Staff Reporter

REVIEW Gavin Foster Audi A4 2.4 manual, R226 810 Audi Quattro, R280 460 The second half of Audi’s new A4 range has arrived. In addition to four cylinder petrol and diesel versions there are now 2.4 and three litre V6 versions. All front wheel drive Audis with the exception, for now, of the 1.9 TDi […]

MORE than 7 600 weapons recovered by UN peacekeepers during the disarmament of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone were destroyed on Monday in the capital, Freetown, the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (Unamsil) reported. The event marked the beginning of the second phase of Unamsil’s weapon’s destruction exercise, which is expected to continue until 10 December. […]

Lynda Gilfillan There’s a baby grand piano laden with candelabra and kitsch in a magical dining room in the middle of the great Karoo. Just when you thought you couldn’t face another Ultra City, and there’s no way you can turn back, because you’ve travelled 700km and there’s still 700km to go before you hit […]

Opposition parties cry “cover-up” and storm out of the National Assembly as the long-awaited report exonerates the government Mungo Soggot and Barry Streek The one-year forensic probe by law enforcement agencies into the arms package has cleared the government of any wrongdoing but uncovered a string of procedural irregularities in several parts of the deal. […]

to tow? The limitations of the current minimum car licence may come as a surprise if you are about to hitch that caravan Gavin Foster Thousands of South Africans who passed driving tests in the past three years are unaware that they are not eligible to tow caravans, speedboats or trailers licensed to carry a […]

Algiers | Friday THE death toll from storms that lashed northern Algeria at the weekend swelled to 701 on Thursday, as rescue workers pulled another 50 bodies from mountains of mud and debris in the capital. Officials said 651 people died in Algiers, where the working-class neighbourhood of Bab El Oued bore the brunt of […]

David Shapshak The death of the desktop PC has long been prophesied by the technology industry, which is always conscious of the next big thing. First came the laptop, then the handheld computers, cellphones and gaming platforms. But the new hub of our increasingly digital homes may well be the fridge, certainly if Korea has […]

report Paul Kirk Apartheid-era legislation, designed to allow a pariah state to conduct secret arms deals, gave the presidency the power to scrutinise and even censor the report of the joint investigation team into the multibillion-rand arms deal before it reached Parliament. The apparent use of this legislation is the latest in a series of […]

I have questions about your motivation in publishing the truly madly explicit copulation photograph (Friday, November 9). I don’t know why we don’t copulate openly in public, but we don’t. All the other animals, as far as I know, copulate anywhere, anytime. We do it in private. Why? It seems so odd. Can you tell […]

MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday IN a further twist in the machiavellian manoeuvrings of Cape politics, the Democratic Alliance is forcing its New National Party councillors to resign from the NNP before the end of the year – or lose their jobs. The DA is amending its interim constitution to ban dual party membership, […]

Algiers | Thursday RESCUE workers on Wednesday pulled dozens more corpses from mounds of rubble and mud in Algiers, where hundreds of people were still missing after storms turned part of the seaside city into a graveyard. Officials said 651 died from weekend storms across the country, 604 of whom lived in Algiers, where a […]

Abuja | Thursday THE Nigerian government on Wednesday approved more than $237-million worth of new power transmission projects, the information minister announced. Information Minister Jerry Gana told journalists the projects would improve power supply across the country. The projects will enhance the existing 330 KW and 132 KW networks of the national grid, an official […]

Johannesburg | Thursday A 66-YEAR-old South African grandfather was acquitted on Wednesday of having committed incest with his daughter — but she was found guilty of incest with her brother, who committed suicide in March. Robert Fedder (66) and his daughter Breggie Kamffer (33) went on trial in October after they and Fedder’s wife, Elsina […]

Cape Town | Thursday SOUTH African Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday attributed the gang-rape of a nine-month-old baby to a lack of morality he blamed on apartheid. Zuma said during a debate in the National Assembly on the rape in the small northern township of Louisville that “something was seriously amiss” in the country. […]

Cape Town | Tuesday SOUTH Africa will not allow US warships to dock in its ports while the military campaign against Afghanistan continues, a press report on Monday quoted a senior official as saying. Sipho Pityana, the director general of foreign affairs, said South Africa had taken this position as the country “will not collaborate […]

ABOUT 100 children kidnapped by a rebel group in Burundi have managed to escape from their captors, one of the teenagers said on Saturday. “There was shooting between the army and the rebels, they told us to head east, and we took advantage of a moment of inattention to escape,” said Edmond Nsimirimana. Nsimirimana is […]

Former South African president Nelson Mandela made a brief visit to Tripoli on Sunday during which he met Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi.

SEVEN Egyptians were ordered on Sunday to stand trial in state security court on charges of using explosives to dig for Pharaonic treasures and sell them illegally, judicial sources said. After shadowing foreign archeologists in the area of Al-Koreimat, 100 kilometers south of Cairo, the group allegedly used explosives to dig a hole 15 meters […]

Algiers | Tuesday THE Algerian government on Tuesday put the official death toll after violent storms ravaged Algeria at the weekend at 579, but the country’s press said thousands may have been killed in Algiers alone. Rescuers continued to search for bodies trapped under tonnes of rubble in the low income district of Bab El […]

Johannesburg | Wednesday SOUTH Africa’s Oppenheimer dynasty is planning to hand over some of the 140 000 hectares of farmland that the Anglo American Corporation owns in Zimbabwe for settlement by impoverished black farmers, a representative for the family said on Tuesday. The Harare-based privately owned newspaper the Daily News reported Tuesday that the government […]

Harare | Monday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe’s regime declared on Sunday that it would bar non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from distributing food aid in the national famine that aid agencies say has already begun. The ban threatens to wreck a major international relief operation being mobilised by international donors. Already nearly a million people are in […]

Khwaja Bahauddin, Afghanistan | Monday US B-52 bombers unleashed their heaviest payloads on Taliban frontline positions on Sunday as militia and opposition forces battled for a key district in northern Afghanistan. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld meanwhile defended plans to carry on raids through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan saying there was a real […]

AMER OUALI AND MARC PONDAVEN, Algiers | Monday THE Algerian government said on Sunday the death toll from fierce storms that swept the country had killed at least 343 people, injured more than 300, and left at least 4 000 families homeless. Rescuers continued to search in clinging mud and through piles of debris for […]

Geneva | Monday CAMPAIGNING New York lawyer Ed Fagan is to sue banks in Europe and the United States on behalf of victims of South Africa’s apartheid regime, it was reported on Sunday. Fagan told the Swiss newspaper Dimanche.ch that banks in France, Switzerland, Britain and the United States had profited from supporting the regime […]

LUNGA MASUKU, Mahlanya | Monday SWAZILAND’S young absolute monarch bowed to pressure from the maidens of his kingdom on Sunday and delivered up an ox as a fine for taking a second fiance after demanding that all young women take a vow of chastity. Three hundred young women marched seven kilometres from the village of […]

A WHITE judge on Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court, Nicholas McNally, has given up his Zimbabwean citizenship and resumed his British one, a state newspaper said Thursday. “Justice McNally and his wife … recently surrendered their Zimbabwean passports to the registrar general’s office after securing British travel documents,” The Herald reported. McNally, who is due to retire […]