Possible shod hominin tracks in the Garden Route National Park, South Africa. Charles Helm Sun 08 October 2023: When and where did our ancestors first fashion footwear? We cannot look to physical evidence of shoes for the answer, as the perishable materials from which they were made would no longer be evident. Ichnology, the study of fossil […]
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Sun 08 October 2023: In a ringing judgment for the right to privacy, the South African Constitutional Court declared sections of the country’s main communication surveillance law unconstitutional in February 2021. The court gave parliament three years to pass a new law remedying the areas of unconstitutionality. The February 2024 deadline for these amendments is looming fast. […]
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Fri 06 October 2023: Johannesburg and its surrounds, at the centre of the industrial heartland of South Africa, have been hit by severe water cuts. Water interruptions have been happening for years, but they have been scaled up dramatically in recent weeks. The deteriorating situation recently forced the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Senzo Mchunu, to […]
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Thu 05 October 2023: The game brings to life a city that was the intellectual and artistic heart of the mighty Abbasid empire. For centuries, Baghdad seemed to stand at the centre of the world. Chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate around the year 762, the city rose from the banks of the […]
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Wed 04 October 2023: In my digital studies class, I asked students to pose a query to ChatGPT and discuss the results. To my surprise, some asked ChatGPT about my biography. ChatGPT said I received my PhD from two different universities, and in two different subject areas, only one of which represented the focus of […]
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Flight operators perform pre-flight checks on a drone, amid the COVID-19 outbreak in Accra, Ghana, April 16, 2020 Tue 03 October 2023: Startups trying to help African public health systems cater to the needs of everyday people, say they face barriers too. Lagos, Nigeria — Three months after she was born, Ayotunde Omitogun was diagnosed […]
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Mon 02 October 2023: The UK’s long-debated online safety bill (OSB) has been approved by the House of Lords, clearing the way for it to become law. But it has pitted the government, which proposed the bill, against tech companies that provide secure messaging services. Critics say it will allow authorities in the UK to compel service providers to […]
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Sun 01 October 2023: Aziz Goolam Pahad, who has died at the age of 82, was a South African anti-apartheid activist, politician and deputy minister of foreign affairs in the post-1994 government. Together with a small group of foreign policy analysts, I worked with Aziz over the span of 30 years, shaping the post-apartheid South […]
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Fri 29 September 2023: Vigilante group turned political party Operation Dudula increases its xenophobic rhetoric amid rising unemployment in South Africa. Johannesburg, South Africa – For years, Freeman Bhengu tried to earn a living in Soweto, the township on the outskirts of the country’s commercial capital, Johannesburg, where he grew up. He wired houses, he helped […]
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Thu 28 September 2023: Today marks an important milestone in the history of the internet: Google’s 25th birthday. With billions of search queries submitted each day, it’s difficult to remember how we ever lived without the search engine. What was it about Google that led it to revolutionise information access? And will artificial intelligence (AI) […]
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