44, Day 72: With Friends Like These...

An ongoing log of the daily activities of the 44th president of the United States during his first 100 days:

-Even as President Obama was publicly playing down sharp disagreements between the U.S. and its European allies over how to respond to the economic slump, evidence of the rift kept bubbling to the surface today. As Obama held a joint press conference with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain calling for coordinated government spending around the world to stimulate economies, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France held their own media briefing to dismiss the idea. "That is not a bargaining chip," Merkel said flatly. Instead, she and Sarkozy have stressed that America and Britain must rein in their poorly regulated free-market capitalism, and adopt a more European model. "Regulation is something that is everyone's interest," Merkel said. These four leaders and the heads of the other 16-largest economies are scheduled to resolve their differences and issue a coordinated plan tomorrow.

-After leaving Brown, the president met with President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia to open nuclear-weapons talks aimed at hammering out a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires at the end of this year. Staff-level talks will begin soon, and Obama said he would go to Moscow in July to discuss the progress of those talks with Medvedev.

-Late in the afternoon, the president and Michelle Obama drove to Buckingham Palace to have tea with Queen Elizabeth II. Their conversation was private, but a palace spokesman said the royal couple gave the Obamas a signed photograph of themselves in a silver frame, a traditional gift for visitors. In return, the American first family presented the Queen with a rare song book signed by Richard Rodgers and a personalized iPod loaded with a video of her 2007 visit to the U.S. The video was a fortunate addition, because as the Daily Telegraph noted, her majesty already owns an iPod.

-Back home in the U.S., meanwhile, a federal immigration judge ruled that the president's Kenyan aunt may legally stay in the country until a formal immigration hearing in February 2010.

by Mark Stein

Sources: The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Evening Standard, and Politico.