<FONT face="Arial Black" size=2> The facts </FONT>
<FONT face="Arial Black" size=2>Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics .Last year ,a journalist was instructed by a well-known magazine to write an article on a president's  palace in a new African public .</FONT>
<FONT face="Arial Black" size=2>When the article arrived ,the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it .The article began :"hundreds of steps leading to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace ".The editor at once sent the journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact number of the steps and the hight of the wall .The journalist immediately set out to obtain the facts ,but he took a long time to receive them .Meanwhile ,the editor was getting impatient ,for the magazine would soon go to press .The editor sent the journalist two faxes ,but he received no reply .He sent yet the journalist another fax informing him that if he didn't reply he will be fired .W hen the journalist again failed to reply ,the editor  reluctantly published the article as it had originally been writen .</FONT>
<FONT face="Arial Black" size=2>However ,the editor at last received a relay from the journalist two weeks later .Not only had the poor man been arrested ,not he had been  sent to the prison as well .He had at last been allowed to send a fax in which he informed the editor that he had been arrested while accounting the 1084 steps leading to the 15-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace .</FONT>