The New Nation - Internet Edition

Bush to visit ME

RAMALLAH: US President George W. Bush will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories from Jan. 9 to 11, a senior Palestinian official said on Saturday. After Bush hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at talks in the United States last week, the White House said he would travel to the Middle East in early January. No venues or dates were given. Senior Abbas aide Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio that Bush's visit would take place between Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, following a trip to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Dec. 19.

Hindu gods summoned

BBC Online: A judge in India has summoned two Hindu gods, Ram and Hanuman, to help resolve a property dispute. Judge Sunil Kumar Singh in the eastern state of Jharkhand has issued advertisements in newspapers asking the gods to "appear before the court personally". The gods have been asked to appear before the court on Tuesday, after the judge said that letters addressed to them had gone unanswered. Ram and Hanuman are among the most popular Indian Hindu gods. Judge Singh presides in a "fast track" court - designed to resolve disputes quickly - in the city of Dhanbad.

Absent at Nobel festivities

STOCKHOLM: The glittering Nobel Prize festivities Monday will be a little less luminous without the presence of literature laureate Doris Lessing of Britain, who at 88 was unable to travel to Stockholm due to ill health. But the other star of the 2007 Nobel season, former US vice president Al Gore who shared the prize with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), arrived in Oslo on Friday.