The fact that investors channelled a net record R15-billion into unit trusts into the third quarter is an indication of improved sentiment towards the market as a result of recent strong gains from the lows of March last year, according to Investec Asset Management director Jeremy Gardiner.

Scientists in California have found a way to ”turn off’’ a gene that makes cancerous cells lethal. They eliminated aggressive, incurable liver tumours in laboratory mice in four weeks, they report in an advance paper in Nature this week. Cancer affects one person in three, and kills one in five. But above all, cancer is a DNA disease.

The Johannesburg Equality Court has found the Gauteng transport and public works department (Gautrans) guilty of favouring white big business at the expense of black-owned concerns, despite the department’s affirmative procurement policies. The judgement marks the first time that a government department has been taken to court over its affirmative procurement policies.

Dutch scientists have confirmed that red wine is healthier than an alcopop. A binge drinking experiment showed those who hit the bottle might do better to choose Cotes du Rhone over cocktails. Twenty healthy volunteers drank six glasses of red wine or six glasses of Bacardi Breezer in three hours.

An unknown work confidently believed to be by Raphael has been found beneath a later painting which had been put into the wall of an Umbrian church and forgotten. A banner once paraded by a Catholic lay fraternity shows Christ flanked by St Francis of Assisi and St Ubaldo, the 12th century bishop of Gubbio, the town where it was found.

After 50 years of failure, a vaccine against malaria could be in sight, raising hopes of slashing the death toll from a disease that kills more than a million people, mostly babies and pregnant women, every year. Results from the trials in Mozambique are published today in The Lancet medical journal.