Oracle Paul the Psychic Octopus predicts a win for Spain. However, having been in Amsterdam during Holland's amazing win over Brazil last week, I'll be going against cephalopod wisdom and rooting for the Big Orange.

I took the kids to see Wall-E this weekend, and it struck me as a surprisingly layered work for a G-rated kids movie, something for which Pixar should be congratulated. It's also a cautionary tale, both ecologically/environmentally and for American passive consumerism. Set 700 years in the future, Earth is uninhabitable due to the amount of garbage (stacks of garbage reach as high as the skyscrapers) and humans live on an orbiting space station, waiting for Earth to come back to life. The space station itself is a Vegas-like cruise ship rendered only slightly more extreme than in reality, and the humans recline in floating lounges with TV screens in front of them, junk food in a slurpy cup easily available. In this environment, humans have become fat, weak and dull, unable to see anything around them but the screens, and isolated from each other.

Even if you don't have young children, the message alone--done with quite of bit of subtlety--makes the movie worth seeing. Don't miss the blending of themes from Hello Dolly!, 2001, and Brazil within the soundtrack.

Brazil spurns US terms for Aids help

Brazil yesterday became the first country to take a public stand against the Bush administration's massive Aids programme which is seen by many as seeking increasingly to press its anti-abortion, pro-abstinence sexual agenda on poorer countries...read on The demand from the US administration, heavily influenced by the religious right, follows what is known as the "global gag" - a ban on US government funds to any foreign-based organisation which has links to abortion. This has resulted in the removal of millions of dollars of funding from family planning clinics worldwide....