In the open fields around Caserta, north of Naples, large herds of buffalo graze on lush grass, and tobacco plants tower along the roadsides. On the face of it these fertile, sun-baked Italian plains look like ideal farmland, but the soil here hides a poisonous secret.

United States investigators preparing war crimes trials against Saddam Hussein and his deputies have uncovered the bodies of hundreds of Kurdish men, women and children in the first forensic exhumation of a mass grave in Iraq. The grave site, in Hatra, near the ancient city of Nineveh, is thought to hold the bodies of several thousand Kurds in nine separate trenches.

Do you know that some products you are buying are fitting with miniature transmitters? From that "VIP membership" card for a clothing store in your wallet or purse, to razor blades and shirts — you are being spied on. And there is a slow but increasingly vocal movement growing to force companies to ‘fess up to using them to track consumers.