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"Unity and diversity, and never one without the other -- isn't this the very secret of our Europe?
-- Albert Camus

What's new on the Old Continent? Will Europe ever speak with one voice? Should it? Has it become a musty irrelevance, or does it offer lessons for America and the world? What do Europeans stand for and where does Europe end? Who's in? Who's out? And why? What do Europeans think of the U.S., and why does that matter?

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How is Turkey doing these days? It depends on who you ask. The United States has been positioning Turkey as a model for being the most democratic country in the Middle East; on the other hand, the European Union has been questioning freedom of the press and human rights in Turkey, as part of Turkey's the country's EU accession negotiations. Recent events suggest the EU's concerns about press freedom are legitimate. The most dramatic case is the wrangle between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Aydin Dogan, who owns almost half of the media organizations in Turkey.

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Americans aren't the only ones smirking at Sarah Palin's claims of expertise in Russian affairs. The Russians are cracking a smile, too.

The authors of a recent article in the Russian daily newspaper "Izvestia" questioned the dubious logic linking the Alaska's proximity to Russia with Palin's foreign policy know-how. They concluded, rather sarcastically, that the former alone is enough to qualify the Alaskan governor as a global politics 'specialist.' The article further discussed Palin's publicity stunt of visiting the Minneapolis Museum of Russian Art in early September and noted that journalists present at the scene somehow failed to probe her familiarity with Russian artwork.

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At a time when the airline industry is crumbling in Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is focusing on other means of connections. He wants to build a bridge - not that we haven't heard that from politicians before. But while others eventually say, 'thanks, but no thanks,' Berlusconi smiles widely and says yes. He has given the go-ahead to start building the world's longest suspension bridge. It will be a grandiose national project. It will also be to Italy what was snubbed in Alaska: a bridge to nowhere.

This one will stretch more than two miles over the stormy Strait of Messina and link the toe of the boot-shaped Italian mainland to its closest island, Sicily. It will connect one poor region to an even poorer island. But is the project worthwhile?

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The Big News in the UK for the last two weeks has been the same as pretty much everywhere else around the world: Financial panic! Market carnage! The abyss! Gemma strips off!

Okay, maybe that last one is only familiar to fans of the British tabloid The Sun, but they are the biggest group of "newspaper" readers in Britain.

Meanwhile, languishing on page two was one of the main events on the UK political calendar - the Conservative Party Conference. A few bits of news trickled out: there was the annual Conservative promise to freeze or abolish some unpopular tax (this year it was the council tax, last year an inheritance tax) and party leader David Cameron's promise to handle the current global crisis better than America has. But British media have been much more focused on politics across the pond.

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News Roundup: Russia

As the U.S. presidential elections approach quickly, Russia is scrambling to underscore its military determination and unyielding ambitions for regional dominance. While the Georgian conflict renewed world interest in Russian affairs in late summer, the subsequent John McCain hard-line statements on Russian affairs and the Republican campaign emphasis on Sarah Palin's Russian expertise have conclusively focused the global spotlight onto the country. The Kremlin wants the new American Commander-in-Chief to enter the White House with the clear idea that Moscow isn't ready to compromise.

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In July, a 200,000-strong crowd cheered for Barack Obama when he gave his speech in Berlin. If you stroll down German streets these days, you will come across many people wearing Obama shirts and stickers as fashionable accessories.

A recent survey now revealed that the presidential candidate enjoys a favorability rating of 83% in Germany. More than 50% of Germans think that transatlantic relations will improve if Obama is elected. For John McCain that figure stands at 11%.

What is perplexing about this is that most Germans would vote for Obama, even though they do not share many of his policy positions. If he were to implement large parts of his foreign and security agenda, it could quickly turn him unpopular in Germany.

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Sweden is not accustomed to being touted in America as the example of capitalism done right. Two months ago, most policymakers referred only to the Nordic country as an example of the classic cradle-to-grave social welfare system with all of its inherent challenges. Politicians on the right were particularly fond of pointing out all the inefficiencies and socialist policies that undermined the country's capitalism. And just one month ago, Mike Huckabee warned at the Republican National Convention that Obama had taken "lots of ideas from Europe he'd like to see imported here."

But now it is not just Obama who is suggesting some idea imports from Europe. Almost overnight, world leaders have rushed to seek advice from Swedish policymakers on how to deal with a banking and credit collapse and restore faith in the capitalist system. The irony that socialist Sweden may rescue America's capitalism is causing some smug smiles in Stockholm.

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion bailout plan still suffers from at least two problems. First, Paulson has yet to explain what he is going to do exactly with all that money. His primary justification was to buy "toxic" mortgages from sinking financial institutions. But the U.S. mortgage crisis has turned into a global credit freeze, and Treasury has yet to explain how its new-found funds will address this far bigger issue. Second, Paulson's plan is still likely to reward those who made the worst mistakes while giving taxpayers little to nothing in return for their investment except a bunch of worthless mortgage assets.

Enter the Brits and the Swedes.

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It was no "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran," but John McCain recently committed another embarrassing foreign policy gaffe - this one with Spain. First he appeared not to know that Spain was in Europe, not Latin America, and to mix up Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with the Zapatistas. Then foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann said McCain had indeed refused to commit to meeting with Zapatero. Spain is not only one of Europe's largest economies, but it is a NATO ally with troops in Afghanistan. Perhaps McCain was tired. He certainly knows where Spain is: he is a U.S. Senator, after all, and he knocked out half the country's electricity when his plane hit some power lines back in the 1960s.

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In their two debates so far, Senators McCain and Obama have made but shallow references to America's European allies. The focus of the first discussion was U.S. foreign and security policy: the candidates exchanged views on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China. Neither of them, however, mentioned the EU, nor did they sketch their visions of the future of trans-Atlantic relations. Why is that?

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Is the European Union paving the way for a new U.S. policy on Cuba? Cuba recently accepted an invitation from the EU to engage in a formal political dialogue - the first step towards normalizing relations between Cuba and the EU's 27 member states.

In June, the EU lifted diplomatic sanctions that had been in place against Cuba since 2003. The sanctions had been mostly symbolic, with the EU continuing to trade with and invest in Cuba. The latest announcement suggests that the European-Cuban relationship will continue to evolve, much to the displeasure of the U.S. State Department.

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Each year the Doing Business Report of the International Finance Corporation and the World Bank rates 181 countries around the world according to the ease of doing business there. This year's top reformer is Azerbaijan. What the Doing Business report does not include in its rankings- and what Azerbaijan sorely needs - is a better business climate for women.

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Russia, like the United States and by now much of the rest of the world, is treading dangerously at the edge of financial despair. Four weeks ago, Finance Minister Alexsei Kudrin stated that Russia would not have to use its reserve funds. The government has since changed its position, and then some. In just the past two months Russia's reserves have decreased by nearly $50 billion [in Russian]. It looks like some (nobody knows yet how much) of Russia's reserves will now be employed in keeping its banks and firms from total collapse.

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In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Iraq war cheerleader Fouad Ajami argues that Obama's foreign policy marks "the sharpest break yet with the national consensus... over American exceptionalism." The problem with Ajami's argument is that there is no such consensus.

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It may sound strange at first, but think for a moment of the U.S. and the EU as empires at different stages of their evolution. What would that tell us about the way they're behaving as world players today?

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Immigrants detained indefinitely, fingerprinting racially-profiled populations, mass deportations: this may sound like a typical European's justification for prosecuting President Bush at the International Criminal Court, but these disturbing developments are, in fact, part of a wave of anti-immigration policies taking hold in the European Union. The sentiment is likely a result of slowing economic growth and increased pressure on highly regulated labor markets, but such pressures are testing the limits of one of the EU's founding principles, the free movement of labor.

What began as a debate over undocumented immigration is turning into a debate over the merits of immigration, both legal and illegal, and leading to calls of preserving national identity

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Obama would probably be the clear victor if the American election were held in Europe. But in little Albania, McCain would probably win.

Albanians tend to view both candidates through the double lens of support for Kosovar independence and support for Albania's integration into Western institutions. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February, but the new state's struggle for legitimacy is far from over. Since both Albania and Kosovo are predominantly ethnic-Albanian, the Albanian government has been the staunchest supporter of their "brethren in Kosovo".

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"Wash and Dry-- 6000 Lire." It was the last thing I expected to see painted on the wall of the local laundromat in Bologna, Italy, where I made the most banal of weekly pilgrimages in college life. I was hoping for clean underwear; I got a lesson in economics.

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The European Union has entered diplomatic no-man's-land by deploying more than 200 monitors to areas of Georgia next to the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, replacing Russian forces that invaded Georgia in August. The EU's Georgian deployment is a test of its ability to manage relations with a resurgent Russia, and to develop a more credible approach to the volatile "in-between" lands that stretch along EU borders from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

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While Turkey's ruling AK Party is still committed to full accession to the European Union, Turkish citizens are becoming less interested in joining the club. Together with the growing anti-Turkish accession feelings from both the citizens and the leadership of current EU member states, it is looking less and less likely that Turkey will ever become a member of the EU.

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Turkey's recent election to the UN Security Council for a two-year term is--for the rising regional power--both a gesture and a request from the international community. As a result of the vote, Turkey is charged with the task of negotiating the Council's primary agenda: the Iranian nuclear program.

A certain test to Turkey's diplomatic prowess, it must work to maintain productive negotiations as an intermediary between Iran and western countries.while simultaneously receiving pressure from the United States to vote for the expansion of sanctions. Despite the difficulty of the task, Turkey may well provide the best avenue to a solution in this escalating international crisis.

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The Russian mission to New York gleefully alerted the press this weekend that they had had received an odd fundraising request: John McCain's campaign urged the Russians to "stop the Democrats from seizing control of Washington and implementing their radically liberal policy for our nation." Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin turned down the request and told the media, to illustrate that Russia doesn't try to influence elections abroad.

The solicitation of the Russians was clearly an accident - people receive unwanted fundraising solicitations all the time. But it's somewhat amusing, given McCain's stance on Russia.

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Though overlooked in the States, the recent vote in the Bundestag represents a drastic shift in German foreign policy. By passing an extension and expansion of Germany's mandate in Afghanistan, Germany's leaders not only went against popular domestic opinion but also took one more in a series of gradual steps towards employing a more muscular foreign policy. This is a notable development for the U.S. as it seeks broader international support for its security efforts.

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The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a study Tuesday showing clearly that the gap between rich and poor is widening in Europe and North America. The report, which covers developments spanning 20 years in 30 countries, contains some interesting nuggets:

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Ironic Europe! After spearheading the fight against climate change for years, the EU now seems to encounter more difficulty reaching consensus on the environment than on the financial crisis.

Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Tusk, the Italian and Polish prime ministers, have led the rebellion at the latest Brussels summit. They claimed they did not have to follow EU restrictions, as they were not in power at the time the agreement was reached, an unprecedented denial of the supranational nature of so many of Europe's commitments.

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"The Achilles' heel of the welfare state" read a recent headline in a Danish newspaper, alluding to the economic toll immigration is taking on the country.

"...Unrestricted immigration is a death threat against our welfare," echoed Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of the right wing party Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People's Party), defending her fight for a selective approach to immigration.

The comments come at a time when Denmark has had to accept new rulings by the EU that ease its own relatively strict immigration policies. The conclusion that non-EU citizens no longer need to be legal residents in an EU country to be allowed family reunification in another EU country is against Denmark's own law. But as Denmark has to follow common policy laws on immigration regardless of national laws, the government has had little choice but to concede to the ruling.

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When I was an undergrad at the University of Southern California, the greatest confrontation between students and administration came when the university decided to stop beer sales at football games. How did the student population react? Write letters? Sign petitions? Organize? Protest? Well, we mostly whined to one another, drank even more before the games, and left at half time feeling bad - and not because of the score - soon forgetting the luxury of ever having been able to drink in the stadium.

In my few weeks as a student in Italy, however, I've been exposed to a whole new world of student activism.

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