The only winners from the resignation of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton are the foes of the United States. Ambassador Bolton did a courageous job communicating and protecting American values in the belly of a beast where those values are at risk each and every day. His commitment to real and effective reform was unshakable. His honesty, integrity, and hard work produced substantial results on a multiplicity of levels in only 18 months on the job. He spearheaded the adoption of a first legally binding Security Council resolution sanctioning North Korea for its nuclear-weapons program; passage of a first ever Security Council resolution addressing the Iranian nuclear program; consensus-building among democratic states that resulted in 50 donor countries, responsible for 88 percent of the U.N. regular budget, taking a common position on management reform. Furthermore, he: had the foresight to refuse to lend credibility to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which as he predi...

The shop owned by Aziz al Soos on the edge of Bethlehem is a modest, single-storey place lost among terraces of restaurants, ironmongers and general stores, but it has one special characteristic. It sells pork. Fifty-year-old Mr al Soos is the third generation of his family to farm and butcher pigs. His grandfather started the business, selling pork to British troops stationed in Palestine during the 1930s, and its current status as the only pork butchery in the territories makes it a valuable place to gauge the plight of the Holy Land's dwindling Christian minority. The issue will be in the headlines later this week, when Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, lead a joint delegation to Bethlehem to express solidarity with their beleaguered brethren. No member of the local Muslim majority would dare enter Mr al Soos's shop, allowing him to be candid in his assessment as h...