Staff Reporter

It was an extraordinary end to a tragic operation. When Lance Corporal Matthew Ford was shot during an assault on a Taliban fortress last Monday, his comrades mounted a dramatic rescue mission that saw soldiers being strapped to the wings of helicopter gunships as they crossed a river under heavy enemy fire.

If you’re reading this on a packed, stalled train, late for work, eating a stale station bacon roll, imagine what life could have been like. If France and Britain had gone ahead with an audacious plan in the 1950s to merge the two countries, the train might have been on time, and faster, the croissants better, but then again, with Paris’s current unemployment problem, there might not have been a job to go to.

Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral de Camara boasted of his noble Portuguese lineage, but was not a happy man. As the illegitimate and unloved son of an aristocratic woman, he was rich but had few friends and no offspring of his own. So when it came to writing out his will almost 20 years ago, he asked a Portuguese notary for a copy of the Lisbon phone book and plucked out names at random.

Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira officially takes up the reins of the South African national side next week, and a momentous challenge awaits the World Cup-winning coach. It may seem obvious, but I believe Parreira’s success or failure as national coach will be determined by whether he can find a regular goal scorer.

In a few weeks’ time, coroner Richard McElrea, based in Christchurch, New Zealand, will produce a report that may resolve one of the strangest, and most baffling, deaths in the southern hemisphere: the poisoning of astrophysicist Rodney Marks at the South Pole.

Squatting, for so long a feature of cities proud of their "ultra-tolerant" reputation, is one of several key symbols of urban Dutch liberalism to come under attack in recent years. "It is all a symptom of a general movement back towards law and order in Dutch society and politics," said a respected Dutch commentator.

Somalia’s Islamist movement, whose leadership is accused by the United States of sheltering some of al-Qaeda’s most wanted operatives, sent a delegation on a fund-raising trip to Britain last year, the <i>Guardian</i> newspaper reported. The Islamic delegation received pledges of funding from members of Britain’s Somali diaspora.

Amir Peretz, the Israeli defence minister and leader of the Labour party, on Thursday appointed Israel’s first Arab Cabinet minister — and was accused of dealing a "lethal blow to Zionism" by right-wingers. Raleb Majadele was appointed minister for science and technology, but critics believe that Peretz made the appointment to ensure that Arab support him in a forthcoming leadership election.

The principal aim of the United States air strikes in southern Somalia appears to have been the elimination of three al-Qaeda suspects held responsible for the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The limited US operation was not part of the larger, Ethiopian-led military effort to topple the country’s Islamist movement and rescue Somalia’s pro-Western government — and runs the risk of undermining it.

Sleek video glasses that turn film viewing into a private affair went on view at the world’s biggest porn show on Wednesday, just after they were demonstrated down the road at the planet’s largest consumer electronics show. The video glasses connect to all of the latest video-playing devices

The Sudanese Presidency reaffirmed its acceptance on Wednesday of a United Nations presence in Darfur in a "technical, material and logistical capacity" and left the door open for further troop deployments. The statement appeared to contradict earlier comments by President Omar al-Beshir to the press that only "funding" was needed.

The cash-strapped Zimbabwe government will fork out hundreds of thousands of United States dollars to pay Pakistani military experts to help train and equip its army, which has been weakened by mass resignations. Safdara Hayat, the first secretary at the Pakistani embassy in Harare, confirmed the arrival of the first four senior military experts from the Asian country.

Rarely in the long line of celebrities who have fallen on their luck can there have been anything quite so publicly humiliating as Tuesday’s sale of Whitney Houston’s knickers. The lot, auctioned off in New Jersey as part of a warehouse-full of musty clothes, instruments and touring stage sets, included hundreds of items bought from the chain store TJ Maxx.

Widespread use of GM crops remains limited worldwide, even as growing weed and pest issues are forcing farmers to use ever greater amounts of pesticides.More than 70% of large-scale GM planting is still limited to the United States and Argentina, according to a new report released on Tuesday by Friends of the Earth International.