Two Surprising Stories

Two headlines on the CNN web site this morning caught my eye.
One told of a journalist released from prison after 44 years, the other of rats becoming valued in land-mine searches.
Where was this journalist, I thought as I clicked to the story. South Africa? Some middle eastern tyranny? Belarus? No, he was from the great state of Louisiana, and his crime was actually a serious one, murder. I had assumed from the headline that he was some sort of political prisoner, but it seems he didn't become an award-winning journalist until after his incarceration.
In the other story, Gambian giant pouched rats are being used like bomb-sniffing dogs in Mozambique to find and defuse long-hidden land mines. The story mentions that in this part of the world, the rats frequently find themselves on the dinner plate.