Reports

Dow Chemical, chemical manufacturer Sasol North America and their contractors hired private investigators to spy on the environmental group Greenpeace, according to a lawsuit filed Monday. The 56-page lawsuit, filed by Greenpeace in federal district court in Washington, alleged that the companies and public relations firms Dezenhall Resources and Ketchum hired investigators who stole documents, tapped phones and hacked into computer networks between 1998 and 2000. "We believe it is every citizen...

Exorbitant medical bills are pushing over 100 million people into poverty every year. In some countries, 5 percent of the population is forced into poverty every year because they have to pay for health services. The findings are from the World Health Organization's World Health Report 2010 which has just been released. The WHO report says that in countries like India people who pay for their health care services suffer "catastrophic costs." While millions suffer and die because they do not have...

The Myanmar junta has suspended nine weekly news journals which accorded prominent front-page coverage to the release of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. The Press Scrutiny and Registration Division under the Ministry of Information suspended publication of the top sports journal First Eleven and the Hot News journal for two weeks while other journals 7 Days News, The Voice, Venus News, Pyithu Khit, Myanmar Post, The Snap Shot, and Myanmar Newsweek were suspended for one week, according to...

Less than one in 10 Afghan men know of the 9/11 attacks and their impact of the war in Afghanistan. A survey by an international think tank shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. A report based on a survey by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) also shows that four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to "destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan." The findings are based on interviews conducted...

"That's All Right Mama" by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup is the world's oldest rock-and-roll song. Southeastern Louisiana University rock historian Joseph Burns claims it was the first to contain all of the elements that are associated with rock and roll. Burns, who hosts the weekly radio program "Rock School" on Southeastern’s KSLU 90.9 FM radio station, cites the following elements to be identified as a rock and roll number: * It is music that draws heavily from blues and country in a hit form that...

Amazon.com Inc is entering film production with a website that will allow aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers to submit scripts and films that could eventually hit the screens. The Web retail giant announced on Tuesday the launch of Amazon Studios in a partnership with Warner Bros Pictures. To start with, Amazon Studios (http://studios.amazon.com) is offering $2.7 million for "top submissions" of scripts and test films received by December 31, 2011. Those would subsequently be developed as...

In 2008, workers came across buried objects during excavation work for building a new luxury hotel on the grounds of Syon Park in west London. Archaeologists have now confirmed that these are Roman artefacts dating from the 1st century AD. Around 11,500 fragments of pottery, 100 coins and jewellery were unearthed by the experts from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), along with burial sites containing human remains and a Roman road, a museum statement revealed. The artefacts were found...

In a country where corruption is commonplace, quantifying it in terms of numbers is anybody's guess. There can be many indicators; one ofthem being the illegal outflow of capital. A US-based organisation has just done that. Tax evasion, crime, and corruption, it says, removed gross illicit assets from India worth US $462 billion between 1948 and 2002. The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948-2008 report released Wednesday by nonprofit Global Financial Integrity (GFI)...

Scientists in the US are more likely to publish fake research than their colleagues from other countries, a study has revealed. The findings appear in the November 16 online issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. R Grant Steen, Medical Communications Consultants, delved through the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn in the 2000-2010 period. Research papers that are withdrawn are usually removed from public records. The PubMed database is the only...

More than 400,000 unlicensed copies of articles from major US news websites were republished online between March and July this year, according to new research published this week by copyright tracking service Attributor. Attributor's Graduated Response Trial for News monitored 70,101 news articles during the period and discovered that in more than 400,000 cases 80 per cent of the original article had been illegally copied. In all, 44,906 websites were involved in republishing content, the...