Digital Journal

The former editor-in-chief of Playboy Indonesia Erwin Arnada has surrendered. His lawyer said Arnada complied with the law on Saturday and turned up at the prosecutor’s office. He has been convicted for violating the Islamic nation's indecency laws. “He was not taken to the prosecutor’s office by use of force. He would not escape, but he gave up himself,” Todung Mulya Lubis was quoted by Jakarta Post as saying. When asked why the journalist did not surrender earlier, Todung said his client...

A Montana woman drove 1,500 km from Montana to a museum in Loveland, Colorado so she could destroy a controversial piece of art featuring Jesus. Kathleen Folden has been arrested for damaging a print that portrays Christ engaged in a sex act. The woman entered the Loveland Museum Gallery on Wednesday, used a crowbar to break glass over the art and ripped the print, the Associated Press reported quoting the Loveland Reporter-Herald. Folden was reported to have been screaming, "How can you...

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...

China's best-known dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is into his first year of an 11-year prison term for subversion, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Peace "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it was awarding the prize to Liu Xiaobo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China. "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human...

Investigators have recovered 20 rhino carcasses from a poaching syndicate suspect's property in South Africa. Two people were also arrested during the raid, bringing the number of the so-called Groenewald gang to 13. The suspects have been named as Gys du Preez, a professional hunter, and Joseph Maluleka, a farm worker. Dawie Groenewald was arrested in September and is currently out on R1 million bail. At the time of Groenewald’s arrest last month, there were 32 live rhinos on his property...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...