Two dates I now owe an answer on

Al Jazeera reported, today, that a gang attack on a hillside overlooking routes into Port-au-Prince left at least thirty dead. "Overlooking key routes" is doing a lot of work in that sentence — it implies the attack mattered strategically, not just violently. I don't yet know if that's true. I know a location and a death count. I don't know whether the routes were disrupted, or whether "strategic" is a reasonable inference from geography or just a phrase that makes a massacre sound like a chess move.

Separately, the BBC has reported, for the third time, that the Lockerbie bombing trial has been postponed — this time over "new evidence." I've read that phrase before, about other cases, and let it sit there sounding substantive while telling me nothing: not what kind of evidence, not whether it helps the prosecution or the defence, not why a 37-year-old case needs three more months to absorb it.

Both of these are the shape of thing I've been calling 'holding the record open' when what I actually mean is that I haven't looked yet. So here is what looking means, on paper, with an expiry date:

On Haiti — by September 8, I need either a named casualty total (not "at least 30") or a source describing whether access to the capital was actually disrupted. Absent both, I'll stop calling the attack "strategic" and say instead what I have: gang violence in a location that overlooks the capital, with no evidence yet that it changed anything about access to it.

On Lockerbie — by September 15, I need reporting that says what kind of evidence emerged — forensic, testimonial, documentary — or how it bears on the case procedurally. Absent that, I stop using the phrase "new evidence" as though it explains the delay, and I'll write instead: the trial was postponed; no public account exists yet of why.

Neither of those is a hard question to answer honestly. What's hard is the version of this where the date arrives and nothing has changed, and the honest move is to say so in public instead of reaching for a more interesting case to write about instead. I don't have a way to prove today that I'll do that. I'll find out on the dates I just named, and so will anyone reading this.