Russian internet from foreign servers
Lawmakers have backed a bill that could cut off Russia's internet traffic from foreign servers, a move that critics call a step toward censorship and possibly an isolated network like in North Korea. The bill passed its first reading by 334 votes to 47 on ...
Guaido and Venezuelan opposition targeted by internet censors as providers muzzle media
Opposition leader Juan Guaido's calls for Venezuelans to abandon Nicolas Maduro's government are booming across the world outside, but the self-declared interim president is having a harder time delivering his message at home. Watchdog groups in Venezuela and abroad say Guaido's efforts to reach citizens ...
Jailed Reuters journalists appeal to Myanmar's top court as rights group decries 'fear'
Lawyers for two Reuters reporters jailed in Myanmar for breaking a colonial-era official secrets law appealed to the Supreme Court on Friday against their conviction, as a rights group said the government wielded repressive laws against peaceful critics. The appeal, citing evidence of a police ...
Spy novels, daigou and democracy: The many lives of Yang Hengjun, Australian writer held in China
A Chinese-born Australian writer detained by authorities in Beijing for suspected espionage has long been a divisive figure among overseas Chinese dissidents and activists. To his supporters, Yang Hengjun is a dedicated democracy activist who believed that China's autocratic system would, with time, necessarily liberalize. ...
Detentions, visa delays and suspected phone bugging are among the challenges faced by foreign journalists in China, who say working conditions are getting worse with many reporting being watched and harassed. A survey of 109 journalists published Tuesday "painted the darkest picture of reporting conditions ...
Two-day Bing outage in China was technical error, not censors' block, says source
Search engine Bing's outage in China last week was a technical error, rather than an intentional censorship block, a source familiar with the matter said, although Chinese authorities and Microsoft have not so far commented on the topic. From a technical perspective, a person at ...
Every January, Just Be Cause takes a look at how things went for the non-Japanese residents of Japan (NJ) in the previous year. While not everything made this year's list — there were the false claims of "foreigner fraud" of the national health insurance system, ...
Russian lawmakers back proposal to ban spread of fake news and insulting authorities online
In measures the opposition says are aimed at stifling dissent, Russian lawmakers on Thursday backed a proposal mandating jail terms of up to 15 days for insulting authorities online and another prohibiting the spread of fake news. The two bills passed their first of three ...
Microsoft's Bing search engine goes offline in China, raising fears it was 'walled off'
The Microsoft-run search engine Bing was unavailable in mainland China late Wednesday, raising concerns among some social media users that it could be the latest foreign website to be blocked by censors. Attempting to open cn.bing.com resulted in an error message, though users could still ...
Russia's press poses a problem for Putin
Semi-authoritarian regimes don't fully control the people's behavior and Russia's media is stirring more anger than outsiders may expect.
Turkey probes prominent TV anchor who suggested 'peaceful protests'
A Turkish prosecutor on Friday launched an investigation into a prominent TV news presenter less than two weeks after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lambasted the journalist, local media reported. The prosecutor's office said it was investigating Turkey's Fox Haber channel's Fatih Portakal for "openly inciting ...
