In Abbas's own Gaza office, a masked man, clutching his AK-47 assault rifle, eased into the president's chair while he and with his fellow gunmen took pictures of each other.

"Hello, Condoleezza Rice ?" one masked man joked into the president's telephone. "You have me to deal with now."

This is the most ridiculous queue that I have ever had the misfortune to be a part of...it took me 3 and a half hours to get to the front. It is a line in Heathrow airport that is simply a transit line to get to Terminal 4...My original flight had landed at...Terminal 4. So naturally I had to go out and then go back in again. Does this make sense? No it does not. And when I asked why there was such a long delay for such a simple procedure as going between flights I was told "It's always like this before Christmas." Do you think they had extra staff on? No, they did not. And to top it all off, they, of course, lost my luggage. I shouldn't complain too much though, on that day a further 8999 people had their luggage lost as well.

A gay bar in Melbourne has won the right to turn away straight patrons, so it can provide an environment in which gay men can express their sexuality without feeling threatened.

The Peel Hotel applied for an exemption to equal opportunities legislation, saying its gay male clientele felt uncomfortable about the increasing numbers of straight people using the venue over the past year.

The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot."

Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire.

It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

It's the free agent's curse: No matter what else may be wrong with the franchise, the new arrival's talent is supposed to overcome it. That's why they put you in the heart of the lineup, or on those bus billboards. If there are problems that still need fixing, that means the savior is a failure. An ongoing set of adjustments means that the savior is an ongoing failure.

So each new strategy that CBS or the Yankees might try, hoping to win more viewers or more games, gets evaluated as an act of publicity long before the results come in. Ms. Couric and the CBS Evening News are going through the kind of scrutiny usually presented on WFAN: Are they sunk? Are they crazy? What were they thinking in the first place? And how long can they keep making excuses for that overpriced bum?

Currently, the Yankees are looking up in the standings at a team, the Red Sox, who are playing the Yankees' game better than the Yankees-i.e., winning ballgames with the finest team money can buy. CBS, having hired the most celebrated anchor in the modern history of morning television, now finds itself looking up in the ratings at a news team helmed by former morning-news anchor Charles Gibson.

These two mega-watt media personalities bare the burden -- and reap the benefits -- of working in New York. I have to think the same "curse" can be applied to the business world as well -- bringing in a hot shot CEO to be a savior only to see the stock tank. Anyone out there have any suggestions?