A Japanese tunnel collapse on Sunday killed nine and trapped many motorists.

Hopes that we’d earned a little breathing space after the election were quickly dashed with what might be called, for convenience, the Petraeus Affair. With revelations falling like dominoes, I can’t venture to comment on how it will end. But we can be reminded of the simmering kettle that is the Middle East, increasingly dominated by radical Muslim groups and fueled by combustible propaganda.