TUESDAY, 5.30PM: A SOLID day’s trading helped Johannesburg Stock Exchange industrial shares better themselves. Gold stocks fell on weaker bullion prices, but not as much as they could have, said dealers. The positive mood on the markets is probably linked to fewer worries about the Asian economies and a relatively stable Wall Street, despite the […]

TUESDAY, 5.00PM: WATER Affairs and Forestry Minister Kader Asmal on Tuesday unveiled a far-reaching new Water Bill that puts an end to private ownership of water. Asmal said in terms of the proposed new law, the right to use water will no longer be allocated primarily on the basis of land ownership, with allocations to […]

MONDAY, 12.30PM: SOUTH Africa’s Under-19 cricket team may well be through to the final of the MTN Under-19 World Cup, if they can beat Sri Lanka. The tenacious South Africans beat New Zealand by five wickets at Newlands on Sunday after being set a target of 195. South Africa were, however, put under quite a […]

MONDAY, 12.30PM: TIGER Woods’ prediction came true when he beat Ernie Els in a play-off for the Johnnie Walker Classic title after being eight shots adrift entering the last day. Woods shot a 65, and then went on to beat Els on the second hole of a play-off with a 15-foot birdie putt. Woods had […]

MONDAY, 2.30PM: ZIMBABWEAN opener Grant Flower scored his first century in one-day cricket to take Zimbabwe to an imposing total of 281 for six in their third and final one-day international against Sri Lanka in Colombo on Monday. Flower, who was dropped twice by Sanath Jayasuriya on two and 18, made full use of his […]

Paul Verhoeven took a tumble with Showgirls, but bounces back with Starship Troopers — a gore-fest full of battles with giant bugs. Phil Daoust met the controversial director. You’re a big-budget Hollywood director who was once known as a bit of an auteur. You work with Arnie, Sharon and Rutger but are getting sick of […]

Greg Bowes Get the Funk Out (GTFO), the CD-sized magazine that billed itself as “the entertainment magazine for advantaged common folk” has ended its print-run. Its recently launched sister publication Explorer will continue to provide fortnightly listings for the Gauteng area. In its short lifetime GTFO transformed itself from a somewhat unfocused A4 mag to […]

Neil Manthorp: Cricket Contradictions are an integral part of cricket. Without them, the game would be baseball … or something. The three-legged finals of the World Series, beginning on Friday at the MCG between South Africa and Australia, have been preceded by the strangest contradiction of the tour so far. It is this: 1 Hansie […]

Martin Kettle in New York When a songwriter is as good and as famous as Paul Simon then, from one way of looking at it, he has nothing left to prove for the rest of his life. But when, like Simon, you cut your first record at 16, are a superstar at 26, and have […]

yet Fusion energy and self-driving cars are just two of the possible spin-offs from space exploration, write Tim Radford and David Rowan In 1945, Arthur C Clarke wrote to Wireless World with a proposal for communications satellites in geostationary orbit, and it must have seemed like a fairy tale. In 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik […]