Their secretaries of state since 1997: Hillary Rodham Clinton Condoleezza Rice Colin Powell Madeleine Albright Our foreign affairs ministers since 1996: Lawrence Cannon David Emerson Maxime Bernier Peter MacKay Pierre Pettigrew Bill Graham John Manley Lloyd Axworthy • I'm just saying. The lack of diversity in Canadian federal politics is getting embarrassing. Mind you, the Conservative caucus makes for slim pickings; there aren't that many women, and there aren't that many MPs who inspire confidence ...

One of the many small things that bugged me in the weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was the habit journalists adopted of describing the attacks as "sophisticated." Yes, they were clever and effective. Sophisticated means something different: it means complex, or beyond the capacity of anyone but the highly trained. I suppose one could argue that about Sept. 11. (I'd argue back, but never mind.) But I fail to see how anyone ...

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the western media coverage of the Mumbai attacks has focused on the two luxury hotels, and on the reports that the gunmen were targeting foreigners, even demanding to see passports. But it seems most, or at least many, of the casualties happened at the Chhatrapatri Shivaji railway station, where the gunfire was indiscriminate. Granted, railway stations do tend to have high concentrations of foreigners in them too, but Indians travel ...

In the Speech from the Throne, as I noted the other day, the Harper government promised to "continue" making foreign aid more effective. Okay, those quotation marks aren't entirely fair. This government did decide to untie all aid, which is hugely important. But it hasn't done much else. And neither did the succession of Liberal governments before it. The proof is in the latest ranking of humanitarian effectiveness among major donor countries: Canada is in ...

I'm not the kind of person who gives her heart to a car easily. In fact, I don't like cars much in general: I see them as expensive, unreliable, nasty but occasionally necessary evils. But I love my Civic Hybrid. I've had it for a year and a half now, and everything about it is great. When I shoulder--check, I can see everything I need to see. (I used to rent cars fairly often, so ...

The news from DR Congo is not good. (When is it?) It looks like tens of thousands of refugees are in need of aid and shelter, as of right now, and the UN is under attack and expressing concern . The violence is linked to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, because...(read more)

My column today (also available as a podcast ) is partly about Maggy Girmaye, a 23-year-old student here in Ottawa who was kind enough to talk to me about sending money home to family in Ethiopia. Remittances, as they're called, form a major part of the...(read more)