A pair of spectacles, a set of keys, a student card, a watch, a few euros, a single grey trainer. Rita Betancourt removes the objects delicately from a small green box and places them on the table of the immaculate suburban home where she and her husband, Luis Tenesaca, now live alone.
REM rocked Jo’burg on Thursday night and, as usual, didn’t disappoint. In terms of value for money, patrons certainly got what they paid for — the hits just went on and on and on, with the lighting system adding real gloss to the presentation. Lisa Johnston was there.
For two days next week, the battle over drugs pricing will move to the Constitutional Court as Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang takes on pharmacy groups. The Health Department will ask the country’s highest court for permission to appeal in a bid to overturn a Supreme Court of Appeal judgement, which threw out ”transparent pricing” regulations last year.
While it’s not a new idea to get pop stars to do Cole Porter’s songs for this movie, <i>De-Lovely</i> has managed to keep the approach traditional, without trying to spruce up Porter’s work for the MTV generation, writes Riaan Wolmarans.
Although it’s a movie about boxing and contains any number of neatly staged fight scenes,it is about fathers and daughters, real or ersatz, and about emotional remoteness and proximity, and doing one last good-bad thing before you die.Black boxers took on the world and knocked it flying, but Hollywood is more concerned with white ones, writes John Patterson.
"The way in for me was to ask questions like, when is the birth of conscience? Not just for a character in a novel, but also for the writer writing the novel." Andie Miller spoke to exiled Nigerian novelist Chris Abani.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is to forge links with left-wing social movements in a move to reverse its waning influence in the tripartite alliance and to revitalise South Africa’s left. At a recent conference, the federation adopted an unprecedented resolution to work with the country’s burgeoning social movements to rescue the "fragmentation and attrition" of the left.
Microsoft on Thursday announced a deal to buy a company run by the creator of IBM’s Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie, at the same time hiring him to be one of the software firm’s most senior technical executives. Ozzie will join Microsoft in the role of chief technical officer and will report directly to chairperson and chief software architect Bill Gates.
A suicide bomb tore through a packed funeral ceremony at a Shia mosque in Mosul on Thursday, killing at least 46 people and wounding up to 100 others. The attack appeared to be the latest outrage by Sunni militants intent on fomenting sectarian strife and destabilising attempts to form an elected Iraqi government.
The Michael Jackson trial descended further into farce on Thursday as the judge ordered the singer’s arrest when he failed to appear at court. Told that he was at a nearby hospital ”with a serious back problem” the judge was unmoved, and gave the singer 60 minutes to appear or face jail and the loss of his -million bail bond.