Clipmarks | invictus's Africa collection

Little arrow that rewrites history books

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Two researchers from Wits University believe that what they have discovered is a 60 000-year-old arrow that was fired from the earliest known bow. Their discovery has pushed back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20 000 years.

The bow, probably made of wood and long since decayed, was used at a time when Neanderthals in Europe were using large spears in duels with woolly mammoths and other large prehistoric game.

The bone arrow, just 5cm long, was excavated by Wadley at the Sibudu cave, near the coastal town of Ballito in KwaZulu Natal, two years ago.

It's mystery who the people were who fashioned the arrow.

Also at this time, humankind was leaving an ever-increasing archaeological record of the first inklings of modern human behaviour. They were burying the dead, using coloured pigments and wearing jewellery.

"This at a time a few thousand years before they walked out of Africa, to become the ancestors of all humans," said Backwell.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, south africa, prehistory, arrow, science

'Witches' burnt to death in Kenya

Wed, 21 May 2008 18:01:31 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Eleven elderly people accused of being witches have been burned to death by a mob in the west of Kenya, police say.

A security operation has been launched to hunt down villagers suspected of killing them in Kisii District.

The BBC's Muliro Telewa in the region says the gang had a list of the victims and picked them out individually.

The area has witnessed similar attacks in the past when people suspected of engaging in witchcraft have been killed or ostracised.

But our reporter says that this is a surprisingly large number of people to be attacked at the same time.

Tags: africa, kenya, witch hunt, terror, lynch, bigotry

Congo Diary: Deforestation

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:32:17 GMT

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Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: africa, congo, environment, deforestation

3,000 workers trapped in S. Africa gold mine

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:52:16 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - About 3,000 miners were trapped underground Wednesday when a water pipe burst and probably caused a shaft to collapse in a South African gold mine, union officials said.

Harmony's acting chief executive, Graham Briggs, said on MSNBC that officials have been in contact with the trapped workers and have been sending them food and water.

He said the company could evacuate the miners over the next day using a smaller cage in another shaft, but the process would be a slow one.

Tags: south africa, gold mine

Major Ebola outbreak in DR Congo

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:43:36 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

More than 200 people died in a previous outbreak in Kikwit

An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been confirmed by the World Health Organization in Kasai province.

At least 166 people have died and WHO says it is aware of 372 other cases.

Specialist laboratories in Gabon and Atlanta in the US confirmed Ebola from blood samples, saying they also showed the presence of Shigella dysentery.

Ebola is highly contagious. People contracting the disease suffer severe stomach pain and internal bleeding.

The fatality rate for Ebola, which has no known cure, is as high as 90%.

WHO and Medecins sans Frontieres have despatched medical personnel to help the Congolese contain the outbreak.

An emergency response team of clinicians, water and sanitation experts and logisticians is on the way to organise clinical care and establish appropriate isolation facilities.

Tags: africa, health, congo, ebola

Rastafarianism: Essence of Reggae

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 12:55:15 GMT

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clipper's remarks: Re-clipping my old stuff as promised.

Clip Source: religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu

Rastafarianism

The original Rastas drew their inspiration from the philosphies of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), who promoted the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s. The organization's main goal was to unite black people with their rightful homeland, Africa. Garvey believed that all black people in the western world should return to Africa since they were all descended from Africans. He preached that the European colonizers, having fragmented the African continent, unfairly spread the African population throughout the world.

After spending nearly a decade in the United States and Great Britain, Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1927, where he spread his political views among the black working class.

In 1930, Prince Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned the new Emperor of Ethiopia.

This announcement was a monumental event that many blacks in Africa and the Americas saw as the fulfillment of Garvey's prophecy years before.

Tags: religion, rastafarianism, culture, reggae, africa, ethiopia, jamaica

Rich Nations Put Global Warming Burden on Africa

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:13:06 GMT

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Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Rich Nations Put Global Warming Burden on Africa

The African continent is already straining from the effects of global climate change, while some of the world's biggest polluters -- the U.S., Australia, and Canada -- are doing nothing to help clean up their own mess.

The effects of the Great Warming are not fairly shared. Fourteen percent of the world's population lives in the 57 countries on the African continent. However, because the majority of Africans live with little to no access to electricity and personal transport usage is among the world's lowest, Africans contribute only 3 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

The United States, conversely, with only 5 percent of the world's population, contributes nearly 25 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas pollution annually. In the United States, with our consumption of electricity, our ecologically harmful industries and our 230 million passenger vehicles, we are literally fueling the destruction of the planet's environment.

Last month, at the United Nations Climate Change summit in Nairobi, Kenya, climate change experts from around the globe reported to 165 countries on the impacts of global warming, which will be felt most harshly by poor developing countries. If that weren't bad enough, the former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern recently released a report that suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20 percent over the next 50 years. From the report and the summit, it is clear that climate change is as much a humanitarian, security and economic issue as an environmental one.

Tags: climate change, ecology, global warming, greenhouse gases, africa

Up in Smoke: The African Apocalypse

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 17:17:43 GMT

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Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Up in Smoke: The African Apocalypse

The continent burning into a desert Nowhere is the effect of global warming more dangerous than in Somalia, where the worst drought in 40 years is affecting the lives of 1.8 million people.

"I am 70 years old now, and the temperatures are getting hotter and hotter as the years go by," says Habiba Hassan, standing in a field of ruined crops near her village of Beniday in Somalia.

The winters where she lives, 200 miles northwest of Mogadishu, used to be "very hot during the day and cold at night", she adds. But now "we have to sleep outside at night, it is so hot."

Somalia's harvest, brought in last month, is almost 30 per cent lower than normal, the result of the worst drought in at least 40 years. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation says that the situation is "alarming," with a "severe food crisis," affecting 1.8 million people, persisting throughout the country for at least the rest of the year.

Tags: climate change, somali, africa, drought, famine

US Reporter Charged With Spying in Sudan

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 01:05:14 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

During the hourlong visit in the police chief's office, Salopek said he was being held in a 20-foot-by-20-foot cell with 15 other inmates and no toilet facilities. Salopek later was moved to better quarters, Shays said.

Clip Source: www.newsvine.com

US Reporter Charged With Spying in Sudan

CHICAGO — A Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune was charged in a Sudanese court Saturday with espionage and other crimes.

Paul Salopek, 44, was charged in a 40-minute hearing with espionage, passing information illegally and writing "false news," the Tribune reported on its Web site. His driver and interpreter, both Chadian nationals, faced the same charges.

The three men were arrested Aug. 6 by pro-government forces in the war-torn province of Darfur, the paper said. Salopek, who lives in New Mexico, was working on a freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine during his arrest.

"He is not a spy," said Ann Marie Lipinski, editor and senior vice president of the Tribune. "Our fervent hope is that the authorities in Sudan will recognize his innocence and quickly allow Paul to return home to his wife, Linda, and to his colleagues."

Salopek was in Sudan writing an article on a sub-Saharan African region known as the Sahel, said Chris Johns, National Geographic's editor in chief.

Tags: sudan, paul salopek, chicago tribune, national geographic, africa

Ethiopia flood misery mounts

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 14:15:57 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

In addition to the confirmed deaths, some 250 people are missing and 73,000 are affected, many of them left homeless by the raging waters that have killed thousands of valuable livestock and flooded huge tracts of farmland.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Ethiopia flood misery mounts as rains threaten dams

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - Ethiopia braced for more damage from deadly nationwide flash floods as the government warned unusually heavy seasonal rains could force the release of water from dangerously swollen dams.

A task force set up to deal with flooding crises that have affected nearly 75,000 people said three dams in the west, south and north of the country were close to the breaking point and advised residents in their vicinities to leave.

Although controlled, it said the release of water from the threatened dams on the Omo, Awash and Blue Nile rivers could compound devastation from floods that have already killed at least 626 people in the south, east and north.

Tags: ethiopia, floods, weather, climate, disasters

Fidel Castro: Brother of the Africans

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:16:49 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Castro has stamped his mark on Africa's history

As the world wonders about Fidel Castro's health, Africa remembers him as the foreign leader who most invested his personal effort -- and Cuban lives -- to help end colonialism and apartheid.

Throughout the veteran Comandante's 47-year rule, the world's poorest continent has loomed large in his global outlook and it was the scene of his most ambitious overseas adventures.

From the deserts of Algeria and Ethiopia to the jungles of Guinea Bissau and Congo and the Angolan bush, close to half a million Cubans have fought and worked on African soil in the name of "revolutionary solidarity." More than 2,000 died there.

African leaders, and many historians, say Cuba's military muscle -- personally directed by Castro from Havana -- kept Angola free, won independence for Namibia and hastened the end of apartheid rule in South Africa.

"When Angola was invaded by the Boers, Comrade Castro sent his troops to assist his brothers here in Africa," Zambia's former President Kenneth Kaunda said recently.

The memory of Cuba's help against colonialism and apartheid kept Castro's star burning brightly in Africa. South Africa's former President Nelson Mandela calls him friend, so too does Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and a host of other African leaders.

Tags: fidel castro, africa, anti-apartheid, anti-colonialism

UN told of mass Darfur killings

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:20:07 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

Luis Moreno Ocampo, who is investigating crimes against humanity in the western region, says the killings include large-scale massacres.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

UN told of mass Darfur killings

By Crispin Thorold
BBC News, United Nations

The ICC prosecutor criticised Sudan authorities for their investigations

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says he has documented thousands of alleged direct killings of civilians in Sudan's Darfur region.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, who is investigating crimes against humanity in the western region, says the killings include large-scale massacres.

Mr Ocampo, in a report to the UN, also criticised Sudan's own investigations.

The court was set up in 2002 to prosecute individuals for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Prosecutions

The Darfur Crimes Database must make dreadful reading.

Collated by investigators from the court, it lists thousands of alleged murders, including many massacres.

According to Mr Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor, in many incidents eyewitnesses recounted the attackers saying things like, "we will drive you out of this land".

Mr Ocampo's report to the UN Security Council lists other crimes, including thousands of deaths as a result of displacement and hundreds of alleged cases of rape.

The Sudanese government has said its judiciary will investigate the incidents but Mr Ocampo says that at this stage it does not appear that Sudan is investigating and prosecuting the cases that are of interest to the court.

This is not a final determination, but it is still significant as an International Criminal Court prosecution can only occur if the national judiciary is deemed to have failed to provide justice.

According to Mr Ocampo, the Sudanese government has said that it will co-operate with the inquiry - and has agreed to interviews with government officials, to begin in August this year.

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Tags: sudan, darfur, massacre, killings of civilians, international criminal court