The United States on Wednesday night raised the stakes in Ukraine’s election crisis when Colin Powell, the secretary of state, insisted that Washington would not accept the official result and threatened to ostracise the Russian-backed regime. His intervention, which sets the Bush administration on a collision course with Moscow, came as the opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, called for a nationwide strike.

Yet again, we’re approaching the cold and clinically prepared marketing scam known as Christmas, when the public are conned into buying rubbish they don’t need, conned into expecting positive emotions they won’t experience, and deliberately manipulated into getting deeper into debt. Here’s a good idea, though: browse through the pix — and the police reports — at <i>Santarchy!</i>

They just don’t make ’em like they used to. This week, it took the grey-haired man in the purple cassock to crystallise the national psyche, with all its imperfections and its challenges, perfectly. With the benefit of wisdom and age, Archbishop Desmond Tutu made clear his love for his "rainbow nation" — and then he laid right in. It had, he argued, by and large become the sycophantic nation.

Annika Sorenstam and Tiger Woods meet in a golf showdown this weekend at the -million skins game with Australian Adam Scott and 2003 winner Fred Couples completing the fab foursome. Sweden’s Sorenstam, whose eight titles this year included a major at the LPGA Championship, has been the top women’s golfer for years.

Wits University played to a goaless draw against Ajax Cape Town in a Castle Premiership match at the Bidvest Stadium on Wednesday night. Ajax CT missed an opportunity to advance to the fourth position of the premiership log table when they failed to beat the hosts.

A brace of goals in the space of two minutes by Sandile Ndlovu gave Dynamos their second win of the season when they beat Santos 3-1 at the Greenpoint stadium on Wednesday night. Dynamos, who controlled the first half, were outplayed in the second half, but poor passing and feeble shooting at goal cost Santos three points.

Driving through western Ukraine on a hot spring day in the mid-1990s, I passed an idyllic scene. Scores of Ukrainian army conscripts lay around a radar antenna, sound asleep in the rich long grass and flowers, soaking up the sun, expressions of pure serenity on their faces. Now, however, it is worth remembering how many times, and with how little fuss and blood, Ukraine has stepped back from the brink before.

President George W Bush’s foreign policy is simple: don’t mess with the United States. The same, it appears, applies to economic policy. Last Friday, the dollar fell sharply against the euro following comments by Federal Reserve chairperson Alan Greenspan, which — by his own cryptic standards — were unambiguous. ”It seems persuasive that, given the size of the US current account deficit, a diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances must occur at some point,” Greenspan said.