Digital Journal

Not only do journalists worldwide accept bribes but often reporters and editors are the instigators, extorting either for publishing favourable stories or for not publishing damaging ones, a new report states. A report Cash for Coverage: Bribery of Journalists Around the World by the Washington DC-based Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) calls it "a single problem with many faces." In South Africa, a journalist admitted in an affidavit that he and several others had set up a media...

The British Library in London has posted more than a quarter of its Greek manuscripts, equating to more than 280 volumes, online, the latest step toward digitising important ancient documents. The manuscripts, available for free on its website at www.bl.uk/manuscripts, are part of one of the most important collections outside Greece for the study of more than 2,000 years of Hellenic culture. The website provides researchers with access to high quality digital images of a major part of the...

An international group of researchers, journalists and diplomats will study the impact of America’s first African American President. They will analyse the challenges facing the President and the significance of his policies. The AHRC Obama Research Network will also organise symposia and seminars and stage an international conference just after the next presidential election in 2012, and publish the results on a dedicated website. The events will take place at the universities of Edge Hill...

Palestinian and Israeli children not only suffer the direct physical consequences of violence, they are also being psychologically scarred by the high levels of violence they witness. Researchers from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) have found that nearly 50 percent of Palestinian children between the ages of 11 and 14 have seen other Palestinians upset or crying because someone they knew or loved had been killed by Israelis. Nearly the same proportion reported...

One in five gay and bisexual men in the United States is infected with HIV and almost half of those infected are unaware of their status, the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found. Each year about 56,300 Americans become infected with HIV and about 18,000 die from AIDS. The CDC findings fall close to the third National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day being observed in the US on Monday. Nineteen percent of "men who have sex with men" are HIV positive and 44 percent of...

People in OECD countries are becoming fatter by the day. One in two people is now overweight or obese in almost half of OECD countries. Rates are projected to increase further and in some countries two out of three people will be obese within ten years. The findings are from a new report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which examines the current obesity epidemic, giving new comparative data, trends and projections across OECD countries and outlining causes and...

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio will visit India soon to see tigers in the wild and promote global awareness about their dwindling numbers. The Titanic star, who is an ambassador of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), met India's minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh in New York on Friday to discuss ways to get involved in tiger conservation, the Press Trust of India news agency has reported. In fact, DiCaprio teamed up with the WWF in May to launch a campaign called Save Tigers Now...

As children read less and fail to build up a vocabulary, the author of a new book says in an interview the vocabulary deficit is a worrying trend that threatens confidence, future job prospects, relationships, and even the ability to understand jokes. "Every child should have a dictionary. Just by looking up a new word, the process mentally glues it into the memory. Words are slippery customers – you need a definition and understanding of the various contexts it might be used in," asserts...

Over 90 percent surveyed workers believe it is the employer‟s responsibility to create a healthy working environment, and a third feel their workplace actually hinders their ability to lead a healthy lifestyle, according to the World Heart Federation. The findings are from a survey released on Sunday on occasion of World Heart Day, the largest global awareness campaign on heart disease and stroke. The survey, conducted by Opinion Health for the federation, compared responses from employees...

There is hope yet for the orangutan in forest plantations and sustainably logged forests. Selectively logged forests and timber plantations can serve as habitat for orangutans, and populations of the ape may be more resilient than previously believed. A team of researchers led by Erik Meijaard of Jakarta-based People and Nature Consulting International has found roughly equivalent population densities between natural forest areas and two plantation concessions in East Kalimantan, Indonesian...