Ian Traynor

Mali is the world’s fifth-poorest country and an estimated four million of its 12-million population are abroad.

Turkey is engaged in a bold attempt to rewrite the basis for Islamic sharia law while reinterpreting the Qur’an for the modern age. The exercise in reforming Islamic jurisprudence is being seen as an attempt to establish a 21st-century form of Islam, fusing Muslim beliefs and tradition with European and Western philosophy.

When Condoleezza Rice left the Middle­ East recently sizing up the chances of relaunching an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, her first port of call was not Downing Street. And it certainly was not Paris. Rather, the United States secretary of state headed for the gleaming palace of steel, glass and concrete that is the German chancellery at the heart of the new Berlin to swap notes with Angela Merkel.

Medinfo, the medical information consultancy, has issued a warning to people travelling to Zimbabwe after deaths due to cholera were confirmed by the local government. Cholera has claimed the lives of 24 people in Zimbabwe in the past month.

George W Bush last week committed the US to a new era of unprecedented partnership with Russia as he and Vladimir Putin signed a treaty scrapping two-thirds of their long-range nuclear warheads and delivered a joint declaration redefining relations between them.