Neil Manthorp Cricket The stomach churns, the vision blurs periodically, the fear of a failure so instant, and finite, paralyses the instincts and movements that have been second nature for years. Very few men, at any senior level, have opened the batting without experiencing these emotions. Many have suffered worse. It is quite possible to […]

A new imaging service was launched last week on the Internet, courtesy of American and Russian military satellites. Duncan Campbell takes a peek By the end of this year, the world’s largest online database will be offering browse and click satellite pictures of much of the Earth’s surface and all of its largest towns. The […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD Me, jump out of a plane at 3 000m? You must be joking. No way! Not this side of life. I could not have emphasised the point more strongly when my editor suggested, with an evil grin, that I try skydiving for this column. I gave him one of […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon When your weekend newspaper starts to depress your spirits, don’t just reach out automatically for the brandy bottle or the Prozac, there are easier ways to shed the gloom. An excellent selection of low comedy is to be enjoyed merely by turning to the Appointments section in the paper. Reading through […]

Sam Taylor CD of the week Despite the grim utilitarianism of their name, the Dave Matthews Band are a very strange phenomenon. They are vastly successful – their first two albums, 1994’s Under the Table and Dreaming and 1996’s Crash, sold a combined total of 11- million copies in the United States; Before These Crowded […]

How was Wired magazine to have known that Godzilla would prove such a flop? With a three-month lead time, the United States’s pre-eminent futurists are bound to make a few wrong guesses. Putting Godzilla on their June cover, in anticipation that the flick would live up to its hype, probably seemed like a good bet. […]

Scholar Apollon Davidson is a living link between Russia and South Africa, writes Shaun de Waal The histories of South Africa and Russia are curiously intertwined, going all the way back to Jan van Riebeeck. In his journal, the first official colonist expressed the desire for help from a Russian with experience in the exploitation […]

FRIDAY, 8.30AM: DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday added his voice to Wednesday’s criticism by President Nelson Mandela of the South African Communist Party. Addressing the SACP’s 10th annual congress, Mbeki berated the party for the ease with which it has levelled “charges of treachery” against the African National Congress, adding that the ANC does […]

say hemp farmers Ferial Haffajee Major South African companies, in conjunction with the government, are funding research into hemp production at the country’s first experimental cannabis farms. Among them are Mercedes Benz South Africa, PG Bison and Masonite Africa. The farms, around the country, are controlled by the Agricultural Research Council and supported by the […]