News stories by Ed Holt, page 8

BRATISLAVA, Aug 03 (IPS) - BRATISLAVA, August 2 (IPS) - The family of slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has called for “lessons to be learnt” after an independent inquiry found that the Maltese state bore responsibility for her death.

BRATISLAVA, Jul 08 (IPS) - Wildlife and environmental campaigners have called for international action as concerns grow over a project to create a massive oilfield in one of Africa’s last wildernesses.

BRATISLAVA, Jun 21 (IPS) - A ruling last week ordering a retrial in the murders of a Slovak journalist and his fiancée has led to a “unique” opportunity to break a global cycle of impunity in journalist killings, press freedom groups have said.

BRATISLAVA, May 26 (IPS) - China is one of the worst places in the world for media freedom, according to the global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) which ranked the country 177 out of 180 in its latest World Press Freedom Index. In the report, the group warned that Beijing is taking “internet censorship,  surveillance and propaganda to unprecedented level,” and had “taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance its control over online information even more”. China is also the world’s biggest jailers of journalists with more than 120 journalists and what the group calls “defenders of press freedom” currently detained.

BRATISLAVA, May 18 (IPS) - Poverty and income inequality are being deepened as COVID-19 relief funds are handed out to large corporations instead of social protection programmes in developing countries, groups involved in a new study of COVID-19 bailouts have said.

May 04 (IPS) - Eighteen-year-old Chuol Nyakoach lives in the Nguenyyiel Refugee Camp in Gambella, Ethiopia. Chuol is grateful that despite the trauma she has already experienced in her young life, she is able to continue her education in the refugee camp. Learning has given her a reason to wake up every day.

BRATISLAVA, Apr 22 (IPS) - Independent journalism is facing a growing crackdown one year into the COVID-19 pandemic as governments around the world restrict access to information and muzzle critical reporting, media and rights watchdogs have warned.

BRATISLAVA, Oct 20 (IPS) - When hundreds of elephants died in the space of a few months in Botswana earlier this year, conservationists were shocked. Wildlife experts said it was one of the largest elephant mortality events in history.

BRATISLAVA, Sep 04 (IPS) - A Slovak businessman with alleged links to organised crime has been found not guilty of ordering the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak in a ruling that has left press freedom campaigner and politicians shocked.

BRATISLAVA, May 19 (IPS) - In Russia, which has one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS epidemics with the rate of new infections rising by 10-15 percent per year and at least 1.2 million people infected, an already fragile healthcare system is buckling under the pressure of dealing with COVID-19.