Reporters on the Job

from the November 26, 2007 edition

• Comedians in Egypt: Staff writer Dan Murphy was half expecting the Axis of Evil comedy tour to fall flat in Cairo. "I thought a bunch of comics playing off Ame 3 2rican stereotypes about Arabs (page 1) and Muslims would go over the audience's head or really offend people."

Instead, the jokes went over well with what was an admittedly Westernized crowd – the show was almost entirely in English. Talking to Dan after the show, Ahmed Ahmed, who was born in Egypt but raised from a young age in the US, said he thought only one of his bits bombed. It was the one where he talks about the assumed irony of an Arab-American living and working in Hollywood, where almost all of his lawyers and agents are Jews. "It seems some things are going to remain taboo for a long time,'' says Dan."

– David Clark Scott

World editor

•MONDAY, NOV. 26 Baden, Austria – US, EU, Russia "troika" holds final round of negotiations on Kosovo's future status.Lima, Peru – Trial begins of former President Alberto Fujimori, charged with ordering two massacres and two kidnappings when Peru was battling the Maoist Shining Path insurgency.•

•TUESDAY, NOV. 27 Annapolis, Md. – US-sponsored international conference on Palestinian statehood..•

•WEDNESDAY, NOV. 28 Tokyo – A Chinese naval ship arrives for a port call to Japan for the first time since World War II.

•SUNDAY, DEC. 2 Moscow – Russians elect new lower house of parliament.Caracas, Venezuela – Proposed date for referendum on constitutional reforms.

– Associated Press