Editor's Notes

Beginning of article

With a presidency as old as this new year, and the worst of the global economic crisis looming ahead, this issue opens with sights set on what is to come. This gloomy forecast will hopefully brighten, however, with Obama leading the United States as the 44th president. And the Czech Republic, as the 103rd member-state to hold the EU's six-month rotating presidency, also feels the weight of global responsibility.

We speak, therefore, of a Sweet'n Low Czech EU presidency. In the fall of last year, a controversial advertising campaign for the presidency depicted Czech national figures tossing around a sugar cube (a Czech invention) under the slogan that the Czechs will "sweeten …