Articles and Op-Eds: 2001

It took awhile to unlearn the number 6,000. Though the estimated death toll at the World Trade Center has been falling steadily since early October -- and has by now shrunk by half -- the smaller number proved hard to absorb. As late as Thanksgiving, the larger figure was still being cited by disc jockeys and pundits, by Northern Alliance fighters and admirers of Osama bin Laden. Maybe even now it remains embedded in the minds of Americans who have been paying less avid attention to the news than they did in September.

STEVE CURWOOD: The archipelago of Indonesia has many threatened species of birds. Many live in Wallacea, which is home to more than 250 birds found nowhere else on Earth. Little is known in the West about the region, and its first field guide to birds was not published until 1997. But there are plenty of experts on Wallacean wildlife if you look in the right places. John Ryan found some on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores.

(Bird calls)

The war in Afghanistan could become a defining event not just for the fight against terrorism but for NATO and US-European-Russian relations. Already the war has brought changes that just a few months ago would have been unimaginable. For the first time in its history, NATO has invoked Article 5 of the Washington treaty establishing the alliance -- not to defend Europe, as was originally envisioned, but to support a US war in a region far from the European theater.

President George W. Bush began the year as the barely elected president and he ends it as a triumphant world leader. Yet, having gained legitimacy by winning a war, he could lose popularity by losing a game -- the expectations game.

What's true for human nature is true for politics: It's always best to under-promise and over-deliver. Bush did that with his own numbers.

Having received just 47.9 percent of the popular vote last year, he now receives poll numbers in the mid-80s.