Digital Journal

Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, has voiced his concern about climate change and the recent floods in Pakistan, in an audiotape posted on the Internet on Friday. Osama's new tack is being seen as an effort to bolster his flagging image. The speech titled "Reflections on the Method of Relief Work" came in an 11 minute video that had been posted on Islamist websites, and was released by American watchdog SITE Intelligence Group on Friday. SITE said that it had been able to identify the voice, but...

US First Lady Michelle Obama will be taking a leading role in a new health campaign by Walt Disney Company aimed at getting children to adopt healthier lifestyles, the entertainment conglomerate has announced. The multimedia initiative, to be called Disney Magic of Healthy Living, will include stars from the Disney Channel like Nick Jonas and Brenda Song showcasing what the company statement described as "fun, easy ways that healthy living practices can be woven into the fabric of everyday life...

Environmental crimes are booming in a Madagascar, plunged in political chaos. Ten or more carts filled with around 100 terrestrial tortoises each are leaving the Mahafaly Plateau in south Madagascar every week, a WWF survey has found. Poaching of both the endemic radiated tortoise ( Astrochelys radiata) and the spider tortoise ( Pyxis arachnoids) for the bush meat and pet trade had long been known. But the ongoing political stability is now being exploited to the hilt for wildlife trade. These...

People in the US are drinking more than they did 20 years ago. Researchers are attributing a variety of factors, including social, economic and ethnic influences and pressures, to this increase. Researchers from the UT Southwestern School of Health Professions compared data of 1992 (with 42,862 respondents) and 2002 (43,093 respondents) across both sexes and three major ethnic groups, and noticed an increase in consumption of alcohol. There was also a rise in drinking five or more drinks in a...

Some 400 years ago in North Peru, a Spaniard had jotted down numbers on the back of a letter. The small piece of paper has now been excavated by archaeologists and it has revealed traces of a lost language. A combined research team of US–Peruvian archaeologists at Santa Mar´ıa Magdalena de Cao in the Chicama Valley of North Peru found this document that lists a few but important words that serve as keys to unlocking the intricacies of a native language that was spoken in prehistory and into the...

Good news: Mainstream media reporting is more likely to deter young people from using illicit drugs than encourage their use. Bad News: Types of reports most likely to have the strongest impact on young people are underrepresented in the media. The revelation comes from a study conducted by the Drug Policy Modelling Programme (DPMW) at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at the University of New South Wales, Australia, which measured the impact of media reports on illicit drugs...

Plants are as threatened as mammals, with one in five of the world’s plant species threatened with extinction. It is for the first time that the true extent of the threat to the world’s estimated 380,000 plant species has been quantified. The shocking numbers come from the Sampled Red List Index assessments carried out by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Natural History Museum and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Specialist Groups. The findings have been released ahead of...

Some people have all the luck. Six such individuals from the world over now have the opportunity to work as panda caretakers for one month, after an intense three-hour live showdown on China’s largest television network, CCTV. Starting October 1, the six finalists will spend three weeks at the Chengdu Panda Base where they will learn about all aspects of giant panda care, breeding and conservation. One important stop will be a visit to a WWF conservation project at the Longxi-Hongkou Nature...

The British Library in London has posted more than a quarter of its Greek manuscripts, equating to more than 280 volumes, online, the latest step toward digitising important ancient documents. The manuscripts, available for free on its website at www.bl.uk/manuscripts, are part of one of the most important collections outside Greece for the study of more than 2,000 years of Hellenic culture. The website provides researchers with access to high quality digital images of a major part of the...

Not only do journalists worldwide accept bribes but often reporters and editors are the instigators, extorting either for publishing favourable stories or for not publishing damaging ones, a new report states. A report Cash for Coverage: Bribery of Journalists Around the World by the Washington DC-based Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) calls it "a single problem with many faces." In South Africa, a journalist admitted in an affidavit that he and several others had set up a media...