News About The News Abroad, And None Of It Good
Zimbabwe: Alex Perry, the Time reporter who was arrested for "working as a journalist without accreditation" in Zimbabwe, has written an essay about his time in jail there. Here's how it opens: "A bad jail wastes a body quickly. When I entered Cell 6 at Gwanda police station, I was fit. After five days in a concrete and iron-bar tank, with no food and only a few sips of water, my skin was flaking and my clothes were slipping off. A prison blanket had given me lice. The water I had palmed from a rusty tap in the shower had given me diarrhea. Under a 24-hour strip light, I hadn't slept more than a few minutes at a time. And I stank. So many men had passed through Cell 6 that they had left their smell on the walls, and while I was making my own stink, the walls were also passing theirs onto me."
Gaza: BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza City on March 12. Now, the New York Times reports, a "previously unknown group in Gaza sent a statement to news organizations on Sunday claiming that it had killed" him. For now, the BBC is treating the claim as a rumor since there is no independent verification.