TWO journalists from US news agency Associated Press — one Spanish, one Indonesian — were seriously wounded in a military vehicle hit by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province in August. There were widespread reports of attacks and intimidation of reporters by both government and Taliban forces during the country’s elections.

FORTY TWO Iranian journalists are still held after the turmoil that followed the presidential election in July. They include leaders of the Association of Iranian Journalists — which like the NUJ is an affiliate of the International Federation of Journalists. NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear has written to the Iranian authorities in London and to the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband calling for them the be freed.

TWO MEXICAN journalists were murdered in July. Martin Javier Miranda Avilés, a reporter on the daily Panorama and correspondent for news agency Quadratin, was found stabbed to death at his home in Zitacuaro. There had been assaults on other Panorama staff shortly before. Ernesto Montañez Valdivia, editor of Enfoque del Sol de Chihuahua, was shot dead in his car in Ciudad Juárez near the US border, an area blighted by battles between drug gangs and police.

THE RAMALLAH bureau of Qatar-based TV news channel al-Jazeera was closed down by the Palestinian Authority in July, with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad accusing it of “bias and incitement” in its broadcasts. Three days later, after worldwide protests, the order was lifted but the Ministry of Information is pursuing a legal case against al-Jazeera.

Rabah Lamouchi of the Algerian daily al-Nahar has been jailed for six months for defamation and working without accreditation.

Crispin Perez became the fourth journalist to be killed in the Philippines this year when he was stabbed near his home.