Staff Reporter

The head of Nato forces in Afghanistan warns on Monday that the military effort needs more money and more troops for a year-long push that he believes will defeat the Taliban. While Nato troops had frustrated the Taliban’s plans to mount a winter campaign for the first time, it had been "against the odds" and the result of "exceptionally skilled and brave fighting".

The Netherlands is to contribute more than R69-million for the period 2007 to 2011 for a new literacy and numeracy research programme, it was announced on Monday. On Tuesday the Dutch ambassador, Frans Engering, and the president and CEO of the Human Science Research Council, Olive Shisana, will sign an agreement for the launch of the new programme.

If you ask a foreign affairs official to explain the apparent eccentricities of Pretoria’s foreign policy stance, you will be told, over and over again, that each case is approached on principle. We lend support to Iran’s nuclear programme, for example, because we support the principle that every country has the right to peacefully pursue nuclear energy, writes Nic Dawes, associate deputy editor of the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.

David Macfarlane is one of the better education journalists in the land. He has been a long time in the business and has a nose for a good story. He regularly peppers the education bureaucracies with emailed questions, from which he draws his own conclusions. He probably pays closer attention to the minister’s speeches than most others. But, in his critique of the role of the minister of education we have seen a blind spot, writes Duncan Hindle, director general of education.

It’s just one of those Johannesburg phenomena you have to get you head around, I suppose. I currently live in the eastern suburb of Observatory and my nearest friendly shopping neighbourhood for food and such like is the formerly predominantly Jewish suburb of Cyrildene.

When Micho Sredojevic’s contract with Orlando Pirates was mutually terminated last week, the Serbian described how he "felt like Mandela being released from prison". It is sad that the "grand old lady" of South African soccer has been turned into something of a circus with problems on and off the pitch.

The family of a woman who died after drinking too much water in a radio contest is to sue the station behind the stunt. Jennifer Strange (28) died last Friday after taking part in a competition to win a Nintendo Wii console on Sacramento’s KDND-FM.

Sixty seals at a Dutch refuge took shelter from the devastating storm that swept across Europe in a cinema, officials said on Friday. The Pieterburen refuge for seals that get swept off the Baltic Sea became besieged after the storm hit on Thursday, its director, Lenie ‘t Hart, told the ANP Dutch news agency.

President Thabo Mbeki is like British Prime Minister Tony Blair and not only because of their similar approaches to modern social democrat politics. Both do fine ostrich impersonations when it comes to arms deals. Blair is risking his legacy by trying to douse the British Serious Fraud Office’s probe of BAE’s global slush funds in arms deals.

Gift vouchers are safe havens for the indecisive, the unimaginative and the practical gift-giver who simply cannot figure out what to get the hard-to-please recipient. They are also a safe haven for retailers, with between 10 and 20% of gift vouchers never redeemed.

The moon was high, the stars were bright, and the gentle swell of the @lantic — a spring tide of discarded ANC flags, gently surging up the concrete incline of the stadium — murmured its lullaby to the night. “I need time,” sighed Thabiso, letting her head drop at last on to Jacob’s shoulder as they danced barefoot in the papery shallows. “I need -”

Philanderers beware: spouses caught cheating in Michigan could end up spending the rest of their life in prison — and not the emotional kind. The state’s appeals court recently ruled that extramarital flings can be prosecuted as first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in jail.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Wednesday called for the resurrection of the European Union (EU) Constitution, saying she was on a quest to find Europe’s soul. Outlining ambitious policy aims to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Merkel sought to counter widespread scepticism about the chances of breathing life into the project.