Digital Journal

It's an attractive, furry, and adorable creature. Ironically and unfortunately, that is what makes the red panda a vulnerable species. It is not critically endangered yet, but the potential threat posed to it is immense. TRAFFIC, the international wildlife trade monitoring network, has just released a report Sikkim—under the sign of the red panda that documents the potential threats posed to this mammal, described as the "most handsome mammal on Earth" by Frederic Cuvier, who is credited to have...

Twenty years after the fall of the Communist regime, politics in Hungary has come a full circle. It has virtually abolished freedom of the press and also assumed presidency of the European Union (EU). The new media law passed on December 21 by the Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz), which enjoys a two-thirds majority in parliament, accords the government sweeping powers to monitor the press. Ironically, Hungary also marked its metamorphosis from being a mere satellite State of the erstwhile USSR...

Human remains said to be over 400,000 years old have been discovered in Israel. The discovery challenges conventional theory that the Homo sapiens species originated in Africa. Avi Gopher, of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, told news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) that testing of stalagmites, stalactites and other material found in a cave east of Tel Aviv indicated that eight teeth uncovered there could be the earliest traces so far of our species. Though the first teeth were...

India's Central Board of Film Certification has refused a censor certificate to Inshallah, Football, a documentary film about an aspiring footballer who was denied the right to travel abroad on the pretext that father was a militant in the 1990s. The film's director Ashvin Kumar said, "This morning (December 23) I received a call from the Indian censor board stating that after having referred the film to a revision panel, censor certification will not be given. We have not been asked to make any...

Wage riots and workplace accidents in Bangladesh have not been making mainstream media headlines. The over-populated, under-fed country, should one be told, is caught in a vice-like grip. This stranglehold is all about the lust for fashion in the West over lives of labourers in a developing country. It is about robbing the poor to feed the rich. What Bangladesh has been witnessing for the last few weeks is a fallout of the global economic meltdown and the exigency of outsourcing, the two being...

The usually accepted argument among psychologists had been that marriage generally reduces illegal and aggressive behaviours in men. There were, however, disagreements over the reason for this. A group of researchers now says that the association is a function of matrimony itself or as well as less "antisocial" men being simply more likely to get married. The team of researchers from the Michigan State University led by behaviour geneticist S Alexandra Burt examined the data of 289 pairs of male...

The pain shot up to his head faster than he could think. It seemed like a powerful electric shock. Hussain, a 26-year-old, still doesn't have words for it. He got just one, and couldn't take it. Hussain is a victim of Malaysia's judicial caning. Across the Southeast Asian country, government officials rampantly resort to this tactic for torture. The metre-long rattan canes, swishing into the flesh of prisoners up to 160 kilometres per hour, tears into the naked flesh of prisoners, turning the...

The month of November saw two uncannily similar elections ― in Myanmar and Egypt. In both cases, the ruling dispensation carried the day at the hustings marred by repression, violence and electoral fraud. Democracy stood ruthlessly murdered. The regimes in power reined in the media in the run-up to the elections and smothered all dissent. Both elections were a mockery of democratic processes and the regimes in power won handsomely. The difference, however, lies in the details; among them is the...

Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera is being used as a “bargaining tool” by Qatar to further its position internationally, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks claim. Qatar-based Al-Jazeera has, however, described it as an American assessment only. In a cable sent on November 19, 2009, Ambassador Joseph E LeBaron wrote that the station could be used "as a bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries, particularly those soured by al-Jazeera's broadcasts, including the United States"...

Interpol has placed Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, on a red notice wanted list over allegations of sexual misbehavior by a Swedish prosecutor, the police organisation has announced on its website. The notice said Assange, 39, is wanted for “sex crimes” on an arrest warrant brought by the international public prosecution office in Gothenburg, Sweden. Interpol is based in Lyon, France. The Red Notice does not amount to an arrest warrant. It asks people to contact...