into profit Andy Duffy A cabal of students is running the University of the North (Turfloop)as a private business, spending millions of the cash-strapped institution’s funds and extorting protection money from outside firms working on the campus. Documents leaked from the university this week, and confirmed by senior sources as accurate, claim the Student Representative […]
Ann Eveleth The development hopes of a poor rural community bordering the lucrative Sabi Sands game reserve have been delayed by bickering between conservationists vying for a slice of the community’s untapped treasure. The tiny community of Huntington in the fractious Bushbuckridge region in Mpumalanga plans to meet this weekend in an ongoing bid to […]
Tim Radford United States space scientists believe they will be able to conjure up refrigerator and furnace insulation tiles out of thin air. They are experimenting with a composite material called aerogel, the lightest solid known. A lump of this “frozen smoke” the size of a man would weigh less than 0,45kg, but could bear […]
Tangeni Amupadhi The official police watchdog, the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), has embarked on a wide- ranging investigation into allegations that the jailed People’s Poet, Mzwakhe Mbuli, was framed for robberies. This follows a plea by Jessie Duarte, former Gauteng MEC for safety and security, for the watchdog to examine the highly suspicious circumstances surrounding […]
Janet Smith Young and single was getting seriously boring till Ally McBeal made her case on television in the United States last year. Critics were yawning over the trendy narrative of ensemble casts in emotional crises after yet another season of superstar sitcom Friends, which earned that show’s cast a few million more. Come now. […]
Neil Manthorp Cricket It has been a silly week on tour. For four years people have complained about the inability of various hosts around the world to organise a sensible itinerary. India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and even Australia, who isolated the third and final test by sticking the World Series into the middle […]
Multinationals are moving into hitherto untouched areas, with catastrophic results, writes John Vidal Amungme tribal leader Yosepha Alomang, a mother of 10, should be in Britain. But as she boarded the plane this month in Irian Jaya, Indonesia, to head for London and the Rio Tinto annual meeting, she was stopped by the military. Had […]
Janet Smith Nine days of the Standard Bank National Festival of the Arts will be turned on by television for the first time this year with the rah-rah arrival of Cue-TV on small screens throughout Grahamstown and surrounding areas. A late autumn lunch is a moment for Christo Doherty, senior lecturer in television at the […]
Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE Of all the cool and creepy pieces of vapourware to have emerged since the Web went mainstream, the coolest and creepiest have got to be intelligent agents. And, according to the press releases jamming my e-mail server, they’re here: autonomous pieces of programming trained to race around cyberspace doing our (largely consumerist) […]
Stefaans Brmmer Staff in the Gauteng premier’s office were to attend a compulsory workshop on Friday to discuss the prevention of leaks of government information. A copy of the “invitation” was leaked to the Mail & Guardian. The “confidentiality workshop” – addressed by National Intelligence Agency staff – was convened amid growing acrimony between Gauteng […]