Julia Finch and Jill Treanor The full financial toll of last week’s terrorist attacks started to become apparent this week as a stream of big companies across Europe and the United States warned of sharp falls in sales and profits. The deluge of bad corporate news from more than 50 companies in the US alone […]

RUGBY Andy Capostagno It is safe to assume that Butch James will never forget the 2001 rugby season. As the fulcrum of a rejuvenated Sharks team he got to play in the Super 12 final. A month later he played his first Test match and 10 days after that outing against France he received his […]

Cape Town | Friday POLICE fired stun grenades on Thursday at some 350 squatters south of Cape Town, after they tried to invade municipal land, a policeman said. Captain Jacques Wiese said residents of the Mandela Park squatter camp in Hout Bay, some “armed with spades and pangas” tore down a municipal fence and moved […]

Maggie Davey recalls the tragic “glamour” of war In the south of Uzbekistan the old Soviet railroad ran alongside the Afghanistan border for a stretch. Since the late 1800s after the Russian conquest of Tashkent and Samarkand, this railroad system, with the Transcaspian system, fed central Asia with both soldiers and the humdrum requirements of […]

Barry Streek The terror attacks in the United States have strengthened the case for controversial provisions in draft e-commerce legislation approved by the South African Cabinet this week. The Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill contains “Big Brother” provisions empowering the authorities to open cybermail messages and place controls over the use of encrypted services. The […]

JULIAN BORGER, EWEN MACASKILL, Washington | Friday AS far as President George W Bush is concerned, Osama bin Laden is “wanted dead or alive” for the September 11 outrages. The phrase harked back to a bygone Texan age when a lawman’s strong hunch would have been enough to dispatch a posse on the fugitive’s trail, […]

food Valentine Cascarino At first I was convinced it was a hangover that triggered the feeling I was back in Paris. But when I returned to the newly established Congolese Restaurant in Yeoville two weeks later, French tourists dining with me felt the same way. With kwasa kwasa music constantly vibrating in the background, the […]

Stuart Millar The attacks on New York and Washington will force organisations to rethink their computer security procedures, experts predicted. Society’s growing reliance on computers and communication technology makes it more vulnerable if systems are wiped out. But according to @stake, the world’s biggest independent security consultancy, the majority of organisations do not have adequate […]

AN Mpumalanga man found his brother-in-law’s decapitated body on a riverbank on Wednesday, just two months after he disappeared, police reported on Thursday. Michael Mgwenya of Blinkwater Farm, near White River, was fishing when he saw a large object wrapped in green cloth on the edge of the river. “He unwrapped the cloth and found […]

A recent report on Afrikaans in higher education has important implications for other indigenous languages, argues Gerrit Brand The draft recommendations of the Gerwel Advisory Committee on Afrikaans in Higher Education have evoked a lot of reaction, both positive and negative, in the Afrikaans community. Yet the other language communities in South Africa do not […]