Reporters Sans Frontières

Concern that social networks to be targeted as BlackBerry helps British police identify rioters.

RWB is worried about cooperation between Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian manufacturer of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, and the British authorities in the wake of this week’s rioting in London and other cities in which,

The Dominican police have named the people they think masterminded and carried out the 2 August abduction and murder of journalist José Agustín Silvestre de los Santos and say the motive was an article by Silvestre linking the alleged mastermind to a recent murder.

Reporters Without Borders condemns yesterday’s murder of TV presenter José Agustín Silvestre de los Santos, who was kidnapped in the eastern city of La Romana and was later found dead in El Peñon, on the road from La Romana to San Pedro de Macorís. He had been shot three times.

Yesterday’s discovery of the body of Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, a crime reporter and columnist for the regional daily Notiver in the east-coast port city of Veracruz, adds her name to the long list of journalists who have been murdered or have disappeared in Mexico. A total of 77 have been killed since 2000 and 23 have gone missing since 2003.

Mr. Ollanta Humala

President of the Republic

Government Palace,

Lima, Peru

Dear President Humala,

Today you assume the office that the citizens of Peru conferred on you in an election on 5 June.

Auro Ida, a renowned political journalist in the west-central state of Mato Grosso and editor of the Midianews (http://www.midianews.com.br/) website, was gunned down in Cuiabá, the state capital, on 22 July, becoming the fourth journalist to be murdered in Brazil since the start of the year.

Nery Jeremías Orellana, 26, the manager of Radio Joconguera in the town of Candelaria, in the western department of Lempira, was gunned down yesterday morning, bringing the number of Honduran journalists killed since the start of the year to three. A total of 12 journalists have been killed in the past 18 months in Honduras without any of their murders being solved.

Reporters Without Borders condemns local TV reporter Adan Benítez’s murder in the northern port city of La Ceiba (the capital of Atlántida department) on 4 July. Employed by two local stations, 45TV and Teleceiba Canal 7, he was the second journalist to be murdered in Honduras in the past two months.

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns last week’s murder of journalist Luis Eduardo Gómez in Arboletes, in the northwestern department of Antioquia, and the threats that two journalists, Medellín-based Mary Luz Avendaño and Bogotá-based Gonzalo Guillén, have been getting in unrelated cases.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the persecution of Mario Sánchez, a radio journalist based in the town of Centenario, in the southwestern province of Neuquén, who has been the target of repeated attacks and threats that began on 19 June, when unidentified intruders set fire to his home after taking his computer and travel documents.