First the pop stars sang for aid to Africa, and now an illustrious group of authors are helping victims of Aids in the continent. Twenty-one writers, including five Nobel prize winners, have produced an anthology to raise money for a charity helping those with Aids and HIV in Southern Africa.

Clara Petacci, Benito Mussolini’s lover, took turns with her sister in the bed of Italy’s wartime dictator, according to a newly released account by one of those closest to him. Immediately after the World War II, Ercole Boratto, Mussolini’s chauffeur from 1922 to 1943, wrote up his recollections of the Duce at the request of United States intelligence.

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin. The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he would have shot her even if she had been three years old.

Colombian rebels plotted to assassinate George Bush during his brief stopover in the port of Cartagena last week, according to the country’s defence minister. Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters: ”We knew that various members of Farc [the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] had been instructed to attack the US president.”

European commissioner Peter Mandelson on Sunday denied being involved in discussions over the alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea as the Conservatives began to put pressure on the British government over what it knew and when. ”I have never undertaken to deal with it in relation to the British government in any way, shape or form,” Mandelson said in a statement on Sunday.

The British government on Sunday night entered the debate over England’s controversial cricket tour to Zimbabwe with Peter Hain, the leader of the Commons, calling it a ”propaganda victory” for President Robert Mugabe. As the first of four one-day internationals ended with an England win in Harare on Sunday, Hain said the sport’s governing body should have complied with the players’ wishes.

Ukraine’s electoral crisis threatened to split the country in two on Sunday night when leaders in the east voted to hold a referendum on regional autonomy, as the government ruled out the use of force to solve the week-long standoff. The Donetsk regional council voted 164-1 to hold the referendum this coming Sunday on giving the region the status of a republic within Ukraine.

This was a victorious year for women environmentalists in Africa. The highlight was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai in October, while on the same day, two of <i>Earthyear</i>’s journalists were fêted at the annual SAB Environmental Journalists of the Year Awards.