Reports

American rock legend Jim Morrison may receive a posthumous pardon for charges framed against the singer in 1969 after he exposed himself during a drunken bout on-stage. Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors, was accused of indecent exposure and lewd acts while drunk during a 1969 concert in Coconut Grove, south of Miami. He was absolved of drunkenness charges during the trial, apart from a felony charge for lewd and lascivious behaviour, but was convicted of exposure and profanity. Morrison, a...

An undercover reporter has found that clothing on sale in high street stores is being made in Britain in dirty, dangerous and appalling conditions. Workers are frequently threatened over production targets and have to work for a pittance. An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatch programme found that top fashion chains are producing clothes in factories where workers are treated like slaves. According to the reporter who worked at a clothing factory in Leicester for three months, employees are...

Real Madrid striker Cristiano Ronaldo has accepted substantial libel damages from The Daily Telegraph over a claim that he put his injured ankle at risk by "living it up" in a Hollywood nightclub. An article published in the British newspaper in July 2008 had alleged that on arriving in Los Angeles to attend a sports award ceremony Ronaldo, who was on crutches at the time, "headed straight" for a trendy nightclub. Ronaldo's lawyer, Allan Dunlavy, told London's High Court on Monday that that the...

A Japanese journalist has been arrested in eastern Myanmar (Burma) for illegally crossing over the border from Thailand. Toru Yamaji, who sneaked into Myanmar to cover Sunday's elections, has been charged under the country's Immigration Act. Yamaji, a reporter with the APF news agency, was detained on Sunday itself in Myawaddy, on the country's eastern border with Thailand, the Associated Press (AP) reported. APF is a Tokyo-based news organisation relaying photos and stories, including online...

A second reporter who wrote about a controversial road-building project outside Moscow has been badly beaten up by unidentified assailants. The assault came two days after another leading journalist was attacked in a savage assault. Anatoly Adamchuk was attacked by men outside his newspaper's office and was being treated for head trauma at a hospital, according to colleagues at the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper where he is employed, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The paper is based in...

Amnesty International and Mexican actor Gael García Bernal have launched a series of films depicting the plight of irregular migrants in Mexico. The four films are being called The Invisibles (Los Invisibles). The premiere of The Invisibles, which record the journey of hundreds of migrants from the border between Guatemala and Mexico on their way to the United States, coincides with the start of this year’s Global Forum on Migration and Development, taking place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The...

When the burqa debate was raging across the world, a young Pakistani women's rights activist, who doesn't wear a headscarf as a rule, travelled to Jalalabad in Afghanistan to see for herself what it meant to wear one. This is her story. Gulalai Ismail, a 24-year-old university student in Islamabad, needed to go to Afghanistan in August on an assignment. The consultancy on the evaluation of a gender-based violence project made her fly to Kabul. And then onwards to Jalalabad. For someone who does...

North Cachar Hills always had its share of problems ― from the politics of insurgencies to that of underdevelopment. But these have become increasingly internecine and debilitating since this district of Assam was renamed Dima Hasao earlier this year. For the uninitiated, NC Hills is to Assam what Assam is to India ― a vibrant melting pot of cultures. What the rechristening has decidedly done is make things worse for the people living in the area. They are now caught between Scylla and Charybdis...

Archaeologists have found a piece of a stone axe 35,500 years old on sacred Aboriginal land in Australia, the oldest object of its type ever found. The shard of stone was found in Australia's lush and remote far northern reaches in May, and has marks that prove it comes from a ground-edge stone axe. The discovery was made by a Monash University researcher and a team of international experts. The previous oldest ground-edge axes were 20,000 to 30,000 years old, and the conventional belief was...

A hundred days later, the litany of woes is piling up for victims of the devastating floods that ravaged Pakistan. Bad news is that the waters still remain. Worse still is the fact that aid is fast drying up. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), funding for the Floods Relief and Early Recovery Response Plan is only at 40 per cent of the requirements of USD$1.93 billion. An estimated 14 million people are in need of urgent humanitarian...