Reporters on the Job

• London or Baghdad? Correspondent James Brandon went to the demonstration against Muslim political cartoons in central London on Friday outside the Danish Embassy.

Some of the demonstrators clearly had mixed ideas about how to take part in a high-profile public demonstration, he says. Some kept their faces covered by scarfs and refused to talk to journalists. "Others seemed quite keen to get themselves on television and acted up for the cameras - apparently heedless of a police photographer walking among them taking pictures," says James.

James has reported from many areas of the Middle East, including Iraq. The atmosphere at the rally was tense enough that "I instinctively did at least one interview Baghdad-style with my back against a wall so that no one could creep up on me from behind. I forgot that I was in central London with tens of policemen only yards away," he says.

• Haitian Hostage: Staff writer Danna Harman interviewed Geneviève, a middle-class Haitian student, who was kidnapped. "She clearly had a traumatic time during her ordeal, but she spoke about it in a matter-of-fact way, and even with some humor," says Danna.

Geneviève's captors, for example, made her change clothes so that her school uniform would not be recognized as they moved her from one house to another. "She had nowhere to put her dress so they gave her an empty corn- flakes bag. When she was released, she said, she walked out towards freedom clutching that corn-flakes bag like a victory flag. "I was amazed by her composure - I almost cried," says Danna.

David Clark Scott
World editor