This week in Washington the halls of Congress have been flooded with talk about looming cuts to the Pentagon. With members of Congress floating plans to undo planned cuts (known in Congressional jargon as "sequestration") due to start in January, the lobbyists for America's weapons makers, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), have been storming the Hill to scare Congress with talk of layoffs and 'doomsday.'

Bonnie has balanced an astonishing musical range with a message and a way of carrying herself that are firmly rooted in her Quaker heritage.

Adversity can debilitate and defeat a lesser soul. But for those with the inner strength to make the climb, new heights can beckon.

Along the way -- especially for a musician -- it helps to have an other-worldly talent, a gift that combines decades of hard work with those inexplicable powers that come from the slipstream of the spirit.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military says it has now fully withdrawn the last of the 33,000 “surge troops” sent to pacify Afghanistan two years ago, but they are leaving behind an uncertain landscape of rising violence and political instability that threatens to undo considerable gains in security, particularly in the former Taliban strongholds in the south and southwest.      

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Obama and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, had what an American official called a “serious and positive” discussion on Wednesday night that the Afghans confirmed had made progress toward resolving an increasingly acrimonious dispute over detaining terrorism suspects, which had their two governments and their militaries at loggerheads for weeks.