Switching Sides — Libya’s Foreign Minister Moussa Kusa defected to London on Wednesday night. Vivienne Walt considers how he could help the coalition.
Tough Choices — Obama’s options in Libya look grim, according to the Atlantic: “If he escalates, the U.S. could risk another Afghanistan,” they say. “If he doesn’t, we could be seen as complicit in Qaddafi’s victory.”
Beyond Fukushima — What’s in store for Japan’s embattled nuclear workers? asks TIME’s Krista Mahr. Full coverage from Japan, here.
Semantics — At the New York Review of Books, Anne-Marie Slaughter mulls the “over-worked dichotomy” between America’s “strategic interests” and its “core values.”
Land of the Free — Almost a year after a massive oil spill slicked-up America’s Gulf Coast, BP is still blocking access to some affected areas, finds Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland. See TIME’s interactive map of the spill.
Afghan Riches — Afghanistan reportedly has $1 trillion in mineral deposits. Elliott D. Woods takes us to some of the country’s fledgling mines, in an evocative essay for the Virginia Quarterly Review.
Prophylactic Paranoia — A local council in Alabang, a posh Manila suburb, has ruled that prescriptions are required for condoms, reports the Wall Street Journal. It’s not the first condom crackdown in the predominantly Catholic country, but just the latest salvo in a decades-long battle for basic reproductive rights.
In Pictures — Light Box features the work of Phyllis Galembo, a photographer her documents costume and ritual in Africa and Haiti.