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France is celebrating its first Socialist President for 17 years, voting in François Hollande and bidding adieu to Nicolas Sarkozy.

Although Sarkozy may have clung on in the final live televised debate - watched by 18 million viewers - Hollande dealt with his cries of “liar” quite well, and with Fascist Marine Le Pen stating she would cast a blank vote, centrist François Bayrou pledging support for him and polls consistently putting the Socialist ahead, “M. Normal” won the day with just under 52% of the vote, in a Presidential race that ended much closer than expected.

Jubilant crowds partied all night at the Place de la Bastille in central Paris, the same place François Mitterrand celebrated his election win in 1981.

Hollande’s victory showed a rejection by France of tough austerity measures, the voters calling instead for the creation of a new European agreement for jobs and growth.

In his victory speech at the Place de la Capitale in Tulle, he asked the public to judge him on two key issues – “justice and young people”.

President Hollande said:

“I am proud to be capable of giving hope again. I will be the president of all… There is only one France, one nation, reunited for the same destiny…

“Everyone in France with be treated equally, no child of the Republic will be sidelined, abandoned or discriminated against. The first thing the President of the Republic must do is to assemble and bring people together for the challenges we face.”

Adding:

“Europe is watching us, when this result was announced I am sure that in some countries it was a relief, a hope… Austerity is not inevitable…

“We are are not any old country, we are France!”

• Sarkozy and Hollande chase the disaffected Le Pen vote 30 Apr 2012

• It’s Sarko v Hollande, part deux 23 Apr 2012

• France decides (round 1) 20 Apr 2012

• Sarkozy v Hollande: French presidential race hots up 14 Mar 2012

• Is François Hollande the next president of France? 9 Feb 2012

Hollande’s win has implications for Europe as whole, proving austerity is not the be and end all. The left across Europe have galvanised hope in his win; Labour Party activists in the UK have been tweeting their delight at Hollande’s win, perhaps seeing it as a symbol for the British public rejecting harsh austerity measures in the general elections in 2015.

The Greek elections, more worryingly, have shown the public supporting far-left and far-right parties who reject the austerity regime, against the mainstream centre-right New Democracy and Socialist parties.

Europe is eager to see how the Franco-German relationship will evolve under Hollande’s direction, especially when Angela Merkel backed Sarkozy in his presidential bid. Hollande plans to meet with Merkel before the G8 summit in Washington in an attempt to start to renegotiate the fiscal pact.

All eyes now turn to the parliamentary elections in June, where the Socialists, UMP and Front National will want to win majorities. It is particularly important for the Socialist to win seats so that Hollande can carry through his policies. The campaign continues.

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Donnacha DeLong, president of the National Union of Journalists, reviews CAFOD’s photography exhibition, “The Silenced: Fighting for Press Freedom in Mexico”, which is being hosted at the Guardian’s London offices until Sunday, May 13th

For the past six years, Mexico has witnessed an extreme escalation in the activities of gangs and drug cartels. In 2010 alone, Amnesty International reports, the government had recorded 15,000 gang-related killings, particularly in the northern states.

In Ciudad Juárez alone, nearly 3,000 people were killed, including several mass killings of young people.

Many of the killings are by the gangs themselves or people caught up in inter-gang warfare. It is unclear how many people have also been killed in actions by the police and army to take on the gangs and cartels, or – more disturbingly still – by local police and army officials who have themselves become mixed up in the drug gangs.

Discerning the responsibility for individual acts of violence is difficult enough in Mexico, but even more so when the diviners of truth – the journalists working in the country – are themselves so often the targets.

Mexico is now seen as the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist.

According to the International Federation of Journalists (pdf):

“During 2011 Mexico remained the deadliest country for journalists with 11 killings recorded. The drug trafficking related violence that has laid to waste parts of the country continues to claim lives of thousands of citizens.

“In this lawless environment, journalists have become the prime targets. Despite the establishment of the Special Prosecutor’s Office to investigate and prosecute those responsible for crimes against journalists, over 98% of media killings remain unresolved.

“Authorities tend to claim delinquency as the reason for crimes against journalists. In the meantime, the Mexican government is yet to implement its promises to protect journalists.”

Impunity in Mexico has a long history, Amnesty International also point out that human rights abuses committed during the country’s “dirty war” of the 1960s remain unpunished; likewise the collective punishment of the indigenous community of the region in the southern state of Chiapas that followed the Zapatista uprising in the 1990s.

The murder of Brad Will, an American Indymedia journalist – killed while covering the 2006 Oaxaca uprising – remains unsolved and unpunished.

• Five decomposing heads discovered in a sack outside a school in Acapulco 2 Oct 2011

• Fear of death: The ultimate injunction 25 May 2011

• Press freedom in peril: Another celeb injunction, and now a contra mundum 21 Apr 2011

This climate of local police corruption, human rights abuses and legal impunity is the toxic nightmare in which violent drug cartels are thriving, despite the state’s war against them.

It is in this context that journalists are putting their lives at risk trying to do their jobs, and as this exhibition shows, far too many are paying the ultimate price simply for telling the truth.

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By Markus Göransson

As a Swede, I have been following the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, Norway’s terrorist and mass murderer, closely through the Swedish press. I was shocked by what happened in Norway last July and have been reading transcripts of the court proceedings and other reports to try to understand better how it was possible for it to take place.

I remember being stupefied when I first heard about the killings. I never imagined that such a thing could happen in Norway, which had alwaysseemed the most perfect place in the world to me.

It was as if evil had stepped into paradise. And I could not get my head around the fact that an intelligent and well-to-do person, who had grown up in that society, could turn against it, devoting all his energies, all his resources – indeed his entire life – to killing as many of its members as possible.

Sometimes people imply that to understand is to condone, but surely you can condemn someone all the more powerfully if you first understand what drove them to commit their crime – all their weaknesses, all their delusions, their arrogance, narcissism and inhumanity.

I think that it would do a disservice to his victims if we treated Breivik like a caricature, a straw man fit only for vilification and dehumanisation. His crime prompts difficult questions that we cannot skirt around by claiming that he is evil incarnate or that he is mentally ill.

With that in mind, I think that the Swedish media – and I imagine the Norwegian media too – are doing an outstanding job in covering the trial. There is not an ounce of sympathy for what Breivik did, yet there is a great deal of effort in trying to understand how he could commit his heinous crimes.

In a way we are compelled to try to understand him, because he is one of us: he speaks a language that we can understand and has grown up in a society and culture similar to our own. He is a mirror of us, and we find ourselves staring fixedly into that mirror to try to understand what, after all, sets him apart from us.

• No Counter-Terrorism approach could eliminate a Breivik lone wolf threat 1 Aug 2011

• What do we know about Anders Behring Breivik? Very Little 26 Jul 2011

• Norway tragedy: How right-wing bigots are still droning on about Islam 25 Jul 2012

• “I dag er vi alle norske” 24 Jul 2011

• Norway’s day of terror 23 Jul 2011

One thing that makes Breivik such a disturbing person is that little in his life story seems to have predestined him to become the worst mass murderer in Norway’s postwar history. Yes, he had a difficult relationship to his father, and, yes, psychiatrists feared for his mental health when he was four years old, but that is light years from saying that he was bound to do what he did.

Discussions about his mental health do not give much comfort. One psychiatric examination found him to be paranoid schizophrenic and hence not accountable for his crimes, but another one concluded that he has no serious psychological disorder.

Breivik himself insists, heatedly, that he is completely sane. Some experts believe that he has an empathic disorder, otherwise he would not have been capable of carrying out his crime, as one Swedish psychiatrist put it.

Breivik denies this, too, claiming that he can switch his empathy on and off and that he has learned to keep his emotions in check through meditation and various other strategies.

While it is difficult to imagine that a person with a healthy sense of empathy can kill seventy-seven people in cold blood, I think that these discussions are, to an extent, beside the point. It is true the state of Breivik’s mental health is an important part of the puzzle of why he could commit the massacres in Oslo and Utøya, but it should not blind us to the fact that he is still a human being, like ourselves, who very deliberately took a series of steps to commit mass murder.

One of the things that have struck me in his testimony is the importance accorded to his ideas about cultural Marxism and Islamicisation. He talks about having submitted to these ideas, turning himself into a “foot soldier of the conservative nationalist revolution,” and sees his actions as the logical outcomes of a diagnosis that Norway and Europe are being threatened by cultural relativism and Islamic immigration.

He says he sacrificed his own freedom and reputation in order to serve the higher agenda of cleansing Europe of alien influences and restoring its essential Christian identity. In his mind, this agenda is more important than either the lives of his victims or his own morality.

“One hundred voices told me ‘don’t do it, don’t do it’,” he said during the trial when describing how he killed his first victims on Utøya. “Taking a person’s life is the most difficult thing you can do…It goes against human nature,” he said later.

And yet he did it. Sixty-seven times he shot and killed a human being, usually at close range, sometimes when they were begging for their lives. He defiled his human nature to put himself at the service of an idea, blinding himself to his own and his victims’ humanity in order to carry out an atrocity.

He strikes me as a kind of modern-day Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, so seized by an idea that it trumps, in his mind, every human instinct, every predilection for empathy and restraint.

Where Raskolnikov’s world view was warped by sickness, poverty and the nihilistic discussions in the student community in St. Petersburg, Breivik drew his intellectual nourishment from online extremist forums, visited from a computer hooked up in the posher parts of Oslo or near the isolated farm where he was preparing for his crime.

And like Raskolnikov, Breivik is guilty of staggering arrogance, believing that he has seen the truth and been compelled to act according to it. He is persuaded that it was through will power alone that he transcended his human inhibitions, which would otherwise have weakened him and prevented him from doing what was right.

He does not realise that, most of all, it was his fanaticism that blinded him, giving him that tunnel vision that removed every shred of doubt, every inkling of modesty and humility that might have prompted in him the questions, “What if I am wrong? What if the world is more complex than I can comprehend?”

No such doubts seem to have figured in his world view. The propaganda movie that he released on the day of his crime moved him to tears when he saw it in court, yet it is a badly argued, horribly produced piece, with gaping logical leaps and factual flaws (not to mention that some of the text in it has been cut and pasted from Wikipedia).

To think that the ideas conveyed by that clip inspired in him the passion to commit his massacres defies reason. Yet somehow they did. Somehow in his intellectual self-isolation he gradually stopped seeing people as people but instead as pawns in a struggle between abstract ideals.

People were accidental to this struggle, mere carriers of the ideas that truly mattered. And for this reason they could be disposed of, in the same manner that fanatics around the world are ready to eliminate people who get in the way of the higher objective.

It was the triumph of abstraction over life and humanity, the victory of arrogance over humility and self-questioning. Maybe one day, in his comfortable cell in the high-security prison of Halden, Breivik will realise the utter vacuity and horror of what he did.

If that day comes, I think his soul will be torn to shreds.

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A year on from the biggest call of his Presidency, the call to send in the Seals and take out Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama has signed a new pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a surprise visit to the country, hailing “a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins”.

Addressing US troops at Bagram Air Base, he said the goal of defeating al-Qaeda “is now within our reach”, and called on the troops to “finish the work at hand” and “forge a just and lasting peace”, declaring:

“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end.”

Heralding “a future in which war ends, and a new chapter begins”, he said:

“My fellow Americans, we’ve travelled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of new day on the horizon.”

Adding:

“The reason the Afghans have a new tomorrow is because of you.”

Looking ahead, he said:

“Our goal is not to build a country in America’s image or to eradicate every vestige of the Taliban. These objectives would require many more years, many more dollars and many more American lives.

“Our goal is to destroy al-Qaeda, and we are on a path to do exactly that… The goal I set to defeat al-Qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild is now within reach.”

Ending:

“I know the battle is not yet over; some of your buddies are going to get injured, some of your buddies may get killed. And there’s going to be heartbreak and pain ahead. But there is a light on the horizon because of the sacrifices you made…

“Today, with the signing of the strategic partnership agreement, we look forward to a future of peace.”

• Barack Obama’s 2012 4 Jan 2012

• The A-Z of Ayman al-Zawahiri 16 Jun 2011

• Now even al-Qaeda say bin Laden is dead 6 May 2011

• A live, incarcerated bin Laden would have been more use to us 5 May 2011

• The influence and legacy of Osama Bin Laden 3 May 2011

• Hell Called, Your Place is Reserved: Muslim-country blogs react to Bin Laden death 3 May 2011

• Where’s Osama? 3 Dec 2009

Back in the US, however, the way the Obama administration have marked the one year anniversary of the killing of Bin Laden has drawn criticism from usually unhostile quarters.

One such is the Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, who blogged:

The administration has every reason to celebrate, as does the country. The president made the right decision, and it was a great example of leadership, courage, and competence at a time when all three are in short supply in our politics.

Less laudable is the other way the administration is celebrating: by rolling out an attack ad questioning whether Mitt Romney would have made the same call to go after the man behind the 9/11 attacks. In the ad, after Bill Clinton extols the decision to greenlight the high-risk operation, the question “What path would Mitt Romney have taken?” appears ominously on the screen.

Concluding:

President Obama made the right call on taking out bin Laden, one that carried great political risk (as Clinton puts it in the ad: “Suppose the Navy SEALs went in there and it hadn’t been bin Laden. Suppose they had been captured or killed.”). And he deserves credit for it. But having made the tough call and having succeeded is exactly what should have given him the leverage to refuse to continue the destructive “who is more macho?” cycle of bravado.

Romney himself has accused Obama of calibrating his war strategy to the election calendar, and has erred by setting a deadline for withdrawing troops – since the Taliban could simply wait out the Americans.

The Republican challenger did, though, put partisanship aside to give the President a share of the credit for Bin Laden’s killing, adding of Afghanistan:

“It would be a tragedy for Afghanistan and a strategic setback for America if the Taliban returned to power and once again created a sanctuary for terrorists.”

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François Hollande is still on course to become the next President of France, the second Socialist President since 1954. In the first round of elections last week, Hollande edged ahead of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy by a slim margin of 1.5 points.

The far left and Greens have pledged their support for Hollande in contrast to Front National leader Marine Le Pen, who has categorically told her 6.5 million voters not to vote for Sarkozy. Despite this, however, it seems likely most of the far right party’s supporters will end up gritting their teeth and voting for Sarkozy.

Recent polls estimate 45% to 60% of people who voted for Le Pen will transfer their vote to Sarkozy in the second round, whereas 18% to 26% would support Hollande. That is still not enough for Sarkozy to win as he would need another 20% to make the gains needed. Many votes for Le Pen came from women, blue collar workers and voters that lived in rural areas, particularly in the Gard region of France.

In the end, though, Sarkozy’s lurch to the right seems to have done him few favours in this election. Though the anti-immigration and anti-European vote went primarily to Le Pen, Sarkozy has reiterated that if elected he will “defend the French way of life”, reduce immigration and secure France’s borders. The President emphatically stated there were not 6.5 million fascists in France.

Both Hollande and Sarkozy have realised Le Pen’s supporters could hold the key to their electoral success on May 6th, although in reality many may not vote in the second round.

Hollande stated on Friday that limiting illegal immigration during an economic crisis was “essential”, and said that if he takes office he will ask Parliament to fix the number of immigrants allowed into France every year. He has stated, however, that he was not prepared to seduce Le Pen’s vote at any price and would seek to give residents who are non-European citizens the right to vote in local elections.

In the national daily Libération Hollande stated:

“There is a part of the Le Pen electorate that comes from the left… Who are against privilege, against globalisation, against a Europe that doesn’t work. It’s up to me to convince them that it is the left that will defend them.”

• It’s Sarko v Hollande, part deux 23 Apr 2012

• France decides (round 1) 20 Apr 2012

• Desperate Sarkozy cranks up the anti-immigration rhetoric 14 Mar 2012

• Le Pen’s fascists claim French youngsters are ‘joining in their droves’ 28 Feb 2012

• Why we should worry about the poison of Le Pen 17 Feb 2012

There is a final televised debate on the May 2nd between Hollande and Sarkozy to make their last bids to the French voters.

If elected, once Hollande takes up office we will see whether he will govern France as a centrist or leftist. With France potentially on the brink of an economic crisis – their credit rating having been downgraded recently - the programmes and policies implemented will need to have a strong impact for France to turn her fortunes around.

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Karin J. Robinson is the Vice Chair of Democrats Abroad UK and was the Democratic Party’s Regional Field Director for Americans Abroad in Northern Europe in 2008. She blogs at the Huffington Post and at www.obamalondon.blogspot.com.

With all the attention on next week’s mayoral elections, and the expectations of a disappointing result for voters on the left, perhaps progressives can take comfort in another election that will be taking place in London and across the UK: the vote for Barack Obama here in Britain.

From May 1-6, more than 6 million American voters who live overseas will have their first and only chance to cast a ballot in person for Barack Obama, and to choose the delegates who will represent them at the Democratic Convention in North Carolina.

Why does this matter? Well, first and foremost, this overseas primary will be one of the first tests of Democrats’ ability to bring back the voting coalition that won us our sweeping victories in 2008.

As a Regional Field Director for Americans Abroad at that time, it was my job to increase voting participation from American voters living here in Europe. The Obama campaign understood that Americans living abroad have historically had difficulty voting, and have often been underrepresented at the polls. In 2008, however, we achieved an astonishing 750% increase in our confirmed Democratic vote.

With the resurgence of the American right, and the Republican Party’s worrying efforts to suppress the vote by introducing restrictive new voting laws across the country, it is now more important than ever before that the Democrats are able to bring underrepresented voting groups back to the polls.

The overseas vote can be a secret weapon in this fight, as a large group of voters that not only vote Democrat in record numbers, but who can make a difference in scores of close races, from Virginia to Pennsylvania to Michigan to Florida, because they will cast their November ballots in their home states, and who – moreover – are invisible to pollsters. Democrats living abroad will not show up in any voting projections until the one that counts, on election day.

• Obama’s playing against a weak field, but it’ll never be as bad as last time 21 Feb 2012

• World Outside Westminster: Obama’s glee at the Republican implosion 19 Feb 2012

• USA 2012: Mitt spends four times as much as Gingrich, gets 1.4 times the votes 1 Feb 2012

• The World Outside Westminster – Oh, Carolina 22 Jan 2012

• Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire: Press round-up 11 Jan 2012

Yet the challenge of organising these voters is significant. The 50 states have different rules for voting in federal elections, and although much progress has been made of late in increasing voter access for Americans living abroad, one recent change to the law means that states that were previously required to keep overseas voters on their rolls for two full election cycles now may
require a fresh ballot request each election year.

As such, Democrats Abroad is making a major push for voter registration and ballot requests this year. We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible by creating www.votefromabroad.org – a one stop shop for all overseas registrations and ballot requests.

Here in London on May 1st, we are pulling out all the stops, offering live music, speeches, American flags in abundance, and one simple message: vote here to make a big difference back home.

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Further on the theme of broken Conservative manifesto promises, we have the continuing saga of Britain’s commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid.

As Left Foot Forward has observed time and time again, the Tories’ incessant obfuscation when it comes to enshrining this cornerstone of the Millennium Development Goals in law constrasts starkly with David Cameron’s former enthusiasm for ring-fencing Britain’s foreign aid commitments.

Now, as both the Observer and Daily Mail report, the legislation committing Britain to the target by 2013 (which was drafted as long ago as January) has once again disappeared from the forthcoming order of parliamentary business, and looks likely to be omitted from the Queen’s speech next month.

The Observer reports:

Any backpedalling from the promise could be embarrassing for David Cameron when he has just scored a political coup, having been invited by UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to chair a new committee on development goals.

Indeed. Still, the repercussions for Cameron here are domestic as well as international. Once again, the unfortunate political subtext is that of the Tory backbenches, militantly right-wing and entirely beyond Cameron’s control. As with the commitment to a elected House of Lords, the ring-fencing of the 0.7% target was a feature of all three main parties’ manifestos in 2010.

• Budget 2012: The consequences of failing to hit the 0.7% aid target laid bare 21 Mar 2012

• Tories delay enshrining 0.7% target in law. Again. When will they legislate? 2 Feb 2012

• Conservatives to meet aid target by counting ‘made up’ debt relief as aid 9 Jan 2012

• Tories are balancing the books on the backs of the world’s poorest 2 Dec 2011

• An open letter to David Cameron on the importance of the 0.7% aid target 17 May 2011

The relevant passage of the Conservative manifesto (page 117, pdf) is entirely unambiguous:

“A new Conservative government will be fully committed to achieving, by 2013, the UN target of spending 0.7% of national income as aid. We will stick by the rules laid down by the OECD about what spending counts as aid. We will legislate in the first session of a new Parliament to lock in this level of spending for every year from 2013.”

Nor was the commitment any kind of afterthought, since it was subsequently included in the text of the coalition agreement (page 22, pdf):

“We will honour our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid from 2013, and to enshrine this commitment in law.”

Much like Lords reform, the 0.7% target is considerably more consensual than it is controversial. It was initially mooted by the UN as early as the 1970s: as the UN’s Millennium Project notes, 0.7% is the bare minimum level of foreign aid investment needed internationally in order to faciliate the Millennium Development Goals.

Indeed, the Millennium Development Goals’ ten year progress report, in 2010, revealed that Britain was then doing quite well in fulfilling its commitments. At 0.51% of GDP, it remained some way short of the target, but nonetheless was spending more on foreign aid than any other G8 nation.

Nonetheless, two years later, Tory backbench enragées are once again at the point of derailing a progressive and eminently necessary piece of legislation. As one NGO insider tells the Observer:

‘My understanding is that the Tory backbenchers don’t want House of Lords reform or foreign aid commitments, so putting both in the Queen’s speech would be too much, even if it means missing the 2013 promise.’

‘If the legislation does not appear in the Queen’s speech’, concurs a Labour source, ‘people will conclude that the Tory party’s claims to have changed were a pre-election con. This is a test of David Cameron’s willingness to face down the right of his own party.’

Speaking to The Sun in February, International Development secretary Andrew Mitchell lamented the lack of parliamentary time for the legislation – although, as ex-DFID special advisor Richard Darlington pointed out at the time, the parliamentary session ending next month has run for around two years, making it one of the longest in Britain’s history. “The most important point,” Mitchell then claimed, “is that we are actually doing it.”

On the contrary, the problem is precisely that they are not doing it. The question is merely who is more deserving of damnation: those Tory backbenchers so profoundly uninterested in the contents of their most recent manifesto, or the coalition government prepared to compromise over the lives of millions in the developing world.

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Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande will face off for the French Presidency on May 6th after neither passed the 50 per cent winning mark in yesterday’s first round.

Hollande looks the favourite, winning the first round 28.6% to Sarkozy’s 27.1%, giving him the momentum going into the two-week run-off. Fascist Marine Le Pen came third on 18.1% – the Front National’s largest ever presidential vote share – with far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon fourth on 12% and centrist François Bayrou fifth on 9%.

Where the voters of the bottom eight candidates vote now will be crucial. Melenchon has urged all his supporters to unconditionally back Hollande, while Le Pen is remaining silent on who her backers should now support.

Although yesterday’s vote reflected recent polls, in the past they have been inaccurate, particularly in predicting support for the Front National as voters do not like to publicly declare the agree with the far right party. This is what partly led to the surprise of Jean-Marie Le Pen edging out the Socialist candidate to enter the second round in 2002.

It is an unexpected achievement that Hollande is set to become the next Socialist president of France. The unlikely candidate replaced Dominique Strauss-Kahn after his sex scandal. He’d been dubbed the ‘ordinary’ candidate in contrast to the ‘bling’ candidate whose popularity has faded over recent months.

• France decides (round 1) 20 Apr 2012

• Sarkozy chases youth vote as election enters final weeks 5 Apr 2012

• Sarkozy v Hollande: French presidential race hots up 14 Mar 2012

• Desperate Sarkozy cranks up the anti-immigration rhetoric 14 Mar 2012

• Is François Hollande the next president of France? 9 Feb 2012

Hollande comes from a small town called Tulle and is seen as a lovely, down to earth guy. His policies if successful include taxing those who earn more than a million euros at 75%. If he makes it to the Élysée Palace he will be the first Socialist president since 1995; if Sarkozy loses, he will be the first incumbent to lose a second term since 1981.

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USA

President Obama has gone on the offensive again, this time over the budget proposed by House Republicans which would see an axe taken to social security spending in an effort to support defence spending and vested interests.

The debate over House proposals stands in stark contrast to the Senate Appropriations Committee which has voted in favour of the spending allocations for the next year. The bi-partisan committee voted 27-2 in favour of approving the allocations, with only two freshman Republican senators dissenting.

The President’s aggressive attacks have done little to distract from the scandal that has engulfed the secret service. Agents in Colombia preparing for the President’s visit are alleged to have invited prostitutes back to their hotel rooms and a dozen have been suspended while the allegations are formally investigated.

• France decides (round 1) Tom Rouse

• World must act now to prevent Sahel famine killing millions Lord McConnell

• Ashton’s diplomatic guile yields progress at Iran nuclear talks Ben Phillips

US 2012

Despite the Cartagena sex scandal, Obama’s poll ratings continue to be favourable. Gallup places his approval ratings at 47%, to 46% disapproving. The latest Real Clear Politics Average of other major polls puts the President 2.2 points ahead of Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Although Romney looks certain to be the GOP nominee, there are 19 states still left to vote and Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich remain in the race. Although neither man looks remotely likely to mount a serious challenge to Romney, they do present a potential thorn in his sides.

If a substantial swath of registered Republicans are still unhappy with Romney as their candidate there is a real chance they could vote for either Gingrich or Paul in protest.

Such protest voting would harm the Romney campaign as it seeks to put the primary process behind it and build a ground campaign ahead of November’s contest with Obama. Research by Nate Silver suggests Obama has already deployed far more resources in establishing forces on the ground and Romney has already been forced into playing catch-up.

If either Gingrich or Paul represents a serious threat in any of the remaining primaryies this will force the Romney campaign to expend resources they would rather utilise targeting Obama.

Syria

The UN and Syria have come to an agreement over international observers entering the war-torn country. The deal comes a week after a ceasefire which has been flagrantly ignored by government troops with international broadcasters regularly showing footage of gunfire.

Three hundred observers are due to be deployed across the country and are expected to enter the country in the next few weeks, subject to agreement by the security council. In a letter to the UN Security Council, General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said progress had been made, but Syria had yet to send a clear signal about its commitment to ending the violence which had led to the deaths of more than 11,000 people in the last year.

He wrote:

“I remain deeply concerned about the gravity of the situation in the country, however, without underestimating the serious challenges ahead, an opportunity for progress may now exist, on which we need to build.”

Burma

The EU has reached a preliminary agreement to lift the majority of sanctions placed on Burma. The final decision is due on Monday and needs to be approved by foreign ministers from member states.

The lifting of sanctions is a response to the reforms introduced by the Burmese military junta over the past year. These included the release of political prisoners – like pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi – and subsequent elections which saw her NLD party win 43 seats in the country’s parliament.

David Cameron made clear in a visit last week that the lifting of sanctions must be accompanied by further reforms and the reform process could not stop just because sanctions have been lifted.

The prime minister said:

“This country really matters. For decades it has suffered under a brutal dictatorship. It is also desperately poor. It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a government now that says it is committed to reform, that has started to take steps, and I think it is right to encourage those steps.”

Bahrain

Finally this week, events in Bahrain have been to the fore, with mounting protests against the Bahraini regime centred around today’s Bahrain Grand Prix, which went ahead despite the disruption.

The body of a protester was discovered yesterday. According to the opposition party Wefaq, the body of 36-year-old Salah Abbas Habib Musa, a father of five, was found on a rooftop in the Shia village of Shakhoura the day before the race. He was allegedly abducted from his village by the military and beaten to death.

As The Observer explains, the uprising began on February 14th last year to coincide with the 10th anniversary of a referendum in which 98.4% voted for constitutional rule – security forces used rubber bullets to stop demonstrations that killed four and injured 600 at the Pearl Roundabout; as the uprising continued, the 2011 Bahrain grand prix was cancelled.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered on March 9th this year calling for the end of the monarchy and the release of political prisoners.

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France goes to the polls this weekend to elect its President, with a second round run-off, if required, taking place a fortnight hence.

The final week of campaigning ahead of the first round of voting on Sunday has seen a bitter war of words between supporters of President Sarkozy and his Socialist rival François Hollande.

M. Sarkozy’s campaign was dealt a fresh blow when a close aide of Jacques Chirac confirmed the former president would be voting for M. Hollande.

The race is expected to go to a second round, with the two men neck and neck on 27% each in an Ipsos poll published earlier this week, but the challenger looks to have a strong advantage in future rounds, with the same survey giving him a 12% lead in any head-to head contest.

However, recent polling has also suggested the parties at either extreme of French politics are likely to give a strong showing, although neither the far left or the far right are likely to produce a repeat of 2002’s upset when Fascist Jean Marie Le Pen progressed to the run-off.

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As BBC News reported today, amidst speculation he may approach far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon or centrist François Bayrou to shore up his support in the second round, M. Hollande said there would be no deals, “no bartering, no concessions, no exchanges”.