Brooklyn’s Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are back with a bang. Lloyd Gedye chats to them about their new album.
South Africa’s insurance industry is waiting with bated breath as claims roll in for damage caused by the freak tides that hit the KwaZulu-Natal coast recently. More than 300km of the KwaZulu-Natal coastline needs to be reconstructed after it was devastated by 8m waves that struck in the early hours of March 19
The web revolution that is turning whole industries from music to television upside down has been slow to reach the cosy world of books — apart, that is, from the pioneering bookseller Amazon. Not any more. Interesting things are happening on a variety of fronts that are changing the way books are found, read and talked about.
PPS Insurance found itself in a tight spot this week after its chief financial officer, Callie Masson, claimed that between R20-million and R25-million was missing from the company’s financials, a charge PPS denies. Masson has now stepped down, saying that there was "a breakdown in trust" between himself and the chairman, according to the resignation letter he submitted to the board.
Whether it’s Japanese psychedelic rock, obscure Scandinavian indie-pop or Appalachian folk that rocks your boat, the question is always the same: how do I find it? Well, the answer to your endless quest for fresh, new, exciting music may just lie in the music social networking website LastFM
The world’s third- and sixth-largest beer producers nudged one another recently, the immediate fallout being that Amstel drinkers may have to switch brands, at least for a couple of months. SABMiller has been brewing Amstel for 40 years, but the brewery announced recently that it has stopped production of the premium beer brand.
A broadband price war has finally begun in earnest. It is being led by the country’s cellphone operators sticking it to Telkom in a bid to capture more subscribers. The latest to join the fray is mobile operator Vodacom, which announced this week that from April 1 2007 its data rates will be decreased by as much as 61%, making it the cheapest and fastest broadband offering available.
A leaked report of an internal audit of the department of public enterprises has put the spotlight on turmoil in the department, which inside sources largely blame on the abrasive management style of Director General Portia Molefe. The department has lost a number of senior officials in the past year. And a number of staffers are said to be contemplating not renewing their contracts.
BEE poster-woman Danisa Baloyi is likely to step aside or resign from her position as a director of Absa on Friday. The bank has been embarrassed by Baloyi’s links with the Fidentia scandal. While it cannot ask for her resignation, bank executives have expressed concerns.
Onerous United States visa conditions have dashed a local band’s hopes of playing at one of the most important international music industry showcases. For the first time, four South African bands were invited to the who’s who of the international music industry, the 2007 South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.