South Africa is increasingly tempering liberal economic policies based on the Washington Consensus with a state-led growth model that draws its inspiration from a very different capital — Beijing. President Thabo Mbeki’s policy agenda, which he assesses in his State of the Nation speech on Friday, is being shaped by the high-growth, government-led Chinese model.

Jimmy Smith, the Philadelphia-born Hammond organ pioneer, who has died aged 76, generally approached his performances like a man who was certain he was in showbusiness, rather than art. Smith’s gigs regularly involved plenty of stagey gesticulation, badinage with audiences, and mopping his brow with towels.

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, dismissed three security commanders on Thursday after a Hamas mortar barrage of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, just two days after the ceasefire declaration. In response, the Israeli government called off a meeting with senior Palestinians to discuss an array of confidence-building measures.

The South African government is still in denial over the scale of the Aids crisis, it is alleged on Friday following revelations that the true death toll is three times the official figures. Researchers backed by the South African Medical Research Council have discovered that most Aids deaths are misclassified because of the stigma attached to the disease.

The White House faced fresh accusations of a clandestine propaganda campaign on Thursday after it emerged it granted regular access to a right-wing blogger with a habit of asking President George Bush easy questions. Jeff Gannon aroused reporters’ suspicions after posing ideologically loaded questions.

It can probably lay claim to being the world’s messiest piece of modern art. Visitors to the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra’s exhibition in the German city of Hannover are confronted with two rooms full of mud. The project, called Haus im Schlamm, or house in the mud, involves 400 tonnes of mud, spread on the floor and walls.