--By CNN's Mohammed Jamjoom

Readers of this blog most likely know that Saudi Arabia bans female athletes from representing the Kingdom during the Olympic Games.

Many, though, might be surprised to find out that Saudi Arabia is, for the first time, allowing a woman to be part of their Olympic delegation in China.

38 year-old Arwa Mutabagani is a professional show jumper. She’s in Hong Kong as we speak, making history as the first Saudi female member invited to be part of her country’s Olympic Delegation.

I was curious to know how this development was sitting with some of the more outspoken Saudis I’ve interviewed in the past, to find out if they feel this signals some kind of profound social change in the deeply religious and extremely restrictive Kingdom.

Wajeha Al-Huwaider is one of the most well known women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia. In the past six months, she’s gained notoriety for protesting the ban on women’s driving in Saudi Arabia and for publicly asking Saudi officials to allow women to participate in the Olympic Games.

When I spoke to Al-Huwaider, she explained how she feels the Saudi Government, by doing this, is simply trying to placate the IOC. Al-Huwaider believes this is a response to the mounting criticism the Saudis have come under of late.

“They’re doing this for the people organizing the Olympics to show they are working on the issue,” she told me.

I next asked Ahmed Al-Omran, who blogs at http://www.saudijeans.org/, what kind of reactions he was seeing from Saudis online. According to him, attitudes towards Saudi women participating in the Olympics seem to be breaking down along gender lines.

“From what I see on the internet and the people I talk to,” says Al-Omran, “the women are all for it and the men are divided. It’s another issue in this country that’s dividing people.”

Al-Omran recently posted a short entry about women and sports and says it sparked a raging debate in the talk back section of his blog. For Ahmed, the answer is simple: he believes Saudi women should be allowed to take up sports in public schools AND go to the Olympics.

“If we already have some qualified female athletes we should allow them to compete on the international level, in basketball or in other sports. It’s is important to introduce sports to girl schools, but that should not be a precondition for having female athletes in the Olympics.”

As for Al-Huwaider, she will continue to try to affect change, but she doesn’t think it will come anytime soon. For her, having one female member among the Saudi Olympic Delegation doesn’t amount to much.

“It’s just like a false pregnancy,” she says, “nothing will happen.”

(AP photo of the women's 100m final in Beijing on Sunday)

Flames shoot out of the windows of the 19th century parliament building in Cairo today. No word on how the fire started. Five people were treated for smoke inhalation.

LeIt's a gorgeous colonial era structure. Let's hope there isn't too much damage!

(Photo AP)

Septuplets!

Egyptian mother Ghazala Khamis, picture in the hospital, after giving birth a day earlier to four boys and three girls at a hospital in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008. A day after giving birth to seven babies, the 27-year-old woman said Sunday she's only seen her babies on television and hopes to hold them and give them names soon. (AP Photo)

Nile fishermen like Salah Zayed – in the blue galabeya - so despise American crayfish clawing through their nets, they call them “cockroaches of the Nile.”

An AP file photo dated last April, showing Palestinian cameraman Fadel Shana's vehicle after it was hit by an Israeli tank.

Tripoli, August 14th, 2008. An event in a sports stadium honoring eleven soldiers killed in a roadside bomb attack the previous day in northern Lebanon. Hundreds gathered to pay respects to the victims, including this man, holding a framed photo of his friend Habib Batsh. Batsh was one of 18 military and civilians killed in the attack.

It hasn't happened in three years: a Lebanese President on an official state visit to Damascus. This photo, taken August 13th, shows Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad with Lebanese president Michel Suleiman and both men's wives.

-- By CNN's Paula Hancocks

It starts with a phone call at 8:30pm as we are sitting down to dinner in Gaza City.

The Popular Resistance Committees tells us to be at a certain place in half an hour - they are training. No further details. A phone call to our Jerusalem bureau chief to weigh up the risks, we all decide it is rare enough an opportunity not to be missed. We grab our equipment and jump in the armored car.

Revered as freedom fighters by many here, reviled as terrorists in the West, the PRC, just one of the many Gaza based militant groups, has been involved in countless rocket attacks on Israel and the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit two years ago.

The “training ground” is basic... a dead end road for marching drills, a wall with tires stacked up against it for target practice. Burning tires surround the area, giving off putrid thick black smoke… so nightly training is invisible to Israeli eyes in the sky.

The gunmen say they are training for what they see as an imminent Israeli incursion into Gaza.

As a Western female journalist working in Gaza, I rarely have to wear a headscarf… but here I am told to cover my head, the militants cover their faces.

One masked man brings me a chair and a heavily sugared tea so I can watch target and hostage-taking practice in comfort. It is horribly surreal.

One fighter tells me he will never let his son fire a gun… he says he only fights to make a better future for his family. But he’s wearing a balaclava, with a rocket-propelled grenade over his shoulder and vowing to destroy any Israeli who enters Gaza. I struggle to marry the two.

The next morning, another phone call.

The same group wants to show us and other news organizations, a rocket factory… precautions this time are more stringent. We drive just outside Gaza City and are transferred into the back of an unmarked van - we are blindfolded and our phones taken away.

You know this is standard procedure to protect the location of the factory, but allowing yourself to be blindfolded by a masked gunman in Gaza feels incredibly unnatural. It’s hard to stop the worst-case scenario playing out in your head.

My arrival at the location caused some surprise, a woman in a rocket factory is hardly the norm. I am closely watched and discussed. I have covered my head and dressed conservatively, but it’s not enough - I am given a jilbab, a long loose-fitting coat to cover my whole body before I am allowed to enter the “factory.” Once the novelty wears off, I am completely ignored.

The “factory” is anything but; it’s a tiny room with rockets lining the walls and masked men trying to light a fire from a gas canister to heat the explosives.

First the lighter doesn’t work, then there’s a gas leak and the room becomes filled with suffocating gas.

You hear of unexplained explosions in Gaza from time to time, euphemistically called “workplace accidents”. That thought is enough to make us squeeze out of the room and wonder if we’ve gotten just a little too close to the “story”.

In a more ventilated area, the preparations begin… I’m struck by the relaxed manner these men handle deadly ingredients and warheads… one slip and the story would be very different and we probably wouldn’t be around to tell it.

As I watch the rockets being made by men who have clearly done this many times before, I glance at the row of rockets made earlier lining the walls - I wonder which will be fired first and will there be civilian casualties.

Hamas, which controls Gaza and all militant factions, including the PRC, are two months into a truce with Israel… not that you’d know it here. They even unveil a new longer-range rocket, which could reach some of Israel’s larger cities. We’re told it is a drop in the ocean of Palestinian surprises should Israel return to Gaza.

There’s no doubt the PRC wants Israel to see these pictures… rocket makers are positioned to give the camera the best angle - the production of deadly weapons is highly choreographed. It’s a militant’s PR event.

An event the Israeli prime minister's spokesman tells us could force an Israeli response if the truce is just a front for militants to rearm and regroup.

A few months ago, there were fears of a civil conflict within Lebanon and a meltdown of the government. Today, there is a unity government (fragile, and approved after laborious discussions, but in place) and a planned visit by Lebanese president Michel Sleiman to Damascus.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, follows the coffin of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who gave a voice to the Palestinians' longing for independence, during his funeral procession at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008. Darwish, 67, died Saturday following heart surgery in a Houston hospital. Abbas declared a mourning period of three days, and flags were lowered to half-staff at government offices in the West Bank. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

If you've ever visited the Pyramids of Giza, you know you can't walk 10 meters without being accosted by a man trying to hoist you up on a camel or hoards of trinket salesmen following your every move until you buy something just to get rid of them. Frankly, it's always something that has spoiled my enjoyment of Egypt's wonders.

Here's another interesting picture sent in by our Baghdad producer Mohammed Tawfeeq. In this shot taken in Yussifiyah a few weeks ago, a female American soldier shows a group of Iraqi women how to treat injuries and conduct searches.

Mohammed writes: "The main reason for recruiting these 'Daughter of Iraq' is to stop female suicide bombers. The use of female bombers is an increasingly common method for staging suicide attacks in Iraq because male security forces will not search women and few women have been trained to conduct searches. Nearly two dozen suicide attacks have been carried out by female bombers in 2008 -- up from eight in 2007 -- according to U.S. military figures. Today, a Female suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest targeted al-Sharqi police station in central Baquba, about 60 km north of Baghdad killing one Iraqi police officer and wounding 17 people including 13 Iraqi police officers .The incident occurred Monday at 12 p.m. local time."

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, right, receives Omani Sultan Qaboos bin Said upon his arrival in Tripoli, Libya, Monday, Aug.11, 2008. (AP Photo/ Abdel Magid Al Fergany)

The World's most recognized contemporary Arab poet died today in a U.S. hospital after heart surgery, according to news agencies. He was 67 years old. (AP file photo)

And history makes fun of its victims
And its heroes
Takes a look at them and passes by
This sea is mine
This moist air is mine
And my name-
Even if I spell it wrong on the coffin –
Is mine
As for me,
Now that I am filled with all the possible
Reasons for departure –
I am not mine.
I am not mine
I am not mine…