Captivating, detailed account of a journalist held hostage for over 7 months.

A comprehensive look at the larger context behing the multiple, individual bashings of White House opponents by the White House. Most cited facts and comments can be verified from records, and conclusions are logical.

While the comparisons of the federal budget to other "numbers" might or might not be true and are mostly of sensational nature, he is touching an highly critical point that will affect ad shape America for the next decades: The sheer size of our debt. +1 in the rating. The rest of it is mostly miminum rating, poorly funded and unrelated blurp.

The author takes six common preconceptions against the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and nuclear disarmament, and argues why those preconceptions are (partially) wrong. The author does not provide further references for many of his claims but to me they sound very logical.

The author examines an escalating verbal battle between the White House and Fox. Not only do both sides bring their arguments, the author also looks at potential reasons why both sides might be interested in such an escalation.

The article not only analyzes the likely cause of sever droughts in Kenya in recent years, but much more looks at the issues arising from those droughts from all sides. It cites environmental experts, interviews affected down-stream farmers as well as farmers in those forests who believe to have bought legitimate titles from allegedly corrupt politicians.

The article reports the experiences of a group of reporters investigating potentiel election fraud in Afghanistan. While much information is based on interviews and therefore not easily verifiable, the information is clearly marked as such.

The story looks at the current Healthcare craze/scare from the perspective of UK, whose healthcare system serves mostly as a negative example in ads and information campaigns. However, the article does not truly examine whether the UK's claims of misinformation about its NHS are correct or not, but rather.

The article mentions several terms, like hundi, ban-king channel, madressah. It is up to the reader to figure out these terms, e.g. by reading a previous, referenced article. Except for Richard Holbrooke's statement, facts in the article are difficult to verify, and therefore seems more like an opinion.

I'm curious about the following quote: "Mr. Holbrooke declined to criticize Europe’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan,..." Was someone at the meeting suggesting Europe's committment was not enough? Or did he volunteer this information?