Sweden vs Israel: war of the words

The diplomatic row between Sweden and Israel has quickly reached ridiculous proportions, with this video being one of the most recent contributions, apparently there is no freedom of press in Sweden! (And apparently the former Israeil ambassador to Sweden has no grip on reality).

The whole story is nicely summed up in Daniel Korski's article which also has an interesting conclusion to the question I've been asking myself for the past few days: why has the Israeli government has reacted the way it has?

Trains vs Planes

Trains are my favourite mode of transport, for the comfort, the relaxation, the beautiful views and it's so good for the environment! At least relative to cars and air planes.

Or so I thought, now I'm a bit confused. On the one hand, Eurostar is so eco-friendly that Friends of the Earth has gone so far as to form a public partnership with them, and if that's not a seal of approval of ones environmental credentials I don't know what is. But on the other hand, a recently published report claims that Britain's long overdue joining of the high-speed train revolution will actually generate more CO2 than air planes! This was calculated for the London-Manchester route, over a period of 60 years. Trains going to Scotland will generate slightly less CO2 and some criticism has been made that they have not taken into account the carbon emission from winning car drivers over to the train but still, it looks a lot worse than I had always assumed!

As much as I love my bike, I really don't fancy cycling to Manchester...

Shinkansen: the height of high-speed trains

What do Turkish people have for breakfast?

Grilled halloumi, garlic sausage, olives, egg, bread and Gozleme (Turkish pancake filled with feta and spinach, there's a lady sitting in the window making them, kinda like this). If it's late enough in the day, any one of about 20 different kebabs will go down well too. All washed down with some Turkish coffee of course - yum!

Evin cafe is the place to go for the best in London, and cheap too: here.

People in the picture are not Turks, they just like Turkish food, well any food really.

Carl Bildt: foreign minister and blogger

While I am no fan of his party's domestic politics or his lobbying for 'intervention' in Iraq, I must say I've been reading Sweden's current foreign minister Carl Bildt's blog quite religiously over the past couple of years. Never failing to update his blog, whether in the midst of gunfire in Georgia or dining with Obama, his reports from around the world are fascinating and interesting. Currently at the helm of the Swedish Presidency, Foreign Policy have published a profile well worth reading - on why he is too good to become foreign minister of the EU.

EDIT: I'm not aware of any other foreign ministers who blog, well apart from David Miliband's which is as boring as his interns are bored writing it. Hillary Clinton and her interns are too busy I suppose...