Today's Story Line

Israel continues its two-track peace negotiations with mixed results. Yesterday, a seven-week impasse was cleared with an agreement to transfer 5 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian control. Outside Washington, the talks with the Syrians proceeded more slowly. In Israel, one man is trying to build his own peace accords, individual by individual.

Away from the talks, another rift is emerging. This one is between rich and poor Palestinians .

Russia's Acting President Vladimir Putin is acting to.

David Clark Scott, World editor

REPORTERS ON THE JOB . .

*A SOCIOLOGIST, I'M NOT: While working on today's story about the gap between Palestinian haves and have-nots, reporter Ilene Prusher borrowed a book. A friend, who is a sociology major, lent her a copy of the Collins Dictionary of Sociology. Thumbing through it, she found several terms, such as "social closure" and "class polarization" that described what she was seeing in her reporting. "Journalists often try to become overnight experts," Ilene notes. But in the end, she didn't use the terms. "They were too technical. The jargon would have been meaningless and the definitions were long," she says.

*UNDER THE DOME: Alexander MacLeod, who reports on London's Millennium Dome, says he is impressed by it as a building project but "can't accept that it fairly represents the country he has lived in for 35 years." The Britain he knows is a parliamentary democracy, has a long, colorful history, and a huge range of cultural activity. Much of that context was missing. He asked one young woman greeter whether there was anything about William Shakespeare on the 20-acre site. She hesitated for a moment and said: "I've seen his photograph somewhere on a wall, but can't remember where." Trying to be helpful she directed Alex to special big screen version of Blackadder, a TV sitcom.

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