sufferers Michael Nurok Forget the apple – if new research proves correct, it will be a pilchard a day that keeps the doctor away. Scientists have been looking at the therapeutic properties of omega-three fatty acids, found in fish oil, in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. South Africa’s richest natural source of the substance is […]

THURSDAY, 6.00PM: POST, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Minister Jay Naidoo released his long-awaited White Paper on Broadcasting Policy on Thursday, outlining a vision to turn South Africa into a global multimedia hub. The 46-page White Paper proposes that the the country’s signal distribution network should be opened to competition by 2000. Concluding that the digital route […]

THURSDAY 6.00PM: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has begun a closed hearing into the 1986 air crash in which Mozambiqan president Samora Machel was killed. TRC spokesman Vuyani Green said that there was evidence linking the crash to activities of the former Suth African Defence Force. Several witnesses, including members of former South African military […]

WEDNESDAY 12.00NOON: THE former commander of the United Nations observer force in Angola says there is evidence in the country of a military build-up that “indicates preparations for a possible return to war”. Zimbabwean army Major-General Phillip Sibanda, who has just returned to Harare from a two-and-a-half-year command of the formerly 7000-strong UN military monitoring […]

WEDNESDAY, 6.00PM: ETHIOPIAN troops, tanks and heavy artillery crossed the border into Eritrea at dawn on Wednesday morning, the Eritrean foreign ministry said on Wednesday. The invasion, which has not been confirmed by independent sources, is an escalation of a tense border stand-off that has seen at least 100 people killed or wounded since Sunday. […]

WEDNESDAY, 2.15PM: APARTHEID’s chief assassin Eugene de Kock, known by his colleagues as “Prime Evil”, claimed on Wednesday that former president PW Botha ordered the 1987 bomb attack on Cosatu House, headquarters of the country’s largest trade union federation. Testifying at Botha’s trial for ignoring a Truth and Reconciliation Commission subpoena, De Kock told the […]

TUESDAY 11.00AM: THERE are still a large number of troops belonging to the Angolan rebel movement Unita in several provinces, in spite of its claims to have demilitarised its forces, according to a United Nations official. Quoting a report by the commander of UN forces overseeing the peace process, UN representative for Angola Alouine Blondin […]

MONDAY, 4.00PM: IN an unexpected turn in the Lusaka High Court on Monday, the state dropped all charges against former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, after which Judge Japhta Banda declared Kaunda a free man. “It’s great, it’s great,” declared Zambia’s 74-year-old founding father as hundreds of his supporters broke through a police cordon to celebrate […]

MONDAY 6.00PM: FORMER Zimbabwean president Canaan Banana has denied allegations by three policemen, two air force officers, two secret service agents, a cook, a jobseeker and a hitchhiker that he either forced or attempted to force them to have sex with him. Banana, 62, a former Methodist minister, was appearing in the Harare High Court […]

Andrew Clements CDs of the week Naxos deserves an award. Using archive material supplied by the Canadian-based Immortal Performances of Recorded Music Society, they’ve secured the commercial release of operatic radio broadcasts, taken from live performances from 1937 to 1943, some of them hitherto only available as expensive bootlegs. Not everyone will like these: recording […]