Jack Schofield Science has finally solved the problem of the old shoebox in the cupboard under the stairs stuffed with half-forgotten photographs. Now you can put your prize snaps on the Web where friends and family will be able to look at them immediately, no matter where in the world they are. There are already […]

Medical aids are going to have to come to terms with picking up the bills for members’ HIV/Aids treatments, reports Sarah Bullen The medical aid industry by its own admission does not have a proud record of being proactive in addressing the costs of HIV/Aids. With South Africa boasting the highest HIV infection rate in […]

A NEW drug combination developed in London offers hope to chronic malaria sufferers who have built up immunity to existing treatments, researchers said. It may also prove an effective initial treatment for the mosquito-borne disease that kills up to three million people each year.

Eddie Webster and Glenn Adler A Second Look There is an increasingly widespread view in business circles and among conservative columnists in the press that trade unions are the main obstacle to job creation, foreign investment and a new growth path. Some even evoke the labour-repressive Chilean or South Korean options to clear the way […]

Fiachra Gibbons Seamus Heaney, the Irish Nobel laureate, won the Whitbread book of the year award this week when his ancient warrior Beowulf slew the upstart young wizard Harry Potter. It is the fourth year in a row that a poet has won the 22E000 prize. Heaney’s translation of the ancient Anglo- Saxon epic poem […]

CD of the week Cape Verde – the name just hasn’t been the same since that wonder-woman Cesaria Evora was discovered singing her mornas in a dusty bar in Mindelo. These days Evora must be one of her country’s biggest exports. Ignored until her fifties, she suddenly sold over 200E000 copies of Miss Perfumado, which […]

Neil Manthorp Cricket Boardroom back-stabbings and committee politics are as much a part of sport as scrotal rash and bad feet, so while the country’s “thinking sports fan” ponders whether Hansie Cronje’s team is distracted by the forced resignation of United Cricket Board (UCB) president Ray White, Cronje’s men are “just playing cricket”. Wednesday’s remarkable […]

Is the death of the NSO the symptom of a deeper malaise in South Africa: the demise of arts and culture? Belinda Beresford reports The death rattle of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) began with the triumphant blast of the national anthem at the start of the second-last performance the orchestra is ever to give. […]

Ivor Powell It was one of those acts of Sod, the unavoidable pitfalls of journalistic deadlines: the day that everything changed in South Africa fell on a Friday, the day of the then Weekly Mail’s publication. So we had to wait another week before The Weekly Mail could respond to the drama that unfolded as […]

Ivor Powell Experts and activists in the fight against HIV/Aids are up in arms over the composition of the government’s new National Aids Council (NAC), unveiled last week to spearhead the fight against the pandemic. The NAC – slotted as a body that will marry efforts by the government and civil society to combat the […]