Los Angeles' Scott Brown's win in last week's Massachusetts special election for a crucial Senate seat was literally “a thunderbolt out of the blue,” as Massachusetts is the bluest of the “ blue” states dominated by the Democrats.

His greatness lies in his humility; his achievements are largely invisible. Sydney Ming-hsun Yeh, who is known and revered in journalistic and political circles as “Ming Kung,” or Uncle Ming, is dead at 97.

Never before has a Nobel Peace Prize aroused such an international uproar as this year's award for U.S. President Barack Obama.

I had difficulty fighting back tears, and also laughter at times, when I watched on live television the eulogy delivered by Edward Kennedy Jr. for his father — the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who was hailed by President Barack Obama as “the greatest legislator of our time.”

Kuomintang chairman Wu Poh-hsiung said yesterday he would help President Ma Ying-jeou but remained silent, when asked whether he would stand for re-election.

Investor Warren Buffett would make a top-notch commentator were he a member of the chattering class.

Former president Chen Shui-bian has started launching an all-out counterattack against his political foes with such a “passionate intensity” that would have made William Yeasts flabbergasted.

In a nutshell, year 2008 is a year of chaos. Internationally, there were a destructive financial crisis, which former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan called “once-in-a-century credit tsunami;” the Mumbai terrorist attack in India; the flying shoes over George W. Bush's head in Baghdad that symbolized the never-ending bloodshed in the Middle East.

To be honest, I have never been a Hillary fan, but I am always awed by her strong personality and profound intellect. She is a born diplomat and gifted politician: pretty, eloquent and convincing even if you don’t agree with her.

We are beginning to see hope out of Barack Obama’s audacity in assembling his administration, barely eight weeks before his inauguration as the 44th president of the United States.