Vice President Joe Biden, in the doghouse for saying he would advise his family against flying or taking the subway because of the new flu strain, will be taking a trip to Europe in a couple weeks — but then again he probably doesn’t have to worry too much since he has his own plane.

Biden drew widespread scorn from the travel industry and pretty much everyone else for saying on NBC’s “Today Show” that he would “tell members of my family — and I have — I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” he said, adding that the problem was that “when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft.”

The White House had to clarify his comments, advising Americans that they really only needed to avoid unnecessary travel to and from Mexico and that they should stay home if they were not feeling well. 

On Friday, Biden’s office announced that he will be going to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo during the week of May 18th. Luckily he has his own 757 Air Force plane to take him wherever he wants to go.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Fowler

Nobel peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari is a former Finnish president but, after looking at President Barack Obama’s speech in Turkey, he said: “I nearly felt it’s good to be an American.”

Speaking after lunch at the National Press Club in Washington, the 71-year-old winner of the 2008 prize was asked on Tuesday to assess the U.S. leader’s call for peace and dialogue with Islam.

“I must say that I’m proud as a transatlanticist and democrat to see that sort of speech is made,” he told reporters.

Ahtisaari, the president of Finland from 1994 to 2000, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for helping to bring peace to places as far-flung as Kosovo, Namibia and Indonesia’s Aceh province.

Interviewed by Arshad Mohammed of Reuters on Monday, he said Hamas must be allowed into talks on ending the conflict with Israel and it was both dangerous and pointless to exclude the Palestinian militant group.

He said Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which holds sway in the West Bank, “have to get their act together and form a united front” to end their power struggle.

Ahtisaari said it would be foolish to rule out peace talks under new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recalling it was Richard Nixon who as U.S. president in 1972 broke with a U.S. policy of isolating China by visiting Beijing.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Bjorn Sigurdson/Pool (Ahtisaari poses with certificate and medal after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December)

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush may be deeply unpopular at home and reviled abroad but in some places people, apparently, are sorry to see him go.

The BBC reports  that Dubya has approval ratings of around 80 percent in Africa where his administration increased aid funding and raised the alarm over the Darfur crisis. In fact, children born in the Sudanese region are routinely named George Bush, the BBC reports. And in Kosovo a main street was named after him to thank him for supporting Kosovo’s independence.

Israelis will miss Bush too. Bush has been a staunch supporter of Israel and some analysts believe Israel’s current offensive in Gaza was timed to coincide with the final days of his administration because the Jewish state knew it could count on his support. ”Israel is probably the only place on earth where Bush can still get a standing ovation,” Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution told the BBC.

Colombia, India, Ukraine and Georgia are also sorry to say good-bye to 43 for various political, economic and trade reasons. President-elect Barack Obama takes office next week and has been embraced abroad as the man who can repair America’s soured relations with the world.

But leaders like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may come to miss the man they loved to hate when they have to start dealing with his successor, the man that the world loves to love, the BBC says.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Bush awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on Tuesday)