Well, we always thought there had to be some truth somewhere in the origins of the Indiana Jones flick, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. And now we know. Except it wasn’t the Ark of the Covenant those evil Nazis wanted, but the Shroud of Turin instead, the very piece of linen believed by many Christians to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

Since he won a Pulitzer Prize in his mid-thirties and landed a job as a New Yorker staff writer, there’s been every reason on Earth to hate David Remnick. Now there’s another one. Working in his spare time, the man with the most sought-after (and best-paid) journalist’s job in the world has written his sixth book: a best-selling 672-page tome about Barack Obama.

Summit TV have demanded a full investigation into the funds CNBC Africa received from the Gauteng government. If there was any impropriety, they say, action must be taken to recover the money.

The revelation that local broadcaster CNBC Africa has been getting around R25-million a year from the Gauteng government almost went unnoticed by the local press. Question is, what kind of information have they been feeding us since they launched?

One of the oddities of great open spaces is how few names there are. The two things are somehow indelibly paired; openness almost necessarily implies namelessness. The opposite applies too: discovery is synonymous with that fabulous process of anointing things with a designation. By TIM COHEN.

No, it’s not a cheap joke. Okay, maybe it is, but then we’ll let you come up with the punchline. Below, for your enjoyment, the parallels between a pro-government Russian youth movement known as Nashi and our very own ANC Youth League.

Combining  bits of everyday stuff with loads of extraordinary talent, the cast of Stomp, now on at the Teatro Montecasino, transform Mom’s kitchen into a pulsating, hypnotic concert hall.

The worst of South Africa and the worst of America have contrived to collide in the now-settled legal battle between Oprah Winfrey and the former headmistress of her Johannesburg girls’ academy, Nomvuyo Mzamane.

On its own terms, Wednesday’s online campaign protesting the ANC Youth League’s disregard for media freedom has been an unqualified triumph. The day has also been an important one for South African social media. Wouldn’t it be great, though, if there could also be a real-world victory?  

The latest furore surrounding Julius Malema, courtesy of Facebook, may, for once, not actually be his fault. But it highlights a worrying trend in our society: the attitude of (some) of our youth towards race. Ironically, this affliction seems colour blind, as young white – and black – South Africans spew out racist vitriol via the anonymity of internet, and youth leaders (yes, we are talking about the ANC Youth League) fail to distance themselves from such views.

If you think it’ll make a difference, and if you want to lend your voice to a blog campaign against the Youth League’s dictatorial anti-media rants, you haven’t got much time left. We speak to the man who started it all.

Over the last 100 years the global movie realm has been inhabited by many heroes and artists. But few of them could honestly count themselves in the same league as the genius from Japan, Akira Kurosawa.

The show is a modern-day Citizen Kane, according to its director Larry Charles. Yeah, maybe he’s biased, but when you’ve got the guy behind the Fake Steve Jobs franchise writing the pilot episode, it’s hard to be a doubter.

There’s something satisfying about kitten murderers and corrupt bureaucrats meeting swift retribution for their actions at the hands of Web junkies. But then mob justice always looks the same, whether you’re in Salem or cyberspace.

For a few moments the food remained uneaten and wine glasses were held in limbo. All we could do was sit and stare as Christian the strongman pulled himself upright from the splits using just his thigh muscles.

A decade in the making, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom sequel “Love Never Dies”, opened this week in London to some decidedly unfriendly reviews. Later this year, it will transfer its “magic” to New York City.

It's a bad joke, but we'll repeat it anyway. Q: How do you tell Chuck Norris's age? A: Cut him in half and count the rings. The man who almost beat Bruce Lee in battle is seventy-years-old on Wednesday, would you believe. We at The Daily Maverick wanted to be the first to wish him happy birthday.

Poland's Ryszard Kapuscinski was once voted the greatest journalist of the twentieth century, even though the factual ambiguity in his books had long been debated. A new biography appears to confirm the great writer's blurring of the divide between reportage and fiction. Should we think less of him?

Arts and culture minister Lulu Xingwana's recent outburst over the Constitutional Court exhibition of “dangerous”  photographs by Zanele Muholi served one important purpose: It put the spotlight on the South African government’s tragic treatment of arts and culture. Read on and weep.

The most commercially successful movie of all time ($2.5 billion and counting), Avatar, was not a match for a small little independent movie about the US Army explosive ordnance disposal team during the Iraqi War, which was made on a shoestring budget. There is still justice in this world.

The makers of hit HBO series Entourage seem to have gotten away with lampooning Harvey Weinstein in a legendary 2007 episode entitled "Sorry, Harvey". But can a small-time Canadian filmmaker get away with an unauthorised documentary on the most intimidating producer in Hollywood?

Annual results out of the Pearson media group reveal that despite a global slump in advertising, the Financial Times has posted a profit. The reason: a rise in FT.com subscriptions of almost fifty percent.

South Africa's longest-running soap opera is to air for the last time on Tuesday, March 2nd. What, if anything, has the show done for the country? And is this really the end?

ABC News is the last of the traditional big-three US news networks to implement cutbacks. On Tuesday last week, the Disney-owned organisation announced plans to retrench a quarter of its 1400-member staff. It can't be good for journalism, but the upside is that the days of the Ron Burgundy-like anchorman may finally be over.

“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own,”  Oscar Wilde.

South Africa's only pay-TV service is "conducting research" into the feasibility of a porn channel on DStv. Really? Could the untold story be that they're preparing to take on a competitor, and that they're trotting out a strategy learned while peddling porn in Greece? A former insider bares all.

The Internet’s new social media phenomenon allows you to chat face-to-face with a random selection of tens of thousands of human beings. It’s a very good reason to give thanks for South Africa’s poor, government-induced bandwidth.

Animals. They are like humans, only more complicated. Ever since my wife and I moved from Johannesburg to the Karoo, our relationship with animals has changed. In the city, animals are akin to toys. In the wild, it sometimes seems as if we are their playthings. By TIM COHEN.