The press ombudsman has thrown out Aids denialist Anthony Brink’s complaint against the Mail & Guardian alleging that the newspaper had implied he was mentally ill. Brink is the policy adviser at the Dr Rath Foundation and a former member of President Thabo Mbeki’s advisory panel on HIV/Aids.

It is every student’s worst nightmare. Having finally escaped from home, moved into student digs and thrown up at freshers’ fair, the last thing you need is your mum and dad strolling on to campus. But in the German city of Münster hundreds of parents have been invited to descend on the university and check up on what their sons and daughters are doing.

Seven-year-old Borik Rubayev has the full tan and puppy fat of Beslan’s surviving children, sugared into forgetting after a year in which money has poured into their town from a contrite government and sympathetic world. He tears around his aunt’s flat, fixing a sniper stand and laser sights to his expensive new toy, a replica of the gun Russian special forces used in the botched rescue attempt.

Seven people, including four children, died on Monday night when flames swept through a rundown building squatted by African families. It was the second unexplained blaze in three days to hit a block housing immigrants in Paris, prompting fears of deliberate attacks.

Binyamin Netanyahu launched a bid to unseat the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, on Tuesday in a challenge that threatens to split the ruling party and cause a radical realignment of Israeli politics. Netanyahu said he will seek the leadership of the ruling Likud party ahead of a general election next year.

Hundreds of people were feared to have died in Hurricane Katrina as more bodies washed up in United States Gulf coast cities on Tuesday in the aftermath one of the worst natural disasters the US has faced in decades. In New Orleans, those who survived the initial impact of the hurricane faced new dangers on Wednesday as its dykes gave way under the pressure of the storm surge.