In the Enterprise category we won for our in-depth series “World of Trouble” on the global economic recession. GlobalPost’s Managing Editor Thomas Mucha led the coverage by 20 correspondents in 20 countries who provided what we call “groundtruth.” That is reporting that focuses on how this sprawling crisis affects real people, their lives, jobs and living standards. Not the kind of coverage that relies on talking heads and analysts on Wall Street, but gritty, down-to-earth reporting in the field by correspondents who live in the countries about which they are writing.

GlobalPost also won two awards in the Special Projects category: for our series “Living in the Shadows” about migrant workers in China, reported by correspondents Kathleen McLaughlin, Sharron Lovell and Josh Chin, and by Mucha; and for “Silicon Sweatshops”, a five-part investigation of the supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular technology products, reported by correspondents Jonathan Adams and Kathleen McLaughlin. And finally we won in Columns, again our Thomas Mucha, for his excellent and insightful columns on global business issues.

From Greece to China and Argentina to India, GlobalPost plans to stay on the story of the swirling economic crisis and the ways in which it affects us all. Stay tuned!

Consider the events GlobalPost correspondents reported just this week:

In Indonesia, Peter Gelling provided authoritative coverage of the country’s elite counter-terrorism force killing Noordin Top, the leader of Indonesia’s answer to Al Qaeda.

In Somalia, six US attack helicopters swept over a convoy of the Al Qaeda-inspired Al Shabaab fighters and killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a leader who has long been wanted by the US in connection with the 1998 attack two US embassies in East Africa. GlobalPost correspondent Tristan McConnell reported from Kenya on how the attacks reveal a dramatic shift in US policy to confront Al Qaeda in the failed state of Somalia.

In Yemen, GlobalPost’s Laura Kasinof reported on the air strikes that killed scores of civilians fleeing fighting in Northern Yemen where the government forces appear to be succumbing to American pressure to step up the fight against “an increasingly active branch of Al Qaeda in the country,” as she wrote.

The US intelligence community is buzzing about evidence emerging over the summer that Al Qaeda leaders are gathering in Somalia and Yemen and trying to establish a new nexus for operations after Pakistan’s military finally stepped up the pressure on Al Qaeda in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

CIA director Leon E. Panetta publicly revealed this in briefings over the summer.

An early warning about this came from Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who spoke at the Brookings Institute in the late spring, saying, “I am very worried about growing safe havens in both Somalia and Yemen, specifically because we have seen Al Qaeda leadership, some leaders, start to flow to Yemen.”

The concentration of violent jihadist campaigns in Yemen and Somalia illustrate that Al Qaeda is a movement not an organization, and the fact that they are scrambling to move base and being hit even as they do so is a sign that they are greatly weakened now eight years after the September 11th attacks.

The federal government announced an investigation and congress declared it would hold public hearings this fall on our Kabul correspondent Jean MacKenzie’s investigative piece about how American tax payers’ money is ending up in the hands of the Taliban. You have got to read this piece which was credited on CNN, CBS, Reuters, HuffingtonPost and all over the blogosphere and different websites. It was one of those stories that staggers the mind. The headline says it all: “US taxpayers funding the Taliban?”

MacKenzie’s reporting focuses on what has long been an open secret in Afghanistan, that the Taliban has established what is essentially a protection racket in which it takes a cut of up to 20 percent from contractors receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for development projects in Afghanistan. Twenty percent.

That’s a big cut even for the mafia. The Italian organized crime families traditionally took only 10 percent of the construction industry in the cities in controlled.

I was thinking about that this morning as I walked near our headquarters here on Atlantic Avenue in Boston and saw one of the last great mafia funerals.

The black limos were lined up along the narrow streets of the North End, this city’s Italian neghborhood. And there were flatbed trucks filled with fresh cut flowers. And wise guys in black suits with sunglasses were standing solemnly as the casket of Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo, one of the most powerful mafia figures in New England as his coffin was loaded into the hearse.

Angiulo died a free man, but only after serving 25 years in federal prison on a litany of charges including racketeering, gambling and loansharking. He was 90 years old.

The scene got me thinking about the federal government’s long fight against organized crime in America and what it can teach us about the struggle against the Taliban.

In the end of the day, the Taliban are criminal thugs and the sooner the US treats them that way, the sooner the government will begin to have impact in Afghanistan. After all, it was when the federal government stopped fighting the mafia and starting trying to cut off their money supply that they succeeded in breaking its hold on cities like Chicago and New York and Boston. It’s time for the US State Department to start thinking that way about the Taliban. Go after the money. To his credit, US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke likes this strategy, but Washington has been slow to move on granting him the auditors and investigators he has requested. And meanwhile the Taliban continues to brazenly carry out its protection rackets and pocket what is estimated to be at least tens of millions of dollars in money that was meant to build bridges and roads and other public works.

The Taliban are an armed insurgency for sure, but they are also a corrupt crime family, not unlike the mafia, that uses fear tactics to control its population and fund its organization. Like the mafia, the Taliban is beloved in the local community because it offers security and a sense of belonging. The North End has always been the safest place to live in Boston. And the community have always looked out for each other. After all, “Cosa Nostra,” means “Our Thing,” in Italian.

That really is not that different from the Pashtun villages where the Taliban holds power. It is ‘their thing.” They know the people, they keep the peace, they protect the collective culture and their way of life and they quite simply kill anyone who gets out of line or threatens their hold on power. Angiulo would have understood that. But he never would have understood 20 percent. In the old world of the mafia, that is just not gentlemanly. It’s not honorable.

Jerry Angiulo must be rolling over in his grave.

And yesterday the world mourned the loss of the last surviving son of an Irish-American family from Boston that suffered triumph and tragedy, sometimes scandal, and came to define American politics.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the last of the legendary political dynasty of brothers and one of the most effective legislators in recent history, died Tuesday night.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who was known as the “lion” of liberalism, was 77 years old.

The death of Sen. Kennedy, who had been suffering from brain cancer, was announced by the family Wednesday morning from the family compound at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The news came even as the family was gathering to mourn the loss of the senator’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who died two weeks ago.

GlobalPost will be taking reports from around the world on the Kennedy legacy and GlobalPost Washington correspondent John Aloysius Farrell will be compiling a remembrance of the senator he covered and the legacy the Kennedy family leaves across the globe.

You can check out the interview here.

In June, I traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to report on the Taliban at a fateful crossroads as the Afghan election looms, the Taliban continues to exert control and the US military escalates its troop deployments in a major offensive in the South. I wanted to revisit the places and the people I have gotten to know through 15 years of reporting there and share some of their stories and insights.

I was joined by photographer and friend Seamus Murphy of VII along the way, who brought me into the circle of a family from Stonecutter Street in Kabul. He first met them in the worst years of the civil war in 1994 and has documented their lives and their struggles and a new sense of hope. The family’s story is told in the lead video on the project landing page. This project also includes strong reporting from GlobalPost correspondents Shahan Mufti in Islamabad and Jean MacKenzie in Kabul.

The idea of the series was to try to unpack the history of the Taliban in all its complexity and historical context so that visitors to the site might get a deeper understanding of a region that has long been a graveyard for empires.

I hope you will check it out and post a comment.

Seamus Murphy/VII, 1996

The radio series is the first phase of an ambitious multimedia project that we are putting together and which will appear on GlobalPost later in the summer. The series focuses in on the Taliban and how the US troops seeking to confront the religious movement fail to understand it. It will feature the powerful photography of my colleague Seamus Murphy of the photo agency VII and video and audio portraits of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reporting trip was built around revisiting people and places that Seamus and I know through 15 years of reporting there. And in case you have been wondering, the writing and producing of this multimedia project is what I’ve been doing with my summer. We will keep you posted on when it will appear on GlobalPost. Until then, please check out The World.

Iason, a freelance journalist who had been writing for GlobalPost in Iran, was detained without charge for nearly three weeks by the Iranian government. He was picked up at the airport amid a crackdown on Western media covering the contested elections and the dramatic street demonstrations that followed.

Yesterday was a waiting-to-exhale afternoon as the first sketchy reports came in from Iran that he was going to be released. And then we got the word from the Committee to Protect Journalists, who have done outstanding work on his behalf, that the good news was confirmed. The Greek government and representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church were pivotal in making direct pleas for his release to the Iranian government. A Greek and British citizen, Iason lives in Istanbul and is on his way to be with his family and loved ones. We hope to speak with him soon. We will give you an update when we do. Check out my last post to read more about Iason and his profound talent as a reporter and photographer.

The CPJ reports that there are still more than 35 journalists, bloggers and commentators who remain under detention in Iran for their coverage of the events that unfolded there last month. We will continue to work with CPJ and other news organizations toward their release. And I am certain Iason will want to play a role in that effort. Welcome home, Iason.

Being there on the ground for the story is what matters. And Iason Athanasiadis, a freelance writer and contributor to GlobalPost who was detained while working in Iran last month, always seeks ground truth. He lives it as a writer and photographer.

Iason has always done extraordinary work around the world for publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor and others. But his greatest work and his greatest passion has been in Iran. His photo essay, “Children of the Revolution,” was one of the most enlightening pieces of journalism I have seen come out of Iran in many years. It chronicles the lives of Iranians with dignity and respect. It is void of cliches. It celebrates the complexity of its culture and it honors the yearnings of its people, particularly its youth, in their search for freedom.

And so I am thinking of Iason today, on America’s “Independence Day,” when big cities and little towns gather for cookouts and parades and forget that July 4th is really about some pretty heavy ideas like “revolution” and “freedom.”

Iason was in Iran reporting on these ideas — “revolution” and “freedom” — for GlobalPost when he was detained by Iranian officials at Tehran International Airport on June 17. Amid a crackdown on press freedoms in the wake of the contested presidential elections and the massive demonstrations that followed, Iason was preparing to leave the country as requested by the government of all Western journalists.

Iason's "Reflections on Leaving Iran"

Iason is a Greek citizen and was traveling with valid journalist credentials and a visa. In the three weeks since his detention, GlobalPost has been working diligently for his release with the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, which provided a grant for him to report from there, and The Washington Times, for which he was also contributing stories, as well as a wide circle of family, friends and colleagues. In an abundance of caution, we kept Iason’s detention quiet at first. (In the post below celebrating the escape of New York Times correspondent David Rohde from his Taliban captors in Afghanistan, you can see a veiled reference to Iason.) At the request of his family, we at first released only a sparse statement on his detention and a plea for his release. We are not trying to make a global drama out of it, just quietly working to encourage the Iranian government to do the right and legal thing. Greek government and Greek Orthodox Church officials have directly intervened with the Iranian government on Iason’s behalf and are also calling for his release. No formal charges against Iason have been presented to date.

Iason is more than a respected colleague. He is a friend. I met him in his native Greece just before the 2004 summer Olympics. I had taken my oldest son, Will, who was then 8, along for the reporting trip and Iason was very warm to him and took some photographs of Will walking through the Parthenon. I met Iason again when he came to Harvard University for the Nieman Fellowship in the Class of 2008 and he remembered my son’s name. That’s a small thing, for sure, but it says a lot about the kind of person he is, one who listens and cares about people. For many months after his Nieman year, he and I looked forward to finding a way for him to contribute to GlobalPost from Iran and finally in June we had the chance to do that. His work for us was fair and balanced and enlightening and, as always, based on “ground truth.”

So on this day with so much talk about freedom, we are left holding our breath that Iason will soon have his.

Photography by: Seamus Murphy

For a moment, you feel what it must have been like to live here in the early 1960s.

That’s when Dupree first arrived in Kabul and where she would meet the two great loves of her life. The first was her husband, Louis Dupree, the dashing American paratrooper turned world-famous archaeologist. The second love was one they both shared: the cultural and historic riches of the rugged, magical landscape of Afghanistan and its people.

As an archaeologist and ethnologist, Afghanistan has been the focus of their life’s work.

She and Louis, who passed away in 1989, lived through it all and suffered with the Afghans through the wars and celebrated the life that has gone on in between. She survived the dark days of the civil war here in the early 1990s and the even darker days of the Taliban. Through it all, she studied and worked to protect and preserve the country’s culture and heritage. Today, there is no Westerner who knows the Afghan people like Nancy.

Some 45 years after her arrival here, I meet with Dupree on a sunny day in the late afternoon shadows of the once-grand home where she lives part of the year in downtown Kabul.

The rest of the year she lives just across the border in Peshawar, Pakistan still writing and researching at the age of 83. She divides her time between the two cities tending to an archive that is housed at Kabul University. The archive, an idea inspired by Louis, is dedicated to creating a resource center for all the different aid workers and Afghan experts who could no longer travel freely in war-torn Afghanistan.

She looks heart sick when she talks about the Taliban’s destruction of the two giant Buddha’s of Bamayan. She also wants to set the record straight that she was negotiating with the Taliban leadership to protect the Buddha’s, and believes the decision to dynamite them was made by a militant fringe closely connected to Al Qaeda. She insists that many in the Taliban government were opposed to the destruction, but the militants had run away with the Taliban movement.

She holds the secrets to so much of the politics that has gone on in Afghanistan, but at every turn the conversation comes back to the Afghan people and her love for and fascination with them and their history.

“I’m a people person,” says Nancy, who apologizes that she doesn’t have much time to talk as she is heading out to a party at the embassy to meet the newly appointed American Ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, who also served as the commanding general in Afghanistan.

Right away, she wants to get into it.

Nancy still has a lot of fire in her voice and she has some stern criticism of the U.S. military and diplomatic approach in Afghanistan.

“They make strategies for people who they don’t talk to,” she says, sitting on a couch in the parlor where we are talking and leaning forward with intensity.

“They sit behind the fortress with razor wire walls of the Embassy. And the rest make their strategy from behind desks thousands of miles away … They don’t seem to realize that the strategy has to be about the people,” she says.

She checks her watch and says, “Sorry, I have to go put on my face now and get ready for all the diplomats. Too many of them, if you ask me.”

Moments later she heads out through the steel gate, looking elegant in a long, traditional embroidered gown. She slides into the back seat and she and her driver head out down the crowded, chaotic and sometimes-perilous streets of the city she loves.