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The reformist Iranian newspaper Ghanoon daily did not appear on newsstands in Tehran on Thursday after the judiciary accused it publishing false reports and shut it down. Ghanoon, meaning "law" in Persian, is the latest victim of ever-increasing bans being slapped on the media despite President Hassan Rouhani vowing to ease such restrictions when he took office last August.

the daily's coverage of the arrest of Mohammad Royanian, a former police and government official, was deemed inappropriate

Royanian has been arrested on charges of financial fraud related to his tenure as head of Iran's Fuel and Transport Management Organisation

POMED is increasingly concerned about the detention of Ahmed Gamal Ziada, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release. He was originally detained on January 29, 2019, after traveling from Tunis to Cairo in order to complete his membership in the Egyptian Press Syndicate. Upon arrival at the Cairo International Airport, Ziada was detained for two weeks without charge. He has since been accepted by the Syndicate as an official member.

If convicted, Ziada could face up to a year in prison.

yet another example of the Egyptian government’s ongoing crackdown on a free press, behavior that has earned it a Freedom House ranking of “Not Free” each year since 2013. Most recently, Egypt denied entry to New York Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick when he tried to enter the country on February 18. Prior to Ziada's detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists identified at least 25 journalists who were in prison as of December 2018, 19 on charges of “false news”—more than any other country in the world.

His split reality, a free man by day and a prisoner in solitary confinement by night, has already taken its toll."There's a deep level of insult that I'm cooperating with the state in the destruction of my life everyday... which puts such immense psychological pressure on someone."

Abdel Fattah's disjointed life has also affected his family who worry for his safety in the police station with no communication once he is inside. He is not allowed any mobile phones or laptops overnight.Abdel Fattah's sister Mona Seif, also a human rights advocate, said she still cannot process how her brother is imprisoned daily.She said she is determined to keep advocating against the unfair probation conditions for him and others.

Dubbed "the icon of the revolution" that unseated longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Abdel Fattah still speaks out on his social media accounts about political repression in Egypt.He argues for others also forced to spend their nights in jail, such as award-winning photojournalist Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, known as Shawkan.

Liao Liang's mission in the Kenyan capital is hardly confidential: As a senior editor of the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of Chinese state television, his task is that of shining a positive light on his country's ambitious activities -- particularly those in Africa, where China's reputation has suffered as its footprint has grown.

"It's an apartheid system," he says, with the Chinese at the top, then the whites, then the blacks and at the very bottom are the Kenyans. "We have to let the Chinese go first in the restrooms and we're only allowed to eat in the cafeteria after 1 p.m., after they have eaten. They treat us like their inferiors." Sometimes, James M. says, he only receives half of his contractual editor's salary of 2,000 euros per month. He says he is penalized 2,000 shillings - around 17 euros - for every mistake in his stories, including typos.

CGTN journalists aren't just there to ward off criticism of China's expansion in Africa but also to break the West's media dominance. The broadcaster has a similar mission in Africa as Russia's state broadcaster RT does in Europe.

To date, more than 300 defendants have been prosecuted following FBI terrorism stings. These stings are often preposterous when examined closely. Derrick Shareef was arrested after buying grenades from an undercover agent; since Shareef didn’t have any money and was living with the government’s informant, the FBI set it up so that the undercover agent, posing as an arms dealer, would accept ratty old stereo speakers as payment. Emanuel L. Lutchman, a mentally ill and broke homeless man, planned to attack a New Year’s Eve celebration with a machete — a weapon he was able to buy only because the FBI gave him $40. The absurdities go on and on and on. Human Rights Watch criticized these types of FBI stings in a 2014 report for having “created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by conducting sting operations that facilitated or invented the target’s willingness to act.”

For “The Day Shall Come,” Morris spent years researching FBI stings and talking to terrorism defendants, federal prosecutors, and FBI agents

Looming over Miami in “The Day Shall Come” is the real-life FBI office building, which is actually in Miramar, just north of Miami. A $194 million structure that opened in 2015, the enormous glass building with sharp lines and curved walls houses the FBI’s South Florida office. Simultaneously assuring and foreboding, the building looks like a police headquarters in a dystopian comic book. Morris delights in using the building as a way of showing how the FBI has benefited financially from, and been changed by, the endless search for terrorists since 9/11.

nothing seems to disturb Egypt’s ruling cadres more than the written word. The recent litany of bans and shutdowns, including blocking hundreds of web pages online, illustrates what Cambridge University’s Khaled Fahmy, a prolific historian of the Middle East, called “an alarmist moment of crisis,” one in which Egypt’s authoritarian state of emergency laws have turned something as simple as reading into a dangerous act. “Free press and freedom of information … are essential ingredients of any democratic system. The regime and many segments of society do not see it this way—they see the exact opposite. They see at times of crises we have to have absolute unity,”

sentenced to five years in jail under a counter-terrorism law for possessing a copy of Karl Marx’s Value, Price and Profit

Sisi prefers conservative Islamists who he can control over secular dissidents—chiefly writers—who threaten his rule.

Referring to President Sisi as “my favorite dictator,” President Trump and his administration have condoned the Egyptian government’s persistent and grave violations of human rights.  The tragedy for Egyptians is that President Sisi has taken these patronizing and demeaning words as a compliment, and has spent the last four years living up to his reputation as a dictator.

your pledge that there will be “no more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator’.”

should release the tens of thousands of prisoners held after grossly unfair trials, or without adequate procedural safeguards

The Saudi woman who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for using Twitter appears to have been denounced to Saudi authorities through a crime-reporting app that users in the kingdom can download to Apple and Android phones.

The user told Shehab that he had reported her on the Saudi app, which is called Kollona Amn, or All Are Safe. It is not clear whether the Saudi officials responded directly to the report, but the 34-year-old mother was arrested two months later.

Her alleged crimes including using a website to “cause public unrest” and “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts” and by retweeting their tweets.

Two members of the Howeitat, a tribe in Saudi Arabia forcibly displaced to make way for the $500bn Neom megacity, have received lengthy sentences over their protests against the project

Two women - Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University student and mother of two, and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, a mother of five - were given 34 years and 45 years respectively over tweets critical of the Saudi government. Osama Khaled, a writer, translator and computer programmer, was sentenced to 32 years over "allegations relating to the right of free speech",

since US President Joe Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia in July, there had been a "more repressive approach by the Saudi state security and judicial authorities against individuals exercising their right to freedom of speech". 

Iran’s foreign minister said that his country is ready to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to resolve questions about uranium found at three undeclared sites, as long as the agency addresses these questions “technically,” rather than politically

Once there is agreement on a return to the nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran will be ready to grant access to the IAEA “beyond safeguards,” Amir-Abdollahian said.

“We are not afraid of having face-to-face talks with the United States, but we should feel that it is going to be a game changer, that there is going to be some kind of gain for us.”  “If the Americans are serious, and they are willing to show their willingness and desire to get back to the JCPOA, these [indirect] messages will suffice."

It's the first queer play to be staged in Tunisia -- director Essia Jaibi's latest work aims to challenge conservative attitudes in a country where same-sex acts are punishable by prison terms.

The work, co-produced by LGBTQ rights group Mawjoudin (translating to "we exist"), is played by six mostly amateur actors aged between 23 and 71, reflecting a decades-long struggle for gay rights in the North African country

other problems facing all Tunisians: police and judicial corruption, impunity and the brain drain as people leave to seek better economic prospects in Europe and elsewhere.