Word: si
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...hardly the ones needed to make the E.U. count on the international stage. Ashton, a former British minister and European trade commissioner, has little experience in foreign affairs. "Van Rompuy and Ashton give the impression of being chosen for their limits rather than their merits," says Dominique Moïsi, senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations. One senior European official frets that when it comes to the E.U. projecting itself, the choice of Van Rompuy and Ashton means the grouping will have to reconcile itself to five years of underperformance...
...pursue their own national interests, rather than subsume them in a multinational body. There's also a case - and plenty in Europe make it - that Europe is better off continuing to aim low. "Very few European countries see the role of the E.U. as a power," says Moïsi. "They see Europe as a place - with a common market, a common currency, but not a power that should project itself onto the outside world." (See pictures of immigration in Europe...
Tucked away at the southern most tip of Laos, Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands) is an 8.5-mile-wide (14 km) archipelago where the Mekong fans out and the land dissolves into thousands of muddy, grass-covered islands, islets and sandbars. The fact that only three islands offer tourist accommodation (rudimentary at that) tells you that this far-flung part of Champasak province is in no danger of being generally discovered - yet. But the more astute backpackers are trickling in on tiny wooden ferryboats, in slowly growing numbers, lured by the chance to do not very much at dirt...
...Si Phan Don is best reached from Pakse, a midsize city that serves as a transport hub for southern Laos. From Pakse, you can make the 90-minute journey by minibus to the Mekong where longtails wait to ferry passengers across to Don Det and other islands. As for the timing of your visit, well, now would be good. All the disquieting signs of backpacker tourism are appearing - the Internet cafés, cheap pizza parlors and beach bars blasting reggae. There are rumors, too, of 24-hour electricity: great for business, not so good for lovers of sublime escapes...
...progressive, prolific Wellwoods - prolific in both writing and childbearing, Olive and Humphry have a brood of seven - and their artsy friends and acolytes form the core of Byatt's novel, and they are an invigorating bunch. Fin de siècle England was bursting with new ideas and beliefs (socialism, suffragism, anarchism, free love), and Byatt's characters are exuberant participants, joining, lecturing, writing, rebelling, and navigating the fallout when their experiments (particularly in the free-love category) come to grief...