A few weeks ago it seemed like Afghanistan’s main candidates for president, the incumbent Hamid Karzai and his former foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, were locked in a dead heat, running side by side toward that coveted post; to govern a country rocked by economic troubles and war.

At the time of his capture Ramirez was holding 15 hostages including anti-corruption activist and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who had been held captive for more than six years.

What bothers me the most about this, and I’m sure the families of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, too, is the certainty that these two women didn’t and probably weren’t even able to commit a grave crime, hostile act or espionage.

North Korea has fired more missiles just hours after the UN unanimously condemned yesterday’s underground nuclear test and the testing of three short-range missiles, the BBC reports.

It’s been creeping behind Americans for many months, like a slow moving hurricane blowing winds of bankruptcy and foreclosure. On a day when the Dow Jones lost almost eight per cent, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) officially announced that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, according to the New York Times.