It was a busy day in New York Harbor yesterday. A sighting of a humpback whale. And an enormous container ship set sail from Red Hook.

It’s not really the sort of scene that springs to mind when you think of Brooklyn.

Spring comes earlier to London than New York. The past week has been the first I have noticed blossoms and buds starting to form. One of the great things about living on the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights is that Brooklyn Botanic Garden is just up the road. Sofie and I renewed our membership on Sunday and spent a very pleasant couple of hours walking, eating ice cream and lying on the grass. There’s barely any blossom yet, but where it is in evidence it’s pretty stunning already. Here’s what we saw:

Cherry blossom
A flowering magnolia tree
A red-tailed hawk
Lots of people wheeling kids
Lots of people wheeling parents
Maggie Gylenhall, Peter Saarsgard and their daughter Ramona

Another entry in the list of “Downfall” parodies. I’m not surprised this one is causing offense among some Holocaust survivors. But it is very well done.

Birthright Israel, by the way, is a non-profit which provides free trips to Israel for 18 to 26 year old Jews.

The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden writes:

Here in the Rhenus Sports Arena in Strasbourg, I’ve just witnessed what is surely a very important – I hesitate to say historic – moment in transatlantic relations. Barack Obama went further than any previous president in apologising for American behaviour.

“In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” he said in a prepared speech delivered before a campaign-style town hall meeting in which he took questions from mainly French and German students.

“Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”

But he balanced this startling mea culpa – or, perhaps more accurately, a George W. Bush culpa – with a clear message to Europeans that blaming America for everything was unacceptable.

“In Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognising the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad.”

Then, in classic Obama fashion, he sought to find a synthesis between the two poles. “On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth.

I’m having a very hard time trying to maintain an iota of cynicism about this man.