Staff Reporter

THE SA Police Service’s Commercial Crime Unit has in the past three weeks confiscated counterfeit and stolen computer software worth almost R15m, says computer software giant Microsoft. Police raided a computer vendor that supplied the Mpumalanga education department with 347 PCs, as well an Erasmia-based computer company where counterfeit and stolen software was found.

THE South African Air Force has stepped in to help a young black woman achieve her dream of flying a Boeing 747 one day. Asnath Matsobane, 21, of Rosenkrans village in the Northern Province, needs to clock up 400 flight hours if she wants to fly large passenger planes, but she ran out of money […]

ILDA JACOBS, Washington DC | Monday A SOUTH African woman’s 25-day hunger strike has succeeded in forcing the California Department of Corrections to admit that her husband was wrongly classified as a gangster. Lara Johnson, 35, originally from Volksrust in Mpumalanga, married African American Demian Johnson in a prison waiting room three years ago after […]

MEDICAL Research Council president Malegapuru Makgoba has condemned what he called the exploitation of young Aids activist Nkosi Johnson in efforts to demonise President Thabo Mbeki. He said people chose to sow doubt on the government’s commitment to fighting HIV/Aids, and when Mbeki tried to clarify his position, they either did not want or chose […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday THE Jukskei River running through the Alexandra township in Johannesburg has tested positive for cholera, threatening the millions of people in townships next to the river who are dependent on it for their daily water. Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Ronnie Kasrils this week confirmed that the river tested positive. […]

A 41-year-old unemployed man who was caught having sex with his dog has appeared in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court. The case against Petrus Moleta was postponed to next week for further investigation. He is to remain in custody until then. Moleta was arrested after passersby reported seeing a man having sex with a greyhound under […]

AN outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) has killed 100 cattle in the past week in Malawi’s central district of Ntcheu, a veterinary official said. Bernett Lurwa said the cows had died of the acute viral disease, which swells knee joints and other parts of the infected beasts. Lurwa said the disease threatens 25_000 other […]

VILLAGERS in northeastern Algeria reported rocks and smoke spewing from craters in an area rocked by an earthquake two months ago, the official Algerian news agency APS reported. Local officials said the previously inactive craters erupted for more than four hours late Wednesday in Ras Aichet, near Djellal in the Khenchela region 500km southeast of […]

If you have the bucks and the hunger, hot-off-the-press handbooks are ready to tell you all about the best places to splash out on the Big Eat-Out, what to order and how much you’ll have to sign off on that platinum card. Two top restaurant guides have been updated, bringing breezy, up- beat reports of […]

A panel of judges sitting at the appeal court in London ruled in favour of an appeal brought by <em>The Sun</em> newspaper.

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION If it proves anything other than the fact that even drivel can be very gaudily wrapped, M-Net’s Cosmo Show has secondary merits. Anything which displays the incomparable Jane Raphaely touch, however remotely bestowed, is always good for a snigger. Cosmopolitan magazine is run by Raphaely’s daughter, Vanessa, and along with the television […]

THE recent birth of two wildebeest calves on the slopes of Table mountain are the first in at least two years because the bulls are too busy fighting each other to woo the cows, says the Cape Peninsula National Park. Representative Philip Prins said last year 35 animals were kept in the camp at the […]

Peter Robinson cricket It’s not a question likely to have kept Shaun Pollock or Graham Ford awake at night, but there will have been times during the past few weeks when the South African captain and coach have wondered how well their team has been playing. Well enough to take care of most Test-playing nations? […]

SIX months after ending a three-year funding freeze to Kenya, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it had put the brakes on a new programme because of “serious setbacks” in the fight against corruption. “It’s not a suspension, it’s more or less a delay in disbursement because of setbacks in the critical aspects of efforts […]

Nigel Williams The Constant Gardener by John le Carr (Hodder & Stoughton) John le Carr’s novels may go on the shelves next to Tom Clancy (and sell as many copies) but if his popularity is due to a belief that he adheres to the Boy Scout code of fiction, then his public are reading him […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Goma | Friday HEAVY fighting erupted early on Friday at Bunia in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, as the country began 30 days of mourning for slain president Laurent Kabila, a UN source said. “There have been clashes in Bunia since 5:00 this morning. It appears that Lendu (local ethnic) groups are attacking […]

Worlds apart, both the Havanna Biennial and AREA 2000 in Iceland interrogated the politics of space Koulla Xinisteris The theme of the seventh Havana Biennial was “Communication and Dialogue”. An engaging response to this theme was South African artist Willem Boshoff’s fragile sand installation, Writing in the Sand, which drew much attention from artists and […]

Robert McCrum talks to John le Carr about his new novel, women and why he avoids other English writers John le Carr was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him an international reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, […]

DUMISANE LUBISI, Belfast | Friday A WIDOW who allegedly forced her young children to perform sexual acts with two men in return for payment appeared briefly in the Belfast Magistrate’s Court this week. The unidentified mother of the two children, a 13-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl, was unable to raise R 1_000 bail and has […]

Neal Collins rugby The truth about the most extraordinary finish in the history of European club rugby is out. Gareth Jenkins summed up the finish of the Gloucester 28 Llanelli 27 Heineken Cup clash perfectly: “When a drop goal hits someone on the arse and bounces over, how do you blame yourself for that?” Up […]

PIET GREYLING (rugby): Is it important how one feels if someone puts in that much money to have his name on it? I don’t have a helluva view I liked the old names but things have changed. To be honest I don’t know what Loftus is called any more. As you get older all that […]

Adam Sweeting CD OFTHEWEEK Prising themselves free from their mid-Nineties fixations with irony and Las Vegas glitz, U2 have circled back to what they’ve always done best on All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Universal-Island). That means big tunes, thumping beats and soaring guitars, while Bono pins his heart on his sleeve and sings as […]

Merryman Kunene soccer The highest recognition any professional can get comes from fellow professionals, who understand better what it takes to get to the top. It is for this reason that Nastasia Tsichlas, the MD of Sundowns, beams with pride when she looks at her success in football, which culminated in her appointment to one […]

Gavin Foster rallying With just a couple of days to go before the end in Senegal, it’s clear that South African Alfie Cox has no chance of winning the 2001 Paris-Dakar rally, and the “almost” man can blame it all on BMW. If the German manufacturer hadn’t ditched its highly successful 650cc single-cylinder machines in […]

David Le Page Takeuchi was a tiny robot built from two cockroach legs and a silicon chip. An innocuous cyborg, he toddled for up to an hour at a time across flat surfaces at the University of Tokyo, where researchers built him in 1996. The little machine had a conventional silicon chip micro-controller, an artificial […]

Look beyond the wigs and waistline Dolly is still queen of country, says Maddy Costa There’s something about Dolly Parton that other old-time country stars don’t have: a very particular ability to make people wrinkle their noses.? She represents a specific, perhaps unrivalled grade of Nashville bad taste,?which is quite an achievement considering that city’s […]

Guy Willoughby review OFTHEWEEK Othello does Maynardville, Maynardville does Othello … intriguing resonances are set up on this millennial cusp down at the fusty-touristy Cape, where the Bard’s most racially charged tragedy finally makes it on to the South African stage with, goodness, a black actor in the title role. Shakespeare, global export and citizen […]

Andy Capostagno golf The annual return of the European Tour to South Africa usually presages two things; big money and heavy rain. And the signs are that this year will be no different. The recent performance of the rand has already ensured that in local terms this week’s Alfred Dunhill Championship at the Houghton Golf […]

Soap opera sub-plots means more attention on the women’s game at the Australian Open Jon Henderson At the end of last year, the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, wrote cloying appreciations of one another for an American magazine. At about the same time, only child Martina Hingis went off to South America and, according to […]

Grant Shimmin athletics A representative of the sponsors was moved to observe at the Absa Series launch in Johannesburg this week that the six-meeting series represented “the pinnacle” of South African domestic athletics. That is patently not the case, although an event that would come closer to the mark the national senior track and field […]