Jerusalem - Israel has conveyed its displeasure to Washington over reported remarks by US Consul General Jacob Walles that it had agreed to start negotiations with the Palestinians over Jerusalem, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

The Jerusalem Post quoted an Israeli government source as saying Walles's comments to the Palestinian daily al-Ayyam were "highly inappropriate," since there was a US-Palestinian-Israeli agreement not to go public with what was being discussed by the negotiators.

Tel Aviv - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he doubted that any peace agreement could be reached by the end of 2008, saying in remarks published Friday that none of the six core issues in the conflict with Israel have been resolved.

"We presented our ideas and demands regarding the six issues but have not received any answer from the Israeli side," Abbas told the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper on the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo interim peace accords by late Israeli and Palestinian leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

Cairo - US media mogul Walt Disney once said, "The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing," which is what the Doing Business report has pushed several Middle Eastern countries to do for the past six years.

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa compete to score better in the annual Doing Business report, published by the International Finance Corp, a World Bank group.

In order to entertain Middle East folks, INX Media, a division of INX Network, has made announcement about the launching of its Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) 9X and music channel 9XM in the Gulf and the Middle East.

For it, the company has appointed a Dubai-based Media Solutions, headed by Altaf Alimohamed (former Star TV EVP) to spearhead its push into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and other Middle Eastern countries.

Media Solutions is a boutique media consultancy business based in Dubai's Media City.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the members of GCC.