Archive - February 10, 2013

Peace Corps Global FROM:            Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Acting Director SUBJECT:      Peace Corps Volunteer Nicholas M. Castle I am deeply saddened to inform you that we have lost a member of our Peace Corps family.  Yesterday, Peace Corps/China Volunteer Nick Castle, 23, died after a short illness in Chengdu, China.  His parents were at his bedside at the time of his death.  Nick arrived in China on June 29, 2012, to begin his pre-service training and was sworn in as a Volunteer on August 27, 2012.  He was serving as an education Volunteer at Tongren University in Guizhou Province, where he taught university-level English.  He was scheduled to complete his service in July 2014. Nick was an outstanding Volunteer who was dedicated to helping others and his passing is mourned by the entire Peace Corps community, including his fellow Volunteers in China, Peace Corps/China staff, and his students.  We are taking the . . .

“[Peter Tinti (Mali 2008-10) is a freelance journalist, writer and analyst based in Bamako, Mali. He writes and reports on issues pertaining to politics, culture and security in West Africa. He has lived and worked in the region since 2008, first as a PCV in Gao, northern Mali.]   February 9, 2013 Mali War Shifts as Rebels Hide in High Sahara  By ADAM NOSSITER and PETER TINTI DAKAR, Senegal – Just as Al Qaeda once sought refuge in the mountains of Tora Bora, the Islamist militants now on the run in Mali are hiding out in their own forbidding landscape, a rugged, rocky expanse in northeastern Mali that has become a symbol of the continued challenges facing the international effort to stabilize the Sahara. Expelling the Islamist militants from Timbuktu and other northern Malian towns, as the French did swiftly last month, may have been the easy part of retaking . . .