News from Around the World

What is so worrying about the Newsweek story was the cowed reaction of the press. In some cases they scrambled to pay obeisance to the White House's tough line, quite forgetting that the kerfuffle distracted from the worsening situation in Iraq in which scores of lives are lost every day. Marty Peretz, the owner of the New Republic, took space in his own publication to attack the Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, who by the way was once the hero of conservatives for his hounding of Bill Clinton.