On air: Has President Obama done the right thing with healthcare?

When I tweeted this morning asking what people would like to talk about Megha in India immediately tweeted back “the health bill definitely is THE news”.

And, she is right the blogosphere is alive with debate other whether the landmark healthcare reform bill is a good or a bad thing for the US.

On air: Has America lost its power over Israel?

US Vice President Joe Biden’s trying to recover from the embarrassment of arriving in Israel on a peace mission, to be greeted by an announcement of 1,600 new homes being built in disputed East Jerusalem. So is the US now ignored by Israel? A once strong force that has lost its influence? Or has Israel always done what it wants, regardless of outside pressure? This is how the visit is playing in Israeli and Palestinian newspapers.

Is Mexico’s war on drugs getting out of control?

We’ve all heard about Mexico’s war on drugs, a fight between rival drug cartels and government forces. Ciudad Juarez remains Mexico’s murder capital and across the border in El Paso it’s also very dangerous. “It’s a war in which the president can’t claim victory, can’t pull out and which only gets worse” says Ioan Grillo from Time Magazine. He also says “Mexico’s drug war could become its Iraq”. So is it really this bad?

On air: Who’s the boss?

After the battles over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate change and internet freedom, China-US relations are once more in the spotlight. A recent poll suggests more than half of Chinese people think they’re heading towards a new Cold War.

Has the west done enough to find this man?

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged over the weekend that the US have little or no recent intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

So is it time to stop looking for him?

Or do you agree with General McChrystal who yesterday said “I don’t think that we can finally defeat al Qaeda until he’s captured or killed” ? Is Osama bin Laden too iconic to give up on?

Here’s our post on this from last week:

Talking Points for 30 July

Thanks Nelson for looking after us last night.

On to some ideas for today’s programme…

World Trade is dead, or at least it has fallen into a deep sleep.

Room for diplomacy… but not as you know it?

It’s all about showing respect, the US Ambassador to Paraguay says. Well, it certainly wasn’t part of his diplomatic training, but Ambassador James Cason has been tugging at his host nation’s heart strings by releasing an album of local folksongs, sung in the indigenous Guarani language.