Reports

The film based on JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit is all set to become the most expensive film ever made. Sir Peter Jackson’s cinematic rendition, the two-part precursor to The Lord of the Rings biopic trilogy, will cost $500 million. The entire three-part The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King – had cost $281 million in contrast. If all goes according to plan, the first part of The Hobbit will open in December 2012, with the second following a...

This should come as a farce – Egypt has become chair of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) governing body, while back home it shoots unarmed migrants and blocks UNHCR's access to detainees seeking the agency's protection. Egypt is notorious for shooting foreign nationals trying to cross into Israel. It also impedes the UN refugee agency's access to foreign nationals detained in Egypt who want to claim asylum. Since July 2007, Egypt has shot down 85 unarmed migrants as they...

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...

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...

The world is today a much wealthier place than it was 10 years ago. The Global Wealth Report says the global wealth currently held by 4.4 billion adults has increased 72 percent since 2000 to reach $195 trillion. The inaugural report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, launched in Zurich on Friday, global wealth will grow 61 per cent to reach $315 trillion in another five years. The report defines wealth as the value of financial assets and non-financial assets (mainly real estate), minus...

Comments posted on Facebook about a female mathematics teacher has resulted in 16 students of a leading private school suspended from their school in the Indian city of Chandigarh. The students, all from Class 12 of Vivek High School, have been suspended for three months, according to the Times of India. Asaf Parvez, son of a high-ranking government official, recently got low marks in his mathematics exam. He then posted his answer sheet on Facebook with rude and abusive comments about the...

Rewards totalling $10,000 are being offered for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally killing an endangered gray wolf in Oregon's Umatilla National Forest. The US Fish and Wildlife service announced Friday it is offering $2,500. A coalition of conservation groups has chipped in with another $7,500 to the kitty. The wolf was a two-year-old male from the Wenaha pack and had been captured and fitted with a radio tracking collar in August...

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...

The Internet is catching them real young. At a time when privacy issues are being widely debated, a survey in the US has found that 92 percent of children in the country have some type of online presence by the time they are two years old. Corresponding figures for the European too are high. Seventy-three percent of parents in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, and Italy said they have been sharing images of their infants online. The study, conducted by Internet security company AVG...

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...