Well, Hugo Chavez seems to be back, and after the White House openly gloated about the coup. Oops. The US ambassador should be about as popular as the Saudi ambassador to Britain who wrote poems in praise of the suicide bombers.

The Sunday Times (sunday-times.co.uk) is full of atrocity stories from the Israeli... what’s the Hebrew for blitzkrieg? I especially like the guy they used as a human shield, shoving him through doorways until he gets shot, not by Palestians but by an Israeli sniper, in the leg, so they just leave him in the street, where he stays 24 hours until someone pulls him in. Today Sharon deliberately ruined Powell’s breakfast by showing him pictures of mangled bodies while he was trying to eat.

Here’s a story of the Queen Mum you didn’t hear much about: in 1941 she had a bunch of her more embarrassing mentally retarded relations (not by blood, at least not the niece who just died) in a home, where they stayed the rest of their lives, the last of the 5 dying this week and going to a pauper’s grave (the home was NHS). The royal family at one point claimed that 2 of them were dead, which they were not.

In our country, on the other hand, mentally retarded relations of former presidents become presidents themselves.

The UN, it seems, is supporting the families of Serb war criminals. Not intentionally, but it’s paying their lawyers such high fees that the defendants are extorting kickbacks of 1/3 to 1/2.