Biowatch South Africa won a major victory recently on access to information about genetically modified crops in South Africa. Pretoria High Court Acting Judge Eric Dunn granted Biowatch access to all its key requests for information — but in a surprising twist, he also ordered the environmental NGO to pay the legal costs of giant biotech multinational Monsanto.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is not gloating. He could — but he prefers to appear magnanimous in what he hopes is victory. In an interview last week, he was handed a perfect opportunity to crow. He was talking about what he called ”the ripple of change” now spreading through the Middle East, the slow, but noticeable movement towards democracy in a region where that commodity has long been in short supply.
Hind el-Hinnawy shocked conservative Muslim Egypt when she publicly declared herself a single mum and launched a paternity suit. The man in the case, Ahmed el-Fishawy, hosted a television talk show offering advice to devout Muslim youth. They had met on the set of a comedy called When Daddy Returned. President Hosni Mubarak may have started a process of change he cannot stop.
The sons of famous men often struggle to make their mark. And Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, is struggling more than most as he contemplates the loss of Lebanon and his country’s increasing international isolation. While his father dominated Lebanon after first intervening in 1976 with United States connivance, Syria’s 14 000 troops and security forces now face a humiliating retreat under popular fire.
Click on image for full-size view.
While it is unlikely that any of the judges in the Constitutional Court will be wearing ”Black Labour — White Guilt” T-shirts under their robes on Tuesday, the offending shirt will probably not be far from their minds, as they consider whether it really is a cut-and-dried case of trademark infringement.
Australia and East Timor were resuming talks on Monday on how to carve up billions of dollars worth of oil and gas under the seabed that divides one of the Asia-Pacific’s richest nations from one of the region’s poorest. Three days of talks were getting under way in the Australian capital, Canberra, five months after the acrimonious collapse of the last round of negotiations.
Any effort to stop Jacob Zuma from becoming president would be like ”trying to fight against the big wave of the tsunami”, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said on Monday. Speaking at a Cosatu conference in Midrand, Vavi stressed that this was his personal view.
The destruction on Monday of 10 000 firearms during a gun amnesty was good, but not good enough, said Judy Bassingthwaite, director of Gunfree South Africa. ”The 10 000 guns destroyed this morning will never harm another human being. Yes it’s a success, but it’s the beginning.
In a haze of dust, wearing ear mufflers against the clang of machines, Lobano Kalimbiro smashes red rocks rich in tin ore with a metal hammer, working up a sweat in a trade that fuelled central Africa’s biggest war and may spawn another.