Britain is pressing to use the combined weight of the European Union’s ”big three” countries to put pressure on Syria over weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and Iraq, the Guardian has learned.

Attacks on elderly women accused of being witches who bring bad luck are increasing in South Africa as a result of spreading tension, jealousy and mistrust, researchers say in a report made public on Monday.

Nuclear inspectors are to travel to Libya, perhaps as early as the weekend, to begin dismantling Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s covert nuclear bomb project. Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is to leave for Libya within days, escorted by inspectors, to start a long-term regime of verifying the African country’s nuclear programmes.

When, at dawn on March 20 the US and its British ally went to war against Iraq, they were intervening in the region on such a scale that Arabs everywhere compared the invasion, in its potential geopolitical significance, to that seminal upheaval of the last century: the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

Baby Tshepang’s rape in October 2001 stirred the world. In that act and in the little one’s horror, much about the country became evident: the mental and physical desperation of hopeless communities like Louisvale where she was raped and the numbers of other Tshepangs across the country. Where is Tshepang now and where are we?