American air strikes have killed more than 70 people in western Iraq, including dozens of women and children, witnesses said on Monday. The United States military confirmed that warplanes and helicopters had fired missiles and killed more than 70 people, but said the dead were insurgents engaged in operations.

A meeting between the foreign ministers of China and Japan was abruptly cancelled on Monday after the Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, paid tribute to Japan’s war dead at a nationalist Shinto shrine, drawing an angry response from China and South Korea.

At the northern edge of Jerusalem, three towering concrete walls are converging around a rapidly built maze of cages, turnstiles and bomb-proof rooms. The Israeli military built the crossing without fanfare over recent months, along with other similar posts along the length of the vast new ”security barrier” that is enveloping Jerusalem.

More than 100 African migrants detained by Moroccan police as they tried to get into the Spanish enclave of Melilla have been rescued after being dumped in the middle of the Sahara desert, according to Spanish media reports. The migrants said they had been robbed of their money by Moroccan police and then bussed into the desert.

Leading South African companies are world beaters in the profit stakes. The Cabinet was recently handed a document by the Department Trade and Industry, which calls for new interventions, including by the competition authorities, to lower prices charged by top corporations.

Absa’s claim that it had no knowledge of irregular lending practices at its Zimbabwe associate, the Jewel Bank, is ”nonsense”, says a senior employee formerly stationed at the Harare bank. In August, reports revealed that the Jewel Bank, in which Absa has a 25% stake, had helped Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation acquire a stake in two privately owned newspapers.