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FRIDAY, 20 FEBRUARY 2026, 00:43

Top Stories

State inaction normalises water poverty

Today at 00:25 AM, via Mail & Guardian

In Limpopo’s villages, being waterless has become so normalised that people seem to have accepted that this is just how life should be — spending hours a day queuing to fill a 200 litre drum

Top Stories

Land as Mother: The sacred politics of food

Today at 00:25 AM, via Mail & Guardian

Rebuilding a just system recognises that enduring solutions might lie in combining modern tools with older ethical frameworks grounded in reciprocity and collective responsibility

Top Stories

Billions needed to sort water crisis

Today at 00:25 AM, via Mail & Guardian

Joburg’s Dada Morero assured residents that the city would not implement water-shedding in the same way South Africans endured load-shedding

Africa

Lobito Corridor: A new line for trade and investment

Today at 00:00 AM, via Mail & Guardian

The corridor is strategically significant given that Zambia, Angola and the DRC are home to some of the world’s most significant deposits of critical minerals

Business

Not enough to save 134-year-old company in South Africa

Yesterday at 17:00 PM, via BusinessTech

Despite the gazetted reforms aimed at strengthening the industry, they do not address the imports that contributed to the liquidation of a 134-year-old South African company.

Politics

Steenhuisen faces palace revolt

Today at 00:30 AM, via Mail & Guardian

Senior Democratic Alliance officials are backing Western Cape agriculture MEC Ivan Meyer to replace the party leader as agriculture minister after its April federal congress

Education

Schools in England to get budget for children with special needs as part of Send overhaul

Yesterday at 20:50 PM, via The Guardian

Children to get individual support directly from school instead of via council in attempt to curb spiralling costs

Children in England with special needs will receive individual support and therapy directly from their schools as part of the government’s overhaul of England’s special education provision.

Under the plans, mainstream schools will be given commissioning budgets to spend on...

Education

Nigeria: Khairun VC Receives Sarkin Sumaila On Courtesy Visit

Yesterday at 20:14 PM, via AllAfrica

[Daily Trust] The Vice-Chancellor of Khalifa Isyaku Rabiu University, Kano (KHAIRUN), Prof. Abdulrashid Garba, on Monday received the Emir of Sumaila, Alhaji Bello Muhammad Dan Sumaila, on a courtesy visit to his office.

Entertainment

24 hours in pictures, 19 February 2026

Yesterday at 18:30 PM, via The Citizen

Through the lens: The Citizen’s Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world.

Science/Tech

Mark Zuckerberg Grilled On Usage Goals and Underage Users At California Trial

Today at 00:02 AM, via Slashdot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced a barrage of questions about his social-media company’s efforts to secure ever more of its users’ time and attention at a landmark trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday. In sworn testimony, Zuckerberg said Meta’s growth targets reflect an aim to give users something useful, not addict them,...

Science/Tech

China’s Hottest App of 2026 Just Asks If You’re Still Alive

Yesterday at 23:21 PM, via Slashdot

A bare-bones Chinese app called “Are You Dead?” — whose entire premise is that solo-living users tap daily to confirm they’re still alive, triggering an alert to an emergency contact after two missed check-ins — has rocketed to the top of China’s app store charts and gone viral globally without spending a dime on advertising. The app wasn’t built for the elderly, as many assumed; its creators...

Science/Tech

Microsoft’s New 10,000-Year Data Storage Medium: Glass

Yesterday at 22:45 PM, via Slashdot

Microsoft Research has published a paper in Nature detailing Project Silica, a working demonstration that uses femtosecond lasers to etch data into small slabs of glass at a density of over a Gigabit per cubic millimeter and a maximum capacity of 4.84 terabytes per slab. The slabs themselves are 12 cm by 12 cm and just 2 mm thick, and Microsoft’s accelerated aging experiments suggest the data...

Health

How Microbes Got Their Crawl

Wednesday at 18:00 PM, via New York Times

In the oceans and on land, scientists are discovering rare, transitional organisms that bridge the gap between Earth’s simplest cells and today’s complex ones.