The Londoner

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government announced on Sunday that it was taking control of troubled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, effectively wiping out shareholders' interest in the publicly traded companies. The regulator of the two companies, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) will manage the two companies on a temporary basis. The takeover is the second rescue bid engineered by the U.S. Treasury Department in little more than six weeks. It came as confidence in the firms' ability to keep operating amid a deepening housing crisis continued to erode. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart, regulator for the so-called GSEs or government-sponsored enterprises, called a Sunday-morning news conference to spell out the latest rescue effort. Officials said the executives of both institutions had been replaced. Herb Allison, a former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch, was selected to head Fannie Mae, and David Mo

By Derek Thompson One of many questions facing organizers of the Republican National Convention was this: In an election about change, how would the GOP reconcile the toxic unpopularity of the president without bashing George W. Bush? The resounding answer: Pretend he’s not there. George Bush’s name was uttered once—once!—throughout the entire RNC in speeches reviewed by Slate. We crawled the transcripts of the Democratic and Republican conventions to compare how the different parties used the outgoing president’s name in their speeches. The results from the DNC were hardly surprising. In 184 mentions, Democratic speakers tied Bush to the fading economy and the bungled wars of the Middle East. But in more than half those mentions (95) they tied his name, like a political anchor, to Sen. John McCain. If you watched part of the convention, you probably caught the ubiquitous stat that McCain has voted with Bush about 95 percent of the time in the last year. Some variation of that number m

Sarah Palin may have more in common with community organizers than she realizes. By Thomas Geoghegan It is possible that Sarah Palin really knows the difference between being a small-town mayor and a community organizer. But it's unlikely—because she has more in common with community organizers than she realizes. The main thing a small-town mayor and an organizer have in common, despite Palin's claim otherwise, is that they have real responsibilities to people. Otherwise, they're almost opposites. Mayors are supposed to enforce the laws. Organizers break laws if they have to. Mayors believe in order. Organizers believe in civil disobedience. Mayors get banquets in their honor. If they're lucky, organizers get invited to banquets for other people. Mayors get their names in lights. Organizers live mostly in shadows. Some organizer long ago probably got Sarah Palin going. There must be at least 20 women in the House and Senate who are there now because, long ago, some orga

By BRET STEPHENS WSJ.com "Islam has bloody borders." So wrote Samuel Huntington in "The Clash of Civilizations?," his 1993 Foreign Affairs article later expanded (minus the question mark) into a best-selling book. Huntington argued that, eclipsing past eras of national and ideological conflict, "the battle lines of the future" would be drawn along the "fault lines between civilizations." Here, according to Huntington, was where current and coming generations would define the all-important "us" versus "them." At the time of its writing, "The Clash of Civilizations?" had, beyond the virtues of pithiness and historical sweep, something to recommend it on purely empirical grounds. It seemed especially plausible as applied to the "crescent-shaped Islamic bloc" from the Maghreb to the East Indies. In the Balkans, for example, Orthodox Serbs were at the throats of Bosnian and later Kosovar Muslims. In Africa, Musl

One morning in Sarajevo Sep 4th 2008 From The Economist print edition THE rebellious Slav subjects of the sclerotic Habsburg monarchy called it the “graveyard of nations”. However, for most people in the east and south of the Austro-Hungarian empire the early years of the 20th century were, in retrospect, a golden age: peaceful and law-governed in a way that contrasts poignantly with the totalitarian decades that followed. The great pity is that Emperor Franz Josef II, who ruled the empire from 1848 to 1916, enjoyed robust good health, living to the overripe old age of 86 and blocking the changes that modernity required of his country. Under a different monarch with a more reformist bent, the empire might have survived for many happy decades more. The shots that killed the heir-apparent to the imperial throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on June 28th 1914 unleashed the destruction of the Habsburg empire, the most advanced multicultural and multi-ethnic s

Thousands of high-flying white youngsters are giving up maths and science at 16 because they think they are not clever enough to succeed atA-Level, according to a report published today. The report reveals that white children who achieve A* and A grade passes at GCSE are far less likely than other ethnic groups to pursue the subjects to A-Level. According to what is being billed as a "state of the nation" report on maths and science by The Royal Society, white youngsters are "known to develop the idea that success in mathematics comes from being naturally gifted". By contrast, Asian and Chinese youths, says the report, are more likely to believe that success comes from hard work. It also warns that overall take-up of the subjects has fallen during the past decade. That means ministers are unlikely to reach targets they have set for qualified scientists and mathematicians to enable the UK to compete with other countries. "In chemistry, Pakistani students are 7.2

The UK government has said it hopes to work closely with Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, to combat extremism and strengthen democracy. The Foreign Office said it aimed to "deepen" its partnership with Pakistan after the victory by the widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Strong democracy was the "key to delivering long-term stability, good governance and prosperity," it added. The Tories and Lib Dems also expressed the need for a stable government. 'Ready to assist' "We want to work with the government to support measures that promote stability, democracy and the rule of law and strengthen the democratic transition," the Foreign Office said. We will all look to him to entrench democracy in Pakistan by securing an independent judiciary, a free media and a non-corrupt government which also tackles terrorism decisively Shadow Foreign Secretary "We believe that Pakistan's people are best served by a democratic go