Blair has often taken it upon himself to placate criticism of US military aggression abroad by pointing to its social achievements at home. And there can be few greater American accomplishments, in his mind, than race.
Tuesday night in downtown Boston and, despite the familiar vista of collars, ties and dress suits swapping business cards over cocktails, the Modern bar was virtually unrecognisable to a regular. Why are large groups of black people being persuaded to go to bars and nightclubs previously frequented only by whites?
The architect with the winning design to rebuild the World Trade Centre site is embroiled in an increasingly bitter dispute with the property developer who owns a lease on the site, as artistic vision clashes with the commercial demands of prime real estate.
Oprah Winfrey’s book club recommendations still count for more than salacious presidential details when it comes to sales, writes Gary Younge from New York.
”The difference between being black and being gay,” said one gay activist, ”is that you don’t have to come down at breakfast one morning and break it to your parents: ‘Mum, Dad, I’m black.”’
In a week when they lost domestic diva Martha Stewart to the Feds, the editor of The New York Times, Howell Raines, to a scandal, and Senator Hillary Clinton to the talk-show circuit, New Yorkers are no strangers to distinguishing between perception and reality.
The CIA and the United States State Department were under increased pressure to justify their assessments of Iraq’s weapons programme this week as a team of former CIA analysts began examining an intelligence report used as a basis for going to war.
”Some of you, many of you, are not going to like what you hear tonight,” said Ted Koppel, the senior American news anchor as he introduced Arundhati Roy, the Indian novelist, activist and critic of US foreign policy, to his show shortly after September 11.
United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix condemned the efforts of British and United States intelligence before the war to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and insisted that, without UN verification, their post-war inspections lacked credibility.
The United States forces possess confirmed samples of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s DNA with which they can determine whether he has been killed or is still at large, according to the coalition commander, General Tommy Franks.