Jay Bakker sits on the dark nightclub stage, chomping on a cigar, his head wreathed in pale blue smoke. His arms are covered in thick tattoos, black discs stretch his ear lobes and a silver ring pierces his lower lip. But Bakker is no rock star and the book in front of him is a Bible. He’s preparing to preach.

Marcello Burricks grew up fast in Cape Town’s tough Slangkop township. Stabbed in a fight at eight, by 14 he had a criminal record for assaulting a teacher. Golden Mgedeza came from an equally rough area, Johannesburg’s Kwathema township, where he dodged bullets from gangster gun battles at school.

Prayers were just ending at the al-Baya’ mosque in west Baghdad on Friday when the two young men stepped from a minibus taxi and approached the entrance. They wore black, like the hundreds of worshippers gathered inside and outside, but something was wrong.

It was 1.22am last Monday on the frozen Alaskan island of Kodiak when the missile flared upwards into the night sky. As the rocket’s flames disappeared into darkness, United States military chiefs waited with baited breath to see if their multibillion dollar ”Son of Star Wars” defence shield would work.

South Africa’s mortality rate has jumped by 59% in six years, fuelled by the HIV/Aids epidemic, according to new figures published this weekend by the country’s central statistical office. The report, which has been mired in political controversy even before its publication, says women have represented the biggest increase, while more adults of both sexes now are dying than in 1997.