BBC News - The cosy relations between France and Africa

BBC News - The cosy relations between France and Africa: "Allegations that African presidents secretly paid money to leading French politicians have recently burst into the mainstream media. But they have caused little surprise to those who follow the often tortuous course of relationships between Paris and governments south of the Sahara.

Unconfirmed rumours of such dealings have circulated for years.

However, the highly specific claims about the value and destinations of secret cash payments - claims made by Robert Bourgi, informal adviser on African affairs to President Nicolas Sarkozy - are new."

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The Greater Recession: The Real Reason Americans Feel So Squeezed - Yahoo! Finance

The Greater Recession: The Real Reason Americans Feel So Squeezed - Yahoo! Finance: "The core of our life -- gasoline, electricity, homes, health care and higher education -- is getting expensive faster than general inflation. Meanwhile, average wages are barely keeping up with the yellow line. When the middle class talks about feeling squeezed dry and sped-up, this is what they're talking about.

Committing the graph to memory is easy. Coming up with a theory is the hard part. Let me try. The reason why toasters are cheap and health insurance is not is that the productivity gains that made toasters -- not to mention computers, media*, durable goods, food, and clothes -- more affordable are not spilling over into health care. The next chart from McKinsey tells the story: More than half of total productivity growth comes from computers and information technology. Practically zero comes from health care and education. In fact, one reason why heath and education are adding the most jobs today is that employers can't meet new demand with technology or offshoring. They have to keep hiring people."

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The imperial delusions of the United States - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

The imperial delusions of the United States - Opinion - Al Jazeera English: "Empires rarely learn in time, because power tends to dull people's capacity for critical self-reflection. While ascending to power, empires believe themselves to be invincible. While declining in power, they cling desperately to old myths of remembered glory.

Today, the United States is morally bankrupt and spiritually broken. The problem is not that we have strayed from our founding principles, but that we are still operating on those principles - delusional notions about manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, the right to take more than our share of the world's resources by whatever means necessary. As the United States grew in wealth and power, bounty for the chosen came at the cost of misery for the many."

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BBC News - Kenya fire: Nairobi pipeline blaze 'kills 100'

BBC News - Kenya fire: Nairobi pipeline blaze 'kills 100': "More than 100 people have died after a petrol pipeline explosion and fire in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, police say.

The blast took place in the city's Lunga Lunga industrial area, and police and troops cordoned off the area as firefighters battled fierce flames in the surrounding shanty town.

The pipeline runs through the densely populated Sinai slum area between Nairobi's city centre and the airport."

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BBC News - Somalia famine: UN warns of 750,000 deaths

BBC News - Somalia famine: UN warns of 750,000 deaths: ""The grim reality of Somalia today is we are not able to get to south and central Somalia, which we consider to be the epicentre of the crisis," he told the BBC World Service.

"What is needed is a better representation of the challenges that aid agencies, including MSF, face in delivering assistance in Somalia today."

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Yashar Ali: Men Will Never Truly Understand a Day in the Life of Women -- But Shouldn't We Try?

Yashar Ali: Men Will Never Truly Understand a Day in the Life of Women -- But Shouldn't We Try?: "Women not only deal with discriminatory behavior on a daily basis, but they are also loaded with the baggage of their social conditioning. We must recognize that, day in and day out, every hour, every minute, women face lives that we men will rarely see and never feel.

Women are constantly reminded that they are different from us. And while we will never fully understand or feel what it's like to deal with these issues, we also don't make any effort to ask, we don't inquire about their struggles. When we do hear about realities like street harassment, we dismiss the situations as just the way things are. Sometimes, as so often happens with street harassment, we diminish the impact it has on women, "Boys will be boys."

And therein lies the problem: if and when we think of sexism, it's about class-action lawsuits, wage fairness -- the big issues. We don't seem to pay attention to the minutiae of daily life and the discrimination that exists on an everyday level."

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Charity president says aid groups are misleading the public on Somalia | Global development | The Observer

Charity president says aid groups are misleading the public on Somalia | Global development | The Observer: "According to Karunakara, agencies have been able to provide medical and nutritional care for tens of thousands in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, which have been receiving huge numbers of refugees from Somalia. But trying to access those in the "epicentre" of the disaster has been slow and difficult. "We may have to live with the reality that we may never be able to reach the communities most in need of help," he said.

Karunakara said that the use of phrases such as "famine in the Horn of Africa" or "worst drought in 60 years" obscured the "man-made" factors that had created the crisis and wrongly implied that the solution was simply to find the money to ship enough food to the region."

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