Music television is the endangered species of the pop world, and is learning the hard way that it must adapt to the internet age, or die. Britain’s Top of the Pops, the world’s longest-running weekly music show, will be declared extinct on Sunday when it is broadcast for the last time on BBC.
An explosion at a chemical plant in eastern China killed at least 12 people on Friday and prompted the evacuation of 7 000 others, state media and officials said. Also on Friday, two unrelated explosions at another chemical plant and aboard an oil tanker injured at least five people, with two others missing and feared dead.
A United Nations human rights body told Washington on Friday that any ”secret detention” centres for terrorism suspects it operates abroad violates international law and should be shut immediately. The UN Human Rights Committee said the United States appears to have been detaining people ”secretly for months and years”.
Asia’s biggest annual security conference issued a toned-down statement on North Korea on Friday, after the communist state threatened to quit the organisation if it condemns the country’s missile launches. The final statement was softer than a draft statement seen by The Associated Press earlier in the day.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: My recollection of a country unified on at least one issue came back to me while watching Jason Reitman’s debut feature, <i>Thank You for Smoking</i>, writes Shaun de Waal.
<b>CD OF THE WEEK</b>: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has just done a Bob Dylan, taking the music to the masses with his new electronic protest album, <i>The Eraser</i>, writes Lloyd Gedye.
Ivan Vladislavic’s recent writing shows in detail the effects of the transforming city on individuals. Darryl Accone reports.
A temporary ban on the movement of ostriches and other poultry in Mossel Bay and Riversdale has been lifted, the Western Cape department of agriculture said on Friday. However, this did not apply in areas between the N2 in the south and the Langeberg mountains in the north, and the R232 and R238, said provincial minister of agriculture Cobus Dowry.
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) President Willie Madisha on Friday vowed that there will be regular protest action at the Israeli embassy in Pretoria. ”We want to tell the [Israeli] ambassador that we’ll march every day if needed until he goes home,” Madisha said.
The Young Communist League (YCL) has accused the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) of ”hiding crooks who have political interests”. Addressing a crowd of about 1Â 500 people in Durban on Friday, the KwaZulu-Natal deputy general secretary of the YCL, Buthi Manamela, said: ”There are crooks hiding in the NPA under the guise of prosecutors.”