Solution-oriented opinion: Gulf oil spill, Detroit and GM, Japan, Sarah Palin, Cyprus

1. Ways to protect Florida from the Gulf oil spill

From The St. Petersburg Times: "Florida needs containment booms as a first line of defense.... BP needs to follow through on promises to help affected communities mop up the oil.... State officials need to ensure that local officials have a say in the cleanup effort."

2. General Motors pays up to clean up old factory sites

From The Detroit Free Press: "Michiganders can be very grateful that the folks in charge of the old GM – which holds the properties left behind when the new company emerged lean and clean from bankruptcy – have the decency to pay for remediation."

3. Japan can revive itself by letting in more immigrants

From The Japan Times: "There is one area where Japan could engage in a strategy that would simultaneously help its economy and give it an edge over China. This is immigration. Japan is unique among economies that are highly developed and in demographic decline in having so few immigrants."

4. Trying to see Sarah Palin in a new (feminist) light

From The Los Angeles Times: "To those Palin haters who are probably at this moment firing up their laptops to tell me I'm a disgrace to the sisterhood, I say this: How often do you, and your supposedly like-minded daughters and sisters and friends, call yourselves feminists?"

5. The old Greek-Turkish dispute over Cyprus can be solved

From The Hurriyet Daily: "Pessimists have always outnumbered optimists so far as resolving the Cyprus problem is concerned.... Despite myself spending seven years breaking my teeth on the challenge of getting the two Cypriot parties and their backers in Greece and Turkey to reach workable compromises, I am not one of that school of thought. The problem is, I believe, soluble."