this is an adventure

President Obama’s speech yesterday in Cairo was aptly titled “New Beginning.” Its promising new tone is encouraging, but needs to be followed by a change of heart for a reluctant State Department and a vigorous, substantive outreach to Muslims. Obama’s new tone adopts a subtle but important new way of speaking about Muslims that may […]

The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys. President Obama’s reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.

Defence Secretary John Hutton becomes the fourth minister to resign in a week, following on the heels of Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, who called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to step aside, to give Labour any small hope of success. Brown is desperately trying to hang on. They’ll have to carry him out.

“Even when he touched on women’s rights, Obama framed it in a Western perspective,” writes Shirin Sadeghi, fancifully ignoring “women who are compelled or forced to wear hejab in these countries and women whose lives and livelihoods are severely impaired by the segregation of sexes that pervades much of the Muslim world.”