"It Is Those Journalists Who Are Disliked By The Authorities Who Die In This Country."
"A Kommersant journalist who covered military affairs and had more than once angered government officials fell to his death Friday from a fifth-floor window of the apartment building where he lived," notes the Moscow Times. "Prosecutors said suicide was the likeliest explanation for the death of Ivan Safronov, a retired colonel who was a columnist at the daily newspaper for more than 10 years. But Safronov's colleagues and neighbors were skeptical he would take his own life." (More here.)
"Gunmen shot dead Mohan al-Dhahr, editor of the Al-Mashriq newspaper, in front of his west Baghdad home on Sunday," AFP reports. "'They knocked on his door and when he came out they opened fire,' said Moaed al-Lami, adding that Dhahr's death brought the number of journalists killed in the four years since the US invasion to 190."
"Reporters Without Borders called today for the release of Congolese university professor Idesbald Byabuze Katabaruka because of the tenuous nature of the charges against him and the risk that detention poses to his frail health," notes RSF. "He has been held since 16 February in the Rwandan capital of Kigali in connection with a 2005 report critical of President Paul Kagame which he says he did not write."