(Euronews: 0804 PST, April 21, 2011) Two award-winning war photographers are among Misurata's latest victims. They were killed after being caught in a rocket-propelled grenade attack, reportedly fired by government forces. Two other journalists in their group were injured.

Tim Hetherington, a 40-year-old British-American, was working in Libya for the US magazine Vanity Fair. He was best known for his work in Afghanistan; his Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo featured a platoon of American soldiers in a remote and dangerous Afghan outpost. American photographer Chris Hondros was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won multiple awards covering several conflicts.

Remembering Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros

(Democracy Now! 0800 PST, April 21, 2011) Award-winning photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed Wednesday when a group of journalists came under fire in the western Libyan city of Misurata. The pair, who had both covered conflict zones around the world, were part of a group of six photographers reporting on the Libyan conflict in a particularly dangerous part of Misurata.

Carroll Bogert of Human Rights Watch worked closely with Hetherington commissioning and disseminating his photos from war-torn regions. Most recently, Hetherington helped photograph secret police files from the Gaddafi documenting the brutality of the regime.

Christina Larson, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, worked with Hondros closely over the years.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have quickly soured following a helicopter strike on a border post that killed three Pakistani soldiers last week. The incident prompted Pakistan to close an important border crossing for NATO supplies into Afghanistan. Criticism of the U.S. and NATO has dominated the news in Pakistani media even after the U.S. apologized for the incident.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has recently accused some elements of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of supporting the terrorist networks in the country, thus undermining the war against terrorism by the U.S.-led international forces in the region. Recently, militants attacked 50 NATO supply trucks in Pakistan's northwestern town of Nowshera, the seventh attack in a short period of time. The U.S. has dramatically ramped up strikes with unmanned aerial drones in Pakistan's tribal areas in recent weeks.

But these are not the only stories that dominate Pakistani news. Reports about the human suffering due to the recent devastating floods, though they have all but vanished from Western newspapers, remain in the headlines in Pakistani ones. Terrorism acts are constant reminders of instability and insecurity for the average citizen, most recently punctuated by two blasts at a shrine in Karachi which left 9 dead and scores injured. The economy has tanked, inflation is at 18-20 percent, and the government seems to be helpless to do anything about it.

Pakistan is a troubled nation with deeply divided loyalties.

Even the once prestigious military establishment is now in trouble. A video purporting to show a group of Pakistani soldiers gunning down six blindfolded men in the country's troubled northwest has been circulating on the Internet for weeks. The troubling video has renewed long-standing concerns about military human rights violations during operations against the Taliban.

The war in Afghanistan has entered its tenth year. Many Pakistanis believe that “America’s War” has become their war. Fears are growing in Pakistan that the U.S. could bolster its drone attacks with a bombing campaign using fixed-wing aircrafts. This would most certainly increase Pakistani anger that could spill over into violence aimed at the thousands of Americans who are currently stationed in the country.

“The U.S. is trying to win its war in Afghanistan, through Pakistan,” says journalist Imtiyaz Mohammed.

He added that Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari is in a major predicament of trying to appease the United States while also trying to calm down an angry population.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is currently ranked the 10th most failed state in the 2010 Failed State Index released by Foreign Policy magazine this summer. Just three places below Afghanistan.

But former President Pervez Musharraf attributes Pakistan’s woes to "failure" of governance.

"I would say failure of governance is the greatest threat today," said Musharraf, who has announced his return to active Pakistani politics from London where he has been living in self-imposed exile since the general election of 2008.

However, many Pakistani pundits believe that this announcement is no coincidence, and has the United States' markings all over it.

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This Sunday, June 27th, we will host a live video web chat with Brian Keane, Director of Land is Life. A man who has dedicated 20 years trying to get us to listen to the elders, to the people who have a proper relationship with the earth, with the sky, with the air and with the water. These people can help us now with this crisis in the Gulf, and they could have helped us long before....

Our response to the Gulf oil spill disaster has not been deep or complete. It has been from a place of policy and economics. We have sprung into action and forgotten to deal with the symbolic, spiritual and emotional nature of this crisis. I have seen no mainstream press organizations, the companies that caused the situation or the government communicating what it means to take FULL responsiblty for causing all this suffering.

It is easy to blame, but what is my role? Since we are not separate, I need to take responsibility for causing all this suffering. I have not spoken out enough, I have not listened properly, I have not respected our Mother, I have used resources mindlessly and I have forgotten to be thankful. But MOST importantly, I have been afraid to use my power to protect.

This crisis in the Gulf is a wake up call to me. It has awoken the "No" inside me. It has gotten me to a place where I will not rely on others to do the right thing in my home, my neighborhood, my community, my city, my country and my earth Mother. I will stick my nose in it and maybe make people angry or uncomfortable, but if I do not do this, then who?

There have been some people and organizations I think have responded fully and I thank them for it, like James O'Dea and Spirituality & Practice. They have expressed a full and appropriate response -- grief, sorrow and asking for forgiveness. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee also is right to remind us of the importance of the symbolism of this experience.

On Sunday I plan to ask Brian how the indigenous people are responding to the Gulf oil spill. Then I am going to listen. I am going to listen with my heart and allow myself to feel the pain of my own and our collective forgetfulness. I am sorry it has taken us so long to get here. What I mean to say...is I am sorry it has taken me so long to get here.

In a season of a high-profile Supreme Court nomination, economic stimulus, and early health care negotiations, why are we hearing so little about the Obama administration's environmental and energy policy?

The answer may lie in Obama's use of terms like "clean coal," "carbon capture and storage," and "cap and trade" that imply more a gesture of environmentalism rather than a full-scale energy revolution. In recent weeks, Obama has deferred to House Democrats to craft a climate change bill that creates the first carbon emissions trading system loosely modeled on EU energy policy. The plan though, in giving away 85% of carbon trade permits to industry for free, sets far more modest goals than the EU system for reducing carbon emissions.

Obama has been even more quiet about a $2.4 billion rollout this month of "clean coal" investments designed to reduce the environmental impact of coal-powered energy. Environmentalists like Al Gore mock the very idea of clean coal power, but similar programs are being implemented in the EU and China as economic stimulus measures.

Even as energy policy takes a back-seat to other administration priorities, there is still pressure to move quickly on new programs. Obama has promised to raise substantial revenue from carbon emissions trading to help pay for expenses like universal health care. Also, there is hope that Obama will sign on to global energy standards this December in Copenhagen to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which previous U.S. administrations never implemented.

Watch the Global Pulse episode on "clean coal" policy here.

This week, Global Pulse examines international reaction to North Korea's weekend missile launch. According to most world media, the launch was a failure and resulted in the missile's harmless fall into the Pacific Ocean. But Pyongyang insisted the missile reached outer space as a satellite, using the event to reintroduce Kim Jong Il in his first public appeareance since August.

Photo footage of Kim in front of North Korea's Parliament showed the leader suffering from weight loss, though he appeared more healthy than some had predicted in the wake of a rumored stroke in August. The Financial Times speculated that Kim's actions could push East Asia into a new arms race as South Korea and Japan escalate their military response capabilities. The Washington Post though noted that a similar 2006 missile launch was followed only weeks later by North Korea's willingness to return to diplomatic negotiations.

Is Kim Jong Il a leader to be feared, and perhaps met with military force? Or is this most recent missile launch merely the work of an increasingly frail and marginalized despot?