  In this talk I report on recent progress in a few areas closely related to
the virtual Compton scattering studies. In particular, I discuss the
quark-hadron duality estimate of the $\gamma^* p \to \Delta^+$ transition, QCD
sum rule calculation of the $\gamma \gamma^* \to \pi^0$ form factor, and
application of perturbative QCD to deeply virtual Compton scattering at small
$t$.
