Iraqis defied violence and calls for a boycott to cast ballots in Iraq’s first free election in half a century on Sunday. Insurgents seeking to wreck the vote struck polling stations with a string of suicide bombings and mortar volleys, killing at least 44 people, including nine attackers.

Wayne Rooney scored two spectacular goals as holders Manchester United reached the fifth round of the FA Cup on a day when the giants of the Premiership hammered home their authority in the world’s oldest cup competition. Rooney made it four goals in five games to seal an emphatic 3-0 victory for United over Middlesbrough at Old Trafford.

The Vatican again on Saturday strongly condemned same-sex marriages as well as states which have legalised the practice, during an audience between Pope John Paul II and members of the Holy See’s top appeals court. ”Homosexual unions and co-habitation cannot be considered as marriages,” said Cardinal Antoni Stankiewicz.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is going to be a busy man this year as far as Africa is concerned. Reports indicate that the court could begin trying those accused of perpetrating atrocities in the conflict between Uganda’s government and rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army this year.

After Big Brother and Jungle Camp, Germans can tune in to a TV reality show this week that breaks new ground in trashiness … Sperm Race. Twelve men will compete against each other to see which one of them has the ”fastest” sperm.

The court house in Santa Maria looks like a fortress. Three lines of steel fencing, reinforced by sandbags, now guard its entrance. Twitchy security guards watch for suspicious characters as they supervise the erection of the metal walls. This is not some new anti-terrorist measure, nor preparations for the prosecution of a violent criminal gang. It is all for the King of Pop.

Thousands of Chinese mourners paid their last respects to purged Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang on Saturday in a tightly controlled memorial ceremony that underlined the government’s unease about the most prominent political victim of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

After the threats and the promises; after the bombs, assassinations and security clampdown; after the Sunni boycott and the Shi’ite religious call to vote, the day of Iraq’s first free elections in half a century dawned on Sunday over a country divided between fear and cautious optimism.