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News Reports
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Thursday, 26 July 2007 |
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Translating Osho's words to the page doesn't do her proper justice - as you'd expect from an actor, her work is visual, narrative and pivots on her perfect delivery. British-born, of Nigerian parentage, Osho bases much of her act on the idiosyncrasies of the UK's Nigerian community, opening with a sketch about the "free bus" (buses where passengers can jump on in the middle and fare dodge). "The only time the 25 bus is empty is when an inspector gets on," she comments, before racing into an acid parody of two Nigerian "princesses" arguing. |
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Thursday, 26 July 2007 |
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The SS Mendi, a former mail ship requisitioned as a troop carrier, had sailed from Capetown with more than 800 African volunteers, some as young as 16, most seeing the sea for the first time. It also carried five white officers, 17 non-commissioned officers, and a crew of 33. The men had volunteered to join the South African Native Labour Corps. They were not trusted to bear arms - another bitter point - but were instead destined to work as labourers. |
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Wednesday, 25 July 2007 |
Born in utter poverty, James Brown became the ultimate self-made man, whose work ethic was topped only by his rhythmic innovations and musical genius. As an activist, James Brown never meant to overthrow the republic -- just find room in it. He sang his bootstrap manifesto: "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I'll Get It Myself.)" He was a patriot who could chopper to 'Nam to succor the brothers marooned there, then embrace Richard Nixon. His musical calls to social justice were not as eloquent as Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches. But they were equally heartfelt.
James Brown leaves a cultural wake as wide as his dear friend Elvis did. It took three services and as many wardrobe changes to send him to Jesus. The Augusta, Georgia, public funeral, broadcast live on CNN from the recently renamed James Brown Arena, took the form of a soul revue: tremulous thanks from Michael Jackson and dance moves by MC Hammer, along with a cape for the open casket. His singular life, begun in unspeakable Jim Crow-era poverty, careened through phases of great fame, wealth, disgrace and redemption. He saw it this way: "My story is a Horatio Alger story. It's an American story, it's the kind that America can be proud of, but yet if you tell it in detail, if you tell all the things I fought to make it, it's like the Satchel Paige story." |
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Wednesday, 25 July 2007 |
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For people in the camps, the economic boom has had the perverse effect of further undermining their already precarious existence. With land at a premium, the local government of Khartoum state periodically sends police and bulldozers into the camps to plow under swaths of mud houses, pushing people even farther out into the desert, and then sells the cleared land to developers."This government has a different feeling towards the southerners," Yobu said. "They look at the south as inferior and themselves as superior. If we separate, we'll have more revenue, and more freedom also. The south has oil, and gold. But right now, the money is in their hands." |
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Wednesday, 25 July 2007 |
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Normally, it is impossible to determine the true owner of such companies. But our document reveals that in December 2003, Friedhelm Eronat personally owned Cliveden Sudan. Channel 4 News has obtained confidential photographs, taken by African Union monitors last July in Suleia, a village just to the north of Block C. The following month I went to other nearby burned villages. In them, I met people still on the run from Suleia. They said they had been bombed by government planes. Some had then been shackled and burned alive, many shot dead; others wounded; women, raped. Suleia is 180km from Block C's first well. Cliveden Sudan insisted to us that the 'wells' are 1000km from the conflict zone. |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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Mr Eronat, who is reputed to be worth £100m, has made a fortune out of oil deals, mainly through his offshore Cliveden Group. He was accused by Global Witness last year of being the owner of a Swiss company allegedly used as a conduit to pass millions of dollars from Mobil Oil to the president of Kazakhstan. A trial is pending in the US of a banker involved in those transactions. Mr Eronat was not charged with any offence. |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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Sudan's main oilfields are in the south and disputes over oil prolonged negotiations to end 20 years of civil war there. In contrast, the presence of oil in Darfur comes as a surprise to many in the humanitarian community. The big question now is whether oil will give a motive for warring parties to speed up moves towards peace or make the conflict even harder to solve. "The issue of oil in Darfur isn't very different from the issue of oil anywhere else," said Mike Aaronson, director general of British NGO Save the Children. "It's potentially a tremendous blessing, and potentially a tremendous handicap. |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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The discovery of oil in Darfur would explain why "a seemingly barren wasteland" of Sudan has ignited such a fierce war, the paper suggests. It quotes a Khartoum analyst who says oil is what's really motivating interventions from the United States, the United Nations and Libya. And it quotes rights activists who say the hunger for oil is what's made the Khartoum government so keen to crack down on rebel demands in the region. |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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In spite of occasional controversy, Sembene's mastery and originality were celebrated both in Africa, where he served as an inspiration for later filmmakers, and internationally. He won prizes at the Venice Film Festival in 1968 (for "Mandabi") and 1988 (for "Camp de Thiaroye"), and at Cannes in 2004 (for "Moolaade"). He was a founder, in 1969 of FESPACO, the biennial festival of film and television held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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Vanity Fair does tell great stories and serious ones, but it sits atop the American magazine industry, in no small part because it takes as its preoccupations the needs and doings of the idle rich. The current Hollywood issue is its biggest ever, 500 pages jammed with glitz, celebrity and so many ads that the magazine could injure someone if it fell off the coffee table. Just outside Mr. Carter’s office, a framed to-do list with hundreds of items details Vanity Fair’s preparations for one of its past Oscar parties, which is a long way from Mogadishu. |
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
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Half of a Yellow Sun - Adichie's second novel - is her homage to "the tiny debris of passionate courage", her fellow Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe's phrase for the Biafran victims of the 1967-1970 Nigerian civil war. Born seven years after it ended, she lost both her grandfathers among the many thousands of civilian dead. Achebe himself has joined a chorus of praise for the novel, calling Adichie "a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers". |
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