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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:03:03 GMT
Ghana still faces huge challenges and British support will help it meet them, but its growth and progress deserve our praise
It's all too easy to think of Africa as a single place defined by famine, war and instability. The truth is very different, with a diverse array of countries, each with its own story to tell. While our TV screens have been dominated by the drought in Somalia and uncertainty in South Sudan, Ghana has been undergoing a boom.
Twenty years ago, it was in a very different place: heavily indebted, more than half the population living in poverty and only just beginning the process of returning to democracy. Since then, its political stability has laid the foundations for record growth, bringing jobs to the country and its people.
Ghana shows that well-targeted, long-term development, matched by political and economic stability, does work. British support has played a vital role in this, ensuring that Ghana is on target to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Aid must...
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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:05:24 GMT
The Obamas' biographer on the introverted president, the strength of Michelle and the stains the Bush family left on the White House carpets
One of the things we learn from your book, The Obamas: A Mission, A Marriage, is not only how the first couple make their marriage work but that Michelle Obama owns a pair of $515 designer trainers…
I know! It's kind of astonishing.
The lifeblood of any piece of reportage is in this kind of telling detail; how difficult was it for you to get that kind of access to the White House?
Well, I spent a lot of time in the White House in the public areas where reporters are allowed to go, but I spoke to people about the private quarters as well. Some of the things I learned were small, novelistic details. For example, the fact that there were still pet stains on the carpets from the Bush cats when the Obamas moved in. I feel the White House is almost a character in this book. What does it mean to live in this place? It's a home, but it's also an..
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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:05:42 GMT
Radio 4's documentary about Britain's ageing prison population made for sobering listening
Dying Inside (R4) | iPlayer
But They Are Only Russians (R4) | iPlayer
London Soundscape (R2) | iPlayer
New Year, new you! How depressing. So let's sod the yoga and stretch the carb-slugged brain instead. Give it a gentle workout with a couple of did-you-know documentaries.
First, Dying Inside, about elderly prisoners. As our sentences get ever harsher and people are put away for longer, and as DNA techniques improve, meaning old crimes can be solved, our prison population is getting older. But Britain has no national strategy for older prisoners. Rex Bloomstein visited three prisons that contain inmates of 50 years or older. Such as Daniel, 65, who'd committed rape in 1982. More than 40% of older prisoners are people convicted of sex offences. "You do think about your crime," said Daniel. "For 24 years I lived in a nightmare." You wondered about his victim, whether their nightmare......
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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:06:12 GMT
The Observer's foreign affairs editor covered the birth of Egypt's revolution in Cairo. Now, as one leading candidate quits the presidential race in despair, he returns to meet protesters fearful of the army's power and a possible deal with Islamists
The statue of Tala'at Harb, the Egyptian nationalist and founder of the Bank of Egypt who died in 1941, is to be found in the Cairo square named after him, a short walk from Tahrir Square. A small, besuited, stocky figure in a fez, he stands atop a little plinth on a traffic circle where the honking cars go round.
Last Wednesday evening, Tala'at Harb found himself transformed into an Askar Kazeboon – a "lying military" screening; an open-air guerrilla broadcast of video clips of brutality by Egypt's military and security forces that activists insist state television rarely shows. Those organising the screening, which gathered a quiet crowd of around a hundred onlookers, had placed a megaphone beneath the statue's arm and stuck a......
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GUARDIAN Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:06:40 GMT
Ghana is one of Africa's great successes – a stable and thriving country that is testament to the impact of aid. As pressure on these budgets grows, Observer editor John Mulholland travels to the country to assess its progress
Early last Sunday morning on a plane ride from the Ghanaian capital, Accra, to the northern town of Tamale, Jeffrey Sachs – director of the Earth Institute research group, economist at Columbia University and international development expert – is explaining what happens when you move from the south of the country towards the north.
"If you look at Ghana and all of west Africa, it's wet in the south, and as you go further north you get into desert. All of west Africa is graded by climate. It's cocoa plantations and tree crops and palm oil up the coast, but as you move north you move into the savannah, and as you go further you get to the desert.
"In general, the farther you go north, the drier you go, and in general as you move from south to north you also..
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GUARDIAN Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:40:00 GMT
Ma Ying-jeou struck an economic deal and established direct postal and air links with Beijing, reducing tensions in the region
The rain that swept the city streets, blurring lights and muffling the blare of klaxons, perhaps helped to dampen passions. Outside the Kuomintang's Taipei headquarters, the victors smiled under thin plastic hoods, cheering in relief as much as in celebration. Across town, the defeated opposition's supporters seemed subdued.
Taiwanese politics are vibrant, emotional, sometimes dirty and occasionally violent. Some might have expected stronger reactions after a race too close to call culminated in yesterday's re-election of incumbent Ma Ying-jeou, who has overseen an unprecedented rapprochement with China.
But the muted response to his victory – he took 51.6% of the vote to challenger Tsai Ing-wen's 45.6% – echoed an unusually calm campaign. Some observers think this youthful democracy's fifth presidential election offers hope that its politics are........
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