Yasser Arafat is dead. So it goes. I really don't know what to think of his departure. He was instrumental in the formation of what is almost a Palestinian state, but he clung too long to his position of power, thereby blocking the road to peace. One thing can be agreed by all sides, though: this was a remarkable man, so the background of this blog will be dark for today.

Upon hearing the news of Arafat’s demise, the Israeli PM, Ariel Sharon admitted that he "wept openly for some minutes." In a formal statement, Sharon said that he "mourned the loss of a great statesman, a friend, and a surprisingly agile tennis player." The last time Sharon saw Arafat alive was in the spring of 2003 during a celebrity tennis match against Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. "We won 6-1, 6-0, but Catherine was heavily pregnant at the time," he recalled. "Afterwards we had a barbecue, and Yasser had everyone in stitches with his impressions. He was relaxed. No one was talking politics. That’s the Yasser I will always remember: a natural clown."

• the white house
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• mrs betty bowers

The attacks have scratched the patina of tolerance on which the Dutch have long prided themselves, particularly here, in a city where the scent of hashish trails in the air, prostitutes beckon from red-lighted storefront brothels and Hells Angels live side by side with Hare Krishnas. But many Dutch now say that for years that the tradition of tolerance had suppressed an open debate about the challenges of integrating conservative Muslims.

There are about 300,000 people of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands today. The ratcheting up of the anti-immigration debate has alienated many of them from Dutch society and, many people argue, helped fragment Muslims here.