Happy Birthday, Alan Johnston.
1. The BBC’s Gaza correspondent turns 45 today. This is his ninth week in captivity. Reporters without Borders say 14 journalists have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip since January 2005, but this is the first time that any of them has held for more than two weeks.
2. Arriving in the UK, I found the headlines dominated by one of Britain’s periodic outbreaks of mass sentimentality, last seen on this sort of scale in the period following the death of Princess Diana. Urged on by the press and a growing constellation of their favourite celebrities, the public - or at least that part of it which most avidly consumes the news, and in turn (symbiosis!) helps to direct its attention - is alarmed about a pretty young girl called Madeleine McCann who...