Reports

The best place to do business is Singapore, says a World Bank index which ranks economies on their ease of doing business. Among others in the Top 10 are Hong Kong, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Canada, Norway, Ireland and Australia, says the report titled Doing Business 2011. Overall, doing business remains easiest in the high-income economies of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and most difficult in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The...

Canadian universities will be funding a series of India-specific initiatives valued at over $4 million. These investments include the new Globalink Canada-India Graduate Fellowship. A statement issued by the Indian ministry for human resources announced today that eight Canadian universities would be providing graduate fellowships for top Indian students who wish to pursue a Masters or PhD in Canada. The Globalink Canada-India Graduate Fellowship Programme will provide 51 scholarship valued at...

US News & World Report magazine will cease printing its monthly magazine in 2011, an internal memo from editor Brian Kelly posted to journalism website Romenesko has revealed. Kelly said in the memo on Friday that the publication would cease printing the regular monthly magazine for subscribers. Instead, it would publish only a series of single-topic issues that will be available on newsstands and for “targeted distribution.” The December issue would be its last print edition. US News & World...

American rock legend Jim Morrison may receive a posthumous pardon for charges framed against the singer in 1969 after he exposed himself during a drunken bout on-stage. Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors, was accused of indecent exposure and lewd acts while drunk during a 1969 concert in Coconut Grove, south of Miami. He was absolved of drunkenness charges during the trial, apart from a felony charge for lewd and lascivious behaviour, but was convicted of exposure and profanity. Morrison, a...

An undercover reporter has found that clothing on sale in high street stores is being made in Britain in dirty, dangerous and appalling conditions. Workers are frequently threatened over production targets and have to work for a pittance. An investigation by Channel 4's Dispatch programme found that top fashion chains are producing clothes in factories where workers are treated like slaves. According to the reporter who worked at a clothing factory in Leicester for three months, employees are...

Real Madrid striker Cristiano Ronaldo has accepted substantial libel damages from The Daily Telegraph over a claim that he put his injured ankle at risk by "living it up" in a Hollywood nightclub. An article published in the British newspaper in July 2008 had alleged that on arriving in Los Angeles to attend a sports award ceremony Ronaldo, who was on crutches at the time, "headed straight" for a trendy nightclub. Ronaldo's lawyer, Allan Dunlavy, told London's High Court on Monday that that the...

A Japanese journalist has been arrested in eastern Myanmar (Burma) for illegally crossing over the border from Thailand. Toru Yamaji, who sneaked into Myanmar to cover Sunday's elections, has been charged under the country's Immigration Act. Yamaji, a reporter with the APF news agency, was detained on Sunday itself in Myawaddy, on the country's eastern border with Thailand, the Associated Press (AP) reported. APF is a Tokyo-based news organisation relaying photos and stories, including online...

A second reporter who wrote about a controversial road-building project outside Moscow has been badly beaten up by unidentified assailants. The assault came two days after another leading journalist was attacked in a savage assault. Anatoly Adamchuk was attacked by men outside his newspaper's office and was being treated for head trauma at a hospital, according to colleagues at the Zhukovskie Vesti newspaper where he is employed, the Associated Press (AP) has reported. The paper is based in...

Amnesty International and Mexican actor Gael García Bernal have launched a series of films depicting the plight of irregular migrants in Mexico. The four films are being called The Invisibles (Los Invisibles). The premiere of The Invisibles, which record the journey of hundreds of migrants from the border between Guatemala and Mexico on their way to the United States, coincides with the start of this year’s Global Forum on Migration and Development, taking place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The...

When the burqa debate was raging across the world, a young Pakistani women's rights activist, who doesn't wear a headscarf as a rule, travelled to Jalalabad in Afghanistan to see for herself what it meant to wear one. This is her story. Gulalai Ismail, a 24-year-old university student in Islamabad, needed to go to Afghanistan in August on an assignment. The consultancy on the evaluation of a gender-based violence project made her fly to Kabul. And then onwards to Jalalabad. For someone who does...