Washington — U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff faced immediate backlash Wednesday for praising Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian” after he released 74-year-old Stephen Hubbard, an American who had been imprisoned in Russia for four years and who had been determined to be wrongfully detained. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump,…
Greenpeace warns of ‘Irreversible Ecosystem Collapse’ as UN biodiversity summit faces crucial test Climate and biodiversity crises are interconnected and require coordinated government action. PHOTO/GREENPEACE. By PATRICK MAYOYO Greenpeace has urged governments attending the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17) to move beyond acknowledging failures and adopt concrete measures to halt biodiversity loss and prevent irreversible…
Less than a month before the UN climate conference COP31 opens in Antalya, Türkiye, representatives of three successive summit presidencies gathered to address a pressing question: How can the world restore trust in climate action when the consequences of a warming planet are already being felt? The devastation in Nepal offered a stark reminder of…
Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of Armenia. PHOTO/ IISD/ENB – Mike Muzurakis. By PATRICK MAYOYO Governments gathering for the 2026 United Nations Biodiversity Conference face a critical test: whether international commitments to halt and reverse the destruction of nature can be translated into measurable progress before the end of the decade. The conference, which opened in…
Mackenzie’s son, Dan Paul Mackenzie, said he worked as a cameraperson in the church. “The children would sit at the back, adults in the middle, and everyone would sing worship songs all morning.” The pastor would start his fiery sermons at noon, some of which included “casting out demons”. The main church shut down in…
The Reserve Bank will start piloting white-labelled ATMs in January, the first step in a plan to turn all of South Africa’s more than 30 000 machines into a shared, unbranded network where transactions below a set threshold are free. To get there, the central bank intends to establish a national cash utility by March 2027…
City Power wants a platform to monitor prepaid electricity purchases in near-real-time. (Graphic: Nicola Mawson | Pexels) City Power’s R3.96 billion in non-technical electricity losses is the target of a tender for near-real-time monitoring of prepaid purchases, but experts warn analytics will flag suspects, not recover money. According to City Power’s latest annual report, the…
Katie Zacharia, the new White House press secretary under United States President Donald Trump, has drawn increasing criticism over claims about her professional background. On Wednesday, a public accountability nonprofit filed a complaint with the State Bar of California over Zacharia’s repeated claims that she was a lawyer. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of…
Affordability pressures and competition for household spending are likely to shape SA’s over-the-top video market growth. South Africa’s over-the-top (OTT) video market is forecast to grow more slowly than the markets in Kenya and Nigeria over the next five years, as SA’s entertainment and media industry continues shifting towards digital consumption. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers…
The woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Cornell University fraternity members has received threats pressuring her to drop her lawsuit, her attorney said Sunday. Thomas Giuffra told CNN’s “State of the Union” that people attempting to unmask his client’s identity had also targeted at least three women mistakenly identified as her. The former…
