It is one of the most famous properties in Hollywood history. A dark, spooky house on a hill overlooking a shabby motel. The lure of the Bates Motel and the house from Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho has brought thousands of visitors to the site since Janet Leigh first stopped off for a quick shower in the 1960 film.

After years of waging a low-key campaign to be recognised as black under South Africa’s laws of redress, local Chinese are squaring up to the government in the High Court. The Chinese Association of South Africa (Casa) wants to seek a declaratory order for South African Chinese to be treated as coloured and benefit from the Employment Equity Act and the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act.

The formalisation of a proposal for ANC president Thabo Mbeki to serve a third term as the party’s president, and the public condemnation of his deputy and aspirant successor, Jacob Zuma, by an ANC provincial chairperson marks the intensification of the succession battle in a direction that should worry Zuma.

Zanu-PF’s succession battle — once confined behind closed doors — is fast becoming a public brawl being fought in the courts, reflecting the former liberation movement’s failure to handle the issue and giving President Robert Mugabe enough reason to hang on to power.

The European commission’s German vice-president, Günter Verheugen, was battling to save his reputation on Thursday after photographs emerged of him relaxing on the beach with his female chief of staff wearing just a baseball cap. Verheugen (62) has dismissed as "pure slander" allegations that he had been having a relationship with his chief of Cabinet, Petra Erler (48).

United Nations aid agencies launched their biggest appeal for funding to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories on Thursday, asking for $453-million for next year and warning of a weakening in the Palestinians’ ability to govern.

On the lawn of the South African presidency in 2003, US President George W Bush held out his arm to Thabo Mbeki and said: "This is our point man." When Mbeki meets Bush in Washington on Friday will he still warrant this sporting honorific from Bush? Does he still want it? Analysts say that neither leader has much choice.