The US and its coalition against terrorism is moving into position near Afghanistan Mail & Guardian reporters By air and sea, the United States and Britain were building up their military presence on Thursday in the Gulf and hundreds of thousands of Afghans rushed to their borders to find they had been almost completely sealed […]

If the US co-operates with an African dictatorship, it is guilty of propping up an African tyrant; if it opposes the dictatorship, it is guilty of imposing American ideas of democracy on Africa; if it does nothing at all, it is guilty of “marginalising” the country. If the US acts, it is wrong; if it […]

One can only commiserate with the United States for the massive terrorist outrage visited upon it and more particularly the injured and families of the dead. All life is precious. As for George W Bush facing his moment of truth, I would rather say that it is not even the US but all of humanity […]

Why do women want to look like skeletons? Is the media to blame, or is body-sculpting the new DIY? BODY LANGUAGE Gaby Wood If you invented a game called fantasy glossies, in which imaginary magazines had to be put together using the most marketable elements of everything on the news agent’s shelf, you might, in […]

Cadres appear to have sold themselves for 30 pieces of silver NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe The 1994 democratic election brought to an end centuries of racial and colonial domination of the continent. Credit is due to the men and women who defied and overcame extreme repression and dehumanisation. They heroically suffered mental and physical […]

Mail & Guardian reporter The development of the wind-up radio moved clockwork from the realm of children’s toys to the adult world. But a team at Technikon Witwatersrand intends to take wind-up power into the electronic age, with a project that should eventually result in a computer powered by a spring. Chris Bradum is manager […]

Carolyn Frost South Africa is the world’s 10th-largest exporter and 13th-largest producer of sugar cane, but a group of scientists at the University of Stellenbosch hope their research will help push the country up the rankings. Although South Africa is the third most productive grower of sugar cane, sugar yields have plateaued since the 1960s […]

There are fears that Zimbabwe’s reorganised Supreme Court might rubber-stamp ‘fast-track land reform’ Michael Hartnack Zimbabwean civil society went on trial this week when the country’s new Chief Justice, Godfrey Chidyausiku, branded criticism of himself “racist”. He refused to withdraw from the first constitutional test case brought before the country’s newly reorganised Supreme Court. The […]

Rabat | Friday THE United States and Morocco signed an agreement on Thursday paving the way for the construction of the north African country’s first nuclear reactor. The document completes an earlier 1980 accord and establishes a legal basis for building the reactor, at Morocco’s National Centre of Nuclear Energy, Sciences and Technology, in Mamora, […]

CRICKET Peter Robinson South Africa need to sort a few things out before they take on Australia. This, I hasten to point out, is Shaun Pollock’s view, although I’m inclined to agree with him. It’s difficult to be critical of a team that has just won a two-Test series by one match to nothing and […]