Special effects take the lead role in Independence Day, the fastest-earning movie of all time. JONATHAN FREEDLAND explains the monster hit DIALOGUE doesn’t get much of a look-in in Independence Day, the sci-fi blockbuster now blowing US box-office records out of the sky like so many enemy alien spaceships. What with the hi-tech crushing of […]
border Has the North American Free Trade Agreement merely ushered in looser restrictions for the drug trade? John Ward Anderson reports from San Ysidro United States customs inspector Robert Bickers — the “linebacker” who tackles drug dealers trying to run back to Mexico when their cars are nabbed in surprise inspections — pointed to a […]
Marion Edmunds The old and the crippled, the blind and the lame of Nyanga and beyond in the Western Cape are furious with Welfare Department officials, who they say make their already tough lives a nightmare. They want to tell the politicians they are not getting the grants they were promised which are all they […]
RUGBY: Robert Armstrong TWICKENHAM is putting the finishing touches to a new gilt-edged international fixture list for 1997 in response to England’s likely exclusion by the other home unions from the Five Nations Championship. Plans by Wales, Scotland and Ireland to set up an alternative championship along with France were discussed at a meeting in […]
Ian Katz in New York The American rock group REM, unremarkable looking thirty-somethings whose catchy tunes are hummed by teenagers, have become the highest paid group in the world after signing a record $80-million contract with Warner Brothers. The deal could trigger a rush of “me, too” demands from other established artists, just as a […]
These days most South African celebrities make a lot more money from personal appearances than they do on the airwaves, writes Katy Bauer WHEN I phoned the SABC this week and asked to speak to Dorianne Berry, the receptionist said she didn’t think anyone by that name worked there. But it wouldn’t be fair to […]
Old habits seem to die hard as NSL officials continue to operate with too much secrecy and too much control SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi ONE sometimes wonders what leading South African soccer officials read during their leisure hours. Tales of Central African dictators from days gone by, perhaps? There certainly seems to be a longing for […]
Mungo Soggot A man who claims he was a victim of police torture will seek a place in South African legal history when he applies to the Constitutional Court next month for R200 000 in damages for the police’s invasion of his constitutional rights. Ntandazeli Fose says he was tortured by members of the Vanderbijlpark […]
The sale of Anglo’s Johnnic stake has finally come off, with a considerable discount to boot, report Madeleine Wackernagel and Tebello Radebe The National Empowerment Consortium (NEC) has pulled off a considerable coup — control of Johnnic for a minimum amount of cash, at a 12% discount to the market price. While the NEC’s starting […]
A century after HG Wells’s War of the Worlds, ERIC KORN asks what happened to sci-fi vision? HOW the aliens must have hated it, being told for so long that they were a political neurosis. Perhaps it was embarrassment about it that has made them so reclusive. Imagine how we will feel, when we land, […]