There are many misdemeanors a Russian oligarch can commit with impunity, from fraud to murder, and many of them have done so. There's only one really unforgivable crime in the unwritten code of Russian laws known as 'ponatiye', or understandings, and that is defiance of the Kremlin's will.

Mikhail Gutseriyev, former chief executive of Russian oil group Russneft, committed exactly that crime last month.

In a country where dissidents are often detained, a single episode of intimidation may seem depressingly routine. But not every country is preparing to host the Summer Olympics, and not every activist has won a prestigious international award. Alexandra Li in Beijing explains what the imprisonment of Chen Guangcheng, and the recent harassment experienced by his wife Yuan Weijing, have to do with the 2008 Games.

At eleven o'clock last Thursday night, Yuan Weijing received an ominous phone call. The caller identified herself as a member of the foreign affairs office from Yuan's home village near Linyi city in Shandong province. "Since last year, your passport has been declared invalid, the reason being that you've been implicated in a criminal offense," said the caller, who went on to advise Yuan not to try to travel overseas the next day.

Two years ago tomorrow, I was driving east on Interstate 10 through Baton Rouge in a pounding thunderstorm to file an onscene piece from New Orleans for Newsweek.com. Hurricane Katrina had already cut a murderous swath across the bayou country of Louisiana before it trashed the Mississippi Gulf Coast in what would turn out to be the worst natural disaster in United States history. While tens of thousands of residents in the stricken area sought refuge from the killer storm and relief workers did their best to attend to the sick, the hungry and the just plain traumatized, the man masquerading as the leader of the free world was kicking back on his ranch in Texas, wrapping up another summertime break from life inside the Beltway. None of us who covered the horrific aftermath of Katrina will soon forget the White House-issued photos of George W. Bush peering out of a passenger window on Air Force One at the devastated coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama fully two days after the storm made landfall.

Last week I was back on hurricane duty in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, wading boots and raincoat at the ready as we awaited the arrival of another Category 5 monster called Dean. 

She was beautiful, glamorous and wronged. Her compassion touched the lives of millions. No other member of the Royal Family could match her universal appeal. In the words of the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, she was "The People's Princess."

So much for the first hasty draft of history. Since then the revisionists have been at work, and with reason. It's ten years this week since Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a Paris car smash. The British nation has had plenty of time to mull the record, and it's no longer quite so sure about her legacy.

Photo: John Moore/AP

It was 111 degrees Fahrenheit for Americans in Baghdad today (43 Celsius for the Iraqis), and it's supposed to be hotter - 117 F or 47C - for the rest of the week. That's in the shade, of course, for those who can find it. Such infernal temperatures are pretty much the same every year. Nothing is quite as predictable in Iraq as the summer heat.

But another simple fact is just as evident: the death toll among fighters tends to decline in the dog days, because nobody wants to have to do battle in that stifling air, and those who have to go into combat tend to move more slowly and cautiously.

On the other hand, to the extent public records are available on non-governmental Web sites like iraqbodycount.org and  icasualties.org (the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, with which Newsweek did a major presentation on the Internet in December of last year), it seems that the civilian death toll, mainly from terrorist attacks, actually may remain high or rise in the heat of summer. Security forces are thinner on the ground. Roadside bombs can be put out at night and suicide drivers don't usually have to brave the hellish heat for very long before they punch their ticket to Paradise.

--With B.J. Lee

Surely it can't be a bad thing for the leaders of the two Koreas to get together for a chat. North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun have a lot to talk about when they get together for a summit at the end of this month. Optimists hope the meeting will boost efforts to persuade the North to get rid of its nukes. President Roh is said to be contemplating a huge program of economic aid as a reward to Pyongyang for shutting down its nuclear reactor last month.

Members of South Korea's ruling party - that's right, Roh's buddies - were especially upbeat. Small wonder. If there's one thing that can help the chances of their beleaguered party, it's a high-profile summit with the North. Most ordinary South Koreans want to see relations between their government and its Northern counterpart stay as warm as possible. Cozying up to the North is so popular with voters these days that Seoul politicians have been known to use talks with Kim as a way to boost their own electoral chances. Political junkies coined the phrase "North Wind" to describe the political benefits of inter-Korean diplomacy.

President Roh isn't up for re-election, but he's eager to help his political allies on the Left close the gap with the conservative opposition, which is still way ahead in the polls leading up to South Korea's presidential election at the end of this year. Roh may be betting that schmoozing with Kim Jong-Il offers his best hope of evening the odds. Plus a bit of statesmanship could do wonders for the legacy of Roh's tarnished presidency. (Right now his approval ratings are under 20%.)

There's just one problem with this theory. Precisely because he's a lame duck Roh may find it hard to win any concessions from Kim. Anything agreed upon may have to be implemented by Roh's successor - and that doesn't look very likely if the next president turns out to be a member of the conservative party that appears to be poised for victory as things stand now. There are also worries about the striking haste with which the whole meeting has been arranged. The government in Seoul had already admitted, surprisingly enough, that both parties have yet to agree on an agenda.

But there's an even bigger concern that's being expressed by conservatives in Seoul as well as Korea-watchers in Washington. Is it really a good idea to give Pyongyang a windfall of this magnitude when the process of dismantling the North's nukes has only just gotten under way? Roh's government is already talking about investing billions of dollars in the North's infrastructure, part of what Roh calls a "new Marshall Plan" for Kim's devastated economy. Yet all this is being promised up front, even though the North still has a long way to go to fulfill the disarmament agreement signed at the Six-Party Talks earlier this year. Why should the North go to the trouble of revealing the rest of its weapons programs, for example, when it's going to get so many goodies regardless? To be sure, it's always a good idea to engage in dialogue - as long as you don't end up giving away the store when you do. President Roh might want to keep that in mind.

During the recent Pan American Games, where athletes from 42 nations gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a fortnight of topnotch competition, one contest that wasn’t on the official calendar caught the public’s eye. Call it the defection game.Guillermo Rigondeaux and Erislandy Lara managed to elude their official minders and slip through a hole in the fence surrounding the athletes’ villa. From there, the story gets fuzzy. Apparently Rigondeaux and Lara were to meet up with a German agent, who reportedly promised them passports, air tickets, and contracts to fight in Europe. In a word: freedom. Somehow, though, the plan collapsed. A few days later, they were arrested by the Brazilian police and bundled off in a plane back to the Antilles, where their fate is uncertain. (A third deserter, from the Cuban handball team, hailed a cab to a suburb of São Paulo, where he evaded capture and filed for asylum.) And that was that.

Or was it?

An over-reaction? Okay, it's clear that Foot and Mouth is a nasty disease with sad and expensive consequences. Already more than 100 cattle have been slaughtered to prevent contagion. But these days Britian barely figures as an agricultural nation. As a fraction of the country's economic output farming figures behind tourism or financial services. The ordinary citizen's attachment to the land is almost wholly sentimental.

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. There are myriad stories related to Beijing's preparations to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, yet few of them capture the imaginations of foreign journalists as much as 1) authorities' efforts to control the weather, and 2) authorities' efforts to control the media. Today it seems that both stories collided on the fourth ring road, right across from the Olympics Tower of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).

Here's what happened. It was a typical August day in Beijing: muggy, hot, polluted. The sort of sauna-like weather that will bedevils visiting athletes during the Beijing Games, which open almost exactly a year from now, on Aug. 8, 2008. Pegged to the "one year to go" date,  Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called a press-conference-plus-street-demonstration at 3 PM to push for the release of detained journalists and more freedom of expression before the Olympic Games.

Here's an item Newsweek's Malcolm Beith wrote from New York:

In its 14 years of existence, the European Union has earned the derision of its citizens and skepticism from the United States. Now it seems set to get more of the same with a new Web video promotion. It's on YouTube and called ... EUTube! The video is a carnival ride through the continent's confused self-image.