Reports

Morocco's topselling Arabic language weekly Nichane, which had taken up in the past taboo subjects like monarchy and Islam, closed shop last week blaming "the highest circles of power" for organising a boycott of advertisers. The trouble for the magazine began last year after Nichane, its French-language sister publication TelQuel and France's Le Monde newspaper conducted an opinion poll on the monarchy. The poll, which found that King Mohammed VI had done a good overall job in the first decade...

An arrest warrant has been issued against the former editor-in-chief of Playboy Indonesia, Erwin Arnada, after he failed to surrender himself to court on Thursday. Arnada has been sentenced to jail for violating the Islamic nation's indecency laws. The chief of the prosecutor’s office in South Jakarta, Muhammad Yusuf, told the Jakarta Post that they had given Erwin enough chances to give himself up. “We had been waiting for him since 10 a.m. But till 4.30 p.m. when our office closes, he had not...

The story now in Moscow is about two groups of journalism students making calendars for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin aimed at his 58th birthday. The first posed in saucy lingerie, the second has hit back with a hardhitting realistic one. The first calendar, called "Vladimir Vladimirovich, We love you. Happy Birthday Mr Putin," featured 12 journalism students of Moscow State University (MGU). The 259-ruble ($8.73) calendar, which hit the markets on Tuesday, came with captions like “You...

A Brazilian student of tourism who was expelled from her university for wearing a minidress that was deemed too short has won $23,800 as compensation from her university. Geisy Arruda, now 21, was thrown out of Bandeirante University in Sao Paulo last year for wearing the short, pink dress to class. She was expelled for her lack of "ethical principles, academic dignity and morality" by wearing provocative and "inadequate clothing," the Associated Press has reported. Arruda was jeered by male...

Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat." The Swedish Academy, which is responsible for choosing the Nobel Laureates in Literature, made the announcement in Stockholm on Thursday. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation. Vargas Llosa, who...

Those of us cricket fans who had seen it, are never likely to forget it. April 18, 1986. Australasia Cup final at Sharjah. Set to chase 246, Pakistan are down to the last ball with four runs needed for a victory over India. Chetan Sharma comes in and lets go a full toss. And over the ropes it is hit by Javed Miandad. A great cricketing moment that. And also one of the most talked-about moments in modern cricketing history. The judgment passed by all and sundry has always been this: that Sharma...

A fanged fish and a fangless snake, five new mammal species, a bald bird and a frog that sounds like a cricket are among the 145 species newly described by science in the Greater Mekong region during 2009, says a WWF report. The report, New Blood: Greater Mekong new species discoveries 2009, says an average of three new species are recorded by science each week in the Greater Mekong – a rate of discovery that marks this region as one of the frontiers for new species discoveries on our planet...

About 166 million people in 22 countries are suffering chronic hunger or difficulty finding enough to eat as a result of protracted food crises. Wars, natural disasters and poor government institutions are exacerbating this state of undernourishment. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said these countries are in what is termed a protracted crisis and said assistance should be refocused for countries around the world suffering from double and triple shocks. Chronic hunger and food...

Global environmental damage resulting from human activity resulted in an economic cost of $6.6 trillion during 2008, equivalent to 11 percent of global GDP. By 2050, this annual amount is expected to jump to $28 trillion (18 percent of GDP). The grim numbers come from a study released Wednesday by the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and UNEP Finance Initiative. The most environmentally damaging business sectors have been identified as utilities; oil and gas producers; and...

A "hidden" language spoken by less than 1,000 people has been discovered in Arunachal Pradesh by researchers who at first thought they were documenting a dialect of the Aka culture, a tribal community that subsists on farming and hunting. But they found an entirely different vocabulary and linguistic structure. Even the speakers of the tongue, called Koro, did not realise they had a distinct language, linguist K David Harrison said Tuesday. Culturally, the Koro speakers are part of the Aka...