Staff Reporter

On the field the 2001/2002 season is expected to be the best since the formation of the Premier Soccer league (PSL) five years ago. But the PSL will have to solve several off-the-field problems. Firstly it will have to stick to its fixture list to avoid congestion something it has been unable to do in […]

Barry Streek A decision by the national and Western Cape governments to allow a perlemoen (abalone) farm in the pristine Pringle Bay area, located in the buffer zone of the country’s only United Nations-recognised biosphere, has triggered strong criticism from local residents and environmentalists. The two groups argue that the proposed farm contravenes the international […]

If Wouter Basson is to be believed, the apartheid government had secret dealings with its enemies, writes Marlene Burger Of all the riddles wrapped in mystery inside enigmas raised by the trial of Wouter Basson, the one causing the most head-scratching is the averred link between the apartheid government’s chemical warfare programme and one of […]

PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday INTELLIGENCE agencies and the state attorney this week sought to stop the Mail & Guardian from publishing information about documents that expose serious irregularities in the R50-billion arms deal. Shortly after the M&G, asked Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Erwin to comment on the documents, Pretoria state attorney Caroline […]

THE Angolan army (FAA) and the Unita rebel movement are engaged in “heavy fighting” in the northern part of the central highland’s province of Bie, Portuguese news agency Lusa reported on Wednesday. The report said that fighting was concentrated around Gamba, a village in the Nharea district about 100km north of the provincial capital, Kuito. […]

MIThril http://wearables.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/mithril The Enchantment Window Manager http://albireo.mit.edu/enchantment.html Steve Mann http://wearcam.org Wearable Computing www.wearablecomputing.com Xybernaut www.xybernaut.com WetPC www.aims.gov.au/wetpc Twiddlers www.handykey.com 5th International Symposium on Wearable Computers http://iswc.gatech.edu Bristol Wearable Computing project http://wearables.cs.bris.ac.uk/ Charmed www.charmed.com MARS Mobile Augmented Reality Systems www.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/projects/mars/mars.html BARS http://ait.nrl.navy.mil/vrlab/projects/BARS/BARS.html Lart www.lart.tudelft.nl @ Monitor Learners still don’t get the same deal Russell Wildeman The […]

An initiative helps children from disadvantaged backgrounds attain a significant level of readiness before entering school Congress Mahlangu Project Head Start is making a difference in improving the quality of early childhood development in townships around Pretoria. The five-year-old project is an initiative of Early Childhood Development (ECD), an NGO that runs the programme in […]

analysis Darryl Accone Johannesburg’s Civic Theatre rechristened its main stage The Nelson Mandela Theatre this week. The announcement was the equivalent of someone unexpectedly jumping out of a giant cake. The evening had already been planned as a celebration and inauguration of The Civic’s makeover into a little corner of New York, named Times Square […]

Andy Capostagno looks at Sarfu’s restructuring Because there is a Test match in Dunedin this weekend there is no rugby being played in South Africa. If the restructuring of the administration of South African rugby announced earlier this week can solve that particular conundrum we’ll all be a lot happier. SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd became […]

SOUTH African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth, who wants to become the world’s next “space tourist,” could make his flight onboard a Russian craft as early as April, the head of the Russian space agency said on Thursday. Shuttleworth’s flight is possible either in April next year on a Soyuz “taxi flight” to the International Space Station […]

Nature’s laws aren’t written in English NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe The bureaucratic, educational, criminal and justice systems in South Africa as well as commerce and industry use languages considered foreign by the majority of African people, bearing testimony to the unrelenting marginal status of African languages. The Constitution, recognising the diminished use and status […]

Byron Kennedy Since the start of this week platinum shed a further $36 per oz to touch fresh 18-month lows of $435, a far cry from the $625 that the metal commanded back in April. That translates into a 30% devaluation in three months, although the majority of that pain was effected over the past […]

Cheryl Goodenough A district municipality in KwaZulu-Natal has accused the national government of acting unconstitutionally by failing to pay revenue to district municipalities. The Uthukela district municipality lodged an urgent application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court last Friday. The matter is set down to be heard on August 13. President Thabo Mbeki and Minister of […]

THE Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (Apcon) said on Thursday that radio and television advertisements for tobacco and alcohol would be banned starting next year. Apcon chairman Olu Falomo said the council had also banned hoardings advertising tobacco or alcoholic beverages at sporting events. Falomo said manufacturers could sponsor sporting events but could not display […]

A NIGERIAN snake charmer, Umaru Daura, picked up a 100 000 naira ($900) reward in Kano on Tuesday after slaying a snake reputed to have killed 34 people. Daura walked into the state government headquarters in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city, Tuesday afternoon with the corpse of a slim 1,5-metre long snake. The killer snake, […]

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki acknowledged in a television interview to be aired on Monday evening that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is not listening to him. Interviewer Tim Sebastian of the BBC’s “Hard Talk” told Mbeki: “He’s not listening is he?”, to which the president replied: “Well he hasn’t.” Mbeki has engaged in “quiet diplomacy” in a […]

MANNETJIE Ganaseb is probably the only person in Namibia who can claim to have been trapped underneath a wild, black rhino and lived to tell the tale. Ganaseb, the Manager of Save The Rhino (STR) Trust’s camel patrol team, was lucky to escape with his life after a close encounter with a black rhino cow […]

A 79-YEAR-OLD Northern Province farmer and his elderly wife have been briefly hospitalised after three armed men ambushed and beat them on Sunday night. The knife-wielding attackers reportedly lured Hermanus Johannes Oosthuizen out of his smallholding house near Pietersburg by taunting his dog at 10pm on Sunday night. “His 71-year old wife, Gerbrecht, heard his […]

SAKHILE MOKOENA Pietersburg | Thursday CIRCUMCISION schools should be regulated without “assassinating” African culture and customs, urged Pan Africanist Youth Congress (Payco) leader in the Northern Province, Matome Mashao, on Thursday. His call follows the cancellation of a provincial circumcision indaba, or meeting, that was to be held on Tuesday but was scuppered when traditional […]

A GROUP of armed men made off with a haul of cash, diamonds and precious metals from a Swissair freight container shortly after it was unloaded at Johannesburg airport in South Africa last week, the Swiss airline and a German newspaper report said on Monday. Between five and seven gunmen, according to witnesses, raided the […]

Cape Town | Wednesday NEW mortality statistics have shown that violence rivals Aids as a threat to South African society, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang told a news conference on Wednesday. But her assertion, backing up President Thabo Mbeki, is at odds with UNAids figures which suggest that annual deaths due to Aids are nearly 10 […]

Some 272 000 people fled fighting between rebels and government forces in Angola from January to June this year, a UN report said on Tuesday. Displacement of civilians mostly peasant farmers occurred in 10 of the troubled southern African country’s 18 provinces, the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) […]

Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWE Home Minister John Nkomo said this week that white farmers and not pro-government war veterans are behind the recent upsurge in violence in the countryside. “No war veterans have been causing any problems on the farms,” Nkomo said late on Wednesday. “It is true the farmers have been attacking properly and […]

Luanda | Thursday ANTI-personnel and anti-tank landmines killed 110 people and injured 140 others during June in six of Angola’s eighteen provinces, a UN report said on Wednesday. About 500 000 people are trapped in areas littered with landmines or where fighting continues to rage in the 26-year civil war, the report said. Estimates vary […]

THE cost of bread in Zimbabwe has more than doubled since January, after a seventh price hike in as many months, a consumer watchdog said on Tuesday. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) said bread prices went up by 15% this week, but the domestic Ziana news agency reported a hike of between 7,5% and […]

MORE than 4 000 Internet users in Ethiopia are under threat from the spread of a “Code Red”-style computer virus, the government’s science and technology commission (STC) warned on Tuesday. An expert with the commission, quoted by Ethiopian news agency ENA, warned that Internet and e-mail users here should guard against the virus by taking […]

A PLAY scheduled for the Edinburgh Festival on the recommendation of the British army in Sierra Leone has been cancelled because the British government will not let the actors in the country, media reported on Tuesday. The play, “Kpundeh”, which attempts to predict what will happen when the killing stops in Sierra Leone, so impressed […]

THE Sudanese government army denied on Wednesday rebel claims that its units attacked oilfields and destroyed oil production installations at Higlieg town in southern Unity State, official media reported on Wednesday. Suna news agency and Omdurman Radio quoted army representative General Mohamed Beshir Suleiman dismissing as an “unfulfilled dream” a claim to that affect by […]

A 78-YEAR-old Egyptian music agent said on Tuesday he wanted a mention in the Guinness book of world records for having married 203 times. Mustafa Semeda, an agent for traditional Egyptian bands in Cairo, told journalists he first got married in 1947 and has since then been married to another 202 women, most of them […]

POLICE near Port Elizabeth were forced on Monday to blow up a stranded whale. “It was not pleasant, it was horrible to see but it was the humane thing to do,” said Wendy Kant, a research assistant at the Bayworld aquarium in the southeastern city of Port Elizabeth. “The police carried out a demolition-controlled explosion […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday HIGH telephone costs in South Africa have limited the growth of the local Internet industry, international survey company Nielsen NetRatings reported on Wednesday. Nielsen NetRatings said in a statement that an estimated 1,5-million South Africans now had home Internet access, but that users only spent an average of four hours […]