An NYT feature on the complicated marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Carlos Alberto, Brazil's captain in 1970, tells BBC Sport his top picks for the World Cup, as does Carlos Alberto Parreira, Brazil's coach.

From AFP via Yahoo! News:

The French have been voted the world's most unfriendly nation by a landslide in a new British poll published. They were also voted the most boring and most ungenerous.
 
A decisive 46 percent of the 6,000 people surveyed by travellers' website Where Are You Now (WAYN) said the French were the most unfriendly nation people on the planet, British newspapers reported.

The Germans have no to reason to celebrate the damning verdict. They came second on all three counts.

WAYN's French founder, Jerome Touze, told the papers he had been stunned by the thumping condemnation of his compatriots and sought to blame it on Gallic love-struck sulking.

"I had no idea that the French would emerge as such an unfriendly country," he said.

"I think our romantic 'moodiness' is misunderstood and I will be sure to pass on the message to my family and friends back in France to be a bit more cheerful to tourists in the future."

Italy was voted the world's most cultured nation with the best cuisine, while the United States was named the most unstylish with the worst food.

Sorry, no word on where Canada fit into the picture.

As an aside, I have some relatives who were born and raised in France. They once went on and on about the reason the Germans hated the French was because the French were simply better than them in all aspects of the human experience: They know how to dress, how to eat, how to converse ... name it, and the French are better at it than the Germans.

And one thing I can say about the rellies: Their scarves are always impeccably swirled around their necks! :)

Draw what conclusions you will from that anecdote.

Germany worries about a rising tide of neo-Nazi extremism, something that might be driven by the World Cup 2006, which starts June 9.

An excerpt from the BBC story:

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has urged extra vigilance from the public to help tackle a rise in far-right extremism.

He said there should be no "no-go areas" for foreigners, as he presented an official report showing a rise in neo-Nazi violence last year.

A Turkish-born politician, Giyasettin Sayan, is in hospital following an apparently racist assault on Friday.

There has been growing concern about racist attacks ahead of the World Cup.

Former government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye drew criticism from politicians after suggesting that black people should avoid parts of the former communist East Germany.

German police have warned that far-right groups are planning to use the World Cup as a platform to win publicity.

This short BBC story looks at the flow of heroin from Afghanistan's Helmand province to Britain.

Helmand is where more than 3,000 British troops will be based starting in June.

That province produces more than half of Afghanistan's opium. However, the second-biggest province for opium production is Kandahar, and that's where Canada's troops are based.

Not a must read, but it drives home the point that drugs fuel the insurgency in Afghanistan, and that the moment Western aid ends with respects to alternative crops, Afghan farmers will go back to what they know best: Cultivating opium poppies.

My post on how Guy Goma's 15 minutes weren't quite up is No. 9 on www.google.it's 'guy+goma' results!

Here's the headline, in Italian, on the translated page:

Minuti del Goma del tipo 15 non erano abbastanza in su

So, to all my Italian visitors, Benvenuto!