Check It Out Wednesday

Yet again, I'm here to provide an alternative to all those pictures of soggy oatmeal that fill up your blog reader on What I Ate Wednesday.  This week brought us...

Habemus Papam!  (We have a pope!)

The papal conclave has (finally) spoken.  With the wafting of their creepy red smoke, they declared Jorge Bergoglio to be the new leader of the Catholic church. Popes get to pick their papal names, and somehow the many generations of old white dudes who did the job all managed to overlook the awesomeness of the name Francis--until smarty-pants Jorge, that is--so the new pope is named Francis.  Yep, he named himself after the saint who is famous for whiling away the hours by talking to animals.  That's my kind of saint, and my kind of pope.

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Bonus, this pope is not Italian!  In fact, he's not even European.  And that's a rare thing in the papal kingdom--I mean, Catholic church.  Gregory III, who ruled over--I mean, led the the church in the 700s, was born in Syria, but all the other popes have been European born.  Francis, however, now has the honor of being our spiciest pope ever, hailing from Argentina.  This has made the Argentinian people almost as happy as they are after a soccer victory.

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Canadians in Space

Proving that they are good for more than just ice hockey victories and maple syrup, Canadians can now take pride in the fact that one of their own is now acting as captain of the International Space Station.  Chris Hadfield is the new Captain Picard.  Only once before has someone other than an American or Russian acted in this capacity, and the very first time it has been a Canadian.  Way to go, Canada!

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China has a Pig Problem

The rivers are overflowing... with pigs.  Literally.

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Reports are showing that over six thousand pig carcasses have been pulled out of the river Huangpu in Shanghai.  As if air pollution wasn't bad enough in China, now they are dealing with a possible water safety problem. The cause?  Most likely the pigs are not in a suicide pact.  No, the ones responsible are the factories operators who clearly saw an opportunity for dumping waste and took it.  And this is not the first time that Chinese rivers have been tainted by industrial growth... They've seen their rivers run red and orange because fabric dyes have been dumped into the water.

China's Yangtze River runs red, source

Ieng Sary Died While Still on Trial for War Crimes

This name might not be familiar to you, but it will be now... Ieng Sary co-founded the Khmer Rouge movement in Cambodia during the 70s--a movement that resulted in the deaths of 1.7 million people.  Pol Pot founded the movement with Sary, they were brothers-in-law.  What was the movement and why did so many people die?  Well, it was a socialist regime that depended upon moving people out of cities and into labor camps in the country.  People were literally worked to death, or else they died of disease or execution.

Ieng Sary has been on trial for a really long time, and a lot of people have been eagerly awaiting his conviction and sentencing.  But now he is dead and all those people are left feeling that justice was not done.  That's a sad story.  The dude was 87 years old and had Alzheimer's, though, so what can you expect?

Okay, that's it for this week's Check It Out Wednesday.  

Be sure to let me know what headlines you loved from the week!