Reports

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...

Morocco's topselling Arabic language weekly Nichane, which had taken up in the past taboo subjects like monarchy and Islam, closed shop last week blaming "the highest circles of power" for organising a boycott of advertisers. The trouble for the magazine began last year after Nichane, its French-language sister publication TelQuel and France's Le Monde newspaper conducted an opinion poll on the monarchy. The poll, which found that King Mohammed VI had done a good overall job in the first decade...

An arrest warrant has been issued against the former editor-in-chief of Playboy Indonesia, Erwin Arnada, after he failed to surrender himself to court on Thursday. Arnada has been sentenced to jail for violating the Islamic nation's indecency laws. The chief of the prosecutor’s office in South Jakarta, Muhammad Yusuf, told the Jakarta Post that they had given Erwin enough chances to give himself up. “We had been waiting for him since 10 a.m. But till 4.30 p.m. when our office closes, he had not...

The story now in Moscow is about two groups of journalism students making calendars for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin aimed at his 58th birthday. The first posed in saucy lingerie, the second has hit back with a hardhitting realistic one. The first calendar, called "Vladimir Vladimirovich, We love you. Happy Birthday Mr Putin," featured 12 journalism students of Moscow State University (MGU). The 259-ruble ($8.73) calendar, which hit the markets on Tuesday, came with captions like “You...

A Brazilian student of tourism who was expelled from her university for wearing a minidress that was deemed too short has won $23,800 as compensation from her university. Geisy Arruda, now 21, was thrown out of Bandeirante University in Sao Paulo last year for wearing the short, pink dress to class. She was expelled for her lack of "ethical principles, academic dignity and morality" by wearing provocative and "inadequate clothing," the Associated Press has reported. Arruda was jeered by male...