CORRESPONDENT

A thousand miles from the main action in Beijing, Hong Kong is playing host to the world's horsey set in an idyllic rural setting, close to shops and transport and with the best equine facilities they say they've ever seen.

There are more than 200 horses, and their riders, here in Shatin and the standard of competition has been extraordinarily and -- surprisingly -- exciting.

Economics has been called the dismal science. Dismal it may be, but there is nothing scientific about the way finance reporters use some words. Take the credit squeeze. Or is it a crunch? Or perhaps a freeze? Even respected newspapers use the words indiscriminately. A headline will scream "crunch" while the article below it mentions a squeeze.
 
Are the terms synonymous, or should writers on economics pay more attention to subtle shades of meaning?

Chinese spectators are causing a buzz at the Olympics. More than 70,000 turned up at the Bird's Nest main stadium on Friday for an athletics session without a single gold medal event. The fans went wild watching heats and one European athlete said he could not begin to imagine how they would behave when the competitors were actually racing for the big prizes.

That has already occurred at the swimming pool where Chinese supporters raised the roof when 19-year-old Liu Zige won the 200 metres butterfly in world record time.  It was clear that over the final lap she raised her tempo in response to ever rising decibels from the crowd.

The fresh-faced youths who search our bags every morning in the Olympic media village are always unfailingly polite. A torrent of "Thank you sirs" and "Have a nice days" accompany every pat-down as the press hordes are whisked by a super-efficient bus service from our university campus-style accommodation to the Olympic venues.

This morning, as I was trapped on my Metro station's platform, listening to announcements about horrible delays, worrying about getting to the White House on time, the White House's usually innocuous "Morning Update" email sent my blackberry pager/cell phone all a-flutter.

It's normally a re-hash of the previous day's news, plus a look ahead at the current day's events, and sometimes an updated schedule. The schedule that went out Wedesday night put President Bush at CIA headquarters for a series of meetings and briefings. So I scrolled down to see what was cooking in the White House kitchen and I found this:

If you're in Kashgar and see the number "48081" behind you, you can kiss unfettered reporting goodbye.

Mixed zones after football matches, as discussed in my June 21 blog, are generally the journalistic equivalent of a rugby scrum with reporters fighting a mass of bodies to attempt to prise comments from footballers who, by and large, would rather be somewhere else - anywhere else.

In the modern era, where sports reporters have less and less access to athletes, mixed zones are a rare chance to grab players for a comment.

On Thursday, at 6:00 am, I will get on a plane at Washington's Reagan National bound for Waco, Texas, via Dallas, for what will in all likelihood be my final August sojourn in President Bush's adoptive home state.

I've been doing this for eight years, and I've logged untold days, weeks, and months in Waco. I'm surprised to find that I'm ambivalent in the face of my final August foray to the Lone Star state (regular readers will recall that I insist that Waco Saved My Marriage).

On a weekend dominated by a Caucasus conflict and Olympic feats in Asia, my assignment covering a referendum in Bolivia seemed relatively small-scale.

But, I told myself as I trudged up a hill in La Paz and felt my heart pound at the high altitude, newspapers and television bulletins and internet websites around the world are still hungry for a panoply of international current affairs. And while the heady slew of missiles and medals half a world away were filling both the front and the back of the dailies, my job was to contribute a little to the middle part.