Although the death rate is sharply down, chaos on the ground still prevails and could easily become much bloodier again.

ECONOMIST: Sudan and Darfur

The battles that followed were far bloodier than those on the beaches the Normandy campaign lasted more than two months and cost 37, 000 lives.

WSJ: Book Review: The Guns at Last Light

The narrators describe a New York that was dirtier, bloodier, raunchier and less gentrified than today but also an easier place for a talented young person to gain a foothold.

WSJ: 5,000 NYC pay phones will take you back to 1993

Where the first term saw a succession of relatively bloodless presidential victories partisan routs in the case of tax cuts, bipartisan agreements in the case of education reform the second term will see a bloodier battle on Social Security, whoever wins.

ECONOMIST: State of the union: The revolution, phase two | The

The results there and in Ninewa province, which includes the equally disputed (and recently much bloodier) city of Mosul, appear to reflect a shift in the balance of power of the Kurds in the north which alarms many Iraqi Arabs as well as Turkey's and Iraq's Arab neighbours.

ECONOMIST: Iraq's Kurds