Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Actress Brittany Murphy's death was an accident caused by a combination of pneumonia, an iron deficiency and "multiple drug intoxication," the Los Angeles County coroner said Thursday.
The 32-year-old actress was found dead in her Hollywood Hills, California, home December 20.
The short statement issued by the coroner's office Thursday did not list the drugs involved, but assistant chief Ed Winter told CNN no illegal drugs were found in Murphy's system.

The full autopsy report would be available within two weeks, the coroner's office said.The primary cause of death was "community acquired pneumonia," but drugs found by the toxicology screening were believed to "play a role in her death," said coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey. "They just were not the primary cause, so they figured into the cause of death, so that's why it's an accidental death."
Murphy's husband, British screenwriter Simon Monjack, has told People magazine the actress had "laryngitis and flu-like symptoms" at the time of her death.

Monjack said Murphy used Vicoprofen to relieve pain from severe menstrual cramps."She was on an antibiotic and was taking cough medicine," he said.

Murphy was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, after she was rushed there in the early morning hours of Sunday, December 20.The often bubbly, free-spirited actress appeared in films such as "Clueless," "8 Mile," "Don't Say a Word" and "Girl, Interrupted." She also lent her voice to animated works, including the movie "Happy Feet" -- in which she also sang -- and a regular voice role on the animated TV series "King of the Hill."

Murphy was best-known for her work in a string of comedies earlier this decade, including playing lead roles in "Uptown Girls" alongside fellow Georgia native Dakota Fanning and "Little Black Book" with Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates.



 

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Several suspected U.S. drone strikes killed at least 29 people in Pakistan on Tuesday, Pakistani intelligence sources said.

One of the strikes targeted Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, a group based in Pakistan that targets U.S. forces and their allies in neighboring Afghanistan, said a Pakistan political source who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.

A commander of the group who spoke on the condition of anonymity told CNN that Haqqani "is alive and was not in the area at the time of the attack."

Who is Sirajuddin Haqqani?

The reported strikes were unusual for the relatively high number of missiles fired -- at least 17, intelligence sources said -- and for the high death toll.

U.S. drone strikes tend to kill fewer than 10 people, though one last year reportedly killed 60, said Katherine Tiedemann, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington. A death toll of 29 would represent the highest single-day death toll this year from a drone strike or strikes in Pakistan, she said.

The missiles hit targets Tuesday morning in at least four villages in North Waziristan, a region rife with Islamic extremists, the Pakistani intelligence sources said.
The strikes happened in the Datta Khel area, which has been the center of much drone activity in the past few months. Sources said drone-fired missiles hit the villages of Daigan, Muhammad Khel, Pai Khel and Toor Narai.

U.S. officials normally do not comment on suspected drone strikes, which have raised tensions between Pakistan and the United States in the past.The United States is the only country in the region known to have the ability to launch missiles from drones, which are controlled remotely.

 

CNN) -- "Media must cease reporting on the discovery of a body at a psychiatric hospital in Dongguan." "Media must not report on corruption allegations relating to the eldest son of President Hu Jintao."
"Media must not report on a lawsuit against China Eastern Airlines by victims of a plane crash in 2004 in which 52 passengers were killed."
Those are just a few of more than 60 restrictions the Chinese government slapped on the media in 2009,
often secretly, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
The press freedom group said it obtained written media-related orders which are published in its report, "China Clings to Control: Press Freedoms in 2009."


Tight controls were put on reporting of ethnic riots in the west of the country in July, and clear orders were issued for how to report President Barack Obama's visit to the country in November, the IFJ said in the report released Sunday.

The press was instructed not to organize questions for the public to ask Obama at a town-hall style event he did in the country and was banned from reporting on "protests or spontaneous news during Obama's visit," the IFJ report said.

It all added up to a year of increased censorship in China, on the heels of a period of relative openness around the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the group charged. CNN's calls to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese Embassy in Washington were not immediately returned.

The IFJ report said that Chinese media were ordered not to report prominently on protests in Iran following the country's controversial presidential election in June.They were barred from reporting at all on elections for the chief executive of Macau, a region of China, and were waved off stories about refugees entering China, threats to public health, political protests and corruption, the report said.

They were allowed to report about some stories in English but not Mandarin, and others in newspapers but not online, said the report, which was compiled with the help of a group called Chinese Human Rights Defenders.That's not to mention self-censorship in the press around two key anniversaries last year: the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and the Tibetan uprising of 1959, the IFJ said.

"Media did not need to be ordered how to report these matters -- they were very aware there was to be no independent reporting on these topics," the report said. "Most journalists and media outlets would self-censor and there would be no need for regulations or orders... self-censorship remains a matter of self-preservation."

Direct orders from the government -- sometimes containing the explicit threat of "punishment from the Central Propaganda Department" -- was only one element in Beijing's arsenal against the press, the report said.

China is clearly concerned about the Internet, the IFJ suggested. "Online surveillance was stepped up, Web sites were entirely or partially closed, online social networks were shut down, online news portals were censored, online journalists and bloggers were detained and arrested."

Press "accreditation rules tightened further in 2009... making it difficult for online journalists to gain accreditation," the report said.And foreign journalists encountered "acts of violence, destruction of work materials and equipment... surveillance and reprimands," the report said.But "despite the difficulties, many journalists try to go out of the way to get the news," the IFJ said.

China hosted a World Media Summit in October, drawing the heads of some of the world's largest news organizations, including the Associated Press, Reuters, News Corporation, Russia's Itar-Tass, Kyodo of Japan and China's own Xinhua.President Hu addressed the conference, saying "it is more important than ever before that the media should establish and uphold social responsibilities," according to Xinhua.

Hu pledged the Chinese government would safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of foreign news media and continue to facilitate foreign media coverage of China in accordance with the law, Xinhua reported. It is not clear that he made a similar promise regarding Chinese media.

Obama criticized censorship in his November visit to China, responding to questions from the Chinese public about restrictions on the Internet."Because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear," he said.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on China to investigate alleged hacking of Google in the country -- prompting the Internet search giant to threaten to pull out of China. "We look to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. And we also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent," Clinton said.

Five years ago, Google agreed to allow some censorship by China, in exchange for the right to operate in that country's massive emerging technology market. The company now says censorship and the hacking of Chinese dissidents' Google e-mail accounts have prompted it to reconsider.

 

Relatives of one of those killed in the shooting console each other in Juarez on Sunday.

 

(CNN) -- As many as 15 gunmen stormed into a house party in Juarez, Mexico, in the early hours of Sunday morning and opened fire, killing at least 13 people and injuring 13 others in one of the deadliest attacks the city has seen this year, a police official said.

The shooting happened around 12:30 a.m. in southern Juarez, police spokesman Jacinto Seguro told CNN.
Witnesses said the gunmen arrived in seven cars, closing down the streets and blocking exits," Seguro said. "They then stormed into the party and began shooting as the group was watching a soccer game," he said, adding that windshields and windows on the cars were darkly tinted.


The victims' ages were between 14 and 19, Seguro said. No other information about the victims was immediately available.

"We're still trying to establish a motive," Seguro said.
More than 100 AK-47 bullet casings were found around the crime scene, Seguro said.

The AK-47 -- known in Mexico by its slang name of "cuerno de chivos," meaning "goat's horn," in reference to the gun's banana-shaped clip -- is the weapon of choice for drug cartels.

On Friday, at least seven bullet-riddled bodies were found scattered throughout northern Juarez, according to police.

Recently, there had been a relative downturn in violence in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas, with a reported ceasefire between two rival cartels battling for rights to the critical Juarez drug route into the United States. The reported ceasefire between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Vicente

Carrillo Fuentes Cartel, commonly known as the Juarez Cartel, was expected to last until February 28, according to a local source who covers the conflict between the two cartels.