It just seems like an ordinary headache at first, with maybe some joint pains and fever. It’s the sort of thing most people would expect to get over pretty quickly. But then, after a while, things get a lot more unpleasant. You fall asleep at the strangest times, you are confused, and you get intense pains and convulsions.

Iran’s Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on Wednesday and sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it of hiding behind the September 11 attacks to violate human rights.

Australian wine growers, grappling with a hangover of monumental proportions, plan to dump 7-million bottles of plonk after bingeing on red grapes. A surfeit of grapes causing a glut in the local market has left producers with an estimated 5-million litres of red wine stored in tanks that need to be emptied before the 2004 vintage is collected in late January.

The Inuit people of Canada and Alaska are launching a human rights case against the Bush administration claiming they face extinction because of global warming. By repudiating the Kyoto protocol and refusing to cut US carbon dioxide emissions, which make up 25% of the world’s total, Washington is violating their human rights, the Inuit claim.

Beatrice Mtetwa, a fearless Zimbabwean lawyer who has defended those arrested by President Robert Mugabe’s government, was named Human Rights Lawyer of the Year on Wednesday night. Judges at the Human Rights Awards in London paid tribute to her courage in fighting for human rights and press freedom in a dangerous country.