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Uprising’s guest expert Rahul Mahajan, a sociologist and news analyst and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, analyzes today’s news headlines:

Canada formally ends its mission in Afghanistan after more than 12 years. Canadian soldiers, serving under the NATO command in Afghanistan, lost more than 150 troops during the war. The Canadian government has promised to continue economic aid to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Swedish journalist Nils Horner was fatally shot in Kabul yesterday in an area frequented by foreign nationals. His shooting comes within days of 11 deaths of Afghan civilians over the weekend from two roadside bomb attacks. Click here for a Globe and Mail article about Canada’s mission, and click here for a Washington Post article about the killing of Nils Horner.

Republican David Jolly has won a special election in Florida, narrowly beating his rival Democrat Alex Sink by about 3,400 votes. The race was seen as the first test of the election year, closely watched by both parties. While the Washington Post concluded that “Jolly’s win … illustrated the political toxicity of the law known as Obamacare,” John Nichols, writing for the Nation, maintains that, “Money, Not Obamacare, Gave the GOP Its Florida Win.” Jolly won a traditionally Republican seat after his predecessor Bill Young passed away last year. Click here for a Washington Post article and click here for the Nation article about the election.

And finally, yet another African American man has been exonerated from Death Row where he spent nearly 3 decades for a murder he did not commit. Sixty four year old Glenn Ford was just released from Angola prison in Louisiana and told the press, “I’ve been locked up almost 30 years for something I didn’t do. I can’t go back and do anything I should have been doing when I was 35, 38, 40 stuff like that.” Ford was sentenced to death as a result of an inexperienced defense lawyer, false witness testimonies, and an all-white jury. He is considered “one of the longest-serving death row inmates in US history to be exonerated.” Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.