Digital Journal

Directly challenging extremist ideology through exposing the fallacies, contradictions and harmful effects of jihadist concepts and actions is a better way of tackling them than closing down extremist websites, a think-tank has concurred. Quilliam, a London-based think-tank whose founders are former ideologues of UK-based extremist Islamist organisations, has based its conclusions on an 18-month study of Arabic-language websites that eventually focused on 20 discussion forums. Unlike earlier...

African-American seniors are twice as likely to be mistreated than elders of other races. They are five times more susceptible to being swindled, the first population-based survey on the psychological abuse of senior citizens in the US has found. Reporting the survey results in The Gerontologist journal, University of Pittsburgh researchers have called for health care and social service workers to be especially vigilant for the possible mistreatment of African American seniors. The survey is...

Palestinian and Israeli children not only suffer the direct physical consequences of violence, they are also being psychologically scarred by the high levels of violence they witness. Researchers from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) have found that nearly 50 percent of Palestinian children between the ages of 11 and 14 have seen other Palestinians upset or crying because someone they knew or loved had been killed by Israelis. Nearly the same proportion reported...

An international group of researchers, journalists and diplomats will study the impact of America’s first African American President. They will analyse the challenges facing the President and the significance of his policies. The AHRC Obama Research Network will also organise symposia and seminars and stage an international conference just after the next presidential election in 2012, and publish the results on a dedicated website. The events will take place at the universities of Edge Hill...

Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio will visit India soon to see tigers in the wild and promote global awareness about their dwindling numbers. The Titanic star, who is an ambassador of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), met India's minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh in New York on Friday to discuss ways to get involved in tiger conservation, the Press Trust of India news agency has reported. In fact, DiCaprio teamed up with the WWF in May to launch a campaign called Save Tigers Now...

People in OECD countries are becoming fatter by the day. One in two people is now overweight or obese in almost half of OECD countries. Rates are projected to increase further and in some countries two out of three people will be obese within ten years. The findings are from a new report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which examines the current obesity epidemic, giving new comparative data, trends and projections across OECD countries and outlining causes and...

One in five gay and bisexual men in the United States is infected with HIV and almost half of those infected are unaware of their status, the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found. Each year about 56,300 Americans become infected with HIV and about 18,000 die from AIDS. The CDC findings fall close to the third National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day being observed in the US on Monday. Nineteen percent of "men who have sex with men" are HIV positive and 44 percent of...

Over 90 percent surveyed workers believe it is the employer‟s responsibility to create a healthy working environment, and a third feel their workplace actually hinders their ability to lead a healthy lifestyle, according to the World Heart Federation. The findings are from a survey released on Sunday on occasion of World Heart Day, the largest global awareness campaign on heart disease and stroke. The survey, conducted by Opinion Health for the federation, compared responses from employees...

As children read less and fail to build up a vocabulary, the author of a new book says in an interview the vocabulary deficit is a worrying trend that threatens confidence, future job prospects, relationships, and even the ability to understand jokes. "Every child should have a dictionary. Just by looking up a new word, the process mentally glues it into the memory. Words are slippery customers – you need a definition and understanding of the various contexts it might be used in," asserts...

European countries have agreed to create six marine protected areas (MPAs) in the northeast Atlantic to step up the protection of the region's environment. They have defined six zones or MPAs over 285,000 sq km where human activity should be limited. The decision was taken at a meeting on Friday in the southwestern Norwegian city of Bergen of the OSPAR Commission, a body through which 15 regional countries, along with the European Union, work to protect the environment of the northeast Atlantic...