South Africa became the first and only Tri-nations country to make the semi-finals, but not before they were looking down the barrel at the mother of all shocks after the Saturday surprises.

Fiji looked out of it at 20-6 down midway through the second-half having been reduced to 14 men for 10 minutes, but they stunned the new tournament favourites with two tries in as many minutes to draw level and had two outstanding chances to take the lead, denied by inches.

The Springboks reasserted themselves in the final minutes, but Fiji were loudly cheered as they did a lap of honour at the end having shown that some of the reaction in Wales last weekend following the defeat to the islanders in Nantes had been out of proportion.

Percy Montgomery missed a third-minute penalty as Fiji started strongly, winning their first two line-outs and twisting a South African scrum, but the Springboks took the lead on eight minutes.

Fiji were penalised for using their hands in a ruck while off their feet and Francois Steyn landed the kick from just inside his own half. Steyn then had a reprieve after his clearance kick was charged down by Kameli Ratuvou in the South Africa 25. Akapusi Qera picked up and fed Sunia Koto, but the hooker knocked on as he contemplated passing in the tackle 10 yards out.

South Africa’s tactics were to play for territory, but they found themselves embroiled in a loose game. They extended their lead in a conventional way: they kicked a penalty to touch, Bakkies Botha took the line-out and after a couple of forward charges, the ball was moved left where Jaque Fourie crossed in the corner. Montgomery found the post for the second time with his conversion.

Fiji did not crumple, cheered on by the neutrals in the large crowd, but they were displeasing the referee Alan Lewis at the breakdown. A promising attack ended when the lock Kele Leawere was penalised for joining a ruck from the side, but it was no more than his opposite number Victor Matfield had done without reproach 10 minutes earlier.

The Springboks were missing tackles with the No 8 Sisa Koyamaibole, the centre Seru Rabeni and Koto making inroads, but their covering defence held firm and Fiji too often lost the ball forcing the pass in contact. They needed points after enjoying a spell of pressure and they arrived when the fly-half Seremaia Bai converted a 30th-minute penalty.

Fiji’s scrum was holding up as they opted for quick delivery but their power was in their tackling. One South African move ended yards from the Fiji line when their back rowers Schalk Burger and Danie Rossouw were flattened in quick succession.

South Africa maintained their position and, after winning a penalty, kicked for a line-out which Victor Matfield seized to set in train a rumble which ended with skipper John Smith being shoved over the line. Montgomery’s kick was again off target.

Back came Fiji again and they ended the opening period on attack, failing to cash in after stealing a South Africa line-out in a prime position. They knocked on with the defence all over the place and had to settle for a 13-3 interval deficit.

Fiji took three minutes of the second period to double their tally after South Africa recklessly threw the ball around in their own 25. Bryan Habana saw an opening, slipped and was penalised for not releasing the ball with Bai claiming the three points.

Bai then made a clean break through the midfield and found Mosese Raulini who charged through Habana before being stopped 10 yards from the line. Fiji moved the ball left but Vilimoni Delasau took his eye off it. South Africa moved upfield and the wing JP Pietersen finished off a flowing move.

It cost Fiji more than seven points because the centre Seru Rabeni was sent to the sin-bin for a dangerous challenge on Butch James, but the islanders found their best form in his absence and rocked South Africa with two tries in two minutes.

The wing Vilimoni Delasau scored the first. Nothing appeared to be on when he received the ball on the left wing on halfway. He kicked right-footed to the line and appeared to have overdone it, only for the ball to hold up on the bounce and Delasau easily won the race to the touchdown.

The try was only awarded after consultation with the television referee Nigel Owens who was looking at his monitors a minute later after Bai ran the kick-off from his own 25. Norman Ligairi took the ball on before Raulini cut a superb angle.

The scrum-half looked as if he would make it to the line, but realised his legs were giving out and off-loaded to the Biarritz wing Sireli Bobo who had the strength to get through two tackles for Bai to again add the extras and bring his side level.

South Africa were rocking but Montgomery steadied them with a penalty before Fiji came storming back. Replacement prop Jone Railomo was an inch short of the line after a forward drive and Koto knocked on before lock Ifereimi Rawaqa tried to force his way over in the corner only to fail to ground the ball after a challenge by Pietersen.

Fiji were looking the more likely winners, but James kicked his side 60 yards downfield into Fiji’s 25. Koto was called up for a crooked throw and South Africa drove a maul from the resulting scrum which ended with Juan Smith crossing for Montgomery to convert.

With a 10-point lead, South Africa closed the game out. Burger should have scored from a scrum five but knocked the ball on as he went to pick up and scrum-half Fourie du Preez also lost control a yard out, but the Springboks wound down the clock with a series of scrums which ended with James scoring his side’s fourth try to give the scoreboard a false look. The score was greeted with jeers with the cheers left for Fiji.

It is the episode of Goodness Gracious Me that everyone remembers. A group of drunk Indians decide to go for an “English” at the end of an evening’s drinking in Mumbai. One demands “the blandest thing on the menu”, the women cluck over the waiter’s “lovely pasty skin” and the head of the table orders 24 plates of chips, ignoring well-meaning advice that “you might have ordered too much”. The sketch endures not just because it puts the post-pub curry crowd bang to rights, but also because of its utter preposterousness: what Indian in their right mind would choose an overcooked carvery over a feast of brightly coloured, piquant delights?

Yet despite Indians nursing a well-deserved feeling of culinary superiority, you would be wrong to assume that this self-satisfaction means that in India everyone just eats Indian. Likewise Chinese in China, Thai in Thailand and just about everywhere else the world over. From Bangkok to Brest, Beijing to Barcelona, gastronomic globalisation - led depressingly by McDonald’s, with its 26,500 branches in 119 countries - has meant that few culinary cultures are hermetically sealed.

In India, people often go for a Chinese. Or rather, an Indianised version of Chinese that some call Chindian. Dishes tend to be flavoured with spices not normally found in Chinese cuisine, such as cumin, coriander and turmeric. Given India’s large vegetarian population, paneer, cauliflower and potato are also far more prevalent, along with garlic, ginger and chillis. Popular Chindian dishes include Manchurian chicken, which has a sweet and salty brown sauce, various Sichuan recipes and Hakka noodles. Narrow and flat, almost square in shape, Hakka noodles are made with durum wheat, with or without eggs. They are stir-fried with vegetables and mixed with a hot, vinegar-based sauce, and sold from dhabas (roadside stalls). The name comes from the Hakka people, the tribe of Chinese who first moved to Calcutta in the late 1700s. There is still a large Chinatown in Calcutta today.

“Indo-Chinese is very popular with middle- and upper-class Indians,” says Tishani Doshi, a writer and dancer based in Madras. Much to her amusement, Doshi recently had her first Indian meal in Britain and was surprised not to have encountered a single dish she had ever eaten in India. “It’s probably how a Chinese person would feel eating at a Chinese restaurant in India,” she says. “I couldn’t believe how heavy the ‘Indian’ food was in London, and it reminded me of the feeling I often get when I go for a Chinese back home: completely stuffed and slightly bloated. I can’t imagine that Chinese people regularly eat anything that heavy.”

So if the Indians eat Chinese, what about the Chinese? Given China’s size and population (1.3 billion people at the last count), tastes obviously vary hugely from province to province. Alex Lee is an American-born Chinese who lives in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China. He says that the most popular restaurants are American chains such as KFC and McDonald’s - but with a twist. “They have changed the menus,” he says, “to accommodate Chinese tastes. You will have things like a seared Xinjiang spiced chicken sandwich from McDonald’s or a fried chicken burrito а la Peking duck style, with scallions and hoisin.”

Wine consultant Fongyee Walker lives in Beijing and says China is so vast that, especially for the less well-off, “foreign” simply means food from another province. “Here in Beijing, the poorer city residents will eat such ‘foreign food’ as Sichuan snack food,” she says, adding that food snobs in the city like to complain that the Sichuan influence has wrecked the food in northern China. “Also popular are the low-level Xinjiang snacks - such as sticky dried fruit cake and lamb kebabs and nang bread - which come from the far west but are so popular they’re almost part of the local scene.”

But, she says, pizza is widely eaten in China, adding that even her staunchly traditional ayi (maid) occasionally dines at Pizza Hut. “The pizza isn’t what you would call a real Italian style - they definitely prefer the deep-pan approach,” she says. Walker recently met a woman who moved to Beijing from Italy 20 years ago and runs an Italian cheese factory called Ji Kang Food in the outskirts of the city.

Italian cuisine also goes down well in Japan. A survey in Japan-guide.com found that the majority of respondents’ (33%) favourite restaurant meal was Italian, compared with just 21% saying sushi. And the genre breakdown at a restaurant review website such as Asku, which covers eateries all over the country, shows just how the Italians, along with the Chinese, are dominating the culinary scene. In Tokyo 2,681 Chinese restaurants are listed, alongside 2,169 Italian, plus some 491 classed as “spaghetti/pizza” restaurants.

Pizza, it would seem, is loved almost the world over. But what do the Italians themselves eat when they venture away from their own cuisine? The stereotype is that they are conservative where food is concerned and that anyone above the age of about 30 views foreign food - which may mean dishes from a neighbouring town or just anything not cooked by their mamma - with the deepest possible suspicion.

Rome-based food writer Maureen B Fant says that while this is of course a sweeping generalisation, it remains largely true. “I grew up in New York, and we used to say I feel like Lebanese, or I feel like Chinese, or let’s see what that Persian place is like,” she says. “You don’t get that here. The few ‘ethnic’ places still tend to be either greatly diluted for Italian tastes, or holes in the wall that cater for new immigrants.” However, exotic ingredients are creeping into the more creative kitchens, she says, “And there definitely are more exotic places than there used to be. But if we’re talking about mainstream trattorias and restaurants, when you want a change from the local fare, you’re still (for now) more likely to think Sicily or Sardinia than Asia.”

This sort of culinary exclusivity is often associated with France, but according to recent research, the favourite dish of the French is not coq au vin, escargots or even steak-frites, but couscous. A survey commissioned by the French weekly magazine VSD asked 960 people to arrange a series of dishes in order of preference. Though the list was overwhelmingly composed of traditional French dishes, such as bœuf bourgignon, bouillabaisse and beef tartare, couscous came out top.

Not only that, but the dish has become a symbol of modern, multicultural France - indeed a conservative politician once described the wave of North African immigration as “conquest by couscous”. Nigh on every town in France has at least one couscous restaurant, where immigrants and locals join to eat cheap bowls of the stuff.

Missing from all this culinary cross-pollination is British food. But there are some brave souls who are determined to take some of our national dishes international. And one of the most ambitious must be Manju Malhi, who grew up in London and, from next month, will be presenting a cookery series on British food, such as shepherd’s pie and bangers and mash, for India’s largest commercial television channel. “Curry has become so popular in Britain, I thought I’d swap it around,” she said recently. “I cannot name one English restaurant in Delhi and I wondered, why so? People here think that English food is bland with meat and nothing else. I am trying to show them that there is good cooking in the UK as well.”.

NEW YORK: In late July, Charles Prince 3rd began daily meetings with about 10 of Citigroups highest-ranking executives in his cherry-paneled library to discuss financial threats looming over the worlds largest bank.

Prince had recently presided over Citigroups most profitable quarter since he became chief executive four years earlier, but the banks brain trust was worried.

To steel itself against potential losses, Citigroup had already squirreled away an extra $2.52 billion in reserves in the quarter.

Still, a housing and credit meltdown was ravaging the financial markets, and he wanted to know how bad the damage to Citigroup might be - and if there were opportunities to be seized.

Taking part in these meetings was Robert Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury secretary and the chairman of the banks executive committee, who was both an influential adviser and one of Princes strongest advocates on the Citigroup board. The banks finance and operations chiefs were also at the meetings, as were the co-heads of its investment bank.

“This was sudden and steep,” said Robert Druskin, Citigroups chief operating officer, referring to the market downturn. “We had to make sure that all the parts of the company were on the same page.”

As the weeks wore on, Citigroups problems grew more serious.

Prices of subprime mortgage bonds and other complex securities were deteriorating rapidly, sweeping up Citigroup and most of its competitors into a financial crisis.

On Aug. 8, a day after the U.S. Federal Reserve Board decided against lowering interest rates, Rubin made a phone call to Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, to compliment him on the decision, according to a person familiar with the call.

Although Rubins interactions with U.S. regulators have drawn scrutiny in the past, this person said that Rubin acted “on his own behalf and not on behalf of Citigroup.” This person also said Rubin made the call out of concern that a rate cut might encourage reckless behavior on Wall Street.

As Citigroups longtime bond-trading engine continued to sputter, its lending units faced swaths of souring mortgages. The bank was on the hook for billions of dollars worth of huge buyout loans that few investors wanted, and its core consumer banking business was strained.

It also became increasingly clear that Prince, for the fifth time since taking the reins as chief executive, would have to disclose a major problem to his board.

Last Monday, the dimensions of the bad news became public: Citigroup warned that it planned to take a $5.9 billion write-down in the third quarter, a move that would cause its profit to plunge about 60 percent.

Although investors bid up Citigroups stock price after the announcement, on the thinking that the worst might be over, the news drove Prince into yet another crisis during what has been an unusually tumultuous tenure. It has raised fresh doubts among analysts and shareholders about whether Prince, a well-regarded corporate lawyer with little previous operating experience as a banker, is dexterous enough to manage a complex global enterprise like Citigroup.

“The third quarter is penance for previous sins, but the sins happened under his watch,” said Meredith Whitney, a banking analyst at CIBC World Markets. “Under his watch, reserves got bled down to precarious levels. Under his watch, the firm made very aggressive loans. Under his watch, the firm delved into subprime mortgage assets.”

Of course, Prince does not fly solo at Citigroup. In addition to counting on Rubins steady hand, Prince gets advice from a stable of managers who are stewards of the banks risk-management practices.

The huge earnings hit also calls into question whether Citigroups vaunted diversified banking mode, which Prince inherited from his predecessor and mentor, Sanford Weill, can actually offset profit disruptions in one area with gains in another when unexpected financial crises emerge.

Even so, the hurdles at Citigroup are of the moment, and Prince is the man in charge. “I dont think there is a doubt where the accountability lies: with the boss,” Whitney said.

No one inside or outside Citigroup has suggested that he will step down immediately - although in the current, high-stakes environment on Wall Street, analysts say that an ouster cannot be ruled out. Although Prince declined to be interviewed, a prominent Citigroup director says that Princes job is entirely secure.

“Chuck is doing a good job, and I think he has been working in an extraordinarily complex situation through difficult markets,” said Richard Parsons, the chief executive of Time Warner and chairman of Citigroups personnel and compensation committee. “Now is not the time to be saying, Do we change course, or do we change captains? “