BRITAIN

BRITAIN

The Independent, London, June 30: The ousting of the Honduran President Manuel Zelaya by the country’s military at the weekend has been condemned by many members of the international community as an affront to democracy. But despite a natural distaste for any military coup, it is possible that the army might have actually done Honduran democracy a service.

President Zelaya was planning a referendum to give him power to alter the constitution. But the proposed alterations were perilously vague, with opponents accusing Mr. Zelaya of wanting to scrap the four-year presidential term limit. The country’s courts and congress had called the vote illegal.

Dubious measures

This is an increasingly familiar turn of events in emerging democracies: an elected leader, facing the end of his time in office, decides that the country cannot do without him and resorts to dubious measures to retain power.

CANADA

Winnipeg Free Press, June 29: The specter of intolerance has raised its ugly head again in France, a republic obsessively secular to the point of trampling religious freedom. Last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the burqa, a word used interchangeably with ni-qab there, was not welcome in his country.

French lawmakers have launched an inquiry to consider if the full-body cloak of Muslim women ought to be banned from public spaces.

‘Ambulatory prison’

Liberal democrats across the world might agree with the president and his colleagues that the burqa, a body-length shroud with a small screen for vision, and the niqab, a cap and long veil that is slit open at the eyes, are degrading and confine women to an “ambulatory prison,” as the French have said. But women from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, where the garb is common, will argue that they freely choose to wear the veil as legitimate expression of their faith, and that a democratic society ought to permit such choice.

All democratic societies wrestle with balancing competing, conflicting rights. Canada issued a clear sign of its preferences last year when a Quebec commission rejected proscribing religious and cultural expression in the form of a burqa ban. Such accommodation subtly forces people to get along.

BAHRAIN

Gulf Daily News, Manama, July 1: Perhaps, as she strode on to Center Court in a double-breasted white trenchcoat, Serena Williams simply felt a bit chilly.

Perhaps the weather forecast had told her there was a chance of rain.

Or perhaps she was just having a Casablanca moment.

It seems unlikely, though.

It was warm and Williams has always been more Foxy Brown than Casablanca.

Fashion statement

No, this particular Nike-sponsored fashion statement, like those more commonly found on the catwalks of Paris and Milan, was entirely impractical (William’s 120 mph serve would have ripped those sleeves right off) and wholly, crucially, cynically, all about the money.

Wimbledon has always been part tennis competition, part fashion parade — any Wimbledon fan worth their salt can reel off as many Vogue moments as victories.

But when a player walks on wearing a get-up that was “unveiled” in a blaze of publicity, is ticked, laureled or crocodiled all over, and will soon appear in your local “sportswear” store, the magic is lost.