Earlier this week it emerged that Eskom seems to have been spying on unions, employees, and environmental groups, including Greenpeace Africa, Earthlife Africa, and GroundWork. Business Times claims to have received numerous documents that point to Eskom having contracted a special services company to gather information on these different stakeholders. Last week Greenpeace jointly sent [...]
The boycott of Nestlé is the world’s longest running. It began in 1977 in response to the aggressive marketing of Nestlé baby milk formula in poorer countries. Nestlé is now one of the most boycotted brands in the UK. Monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) finds the company to be responsible [...]
As part of their joint Fight for the Reef campaign, WWF-Australia and the Australian Marine Conservation Society yesterday released a scorecard assessing the performance of both the Queensland and Australian Governments’ management of the Great Barrier Reef. Last year, UNESCO gave Australia a deadline to outline how it would better manage the Reef, noting that [...]
The BBC yesterday reported that a US court has approved the biggest criminal penalties in US history and ordered UK oil company BP to pay $4bn (R36.2bn) to the US Department of Justice. As part of the deal the company also agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster [...]
Quietly, globally, billions of bees are dying, threatening our crops and food. But in 48 hours the European Union could move to ban the most poisonous pesticides, and pave the way to a global ban that would save bees from extinction. Four EU countries have begun banning these poisons, and some bee populations are already [...]
By 2050, rising population and demand, as well as an increase in use of wood for bioenergy, could triple the amount of wood society takes from forests and plantations per year, according to the latest instalment of WWF’s Living Forests Report. The report, presented yesterday at the international paper conference Paperworld in Frankfurt, projects paper [...]
The High Court in Pretoria has granted an order to freeze the delivery of South African helicopters to the Zimbabwean military, Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum said on Friday. “An urgent interim court order was awarded to AfriForum late this afternoon by the North Gauteng High Court to prevent delivery of Alouette III Air Force helicopters [...]
A worthy example has been set by three of South Africa’s major retailers. The National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA) is delighted to announce that Pick n Pay, Game and Makro have advised that they will cease to stock and sell the Homemark product, Magic Fish, with immediate effect. The NSPCA approached the retailers directly after [...]
The movie Zero Dark Thirty, which depicts the hunt for Osama bin Laden, wrongly suggests that torture was an ugly but useful tactic in the fight against terrorism. It also falsely implies that information obtained through torture was critical to finding bin Laden. As the film-makers note, it is a fictionalized account, not a documentary. [...]
World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab today opened the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2013. Crystal Awards were presented to the artist Vik Muniz, the documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and the actress Charlize Theron. More than 2,500 participants from over 100 countries are taking part in the Meeting The theme of [...]
