This is a new feature,
which, beginning next week, will appear in Slate twice a week.
U.S. Vice President Al
Gore's speech to the world summit on climate in Kyoto, Japan, received an
almost universal thumbs-down, especially in Europe. "Gore disappoints the
world" was the headline in Germany's Die Welt, and almost the same headline was used by Spain's
El País. Le Monde in Paris spoke of "great
disappointment" and "a wave of frustration" and said that Gore might even have
caused the summit to fail. In its host country, Japan, Asahi Shimbun
was more polite, but still referred to his speech as "ambiguous." The worldwide
consensus was that the poor jet-lagged VP, whose arrival in Kyoto had been
awaited with such excitement, had signally failed to deliver a breakthrough in
the stalled negotiations because of political pressures at home.
But the world summit
commanded relatively little attention in the press outside Europe and the Far
East. In India the Asian
Age didn't mention it at all, being more interested in the nation's prowess
in beauty contests. The new Indian Miss World, Diana Hayden, in London on a
"tour of glory," was "not the only Indian woman this year to stun planet
Earth," it said, for India had also provided first runners-up at the Miss
International and Miss Asia-Pacific contests. The Age of Melbourne was quietly
pleased, as were other Australian newspapers, about a special gas-emissions
deal being offered to its country in Kyoto, but paid more attention to a
Canberra Senate ruling that transsexuals should be allowed to compete in sports
competitions, raising the question of whether they should do so as women or be
put in a category of their own.
In Milan the Corriere
della Sera reported on a visit by Italy's Communist Party leader, Armando
Cossuta, to New York, where he had "fallen in love" with Sharon Stone when he
met her by accident in the Harry Cipriani restaurant on Fifth Avenue. She was,
he said, "in the dreams of all men" and "even more beautiful than on the
screen." The United States, on the other hand, was "a world made to measure for
the rich" and not a model that other countries should imitate. La Repubblica of Rome was
preoccupied with the Vatican's difficulty in finding a new commanding officer
for the pope's 100-strong Swiss Guard, it being the view of the Swiss bishops
that the deputy commander, Lt. Col. Alois Estermann, wasn't "aristocratic"
enough for the job.
The
Times of London
carried a report of a confession on television by President Alberto Fujimori of
Peru that he slips secretly out of his palace at night to indulge in "romantic
escapades": "I run out through the back door and drive past the gates in a
small car, which is not so obvious." Fujimori also said he had been "a late
starter" at romance, having experienced his first kiss at the age of 32 "with a
German teacher I had, at the end of one of the lessons." He may be trying to
protect himself against posthumous revelations by Seymour Hersh.
