GUARDIAN Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:00:01 GMT
Africa may be known as 'the hopeful continent' – but recent elections show little progress
Today it takes a leap of imagination to see the ghosts of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman trading blows at the Tata Raphael Stadium in Kinshasa. It was here in 1974 that the heavyweights fought the Rumble in the Jungle under the gaze of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
The dilapidated venue now has an artificial football pitch. Standing on the centre circle, you can gaze around concrete terraces reminiscent of pre-Hillsborough England and at the fading paint of numerous adverts depicting Kerrygold's grazing cow. Inside is Ali's dressing room from that night, now dingy, dirty and reeking of urine.
But the stadium is far from dead. Its grounds fairly throb with sporting life: joggers, sprinters, footballers, basketball players and, of course, boxers working out. Perhaps inevitably, there are also artful dodgers looking to fleece tourists of $100 (£64) to pass the gate.
It's increasingly........
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GUARDIAN Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:00:01 GMT
Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation took place a year ago today. Since then, a new and profound reality has emerged
In mid-February as Egyptians revelled in the wake of Hosni Mubarak's resignation I was standing at ground zero of another revolt, a hospital in Manama.
An Indian doctor, with a Bahraini ID, showed me to an intensive care unit where one of his colleagues, Sadiq al-Ikri, was recovering from a savage beating by Bahraini security forces the night before. A woman's voice screamed frantically from a television screen on the wall. Heavy weapons were mowing down people in Benghazi, she said.
"She's Libyan," explained the clearly worried doctor. "It's happening there too."
At that point it seemed difficult to know where to look, or where to be to cover what was taking place across the Middle East. The regional order was imploding. And everywhere, from Morocco to Yemen was starting to feel its effects.
As more wounded were wheeled into Manama's Salmaniya Medical Centre, it..
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GUARDIAN Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:22:00 GMT
Leon Panetta is in Tripoli to meet members of the interim government, becoming the first Pentagon chief to visit Libya
Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, has warned Libya's leaders they face a long struggle in emerging from decades of dictatorship and uniting the rival militias that still hold sway over many parts of the country.
Panetta, the first Pentagon chief ever to set foot in Libya, said Washington would support the new government's efforts to take control of the oil-producing nation two months after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, but did not offer specific aid.
"This will be a long and difficult transition, but I am confident that you will succeed," he said after meeting Libya's interim prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib. "I'm confident they [the interim leaders] are taking the right steps to reach out to all of these groups and bring them together so they will be part of one Libya and one defence system."
Panetta's comments came as the UN security council........
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GUARDIAN Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:00:01 GMT
Hair salons thrive as natural or 'village' hair is deemed unfashionable and unlikely to attract rich and successful suitors
In a world of dramatically contrasting poverty and wealth, it's a rare common denominator: the one social status symbol of choice that cuts across Nigeria's vast class and culture groups is hair extensions. And the longer and straighter, the better.
They are so popular that few women in the buzzing commercial cities of Africa's most populous nation openly wear their hair in its natural, curly state. "We're never taught to look after our natural hair, and it's something you're supposed to learn as a child, the way you learn to tie your shoelaces," said Yemi Akinrede, 28, who struggled to persuade her own hairstylist not to straighten her curls on her wedding day.
Another woman, a blogger known as Natural Nigerian, said women stare at her open-mouthed in salons, where Nigerian stylists usually try to drag their combs through her hair saying "sister we have....
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ECONOMIST Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:00:45 GMT
IF IT took over, the Syrian National Council (SNC), the main opposition to President Bashar Assad, would sharply alter the regional dynamic. Burhan Ghalioun, a Sorbonne professor who is its leader, says that Syria’s special relationship with Iran, its main ally, would end. Relations would also change for the worse with Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia party-cum-militia whose popularity in Syria has plummeted thanks to its support for the regime.This may bolster the SNC’s standing with Mr Assad’s enemies abroad, especially those in the United States who see in Syria’s conflict a chance to isolate Iran and tilt the regional balance of power against it. But Mr Ghalioun’s comments did not go down well with some colleagues, who think he jumped the diplomatic gun. Nor did some rude remarks he made about the Kurds, an important minority in Syria.Mr Ghalioun has yet to win the avuncular mediating status of his Libyan counterpart, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, now the interim president. Since Syria’s..
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GUARDIAN Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:03:00 GMT
• Old rifts healed at Durban, but new fault lines emerge
• Kyoto agreement under threat without UN deal
China, India, Africa and the EU were at loggerheads on Friday night, pushing UN climate talks into extra time on Saturday as 194 countries attempted to reach a global deal to prevent dangerous global warming.
There were signs of movement on all sides, according to people in the talks in Durban, with compromises possible but no final breakthrough. Some long-standing rifts between the developing and developed countries, and between the EU and the US, appeared bridged.
A new text, seen by the Guardian, was introduced at midnight and went some way to easing the fears of developing countries that rich countries could wriggle out of their obligations.
Governments are wrangling over what form any future agreement on global warming should take, following a disappointingly weak agreement in Copenhagen in 2009 and slow progress at Cancun last year.
Also at stake in Durban was the......
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ECONOMIST Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:17:06 GMT
A different sort of beard WHEN revolutionary Zionist pioneers first pitched up in Palestine, they tended to look askance at the existing Orthodox Jews as dusty museum pieces. A century or so on, Orthodox Jews often have a similar attitude to secular Jews. Once a small minority in Israel’s state-building project, Orthodox Jews are now at its forefront. They comprise 40% of the ruling coalition’s members, and over 40% of new army officers and combat soldiers. As their birth rate is more than double that of secular Jews, their power is set to mount.The spectrum of political Judaism is as wide as political Islam’s. A bit like the split between Muslim Brothers and Salafists, religious Jews loosely divide into religious Zionists, who want Jews to control biblical land, and the ultra-Orthodox, who seek to enforce literal rabbinical dictates. The former pride themselves on leading Israelis into battle. The latter staunchly defend their exemption from the military draft.Though intense.....
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ECONOMIST Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:17:06 GMT
THE election results in Egypt are an Islamist “hurricane”, “deluge” or “tsunami”, according to Israeli newspaper headlines. The defence minister, Ehud Barak, called them “very worrisome”. Officials, sounding cool, noted that there were precious few relations left to break, since Egypt had long been severing ties to punish Israel for refusing to yield to the Palestinians in the peace process. Egyptian-Israeli agricultural schemes long ago ground to a halt. Factories with Israeli links that had profited from tariff-free exports to the United States have shut. Since Egypt’s revolution began in January, Israeli tourists have virtually stopped coming. This year Egyptian militants have blown up a pipeline pumping Egyptian gas to Israel nine times. And Israel’s embassy in Cairo remains closed.It could get worse. Before the Camp David peace accords were signed 33 years ago, Israel’s front with Egypt was its most menacing—and it could become so again. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian.....
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ECONOMIST Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:17:06 GMT
Welcome back from London IT FELT at first like a throwback to 1979, when Iranian revolutionaries seized the American embassy in Tehran for 15 months and a bilateral friendship soured. In truth, relations between Iran and Britain had curdled long before November 29th, when two British diplomatic compounds in the Iranian capital were overrun in similar fashion, this time for only a few hours. As in 1979, the assault may have strengthened the hand of hardliners at home, but today’s Islamic Republic can ill afford such shows of defiance. Within a week of the assault, which led to the closure of the embassy and the expulsion of the entire Iranian mission in London, the Iranian action began to look like a costly mistake.At the beginning of the diplomatic crisis, the speaker of the parliament in Tehran railed against Britain’s “hegemonic” policies. Iranian diplomats returning from London were greeted with bouquets. But Iranian braggadocio soon turned to queasy contrition. By December....
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Kenya 'will pursue Somali rebels'
Pentagon boss praises new Libya
Panetta says Libya faces long, difficult transition
Panetta Makes Historic First Visit To Libya
Historic visit to Libya by Pentagon chief Panetta
Panetta: Libya needs time to gain control of militias
Obama administration rolling back most sanctions on Libya
Defense chief Panetta visits Libya
