With biofuels being blamed for rising food prices and offering limited environmental benefits, diverse luminaries such as former United States vice-president Al Gore and Microsoft’s Bill Gates are throwing their considerable support behind cellulosic ethanol, a second-generation biofuel.
Soccer fans might be feeling a little bewildered after the misinformation that characterised the fallout over the recently announced billion-rand Premier Soccer League (PSL) broadcasting-rights deal. But local soccer has never been healthier financially and, if anything, there will be more live soccer on free-to-air television than ever before.
The medical fraternity is up in arms over the Discovery Health Network — they call it "unethical" and an attempt by a dominant player to control their practices. Discovery says it is cutting the rate of medical inflation. This year, Discovery introduced a direct payment plan for general practitioners and specialists who sign up to their network.
While the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) shouts and stomps its feet after having lost the rights to the drawcard that is Premier Soccer League football, industry insiders accuse the public broadcaster of double standards and insist that its showing of public bravado is just sour grapes.
It is already the world’s biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the Far East. But this week Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast, 1,19-million-square-kilometre chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic.
Tony Blair is to make his first working visit to Ramallah on the West Bank in July as a special envoy of the quartet of Middle East peacemakers to discuss Palestinian state-building, it emerged last week after he was confirmed in the high-risk job amid scepticism about his chances of success.
Why does Ronald Suresh Roberts keep scrabbling long-buried controversies to the surface? Recently, he recycled President Thabo Mbeki’s 2002 Briefing Notes by arguing that the Congress of South African Trade Unions is the counter-revolutionary stooge of the right. His new book, Fit to Govern, peels back the ”stiff dishonoured shroud” of Barney Pityana’s 2000 media racism inquiry.
Since Russia enshrined freedom of speech as a constitutional right in 1993, a total of 152 journalists have been murdered there. A database set up in June by two media monitoring organisations, the Glasnost Defence Foundation and the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, sets out the details of each case. Yelena Tregubova is trying hard not to be the 153rd.
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has come a long way in the past six years. But even the crew who have filmed him for so long were apprehensive about his first on-screen kiss. ”I shouldn’t be watching this,” said producer David Heyman, describing his thoughts during the kiss scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
In many respects, Michael Moore’s new documentary movie, Sicko, is like a trial for those who oversee healthcare in the United States. The industry — doctors, drug makers, hospitals and insurers — is charged with greed and putting personal interests above those of patients. But one aspect missing from the film is the defence.