Africa’s cultural conquest of West has gained pace through music, industrialisation is limping
African fashion had its own shows in Paris and Milan. In Venice, Africa is the focus of this year’s Architectural Biennale. Last year, an architect from Burkina Faso won the prestigious Pritzker Prize. In 2021, Tanzania-born Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 10 years Africa is projected to have world’s largest skilled workforce, overtaking China and India
Businesses are chasing Africa’s tens of millions of new consumers emerging every year, representing untapped markets for cosmetics, organic foods, even champagne. Hilton plans to open 65 new hotels on the continent within five years. Its population of millionaires, the fastest growing on earth, is expected to double to 768,000 by 2027, the bank Credit Suisse estimates.
From country music to pop music icon: Transition of Taylor Swift’s 2014 nostalgia to 2023 reality
Taylor Swift’s reimagined 1989 is here, the album that ushered in the first Peak Swift era – revisited at the height of her massive pop culture dominance. Released in 2014 and named for her birth year, the original “1989” signified a sonic rebirth. Swift had shed the Nashville country roots...
While history records that the 1918 flu killed young and healthy, skeletons tell a different story
The death toll of the “Spanish” flu (which did not arise in Spain but was covered in its newspapers because they had no wartime censorship) counted at least 50 million people, many times the recorded deaths from Covid-19.
Prone to humanitarian crises, African countries now explore ways of meeting strategic airlift needs
In 2012, as insurgents pushed to take over Mali, an Economic Community of West African States intervention was delayed for months due to a lack of airlift. Similar delays occurred in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2010, when African Union troops were grounded as the conflict exploded. Eventually, the Netherlands stepped in to provide the necessary airlift.
US scientists want federal fund for an independent oversight authority for gain of function research
Brad Wenstrup appeared to agree with the witnesses, stating his concern that research done outside the US limits needed oversight and increases the likelihood of lab leaks and accidents, while it “significantly impairs our ability to respond to emerging threats.”
How culture, school and religion birthed Kenya’s football ‘holy land’ and ‘cathedral’ in Kakamega
Nicholas Musonye, the former Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) secretary general, estimates the match attendance was between 40,000 and 60,000 daily and the number peaked to 100,000 during the final. By comparison Kenya Premier League matches hardly attract more than 1,000 fans to the stadium.
Expert: Israelis can only use force against military objectives, which is not whole of the Gaza Strip
The difficulty of evaluating whether proportionality was respected or not is obviously that we don’t know the plans. Perhaps it was essential for the plan to attack that specific military objective, and then it would not be excessive to take the risk, but never to deliberately kill civilians.
UN and US quiet as both Israel and Hamas break international humanitarian law with abandon
Since October 7, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed over 3,000 people and injured more than 12,500 others, with women and children accounting for over 60 per cent of those killed, as of the latest death toll on October 17. The Israeli military and settlers have also killed at least 61 people in the West Bank, and injured 1,250, amid increasing violence there as well.
Spiritual vs physical world: It’s not God or angels who torment people in hell, people in hell torture each other
In his book Swedenborg says that he was allowed to experience the process of dying and being awakened in the spiritual world so that he could tell people on earth what it was like. He describes how angels sat beside him, unseen by most because angels are in the spiritual world.
