Incredibly Moving World Press Photo Winner

Via Mother Nature Network: A portrait of a veiled woman cradling a wounded relative in her arms, taken in Yemen by Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda for The New York Times, won the top World Press Photo prize on Friday.

The photograph captured a moment in the conflict in Yemen, when demonstrators against outgoing president Ali Abdullah Saleh used a mosque in Sanaa as a field hospital to treat the wounded. But judges said it also spoke more broadly for the Arab Spring.

“The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on,” Aidan Sullivan, chair of the jury, said of Aranda’s photograph, which won World Press Photo of the Year 2011.

“We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East.”

Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj won first prize in the Daily Life Singles category with his photograph of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-Sung on a wall in Pyongyang.

Who’s Behind The Super PAC Explosion

The Article: The “People” Behind The Super PAC Explosion by Gavin Aronsen and Dave Gilson on Mother Jones.

The Text: Since last January, super-PACs have raised nearly $93 million in preparation for the 2012 election. Of that, more than 35 percent was donated by corporations, unions, and nonprofits—or, as we’ve come to know them in the post-Citizens United era, people. Though non-people people have not dominated super-PAC giving (for now), their strong showing in the recent round of financial disclosures lends credence to campaign finance reformers’ concerns that super-PACs enable cash-flush organizations to buy outsized influence over elections and candidates. The average corporate or union super-PAC donation was more than $62,000; in contrast, the average individual donation was around $23,500.

Of the $22.4 million collectively raised by the biggest 20 corporate and union super-PAC donors, 37 percent was from labor groups, which contributed to both liberal super-PACs and their own super-PACs. The rest was largely corporate donations to conservative super-PACs and groups supporting (but officially unconnected to) Republican presidential candidates. See the next page for a list of the biggest human donors to super-PACs—some of whose companies also appear on the list below.

Top 20 “People”* Giving to PACs

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