Aug. 27.─ Direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis are scheduled to commence in Washington on September 2, a decade after the last real final-status talks, and nearly two years after the last direct talks. Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu will come face to face for dinner and talks in Washington as guests of President Obama after 18 months of shuttle diplomacy and indirect "proximity talks" headed by Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell.

President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, along with Tony Blair, the special representative of the Middle East Quartet are also due to join the inaugural session in Washington.

While much hope has been placed on these talks culminating in an agreement within a year, most Palestinians and Israelis remain skeptical of their success. More importantly, hopes and expectations have been inflated in some media reports, adding confusion and creating myths about what might turn up only to be yet another photo op in DC.

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The chance of being shot in Caracas may be higher than just about anywhere else in the world, outside war zones

Caracas, Aug. 19.- Cheuk Woon Yee Sinne, a baseball player from Hong Kong, found that out on August 13th. As she took the field for a match in the Women's Baseball World Cup, at an army stadium in Venezuela's capital, a stray bullet hit her in the leg. Her team promptly pulled out of the tournament.

That was an embarrassment for the government of Hugo Chávez, which faces a legislative election on September 26th. It said the shooting was an isolated incident and moved the tournament to a venue outside the capital. But it also has another solution to Venezuela's crime problem: suppress negative crime statistics and prevent the media from publishing gory images.

The government stopped publishing data on murders several years ago. Nevertheless, Roberto Briceño-León of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, an NGO, says that a government report he has obtained puts the national murder rate at 75 per 100,000 people, up from 49 just four years ago and almost twice the rate in neighbouring Colombia where guerrillas continue to wage war.

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Johanesburg, Aug.14.─ The ANC is not trying to control the media through the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal (MAT) and reports of it doing so are misleading, President Jacob Zuma said on Saturday.

"This is not personal, it is aimed at advancing the freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution," he said in a statement.

Zuma said that the ANC as South Africa's leader had to protect and defend the rights of its citizens.

"It [the tribunal] is aimed at ensuring that those who do not have money to go to lawyers can still obtain protection, as they do from the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa", Zuma said.

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