The Second World War formally ended on September 2, 1945 with Japan’s surrender. There is a popular saying that a war is over when the last soldiers killed are buried. With WWII, however, things aren’t so simple.

The Second World War was a beast born of WWI, known in Europe as the Great War. Some alternative historians see them as two phases in the same war, separated by a fragile truce. This seems logical: For thirty years, the world tried to destroy itself in trenches and gas chambers, at logging sites and in slums blighted by misery and unemployment. It measured the shapes of skulls and class distinctions, and meticulously calculated the percentage of Jewish or Japanese blood in people destined for death camps or internment camps.

Beset by mounting casualties on the battlefield and deepening disquiet at home over the United States’ longest war, President Obama’s Afghan policy now faces another big headache: the unraveling of central authority in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian nation that hosts a U.S. air base critical to the battle against the Taliban.

Just a month after agreeing to extend for a year a $60 million lease on a U.S. air base here, Kyrgyzstan’s generally pro-Western but increasingly impotent president, Roza Otunbayeva, has retreated from U.S.-backed security programs that Washington hoped would help fortify a fragile Kyrgyz government.

At times Tuesday night, it sounded as if President Barack Obama didn’t know what kind of speech he wanted to give. Was it a foreign policy address aimed at assuring a world-wide audience of America’s resolve in the war against militant Islam? Or was it an election stump speech to confirm to voters that the economy is job No. 1 for this president and his party?

The speech’s best moments were those praising the commitment, courage and sacrifice of America’s military. The president powerfully said that «our troops are the steel in our ship of state,» and all who serve join «an unbroken line of heroes that stretches from Lexington to Gettysburg; from Iwo Jima to Inchon; from Khe Sanh to Kandahar.»

Entering a war is easy; getting out of it is the hard part. That axiom is particularly true for the United States today, as it muddles through three wars — two of which were forced upon it (Afghanistan and the «war on terror»), with the third (Iraq) started unnecessarily by a US administration blinded by ideology and hubris.

The US has no prospect of a military victory in Afghanistan or Iraq; these wars’ economic costs can hardly be borne anymore, and political support at home is dwindling. America must withdraw, but the price — for the US, its allies in the region, and for the West — remains an open question.

An interview with Premier Vladimir Putin on the road between Khabarovsk and Chita with the premier himself driving.

Question: Will it be difficult to drive and talk all at once? Self-control and all that... you will be inevitably distracted.

Vladimir Putin: No, let’s do it. Matter of fact, I’m having a break right now. Probably the first break in a decade or so.

Question: What is more difficult to handle — political issues or economic matters?

Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable: He knows what he wants and where he’s headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only as ambition wanes does education become a possibility.

My own education did not commence until I had reached middle age. I can fix its start date with precision: for me, education began in Berlin, on a winter’s evening, at the Brandenburg Gate, not long after the Berlin Wall had fallen.

It is easy to find an excuse to comment on this subject. Just open up any American newspaper these days. The Washington Post’s lead column, for example, is entitled «Toxic Brew for the GOP.» This is about the ideology of the politicians who are bound to win control of the U.S. Congress in November’s midterm elections.

How to call them? Republicans? Generally speaking, yes. Conservatives from the so-called Tea Party? Absolutely. Incidentally, these are related organizations but with some major differences. Are they small town Americans? Yes, they are that, too.

However, among the many labels applied to this political wave in the panicked op-eds of U.S. newspapers, the most precise would be the «attack of the primitives.»

A day after he traveled to Sochi on the Black Sea to meet President Dmitry Medvedev, Bono joined the rest of the band onstage at Moscow’s Luzhniki stadium. The show was U2’s first-ever in Russia; the group had been one of the few major international acts who hadn’t played in the country, where Western music is hugely popular.

As the band took the stage, the skies opened with torrential rain — especially ironic since «Beautiful Day» was among the first songs. Most of the 50,000-plus crowd stayed dry, though, since the seating area at the stadium — used primarily for soccer — is covered by a roof. The band, as well as the throngs of fans in the dance-floor area, weren’t so lucky. Only the drum kit seemed reliably protected from the rain, while Bono, Edge and bassist Adam Clayton played under the raindrops and got soaked in the process.

There is a hole in the map of Central Asia where Kyrgyzstan used to be. A country once considered an outpost of relative tolerance and democracy in a region of dysfunctional authoritarian regimes is today a deeply divided, practically failed, state. If the international response to its descent into political chaos is not swift and bold, the consequences will be disastrous.

After years of mismanagement and corruption President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in April by a provisional government that has not succeeded in establishing its authority over the country. An explosion of violence, destruction and looting hit southern Kyrgyzstan in June, killing hundreds and deepening the gulf between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities.

«My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old.»

So began the simple letter that ultimately made a little girl from Maine an international ambassador for peace in the early 1980s.

Smith, born in Houlton in 1972, was living in Manchester when she sent her famous letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1982.

She died 25 years ago today while coming home to Maine, forever linking her to the people of Lewiston-Auburn.

An inexperienced crew operating a Bar Harbor Airline flight from Logan Airport made an errant approach to the Auburn-Lewiston Regional Airport during a rainstorm.