Nuclear threats and rocket rattling by North Korea make news as well as noise, but peaceful positive developments associated with South Korea are more significant for the Korean Peninsula, Asia and the world at large.

The killing of 17 unarmed civilians in Afghanistan is a brutal reminder of the true nature of war. The U.S. Army soldier alleged to have committed the crime is under intense media scrutiny. Our court systems, military and civilian, reinforce this individual focus.

“We are you, and you are us.”

“One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude,” wrote French observer Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, reflecting respectively on the United States and Russia

“The courage to be patient,” is how U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower publicly rejected demands in 1954 for military action against China, during the height of the Cold War. Ike's wise counsel then provides good guidance now. On Feb. 28, North Korea's official news agency and the U.S. Department of State announced that Pyongyang is suspending nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment, and permitting nuclear inspections. This may indicate flexibility by Kim Jong Un, the North's young new leader

“The greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression,” bas become standard media shorthand for reference to the recent global financial crash and resulting severe recession. This latest massive money meltdown continues to reverberate, even though stability apparently has been achieved.

Manufacturing is coming back, declared President Barack Obama at a Master Lock plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Actually, the U.S. remains one of the principal manufacturing powers on the planet, but this trip was designed to help win November elections, not provide an economics lecture.

Yet another intimate portrait has just emerged about one of the most prominent and pivotal world leaders of the early 1960s, arguably the most dangerous and highly charged years of the Cold War.

“Germany Dominates Europe Once Again,” is the eye-catching headline of an editorial by William Pfaff on truthdig.com, a popular blog and commentary site for people on the political left.

“What's past is prologue” wrote William Shakespeare in “The Tempest” a tale of fantasy, hatred and intrigue, but ultimate success by a leader. The line is worth remembering when considering Middle East matters.