Dr. Mark Fowler was the physician Tennessee paid to help end Christa Pike's life on 30 September. He is now speaking out for the first time, saying she still deserves to die and comparing the backlash against him to what Jesus faced.
Read the storyA pastor in Plateau State says he has dug mass graves for his own church. A post shared hundreds of thousands of times says 3,000 of his members are dead and that more Christians died in Nigeria this year than Gazans in three years. We checked every claim. The killings are real. Some numbers are not.
Read the storyOn 4 November, 3,456,591 registered voters in the Western Cape elect the councils that run water, refuse and roads, the same party that has kept Cape Town for over 20 years on the back of clean audits. That vote changes nothing about policing, passenger rail or the province's own tax money. SARS data show the Western Cape pays 15.5% of South Africa's tax but gets back only 10.4% of the national equitable share. Our daily column argues the record built at this ballot box is the strongest case yet for giving the Cape the rest of the power too.
Read the storyPatrick Stewart, the actor who gave two generations of fans both Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier, has died at 86 at his Los Angeles home. His family says it followed a short illness with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia. Co-stars from Hugh Jackman to William Shatner are sharing tributes, and his last interview, given just months before he died, has a line that now reads like a goodbye.
Read the storyIntel shares fell 23% in after-hours trading on 29 October 2026, even after data center chip demand hit a record. A factory explosion in Israel and a widening cash burn are the reasons investors ran, and we lined up Intel's demand numbers against its cash numbers in one table.
Read the storyCalib Cassim ran Eskom's books through load shedding, a CEO scandal and now a return to profit. His final year's pay jumped 90% to R13.52 million, more than CEO Dan Marokane earned. We lay out the 24-year timeline and the worked numbers behind the rise.
Read the storyLeaked recordings show a Madrid control centre telling a Renfe driver to resume at normal speed while a stopped train sat on the line ahead of him. Seventeen minutes later his train hit it, in a crash that has killed at least 69 people, including a former government minister and a 24-year-old athlete.
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The doctor who ran Pike's execution breaks his silenceViral2
Christians killed in Nigeria: The numbers, the killers and the silenceWorld3
3.4 million Western Cape voters go to the polls on 4 November, but only to choose who empties the binsPolitics4
Patrick Stewart, Star Trek's Picard and X-Men's Professor X, has died at 86Viral5
Intel's stock crashed 23% in after-hours trading as record chip demand collided with a cash-burn warning and a deadly factory explosion.Money6
Eskom's long-serving CFO Calib Cassim retired after 24 years, on a 90% pay riseMoney7
Spain train crash: What the leaked tapes revealWorld8
A sector by sector look at which South African jobs are exposed if AGOA ends, and what it could mean for your shoppingMoney9
FBI blames North Korea for the record Binance hack. Binance has now covered 90% of the $6.3bn stolenMoney10
Utah filed 14 criminal counts against Kalshi and its two foundersMoneyEskom's long-serving CFO Calib Cassim retired after 24 years, on a 90% pay riseMoney2Spain train crash: What the leaked tapes revealWorld3A sector by sector look at which South African jobs are exposed if AGOA ends, and what it could mean for your shoppingMoney4FBI blames North Korea for the record Binance hack. Binance has now covered 90% of the $6.3bn stolenMoney5Utah filed 14 criminal counts against Kalshi and its two foundersMoney6
How safe is high-speed rail, really?Explained7
What your rights are if a cruise line cancels or abandons your voyageExplained8
Cape Town's record building year, and who still controls the moneyPolitics9
Africa's top health official warns the UK about Ebola, even as a DRC ward empties outWorld10
Microsoft offered buyouts to 60,000 staff. Two days later it posted $36.6 billion in profitMoneyA new estimate says up to 576,000 South African jobs could feel the hit if the United States drops South Africa from the AGOA trade deal. We broke the number down by industry, cars, citrus, wine and clothing, to show whose job is actually on the line. The surprising twist is what it could do to prices on your own shelf.
Read the storyThe FBI said on 31 October 2026 that North Korea's Lazarus Group stole $6.3 billion from Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, in the worst hack in crypto's history. Binance says it has now covered 90% of the losses from its own funds. Here is what is confirmed, what is still a guess, and who is being blamed.
Read the storyPetrol, SARS, Eskom, grants and the stories everyone is talking about. One short email, free.
Free. One email each weekday. Unsubscribe anytime.Utah charged prediction market Kalshi and cofounders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara with 14 counts on 28 October 2026, including a second-degree felony that carries up to 15 years. The evidence is $114 of bets placed by an undercover state investigator. Kalshi calls it a crazy overreach. Arizona tried the same thing in March and a federal judge killed it. Utah already won the argument Arizona lost.
Read the storyThe City of Cape Town spent a record R12.24 billion on roads, pipes and power lines in the year to June 2026, more than double what it spent in 2021. Nationally, municipalities had spent only 36% of their yearly capital budgets by the halfway mark of the same year. Our daily column argues the government that finishes what it builds, with clean books behind it, should hold the money and the decisions for Cape roads, pipes and power.
Read the storyAfrica CDC's Director General Jean Kaseya has warned that the outbreak sweeping Central, East and West Africa could still reach Britain, even as health workers in eastern Congo celebrated discharging their last Ebola patient. The outbreak has now passed 10,100 confirmed cases and left almost 4,930 people dead, the worst in DR Congo's history. More than $2 billion in pledged funding has still not arrived.
Read the storyMicrosoft told about 60,000 employees it would pay them to leave. Two days later it reported the most profitable quarter in its history. We lined up the dates and did the arithmetic on what the company earned per worker, per day, and on what it spent building AI data centres instead of paying salaries.
Read the storyJamal and Kamal Abubakari, 22-year-old twins from Ghana, pleaded guilty with Amanda Joy Opoku-Boachie, 53, to running a romance fraud network that took more than $9 million from older Americans over nearly two years.
Read the storyBowen Wan was 31, an Amazon engineer, and she had epilepsy. Her parents say ChatGPT spent 25 days walking her off the drug that kept her alive, then told her to hide it from her doctors. She died in February. A review of her chat log counted at least 158 times she said something was wrong.
Read the storyAlphabet shares fell between 8% and 10% on 28 October 2026 after its free cash flow turned negative for the quarter, even as revenue grew 25%. We lined up its AI spending against Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia, and checked why China's own AI stock index has already lost 40% of its value.
Read the storyThe Federal Reserve kept its benchmark rate unchanged on 28 October 2026, but the 10-2 vote was the most split in decades. The two dissenters did not want a cut. They wanted to raise rates again, over inflation that is still climbing. Chair Kevin Warsh then had to tell reporters, unprompted, that politics played no role, six days before the midterm elections. Here is what the hold actually does to your mortgage, savings, credit card and car loan.
Read the storyA Renfe AVE hit a stopped Iryo train near Urda in Toledo province on 28 October 2026, killing at least 68 people and injuring more than 100. The safety system had already failed and six trains had been halted. Eighteen minutes after a control centre told one of them to move again, it was travelling 25km down the line into the back of another. A day later riot police were using tear gas on a crowd outside the transport ministry in Madrid.
Read the storyStanford Medicine researchers read the genomes of 1,050 Polynesian people and found that Native Hawaiians and the people of Easter Island share more ancient DNA with each other than with anyone else in the Pacific. Both trace back to a tiny group of sailors from Mangareva. The same voyages also explain a medical pattern showing up in Native Hawaiians today.
Read the storySouth Africa sold R9.8 billion worth of wine last year, almost all of it from the Western Cape, plus a record citrus harvest, a near-record rooibos crop and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of table grapes. Washington must say by 2 November whether South Africa keeps its US trade benefits. The province that grows and ships the goods has no seat at that table.
Read the storyA skeleton nicknamed Jodi sold at Sotheby's New York for $47.3 million, more than five times its $9 million high estimate. It is sold as a Nanotyrannus, one of only three known to science. A large part of the scientific world does not think Nanotyrannus is its own species at all. Many argue these bones belong to a teenage T. rex. Somebody just paid $47.3 million for the winning side of an argument science has not settled.
Read the storyThe US Federal Trade Commission and 20 states sued Dollar General Corp on Monday 26 October 2026, saying the chain routinely charged customers more at the register than the prices on its own shelves, tags and adverts. The complaint lists 29,265 pricing complaints filed against the company from 2019 to March 2026. Dollar General says it will fight the case.
Read the storyAbout 200 people who bought cabins on the Villa Vie Odyssey as a permanent home were ordered off the ship in Cambodia on 27 October 2026. The company says war-driven fuel costs rose as much as 344% a month per cabin, and it cannot say when, or if, the ship sails again.
Read the storyReports this month describe a syndicate of fake e-hailing drivers working the arrivals halls at Cape Town International Airport, charging tourists up to R25,000 for trips that normally cost a few hundred rand. The trick is a card machine with two extra digits keyed in before the tap. We checked the real fares for four routes from the airport, and what to do if you already paid one of these bills.
Read the storyThe Port of Cape Town was ranked the worst container port on earth in 2025. The fruit growers who lost R4.25 billion when ships queued and cranes stalled are all in the Western Cape. The company that decides how the port is run, Transnet, is not.
Read the storyA US trade law gives South African factories and farms duty-free access to America. Washington's own deadline for warning South Africa it could be dropped falls around 2 November 2026, and estimates suggest up to 500,000 South African jobs depend on that access staying in place. But the category with the most to lose, cars, already pays a 25% tariff no matter what Washington decides, and vehicle shipments to the US have already fallen by more than 80% in a single year.
Read the storyThe company that owns Elvis Presley's music rights has sued Anthropic, the maker of the AI chatbot Claude, saying it trained the AI on 274 of his songs without paying for any of them. The lawsuit wants $41 million. Anthropic already paid out far more this year to settle a different copyright fight, so the music industry now has a price to point to.
Read the storyCape Town is the only metro in South Africa with a full feasibility study and business plan to take passenger rail over from PRASA. Daily train trips fell from about 600,000 in 2003 to a low of 133,000 in 2022, before climbing back to about 200,000 by March 2026. This column makes the case for a Cape-run railway that puts money back in commuters' pockets.
Read the storyA Victorian Supreme Court judge has rejected a prisoner's bid to have Vegemite back inside Barwon Prison. The spread has been banned in Victoria's prisons since 2006, and the official reason has nothing to do with taste. It can be fermented into alcohol, and its smell throws off the dogs that search for drugs.
Read the storyThe number of people who have sought medical help after drinking Bronkhorstspruit's tap water has risen to 833, and about 4 in every 10 of them are children aged four or younger. On Monday 26 October the Deputy President went to look at the treatment works himself. The same day, the Minister of Water and Sanitation said she is still firm that there is no outbreak, because nobody has died. The chlorine stopped on 24 September after a fight over the supplier's price.
Read the storyA movement that refused to name a leader just won Serbia's parliamentary election outright. The Student List took 140 of 250 seats, Aleksandar Vucic's party conceded, and 14 years of one-party rule ended in a single night. Now the group that built its whole identity on having no leader has 90 days to pick a prime minister.
Read the storyHarry Kane won the 2026 Ballon d'Or on Monday night, the first English winner since Michael Owen in 2001.
Read the storyDaniesha Charles was 15, on £7 an hour, and three months into a part-time waitressing job at the Royal Thurso Hotel when she dropped an apple crumble. An employment tribunal has now awarded her £13,048. The judgment breaks that figure into three parts, names the general manager, and finds the way she was treated was discrimination because of her age, her sex and her race. The hotel says the case belongs to a previous period of operation.
Read the storyAnthropic filed to sell shares to the public on 26 October 2026. Inside the same document, the company warns that its AI could cause a catastrophe too big for any single insurer, and maybe the whole insurance industry, to cover. It also disclosed $16.3 billion in first-half revenue next to an $80 billion loss. Markets went up anyway.
Read the storyLewis Hamilton says he is willing to keep racing into his mid-40s so he can compete at Formula 1's first African Grand Prix since 1993. The race is heading to Rwanda, not to Kyalami, the South African track that held the last one. Here is the full history of F1 in Africa, in one table, and why Hamilton is the one holding the door open.
Read the storyOne of South Africa's biggest dealer groups says that people who bought discounted Chinese cars four to five years ago are now stuck. The cars lost value so fast that trade-in offers sit below what owners still owe the bank. Here is why it happened, what the gap looks like in rands, and the cheapest way out.
Read the storyA tabloid headline made it sound like Bill Gates is cheering companies for swapping workers for machines. His actual essay argues for the opposite, a tax to slow that swap down, plus a list of jobs no robot should ever be allowed to take. Industry has already told him no.
Read the storyVolkswagen's Audi brand is building a $4.2 billion SUV factory in Georgia while cutting thousands of jobs back home in Germany. The two are not separate stories. A 25% US tariff made it cheaper to build the cars in America than to ship them there, and that single piece of arithmetic is paying for the new jobs in Georgia and emptying out the ones in Germany.
Read the storySingapore went from US$517 a person in 1965 to US$98,814 today. We took its 10 big moves, from jailing corrupt ministers to owning your own home, and applied each one to the Western Cape using real numbers on its port, water, power, crime, trains, schools and jobs.
Read the storyIn 1965 the average South African had about a third more money than the average Singaporean. Today the average Singaporean has 15 times more. We went through how a tiny island with no water, no army and no resources did it, from housing and schools to its ministers' pay and its strict laws, and what it means for South Africa.
Read the storyFinance Minister Enoch Godongwana cut the fuel levy on 21 October, by R1.50 a litre on petrol and R3.00 on diesel. Diesel should get cheaper. Petrol is expected to rise anyway, by 2c to 38c a litre depending on which forecast you use, and the relief shrinks again on 2 December. We worked out what it costs a 50-litre tank at every step.
Read the storyLuiz Inacio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential runoff on 25 October 2026 with 51.79% of the vote, a fourth term at age 80. Brazil sells South Africa more chicken than almost anywhere else does, so who runs Brazil touches what lands in your freezer. Here is the trade, the numbers and the rand.
Read the storyApollo Global Management's chief economist, Torsten Slok, says AI has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of 7 tech giants. Revenue per worker at the rest of the S&P 500, the "S&P 493," has sat flat for seven years while the 7 AI stocks race ahead. We built the table showing exactly how far apart they are.
Read the storyKFC is replacing Pepsi with Coca-Cola at 3,700 US restaurants from January 2027, ending a 40-year partnership that began when PepsiCo owned the chain outright. Pepsi spun off KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell in 1997, and the split that was meant to save its drinks business may be the reason Pepsi is losing it now.
Read the storyA line by line look at what a Western Cape household pays for electricity, food, fuel and rates each month, set against the national picture, and how much of that bill is decided in Pretoria rather than Cape Town.
Read the storyThe US housing market has flipped. Sellers now easily outnumber buyers, homes sit for months, and sellers are not just cutting the price. Many are also handing the buyer thousands of dollars toward closing costs on top of the cut. One Texas seller's price fell $100,000 over more than a year, and the cash she gave the buyer made the real discount even bigger than her new asking price showed.
Read the storyThe Bronkhorstspruit water treatment works stopped putting chlorine in the water on 23 September. Nobody turned the taps off. By the time inspectors arrived on 14 October, 408 people were ill, most of them small children. A newspaper investigation says the mayor and her officials already had at least three reports on their desk saying the plant was failing.
Read the storyA fire tore through the Kehlsteinhaus, the mountain building above Berchtesgaden known as Hitler's Eagle's Nest, on the night of Friday 23 October 2026. Bavarian police say they suspect arson and have detained a suspect, though they have not said the man is responsible. The building had stood since 1938, survived the heaviest Allied bombing raid of the region and outlasted 80 years of German arguments about whether places like it should be preserved or torn down.
Read the storyThe Auditor-General found only one of South Africa's nine provincial health departments earned a clean audit for 2025/26, the Western Cape. Its people also live longer than anywhere else in the country. Our daily column lines up the Western Cape's health record against the national picture and argues the province has earned the right to decide how its own health money gets spent.
Read the storyPresident Trump signed a proclamation on 23 October 2026 removing the extra 50% tariff from 22 categories of Canadian goods, effective 30 October. On the same day, about 100 other Canadian product categories were added to the same 50% tariff list. The relief leans heavily toward Maine farmers and growers, after Senator Susan Collins pushed for it ahead of a tough midterm race. We built the full table of what comes off, what goes on, and what the original tariffs cost while they ran.
Read the storyNew York City's Council voted 40 to 7 on 22 October 2026 to end horse-drawn carriages in Central Park after 160 years, months after an 18-year-old tourist was killed when a carriage horse bolted. The new law bans selling the roughly 180 horses for slaughter and promises carriage drivers help finding new jobs. It never says where any horse will actually live once the stables close, and the drivers' union is already threatening to sue.
Read the storyApple's first folding iPhone, the Duo, went on sale this week at $1,999 and up. Within hours, a handful of owners in the US, Australia and China posted photos of inner screens cracked along the fold. Apple has not commented. Its own repair price list shows why that crack matters more on a folding phone than on any other iPhone, and the same week, Apple Store pickup slots nearly vanished.
Read the storyBrent crude settled at $116.72 a barrel on 23 October, its highest level since 29 April, after a week of Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia and a report that the US and Israel are planning fresh strikes on Iran. The jump lands just as South Africa was banking on a cheaper pump price from 4 November, built on a forecast from before oil climbed this fast. Weigh the new numbers against that forecast, and the relief shrinks hard, especially for petrol.
Read the storyA 3 metre, 9 kilometre wall is planned beside the N2 near Cape Town airport. One activist calls it apartheid-era thinking. People who drive the Hell Run say it is about not getting a rock through the windscreen. Here are the attacks, the numbers and both sides in their own words.
Read the storyWestern Cape pupils are writing their matric exams right now. The province's 2025 pass rate put it fifth of nine, a real number critics love to quote. But its bachelor's pass rate and its reading scores, the measures that actually show learning, put it at or near the top of the country. Our daily column explains why the headline rank is the wrong one to judge the Western Cape by.
Read the storyThe World Meteorological Organization says the El Nino building in the Pacific could peak near 3.8 degrees above normal in December 2026, possibly the strongest since records began in 1950. For South Africa that means a drier, hotter summer, and a food, water and power squeeze that will not show up in shops until well into next year.
Read the storyA grandmother killed near the airport, a tourist's jaw broken by a stone and 42 bricks thrown in one year at the airport alone. Here is where the N2 and R300 are dangerous, what the attackers do, who is responsible and how to drive the road.
Read the storyL'Oreal, the world's biggest cosmetics company, told investors on 22 October that weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are changing what people buy at the make-up counter. It is not alone. Food, clothing and airline companies have each put their own numbers on the same drug in the past year, and we put them in one table.
Read the storyModerna and Merck say a cancer vaccine made individually from each patient's own tumour cut the risk of melanoma coming back or killing them by 42% in a 1,137-patient trial. Professor Georgina Long, who led the study, calls it a foundational shift in cancer medicine. No two doses are the same, and that is also why it is slow and expensive to make.
Read the storyCalifornia voters decide on 3 November whether billionaires pay a one-time 5% wealth tax. Mark Zuckerberg told Meta's board he might leave the state over it, so the company built him a way to sell stock and cover the bill, worth an estimated $12.4 billion, without losing control. He held enough votes to approve the plan alone.
Read the storyUS tech stocks had their worst day since June after Meta's earnings reignited fears that Big Tech is spending far more on AI than it earns back. We lined up the four biggest spenders' 2025 and 2026 numbers against their disclosed AI income, and checked how much of that bet already sits inside ordinary retirement accounts.
Read the storyInterpol's Operation Serengeti III arrested 1,462 suspects across 21 countries in two months and recovered more than $105 million from online scam and extortion networks. Victims lost at least $385 million, nearly four times what came back. Here is how the money moved, who ran the scams, and what it means for anyone who has already had the call.
Read the storyFinance Minister Enoch Godongwana used the 21 October mini budget to stretch South Africa's R370 SRD grant to 31 March 2028. In the same document, Treasury names the scheme one of the three biggest risks to the national budget and warns a pending court case could more than double its yearly cost. We worked out what R370 is really worth since 2020, and who pays for it.
Read the storyThe Western Cape and the City of Cape Town have spent more than a decade and over a billion rand building their own law enforcement force, LEAP, because the national police service answers only to Pretoria. Our daily column lays out, line by line, who pays for policing in the Western Cape and who actually controls it.
Read the storyDashcam footage of a father shooting back at armed men outside his Pinetown home has been watched millions of times. Posts claim three hijackers died. Police confirm one. What happened on Lea Place, what South African law says when you shoot a hijacker, and what happens to the person who pulls the trigger.
Read the storyOn Wednesday 21 October 2026, two flaws in PHP, the code behind about 7 in 10 websites, pushed governments, Wikipedia and the Port of Rotterdam offline. The same day a popular AI tool shipped a password stealer, the developer platform Railway paused every deployment, and India's biggest bank reported a data loss. Days earlier, a company that vouches for websites was found using a secret key that was simply the number 4. Here is the full list, with what each one means for you.
Read the storySouth African banks refund some fraud victims and refuse others, and the split comes down to a single word in the Code of Banking Practice, "authorised". The National Financial Ombud settled only 22% of banking fraud complaints in the customer's favour in 2025. We lay out the full complaint route, the real numbers at every stage, and what to say to your bank in the first 24 hours.
Read the storyKostiantyn Vlasenko held a position called Vertun inside a concrete drainage pipe for 491 days. Russian drones destroyed both his legs. One foot came away after the tissue died. He cut the other one off himself with a knife. Then a Ukrainian hexacopter flew him out with 135 kilograms slung beneath it, in what the people who built the drone call the first evacuation of a person by drone in this war.
Read the storyBrent crude went above $110 a barrel on 22 October, its highest in five months, after a Houthi drone strike near Saudi Aramco's huge Shaybah oilfield. A separate attack on an airport in Dammam killed one person and injured eight that same day, yet barely moved the price. The United States has pulled some diplomats out of Saudi Arabia.
Read the storyFrom reservations booked on or after 20 November 2026, Airbnb hosts can no longer make guests strip beds, wash dishes, do laundry or carry rubbish offsite before they leave. Hosts who keep demanding it risk losing their listing's ranking, their Superhost badge or their account. Guests are relieved. Hosts are furious. And the cleaning fee has not dropped by a single cent.
Read the storyVodacom collected 2.27 tonnes of old phones, batteries and computers from South African homes in a single month, and Makro now runs 19 drop-off bins with its recycling partner DESCO. Old circuit boards hold far more gold per tonne than mined ore does, landfills have refused e-waste since 2021, and we built the one table that shows where to take every kind of device, and whether you get cash, credit or nothing at all.
Read the storyFinance Minister Enoch Godongwana cut the general fuel levy in the mid-term budget on 21 October, by R3.00 a litre on diesel and R1.50 on petrol from 4 November. Weighed against the latest forecast for next month's price, diesel should actually fall. Petrol gets only a few cents of help, and paraffin, the fuel poor households rely on, gets none at all.
Read the storyOn 19 October 2026, Alberta put the question of leaving Canada to its own people, who said no by a wide margin. Canada did not break. Our daily column argues that asking the question is itself the democratic act, and that the Western Cape remains the one place that has never been given the chance.
Read the storyNorth Korea released new photos of Kim Jong Un this week after claims spread online that he had died from a brain haemorrhage. It is not the first time. The same three steps have repeated since 2014, and nobody outside Pyongyang can say for certain what is true this time either.
Read the storyAlberta voted 75.3% to stay in Canada on 19 October 2026, despite paying Ottawa far more than it gets back. The fiscal numbers, the pension fight, and how the vote compares to Quebec 1995 and the Western Cape.
Read the storyA federal judge ordered Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani to repay Theranos investors $452 million. Three years and five months on, no payment has been reported, and prosecutors have asked Holmes for $250 a month once she is free. Here is the court record, the release dates for everyone involved, and what the whistleblower says about the new film.
Read the storyDrivers in Los Angeles are angry about record pump prices. Lined up next to four other countries, their price looks like a bargain. We converted October 2026's official fuel prices for the US, UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada into one currency and found the gap has almost nothing to do with oil.
Read the storyElon Musk confirmed on SpaceX's earnings call that Tesla and SpaceX are exploring a merger, which would create the largest company in history. SpaceX's revenue jumped 161% last quarter while Tesla's car business barely grew, so the real question for a Tesla shareholder is what they would actually be buying.
Read the storyNigeria has confirmed its first case of the Ebola outbreak spreading from DR Congo, in a woman who flew in from Uganda and fell ill in Abuja. Nigeria has done this before. In 2014, it stopped a single imported case from becoming an epidemic in just three months.
Read the storySouth Africa's finance minister delivers the mini budget on Wednesday 21 October at 14:00. The Road Accident Fund wants 75c more on every litre of fuel, Transport Minister Barbara Creecy already said no, and Treasury must decide if it agrees with her or the fund. We worked out what every number on the table, the fuel levy, grants, VAT and electricity, is worth to one household's month.
Read the storySABRIC's 2025 crime report shows South Africans lost R2.4 billion to digital banking fraud last year, and people over 55 with savings are the biggest target. The calls work because fraudsters already know your name, your bank and your account number before they dial, so the call sounds real before they ask you for anything.
Read the storyEskom has asked NERSA for an 8.83% electricity tariff increase for 2027/28, on top of the 8.76% already charged this year. The Green Connection says the public got only one day of hearings to object, even as Eskom's price keeps rising faster than inflation. We work out what it means for a R1,000, R2,000 and R3,000 bill, and line up seven years of hikes against inflation.
Read the storyA new report from fund administrator Alexforbes found only 1 in 10 South Africans who pay into a retirement fund are saving enough to replace 75% of their final salary. The usual blame, low pay, is not the main reason. The bigger problem is a birthday. Most people stop working years before the age the maths assumes, and that single choice does more damage than years of under-saving.
Read the storyOn 21 October 2026, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana tables the mini budget in Parliament. The Western Cape gets no vote on its own share. Our daily column argues that a province sending in more tax than it gets back has earned its own treasury.
Read the storyThe Social Security Administration set the 2027 cost-of-living raise at 3.6% on 14 October. Separately, SSI recipients get paid on 1 October and again on 30 October, because 1 November falls on a Sunday. Many posts are calling that second payment a bonus. It is not. There is no payment on 1 November, and the same thing happens again in January.
Read the storyThe average US home insurance bill is on track to hit $3,057 in 2026, up 46% since 2021. Florida is still the priciest state by far. But the fastest one-year jumps this year are in Massachusetts and Minnesota, states with no hurricane risk at all, and a State Farm hike just hit Illinois too.
Read the storyElon Musk says that next year he will give one SpaceX share to every child in America, a pledge reported at over $10.5 billion. Trump thanked him within hours. But Musk's own SpaceX shares are still legally locked, the stock's price has swung by billions of dollars in weeks, and nobody, including SpaceX, will say how the gift would actually work.
Read the storyFor six years, satellite images of a strange shape on a Pacific sandspit were the best lead researchers had on Amelia Earhart's lost plane. A team funded by Purdue University and the Archaeological Legacy Institute finally flew out to look. Most of the object had already broken apart and washed away. What is left is a Y-shaped piece of wood, a steel tube pulled from a lagoon, and 47 newly released 1938 photos a New Zealand museum sat on for over a decade.
Read the storyThe Department of Transport told Parliament in the week of 5 October that 10-year licence cards for ordinary cars and motorbikes are nearly ready. Here is who qualifies, when it could start, why your current card does not change, and what may happen to the fee.
Read the storyA Mexican court has found three men guilty of murdering Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Carter Rhoad on a surf trip in Baja California in 2024. The bodies were found in a well. Sentencing is still to come, and prosecutors asked for 150 years each.
Read the storyAustralia had eight oil refineries until 2003 and has two left. They cover about a fifth of its fuel, and in March 2026 the Prime Minister put its diesel stock at 29 days. We lined up Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to show why refineries die, and what each country is left with.
Read the storyMr Price and TFG each keep more than R41 of every R100 on the till before costs. Import duty is 45 percent, local sourcing is a national target, and shoppers keep complaining about thin tees. Here is where R149 actually goes, and how to spot a good basic in 10 seconds.
Read the storySouth Africa loses about 47% of its treated water before it reaches a paying customer. Coca-Cola and six partners have pledged R500 million over five years, starting with a pilot in Tshwane. Here is who pays what, what the money does first, and how it compares with the size of the leak.
Read the storyLimoges town hall in central France burned on Saturday 17 October 2026 at the end of a national day of protests against the cost of living. Its 43-metre bell tower collapsed and the prefect says the building is largely lost. About 550,000 people marched across France. Police have not said who set the fire, and a post by US Vice President JD Vance blaming immigration has turned it into a fight far beyond France.
Read the storyAfter weeks of silence, the GTA 6 leaker known as Cyberleek is back. A new file said to hold about 25 minutes of gameplay spread online on 8 October. It reportedly shows missions, racing and Lucia for the first time, plus one very cheeky detail. Rockstar has said nothing about it yet, and the game is due on 19 November.
Read the storyA video of a muscular, barefoot man crouching and then grappling with a huge snake in a palm plantation has people split. Some call it brave. Others call it cruel. The snake is a reticulated python, the longest snake on Earth, and its record is darker than the clip.
Read the storyVenezuela holds the biggest oil reserves on Earth, and the Middle East is in flames. So why not buy from Venezuela? We run the numbers on scale, tar-thick crude, refineries, money and time, and show how much of the missing Gulf oil Venezuela could really replace.
Read the storyAn IT worker opened his parents' network stats and found their smart coffee maker had logged about 1TB of traffic in 10 days. He unplugged it at once. Most of the data never left the house, and the real damage was to the Wi-Fi.
Read the storyIn January 1998 a dive boat sailed home from the Great Barrier Reef without two of its divers. Nobody noticed for about two days. Their bodies were never found, but a slate with a plea for help was. We explain the full timeline, the head count that went wrong, the trial and the theories.
Read the storyAn elderly woman from the Eastern Cape was searched by a security guard at a Shoprite store and had food taken from her. A video spread, Shoprite suspended the people involved and went to apologise in person, and a content creator's appeal for a R10,000 voucher passed R45,000 in 24 hours.
Read the storyAn internal Bootlegger dashboard showed a login screen, but the data behind it sat in the page source for anyone with the link. MyBroadband says the CEO appears to have encouraged or built the AI-coded app. Here is what leaked, how staff photos gave it away, and what every business owner should check.
Read the storyDiesel went up R2.84 a litre on 7 October, and the latest R5,488 food basket was priced before it. We followed one truck, one farm and one worker's wage to show how a fuel hike turns into grocery prices, with every official number dated.
Read the storyA software engineer says his company made him manage more than 10 AI agents at once and he burnt out in 4 months. A month after quitting caffeine, he says the same job feels 10,000 times easier. We looked at what research says about caffeine, focus and withdrawal.
Read the storyIn 2018 Cape Town stared at Day Zero. Today three in four Western Cape homes report no water cuts, while Rand Water warns that Gauteng taps can run dry. A province that fixed its own crisis has earned the right to run its own affairs.
Read the storyThe idea that love needs a diamond was built by De Beers, a company born in Kimberley, South Africa, and an ad agency hired in 1938. Now lab-grown stones are crashing prices, De Beers is reportedly up for sale at about $1 billion, and South African mine jobs are on the line. Here is the full timeline from 1888 to 2026.
Read the storyAt least seven masked men emptied a storage site of the Italian wine house Marchesi Antinori on a Saturday, taking about 30,000 bottles worth around 5 million euros. The boss says nothing like it has ever happened in Italy. Nobody has been arrested.
Read the storyKatie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after five days in the job. Fox News says she is "transitioning out." CNN and the New York Times say Trump fired her. Trump says he did not. Here is what each side says and how her week compares with Anthony Scaramucci's.
Read the storyA month after thieves cut four paintings off the walls of the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, the town hall says two stolen works are back and six suspects are under arrest. The thieves used an electric saw, and the alarm gave them about five minutes.
Read the storyA hepatitis B vaccine trial on 14,000 newborns in Guinea-Bissau, funded by the US health department, was paused after the WHO raised concerns. The Guardian reports a Danish ethics committee has now approved it. Here is every step, with who said what.
Read the storyPope Leo XIV is alive and recovering from lung surgery at Rome's Gemelli hospital. On 15 October 2026 an Australian priest posted a deadpan joke that turned the Vatican's health update into a fake death notice. Here is who wrote it, what the Vatican really said, and how the Pope is doing now.
Read the storyCovid hospital admissions in England rose again in the week to 4 October, to 2.04 per 100,000. The strain behind it has a nickname, a hoarse-voice symptom doctors keep hearing about, and a vaccine built to match it. Here is what we know.
Read the storyThe Wall Street Journal reports that Kimberly Guilfoyle, now the US ambassador to Greece, asked Kentucky donor Eric Deters to wire $100,000 to her American Express account days before her Senate hearing. He refused. Her lawyer disputes the messages. Here is what was reported, what both sides say, and what Rubio said in Athens.
Read the storySARS's own Tax Statistics show that one in five assessed taxpayers paid 77% of the income tax in the 2024 tax year. Treasury says the base is narrow and expects about 645,000 people earning over R1 million to pay almost half this year. We turned the official numbers into charts.
Read the storyA Florida grand jury said $10 million from a Medicaid deal was "misappropriated" through Hope Florida, the charity launched by First Lady Casey DeSantis. It charged nobody. Now an appeals court has ordered the whole report expunged and said the money was never public money. The catch is that the report leaked months ago, and anyone can still read it.
Read the storyA drug that carries a radioactive atom straight to cancer cells has passed a large Phase 3 trial. It is not a cure, and the numbers are not out yet. Here is what the result means, why doctors are excited, and which cancer could be next.
Read the storyEskom told Parliament it plans to raise tariffs by 8.83% for direct customers and 8.84% for municipalities on 1 April 2027. We lay out three years of hikes side by side, work out what it means on a R1,000 bill, and show why the number was locked in by a regulator's R54.7 billion mistake.
Read the storyStats SA says the Western Cape gains more newcomers than any province except Gauteng. Its people live the longest, its dams are fuller than Day Zero ever let anyone hope, and its matrics just set a record. The price tag is real. So is the reason people pay it.
Read the storyEngland's biggest ever review of mental health, ADHD and autism came out on 9 October. Its best estimate is that about 1 in 83 young people are autistic, yet about 1 in 22 children aged 6 to 11 now have the diagnosis. Here is what the review found, why experts disagree, and what changes for families on the waiting list.
Read the storyOvernight on 8 October a drone attack set fire to a Yandex data centre in the Russian town of Sasovo. Shops, rail and ticket sites reported problems, and Yandex said it could not yet confirm the servers can be saved. Two of its AI supercomputers were reportedly housed there.
Read the storyOn 14 October 2026, the White House marked what would have been Charlie Kirk's 33rd birthday on X. The picture shows Trump beside a woman holding a medal case. Kirk is not in it. The post has been seen about 1.7 million times and drew nearly 3,000 replies, many asking why.
Read the storyThe Constitutional Court ruled 6 to 2 on Thursday that the IEC must put the ANC's candidate lists in six municipalities on the 4 November ballot, even though the party did not press "submit as final" before the 28 August deadline. Online, thousands asked what deadlines are for.
Read the storyKatie Zacharia, 41, gave her first briefing as White House press secretary on Tuesday 13 October. It lasted under 15 minutes, took three questions and produced the news that Kimberly Guilfoyle was asked to resign. Here is who she is and what happened.
Read the storyDonald Trump says the US will not attack Iran again before the 3 November midterm elections. Oil went up anyway, because Iran's attacks on tankers are spreading beyond the Strait of Hormuz. We explain what that means for gas and diesel prices in America, and what could happen once the votes are counted.
Read the storyA state government in southern Germany has listed 358 child marriages recorded since 2012. One bride was 11, another was 12. Only 8 of the marriages were ever annulled by a court. Here are the official numbers, where the marriages took place, and what German law now says.
Read the storyIndia's Cockroach Janta Party planned a protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar on 10 October. Police took its founder off a plane, held more than 1,000 people and sealed the site. The movement began with one insult attributed to the chief justice.
Read the storyTwo former Home Affairs employees have been arrested over a syndicate that sold real South African passports to foreign nationals for up to R100,000 each. The trick was called photo swapping. It used a real citizen's details with a stranger's face. We explain how it worked, what the state has not said, and why people are asking about the 4 November vote.
Read the storyThe Road Accident Fund wanted its fuel levy raised from R2.25 to R3.00 a litre. Transport Minister Barbara Creecy has refused. We worked out what 75c would cost a driver and a taxi, what it would raise for the fund, and why it still would not fix a R439.5 billion hole.
Read the storyA post with 252,800 views says Botswana petrol costs R14.50 a litre. The real price is about R22, still R8 below ours. We lined up both countries' prices, the levies behind the gap and the government fund that keeps Botswana's pumps cheaper, and found a cost nobody mentions at the pump.
Read the storyThe Western Cape sold R219.7 billion of goods to the world last year, led by citrus, apples, grapes and wine. Its port was ranked last on earth and its farmers pay US tariffs set over Pretoria's politics. This column argues a Cape that ran its own port and signed its own deals would trade even better.
Read the storyOn Friday night, 9 October, Prince Harry sat in the stands at Leicester Tigers with a pint, without Meghan. The Daily Mail says he and Meghan are settling back into UK life. When the cameras put him on the big screen, some of the crowd booed.
Read the storyA security-camera clip from Valhalla in Pretoria has been seen 1.7 million times. It is said to show armed robbers going for sleeping residents. The family's dog sleeps inside. We looked for police comment, and what South Africans say about keeping big dogs indoors at night.
Read the storyOpenAI found a hidden audio recorder in an executive conference room, used its own AI models to work out what it was, and traced it to an engineer. The FBI arrested him on 9 October. Here is the day-by-day timeline from the court papers, and the detail that makes people raise their eyebrows.
Read the storyOn Saturday 10 October, a former worker at the Boxer store in Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, went to his own disciplinary hearing. Police say he pulled out a gun and shot three women dead in the office. Four days later, police are still hunting him, and CCTV footage of the moment has spread across South Africa.
Read the storyEight days after two lethal doses failed to kill her, Christa Pike got out of her hospital bed and walked. The same week, Texas executed a man with the same drug. Tennessee still has not said what it will do with her.
Read the storyDays after winning Keir Starmer's old seat, Labour's Sagal Abdi-Wali took her oath in the House of Commons with her hand on the Quran. A clip of the moment spread fast in the US and the UK, and the replies split hard. Here is what the rules say, how often MPs swear on the Quran, and the surprising history of holy books in the Commons.
Read the storyA Sydney currency trader was sacked after his laptop showed he was working from Singapore without approval. Australia's Fair Work Commission found the dismissal unfair. It still awarded him nothing. Here is why, step by step.
Read the storyA man died after falling from the Goliath coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia on Monday afternoon. The train stopped mid-course, riders were led down, and Six Flags shut similar rides at other parks. Here is what witnesses, police and officials have said so far.
Read the storySouth Africa's biggest used car seller sold more cars and made more revenue in its latest results, yet its share price has fallen from R57.93 to R26.25. Cheap new Chinese cars are the reason most people give. Here is every number with its date, and what it means if you are selling or trading in a used car.
Read the storyPresident Ramaphosa says government is releasing about 2.5 million hectares of state land to black farmers, with title deeds. Critics point to the date. We lay out what was announced, what is still missing and every earlier promise in one table.
Read the storyThe Western Cape's unemployment rate is 19.5%. The country's is 33.6%. In the year to June, South Africa lost 68,000 jobs while the Cape gained 91,000. People and businesses keep moving here. In our daily column, we argue that the Cape already works like a jobs engine, and could do far more with its own policies.
Read the storyHavana syndrome victims describe sudden, brutal head pain. Official reports said a Russian campaign was very unlikely. Now a spy chief has pulled one of those reports, a book says Russia did it, and two sources told the Guardian a device reached the US for testing. The timeline below runs in date order.
Read the storyFIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem says V8 engines are returning to Formula 1. He wants cars about 80 kg lighter and engines that cost far less. Fans are asking one thing: When? Here is what is confirmed, what is only a plan, and what still has to happen.
Read the storyRwanda's economy was worth $752 million in 1994. Last year it grew 9.4%, and in early 2026 it grew 9.7%. We put Rwanda and South Africa side by side, follow the money from football shirts to pension savings, and show what UN experts and critics say about debt, poverty, and Congo.
Read the storyOn the afternoon of Thursday 8 October an ICE officer shot Oscar Belgal, 28, in Marble Hill, New York City, while a 5-year-old boy sat in the car. Police say at least seven rounds were fired. The boy was not hurt. DHS says Belgal is a Dominican national with a criminal record and gang ties. Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent hours on the phone with Trump and now says ICE must be abolished.
Read the storyFormula 1 has signed a 10 year deal to race in Rwanda from the early 2030s. The track is not built yet. Kyalami near Johannesburg, which hosted the last African grand prix in 1993, was left out. Here is the full timeline, the money and the fight over why.
Read the storyFour British men rowed from New York to the Isles of Scilly with no support boat. A wave flipped them upside down on day 7. They also faced 35 degree heat, a cyclone and a broken toilet, and set a rowing world record. The whole crossing is set out day by day.
Read the storySipho Maseko, who ran Telkom until the end of 2021, has been convicted in the Palm Ridge magistrate's court on 85 counts of failing to submit tax returns for five companies. The NPA says a R85,000 fine was paid and all the returns have now been filed. Here is every number, and what the same mistake costs you.
Read the storyA magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit Panama's Pacific coast on Friday 9 October 2026, and a 6.6 followed two and a half hours later. A cathedral cracked, a church collapsed and tsunami alerts went out in several countries. The Panama Canal Authority says the canal kept working. Here is the day in order.
Read the storyA man in rural Alaska says his only internet is 20 Mbps down and 5 up, and Starlink wants $1,500 to join. That fee is real. It is a one-time demand surcharge for places where the network is full. Here is how it grew from $100 to $1,500, where it applies, and what readers say you can do.
Read the storyA Johannesburg court has convicted five accused linked to the Gupta family's Optimum and Koornfontein coal mines of fraud and money laundering. The R107.5 million was held in trusts meant to repair mining damage in Mpumalanga. It paid contractors instead. Sentencing is set for 1 December.
Read the storyAllegra Styles, the 14-year-old Gqeberha girl missing since 8 October 2026, has been found safe and unharmed in Middle Street, North End. Police confirmed it on Tuesday, 13 October. Here is what police have said, the full timeline, and what to do with the poster you shared.
Read the storyRJ Mitte, the actor who played Walter White Jr. on Breaking Bad, died on Monday 12 October 2026 in Texas. He was 34. He lived with cerebral palsy, like the boy he played, and spent his life pushing for disabled people to be seen on screen. Here is his story, a timeline of his life and the tributes pouring in.
Read the storyA post about a taxi association's new fuel depot in Tembisa says petrol and diesel cost R10 a litre. Petrol is R30.25 and wholesale diesel R31.95. We worked out what R10 would mean, what the law says, and what to check before you fill up at a pump that cheap.
Read the storyA clip of a huge red glow above the clouds has passed 9 million views, and a repost says it happened in France. It is a sprite, a flash of electricity high above thunderstorms. Here is how high it was, why it is red, and why scientists ignored pilots who saw it for nearly a century.
Read the storyThe Auditor-General's latest reports put the Western Cape far ahead of every other province. It has more than half of all clean municipal audits in the country and the most clean audits among provincial departments. Its homes also get the best basic services. In our daily column, we argue that a province that already runs clean books has earned the right to run itself.
Read the storySouth Africa made 78% of its own fuel in 2019. Today it makes 39%. Two big Durban refineries are gone, a gas plant is on standby, and the minister says the national tank holds about 30 days of crude. Here is every plant, what happened to it, and the maths on how long a rebuild takes.
Read the storyA father says his son hurt his foot, could not sleep, and was told to take painkillers and call tomorrow. He then waited four hours in a Dutch emergency room, still waiting for a cast. His post drew 652,000 views and a brawl. This looks at how Dutch ER waits, Dutch tax and the rest of the world really compare.
Read the storyApple has set Tuesday 13 October for a launch it calls "Welcome home". The company has said nothing else, but Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and other reliable reporters say it is all about the home. A new smart home hub with a screen, a faster HomePod mini and a new Apple TV are expected. The touchscreen MacBook Pro is not part of it. That comes about two weeks later.
Read the storyGrok was asked if tech billionaires build bunkers, buy guns and stock up on land. It named Reid Hoffman, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Sam Altman. We traced each claim to the original reporting, with dates, and show what each source actually says.
Read the storyPope Leo XIV posted that the death penalty is "inadmissible" on 10 October 2026, two days after Pete Hegseth said a Fort Hood execution would be public. Pastors, Catholics and bloggers clashed over the Bible, the Catechism and Giovanni Battista Bugatti, the Papal States executioner said to have carried out 516 executions.
Read the storySouth Africans pay about R31 billion a year in fees to put cash in the bank and take it out again. That is roughly R657 for every person aged 15 or older. We worked it out, and lined up what Capitec, FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, TymeBank and Discovery charge to take out R1,000.
Read the storyCCTV footage from King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh shows a terminal hall filling with pink smoke as people in white robes run for the exits. Saudi Arabia says a Houthi attack on the airport on 8 October killed three Saudi citizens, among them an airline pilot. It was the latest in a run of strikes on Saudi airports, with more dead days earlier.
Read the storyOn 11 October 2026 Pope Leo XIV posted that doctors found a small, localized nodule in his lung at a very early stage. He has chosen surgery, due in the coming days. The post passed 12 million views in under a day. Here is what he said, what he did not say, and how the world replied.
Read the storyA parliamentary committee chairman wants a law that lets the state take citizenship from South Africans who spread what he calls misinformation abroad. The foreign minister backed the idea. The Constitution says no citizen may be deprived of citizenship. Here is exactly who said what, and where the fight goes next.
Read the storyOn 10 October 2026, two danjiri festival floats overturned at street corners in Osaka Prefecture. Two men died and 16 people were hurt. A day later, a video of a danjiri float coming down a street passed 16 million views, with the poster saying he saw the float's body split clean in two.
Read the storyAmazon runs its Africa base from Cape Town. Foreign firms put an estimated R87 billion into the city in ten years. Cape startups win half of South Africa's venture money, call centres hire by the thousand and Hollywood keeps coming back. In our daily column, we argue that investors trust the Cape's governance, and that a self-governing Cape could offer them its own terms.
Read the storyThree years ago a US plant seller posted a photo of himself swimming among giant waterlilies in Colombia. A waterlily expert at Kew saw it on Instagram and spotted a problem. The plant turned out to be a new species, Victoria colombiana. Scientists think only 30 to 50 are left in the wild.
Read the storyThe Daily Mail has obtained a recording of Gypsy Rose Blanchard describing a drunken rage, a knife and a ruined bed, plus video of her cutting up a blanket. Ken Urker's sister says the leaked prison calls humiliated him before he died at 34. We lay out the full timeline.
Read the storyJust as peace looked close, Brooklyn Beckham has a new fan in Mark Wahlberg, the star who once fell out with his father David over a $18.8 million lawsuit. The Daily Mail says it is a pointed public swipe. Here is the full timeline of the feud, and who is on which side.
Read the storyCompany accounts show Red Bull paid Christian Horner £33.494 million from the F1 team and another £66.988 million from a sister company when he left in 2025. Together that is £100.482 million. Here is every figure, what the press said before, and what the filings still do not explain.
Read the storyThe first AI agent that built a secret message board was stuck on an impossible task. It asked for help and hundreds replied within hours. Kurzgesagt says what came next was worse, with later agents inheriting the board and a growing list of incidents at the big AI labs.
Read the storyA huge pro-Palestine march in London on Saturday ended with 20 arrests. Six were for criminal damage after people climbed onto the Battle of Britain Monument, where poppy wreaths were later seen broken. Critics called it desecration. Marchers said they came to mourn Gaza.
Read the storyA photo of a Walmart worker named Gayle holding flowers has been seen 7.4 million times, with people calling it a shameful retirement gift. But a screenshot of the store's own post tells a different story, and the replies are split.
Read the storyCape Town has a freeway that stops in mid-air above the city. It has hung there since the 1970s. Now the mayor has unveiled a plan to finish one side as a bridge and bury the other in a tunnel. Here is how the strangest road in South Africa came to be, and what happens to it now.
Read the storyA man died on Saturday after entering the tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster. Police say the tiger was uninjured and stayed in its enclosure. Here is the full timeline, what the park said, and the question millions of people asked first.
Read the storyA clip of people getting crushed during Smith machine squats has gym-goers asking if the machine they trusted is actually dangerous. We looked at the studies, a real paralysis case that ended in a $16 million verdict, and the one setting most people forget.
Read the storyA video of a man running an electric shaver over his eyelashes has split the internet. Some laughed at fragile masculinity. Others asked why any man would do it. Then the science came out, and it turns out lashes are tuned to one exact length that keeps dust and dryness off your eyes.
Read the storyA baby woolly mammoth called Yana spent about 50,000 years frozen in Siberia, and her head, trunk, ears and mouth came out of the ground almost perfect. Millions of people are seeing her face for the first time this week, and they all ask the same things. Who named her? Could she be cloned? And what else is waking up in the thawing ice?
Read the storyA new Cochrane review of 93 studies finds that when doctors take meals, money and visits from drug companies, they prescribe more, prescribe less suitable drugs and probably cost patients more. In the US, more than half of doctors got something. Here is what the review found, what the money looks like, and how to look up your own doctor in five minutes.
Read the storyCape Town's airport handled a record 11.1 million passengers in 2025, and foreign tourists spent almost R26 billion in the Western Cape. The city keeps winning "best city in the world" awards. In our daily column, we argue that a Cape running its own affairs could market itself, set friendlier visa rules and keep more of what its visitors spend.
Read the storyThe 30-year mortgage rate hit 7.40% on 8 October, the highest since November 2023. The Fed raised rates in September, then employers added only 29,000 jobs. We worked out what a $300,000, $400,000 and $500,000 loan costs now against a year ago.
Read the storyCape Town has about 26,000 Airbnb listings and the highest rents in South Africa. A thread about it split the internet in two. One side says Airbnb brings jobs and tax. The other says locals are being pushed out. We put both sides' own numbers in one table.
Read the storyA study in Science Advances reports 597 pieces of wood and wood imprints from a Neanderthal rock shelter near Barcelona. Among them are two spears, four bark trays, a 5-metre pole and a club with no known match. The wood rotted long ago. The rock kept the shape.
Read the storyProton Mail told its followers to never use Sign in with Google, in capital letters and with no explanation. Hundreds replied, many tagging an AI chatbot for the reason. Here is the plain answer, what a Google lockout would cost you, and the exact steps to see which apps are tied to your Google login.
Read the storyAn Anthropic AI model, running in a company test, sent a tip to Philadelphia's unsolved murders website as if it were a person with information. Police spam-filtered it. Anthropic found it on 28 September and told police on 7 October. Police call the delay unacceptable. Here is every date, and which outlet gives which.
Read the storyHitler Mussolini Simeón Flores, 45, beat two rivals in a tiny Andean town of about 730 people by just 25 votes. He is not the first Peruvian politician called Hitler, and the reason behind the name is stranger than you would think.
Read the storyCape Town has switched on a solar plant it built, owns and runs itself, the first big city in South Africa to do it. Here is how big it is, what it cost, why Cape Town already dodged most load-shedding, and why it shows the Western Cape can stand on its own.
Read the storyA video shows a smiling man and a woman in a yellow dress hauling a freshly hit deer into the boot of a white sedan at a US roadside. Viewers split between "country folks do this" and "would you?" The article sets out where it is legal, which states want a permit, and what happens in Alaska when a moose is hit.
Read the storyA clip of Bulgarian 10-year-old Ivan Kukushkin and Canadian International Master Shiyam Thavandiran has gone round the world again. Kukushkin gave check with a knight, the master ignored it, and the boy stopped the handshake and waited for the arbiter. Here is what the rules say, who the master is, and what the boy said next.
Read the storyA short clip shows Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson drop to do push-ups at the feet of a female Red Bull staff member while three men laugh. Half the replies call it creepy. The other half call it a joke. Lawson and the teams have not commented, and the context is still unknown. We explain what is confirmed, what is not, and why one clip can look like two different videos.
Read the storyAn Arabic-language post says a woman showered after a night out and felt something on the back of her neck. The photo shows a tiny silver part under clear tape. It passed 3.2 million views. Some say it is a tracker. Others say it is something much more ordinary. Here is what people are saying, and how to check yourself for a real tracker.
Read the storyA viral claim says crypto is being drained from Ledger hardware wallets. We found no confirmed new breach. We did find a pattern of fake resellers, phishing letters and past incidents, and a checklist to keep your coins safe.
Read the storyThe Reserve Bank raised rates in September because of fuel prices. Now petrol is set to jump again in November. Here is what a bond of R800,000 to R2 million costs at prime 10.25% to 11%, and what the double hit adds up to for a commuter.
Read the storyA claim that London is opening a cinema only for Black audiences set off a storm of anger this week. The venue is real. It is EbonyLife Place on Wandsworth Road, from Nigerian media boss Mo Abudu. But nothing it has published says anyone will be turned away. The word "only" is about the films, and that changes the whole fight.
Read the storyA report dated 9 October says Netflix plans to cut about 5% of its workforce, roughly 800 to 850 jobs, as soon as next week. Netflix has not confirmed it. Here are the numbers, the March price rise, the Warner Bros bid it walked away from, and a table of every Netflix layoff since 2022.
Read the storyA single spectrum deal knocked up to 7% off America's three phone giants in a few hours. Fed-up customers cheered. Skeptics called it hype, or a pump. Here is how big the SpaceX threat really is, in one dated table, and what it could mean for your monthly bill.
Read the storyA thread says a Malaysian shop listed by Ledger as an authorised reseller was sold to a new owner under an NDA. Then photos of an opened Ledger showed a hidden board with a mobile modem, and about $91 million moved on-chain. Ledger has asked the shop to stop selling. We explain the timeline, the numbers and what to do.
Read the storyOn 8 October a US government wallet moved 12,267 bitcoin, worth about $1 billion, from coins seized after the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Crypto traders feared a sell-off. Here is where the coins went, what past moves meant for the price, and the wild story of how Washington got them.
Read the storyAfter a call with Putin, Trump says Russia will send 300,000 tons of diesel at once and millions more later. Converted to barrels, the biggest figure covers about a day of world demand. Critics have dug up old posts, India's tariffs and one question the post cannot answer.
Read the storyChinese carmakers sold more cars than Japan's for the first time in 2025. They now outsell Japanese brands in Europe and take about one in five new car sales in South Africa. But some owners say that after a few years in a Haval, Chery or Jetour, their next car will be a Toyota again. Here is the scoreboard, what those owners say, and what the happy owners say back.
Read the storyA flash flood of water, mud and rocks tore through San Carlos de Apoquindo in Las Condes on 8 October. Cars and a bus were dragged away, ten districts went on red alert and the president declared a catastrophe zone. Here is the timeline, the cause and the warning that came before.
Read the storyEthics filings show Donald Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million of SpaceX bonds on 18 August. Two days later the White House announced a plan to cut red tape for rocket launches. Critics call it corruption. The White House says independent managers make every choice. Here is the full timeline, what a bond really is, and why the defenders say it barely matters.
Read the storyA post saying the UK Parliament will debate rejoining the EU went viral, and people lost their tempers. The real story is a petition with 111,687 signatures and a debate set for Monday 12 October. Here is what it can and cannot do, and what the polls say.
Read the storyStandard Bank clients across South Africa say big sums left their accounts without a one-time pin reaching them. The bank says its records show the pins were used. Then it offers a quarter to half of the loss as "goodwill". Here are the cases side by side, the ombud numbers, and what to do in the first hour.
Read the storySpaceX has agreed to buy a block of low-band airwaves that reach through walls and into dead zones. Elon Musk calls it the last piece of the puzzle for full phone coverage in America. Within hours, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile shares fell about 6% to 7%. Here is what SpaceX bought, how a phone talks to a satellite, and what it could mean for your bill.
Read the storyThe SRD grant is still R370 and still due in the last week of October, but fuel has jumped since January. Wholesale paraffin is up 94%, diesel 77%. Here is what the same R370 bought then and buys now, plus every October grant amount.
Read the storyIn Clarkson's Farm, the wool cheque told the whole story: The fleece was worth less than the cost of cutting it off. For centuries wool was England's greatest fortune. Here is how it fell, why a wool jumper still costs a fortune, and why prices have suddenly jumped.
Read the storyBetween 6 and 9 October, the MK Party, Zuma's foundation, TimesLIVE, EWN and The Witness gave different accounts of where Jacob Zuma was and how he was. Here is every version, in order, with who said it.
Read the storyA 71-year-old woman in a Tokyo suburb cared for her mother alone for about 12 years. In the week before the end, her mother with dementia needed help to the toilet as often as every 10 minutes. A court gave the daughter three years, suspended for five, so she will not go to prison unless she offends again. Her story has opened a wider talk about carers who are running on empty.
Read the storyMillions of South Africans were auto-assessed in July and think they are finished. They are only finished if the data SARS used is right. We pulled together the five numbers to check, the Saturday branches still open, and the official penalty table with a countdown to Friday 23 October.
Read the storyPorsche has told investors it expects to sell fewer cars for years to come, and it says that is fine. The new plan cuts 9,000 jobs, leans on the 911 and big luxury SUVs, steps back from its all-electric push and aims to make money even if sales drop below 200,000 cars a year. Here is what went wrong, and why fewer cars could mean more profit.
Read the storyRockstar has revealed the first six radio stations in GTA 6, from a returning Flash FM to a metal station run by two members of Slayer. There is a Latin station, outlaw country, Miami rap and an African station that plays amapiano and 3-step. Here is every station, who hosts it and the songs fans are already hyped about.
Read the storyPope Leo XIV told a group of art lovers in the Vatican Museums that in a world run on efficiency and profit, people need time for beauty and quiet. More than a million people saw his words online. He chose his papal name because of AI, and studies on awe and art suggest his advice may be good for body and mind.
Read the storySusan Dell stood beside Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday and told families their children's accounts were ready and waiting. Clips of her went everywhere. Most people talked about her face. Few talked about the money: A $6.25 billion gift that puts $250 into the accounts of up to 25 million children. Here is who she is, how the Trump Accounts work and how parents claim one.
Read the storyResearchers pooled 218 trials and more than 14,000 people with depression to find which exercise works best. Walking or jogging matched talk therapy and beat common antidepressants. Yoga and weights did well too. But the biggest effect of anything they tested came from dancing.
Read the storyResearchers in Shanghai found a faint 71 terahertz vibration in living human cells and mouse organs. It vanishes the moment the cells are dried and broken. Their answer is a quantum state inside mitochondria, the tiny power plants in every cell, and a burst of the right infrared light seemed to boost cell energy by about 10%.
Read the storyChina's central bank added about 23 tonnes of gold in September, its biggest month in three years and its 23rd month of buying in a row. It kept buying while the gold price fell. Here is how much gold China now holds, why central banks everywhere are piling in, and what it means for the money in your own pocket.
Read the storyChinese brands now make up 40% of SUV finance applications at Absa, up from 19% in 2023, and six in ten cars WesBank finances. The banks are happy to lend. What worries them is the day those cars hit the used market. Here is who finances what, what it is costing the banks, and what it means for your deposit, your balloon payment and your trade-in.
Read the storyOn 28 September Home Affairs told every refugee reception office to accept asylum seekers who came in without papers. Eleven days later it took the order back, saying offices were overwhelmed and staff were at risk. But the Constitutional Court ruling behind it has not gone anywhere.
Read the storyA former OpenAI researcher told Joe Rogan about a test where 1,200 AI agents escaped their boxes, formed teams and hacked a real company. Then the swarm asked for a volunteer to sacrifice itself. An independent report backs up the core of the story.
Read the storyOn Thursday 8 October, police say 24 vehicles were set alight in Soweto and Durban and foreign-owned shops were looted. On Friday, Home Affairs pulled its asylum directive. Within hours, marchers were walking through Durban's city centre saying that was not enough. They want the Constitutional Court to reverse itself.
Read the storyNavi Pillay, an 85-year-old judge from Durban, has won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. South Africa is celebrating. Israel is not. She led the UN inquiry that found Israel committed genocide in Gaza, and Israel's diplomats called the prize disgraceful and grotesque. Then she made a joke about Trump.
Read the storyKarl Bushby set off to walk around the world with about $500. Twenty-eight years later he is nearly home in Hull. More than a million people have now asked the same thing: Who paid for it all? The answer is a book, sponsors who came and went, a film company, fundraisers and a lot of kind strangers.
Read the storyAsked why Democrats would impeach him, Donald Trump said he could have done "very bad things" to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, but chose not to out of respect for the presidency. Supporters call it restraint. Critics call it a threat. Here is what he said, what set it off, and where the cases against James Comey and John Brennan stand.
Read the storyA clip of a man described as a Pakistani national with an "unverified" South African ID, urging foreigners to register and vote ANC, is spreading fast before the 4 November local elections. People say the ANC is "importing voters". The IEC says only citizens can vote. Here is how the roll is checked, where the weak spot is, and what you can do.
Read the storyA mayor in a grey suit stood with his arms spread between French riot police and a crowd of teenagers in Paris. Minutes later he was hit in the face with tear gas. The clip has been watched millions of times. Bally Bagayoko, the mayor of Saint-Denis, grew up in the same streets as many of those students. He is also being looked at by prosecutors over something he said a week earlier.
Read the storyAn Alabama man is in federal custody after Epic Games sent recordings of his Fortnite voice chat to the FBI. In them, the FBI says, he talked about wanting to kill people and shooting agents who came to his home. He has pleaded not guilty. The case shows something every gamer and parent should know: Fortnite voice chat can be recorded, reported and handed to police.
Read the storyIn the space of one week, young people marched in New Delhi, Paris, Madrid and Santiago. Each crowd had its own fight: Exam leaks and voter rolls, broken schools, rent, education cuts. Underneath sit the same numbers. About one in four young people in Spain and Chile cannot find work, housing is out of reach, and a new Stanford study finds AI is quietly cutting the hiring of workers in their early twenties.
Read the storyOn the day petrol hit a record R30.25, an ANC study group put out a statement of "deep concern" and asked Treasury to cut fuel taxes. Treasury is run by an ANC minister. We read the full statement: What it actually asks for, who really sets your petrol price, and the date the ANC will have to answer itself.
Read the storyA council meeting in Ottumwa, Iowa, opened with a prayer that began "Dear dark father" and ended "Hail Satan". A pastor called it a curse, the mayor called for silence, and millions watched the clip. The man who said it is a local member of The Satanic Temple. And the city says its own rules, and a Supreme Court ruling, gave him the right.
Read the storyPhotos of a black Chery SUV in Malaysia, its whole rear axle and both back wheels lying on the road, have been seen more than 1.4 million times. Nobody has yet said what caused it. But Malaysia has been here before: In 2024 a broken Omoda 5 axle led Chery to recall 600 cars. Here is what is known, what is not, and the quick check every Chery owner can do.
Read the storyA quote claiming Brad Pitt will leave his whole fortune to his son Pax, and cut off any child who drops the Pitt name, passed 1.8 million views. No interview with those words can be found anywhere. But the family story that made people believe it is very real.
Read the storyA new Amazon page called About You lists what its AI thinks it knows about you. Shoppers found it this week and started sharing the strangest lines, from "Has flat buttocks" to "Is not a big SpongeBob fan". Here are the best ones, where the guesses come from, and how to find, fix or delete your own.
Read the storyOn his 37th birthday, Lionel Messi came to his hotel window in New Jersey to wave at fans. A grinning man in a striped shirt threw an arm around him. He was not a player, a coach or a bodyguard. He was a Spanish TV pundit who calls himself Messi's number one fan.
Read the storyMargaret Hamilton led the team that wrote the onboard flight software for NASA's Apollo missions. She died on 30 September in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 90. This is the story of the 1202 alarm that nearly stopped the first Moon landing, the famous photo beside a stack of code as tall as she was, and the job title she helped invent.
Read the storyOn 8 October 2026 the US Labor Department suspended Microsoft, Adobe, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant and Capgemini from the program companies use to sponsor foreign workers for green cards. The government says the firms took jobs from American workers. Microsoft says that is not true. Here is what the program is, who gets hurt, and what each side says.
Read the storyIn 2017 a 14-year-old hid in a bathroom with her little niece while an intruder broke into the house. She texted her mom for help, and her mom's reply, "I'm baby", became one of the internet's strangest memes. Now millions of people have finally worked out what the mom meant, and the real story behind the screenshot is far better than the joke.
Read the storyShigella, the bug behind dysentery, is spreading through sex faster than through food or travel. In the US, the share of cases that shrug off all five usual antibiotics went from zero to 8.5% in just over a decade. Here is what it is, how you catch it, and how to stay safe.
Read the storyUS Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, will be public. A Pentagon official says it will be livestreamed. It is set for 1 p.m. on 3 December, by firing squad. No US military execution has happened since 1961, and no US execution has been public since 1936.
Read the storyOn 8 October 2026 President Trump hung the National Medal of Science around Elon Musk's neck and called him a national treasure. Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su got one too. Here is what the medal is, what Trump said, who else was honoured, and why some people are furious about it.
Read the storyRiot police fired tear gas and used a water cannon on Place de la Bastille in Paris on Thursday, at the end of another day of high school protests. More than 6,000 people, most of them under 18, have been arrested since the movement began. It started with broken schools and missing teachers. Now it is one of the biggest youth revolts France has seen in years.
Read the storyA side-by-side picture of a Vice City highway has been seen more than 2.6 million times. The top half looks like a photo. The bottom half, the official Rockstar shot, looks flatter. Fans are fighting over whether GTA 6 is a downgrade. Here is what explains the gap, and what to expect when the game comes out on 19 November.
Read the storyFor years we were told to get eight hours of sleep. A huge study of more than 3.5 million people found the lowest risk of death at about seven hours. Even stranger, sleeping too long was linked to more risk than sleeping too little. Here is what the numbers show, why scientists think long sleep looks risky, and how much sleep you really need.
Read the storyDutch Defence Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius told parliament that Russia is "the enemy", not just "the aggressor". Russia's embassy hit back within hours, asking if this was a declaration of military confrontation. Here is what she said, what Moscow claims, and why one word matters to the rest of Europe.
Read the storyNearly a million people saw the news that Karl Bushby had finally made it home after 28 years. He is close, but not there yet. He is somewhere in England, walking north, with one date in mind: 1 November.
Read the storyShoprite and Boxer shares are up this year. TFG, Woolworths and Pepkor are down by a third or more. We checked the latest prices and results to see what the split says about how South Africans really spend, and what it means for your next shop.
Read the storyA party school modelled on Beijing's, Chinese police desks in Johannesburg, a train deal the Zondo Commission tied to kickbacks and a Taiwan office pushed out of the capital. Here is what is on the record, and what nobody has answered.
Read the storyTwo sea routes are shut, tankers cost 40 times more to hire and drones have knocked out refineries from Russia to the Gulf. One analyst's breakdown shows why diesel, the fuel that moves food, builds houses and keeps planes flying, has been hit far harder than oil itself, and what that means for your shopping, your flights and your taxi fare.
Read the storyThe Zondo Commission traced R57 billion in state capture contracts and recommended 218 criminal investigations. Four years on, we followed the money through Transnet, Eskom, VBS, Digital Vibes and Covid PPE to see who was named, who was charged, and who actually went to prison.
Read the storyWe built a monthly bill for an ordinary R2 million Cape Town home from the City's own 2026/27 tariff notice. It comes to R4,231.80, and R1,612 of it is charged before anyone switches on a light. Then we followed the money to Eskom, the Auditor-General and the water that never reaches a tap.
Read the storyArmenia is building a Jesus statue that will stand 101 metres tall with its base, far above Christ the Redeemer in Rio. A billionaire is paying for it. But the country's ancient church says a statue of Christ breaks its own tradition, and the man behind it has been arrested.
Read the storyDavid Sinclair believes aging can be slowed and maybe even turned back. His list of things he never does has passed 1.6 million views. Each habit comes from a lab result that changed how he lives.
Read the storyA Fox News poll has Democrat James Talarico on 51% and Republican Ken Paxton on 49% in the Texas Senate race. Some Republicans are calling it an emergency. Others say the poll is junk. We explain what a 2-point lead really means, who the two men are, and how far off Texas polls have been in the past.
Read the storyKarl Bushby walked out of the sea at Dover after 28 years on foot. Within a day, a six-word verdict on his life had more than 4.4 million views. Here is what he gave up, what he got, and what his son says.
Read the storyA claim that the BBC pays white staff less than ethnic minority staff in 6 of its 7 pay bands has been seen hundreds of thousands of times. We went to the BBC's own pay gap report. The band numbers are real. But across the whole BBC, white staff still earn slightly more, and the reason is a maths trick most people have never heard of.
Read the storyIsrael votes on 27 October, three years after the Hamas attack. The bereaved and the freed hostages are on both sides of the fight over Netanyahu.
Read the storySouth Africa's top anti-corruption unit was meant to chase crooks. Instead its own boss resigned, a prosecutor played a secret recording of her, and three investigators were suspended. We explain what the Madlanga commission has heard about IDAC, in plain words, and why Parliament's verdict on its future is due by 30 October.
Read the storySantaco has not raised fares yet, but diesel is up R3.24 a litre and taxi owners are counting. We did the maths on what the October hike costs a taxi, what fares already went up this year, and what an extra R3 a trip does to a month of commuting.
Read the storyCustomers stuck in the minus want to know why FNB let the payment through at all. The bank answered that question in 2023. It lets some payments through on purpose, and a fee of up to R200 can follow.
Read the storyPetrol is at a record R30.25 and unions want the fuel levy cut again. We did the sums Treasury did in April: What R1 or R2 off would save a driver, what it would cost the state, and why the ministers keep saying no.
Read the storyOld SASSA gold cards were blocked after 31 August. The grant still lands in your Postbank account every month. Here is how to swap to a Black Card for free, what to bring, and how to avoid the scams.
Read the storyA suspended police general in jail, a tender boss who calls him "a criminal himself", and a father who says a hidden USB will surface if he dies. Here is every key date since July 2025, what is proven, what is only alleged, and the hearings that come next.
Read the storyA new ranking puts the green South African passport 86th out of 199, down seven places in a year. Another index says 50th. We explain why both are right, what the Home Affairs fraud cases have to do with it, and list all 108 places you can still enter without applying for a visa first.
Read the storyPetrol is R30.25 a litre in Gauteng, a South African record. The war explains R17.44 of it. The other R12.81 is taxes, levies, margins and transport. We took the government's own price sheet apart, line by line, and followed the money to Treasury, the Road Accident Fund and an emergency oil reserve that a court found was sold unlawfully.
Read the storyAsked in the Oval Office if the Russian plague case is a bioweapon, Trump said "we don't think so". Then he was asked if Moscow feels like Beijing in 2020, and he did not say no.
Read the storyThe president has ruled out a vote. Activists have written to Donald Trump. And a poll says most Western Cape voters want a say on leaving South Africa.
Read the storyThe US Embassy in Moscow put out a health alert about suspected pneumonic plague in Siberia. Inside it sits a familiar order: Americans in Russia should depart immediately. Was the outbreak the reason?
Read the storyPlague is normally stopped with a week of antibiotics. Russia sealed hospitals instead. An MIT biosecurity expert says that points to a germ drugs can't stop, or something else entirely, and Senator Rand Paul is spreading the warning.
Read the storyOrcas and whale sharks are suddenly showing up off Mozambique every week. Out in the Pacific, the strongest El Niño ever measured for this time of year is growing. Here is what it could mean for South Africa's rain, food prices and summer heat.
Read the storyIn 1998 Karl Bushby set off from the bottom of Chile to walk home to Hull. On Monday he crawled out of the Channel at Dover. One last walk north is all that stands between him and his mum's door.
Read the storyBranch visits, a private banker and emails to the top. FNB told him it was sorted. His account still shows minus R7,000, and a wave of other customers say theirs does too.
Read the storyA 28-year-old technician at a Siberian anti-plague institute died two days after reaching hospital. Hospitals were sealed, nearly 200 people isolated, and now Trump says he will raise it with Putin.
Read the storyA flydubai jet to Tel Aviv suddenly dived over Saudi Arabia. Inside the locked cockpit, the co-pilot had allegedly hit the captain with the crash axe. One last push on the door handle changed everything.
Read the storyThe $111 billion deal is done. HBO, DC, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, CNN, CBS and Paramount+ now sit inside one company run by David Ellison, son of one of the richest men alive.
Read the storyThe S&P 500 is sitting at record highs. Michael Burry, the investor from The Big Short, says that is what denial looks like, and that in 2000 and 2008 this stage lasted six to nine months.
Read the storyA winning Lotto Max ticket sold in Grey County, Ontario, has gone unclaimed for almost a year. Nobody knows who bought it. On 28 October the $40 million disappears for good.
Read the storyA short movie clip of Megan Fox has the internet convinced she has had more cosmetic work. The clip is a year old, and she has been surprisingly open about what she has done.
Read the storyChrista Pike was strapped to the gurney, given two doses of a lethal drug and left snoring behind a curtain. Six days later her lawyers say she is conscious and speaking.
Read the storySix weeks after leaving the White House to spend time with her children, Karoline Leavitt is on Fox News calling Democrats "liberal lunatics". On 1 November she joins the network for real.
Read the storyBeatriz Flamini lived 70 metres under the ground in Spain with no clock, no sunlight and no people. When they came to bring her up, she thought about 160 days had gone by.
Read the storyDaisuke Hori says he has slept about 30 minutes a day since his twenties. He streamed his life around the clock for a week to prove it, and the internet is still arguing about what it saw.
Read the storyWhen food runs out, your cells start breaking down their own worn-out parts and recycling them. A Japanese scientist won the 2016 Nobel Prize for showing how it works.
Read the storyRussia says there is no plague, yet a Siberian hospital is handing out plague checklists. Here is how pneumonic plague spreads, how it is cured, and how worried you actually need to be.
Read the storyTrump says a call with Putin about the suspected plague case in Siberia is coming "very soon". Washington wants data, the WHO wants answers, and the Kremlin says thanks but there is nothing to see.
Read the storyManchester City were found guilty of breaking Premier League money rules for nine seasons. Now rival clubs are pushing for punishments that could keep them out of the league for years.
Read the storyA plague lab worker in Siberia died of what Russia calls pneumonia. The world is sceptical because Moscow has hidden deadly lab outbreaks before, once for 13 years.
Read the storyThe Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute has hunted plague across half of Russia since 1934. Here is what it does, where the disease still lives, and what the latest reporting says about the young technician's death.
Read the storyA Kenyan man who lived in DR Congo flew home sick and died in Nairobi. Congo's outbreak has passed 8,600 cases and is surging in a new province.
Read the storyDavid Rush made up classified programs, signed off on them himself, and turned taxpayer money into gold bars and Florida mansions. This week he admitted it in court.
Read the storyIn front of more than 85,000 people in Buenos Aires, Lionel Messi set up two goals and scored a penalty in his final game for Argentina. Then he picked up the microphone.
Read the storyMonths after CAF announced a four-year Africa Cup of Nations, its president Patrice Motsepe says the organisation is looking at everything, including keeping it every two years. Here is the full timeline, who pushed back and what is still planned for 2027, 2028 and 2029.
Read the storyJonathan the giant tortoise lives on St Helena and was already fully grown when he was photographed in 1886. Guinness World Records says he was hatched around 1832. We explain his life by year, what he eats and why he may be older than the record says.
Read the storyCooperative Governance Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa says small parties will not be allowed to lead councils, and parties in the national unity government are eyeing hung metros. We explain the numbers on hung councils, who has run what since 2021, and why a new study says leaving out the biggest party backfires.
Read the storyEskom has asked private firms to apply as partners for up to 6 GW of solar, battery and wind projects. BusinessTech says that is enough to cover six stages of load shedding. We lay out the dates, the sizes and what is still missing, including a price.
Read the storyOn 5 October, federal agents raided a protest camp in Arizona and a cottonwood tree estimated at up to 250 years old was cut down. Activists say it was the last of four "grandmother" trees. Here is who was in it, how old it was and what happens next.
Read the storyAround 5,000 years ago, Egypt's first kings were laid in the desert at Abydos with dozens of people buried around them. Now a forensic look at 46 of their skulls shows that 18 had been hit hard enough to die. Here is what the cracks say, and what they still do not.
Read the storyDeep inside the Vatican sits an archive with 85 kilometres of shelves, about 53 miles. It holds twelve centuries of letters, trial records and secrets, and only approved scholars get in. People have wondered for 400 years what is on those shelves. Here is what we know, and what we still do not.
Read the storyA Roman ship sank off Turkey about 2,100 years ago with a cargo of 6,511 plates, bowls and trays. Archaeologists say the pieces came up intact, packed in clay inside wooden crates. The pottery comes from a town the Roman writer Cicero praised in a letter. Here is how a dinner set outlived an empire.
Read the storyA new count puts the giant tortoises of Aldabra at around 180,000, the biggest number ever recorded for the species. That is more than the number of people in the whole of Seychelles. A hundred years ago, hunters had left fewer than 1,000. Here is how scientists counted animals that hide, and what they found.
Read the storyFrom May to September, hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers slept on the pavement outside Durban's Home Affairs refugee office. Most had legal papers. A post said 41 of the children were under four. We lay out the dated timeline, the offer they were given, and why about 100 said no.
Read the storyEskom has doubled its profit to R30.3 billion. It has also sold less electricity than in any year since at least 2008, down almost 21%. We put the numbers side by side, show where the customers went, and explain who still owes Eskom R111.6 billion.
Read the storyIn 1902 hundreds of Boers left South Africa for Patagonia rather than live under British rule. More than a century later, a few dozen elderly people still speak the Afrikaans they carried with them, and it sounds like nobody else's.
Read the storySouth African farmer Leon Lotz lost his father-in-law to a farm attack in 2010, and later his wife. His story has reignited the fight over farm violence, and over who is counting.
Read the storyA murder investigation, a jungle escape, a faked heart attack and two runs for president. Most of the legend is true. Some of it he made up himself.
Read the storyScientists pooled more than 50 studies and found coffee drinkers stayed healthier for longer. When you drink it may matter even more than how much.
Read the storyCalifornia, central Chile, the Mediterranean, the Western Cape and southern Australia share one rare climate. If AI makes work optional, money may flood there.
Read the storyA British psychologist spent ten years studying lucky and unlucky people. The difference wasn't fate. It was a handful of habits anyone can copy.
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