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Times Online news reporter Hannah Strange is spending a week in Sierra Leone, an African country still racked by the aftermath of a brutal civil war in which tens of thousands were killed and a third of its total population displaced. Here is the first of her daily diary entries:
Six years on, the scars of the civil war that brought Sierra Leone to its knees have faded little. Freetown, once known as the Athens of West Africa, remains little more than a giant slum, a mass of makeshift shacks and crumbling concrete blocks sprawling over the hills that rise steeply from the shoreline.
The poverty is overwhelming: from the overcrowded, rusting boat that is now the only way of travelling from the international airport at Lungi to the capital since the alternative helicopter plummeted into the Atlantic along with the Togolese sports minister several months ago, to the sleeping bodies that line the city streets as bare market stalls sell nothing by candlelight.
The capital is a city – if it can truly be classified as that – of destitution, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and religion, the latter as visceral as the humid, tropical heat. The streets are an alphabetic mish-mash of international aid agencies - the WHO, the UN, CARE, Christian Aid – almost every other vehicle is a white jeep. The few other roadworthy cars belong to government ministers.
The cars also belong to the city’s other powerful grouping, the entrepreneurial preachers who feed on the city’s despair. For, saving souls is big business in Sierra Leone. A country with a majority Muslim population of 55 per cent, Christianity has been growing since before the civil war, between 1991 and 2002, but in its wake has recruited thousands of new converts, swelling to a point where any visitor would assume it was the dominant religion.
Freetown and much of the countryside is dotted with half-finished churches as missions from the United States descend en masse to bring relief – and faith – to the impoverished. On the boat from Lunghi to Freetown, I meet a group from the Jefferson Baptist Church in Oregon who are on their way to build their eighteenth church in the country; when they finish they plan to build more. The attached schools are attracting thousands of families drawn to the free education – the Imam of western Liberia apparently sends his children to one just inside the border.
One of the Oregon group tells me how they gave “the Jesus video” to a local who converted at once – and shortly after screened it at a mass service, saving 3,000 souls in the process. These vast services, modelled on the televangelist megachurches of the US Bible belt, are a phenomenon that is sweeping the country. Freetown is awash with banners advertising the next event – there are several, some festivals lasting several days, planned for the next week in the capital alone. Held in the city’s football stadium or in fields surrounding the city, they attract crowds of thousands – but they are not popular with everyone.
Some residents tell me that they are held by evangelical pastors who have broken away from their original organisations to form their own splinter groups, capitalising on the market for salvation amongst the traumatised and impoverished populace. They are in it purely for the profit, I am told, charging their congregations hefty fees to attend and requiring generous donations to “the bank of Jesus Christ” in exchange for pseudo-miracles and the promise of forgiveness.
The rise of Christianity is evident in the banners that adorn almost every vehicle, proclaiming “Thanks to God” (A.D. Tours), “God bless the owner”, or in one rather peculiar case “The more you hate, the more God bless.”
Luckily, there are few frictions between the two major faiths, I am told. For most, religion is not a matter of competition, but of finding a path to a better life, and in this the two groups are united. “God loves Islam too,” the banners declare.
Little more than a day and a half since the start of our poll, the Tories are storming into a huge lead.
With more than 2,500 votes cast by Times readers on who you'd vote for on Thursday's local and London mayoral elections, David Cameron's party has achieved close to 70 per cent of the total vote, with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and other parties languishing around the 10 per cent mark.
We don't, of course, claim our results are scientific, that floppy-haired Boris Johnson has by any means got it in the bag, or that Ken Livingstone's necessarily toast.
But we do say our poll's much more fun than the real thing, because you can have your say wherever in the world you live, from Georgia to Oman. And so, using some rather funky technology provided by our polling company, here are some interesting geographical observations on where the last 500 voters have come from, and who they support.
Gordon Brown's Labour have struggled, well, pretty much everywhere. But he has gained a handful of votes in the left-leaning liberal US east coast states of Pennsylvania and New York, as well as in Europe - Ireland, France and Finland, to be precise - New South Wales in Australia, and Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Tories have votes from pretty much all over the world, including much of Europe and as far afield as Jordan, the Phillipines, Ghana and South Africa. The Lib Dems do best in Europe where - one would imagine - a larger number of people have heard of them. But they also picked up a vote in the bohemian US city of New Orleans.
Vibrant political debate has also been raging in the comment section beneath our poll. Grievances with the government over the smoking ban feature in several comments below, along with the economy, the European Union, immigration, and the prospect of voting fraud because of the postal vote system.
But it isn't all doom and gloom for Gordon Brown. Some of you say that voting Tory would be to vote to go back to the days of mass-unemployment and economic instability in the 1980s and '90s. One of you says Mr Brown is more honest than David Cameron, who is painted as an opportunist. And you also point out that Mr Cameron hasn't exactly come up with many decent policy initiatives of his own. Or, as one of you says, the Tory leader has established himself as a "polished, name-calling yob" but little else.
So join the debate below, and have your say by voting in our poll while you're at it.
And while you're here, why not take a glimpse at our map of the world showing where the last 500 voters have come from by clicking here
 Interesting comments from the Ministry of Defence, which has sprung to the defence of Prince William for using a £10 million Chinook helicopter to go to a stag party on the Isle of Wight for his cousin, Peter Phillips.
The Prince borrowed the aircraft last Friday only a few hours after receiving his "wings" from his father, the Prince of Wales, at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire, pausing only to pick up his brother, Harry, in London on the way.
An MoD spokesman said: “The Prince’s training was designed to give him an insight into the many roles of the Royal Air Force. Having spent a week under instruction with a Chinook helicopter squadron, Prince William flew a legitimate training sortie which tested his new skills to the limit."
He went on: “Flying at low level Prince William piloted the heavy support RAF Chinook helicopter through the busy London flying lanes to a helicopter landing site in Central London before departing the lanes to the South West, making a water crossing and an approach to a civilian airfield routinely used by Chinook squadrons.”
William was accompanied by an unidentified instructor, who opined, according to the MoD: “Prince William showed natural piloting skills and an ability to pick things up quickly."
Pick things up? What, like Harry?
Anyway, it reminded us of some other taxpayer-funded jaunts, such as:
John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, using his official Jaguar limousine for a 270-yard journey along the Bournemouth seafront during the 1999 Labour Party conference "for security and because my wife does not like her hair blown about".
Tony Blair taking the Queen's Flight on a family holiday to Sharm el Sheikh at Christmas, 2004 - for security reasons, however, rather than to stop Cherie Blair's hair getting messed up. The RAF crew spent eight nights at a luxury hotel waiting to take the Blairs back home.
More recently we had news of a £4,280 taxi bill run up by Mary Martin, wife of the Speaker of the Commons, on shopping trips. This time it was Lord Snape, the former Labour MP who proposed Michael Martin as Speaker in 2000, who rushed in to defend her honour. "Is the Speaker's wife supposed to queue for the No 12 bus when she does her shopping?" he demanded.
Luckily we've still got Gordon Brown, a renowned skinflint who has already ditched his predecessor's "Blair Force One" flight plans. Mr Brown arrived for his official visit to the United States in a rented 757, only to be upstaged by the Pope.
So what's Dick Cheney doing going fly fishing with a naked lady? Hasn't he got a superpower to help run?
This official White House photo of the US Vice-President enjoying an afternoon's fishing at Snake River, Idaho, set off a bit of a storm after an American blogger noticed what looked like a woman in her birthday suit reflected in his sunglasses.
"First he accidentally shoots a man. Now he is fishing with an inflatable sex doll?" wrote a poster on the sportsshooting.com photography website. "That explains his heart problems," replied another.
The White House was quick to damp down the rumours. "Clearly it's a hand holding a rod," said spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell.
So what do you reckon? (Clue: this full-sized version of the image might help.)
It's the White House, some time in January 2002.
Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, and Stephen Hadley, her deputy, are telling George W. Bush that lumping Iran along with Iraq and North Korea in his forthcoming "Axis of Evil" speech may not be such a good idea (especially since - as Rice points out - Iran has a democratically elected president).
Bush rejects their arguments. President Khatami will understand, he says. If anything, it will help him and Iran's other reformers in their battle against "the hardliners, the deadenders, the Ayatollah Cockamamies".
"Iran stays in," he declares.
Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff, hands Bush a bottle of non-alcoholic beer. Then Dick Cheney, Vice-President, finally chimes in.
"Anyone can go to Baghdad," he says. "Real men go to Tehran."
Bush smirks and clinks his beer bottle with Cheney's coffee mug.
"Real men," he says.
Continue reading "'Real men go to Tehran': what Dick Cheney might have said" »
"I don't think anybody in this city is shocked about what consenting adults do. As long as you don't involve children, animals and vegetables, they leave you to get on, and live their own life in their own way."
Perhaps this is merely the wishful thinking of a man with five children by three different mothers. But will Livingstone's liaisons, revealed last night, affect your choice of London mayor?
It had been assumed that Boris Johnson, his main rival, was the most sexually active of the mayoral candidates. The dishevelled Old Etonian is known to have cheated on his wife more than once.
Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem long-shot, has also negotiated an eventful private life. His ex-wife says the couple shared a "wonderful marriage", but she is not thought to be best of friends with his current long-term boyfriend.
Does it matter what London's next mayor gets up to in his own bedroom?
Some people never grow out of their childhood fascinations. But at the age of 33, Mike Stimpson decided it was time to put his to a creative use, combining his long-standing love of Lego with a new-found passion for photography to recreate some of the world’s most iconic images.
Stimpson, a computer programmer from Birmingham, used the well-loved children’s toy to reconstruct scenes from famous photographs, such as Charles C. Ebbet's 1932 "Lunch atop a skyscraper" and Henri Cartier-Bresson's "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare."
And although Lego men are endowed with a permanent grin, Stimpson nevertheless put them to work in some of the most horrific images of war from the 20th century.
Shooting them mostly in black and white, he spent hours painstakingly arranging the scenes and experimenting with lighting to ensure he got the right effect. His devotion to detail is apparent in all his recreations, from patterns on clothing to roadmarkings in backdrops.
Stimpson next hopes to recreate Diego Maradona’s notorious “Hand of God” goal against England and soldiers raising the US flag at Iwojima during World War Two.
His photographs are available for sale on redbubble.com.
View his recreations below and then click here to see if you guessed the correct originals.
"Vietcong Captain", Tet Offensive, Eddie Adams
"Tiananmen Square", 1989, Jeff Widener
Are you an April Fool? Read the selection of stories from around the world today and see if you can work out which are true and which are spoofs.
1. The BBC will today broadcast the first ever footage of flying penguins. Until this unique colony was discovered while filming on King George Island, 750 miles south of the Falklands, it was thought that the birds were entirely flightless.
2. A study published in the journal Australasian Psychiatry has lit a fire under the debate between Australia’s two biggest cities. A neuropsychiatrist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital carried out a series of brain scans on Sydneysiders and Melburnians.
The results revealed that the brains of Sydney’s inhabitants had suffered significant shrinkage, a well-known stress symptom. It is thought the rapidly rising house-prices in Sydney have contributed to their brains getting smaller.
3. Budget airline Flybe has blown Ryanair out of the water with its latest fare offer.
The company yesterday paid 172 actors £40 each to fly from Norwich to Dublin.
The low fare airline ensured they will now meet their annual passenger targets, but Greenpeace described it as “lunacy”.
4. Robert Mugabe banned the custom of April Fool pranks yesterday amid growing tensions in the country's elections.
He told a party rally: "This country has had enough of British and American customs, and if this is the last change I am able to make to Zimbabwe's proud history, I will rest assured that the struggle against British Imperialism is one step nearer to the finish.”
5.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s fiscal responsibility was questioned today when he was caught on camera using a scratch card.
The image showed him playing the Lotto game in his local corner shop. Building worker Hugh Grenoble, 30, told the Daily Mail: "I actually did a double take when I saw him.”
6.
Harriet Harman has reignited the row over safety on the streets of London by going out in South London in a stab vest less than three months after the Home Secretary admitted she was scared to go out at night.
The Deputy Labour leader was pictured fully kitted out for a stroll through her own constituency of Camberwell and Peckham despite the furore that followed Jacqui Smith conceding that she felt unsafe walking alone in London at night.
7. The Rock, a New Zealand radio station, had to cancel their April Fools joke this year when it transpired that 2,000 people were planning to turn up to their fake “secret” Foo Fighters gig.
After inquiries from fans, record labels and promoters the station got cold feet.
Brad King, Program director at The Rock, said: "This is what happens when fools plan April Fools jokes.”
 8. Cedric and his half-brother Clinky, a pair of Tasmanian Devils, are on the verge of a great cancer breakthrough.
Australian Professor Greg Woods from the University of Tasmania says that the tough genetic make-up of the steely creatures could end the scourge of cancer.
Scientists are trying to work out why Cedric is impervious to cancer despite malignant cells being pumped into him.
9.
Google.com.au, the Australian branch of the global search giant, as unveiled a new feature that allows users to select “one day in advance” and search only for results published tomorrow.
The Google Day function uses Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation – it’s known as gDay (MATE) for short.
But not everyone was impressed, Sally from Western Australia said: “This is old news. I read about this announcement yesterday on Google.”
10. Gordon Ramsay has banned swearing in his restaurants. He will fine any member of staff caught using the “F” or “C” words.
The move came 10 days after an Australian parliamentary motion was tabled calling for a review of the broadcasting code of conduct, following an episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, in which the chef swore more than 80 times.
11. Japan has held its first ever pen spinning national championships. The winner was Ryuki Omura, 16.
Mitsuhiro Nakamata, a spokesman for the Pen Spinning Association Japan, said: "Pens are always around, so you can practice and enjoy pen-spinning anytime, anywhere."
12. Amy Winehouse will appear in the latest series of Doctor Who. The Back to Black singer will play The Rani, originally played by actress Kate O'Mara in the 1980s.
The character is an evil scientific genius who has enslaved entire planets in previous episodes of the sci-fi drama.
It will be Winehouse's first acting work since being expelled from the Sylvia Young Theatre School.
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