Reporters on the job

ROOM WITH A BATTLE VIEW: Scott Peterson got up early yesterday morning to investigate the burning of a Macedonian village he'd seen the night before. "A BBC colleague and I wanted to get there before the police closed the place off to the media," Scott says. They set off at dawn, climbing a hillside between their hotel and the village (page 1). "We got about three-quarters of the way up the hill when the sniper fire started around us. Then, we heard the tick-boom of an outgoing mortar shell," says Scott. That settled it. The two headed back down the hill. "We decided we didn't want to be mistaken for combatants," says Scott, as the whump of mortar fire echoed over the phone. He retreated to his $12-a-night hotel room in Tetovo (bare bulbs, occasional working water, and no curtains - "just the kind of place I feel comfortable in," he says). Best of all, says Scott, the room's second-floor balcony gives his satellite phone a clear signal - and a safer vantage point to the ongoing firefight.

LIFE IN THE POLITICAL MAINSTREAM: Two separate interviews gave the Monitor's Paris-based Peter Ford a good look at what electoral success has done to the French Greens (this page). At midday, he ate with a young city council candidate in a typically Green hangout. "It was a smoky, cramped, bohemian cafe, where everybody knew her, everybody was going to vote for her, and her lunch was on the house," Peter says. That was the way things used to be. In the evening, Peter saw the Greens' future. He accompanied the Green candidate for city mayor on a walkabout with his Socialist colleague: The scrum of TV crews, photographers, and other journalists made a mockery of his attempts to meet the people.

David Clark Scott World Editor

BEST OF THE REST

INDIA'S CRICKET COMEBACK: India ended Australia's world-record, 16-game winning streak yesterday with a record of its own, reports The Times of India. On the verge of defeat, India was forced to follow on but ultimately defeated Australia by 171 runs. India became only the third team ever to win a test after being forced to follow on. The last were in 1894 and in 1981.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor