World

Washington On Monday afternoon, President Bush addressed a crowd of several thousand Republican supporters in Pensacola, Florida. The appearance was meant to shore up the sputtering campaign of Charlie Crist, the Republican candidate to succeed Mr Bush’s brother Jeb as governor of Florida. Crist was one of the rare Republican candidates willing to appear with the President in public. Until this week, that is. Crist (who won his race in the end) stood Bush up. He suddenly remembered that his campaign was ‘doing very well in Pensacola’ and that there were a lot of votes to be canvassed for in Palm Beach, several hundred miles across the Gulf of Mexico.

The superstar’s adoption case has shown the powerlessness of an entire African people faced with the might of a single American woman, says Melissa Kite Imagine the scene. Florence Okosieme, wife of a wealthy tribal leader from Nigeria, touches down at Wayne County Airport, Detroit. A limousine awaits to whisk her through the grimy streets of ‘Murder City’ to the suburb of Pontiac, where a poor family awaits her help. She grimaces as the stretch limo passes abandoned and burnt-out shells of buildings where drug gangs hover. When the car pulls up at a tiny house, she pulls her fur coat around her as if to ward off the robbers

I have been following with interest — not to say glee — the spat between the government of Kazakhstan and ‘Borat Sagdiyev’, the latest alter ego of the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Kazakhstan’s autocratic President Nursultan Nazarbayev has evidently failed to see the funny side of Borat’s characterisation of Kazakh men as brutal racists and Kazakh women as mulish peasants who are treated as chattels by their menfolk. London ambassador Erlan Idrissov and other spokesmen have suggested that Baron Cohen is cowardly and politically motivated as well as plain wrong. What particularly got up Idrissov’s nose was Borat’s claim that a Kazakh wife can be bought from her father for

Iran hardly counts as an ‘emerging market’ these days, even for the most adventurous stock-pickers. But there is one Iranian export that appeals to the most sophisticated investors — not oil traders or arms buyers, but those who search for trophies that please the eye as well as making interesting conversational gambits at dinner parties. Have you ever thought of buying a Tabriz? But what is a Tabriz? And how much do they cost? The word conjures up images of exotic palaces, or perhaps some ceramic marvel. But those who know will thrill at the thought of a Tabriz because it is currently the most sought-after property in the market

When Harry Truman was president of the United States, he famously displayed on his desk in the Oval Office a sign that read: ‘The buck stops here’. He understood the need to take responsibility not only for his own actions but also for those of his administration, and that this applied even to the toughest of decisions

The former Israeli prime minister tells Allister Heath why he believes the US President will keep his promise to curb Tehran — even if many Europeans remain blind to the threat It was not my idea of a joke, but I reluctantly complied with the Israeli detective’s request that I hand over all my belongings to him ‘as hostages’, including my mobile phone and passport. He congratulated himself repeatedly on his sense of humour, before ushering me on to the back seat of the heavily armoured Jaguar, where I squeezed in as best as I could between Benjamin Netanyahu and one of his bodyguards. As our mini-motorcade began its journey

At a recent Stop the West rally (yes, I know, but that’s their real agenda) demonstrators waved placards proclaiming ‘We’re all Hezbollah now’. Really? If so, why were they allowed to parade in Trafalgar Square? In a sane society they should surely all have been arrested as a self-proclaimed army of holy warriors whose explicit aim was to murder untold numbers of innocents, destroy Britain, America and the free world and subjugate them to the dictatorship of the ayatollahs. Because that’s what Hezbollah is. Literally designated the Army of God, it is a military force funded, trained by and answerable to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Iran that is

The Blair–Bush summit in Washington was long-planned, but fortuitously well-timed. The President and Prime Minister face not only a huge strategic challenge in the Middle East but also a fundamental political problem at home. They have not yet managed to persuade Western voters of the path they have jointly pursued in the region. Neither man is seeking re-election. All the more reason, then, for candour and robust explanation of what this crisis is truly about. With some exceptions, the default position in the West is now that Mr Bush and Mr Blair have allowed Israel to deploy tactics in southern Lebanon that are at best ‘disproportionate’ and at worst —

Jacques Chirac hit the nail on the head in 2002 when he opened a factory making components for the Airbus A380. The aircraft was, he said, ‘A symbol of what Europe can achieve.’ I could not put it better myself. As the vast 550-seat superjumbo wowed the crowd at Farnborough Air Show this week, there was no mistaking its significance. Conceived by French and German politicians; bureaucratic, expensive and dogged by scandal — the A380 is indeed a wonderful monument to the European Union. In fact, so short is this engineering marvel on market logic that there is a small but distinct risk that it could bring down not only

For all that was made of the ‘diversity’ of the French World Cup side, what was truly striking about the team that took to the field to face Italy in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium was its very lack of diversity. For all but three of the players who thundered on to the pitch to do battle with the Italians were black Frenchmen. Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, the Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines of the beautiful game (along with its now disgraced Algerian maestro, Zinedine Zidane), fought the good fight for France in a contest that ultimately favoured Italy — and that says as much about the changing face of modern

When facing an audience of ambulance workers in a speech last Friday, Andrew Lansley had the ideal joke to warm them up. ‘People always imagine politicians are a bit brain dead,’ he said. ‘Well I am — and I have the MRI scan to prove it.’ He was being absolutely serious. In a freak medical incident while playing cricket in Kent 14 years ago, the shadow health secretary became one of the 150,000 people in Britain to suffer a stroke. While he has made no secret about his condition, few in Westminster are aware of it. Yet plenty of clues exist for those with an eye to see them. Mr

When Tony Blair campaigned for the rewriting of Clause 4, his mantra was that Labour ‘must mean what we say, and say what we mean’. The symbol of this supposed new transparency was the ‘pledge card’: my word is my bond, Mr Blair declared to anyone who would listen. It is worth remembering such claims when considering the widespread briefing to the press last week that the Prime Minister is preparing a deal with Gordon Brown to settle the so-called ‘handover’ — a deal which could see Mr Blair departing No. 10 next spring. The principal objective of the two men is, according to the Guardian, to ‘get through [Labour]

The Prime Minister launched an initiative this week to promote longevity with the aid of a few well-chosen lifestyle adjustments. Mr Blair will, apparently, consume more water with his one real vice — drinking too much tea and coffee — and walk up stairs instead of taking the lift. If only his political staying power, as a leader who has expressed the fervent wish to serve a full third term, were so easily guaranteed. Mr Blair co-opted the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, fresh from a mauling in Gateshead by the main health union (now there’s a bad day out) as his partner in the Longer Life initiative. Mrs Hewitt might

Alan Dershowitz says that the pre-emptive assault on Iraq has given a bad name to a good idea — and will leave Iran the most dangerous nation in the world Face it. Iran will get the bomb. It has already test-fired rockets capable of targeting the entire Middle East and much of southern Europe. And it claims to have 40,000 suicide volunteers eager to deploy terrorism — even nuclear terrorism — against its enemies. With a nuclear capacity, the Islamic Republic of Iran will instantly achieve the status of superpower to which Iraq aspired. Nothing will deter Iran. Sanctions are paper protests to an oil-rich nation. Diplomacy has already failed

Iran’s leaders may be crazed and dangerous fanatics, but they are not stupid. That is why President Bush is right to show the Iranian regime that he is serious about containing its undisputed ambition to go nuclear in flagrant defiance of the international community. Nobody in their right mind — including President Bush — wants to go to war, let alone launch nuclear missile strikes, as some overexcited headlines in the American and British media have suggested over the past few days. But the White House, as well as Downing Street, would be delinquent if they were not busily reviewing all possible contingencies to deal with Iran. That senior generals

The performance in the Israeli elections of Kadima, the new centrist party founded by Ariel Sharon, is almost as remarkable as the survival of the state of Israel itself in the 58 years since its foundation. True, Kadima did not secure the clear mandate for which the acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, had hoped. Turnout was also disappointingly low. But Kadima, the breakaway group formed after Mr Sharon dramatically left Likud last year, has emerged as easily the biggest single party and will lead a coalition to form the next government. As The Spectator goes to press, the precise complexion of that coalition is impossible to judge. Mr Olmert