Everyone loves a good mystery. The New York Times lays one to rest today in an article on the purported discovery of the remains of Czar Nicholas II's two children, thought to be killed in 1918 but rumored for years to have escaped execution. The article explains the process that recovered nine sets of remains in 1991 and then the discovery of these last two sets this past summer. There is no indication of why The Times has just picked up on the story now, though. The article also lacks some historical context. It would have been more informative if it had included, for example, the dates when Anna Anderson claimed to be Anastasia and some of the theories that prompted the rumor that two children escaped execution and when these theories originated.

A Washington Post article today reports on the oft-forgotten war-torn country of Afghanistan. The article devotes a substantial amount of space to discussing the report released by the Bush administration showing failure to meet its goals for 2007. It includes many comments from senior officials--made anonymously, of course--that indicate that they are not surprised.
They're not the only ones.

In The Boston Globe today a fine line exists between the stigma of an accused drug dealer and the injustice of one wrongfully imprisoned. An article on the release of an accused drug dealer describes the prosecutorial errors that caused the judge to drop the charges. However, the viewpoint is quite balanced and does not note that the accused had been held for four years until the very end of the article; this seems to make the story newsworthy.