I've just been in Ireland for a couple of days taking care of a little bit of family business.
The city I went to, Waterford in the Southeast, used to be rather hard to reach.
You could take the ferry, which takes a whole day or a day-and-a-night. Or longer if there is a storm, as happened on my birthday a few years ago - I spent most of it on the floor of the ship's restaurant.
You could fly to Dublin and take the train, which takes most of the day.
Or you could fly to Cork and take the bus. You'd arrive at Cork airport - shiny and marbled. You'd take a taxi nto town - ricketty. And you'd get the bus for three hours - rattling and combustible (well, once anyway, I ended up stood by the roadside watching the bus smouldering after something happened to the motor).
But now you can fly, at low cost, to the local airport. It's a sign of the aviation revolution happening across Europe.
There's still some work to do on that, though.
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One of the proposals being promoted to try to limit the violence in Iraq has been to partition the country.
Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador in Croatia during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, is one of the most prominent .
He has been working with Kurds in northern Iraq advising them on how to strengthen their position post invasion.
Iraqi unity is a myth, runs the argument, and creating three separate nations - Sunni, Shia, Kurd - is the way to peace.
Partition always seems like a good idea in a situation where interethnic violence is worsening - "keeping them apart" is bound to appear better than "letting them fight".
But the history of partition is not encouraging.
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After working without sleep for days, our intrepid Tara Gadomski, who covered the election for us from Pennsylvania and monitored the US press, also managed to produce a blog entry!
Here it is:
Despite ten years of working at becoming a cynical journalist I was still surprised at how orchestrated politics can be.
I reported on election night from the Scranton Cultural Center in Pennsylvania, where Bob Casey's supporters, and a large group of TV reporters and photographers, were gathered to watch the results.
I was the sole ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ crew present, but I had a volunteer assistant--my Dad, Michael P. Gadomski. Here's his website: . He lives near Scranton, and he is a professional nature photographer (he sometimes takes pictures of things like rattlesnakes and poisonous frogs--decidedly less dangerous than the wild animals found in politics.) He took the photographs you see in this blog.
Like at most big events, the press was unceremoniously corralled into two cordoned-off areas which were designed to provide a clear view of the stage. We were not allowed to leave the areas at all (and yes, there was a bathroom there!)
This is the part that surprised me: as the crowd grew larger, the area immediately surrounding the stage began to fill up--- with people handpicked from the crowd.
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On Reporting Religion this weekend, and on World Update, our coverage of the midterm elections in the US has taken an interest in the impact of evangelical Christians and their attitude to the Republicans.
I have been speaking to David Kuo, former special advisor to President Bush on faith-based initiatives, part of the compassionate conservative agenda on which Mr. Bush campaigned in 2000.
He became disillusioned with what he calls to his attempts to help the poor.
He says both main parties played to stereotypes - "Republicans were indifferent to the poor and the Democrats were allergic to faith".
It will be fascinating, amongst all the other deeply significant issues that are bound to arise from Tuesday's vote, to see whether the Democratic Party's efforts to bridge their - win over Evangelical Christians - has had any effect.
Our Santiago correspondent (and hey, just imagine how many other global news organisations have one of those... not boasting or anything...) Jane Chambers gave us a suprising report about the mountain village of Salamanca, 300km from the capital, the first village in South America with free WiFi.
It's made a big difference to the life of the villagers already and the hope is it will generate a more prosperous future.
There are lots of places in the developed world with wireless Internet connections, but they don't usually work together.
I have a very clever telephone that also gives me WiFi broadband - but I would have to sign up to several different expensive accounts to use it as I move around London.
And outside London it would be even harder to connect.
I can use it on my home wireless connection - but that's where I've got my computer so why would I?
There's a long way to go before what is obviously a technology with great potential actually delivers.
I would ask for you comments - but the comments software isn't working on this blog at the moment. The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s finest minds are on the case. But sorry - I will ask you about your own WiFi successes and failures when that's fixed.
| 11:44 UK time, Wednesday, 22 November 2006
