To Mubarek Awad, the inside of an Israeli jail cell was nothing new. He’d been in many.

On a recent trip to Lviv, Ukraine, I stayed in a hotel just across the street from an Internet cafe. Also close was a McDonald's. But the café and McDonald's had more than proximity in common.

If there were a media Richter scale, the New York Times’ Jayson Blair affair might well have set a new shock record. The Times’ disclosure of how for years Blair, 27, deceived and tricked his readers and editors alike sent shock waves through media across America and doubtless the world. He was accused of widespread plagiarism, falsification of information and of using datelines to create the impression he’d done on-the-scene reporting when he hadn’t. The revelations not only brought Blair’s resignation but also those of the executive and managing editors.

Having lost a son in World War I, the great German artist Kathe Kollwitz was avowedly anti-war but equally committed to what she called 'a new idea-that of the brotherhood of man'. In his book, All Saints: daily reflections on saints, prophets and witnesses for our time (Crossroad, 1997), Robert Ellsberg writes that Kollwitz worked for many years on the statue, Mourning Parents, modelled after her and her husband, Karl.

The author was not some foreign critic but Clyde Prestowitz, a US trade negotiator in the Reagan administration.

For weeks the collapse of the Houston energy giant, Enron, competed with the war on terror for headlines.

Even the worst of tragedies may bear some fruit. That's clearly the case in America in the wake of 11 September.

The scenes, televised globally, were ugly—rioting, looting, young African American men hauled to jail.

For most Americans life has changed since 11 September. The events of that day and its aftermath have riveted indelibly on the American psyche how fragile were the peace and comforts we enjoyed.

How often do we see in person someone whose daring and perseverance have inspired a hit movie? Rarely, for most of us. So it was a special treat to see and hear Erin Brockovich at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC. I'd already seen Erin Brockovich, the movie, and admired her relentless search for proof that water pollution by a large utility was the cause of widespread illness in a small community in California. With the help of friends and a major law firm she fought for what became the largest ever direct-action lawsuit settlement in US history.