Michael Brooks looks at the latest cool solution The refrigerator of the future may be cooled by a semiconductor device no bigger than a credit card. There will be no buzz, no moving parts and, most important of all, it will do away with the need for the environment-destroying Freon gases used in conventional refrigerators. […]
A growing number of readers have been demanding to know from the Mail & Guardian when Robert McBride is going to be released from the Mozambique prison where he is being held. Well might they ask. And it is not the only question which needs to be asked of the authorities where the McBride case […]
Stephen Gray : Unspoilt places ‘Prickly pear”, I suppose I knew, was the homely way to refer to that flat, jointed, paddle-leaved plant which holds its barrel- shaped fruit aloft like sore thumbs. If pushed, I could have volunteered its botanical label: Opuntia – a suitably blunt name for the gawky, invasive alien that should […]
Shaun de Waal : CD of the week The Rough Guide books have been helping people (usually young, hip people)find their way around the world for years. Recently a set of superb music guides was added to the list -World Music, Jazz, Rock – and now, in a logical extension of the concept, here comes […]
Ian Wylie and Liz Stuart Plastic may be the gold standard for a new millennium, but people are proving reluctant to give up notes and coins. Cash is still king and electronic purse pretenders are finding it tougher than expected to win allegiance. When coins tear holes in pockets, notes disintegrate and both make the […]
A South African cvompany has been implicated in illegal leopard trade, write John Grobler and Fiona Macleod Delegates from an international conservation agency meeting in Namibia for the past two weeks were shocked when, walking out of a popular bar in Windhoek last Thursday (April 23), they encountered a group of drunken men taunting three […]
Nelson Mandela is promoting peace and development in Luanda … but neither are foregone conclusions Chris Gordon President Nelson Mandela’s visit to Angola this week takes place against a background of rumours of war and the poor health of President Jos Eduardo dos Santos. Mandela is scheduled to meet Dos Santos to discuss the two […]
competitors Charlene Smith Telkom is beginning to fight, and beat, their cellphone competition on their own ground. The latest Telkom innovation is its Call Answer service. First piloted over four months early last year to residential customers in Rosebank in Johannesburg and Middelburg in Mpumalanga, it is now beginning to pick up momentum with availability […]
Tracy Murinik : On show in Cape Town A coffee pot with six spouts stands on a now coffee-stained table surrounded by six coffee cups into which it spurts the same, now-acrid coffee that it has been recycling for the past few weeks. Mns Wrange’s Monument: Democratic Coffee Table with Fair Coffee Pot and Equal […]
The stakes are high as businesses do battle for Johnnic, a showpiece empowerment company, writes Jenny Cargill It is almost like old times watching the current wrangling within the National Empowerment Consortium (NEC) over New Africa Investments Limited’s (Nail) bid to merge with Johnnic. The 18-month run-up to the NEC’s purchase of the controlling interest […]