Reports

Women who win the Best Actress Oscar are at a higher risk of divorce than nominees who do not win. On the other hand, Best Actor winners do not experience an increase in the risk of divorce after an Oscar, a new study insists. Tiziana Casciaro, an assistant professor of organisational behaviour at the Rotman School of Management, studied the marital graphs of 751 nominees in the best actor and actress categories of the Academy Awards between1936 to 2010. The results, which have been published...

A four-member UNESCO-IUCN monitoring team is visiting Manas National Park in Assam for an on-the-spot assessment if the "danger" tag attached to the World Heritage Site should be removed. The outcome of the five-day visit will play an important role at the 35th World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain during June when the issue will be discussed. The last time that a UNESCO team visited Manas was in 2008. Manas National Park is India’s only World Heritage Site on the Danger List. It was...

The tiger reserves of Asia could support more than 10,000 wild tigers – three times the current number – if they are managed as largescale landscapes that allow for connectivity between core breeding sites, a new paper from some of the world’s leading conservation scientists finds. The paper is the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries at November’s historic tiger summit to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022. “A Landscape-Based...

The international community is woefully lacking in courage and hiding behind "soft diplomacy" in confronting human rights abusers the globe over, a leading rights group has said in a 649-page world report released Monday. Human Rights Watch, in its World Report 2011, flayed world leaders and global institutions for "simply feigning serious participation" and "ongoing concern" for human rights, claiming that these "expected champions" use rhetoric as substitutes for concerted action. "The quest...

Over 296,800 people died in 373 natural disasters in 2010, Around 208 million others were affected by this disasters, which cost nearly US$110 billion. The figures have just been released by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). The January 12 earthquake in Haiti was the deadliest disaster of the year, kiling over 222,500 people. The quake had measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, and was followed by over 50 aftershocks over the next two weeks. The second most fatal...

Global warming is already affecting the earth in a variety of ways that demand our attention. Now, research carried out at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem indicates that many tree species might become extinct due to climate change if no action is taken in time. According to the research, trees which disperse their seeds by wind, such as pines and maples, will be unable to spread at a pace that can cope with expected climate changes. The research, which focused on the ecological consequences...

An official complaint has been filed against oil giant Shell for breaches of basic standards for responsible business set out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International on Monday claimed that Shell’s use of discredited and misleading information to blame the majority of oil pollution on saboteurs in its Niger Delta operations has breached the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The complaint was...

Critics of the Indian government's liberation policies and globalisation watchword now have some more numbers to nail the government with. India lost $104 billion in illicit financial flows between 2000 and 2008, according to a groundbreaking report which used World Bank and IMF data to estimate the quantity and patterns of illicit financial flows coming out of developing countries. The figures are from Global Financial Integrity (GFI)'s Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 2000...

The three-day Flashpoint Human Rights Film Festival, which brings together eight extraordinary films from around the world that deal with human rights issues, gets under way in New Delhi on Thursday. The films urge people to reflect, react, revolutionalise and act as a ‘flashpoint’ to usher in change. The festival has already been held in Mumbai from December 8-10, 2010. The New Delhi edition would include special focused thematic screenings and panel discussions. The eight documentaries to be...

The Brazilian floods that has claimed over 600 lives is deadliest natural disaster to have hit the country. This comes barely months after an unprecedented drought afflicted the Amazon region when water levels in the river's tributaries fell drastically. Torrential rains inundated a heavily populated, steep-sloped area about 40 miles north of Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday and Wednesday, triggering flash floods and mudslides. The disaster had claimed 610 lives at the last count. About 12 inches...