How did the inhabitants of Sri Lanka, calling themselves Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, come to believe that `our people' did not comprise all of the people living on the island?

One of the two opening batsmen for the Masters is Conrad Hunte, invited from the USA by the Barbadian government with his American wife, Patricia, and their three daughters, Roberta, 10, Grace, 5, and Veronica, 2.

There is a small but not insignificant tree newly planted in a garden in the Alpine region of northern Victoria, Australia.

The silence was almost tangible. It hung over a stony hillside scarred by the skeletons of mulga trees, a landscape stilled as if in reverence for the sacred carvings etched in the sheer red faces of the gorge.

In 1975 the Senate created a landmark in the history of Australian race relations when it passed without dissent a motion stating that before 1788, Australia's indigenous peoples possessed the whole country. It urged `the Australian Government to... introduce legislation to compensate (these) people...

Reconciliation in Zimbabwe' was the headline the Bern daily Der Bund gave its report on the launching of the German version of Alec Smith's book Now I call him brother.

The city of Richmond, Virginia, is the former capital of the Southern Confederacy.

South Africa is in a state of deep unrest. Recently there has been a hardening polarization of the extremes of both right and left.

Looking deeper one could see the destructive potential of forces that have broken many another country. The most obvious tension is between Fiji's Indians, who comprise 49 per cent of the population of 715,000, and the ethnic Fijians (46 per cent).

From Aubern Street - where Martin Luther King Jr was laid to rest next door to his Ebenezer Baptist Church - the multistorey spires of downtown Atlanta gleam on the skyline a mile away like a shining 21st century citadel of economic success.