Biosphere II was a vision of the future that failed. Now, Jim McClellan reports, it has been reclaimed by mainstream scientists The huge sheets of cheap plastic look out of place hanging in Biosphere II, the sealed glass ecosystem in the Arizona desert, built at enormous expense and once hailed as a high-tech temple of […]

Saul Hansell After two years of development and trial, the credit-card industry has an elaborate system to improve the security of buying over the Internet. The system, called Secure Electronic Transaction, is to be introduced early next year and promises to make it harder for anyone to steal a credit-card number sent over the Internet. […]

Eddie Butler : Rugby Before the game against Ireland two weeks ago, Sean Fitzpatrick, perhaps surprised to be above ground and not in the changing room, agreed to do a BBC interview for Grandstand. The captain of the All Blacks, his international career spanning 11 years and 91 caps, was missing his first Test ever […]

FRIDAY, 2.20PM: WEST INDIES A began their four-day match in Newlands against Western Province with a narrow escape — opening batsman Leon Garrick edged the second ball of the match to the slips, where Eric Simons didn’t quite manage to catch it. But it was Simons who got his revenge not long after, trapping Garrick […]

Elizabeth G Olson The World Wide Web site of a group called the Charlemagne Hammerskins opens with an image of an armed, masked man beside a swastika. A click on a button below labelled “Access for sub-humans” yields a picture of an apparent concentration camp, captioned: “Be assured, we still have many one-way tickets for […]

FRIDAY, 5.30PM: IT was a bad Friday at the JSE, as the disappointing money supply and credit extension figures from the Reserve Bank (see below) helped drive the JSE southwards, and the gold price remained at low levels. The all gold index fell 30 points to 727 — its worst level in14 years. The JSE […]

of life Dying from cancer, Ameen Akhalwaya reflects on a life of pain and gain as a newsman `How are you?” “Up and down – long spells of feeling fine and then sudden pain and discomfort for a couple of hours – I’ve got cancer.” A pregnant silence on the other end of the line. […]

evil In an extract from his book, Into the Heart of Darkness, journalist Jacques Pauw describes his meeting with Paul van Vuuren, whose only regrets were that he lost the war, was exposed and had to confess It is Sunday lunch on the farm “Drooglaagte” west of Warmbaths in the Northern Transvaal bushveld. The burly, […]

Mail & Guardian reporters The beginning of November was D-day for radio stations: one in five songs or 20% of their music must now be a home-brew. Although a number of radio stations are below that quota, only one has applied to the Independent Broadcasting Authority for a broadcasting exemption. Highveld Stereo’s station manager Malcolm […]

Intel maintains its dominance of the microchip market by suing companies that compete with it. Tim Jackson tells the story of one of these battles In the mid-1980s, George Hwang decided to start a new business combining his own expertise in process technology and manufacturing with the talents of Bob Woo, a friend with an […]