There is coverage in all the US papers of the life and times of Teddy Kennedy and the first port of call for today’s press review was the Boston Globe in his home state of Massachussetts. Two details I retained from the obituary were how he died:

“He died the way he lived,’’ said a long-time Kennedy staffer, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the moment, breaking up with emotion during the interview. “.Fully in the moment, with incredible courage. He knew exactly what was going on. He wasn’t afraid. And given everything that he had been through his entire life, was always optimistic and knew that this country’s best days always [were] ahead.’’

Kennedy greatest legacy will be the way in which he pursued the cause of healthcare so vigorously, even as his health declined. Even when members of Obama’s administration questioned the president’s decision to spend so much political capital on the seemingly intractable issue, Obama reportedly replied, “I promised Teddy.’’

David Filipov recounts the very real connection his mother Loretta Filipov, an ordinary woman from Massachussetts, felt for Teddy Kennedy. The article is called “Essay: for a mother, the Kennedy connection ran deep.”

Like so many people, his mother felt she had developed a personal relationship with Kennedy that transcended the normal dynamic between voter and candidate.

It transcended the positions he had taken and she had supported on healthcare and the war in Iraq. It was as though the Kennedys were family, and Teddy, warts and all, was the most beloved of the brothers.

He recounts how his mother thought Kennedy in the end transcended his flaws and became a better public servant than his brothers ever were.
Unlike his mother David Filipov - a staff writer at the Globe - said he never really supported Kennedy but one day in 2001 he accepted a phone call from him. His father had died in Sept 11th.
Kennedy helped the family through that and his mother drew massive strength from this. She was particularly moved by the last letter she received from him in September of last year. “Your strength and determination have always been an inspiration to me and I am grateful now to draw upon it as I sail this uncharted course,” Kennedy wrote.

“Maybe all the survivors of 9/11 got a letter like that,” says Filipov. But when his mother reads it, her voice cracks as though they were the words of a close personal friend.

A catch 22 lies at the heart of the mess surrounding Afghanistan’s presidential election, writes Jeremy Page in Kabul for the Times of London.

He says there is no doubt that voter turn out was low and there was widespread fraud in South. The question is how to deal with it without provoking confrontation between Karzai’s supporters – he is an ethnic Pashtun - and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who is half Pashtun and half Tajik.

If the Electoral Complaints Commission is unable to prove fraud, Karzai will win the first round and the Tajiks in the North will view it as illegitimate.

If fraud is found and voters are invalidated, Karzai could lose in the first round, there could be a run off with Abdullah and the ethnic Pashtun majority could feel disenfranchised.

Many say this was foreseeable yet the international community shrugged off the risks saying “any result is better than no result’ and left it to Afghanistan’s fragile democratic institutions to resolve the mess.

Le Figaro reports that Barack Obama has brought five books with him on holiday to Martha’s Vineyard, including a biography of John Adams
And a book by Thomas Friedman on climate change. Five books in one week? With golfing and some family time thrown in, taking in the sea air of Martha’s Vineyard? I think not! That would require 300 pages of reading per day, according to Le Figaro. What’s more he was already reading one of the novels in 2008 according to a website, the Daily Beat.

The Guardian features a photo of an annual tomato festival in Valencia known as ‘La Tomatina’. 110,000 kg of tomatoes is spattered every year at the end of a week of festivities.