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There are two kinds of celebrity crash because we now have two kinds of celebrity: attention controllers and attention seekers. Woods is an example of the former, whom you might also know as "people who are famous for actually doing things." Attention controllers' fame derives from some public competence; their private lives are used as complementary assets (setting the photo ops, selling the baby pics), but with tight boundaries...
...spite of crumbling public support for the mission in Afghanistan, the U.S.'s NATO allies should be able to muster an extra 5,000 troops to join President Barack Obama's surge, officials at the alliance say. But this will still fall well short of the 10,000 troops Washington has been seeking. And it is likely to come with demands for a more robust strategy to build civil institutions, including benchmarks on stamping out fraud and corruption in the Afghan government...
...Some NATO officials, though, say that even getting to 5,000 extra troops could be hopeful. That number may include troops that were already deployed as reinforcements for Afghanistan's presidential elections last August. And many NATO countries, struggling with a deeply skeptical public, have already indicated they want to scale back their military involvement in Afghanistan...
...plan to send extra troops - about 500 - while the other major European powers, notably Germany and France, are reluctant to commit any. Surveys consistently show that most European voters feel the Afghan mission is failing and are opposed to any additional deployments. In Britain, around 70% of the public favors an early withdrawal. The global economic crisis is also setting new budgetary constraints on government expenditure. "I don't see anyone sending massive numbers. Most countries are under pressure to announce exit strategies," says Shada Islam, Senior Program Executive at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think tank...
...Relations between Pakistan and the Obama Administration could be sharply strained if Washington decides to expand its covert air strikes on Pakistani soil. In recent years, Pakistani officials have publicly protested but privately acquiesced when CIA-operated drone strikes have targeted al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the mountainous tribal areas - a program that has eliminated more than a dozen senior al-Qaeda operatives and even Baitullah Mehsud, the founding leader of the Pakistani Taliban. But the perceived violation of sovereignty has also enraged the Pakistani public. If the U.S. decides to expand the target range of such strikes beyond...