Foreign Journalists

A burst of gunfire and squealing tires kicked off what was scheduled to be a day of anti-government protests in Tripoli, Libya's capital. The foreign journalists in town, all watched by minders, struggled to find out what was happening. "Al Qaeda is on the loose," claimed an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' press division. The terrorists, he said, want to turn the country into Iraq. But there was no reason to panic. The Libyan government would not allow any harm to befall the journalists, by simply barring them from venturing outside.

A French television correspondent was killed Wednesday while reporting in the restive Syrian city of Homs, the first Western journalist to die in a nearly 10-month uprising against the government of President Bashar Assad. Syrian authorities and opposition supporters traded accusations of responsibility for the shelling that killed Gilles Jacquier, 43, an award-winning correspondent for the television channel France 2. The government called it a terrorist crime and said eight Syrians were also killed.

Loyalists of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attacked foreign journalists Thursday, drawing Washington's censure and international rights groups' accusations that the beatings and detentions were desperate moves by a teetering regime trying to cling to power. Although the abuse of reporters and camera crews risked discrediting Mubarak in the eyes of already wary democratic allies, it also served to mobilize his supporters against a 10-day-old campaign for his ouster and block some of the damaging imagery from reaching readers and viewers around the world.

At home in San Fernando in early June, Hadia Al-Abdullah was watching an online video of a women's silent protest in Damascus, Syria, when she saw someone who looked like her 65-year-old mother. She played it over and over to be sure. But when Al-Abdullah later spoke to her mother on the phone, the older woman didn't mention anything about a protest. " 'I went out to buy a jilbab, ' " a robe, Al-Abdullah recalled her mother saying. "That's the code she used. " On another day, Al-Abdullah's father complained that his wife was going to the "hospital" even though he had asked her not to. "If I need to go to the hospital again, I'll go," her mother said when she got on the phone.

American values and the view of Hollywood from abroad will be the subject of a panel discussion by foreign journalists in Camarillo today. Howard Rosenberg, an entertainment critic with the Los Angeles Times, will moderate the discussion by journalists from Egypt, Holland, Chile, France and Japan who cover the Hollywood entertainment industry. The event is hosted by the World Affairs Council of Ventura County.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Li Jinhua dismissed as "unfounded" protests by foreign journalists over police mistreatment and implied that reporters were beaten for violating rules governing foreign press coverage in China. Half a dozen foreign journalists were assaulted or detained by security forces this week while covering the first anniversary of the crackdown on demonstrators in Beijing.

CHINA * China opened two bases to scores of foreign journalists in an unusual, closely supervised effort to demonstrate the world's largest military's ability to protect the most populous nation on Earth. Some critics, both within and outside the People's Liberation Army, say its 2.5 million soldiers are undertrained and under- equipped despite China's efforts to modernize military technology and expand its cache of weapons.

Here in Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, the reformist government is resisting efforts by the Yugoslav army to increase its authority at civilian expense. On Saturday, however, the presidential press office said a military court had ordered 30 days of pretrial confinement for two foreign journalists detained in the republic.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday that foreign journalists who were beaten a day earlier in Tian An Men Square were breaking the law. He cited an unknown or nonexistent law to back up his accusation.

They came from all over the world, journalists from 17 media organizations representing 14 countries and five continents, to collect the prize they had sought for months: about 10 minutes of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's time. Deluged since his inaugural by hundreds of requests from foreign journalists to interview California's foreign-born governor, Schwarzenegger's aides declared Friday "International Media Day." From 9:30 a.m.

Amid intensified NATO-led bombing of Libya's capital, the government is alleging mounting civilian casualties and massive damage to homes and civilian infrastructure, though foreign journalists see limited evidence of such devastation. Libyan authorities in recent days have alleged that separate bombing strikes in Tripoli injured an infant girl, heavily damaged a Christian Coptic church and resulted in part of a bomb or missile landing in a semirural neighborhood. International reporters were bused to each scene, but what they learned did not always match the information provided by officials.

Government loyalists tried to show Monday that they had wrested control of the last major rebel-held enclave in western Libya, but a visit only underscored that ferocious fighting continued in the city. It also showed how deeply Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's forces were embedded within the heart of Misurata and how difficult it would be to dislodge them without risking civilian lives. Libyan officials hustled international journalists onto a pair of buses Monday afternoon in Tripoli for a trip to what government spokesman Musa Ibrahim described as "liberated" Misurata, about 125 miles to the east.

Four journalists were expelled from Yemen on Monday after reporting on unrest that included government forces firing on unarmed civilians. Haley Sweetland Edwards, a freelance reporter working for The Times, was among the group of reporters deported after five armed men raided their home in the early morning. Edwards was still in her pajamas when she was taken to meet a military colonel who said the group was being expelled for national security reasons. The journalists were able to return to the home to collect their belongings before going to the airport with a military escort.

The shot-up ambulances at this oil town's hospital attest to a battle in which normal rules of engagement did not apply. The burnt-out carcasses of vehicles show the ferocity of the combat between Libyan rebels and Moammar Kadafi's forces. The pro-Kadafi soldiers manning checkpoints and waving green flags illustrated the authority the Libyan regime has reasserted over this strategic oil refinery city on the Mediterranean Sea coast. In a bold assertion of confidence, Libyan authorities loaded dozens of foreign and local journalists onto a plane and flew them hundreds of miles east to battle-scarred towns Bin Jawwad and Ras Lanuf , which only days ago were under the control of forces loyal to the rebel interim government.

A burst of gunfire and squealing tires kicked off what was scheduled to be a day of anti-government protests in Tripoli, Libya's capital. The foreign journalists in town, all watched by minders, struggled to find out what was happening. "Al Qaeda is on the loose," claimed an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' press division. The terrorists, he said, want to turn the country into Iraq. But there was no reason to panic. The Libyan government would not allow any harm to befall the journalists, by simply barring them from venturing outside.

An anonymous online campaign calling for pro-democracy demonstrations across China on Sunday has been met with the detention of human rights activists, greater Internet censorship and even veiled pressure on foreign journalists. The strict response by authorities comes after a U.S.-based Chinese-language website, Boxun.com, called for repeated attempts each Sunday to launch a "jasmine revolution" in about two dozen cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. The first planned attempt, which was held last Sunday, brought out a swarm of police and foreign media in some of the designated sites but provided no evidence the country was on the cusp of a popular uprising.

The government here has banned a controversial Australian-made film that depicts the Indonesian military's reported 1975 execution of six foreign journalists in East Timor. Indonesia's film censorship board announced last week that all screenings of the political thriller "Balibo," which documents the killings of the so-called Balibo Five, are forbidden. The five -- two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander -- were working for Australian television networks when they were allegedly murdered by Indonesian troops during the 1975 invasion of East Timor.

In his 12th-floor office a few blocks from the White House, Hamdi Fouad sits tapping an unlit cigar on his desk, glasses pushed back on his forehead, and wrestles with a daily dilemma: What will he tell his millions of readers back home in Egypt today about the United States? "If it's a decision made in Washington, it's page one, even in Cairo, and my editors want it all.

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is recovering in an American hospital this week after being sexually assaulted and beaten by a mob in Egypt's Tahrir Square late on Friday. The same day that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Logan was surveying the mood of anti-Mubarak protesters for a "60 Minutes" story when she and her team "were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration," CBS said in a statement Tuesday. The network said that a group of 200 people were then "whipped into a frenzy," pulling Logan away from her crew and attacking her until a group of women and Egyptian soldiers intervened.

Loyalists of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attacked foreign journalists Thursday, drawing Washington's censure and international rights groups' accusations that the beatings and detentions were desperate moves by a teetering regime trying to cling to power. Although the abuse of reporters and camera crews risked discrediting Mubarak in the eyes of already wary democratic allies, it also served to mobilize his supporters against a 10-day-old campaign for his ouster and block some of the damaging imagery from reaching readers and viewers around the world.