In one way or another, President Obama's critics will dog him all the way to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, and even his admirers will continue to have doubts about his accomplishments if not his promise.

The deliberations of the Senate Finance Committee on health-care reform — which, understandably, have monopolized the public's attention to Capitol Hill — have concluded not a moment too soon.

At 9.8 percent, the unemployment rate is higher than it has been since it hit 10.1 percent in June 1983. Since the recession began 21 months ago, the economy has shed nearly 7 million jobs.

At US$2.87 a gallon, the average price of milk is down 27 percent from a year ago. That means cheaper groceries for recession-weary consumers and more bang for the taxpayer's buck in food stamps and other federal nutrition programs.

A disquieting phrase has entered our economic lexicon: “new normal.” The “new normal” economy that emerges from our recovery, many economists fear, won't look like the old normal, the American economy of the past couple of decades. It will look worse.

Three years ago this week Anna Politkovskaya, a courageous journalist who exposed appalling human rights offenses in Chechnya, was shot five times as she entered her Moscow apartment building.

At the heart of the Obama administration's deliberations about Afghanistan is the question of whether U.S. security rests on the defeat of the Afghan Taliban movement.

The Obama administration's positive tone following its first diplomatic encounter with Iran covers a deep and growing gloom in Washington and European capitals.

Before firing me last week from my post as his deputy special representative in Afghanistan, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conveyed one last instruction: Do not talk to the press.

What would Thomas Edison say? Last month, stores in Europe stopped acquiring new stocks of Edison's brilliant invention.