There's nothing like reading several newspapers to make sure you have no idea what's going on. The New York Times says that Yemen is joining the fight against terrorism; the Times of London says Yemen's going to be one of the next targets, along with Sudan and Somalia.

A South Korean prisoner of war escapes from North Korea after 50 years. Not exactly Steve McQueen, is he?

Pakistan sends planes to evacuate its pro-Taliban forces from Afghanistan. Obviously with US permission.

The British royal family is giving an insight into the weird habits of British education. Prince William avoided (or did he?) a tradition at St Andrew's that involves heavy drinking and a shaving cream fight. Prince Harry played a traditional Eton game called The Wall, whose rules several newspapers devoted what seemed like pages to trying to explain. The game ended this year without a goal being scored. There hasn't been a goal scored in something like 90 years.

A major scandal at the journal Human Immunology, which published an article proving that Jews and Palestinians from the Middle East are genetically pretty much the same, so that the Jews are not a distinct people. The author got fired off the staff and the journal has written to university libraries suggesting they just rip those pages out.

Indeed, I keep seeing these stories about censorship in academia and I'm just so thrilled I can't tell you. By the way, did I mention what a great job George W. Bush is doing? One group compiling a blacklist is called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, on whose board sits Lynne Cheney.

The NY Times mentioned a couple of days ago that there is a site with a "Rapture Index," where they put a numerical value to the likelihood of the world ending on any given day. Evidently September 24 was a record.

At the Observer.co.uk/comment you can find a page called Sunday Surfer which has links to various websites in which you can find out your pirate name, your Sopranos mob name, your Oz prison bitch name, what Mr T. would call you, and so on.

The tv show Big Brother has reached Russia, where they're too drunk to notice the irony. Also, it has a different name there. So here's the skinny: Margo started fooling around with Olga, including showering with her. Olga was voted off the show, so she went after Alexander (more showering). His girlfriend got upset so he had to leave the show to make up with her. Margo has had sex with Max a couple of times now, and if you wanted confirmed what you always thought about Russian sex: 63 seconds.