Features

In Antarctica's vast spaces, a former Rhodes student walks a rocky road
Liam Pedersen, a 30-year-old former Rhodes student, has helped to create a robot which not only autonomously identifies meteorites but which also may play a significant role in future space travel. LIAM Pedersen is an unlikely adventurer. Tall, ...

Pesticide mix exposure linked to Parkinson's
WASHINGTON -- Exposure to a mix of two crop-treating chemicals widely used in farming has been linked to Parkinson's disease, according to a study in the Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers led by Deborah Cory-Slechta, environmental medicine pro...

America, Canada in spud spat
TORONTO -- It may not be the most strategic of issues to fight over, but Canada and the United States are caught in an escalating trade dispute over potatoes from Prince Edward Island (PEI). A fungus found in a potato field in the Canadian territ...

Southern Africa had enough food in 2000
By Glyn Williams SOME 28 million people in sub-Saharan Africa faced severe food shortages, mainly because of prolonged drought and civil strife, according to a report released late in December by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The rep...

Farmed salmon highly contaminated
LONDON -- Farm-reared salmon can contain up to 10 times more potentially dangerous chemicals than wild salmon as they are fed on fish offal, scientists said this week. According to research in Britain and Canada quoted by the BBC, the practice of...

Floods wipe out Malawi crops
BLANTYRE -- More than 500 subsistence farmers in Malawi were left destitute after floods in the southern parts of the country wiped out their crops, Africa Eye News Service reported yesterday. Malawi commissioner for disaster preparedness Lucious...

Fertility research confirms what most women know
By Jo Stein A NEW study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) confirms what women already know from experience -- that you can't rely on the "rhythm" or "calendar" method for planning or preventing pregnancy. The rhythm method is based on the un...

Grammys up for grabs
Here are the nominees for some of the principal categories in the 43rd annual Grammy Awards Album Of The Year Midnite Vultures by Beck The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem Kid A by Radiohead You're The One by Paul Simon Two Against Nature by...

Pedalling paramedics
By Kofi Akumanyi THE first bicycle-ambulance experiment in the United Kingdom has given a new meaning to the phrase "pedal power". The top-range BMX bicycle, ridden by former British and European BMX champion Tom Lynch, was equipped with flashin...

STARSCOPE by William Smith
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 21): Assuming you are feeling quite cramped or restricted by complications in your personal life, move quickly to affect the necessary changes. You are bound to come up with the answers to private difficulties if you resort to ...

Transformation and the politics of memory
Several letters have appeared in the Daily Dispatch for and against 'forgetting' the apartheid past. Leonhard Praeg tackles the issue. SOCIETIES, like individuals, tend to remember selectively. And the decision to remember or forget is often link...