Michael Jackson has been taped making overtly anti-Semitic remarks during a phone call, describing Jews as ”leeches” that conspired to leave him ”penniless”. ”They suck,” said Jackson. ”I’m so tired of it … they start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money. It’s a conspiracy. Jews do it on purpose.”

Western aid and civil society groups said on Wednesday they faced being closed down after Russia’s Parliament passed a Bill restricting foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The Duma, whose 450 members rarely defy the Kremlin, voted 370 to 18 for the Bill, which would impose curbs on western activists and aid groups.

When Nihal Abdul-Hamid was a student at Cairo’s al-Azhar university she told few friends she had joined the Muslim Brotherhood, the influential Islamist group outlawed by Egypt’s government. It was a time of crackdowns, and arrests of Islamic sympathisers were widespread. ”It was very dangerous, it was completely secret,” she said.

The United States on Wednesday threatened to block a record-breaking arms deal under which Spain would sell ships and aircraft to Venezuela, in another sign of increasingly fraught relations between the Bush administration and the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez.