Barring a last-minute intervention by the courts, California will execute the third death-row prisoner in as many months at one minute past midnight on Monday. The planned lethal injection at San Quentin prison near San Francisco follows the rejection on Friday by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of a clemency petition on behalf of the murderer Michael Morales.

First came the outriders: two bare-chested boys riding pillion on a motorbike and waving tree branches in the air. Then the women whooped for joy and everyone surged forward as the dust-covered motorcade rumbled down the red dirt road. After two decades of one-party rule in Uganda, the arrival of the opposition leader Kizza Besigye was greeted like the first rain after a dry season.

Israel froze contacts with what it called the ”terrorist” Palestinian Authority on Sunday, and put a block on the transfer of funds, the day after the swearing in of a Hamas-dominated Parliament. ”Israel views the rise of Hamas as a dangerous milestone that turns the Palestinian Authority into a terrorist authority,” said the acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert.

The story has presented journalists with many ethical pitfalls, and the media have come in for a good deal of criticism. Most recently, Zuma hit at the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> for its report (December 2) that he told senior alliance leaders he had had consensual sex with the woman who has accused him, but denied raping her.