Guardian Writers

After Patti Solis Doyle and Geraldine Ferraro, Mark Penn is the third senior adviser to Hillary Clinton to step down or be demoted. Each time one of the praetorian guard falls, more questions are asked about the judgement of the commander-in-chief. It was Penn’s big idea to play on Clinton’s managerial competence and her experience under fire.

Thirteen months have passed since British Prime Minister Tony Blair described Britain’s military operation in Basra as "successful" and "complete". Like United States President George Bush’s earlier boast of "mission accomplished", these words now ring hollow.

Gold prices soared to new records trecently, on the back of oil’s surge, helped by geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty. The oil price hit $100 a barrel in trading last week, having increased 57% last year, according to Fortune magazine. This puts oil within reach of its all-time inflation-adjusted high of $102 a barrel.

Last week the World Bank published a major book on a crucial aspect of development. The problem was its title. The scandal surrounding its president, Paul Wolfowitz, and the pay package he secured for his bank-employee partner means <i>The Many Faces of Corruption</i> has become less a resource for development economists and more a goldmine for satirists.

The back-slapping, the rictus smiles and the standing ovations of the State of the Union speech are integral to the annual ritual. But they could not disguise the hard truth that this was a very different report to Congress from any United States President George W Bush had delivered before.

Outside the depleted ranks of the United States’s neoconservatives, few tears are likely to be shed over John Bolton’s resignation as US ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton’s political fate was effectively sealed, like that of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, when the Republicans suffered their crippling defeat in the Congressional elections last month.