South Africa Michael Metelits International research organisation Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) plans to drop Malaysia from its emerging markets free index on November 30, a move which could benefit South Africa. MSCI’s move will increase the weighting of other emerging markets in the index. South Africa has the second largest weighting in the index […]

hemp You’ve heard of lager, pilsener, draught and stout. Now there’s hemp beer. It’s called Hanf (“hemp” in German), made by Wdi Bru in Switzerland, and it’s finally available in South Africa (Cape Town and Gauteng only). At the third birthday party of Pretoria pita bar and reggae club Tings an’ Times on October 10, […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Two local programmes gave me the worst case of dyspepsia in the past week. First came Top Billing, which has a certain jolliness about it -but it then confronted us with a profile on Edith Venter. Many readers outside Gauteng will be muttering “Who dat?” – which would undoubtedly depress […]

A new satellite network to satisfy our need to keep in touch may mean signals from the heavens cannot get through. Robert McKie reports In a few days, the world will shrink irrevocably. Engineers will switch on a flotilla of 66 communication satellites allowing telephone users – from Antarctica to the Atlantic, and from the […]

battleground On October 23 1942, the battle of El Alamein began. James Ambrose Brown, a young soldier, carried into battle a diary in which he recorded the horror of all he saw This year there will be no old soldiers at the graves of comrades who died at the battle of El Alamein. Like those […]

bus Patrick Bond Last week, while global bureaucratic financial elites had trouble even pretending they possessed the tools to fix the world economy’s cracked engine, some passengers at the back of the bus debated whether to hijack the stalled vehicle or set out on foot. Urgent strategic planning for progressive resistance to globalised finance occurred […]

spring fever Friday night Genevieve Cutts Remember the days when it was a mission to find something to do on a weekend in Johannesburg? Well, those days are over. My Fridays now begin (please note I say begin) vegged out on my couch in front of the TV as I am e-ntertained and e-nthralled by […]

Stephen Moss Jos Saramago has finally received his due from the Swedish Academy. Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is the first writer in Portuguese to win the world’s most prestigious literary award. “I am very happy for myself,” he told a cheering crowd at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “But I am also […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.00am. COST of local telephone calls will rise by a substantial 19,2% from next year, Telkom announced on Thursday. This increase follows rises of 25% and 28,4% in 1998 and 1997 respectively, making it the third successive year that Telkom will institute an above-inflation increase. The rising cost of local […]

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD I have done some stupid things in my time. But spending the night alone in a haunted office building must rank way up there as one of my dumbest and most bizarre ideas yet. Yes, you heard right. I did say haunted and alone. It was so spooky. Every […]