Cape Town Archbishop Ndungane Njongonkulu has challenged a statement by a group of conservative evangelical archbishops from Africa, Asia and Australia who are warning of a schism in the church over homosexuality if a US church tries to confirm a gay bishop.

The United States authorities in Iraq were last night wrestling with the thorny problem of how to dispose of the bullet-riddled bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein after their ”touched up” corpses were shown off to the world yesterday.

President George Bush hosted a Palestinian prime minister at the White House for the first time in his presidency yesterday in a visit designed to quicken a sluggish peace process and shore up the authority of his guest

The Aids Healthcare Foundation, the largest non-governmental supplier of Aids treatment to patients in the United States, won the first round of a legal battle yesterday to break GlaxoSmithKline’s hold over the patent on AZT, the first Aids drug.

Jayson Blair, the reporter whose invented sources and bogus datelines plunged the New York Times into crisis this year, is back at work. He has been hired by Esquire magazine in New York to write about another journalist who invented his material.

George Bush yesterday bowed to international pressure and deployed US troops to the coast of Liberia in support of a west African peacekeeping mission in the war-torn country.

A looming crisis in Johannesburg’s emergency services appears to have been averted this week, after an order for the provision of 48 new ambulances was signed on Thursday by the Gauteng government and the city council.

South Africa is facing the first nationwide mine strike since 1987 after pay talks broke down this week. The National Union of Mineworkers stands fast on its demand for a minimum wage of R2 000.