Are South Africa’s print media giants silencing independent local newspapers by offering drastically reduced advertising rates? Mbuyisi Mgibisa speaks to some disgruntled voices.
I strongly suggest that Andre Kriel and the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu) stop being defensive and misleading the readers of your paper ("Clothing council is doing its job", July 15).
Millions of people along the coast of North Africa may be forced to migrate as climate change makes their livelihoods untenable, warns an Egyptian report. "There are signs that changes will be significant and possibly severe," says Mohamed El-Raey, professor of environmental physics at the University of Alexandria.
Climate change is likely to "activate" sand dunes across Southern Africa, with potentially disastrous consequences, report researchers in the journal Nature. As the Kalahari desert gets hotter and drier in the 21st century, dunes will become unstable and vegetation for grazing scarce.
Recently President Thabo Mbeki announced the appointment of a task force to push South Africa’s growth to 6%. He said he is considering importing skills, renewing focus on the labour market as a key constraint to achieving higher growth. However, it appears that the government has an inadequate grasp of exactly what skills it requires and where.
The American trade union movement was poised for its greatest rift in almost 70 years recently, as unions representing a third of the membership announced plans to set up a rival organisation. In a move that could have serious implications for the Democratic party’s electoral machine, four of the country’s largest unions said they would boycott the annual convention of the AFL-CIO.
Struggling under an onslaught of Bollywood movies on black market DVDs, the owners of Pakistan’s empty cinema halls are imploring their government to lift a ban on India’s wildly popular masala flicks. Movie houses that once saw audiences queue for Pakistan’s home-grown ”Lollywood” productions now say they need to screen films made by their once bitter rivals in glitzy Mumbai.
In the next month, all African eyes will be on the race to see who will represent the continent on the United Nations Security Council. Polite diplomacy is quickly giving way to horse-trading. At a meeting in Swaziland in February, the African Union called for two permanent seats with veto power and two additional rotating seats on a reformed Security Council of 26.
Stocks of a small, herring-like fish that provides omega-3 essential fatty acids for supplements taken by millions of people could be endangered because of the Western world’s obsession with health foods, conservationists warn. At risk is the future of the menhaden fish, which breeds in Chesapeake Bay and lives along the United States’s eastern seaboard.
Recently, the World Trade Organisation kicked off yet another attempt to put back on track stalled talks that aim to reform the rules governing world trade in everything from sugar through manufactured goods to services such as insurance. WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi recently said he was pressing the panic button because the talks were in danger of failing.