Selected reading

• The winners of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize have been announced. The photograph above, taken from the campaign trail of the US elections, was one of many which won Damien Winter the prize for feature photography.
• There’s plenty of good stuff among the winners, among them Lane DeGregory’s story in the St Petersburg Times, whose story about an abandoned 7-year-old girl managed to strike the difficult balance the heartbreaking subject matter and broader questions about psychology & child development. In a year when pronouncements about the death of newspapers have been so widely-pronounced, the Pulitzer again demonstrates what’s good about this profession. [Edit]
• Dafna Linzer reports that dozens of prisoners held by the CIA are still missing, and their fates are unknown.
• In a sobering assessment, Journalist/historian Gareth Porter argues that the U.S. lacks the capacity to achieve its goals in Afghanistan.
• Cuban Americans are apparently appreciating the overtures of the new US administration.
• Related to yesterday’s post, Tom Lloyd asks what the War on Drugs is actually achieving.
• Today is Earth Day. Always eager to mark such occasions, here’s Joe Romm about why it should be scrapped.
• Stacey Palevsky relates a story about the fight to release Deborah Peagler, a woman who was sentenced for killing her husband, even though she was subjected to long-term domestic abuse.
• Boris Johnson confirms that he won’t fund the planned rape crisis centres in London.
• And apparently there was some Budget thing. The New Statesman has a round-up of reactions.