Talking points

Aaron L. Friedberg in the Washington Post says it's "An Offer Kim Can't Refuse"

Though the hour is late and the odds long, there is still a chance that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il can be persuaded to give up his nuclear arsenal.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice begins a visit to the Far East to bolster support for North Korea sanctions. And it's not just North Korea - EU foreign ministers are meeting in Luxembourg to discuss possible sanctions against Iran.

Three hundred million Americans

The US population passes the 30 million mark today - how important is an expanding population to the world's only superpower? And what does this phenomenal (by western standards) growth in population mean to Americans?

On Iraq, there's increasing chatter about a three-state federation. US President George W. Bush tried to nip this in the bud during a television interview on Monday, saying he opposed dividing Iraq into a Kurdish, a Shia and a Sunni region.

And corruption in Sweden shock. That's right, the poster child of good government has been hit by a tax scandal, with a second minister resigning despite the centre-right coalition having been in office for less than two weeks.

Other stuff to think about

An email after yesterday's programme, from Susan in France:
What happens when Muslim women need a passport and what happens when they get to passport control? Or do they have to stay in the country because they cannot take the veil off for the passport photograph?

I don't know Susan, but perhaps someone can answer that for us...

Here's some other stuff that caught my eye this morning. First, a New York Times editorial - Paying for Better Parenting

New York is searching for new ways to fight persistent poverty, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Commission for Economic Opportunity has recommended useful reforms. To encourage families to participate in these programs, the mayor hopes to recruit private donors to provide parents with a cash incentive to make the right choices for their children - like taking them in for regular checkups and making sure they stay in school.

And also in the NYT, Jeff Stein asks US government officials: Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?

Too many officials in charge of the war on terrorism just don't care to learn much, if anything, about the enemy we're fighting.

And W F Deedes in the Daily Telegraph argues (admittedly, as others have before) that "one day, we must talk to the Taliban".

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war," as Winston Churchill sagely observed in Washington half a century ago, when tension with the Soviet Union was high. Scanning the horizon, I see signs of such thinking beginning to stir in the so-called war on terror.

And Michael McCarthy in the Independent asks if carbon offsets are an excuse to carry on polluting?