France

On June 2, the convicted Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti walked out of a Brazilian prison a free man. He did so after Brazil’s supreme court upheld the decision of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to refuse to extradite Battisti to Italy. A member of the left-wing terror group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC) during Italy’s blood-ridden “years of lead” in the 1970s, Battisti had been on the run from Italian justice for nearly thirty years, since escaping from a prison near Rome in October 1981.

Paris
Ever since the news broke, a week ago Saturday, of the IMF head’s surprise arrest, for alleged attempted rape, in the first-class cabin of an Air France jet minutes from takeoff on the JFK tarmac, the Dominique Strauss-Kahn meltdown has caused France to experie

Over the weekend, International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was nabbed by police and accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. Even as that case is being sorted out, new allegations of sexual assault are emerging against the high-powered French bureaucrat:

This doesn't sound good: "Shadow Stat Misery Index Highest on Record"

"IDF: Unrest along Israel's northern borders bears Iran's 'fingerprints'"

Both the so-called Republican Forces loyal to the new Ivoirian president Alassane Ouattara and French officials have been at great pains to insist that deposed president Laurent Gbagbo was captured by Ouattara’s troops and not by French troops. This is not what was initially reported. But, in any case, as an article in Tuesday’s edition of the French daily Libération puts it, “nobody is fooled.”

Amid budget battle, Obama scraps planned trip to Indiana.

"How do you say 'coalition of the willing' in French?"

CNN reports:

Military action against the Moammar Gadhafi regime could begin in the coming hours, a French government spokesman said on Friday, hours after the U.N. Security Council authorized the use of force to protect besieged civilians in Libya.

Speaking in an interview with RTL radio, Francois Baroin said France plans to participate in what he described as "swift" efforts.

A disheartening report from Josh Rogin on the G8 foreign ministers' meeting on Libya. "Inside the foreign ministers' meeting, a loud and contentious debate erupted about whether to move forward with stronger action to halt Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's campaign against the Libyan rebels and the violence being perpetrated against civilians," Rogin reports.

French foreign minister Alain Juppe "suggested in a radio interview Tuesday that events on the ground in Libya have already outpaced diplomatic efforts," according to the AP.

The Obama administration has been recklessly cautious -- and has even go so far as to say that the president "doesn’t want to fall into a Libya trap." But the trap in this case might be to do nothing at all.