– As that all-important US election looms ever closer, EU foreign ministers are meeting today to discuss how to rebuild those battered ties between Europe and America that conventional wisdom sees as having been so badly damaged during the Bush years. Across Europe – hell, across the world – everyone is waiting for Wednesday’s result. But pretty much every prediction is just speculation.

– Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, is Barack Obama (a half-Kenyan, half-American born in Hawaii and raised in Indonesia) just too European? Well, according to (some) Americans, perhaps.

– For Europeans there are a number of signs that Obama may not be quite as sympathetic to this continent as his famous trip here a few months ago might suggest. These are also hardly new concerns – and despite some promising signs that Obama realises the EU’s potential importance, there remains much we don’t know. So why is Barack Obama so popular in Europe?

– Shifting off to random bits and bobs, via Pubic Affairs 2.0, a long-overdue and most welcome addition to the European Parliament website: a handy range of RSS feeds. (Ignore the podcasts for now, though – they don’t seem to be overly regular…)

– The old straight bananas row seems to be back:

A leading supermarket has been forced to ditch a healthy eating campaign at the eleventh hour after discovering its staff could be individually prosecuted under EU regulations.

This, methinks, is worth looking into in more detail, especially as the Commission is set to rethink various fruit and veg regulations later this month.

– Will the credit crisis see the Eurozone expand, rather than contract? It may look attractive at the moment – but is the single currency a sensible option?