A bronze sculpture of the Labrador Duck sits in Brand Park in Elmira, New York, near the site where the last living survivor was seen. (photo by Scott Anger)

The Lost Bird Project, which memorializes five North American birds driven to extinction in modern times – the Carolina Parakeet, the Great Auk, the Heath Hen, the Labrador Duck and the Passenger Pigeon – has a launched a site. 

While looking for a story about climate change in North America, photographer Nina Berman stumbled upon a tiny subject with a huge impact.  The Mountain Pine Beetle is an 8 mm-long (about 1/3 of an inch) insect that is killing millions of acres of forest across Canada and the northern United States. 

DOCUMENTARY FILM TO BE DISTRIBUTED VIA NEWSPAPER – Gannett has announced that its newspapers will distribute one million copies of a documentary film made by the organization The Smile Train, which helps children in developing countries.  The film, “Smile Pinki”, follows Pinki, a young girl in rural India whose life is transformed when she receives free surgery to correct her cleft lip. The Smile Train’s mission is to help very poor children in developing countries who are suffering from cleft lip.

Can U.S. forces succeed in a land long known as the “graveyard of empires”?  FRONTLINE’s season premiere, Obama’s War, airing October 13, 2009 on PBS, takes a look at the administration’s new counterinsurgency plan for Afghanistan and its neighbor, Pakistan, where US troops are not allowed.  To see the new strategy at work, FRONTLINE embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment in Afghanistan’s violent Helmand province.  Since the Marines’ arrival in July, Helmand has become the most lethal battlefield in Afghanistan.  But FRONTLINE found the Marines trying to act as armed diplomats, attempting to build the necessary trust for badly needed economic development.