Africa’s Oscars : Andrew Worsdale Two days before the launch of South African cinema’s biggest schmooze-fest, Sithengi, the film and TV market, most local players were gathered in force with the continent’s counterparts at last Saturday’s M-Net All Africa Film Awards in Pretoria. The State Theatre is a bit monolithic but the seats are so […]

Jack Schofield Two years after it was launched, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), a connector designed to replace serial and parallel printer ports on personal computers, should start to take off this Christmas. More than 100-million personal computers have been shipped with built-in USB ports, software support has been provided in Windows 98 and Mac […]

Maureen Barnes : Down the tube Two of the most entertaining weekday series recently have been screened on e.tv. Dalziel and Pascoe is on Friday night at 9pm – a night which the other channels treat as thugs night in and over-excite their audiences by screening kung fu or Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. It’s a classic […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The rector of the troubled University of the Western Cape (UWC), Cecil Abrahams, has not apologised to the university community for the ”short-sighted, inhuman and mechanical manner” in which he implemented a retrenchment process. Abrahams was censured by the university’s senate and ordered to issue a public apology ”at an appropriate […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Thursday 12.30pm. FRANCE’S 1995 Australian Open champion Mary Pierce thrashed South Africa’s Amanda Coetzer 6-1 6-0 in New York at the WTA Chase Championships on Wednesday. The 45-minute humbling of Coetzer, who was the last player to qualify for the season’s final tournament, sets up a repeat of last year’s […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Wednesday 5.30pm. THE long-awaited cut in interest rates by the United States Federal Reserve on Tuesday night failed to inspire the local market on Wednesday, despite global markets’ positive response to the move. The all share index closed 0,58% lower, led down by the financial index which shed 1,47% on the […]

DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Wednesday 11.30pm. THE day for which South African rugby fans have long waited — when popular Western Province captain Bobby Skinstad dons the Springbok green and gold — comes at last on Saturday when the South African team faces Scotland at Murrayfield in Edinburgh. Though Skinstad (22) has played seven […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Wednesday 3.30pm. THE real value of building plans fell by 10,3% during the first nine months of the year, representing a loss of R1,27-billion to the economy, according to the latest building statistics released by Statistics South Africa on Wednesday. This continues a falling trend since the second half of 1996. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Wednesday 11.00am. ZIMBABWE was hit hard on Wednesday by a second anti-government national strike as trade unionists pressed their demands for pay rises, price cuts and an end to corruption. Factories and building sites fell silent across the country, with most shops and banks also closed, as trade unionists proved for […]

ROB DAVIES, Johannesburg | Tuesday 10.15am. WHEN the South African mid-week rugby team take on Edinburgh Reivers at Eastern Road on Tuesday evening Springbok coach Nick Mallett will have his selection spectacles focused on more than one Test hopeful. We all know that Mallett prefers not to change a winning combination, but after Saturday’s near-catastrophe […]