Has planet Earth's luck changed for the better? We rarely see evidence of good fortune operating at a civilizational level, but two events in the news earlier this week promise to benefit all mankind. The first story concerned the discovery by census takers of more than twice the number of lowland gorillas thought to inhabit the Republic of Congo. An earlier census of the region conducted in the 1980s concluded there were about 100,000 of these magnificent creatures remaining, but it was thought that at least half of them had died since then, victims of poachers and disease, particularly Ebola. However, the latest census determined that there may be as many as 125,000 lowland gorillas living in the Congo's rain forests and swamps, and a previously unknown population of 6,000 was discovered in a remote swamp. The story is so stunning because good news on the environmental front seems so rare in this day and age. We hear so very often about global warming and its harmful effects on the ecology, of mysterious bee die-offs, mutant frogs, dying coral reefs, species extinctions, and about the catastrophic whim of nature stirring up deadly forest fires, tidal waves and earthquakes. But the discovery of a robust population of lowland gorillas surely ranks among the most felicitous environmental stories to come to light in recent years. A Turn Toward Peace in Iraq? The other story concerned the decision by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disarm his Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, in Iraq, and to remake it as a social services organization. If he's serious, and if he succeeds in getting militiamen to lay down their arms, it would represent a major breakthrough for peace in the region, effectively shutting down an insurgency that takes it orders from Iran. It would also
LATEST TRADES
