Mr. Blair gains little if anything from being pictured with Mr. Bush. By contrast, said Robin Cook, a former cabinet member who resigned over the war, being seen at Buckingham Palace and alongside Mr. Blair amounted to "the mother of all photo ops for President Bush."

But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was unable to persuade more than three of the board's 35 member countries — Canada, Australia and Japan — to vote for a formal censure of Iran. Even the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr. Bush's host, sided with France and Germany and said that the best way now to deal with Iran is to encourage its sudden conversion to openness.

"I believe he is willing to cooperate with us and turn in his passport at this time," Sheriff Anderson said of Mr. Jackson, who was in Las Vegas on Wednesday filming a music special for CBS television that was to have been shown next week. CBS announced on Wednesday that it was pulling the program from its schedule.
mr ed - odd that cbs has now pulled two shows in a few weeks. i have no idea what it means.

President Bush thought he had at last found someplace even more sequestered from the real world than the Republican fund-raisers and conservative think tanks where he makes his carefully controlled "public" appearances.
In her remarks honoring Mr. Bush at the state dinner last night, Queen Elizabeth unleashed a barrage of favorable references to the most dreaded words in the Bush-Cheney lexicon: "multilateral order," "trans-Atlantic partnership," "other allies" and "effective international institutions."
Everything Mr. Bush did in London reinforced the idea that this was a trip made not so much to thank the British people for their friendship, but to send a message to the voters back home that he was at ease as a world leader.

"When the F.B.I. placed an undercover in the foreign exchange world, posing as a bad guy with money looking for bad things to do," Mr. Comey added, "he had more criminal schemes thrown at him than he could imagine."

mr ed: the funny thing is that i cant see any mention at ft.com,
even the wsj hardly mentions it.
fabulously, it is actually below these two stories
"The House approved by a 418-2 vote a bill to curb mutual-fund-trading abuses and boost oversight. Massachusetts subpoenaed at least five fund groups."
"Freddie Mac is expected to report that it overstated earnings by as much as $1 billion in 2001 when it releases its restatement."