The shark is well-known as a dangerous and efficient killer. But its full nature is not understood, writes Ellen Bartlett FOR all the exposure it gets every time it bites or kills someone, the great white shark is a poorly understood animal, maligned in science and fiction alike as an evil but mindless man-eater. Perhaps […]
Barbara Ludman JOSEPH SEREMANE sat with the audience all day on Tuesday during truth commission hearings at the Old Fort, the former prison in Hillbrow. The commission was running well behind schedule, but still Seremane, the chief land claims commissioner, sat hour after hour, a spare, dignified figure, his back barely touching the back of […]
Christopher Zinn in Sydney THE oldest living plant in the world – a self-propagating Tasmanian holly-like bush – has been estimated by scientists to be more than 43 000 years old. Chief botanist at the Tasmanian parks and wildlife service Stephen Harris said that Lomatia tasmanica, whose common name is King’s Holly, was 30 000 […]
MFANA, the dagga-growing official who works for the Justice Department, highlights the fact that the police are waging an expensive – but losing – battle against the country’s most tenacious industry. Since 1928, the cultivation and use of cannabis has been a criminal offence in South Africa. The legislation was toughened in 1971 when the […]
Chris McGreal in Bukavu, Congo, uncovers new evidence of genocide as mass graves are unearthed around the country SIX villagers led the way up the narrow path off the main road about 15km from Bukavu, on the far-eastern border of the former Zaire. One carried a spade. He knew where he was headed, but the […]
FRIDAY, 8.30AM INVESTIGATORS into the case of army chemical warfare director Brigadier Wouter Basson have reopened investigations into the mysterious 1987 crash of the SAA Boeing 747 jet Helderberg, in which all 159 people aboard perished. An inquiry into the crash ruled out a bomb or explosive device as the cause, but strange aspects of […]
FRIDAY, 3.30PM The special police investigation team probing this week’s assassination of five African National Congress members, including two newly elected councillors, in Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal, is looking for two Gauteng policemen and one Patrick Skhumbuzo Ndlovu, alias Bob, who they believe can assist with the investigation. Head of the special investigation team Director Bushie […]
NATAL SERIAL KILLER POLICE have discovered 18 bodies buried in shallow graves in Phoenix, north of Durban. Five bodies were discovered yesterday, one of which appeared to be a young black women probably murdered this week. Another three bodies were discovered at a nearby cemetery on Monday. Police have warned that the killer, who preys […]
In her letters – auctioned this month by Sotheby’s – the late Patricia Highsmith is revealed as a tough, sometimes bigoted woman, writes Sarah Boseley CRIME novelist Patricia Highsmith was a semi-recluse from about 1970. She was very private in her Swiss home, having settled in Europe, which loved her amoral heroes whose escape from […]
Lucy Jones DOCTORS in Baley, a small gold mining town in the Russian far eastern region of Chita, had long been puzzled by the high incidence of babies born without limbs, bald children and adults with abnormally big heads. They guessed such deformities might be related to the nameless mine, located on Baley’s outskirts, where […]