Global Briefing, April 26, 2011: Apocalypse Still

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No return — Twenty five years after Chernobyl, TIME considers the disaster’s legacy and its lessons; Krista Mahr writes about what it’s like reporting in Japan’s nuclear zone.

America’s Shame —  Amy Davidson’s sharp take on the Guantanamo files cuts to the dark heart of the matter: “We sacrificed our values and our moral standing for goals that were increasingly—vanishingly—distant from the ones we had been told were so urgent; or for no real reason at all,” she writes.

Fighter FlightJohn Wendle explains why this weekend’s prison break in Afghanistan is bad news for American fighters on the ground. Read TIME’s ‘Top 10 Prison Escapes,’ here.

Flying Blind — In the Washington Post, Martin Pincus mulls the move toward unmanned drones. Is this a technological tipping point?  he asks.

Wither Europe? — A shift of economic power is changing the continent’s political priorities, often in contradictory ways, says Richard Gowan. “The EU may be on the road to becoming a sort of strategic suburbia: a collection of small, quiet and obsessively inward-looking communities suspicious of the outside world,” he says.

Death in Dara’a — According to multiple reports, the crackdown in Syria is intensifying; Rania Abouzeid predicts there may well be more violence to come.

Irreligious —  At team form Al Jazeera re-visits the brutal, anti-Ahmadi killings that took place in Indonesia last February. Read TIME’s account of the country’s spiritual revolution, here.

In Pictures — Light Box features Tim Hetherington’s photography from Liberia; See some of his work from Afghanistan, here.