governance and garbage

NYM: Q: what would it take to eliminate homicide in NYC? A: "mass evacuation."
(seriously, though - an interesting look at different segments of the homicide numbers and what NYPD have been doing to tackle them.)

and, a focus on a northeast brooklyn neighborhood where high homicide rates are more stubborn, and new gang dynamics exist:
"The massive, corporate-style drug organizations of the eighties and early nineties are long gone from the streets of Brooklyn—driven out during the boom years by aggressive policing and an improved economic outlook. What they left in their wake is a wildly fractured drug market populated by an amorphous and crowded field of close-knit, hard-to-identify miniature gangs—and a form of violence that may be even more difficult to tamp down than what came before it...Today, dealers sell primarily to known customers and avoid risky street-level sales—and, thus, should be less likely to get involved in competitive gunplay. So why all the killing? 'The idea that the shootings are drug-related has some truth to it, but it’s overstated,' says John Jay’s Greg Donaldson...'What they are, are people who are armed because they’re in the drug trade, but then it’s often personal—somebody said something to someone’s girlfriend.'...Deanna Rodriguez, the D.A.’s gang-bureau chief, says the academics may be right that this sort of interpersonal beef among armed young men has caused the surge in violence in recent years. But the real concern, she argues, is that the small gangs are becoming entrenched—and starting to fight over drug-dealing turf. Maturing subsets of Latino gangs like the Latin Kings and Dominicans Don’t Play, she says, are particularly worrying—which may explain the city’s sharpest murder spike, in Bushwick’s 83rd Precinct, where a peace between area Latin gangs has fallen part."

NYT: US (finally) questions election outcome of election in Kenya, calls for leaders to meet

NYT: Iraqi parliament approves measure to allow Baathists back in

LAT: Chávez says the FARC, ELN shouldn't be labeled terrorist groups: "'They are insurgent forces who occupy space and who have a political plan...'"
Gdn: Clara Rojas, one of the hostages released this week by the FARC, is reunited with her son
who was born 3 years ago in captivity and has been in foster care in Bogotá.

LAT: UN team created to run Guatemalan judiciary: "The U.N.-staffed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala will consist of 150 lawyers and forensic investigators who will prosecute cases in local courts."

BBC: but they're not invited to Pakistan

Atlantic: slideshow of photographs from Guantánamo

Econ: on the globalization of Camorra, one of Italy's largest mafias (book review)
Slate: why do mafias love trash, anyhow?
Econ: of governance and garbage
(find Ryan's take here.)

Gdn: deciding on the lyrics for Spain's national anthem (wordless since 1978, three years after the death of Franco)

Portfolio: it's not just your gov't spook job anymore: espionage goes corporate

Portfolio: property rights and protests in China

Econ: pink in Georgia and orange in the Ukraine

BBC: Zuma gives his first speech as ANC head, calls for unity

BBC: Sri Lanka gov't claims 59 Tamil Tiger combatants dead

Econ: in Turkey: Islam and democracy
Econ: and a drag queen. "...for the past year Huysuz Virjin (the Petulant Virgin) has been replaced by his less exotic self, Seyfi Dursunoglu..."