Bob Fisher SAILING Days before the start of the America’s Cup, New Zealand’s defence has come under fire – and not solely from their Italian challengers. The Kiwi skipper Russell Coutts and his crew are at odds with Team New Zealand chief executive Sir Peter Blake and his team responsible for the defence of the […]

Four hours from the summit of Everest, Cathy O’Dowd came across a stricken climber. She faced a brutal choice: to risk her own life in a doomed rescue – or to push on to the top. Here she explains why she left the barely breathing body I stared at the body, blinking in disbelief. We […]

Between Madagascar and the African mainland lie several small islands that time forgot Jacqui Pile ‘Slap ze seat before you sit down,” shouted Freddie, the mad German who picked us up at Nosy B airport. We vigorously hit the seats before we climbed into his convertible Kombi. A cloud of mosquitoes rose up and buzzed […]

American literary heavyweights trashed the bestselling novels of Tom Wolfe … but now he’s fighting back with gusto Julian Borger T he literary world loves a good punch- up, and as feuds go, this is the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila all rolled into one. The feud has brought together John […]

Heather Hogan The South African Police Service’s fraud unit is investigating an empowerment company that promised entrepreneurs their own bread distribution businesses, accepted their investments and then went into liquidation. Despite assurances from police that the investigation will commence this week, disgruntled investors, believing police are taking too long, staged a demonstration outside the Germiston […]

Time is running out for a group of farmworkers who are waiting for state assistance to build new homes Marianne Merten A group of 14 Stellenbosch farm workers and their children may soon find themselves homeless following the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs’s failure to provide them with grants for the construction of new […]

SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Friday 5.30pm THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange ran out of steam on Friday afternoon, after climbing marginally higher earlier in a day dominated by futures trade. The major indices closed mixed, with only the industrial and IT counters ending in positive territory. Boosting the IT sector was news that Prism rose […]

Paul Kirk Smuggling. The very word conjures images of drug dealers and hardened criminals. But in the United States, a special squad of dogs is trained to separate South African travellers from their smuggled biltong. Owing to restrictions on uncooked meat and vegetables the US does not allow biltong to be imported. That means South […]

Howard Barrell The government is seeking to avoid a political train smash with public service unions by overhauling the civil service pay structure that would automatically fix most annual increases at about the rate of inflation. But these government proposals – at the centre of its plans to improve the civil service while halting the […]

David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY In view of the rivalry between the old Transvaal and the Cape, the fact that they hosted competing disasters in a matter of days – the Cape burning and now the Transvaal almost washed away in floods – offers further grounds for suspicion that You-Know-Who is playing silly buggers upstairs again. […]