Uh-oh! North Korea last night made good on a surefire promise and blew up, for the third time, a nuclear bomb. The idea is to perfect a nuke so small it could fit atop a missile bound for these here United States. Or Japan. Or South Korea. Barack Obama is pretty unhappy, since this kind of ruins his State of the Union party. But this time China, North Korea's only real global pal, is also pretty pissed.

Iran, weirdly, has decided to slow its production of weapons-grade nuke fuel—opening up a longer timeline for diplomatic talks. Both North Korea and Iran are suffering under global economic sanctions. The difference is North Korea doesn't care at all.

The president's big speech won't just be about the economy. He'll announce the return of 34,000 fighters from Afghanistan, the next phase ahead of full(-ish) withdrawal in 2014.

Expect to hear about guns. Like the gun a University of Maryland student just used to kill himself and a roommate.

What's been a crippling spike in health care costs for several years has begun to ease, for reasons unknown. (It might be because of health care reform, but only a little bit.) But the trend has shaved hundreds of millions from government spending forecasts.

Four years have elapsed without a fatal airline crash in the United States—the longest span without a deadly tumble from the sky since the dawn of the jet age. Last year also marked a global record for airline safety.

The Summer Olympics hates that one sport where you writhe around on mats with another human and exchange ringworm and acne sebum.

This is a bad idea. The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office has decided it needs an aerial drone—but no, definitely not, don't be crazy, it's not for surveillance.

The retiring pope's older brother, a more kindly looking regular priest, says Benedict won't come back to Germany, won't write any more books, and most certainly won't be succeeded by anyone with brown skin. Because of course not. Sigh.

A Montana TV station has apologized to its five or six people regular viewers after hackers hacked its emergency signal to say something about a zombie apocalypse during another gripping episode of The Steve Wilkos Show.