Reporters

An Iraqi interpreter for CBS News kidnapped in Basra was freed Wednesday, but a British journalist remained in captivity, police said. Aqeel Khadhir was handed over to authorities at the hotel where he was seized in Basra, 275 miles south of Baghdad, Police Brig. Gen. Shamkhi Jassim said. Journalists at the hotel saw police officers escort the Iraqi interpreter to headquarters.

Hewlett-Packard Co. said late Wednesday that it has settled with the New York Times and three BusinessWeek journalists who were spied on as part of the company's boardroom surveillance scheme. The Palo Alto-based computer and printer maker would not disclose the payment made in the settlement, nor would the lawyer representing the Times, one of its reporters, John Markoff, and BusinessWeek reporters Peter Burrows, Ben Elgin and Roger Crockett.

Upping the ante in the fight between the press and the courts over confidential sources, a judge here has imposed daily fines on a former reporter for USA Today that could quickly bankrupt her unless she reveals all of her sources at the Justice Department and the FBI. Toni Locy, who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, faces a $500 daily fine beginning at midnight. Next week, the fines will go up to $1,000 per day, then to $5,000 a day the week after.

The free-press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders appealed Friday to Cuban leader Raul Castro to free 19 journalists still jailed in Cuba five years after a crackdown on critics of the regime. The international group, which is banned from visiting the Communist-ruled island in any journalistic capacity, sent an undercover reporter to assess the climate for free speech under the recently changed leadership.

When a masked man fired three shotgun blasts into Chauncey Bailey in August as the newspaper editor walked to work, the slaying sent a powerful tremor through Bay Area journalism circles. Mary Fricker, a longtime business reporter for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, was about a year into retirement when she got word. Lisa Pickoff-White was driving cross-country to start her journalism studies at UC Berkeley. And Bob Butler, a member of the National Assn.

Five years ago Wednesday, U.S. forces entered the heart of the Iraqi capital, and Saddam Hussein's regime fell. While much of the world watched the downfall of Hussein and the destruction of his huge statue in central Baghdad's Firdos Square on television, Iraqis lived it. They have memories of what they were feeling as Hussein was toppled from power. Here are some of them: -- I knew everything that was happening because of the hidden satellite dish in my home.

Images run through my mind when I'm brave enough to let them in like the click-click of an old slide projector. The body of the security guard five days after the quake, his keys still on his belt, his uniform and badge struggling to lend some dignity to his bloated corpse. The body of the student, a boy slightly older than my son, his sneakers battered, his shirttail out. Like most people, I move through life clinging to a few assumptions that give me a modest sense of control.

The blast of insecticide jolted me awake. A Mexicana flight attendant had just doused me with a chemical cloud while her colleague explained over the intercom that the Cuban Health Ministry requires arriving aircraft to be fumigated. "The substance isn't harmful to humans," we were assured, amid a chorus of coughing. Ah, the glamorous life of a foreign correspondent. Nights spent in war-zone villages without heat or indoor plumbing.

Citing a journalist's need to keep news sources confidential, a federal judge in Santa Ana declined Thursday to order a reporter to reveal the names of federal officials who leaked information to him for a 2006 story about a grand jury investigation into a scheme to send sensitive military technology to China. Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz was subpoenaed to testify in federal court by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

Conservative columnist Robert Novak, a fixture on the Washington scene since the administration of John F. Kennedy, announced Monday that he has a brain tumor and will begin treatment soon. In the meantime, he said, "I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period." Novak, 77, became ill Sunday while he and his wife were visiting their daughter on Cape Cod.