The Jamaican prime minister, PJ Patterson, declared a state of emergency and pleaded with half a million people living in vulnerable areas to leave their homes as Hurricane Ivan raced towards the island on Friday night. ”Residents living near coastal areas must evacuate before it’s too late,” Patterson said in an address to the nation.

Periodically, St Mark’s Square in Venice is flooded by spring tides. On Friday night it was inundated with Hollywood executives and movie stars for the first film premiere to be staged in the historic piazza. Shark Tale features, perhaps appropriately, acquatic, cartoon characters, one of which speaks with a pronounced mafia growl. The voice belongs to the veteran actor Robert De Niro, many of whose defining roles have been as an Italian-American gangster.

There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this week sent the city’s police into a frenzy. ”They freaked out completely,” Lazar, their spokesperson, said happily.

Islamic militants in Iraq are strengthening their grip on the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, four months after American commanders struck a ceasefire deal that was supposed to pacify the city and return it to government control, residents said on Friday. Militants have imposed religious law on communities, issuing edicts and executing those accused of spying and even stealing.

The Democratic Alliance has called on Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula to take urgent steps to end the escapes from custody of awaiting-trial prisoners. Resources invested in investigating and arresting alleged criminals would be wasted if they escaped before standing trial, DA MP Roy Jankielsohn said in a statement on Thursday.

Briton Simon Mann, the alleged brains behind a plot to stage a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, was on Friday sentenced to seven years in jail by a Zimbabwe court for attempting to illegally purchase weapons. A group of 65 other suspected mercenaries was sentenced to 12 months in jail while the two men who flew a plane to Harare in March to pick up weapons were given 16-month jail sentences.