The Guardian rounds up the best comments, questions and answers from our recent live chat on tomorrow's journalist – what tools and skills will they need to survive and thrive?
Eight days before Barack Obama's inauguration as President, the German current affairs magazine Der Spiegel published the world's "wishlist" for the next President: e-mails and quotes by international leaders who express their expectations about his presidency.
While some are quite interesting, others are, in my opinion, rather general phrases (maybe as was to be expected), such as "only by close trans-Atlantic cooperation can we face the world's challenges", which is true nevertheless.
Interestingly, this quote by the Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende is contradicted by a report in the international edition of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, which states that the Dutch government - which had welcomed Obama's promise to close down Guantanamo and had strongly condemned the prisoner camp in the past - has refused to accomodate or grant asylum to those detainees who will be released without trial, but who are unable to return to their home countries because of prosecution they may face there.
Apparently, so far only Albania has offered to take in five Uyghurs, who would face torture in China, and while Portugal has also offered help, Germany has announced it would consider it.
Laura, You are right to flag this one up. How to persuade countries to take on prisoners from Gitmo is an interesting question and I have been working on this story. Let's have a brief chat at conference tomorrow morning about this, as I can tell you more privately. Perhaps everyone can inform themselves about the situation. Here is a good place to start. I also want to outline how the commissioning process for a twenty minute current affairs documentary can work.
Will they actually do it? Close it down I mean. They've created a sticky situation RE the asylum seeking you mention. I hope they figure it out, though.
The world's image of the USA needs to be purged of orange jumpsuits.