Captain Kirk finally lived his ‘beam me up, Scotty’-moment. At age 90 and more than five decades after coining this phrase in the TV series Star Trek, William Shatner went where only the super rich have gone before, aboard multibillionaire Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. Back on Earth, the Canadian actor poured his heart out and cried when he told Bezos: “I hope I never recover from this”.
Bezos told the New York Times he has bigger plans beyond space tourism for Blue Origin. He wants to go to the moon, build larger rockets and, according to him, eventually move all polluting industries off Earth and into space.
Seems Britain’s Prince William can’t wait till ‘eventually’. Taking a swipe at space-obsessed billionaires he told the BBC this morning that the focus should be on repairing the Earth, not trying “to find the next place to live”.
Back to real-Earth problems, the world is battling the devastating effects on an energy crisis. At home, Eskom suspended load shedding for now but warned of constrained supply, while half of Eskom’s coal fleet appears to be offline, in the UK, two energy suppliers with about 250,000 customers have collapsed, and in China, factory-gate prices soared to a 26-year high amid a surge in coal and other commodity costs, potentially adding to global inflation pressures.
In the markets, the rand firmed to under R14.80 on a slightly weaker US dollar. Emerging market peer the lira dropped to a record low against the US unit after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired three members of the central bank’s interest-rate setting committee in a midnight decree. “We have not seen any contagion in the EM market and expect this to be mostly contained to the lira and not spilling over to other EM currencies,” comments TreasuryONE.
Here’s a roundup of the world’s top and most interesting headlines:
SA Business
Other African stock exchanges are doing great things – using WhatsApp, M-Pesa and tax breaks – Fin24
Behind the mega data centre development coming to Jo’burg – TechCentral
Why you can trust VodaPay – The one app for anything and everything – BusinessTech
Global Business
US unveils plans for seven major offshore wind farms – AFP
Chinese workers reveal hours online as backlash to 996 grows – Bloomberg
Humans enjoyed blue cheese and beer 2,700 years ago: study – AFP
Markets
Most Asian markets up on recovery hopes but tightening in view – AFP
Bitcoin takes on gold for Diwali, helped by top Bollywood stars – Bloomberg
Dollar pauses after rally to one-year high; Aussie, kiwi rebound – Reuters
Opinion/In-depth
Data analysis of the National Treasury records reveals extent of price gouging on PPE – Daily Maverick
Fashionable farming – the people growing their own clothes – BBC News
On the spectrum: The fight between mobile operators and South Africa’s telecoms regulator over frequencies intensifies – Daily Maverick
Video
Apple likely to cut production of iPhone 13 – Reuters
South Korean Dalgona candy gets a ‘Squid Game’ boost – AP
Energy from bogs: using peat to make batteries – Reuters
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