So, if you thought we had energy problems, there are now con artists selling fake ‘biofuel-producing plants’ in Kwa-Zulu Natal. That was the warning from the KZN provincial government today. The province has urged people to beware of buying alien plants from people claiming they will buy back the vegetation’s by-products to be used as fuel. They are lying.
British politics is theatrical at the best of times. They’re dealing with cat-gate at the moment, so it just became even more theatrical. A judge has actually ruled that an illegal immigrant could avoid deportation partly because the judge feared separating him from his pet cat and partner risked “serious emotional consequences”.
India’s most famous tourist attraction, the 358-year-old Taj Mahal, will collapse within five years unless something drastic is done. The wooden foundation is becoming brittle and disintegrating due to a lack of water. This is because the river crucial to its survival is being blighted by pollution, industry and deforestation.
One can understand the anger of Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson), Julia Kavner (Marge) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart) when Fox Television explained that they would be receiving a 45% pay cut. The broadcasting network claims they can’t afford production costs and, if the actors won’t budge, they’ll pull the plug. I think I speak for everyone when I say: Fox you, Fox.
The Japanese have proved that they are some of the most resilient people on earth. With the earthquake and tsunami that struck earlier this year, numerous acts of heroism emerged. Now they’ve invented the Noah Disaster Shelter as a very probable device for protection when particular natural disasters strike.
A Dutch man was caught trying to smuggle more than a dozen live hummingbirds inside his underpants at Rochambeau airport over the weekend. They were individually wrapped in cloth and taped up to stop them from escaping. Airport officials noticed the passenger fidgeting and acting suspiciously, and the man was detained by French customs officers.
Hundreds of homes were destroyed when a tornado tore through the town of Ficksburg in the Free State province yesterday afternoon, emergency officials said. At least one person was killed, but the full extent of the damage is not yet known. Last night, a second tornado hit the East Rand and caused extensive damage to Duduza, near Nigel.
The South African and Vietnamese governments have come together and agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding that will seek ways to stop rhino poaching. Ironically, the Vietnamese officials asked that a domestic medical research institute verify that rhino horn had no medicinal properties, and to make this information public.
A study from Lawrence Berkely National Library has claimed that when you smoke a blunt, you contribute indirectly to a little under a kilogram of carbon dioxide emissions. The same study suggests that US pot growers are responsible for 1% of national electricity consumption. So I guess it’s not that green after all. (Sorry.)
Eyewitness News radio bulletins will never be the same again after one newsreader lost it last night and f-bombed all kinds of philosophies to anyone that was listening to the 01h00 news. Anarchist and environmentalist, Mark Esterhuysen, probably won’t be reading the news anymore. NSFW, obviously.
On Sunday, 20 000 bullfighting fans packed Barcelona’s La Monumental bullring to watch the last corrida that Catalonia will hold; the event was headlined by Spain’s premier matador, José Tomás. The regional ban on bullfighting, which was approved at the end of last year, goes into effect in January.
As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests enter their ninth day, an increasing number of videos and photos have begun surfacing, showing near-indiscriminate use of tasers, mace and kenneling by the NYPD on demonstrators, who are protesting a financial system that apparently favours the wealthy and powerful over ordinary citizens.
Kenya’s Wangari Maathai has died while undergoing cancer treatment in Nairobi at the age of 71. An activist for conservation, transformation and women’s rights, she was the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
This is exactly what Cape Town needs. A committee whose sole purpose is to reconcile relations between the city’s residents and baboons. Capetonians have lived in fear of their sandwiches being stolen for long enough.
A teenage boy who has been dubbed “forest boy” by the international media is apparently keen to go back to the bush. The boy, believed to be a 17-year-old English language speaker, handed himself over to German officials in Berlin earlier this month after walking for about two weeks. Officials describe his story as “incredible”.
A guy from Volunteer Wildfire Services emailed me. His name is Michael Brandt. No spice. More than enough reason to show you this flyer. We at VWS Jonkershoek will be holding our second Fire & Fynbos Awareness Day on the 25th September 2011. Our focus is once again on creating awareness of what our volunteer […]
23-year old Croatian entrepreneur Mate Rimac unveiled the Concept_One electric supercar at the Frankfurt Motor Show yesterday – a 1,099 horsepower machine that can go a little under 600 km per charge, and can get over 300 km/h on a stretch. Is that enough car numbers? I’m not great at car numbers. Take a look at the thing though, it’s sexy.
New oil leakage has been spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, near the BP well that burst 15 months ago; the oil currently covers an area about seven kilometres long and 50 metres wide. It’s not clear if the oil is coming from the reservoir itself, or if’s been trapped in last year’s damaged rigging.
The utter tragedy that is rhino poaching hit hardest within South Africa’s wildlife conservation community over the weekend. A top Kwa-Zulu Natal game ranger was killed accidentally by colleagues during an anti-poaching operative on Saturday. The incident, which took place at the Umfolozi Game Reserve in Zululand, has been described as the most devastating event in the history of conservation.
There are reports of a blast at the southern French nuclear plant of Marcoule, in the Gard region – with further claims that there is a risk of radioactive leakage. The explosion followed a fire in a radioactive waste storage sight, killing one person and injuring three more.
This really has nothing to do with making your pet cat fluorescent so that you can see it in the dark and not stand on it when you get up to go the toilet at night. It has, however, everything to do with the similarities between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV).
Greenpeace! What a dumb idea. That giant recreation of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is going to disappear as soon as that iceberg melts – OH. Oh gosh. You’re trying to put together some sort of heavy-handed metaphor about ‘mankind,’ ‘melting,’ like some sort of iceberg, because of ‘climate change.’
In the aftermath of last Friday’s plane crash off the island of Robinson Crusoe, Chile, officials have stated that no effort would be spared in the rescue/recovery of the 17 passengers. This apparently includes using the Find My iPhone app to isolate the coordinates of one of the passenger’s last known whereabouts before the crash.
OK, so, this is a pretty horrific story, but it has a happy ending. After a 14-year battle, these Chimpanzees have been set free from captivity after being taken from their mothers shortly after their births. They’d been kept in a research facility in Austria, undergone medical testing, been injected with HIV and hepatitis. But, at least they’re happy now.
To demonstrate the lethal speed at which the Texan wildfires are spreading, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department have released footage of the wildfire consuming the 6 000 acre Bastrop State Park – 84% of which has been burnt down as of today, in spite of firefighters’ efforts to save a number of historic Civilian Conservation Corps cabins.
Ain’t Mother Nature grand? Especially when one of her chunkier children gets loose near your village. One of her 6.5-meter long, one tonne, man-eating children…
The cleanup of the oil spill at Bloubergstrand continues, and City of Cape Town Disaster teams are still assessing whether the beach can be re-opened this afternoon. The wreckage of the Seli One carrier, which was stranded off the Blouberg coast two years ago, leaked oil onto the beach over the weekend following rough seas.
In other meat-related news today, animal lovers may be pleased to know that China seems to be losing its taste for dog meat. Stats show that more people than ever before now keep dogs as domestic pets in China. While dog meat is certainly still on the menu there, the way dogs are viewed generally is undergoing a major shift across the country.
Researchers in Gothenburg, Sweden, met this week to launch a new “meat without slaughter” initiative – with plans on being able to release bio-sausages in the next six months. Bio-sausages made from exotic animal cells, too, because vat-grown tiger meat isn’t any less ethical than vat-grown bacon.
A Florida funeral home has unveiled an ‘alakaline hydrolysis’ unit, which dissolves dead bodies in heated alkaline water. Which is, apparently, something you might want to do; the process is being billed as a far greener alternative than cremation, producing far less greenhouse gas and requiring far less energy.