● <B>SENEGAL. Pulp of Baobab a novel food. </B> Its fruit has a tart, zesty taste ? some say like sherbet. It?s highly nutritious, and might be imbued with the souls of dead chieftains. If you live in Europe, it could be headed to a smoothie near you. The baobab tree ? thick-trunked icon of the African bush ? does not look appetising. But European firms may soon be using the pulp of its fruit as a flavouring for cereal bars or drinks, after it won European Commission approval as a novel food.

● <B>ISRAEL. Settler vigilante violence going up. </B>Armed with guns, slingshots, knives and stun grenades, Jewish West Bank settlers pelted the house of Palestinian Nahla Makhlouf with stones, uprooted young trees and painted the Star of David on her walls. Settler vigilante violence is growing, according to a recent UN report, which recorded 222 incidents in the first half of 2008, versus 291 in all of 2007.

● <B> ICELAND. The craze to help people stay healthy. </B>If helping a man without lower legs become one of the fastest runners on the planet sounds far-fetched, how about typing by just thinking the words or staying sporty well into old age? Such prospects motivate work at Ossur, the Icelandic group behind the prosthetics that vaulted double-amputee Oscar Pistorius into the limelight with his bid to compete in the Beijing Olympics.

● <B>KOSOVO. The revival of Catholicism. </B>Hundreds of Kosovar Albanians gather on Sundays to attend religious services in a still unfinished red-brick church in the Kosovo town of Klina. Turning away from the majority Muslim faith imposed by the Ottoman Turks centuries ago, these worshippers are part of a revival of Catholicism in the newly independent Balkan state.