In Senegal, fashion is a challenge to class taboos, to machismo and to the prejudices of the outside world. And, as Peter Popham discovers, it is also a vigorous celebration of young Africa coming into its own

South Africa’s last white leader appears to defend policy of segregating racial groups

So far none of these rapidly growing parties has succeeded in forging a meaningful alliance with any of the others across national borders

Clip showing hockey star training for London 2012 'on Argentine soil' in Port Stanley provokes fury

Their killing power is immense and the surveillance possibilities are endless. Perhaps it's no wonder that the awesome potential of unmanned aerial vehicles is now being so energetically explored – from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the London Olympics.

Behind the death in China of a British businessman are murky tales of corruption and infighting that reach the top of the Communist party

Mr Cameron, it must be said, is no slouch: in announcing that sanctions on Burma are to be not lifted but "suspended", he succeeded in saving everyone's face while at the same time throwing almost everyone off balance.

An earthquake's force has the caprice of a wild, giant child, flattening this and pardoning that, as if according to some mad moral scheme. But the tsunami allows no such cosy anthropomorphism: nothing within its compass is spared. Everything, excepting only the peculiarly rugged, is demolished, dismembered, pulverised, atomised, by nothing more awesome than the power of water.

He may have picked an odd day to go – the first day of the water festival, which heralds Burma's new year, when citizens joyously drench each other from dawn to dusk – but when David Cameron visits the former British colony on Friday, becoming the first British leader to do so since Anthony Eden, he will have much to talk about.

Authorities have ignored everyday people as they struggle to get economies back on an even keel