With the semester coming to an end, time to hit the Internets and start blogging more regularly. I’ve been meaning to write one for months about the poaching crisis. It’s coming. In the meantime, here is yet another story on the corrosive effects on governance by Sudanese elephant poachers in the Central African Republic.

Elsewhere, it’s not been a good week for the Obama Administration but good news for team O, the media agree that the Benghazi mess has been overblown:

• David Brooks on the scapegoating of State Department hand Victoria Neuland
• Jeffrey Goldberg concurs that Susan Rice was not to blame
• Read the emails for your self

In other news, personal health confessionals become something more:

• Actress Angelina Jolie on her double mastectomy after becoming aware of the BRCA gene and her high likelihood of developing the same cancer that killed her mother.
• Times contributor Andrew Revkin on how he has progressed since having a stroke 22 months ago

The father of modern IR theory Ken Waltz died this week if you were living in a cave without internet access

• Steve Walt’s remembrance
• Our own Duck liege Dan offered his own as well

Lots of bad news in Asia right now:

• China’s water crisis affecting its growth
• Cambodia shoe firm roof collapse
• Bangladesh, on top of the garment factory tragedy, is facing an imminent cyclone risk, a million evacuated