The British government knew about the alleged plot to overthrow the President of Equatorial Guinea at least five weeks before a group of mercenaries was arrested in March for planning the coup. In a dramatic admission, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, confirmed that the government had been ”informed” of the alleged coup plot ”in late January 2004”.

Ten years ago a pretty 17-year-old called Silvia Munguía was working as a movie extra when an impressively voluptuous woman appeared as if out of nowhere and offered her ”the body of a goddess”. A few days later in a backstreet clinic the woman, who turned out to be a man, took the skinny teenager’s gold jewellery and in return injected her buttocks, calves and thighs with several large syringes full of a transparent oily liquid.

The children are playing with their new guns. Short, stubby pistols with removable magazines, black sniper rifles with scopes, silver revolvers, AK47s. None is real, of course. They are all toys. It’s Eid, the Muslim holy festival, and the day after the end of Ramadan, the holy month. All the children in Qalandiya refugee camp have presents.

The full cost of the battle of Fallujah emerged on Saturday night as large numbers of wounded civilians were evacuated to hospitals in Baghdad, as insurgents stepped up retaliatory attacks in other cities. As the first Red Crescent aid convoy was allowed into Fallujah, Iraq’s Health Minister, Alaa Alwan, said ambulances had begun transferring a ”significant number” of injured civilians out of the battle zone.

Behind a barrage of tank and artillery fire, United States troops charged on Saturday into southern Fallujah, overrunning the final insurgent stronghold in the city after nearly a week of intense urban combat that has killed 24 Americans and more than 1 000 insurgents.

Kneeling in the sodden, charred remains of the primary school, Hari Boukameans took a Stanley knife to a melted computer. He twisted and he gouged — trying to recover the hard drive, hoping to salvage a little bit of the precious Dutch culture of live and let live from the flames of hatred that consumed his workplace.

Iraq’s government extended its security clampdown on Friday night, imposing new curfews as the United States military struggled to contain a spreading wave of militant attacks. It came as US troops in the assault on Fallujah were locked in heavy fighting in the Joulan district, which they had previously declared under control.

He did his best, but Arnold the would-be statesman could not quite shake off Arnie the film star. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, and a 57-strong entourage of business leaders flew into Tokyo earlier this week. He was, commentators noted, the first visiting politician to be greeted at the airport by crowds of screaming, camera-wielding fans.

Details of rapes and other atrocities against foreigners in Côte d’Ivoire began to emerge on Friday as thousands of expatriates continued to leave the West African state and African leaders moved to prevent the crisis from igniting the entire region.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=125477">Rapes, atrocities in Côte d’Ivoire</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=125415">Westerners plucked from chaos</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=125394">Côte d’Ivoire leaders in SA</a>

United States President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair committed themselves to seeking a viable Palestinian state on Friday, but only if the new leadership committed itself to democracy and the rule of law. Though Bush was lavish in his praise of Blair as a "statesman and a friend", and promised to commit some political "capital of the United States" to build a Palestinian state, the leaders’ statements were notably low on specifics.