In Washington, the Israelis and Palestinians are discussing peace, but in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, construction is proceeding at full speed. A legal ban is being ignored and the government is looking away. The thousands of new homes could hinder reconciliation.

Officially, at least, this is the hour of diplomacy. For the first time in two years, Israelis and Palestinians are meeting for direct peace talks. United States President Barack Obama has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Washington. Settlement construction is one of the most sensitive issues at the talks.

It's also an issue where the fronts are growing increasingly tense. "As far as we are concerned, we will continue building after we have buried our dead," Naftali Bennett, the general director of the settlers' association Yesha said hours before the start of peace talks. Just a short time after his announcement, the settlers began erecting several symbolic settlements in the West Bank. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Bennett had threatening words. "It is not good enough that the moratorium will end on Sept. 26," he said. "Ehud Barak needs to act to approve 3,000 new housing units -- 1,500 of them right now."

An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery now faces being whipped for indecency, her son says.

Iranian authorities sentenced Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to 99 lashes after the Times newspaper published a picture purportedly of her without a headscarf.

The Times later published a correction, saying the photograph was of a different Iranian woman.

After an international outcry, Iranian officials temporarily halted Ms Ashtiani's stoning sentence in July.

There are fears the death sentence could still be carried out by hanging.

Bahrain has accused 23 Shia Muslim activists of forming a "terror network" aimed at toppling the Gulf state's government, the official BNA news agency says.

The agency, citing the charge sheet on Saturday, said the suspects allegedly held secret meetings in Bahrain and abroad in order "to change the political regime through illegal means".

It identified 10 suspects, including eight opposition figures who have been detained since mid-August.

State media said those expected to be charged included leading figures from Al Wefaq society, the banned Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, and the London-based Bahrain Freedom Movement.

Abduljalil al-Singace, the chief suspect and leader of the Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy, an opposition association, was charged with "running an illegitimate network," as well as "leading sabotage cells ... contacting foreign organisations and providing them with false and misleading information about the kingdom".

URUMQI, China -- The five-star hotels are full, bulldozers are making quick work of dreary slums and billboards for "French-style villas" call out to the nouveau riche. In the year since rioting between the Han and Uighur ethnic groups killed nearly 200 people in this city in far western China, life appears to be returning to normal.

"Don't worry, everything is peaceful now," said the perky bellhop at a hotel in the city's predominantly Han Chinese quarter.

But before turning away, he had second thoughts. "You'd better not go to the Uighur part of town at night," he said.

Beneath the gloss and mercantile buzz of Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, there is a palpable unease that neither tens of thousands of surveillance cameras nor the patrolling squads of black-shirted police officers can completely assuage.

After being called on a white lie he told during his Restoring Honor rally, Glenn Beck admitted Thursday that he stretched the truth because he "thought it would be a little easier."

Beck had claimed that he held George Washington's handwritten first Inaugural Address in his hands at the National Archives, but a spokeswoman at the institution said he did no such thing. Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and others called him out for the fabrication.

Thursday on his radio show, Beck copped to the lie. (RELATED: Lies By Prominent Americans.)

"I thought it would be a little easier in the speech," Beck said, than to go into the following elaborate explanation (via Mediaite):

GUATEMALA - At least 10 people died Saturday in Guatemala when they were buried under two different mudslides caused by the heavy rains that have drenched the country for the last two days and which have also devastated dozens of communities

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico - Some 5,000 people have been evacuated in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco because torrential rains have caused two rivers to overflow their banks, officials said Saturday. "The situation is very critical, a situation more critical than in 2007," state Gov. Andres Granier said. Three years ago, the state suffered heavy flooding that had more than 60 percent of its territory underwater and displaced close to 1 million people.

Atlantic Tropical Weather Discussion.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

An Israeli newspaper managed to get the court to release the woman's sealed testimony. She turns out to have been abused by her father from childhood, and currently to be in a home for abused women. According to her testimony, she was really raped (in the normal sense of the word) and beaten by the defendant. However, because of some problems with her testimony, including the fact that she had worked as a prostitute, the idiots in the prosecutor's office thought that they would have a hard time convincing the court that she had been raped, and came up with an alternative strategy....