UN envoy a victim of Bush weakness  —  President Bush's UN ambassador is resigning his post because he cannot get Senate backing to stay in the job.  —  If Mr Bush's Republican Party had kept control of the Senate in last month's elections, they might have been able to get John Bolton confirmed.

Bush Sticks to His Guns  —  While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself seems determined to proceed the way Harry Truman did in Korea — or, as some might put it, as Winston Churchill did after Dunkirk.

NASA Plans Lunar Outpost  —  Permanent Base at Moon's South Pole Envisioned by 2024  —  NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 — the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.