| Not quite joined at the hip … just good friends
Mark Malloch Brown, the new minister at the Foreign Office, will be lying in a darkened room today, breathing deeply with a wet towel on his head. The former deputy UN Secretary General, who was regarded as the bane of the neo-cons in Washington, recently declared confidently in an eye-popping newspaper interview that Britain and America would no longer be "joined at the hip" on foreign policy. In the Machiavellian world of Westminster this was seen by some as yet another sign that Gordon Brown, the newly-installed Prime Minister, was seeking to distance himself from Tony Blair's reign by loosening the ties that have bound Britain and America for decades. Even when Mr Brown personally implored all his cabinet colleagues to go forth and talk up the so-called "special relationship", and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, went public to emphatically declare that the UK's link with the US was its "most important bilateral relationship", there were still some souls rubbing their chins and thinking Gordy was up to something sneaky.
Big Media Meets Its Match
"I'm not going to say that it gives you the path to the future, but history repeats itself often enough that it's worth knowing about. You need to understand how journalism and broadcasting and media in this country developed if you're going to make an intelligent contribution." The rapid rise of the Internet has dramatically shifted the media and telecommunications landscape, kicking up a flurry of new questions: Who will build and control the Internet's future infrastructure? Will all Americans get equal access to high-speed broadband service? Should the government attempt to control digital content, be it spam, pornography, or anything else? Should Internet radio stations and video providers be subject to rules similar to those that traditional broadcasters follow? With these issues looming on the horizon, many media reformers are urging activists and policy makers like Copps and Adelstein to shift their priorities rapidly.
Homeowners: Contractor Took Money, Left Jobs Undone
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Several people claim a contractor has taken tens of thousands of dollars from them, torn apart their homes and then disappeared with the work left undone. "His name is Brian Berry, a man who says he is a contractor, but he has no license, no insurance, no permits. Of course, he never tells his victims that. Instead, he rips apart kitchens, basements, bathrooms -- all on a promise to deliver dreams. Then, as quickly as he cashes your first check, he's gone," KMBC's Jim Flink said. Inside Steve Petrillo's Leawood, Kan., basement sits a patchwork of abandoned dreams. .
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