In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq’s Ba’athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks.

Pollution from the Prestige oil tanker spill is far worse and more widespread than the authorities have admitted, and marine scientists warned yesterday that fish and shellfish from Spain may be poisonous for up to 10 years.

They called him the sultan, the emir, the sheikh. He wore crocodile-skin loafers and fine silk suits, rode in chauffeur-driven limos and leather-upholstered private jets, ate in three-star restaurants, slept in five-star hotels, maintained servants and even boasted, on special occasions, a harem.

Jessica Lynch, the American soldier held for eight days during the Iraq war, was raped by her captors, according to an authorised biography due for publication next week.

For more than a year the Scorpions kept their investigation of Deputy President Jacob Zuma a tightly controlled secret. When, in November last year, I finally managed to lay my hands on court papers I had been seeking, I was unaware just how explosive they would be, writes Sam Sole, 2003 Vodacom Journalist of the Year.