Jack Zimba

Gabriel with his younger brother, who donated a kidney to him.   JACK ZIMBA        WHEN Gabriel Phiri was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2006, he felt like it was the end of the world for him. “It was a fright. It was a question of am I going to live or maybe this is the end of it all,” says the 55-year-old. Today, however, Mr Phiri lives a fairly healthy life, thanks to a donated kidney he received from his younger brother. Mr Phiri discovered that both his kidneys had collapsed after a freaky incident. While waiting for a friend in a car park, a tiny particle entered his eye and he ended up at the hospital to have it removed. However, after routine tests, it was discovered that Mr Phiri had high blood pressure, a shocking diagnosis, as he was not a known hypertensive. Prior to this episode, however, Mr Phiri had for a long time suffered loss of appetite, which he could not understand. But it was the second diagnosis that scared ...

Solar panels at an apartment block in Husby.     Henrik Norlin explains to journalists how old clothes are turned into new fabric.   Bicycles at a new residential in the Stockholm Royal Seaport .   THE 1985 sci-fi movie, Back to the Future, predicted what the future would look like 30 years later - with flying cars, video phones, robots, self-lacing shoes and levitating skate boards. Most ideas remain a dream. The movie is partly set to the date October 21, 2015 which, three decades ago, seemed a really distant future. Yet on this very date, I found myself standing in a small science laboratory at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, listening to a lively young man explaining how his small company called Re:newcell is able to turn old clothes into snow-white fluffy cotton that can then be used to make brand new garments. The concept seems extremely futuristic and I can imagine what such an innovation ...