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Last Updated 09 Feb 2010

A Selection from our Members

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The chief organiser of the World Cup 2010 has pleaded for South Africa not to be condemned in the wake of the gun attack on the Togolese team in Angola for the Nations Cup, which killed three people.

The ambush was claimed by the Front for the Liberation of the State of Cabinda - Military Position, a faction in a separatist struggle which has lasted decades but waned in recent years.

Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the organising committee for World Cup 2010, said: "We should not be asked nor should we be condemned for what happened in a country far away from us because we don't apply the same standard when we come to any other country.

"If something happens on the African continent then we cannot condemn the whole continent. There's a war in Afghanistan - you cannot condemn the whole of Asia and to say now cannot you can't have any events in Korea or in Japan.

By Sebastien Berger, The Telegraph (U.K.)

TIMBUKTU, Mali --From a dented metal trunk, Abdoul Wahim Abdarahim Tahar pulled out something sure to make a preservationist's heart race -- or break: a leather-bound book written by hand in the 14th century, containing key verses of the prophet Muhammad, and crumbling at the edge of each yellowed page.

"Every time I touch it, it falls apart," he said, paging through the book. "Little by little."

But Tahar saw promise in the brittle volume -- for himself, his family and this legendary but now tumbledown town. He is not the only one. A sort of ancient-book fever has gripped Timbuktu in recent years, and residents hope to lure the world to a place known as the end of the Earth by establishing libraries for visitors to see their centuries-old collections of manuscripts.

By Karin Brulliard, The Washington Post (U.S.)

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A South African university administrator who suspects he was once barred from the U.S. because of his criticism of the Iraq war said a day after his ban was lifted that Americans who supported him had taken a stand against intolerance.

Adam Habib, who is deputy vice chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, had been barred from the U.S. since 2006 for what the government said was involvement in terrorist activity, a charge he denies. Habib said that he was never told what he had done that could be considered terrorism.

The U.S. State Department said that Habib and Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University in England posed no danger to the United States and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has signed orders enabling them to visit the U.S. after bans that lasted years.

By Donna Bryson, The Associated Press (U.S.)

But recently, for the second time in 16 years, they were driven from their homes and are now living in makeshift bamboo-and-plastic tents at the side of the road in a valley that long ago was part of the forest.

Their plight casts a focus on Kenya's endemic corruption and its potentially catastrophic effect on a small, powerless tribe, and the rest of the nation.

The Ogieks were first dispossessed in the 1930s by British colonists, who set aside small forest reserves for them, while taking away most of their ancestral lands. Things got worse, however, after the nation won its independence.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times (U.S.)