I'm back ...

... though I don't know if I'm better than ever. I caught a cold from Joey and have been in bed since Monday afternoon. I've slept a lot, interspersed with reading A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power and a year-old article in Harper's by Bryan Mealer, "Congo's Daily Blood". (The link only gives you part of the article for free; the Harper's website is pretty useless.) You can download an mp3 of Mealer talking to Leonard Lopate at WNYC shortly after the events in 2005 that he reported in Harper's here. Lopate also did a segment on "girl soldiers" in the Congo last week.

And in today's news:

KINSHASA, March 7 (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo's top nuclear research official has been arrested, the government said on Wednesday, after a Kinshasa newspaper reported uranium had gone missing from an atomic institute in the city....

Last year diplomatic and intelligence sources told Reuters that countries suspected of seeking nuclear arms might have exploited lax security in Congo to obtain uranium.


Great, just great.