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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You may not think that it's as bad for Obama out there as I'm making it out to be. Well, Tuesday morning at The Hague, in the Netherlands, Obama held a joint press conference with the Netherlands prime minister Mark Rutte. At the very end of the presser, Obama ends it by saying this. Now, you'll hear the emcee, but the point is one person... We did not doctor this. This is the point I have to tell you: We did not touch this. There is no verbal audio equivalent of anything they Photoshopped here. This happened...

VIDEO AT LINKOkay, THAT was certainly embarrassing. At the end of a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in the Netherlands on Tuesday, the applause for Barack Obama came from a grand total of one guy. One. After thanking the crowd twice for suffering through his boring, standard worn-out spiel, Obama looked around the room, expecting the usual fanfare and applause he receives from his loyal followers back home. It never came. Instead, the Leader of the Free World was met with one slow, awkward clap. Question: was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in the house?

resident Barack Obama flies Sunday to a Europe shaken by Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea and his threats against eastern parts of Ukraine. At a summit conference at The Hague on preventing nuclear terrorism – scheduled long before the Ukraine crisis – Obama will confer with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders. On Monday afternoon Obama will meet with President Xi Jinping of China, Russia’s neighbor and sometime rival. Putin has forced the United States and Europe to refocus on the origins of the modern transatlantic alliance -- the 1949 NATO defense partnership designed to prevent a Russian invasion...

What's novel here is that in Europe, doubts about America's wisdom, strength and resolve are increasingly focused on the person of the president. Beyond the espionage, think of Mr. Obama's hesitations on Iran and turnabouts concerning Syria—or his role in lengthening the U.S. budget shutdown, or in providing America with a new but crippled national health program. These days, and to varying degrees, the governments of France, Britain and Germany regard Mr. Obama as a problem. No longer expressed only in private, the notion represents a decline in the reflexive acceptance and respect that had cushioned European attitudes about his...

AFP - France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party. The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity. A poll published last week suggested the FN could...

BERLIN (AP) — Five years and 50 years. As President Barack Obama revisits Berlin, he can't escape those anniversaries and the inevitable comparisons to history and personal achievement. With his own 2008 speech at Berlin's Victory Column and former President John F. Kennedy's 1963 historic denunciation of the Soviet bloc as markers, Obama will use an address at the city's Brandenburg Gate on Wednesday to renew his call to reduce the world's nuclear stockpiles. The White House said Obama will draw attention to his plan for a one-third reduction in U.S. and Russian arsenals, rekindling a goal that was a...

A nationwide general strike Thursday forced the closure of factories across Spain, though activity levels remained largely normal in big cities despite minor violent incidents. The strike, called by the country's two largest unions, is the first clear challenge to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's austerity and reform drive. It has drawn support from the Socialist Party, which was in power until December and is the largest opposition in parliament, as well as the much smaller United Left bloc. The protest puts the spotlight on Spain just a day before the government presents its 2012 budget, which the EU and investors...

The EU’s most senior figure has revealed disappointment with President Barack Obama’s presidency and has called for efforts to revive transatlantic relations. Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, said the EU-US relationship was not ‘living up to its potential’ and was being weakened by disagreements on how to deal with the economic crisis. Europe’s austerity strategy clashed with Mr Obama’s call to maintain fiscal stimulus at the G20 summit. Mr Barroso cited climate change and trade reform as further reasons for the rift in an interview with The Times.

Obama cancels Poland trip due to volcano fallout The Associated Press Saturday, April 17, 2010; 2:56 PM WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has canceled plans to travel to Poland for the funeral of President Lech Kaczynski (lekh kah-CHIN'-skee). A White House statement Saturday cited hazardous flying conditions posed by the ash cloud from the erupting volcano in Iceland. The cloud has forced huge portions of European airspace to be closed. The fear is that microscopic particles of highly abrasive ash could endanger passengers by causing aircraft engines to fail. Obama was to leave Washington on Saturday night for Sunday's state...

President Obama says the loss of Polish President Kaczynski is ‘devastating’ April 10th, 2010 - 8:15 pm WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) — President Obama on Saturday released the following statement after Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and other senior government figures were killed in a plane crash in western Russia. “Today, I called Polish Prime Minister Tusk to express Michelle’s and my deepest condolences to the people of Poland on the tragic deaths this morning of President Lech Kaczynski, First Lady Maria Kaczynski, and all who were traveling with them to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre....

The UK government needs to be "less deferential" towards the US and more willing to say no to Washington, a group of MPs have said. The Commons Foreign Affairs committee also said it was wrong to speak of "the special relationship" with the US, as it was fostering other alliances. However, the MPs did agree that the link between the countries was "profound and valuable". The Foreign Office said the two nations share a "unique" bond. The committee said the phrase "the special relationship" did not reflect the "modern" Anglo-American relationship. It was originally coined more than 60 years ago...

The contretemps between President Obama and Israel needs to be seen in a broader global context. The president who ran against "unilateralism" in the 2008 campaign has worse relations overall with American allies than George W. Bush did in his second term. Israelis shouldn't feel that they have been singled out. In Britain, people are talking about the end of the "special relationship" with America and worrying that Obama has no great regard for the British, despite their ongoing sacrifices in Afghanistan. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly criticized Obama for months (and is finally being rewarded with a...

European NATO allies are to urge President Barack Obama to remove all remaining US nuclear weapons from European soil, as domestic pressure grows to rid its soil of outdated Cold War-era aerial bombs. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Norway will call "in the coming weeks" for more than 200 American warheads, mostly stocked in Italy and Turkey, to be taken back, a spokesman for Prime Minister Yves Leterme told AFP. A joint proposal by the five NATO members will demand "that nuclear arms on European soil belonging to other NATO member states are removed," Dominique Dehaene said. Only the...

The relationship between the US and the European Union is cooling. By declining to come to Spain for a trans-Atlantic summit, President Barack Obama made it clear that Brussels is far down on his priority list. The reasons for that can be found in Europe. The US president is traveling a lot these days -- and a clear pattern has emerged. The deeper into the United States it takes him, the better -- be it Nashua, New Hampshire or Tampa, Florida. The issue is always the same: How can Barack Obama create more jobs?

EU summit off after Obama 'snub' The European Union has scrapped a summit with the US, after President Barack Obama decided not to attend. The event in Madrid in May was to have been the highlight of Spain's six-month EU presidency, and the cancellation is seen as a humiliating blow. Officials say the summit may be take place later this year. BBC European affairs correspondent Oana Lungescu says many see Mr Obama's decision as a snub to the EU's hopes of boosting its global role. On Tuesday, the White House said Mr Obama had had no plans to attend the...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone cold on his US counterpart Barack Obama, the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday. Sarkozy, whose pro-Washington stance has seen him nicknamed "Sarko the American," stressed that France and the US were "the same family" during his first face-to-face meeting with Obama in April since the US elections last year. But the French president has clashed since then with his US counterpart on a series of issues, raising the question of whether Sarkozy is reverting to the anti-US posture of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac. "He has now shifted from a pro-Bush position to an anti-Obama...

Barack Obama has arrived in Oslo to receive his Nobel peace prize amid considerable anger over the White House's decision to cancel a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner. Obama is scheduled to meet the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, and the Norwegian royal family before receiving his medal at a ceremony due to begin at midday. His main speech is scheduled at a banquet tonight. But Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit. The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates...

Finally some Europeans are angry with Obama—the very ones who are awarding him his Nobel. Katarina Andersson on the president's decision to decline lunch with King Harald and skip his own Nobel exhibit. A day before President Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the president’s treatment of his Norwegian hosts has become hot news across Scandinavia. News outlets across the region are calling Obama arrogant for slashing some of the prize winners’ traditional duties from his schedule. “Everybody wants to visit the Peace Center except Obama,” sniped the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, amid reports the president would snub his...

US President Barack Obama has made further changes to his plans for travelling to Europe. He will now go to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen after the Nobel Peace Prize Award ceremony in Oslo, rather than before. (With latest update) Aftenposten, quoting the White House, says Prsident Obama has decided to attend the closing sessions of the Copenhagen Summit, and arrive there on December 18th. Original plans called for Obama to travel to Copenhagen for the opening of the Summit, and then travel on to Oslo on the evening of Wednesday, December the 9th, and then return to Washington...

Why Europe Feels Rejected by Obama By JOHN VINOCUR Why would an American president not come to a celebration marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with it, the triumphant end of the Cold War — one of the high points of the United States’ and Europe’s common 20th-century history? Whatever the exact answer — and it could be that a fatigued Barack Obama didn’t want the physical strain of a trans-Atlantic trip days before a weeklong tour of Asia — his absence from the Nov. 9 ceremonies in Germany has reinforced Europe’s fear that it has become an...