We began our visit the day before yesterday with an informal dinner with Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates.

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The leaders of the 27 EU nations began the summit with an informal dinner, and later continued their talks behind closed doors.

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It might only be an informal dinner but this is the 18th time in the past two years that Europe's leaders have gathered in Brussels.

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Yet anybody with a blog or a social-networking page is effectively treating it as a gigantic electronic dinner party, in which conversation is free and informal, friends can keep track of each other's most mundane experiences and any thoughts that take one's fancy can be instantly shared with anybody else who owns a computer.

ECONOMIST: Tech.view: Everybody does it | The