Daniel Ortega led a rogue state before rogue states were invented. As chief engineer of Nicaragua’s 1980s left-wing Sandinista revolution, he became Ronald Reagan’s favourite Central American whipping boy. The United States government conspired with so-called Contra rebels to overthrow him. He was eventually voted out of office in 1990, beaten by a US-backed candidate.

The death of al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Wednesday in Baquba, during a joint United States-Jordanian operation, was hailed as ”great news” on Thursday, but there were differing views on whether it would lead to a break in the violent insurgency that has wracked the Middle East nation.

The Bush administration stared down a new wave of international condemnation of Guantánamo on Sunday, dismissing the suicides by three inmates of the prison camp as a ”good PR move” on their part and an ”act of asymmetrical warfare”. The hard line from an administration official comes at a time of increasing international criticism at the handling of terror suspects at Guantánamo.

Twenty-five years after the first Aids cases were reported, there is no sign of a halt to the pandemic which is likely to spread to every corner of the globe, the head of the United Nations’s Aids agency has said.