There has been plenty of commentary on Edward Snowden (Nexon, Toobin, Roger Simon, interesting counterpoint from Jack Shafer here), but I’m a little bit amazed that important government secrets are entrusted to a 29 year old high school dropout who unilaterally gets the chance to decide what’s in the national interest. I respect the idea of whistleblowers, but something about the tone of interviews with this guy struck me as dime store political philosophy from the Wachowski brothers.

To the business at hand: here is your Thursday morning linkage! On the lighter side, cheetahs are effective hunters because of their capacity to turn. They can run up to 60 mph so let’s protect those big cats alive and in the wild.

In other news:

• US-China summit yields agreement on effort to tackle potent greenhouse gas HFCs
• Giving high risk people AIDS drugs — PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) — gets further support as a HIV prevention tool with drug addicts
• Scary story on Indian generic firm Ranbaxy and fraud in its drug production Continue reading

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

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Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage. Back on the Africa theme from a couple of weeks ago, here are some good reads from the week:

• More reports on the elephant poaching crisis in CAR
• Last rhinos in Mozambique killed by poachers with the help of park rangers; time for Kruger fences to come back up
• Alex de Waal trolls celebrity activists like Enough, Kony 2012, faults them for insufficient consultation with local actors on the ground
• Nigerian military over-reacted and killed a bunch of citizens in the north: Boko Haram recruitment advertisement
• Abuamerican, American jihadi gone to Somalia, apparently about to be dead because of a falling out with Al Shabab
• Zuma, ANC, and Mandela’s family cashing in on Madiba in a highly distasteful way
• Estimate of 2011 Somalia famine deaths is 260,000, half 5 and under
• Hey, CGD mapped subnational income levels for everywhere, except most of Africa
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Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage!

• Algal bloom kills 240 of Florida’s 5000 manatees (cause of death: natural toxin)
• Madonna smacked down by Malawi government after her recent visit
• Shale gas and methane leaks, greener than coal but by how much?
• Obama tells donors that the politics of the environment are hard, hints at what he might do on Keystone XL pipeline
• BP is beyond “Beyond Petroleum,” sells wind power interests
• Nicholas Lemann asks: what happened to the environmental movement?

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Arriving in the middle of the International Studies Association annual meeting, here is your Thursday morning linkage…

• Man tries to smuggle 10% of endangered Madagascan tortoise population into Thailand
• DRC military facilitating poaching and pillaging in UNESCO world heritage site
• Just when the French thought it was safe to go home: suicide bombers in Timbuktu
• Bad Chinese air killing 1.2 million Chinese every year prematurely
• Chinese government study says pollution costs 3.5% of gross domestic product 
• Dude, where are half of China’s rivers? Continue reading