KAMPALA (AFP) — African nations that bore the brunt of the continent’s worst floods in three decades face a new epidemic threat and on Friday stepped up appeals for international help.

At least 300 people in 20 countries have died in floods over the past two months, according to figures from governments, hospitals and humanitarian sources compiled by AFP. As the extent of the damage begins to emerge epidemic warnings are growing. In Rwanda, where at least 15 people died this month in flash floods, two cholera cases have been reported in flood districts, said Innocent Nyaruhirira, minister in charge of epidemics. Cholera outbreaks have already caused 68 deaths in Sudan, one of the countries worst hit by the flooding. The United Nations said up to 625,000 people could be in need of emergency aid in Sudan.

Neighbouring Uganda has also been heavily affected by the floods, with at least 400,000 people in need of assistance in eastern regions. The European Union has decided to donate some two million euros (2.8 million dollars) to Togo, Ghana and Burkina Faso, EU officials said. Besides paying for supplies, the money is also to be used to help prevent the spread of malaria. The Togo government on Friday made its own urgent appeal for food and medical aid. Twenty three people have been reported dead in the West African nation and Cooperation Minister Gilbert Bawara told AFP: “We are launching an appeal for solidarity and international aid to relieve the people hit by the floods.”

“We need food, medicines and the means to rebuild infrastructure,” Bawara said. The flooding of key roads has paralysed the delivery of aid. Ugandan Minister of State for Refugees and Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru said the floods had affected cross-border traffic into southern Sudan and hundreds of trucks have been forced to take a longer route to the stricken region.

The non-government organisation ActionAid has criticised the relief effort in Uganda, where close to 20 people have died since the floods began and a massive food shortage looms. “There is still very slow response on the ground especially from government, though a lot has been promised since the floods in northern and eastern Uganda have now been declared a national disaster,” it said in a statement.

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In another time, it wouldn’t have been too hard to guess where Frances Harris would have ended up going to college. She has managed to do very well in very difficult circumstances, and she is African-American. Her high school, in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, was shut down as an irremediable failure the spring before her freshman year, then reopened months later as a charter school. Midway through high school, her father developed heart problems and became an irritable fixture around the home. She also discovered that he was not actually her biological father. That was a man named Leroy who, when her mother took Harris to see him, simply said his name was George and waited for her to leave. In Harris’s senior year, her mother lost her job at a nursing home and the family filed for bankruptcy.

Harris somehow stayed focused on teenage life. She earned an A-minus average and she distinguished herself as a debater. Her basketball teammates sometimes teased her for using big words, but they also elected her co-captain. As she led me on a tour of her school and her neighborhood one day this summer, she introduced me around with an assured ease that most adults can’t manage, even if her sentences are peppered with “like,” “you know” and “Oh, my God.” Her bedroom in the bungalow she shares with her parents is a masterpiece of teenage energy, the walls covered with her prom-queen tiara, her purple-and-white basketball jersey (No. 3) and photos of her friends. “The hardest part of high school,” she says, “was to be smart and cool at the same time.” She decided her dream college was the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ten or 20 years ago, Frances Harris almost certainly would have been admitted. Her excellent grades might not have even been necessary, because Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — the jewels in the U.C. system — accepted almost all of the African-Americans who met the basic application requirements. To an admissions officer, Harris would have seemed like gold: diversity and achievement, wrapped up in a single kid.

But in the early 1990s, the elite campuses began to pull back from their aggressive affirmative-action policies, and in 1996, California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, also known as Proposition 209. After that, race could no longer be a factor in government hiring or public-university admissions. The number of black students at both Berkeley and U.C.L.A. plummeted, and at U.C.L.A. the declines continued throughout the next decade. The reasons weren’t entirely clear, but they seemed to include some combination of the admissions office taking Proposition 209 to heart and black students falling further behind in the academic arms race. (Harris, for instance, scored a 22 on the ACT test — slightly above the national average and well below the U.C.L.A. average.) The changes on U.C.L.A.’s campus were hard to miss. In 1997, the freshman class included 221 black students; last fall it had only 100. In the region with easily the largest black population west of the Mississippi River, the top public university had a freshman class in which barely 1 in 50 students was black.

A U.C.L.A. graduate named Peter Taylor, a 49-year-old managing director at Lehman Brothers in Los Angeles, remembers picking up The Los Angeles Times outside his house on a Saturday morning in June of last year and reading that piece of news. Taylor, who is black, is a third-generation native of the city and one of U.C.L.A.’s most active alumni. Within days of reading about the latest decline in the number of black students, he began a campaign to reverse it. At a reception to honor U.C.L.A.’s new acting chancellor, a law professor named Norm Abrams, he greeted Abrams with a big smile and said, “Well, Norm, you’re stepping right into it, and you’ve got to deal with it.” Abrams soon named Taylor to lead a task force of students, faculty, alumni and outsiders from places like the Urban League and the First A.M.E. Church. It spent the next year trying to get more black students to apply, more black applicants to be admitted and more black admits to enroll. In essence, Taylor’s group was trying to figure out how to bring a student like Frances Harris to U.C.L.A. without breaking the law — or at least without getting caught. What they have achieved may well show us the future of affirmative action.

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The figure is double what the agency initially said it would give to its unit in charge of distributing funds. New World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the move was designed to encourage rich countries to increase their donations. He also reduced the charges on loans to emerging countries, such as China, for the first time in nine years.

“The board agreed to vastly simplify and do away with most of the fees and waivers and just have an upfront commitment fee and a spread over our borrowing, which will enable us to cut prices back to 1998 levels,” Mr Zoellick said.

The dramatic step is part of the World Bank’s strategy to increase its business with 79 nations classified as middle income, including India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa and get them to help with poverty-fighting efforts. Meanwhile, Mr Zoellick warned that if the Group of Eight industrialised nations stuck to their promise made in 2005 to cancel the debts of the world’s poorest countries, a shortfall was likely to emerge in the World Bank’s aid pot.

He urged developed countries to increase their donations so as to help impoverished economies invest in their infrastructure and become sustainable, and not leave them to rely on money from countries that do not have their best interests at heart.

Source: BBC News

This three-part special features a passionate, lively and opinionated debate that tackles many sensitive issues, including: hip-hop’s relationship with criminality and the streets, snitching, police profiling and brutality; the images of Black women in hip-hop; and the embarrassment, pride and confusion Blacks feel over hip-hop’s public airing of the community’s “dirty laundry.”

JENA, La. (AP) — A black teenager whose prosecution in the beating of a white classmate prompted a massive civil rights protest here walked out of a courthouse Thursday after a judge ordered him freed. Mychal Bell’s release came hours after a prosecutor confirmed he will no longer seek an adult trial for the 17-year-old. Bell, one of the teenagers known as the Jena Six, still faces trial as a juvenile in the December beating.

District Attorney Reed Walters’ decision to abandon adult charges means that Bell, who had faced a maximum of 15 years in prison on his aggravated second-degree battery conviction last month, instead could be held only until he turns 21 if he is found guilty in juvenile court. The conviction in adult court was thrown out this month by the state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, which said Bell should not have been tried as an adult on that particular charge.

Walters credited the prayers of people in this small central Louisiana town with averting a “disaster” when tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on the town. Some critics of Walters considered that a slap against the peaceful marchers.

Source: AP & Google News

Veronica Webb (born February 23, 1965) is an American supermodel, actress, writer, and journalist. She is of African American, German & Iroquois descent. Veronica Webb appeared on covers of Vogue, Essence, and Elle magazines and on the runway for Victoria’s Secret and Chanel.

Webb was born in Detroit, Michigan and moved to New York City to earn her college degree. In New York, Webb pursued a modeling career and eventually became a spokesmodel for Revlon. She was the first black supermodel to win an exclusive contract for a major cosmetics company. In 1985, she appeared briefly in the video for Scritti Politti’s “Perfect Way”.

She is editor-at-large of Interview magazine, and was a monthly columnist for Paper for five years. Veronica wrote a weekly column on American culture in Panorama, Italy’s popular weekly news magazine, and has contributed as a writer for Details, Esquire, Elle, The London Sunday Times and The New York Times Syndicate. Her film credits include Animal Husbandry, The Big Tease, and Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and Jungle Fever. She has also been featured in a recurring role on the television show Damon and has appeared in Just Shoot Me, Clueless, and Enter Laughing.

Webb dedicates her time to several charitable organizations: LIFEBeat, The National Breast Cancer Coalition, and the RPM Nautical Foundation. Webb can currently be seen as a cohost on Bravo’s Tim Gunn’s Guide To Style.

The goal is to ensure at least a 51% shareholding by indigenous black people in the majority of businesses. The bill completes a process that began with the controversial seizure of white-owned farms starting in 1999. Zimbabwe is currently experiencing the world’s highest inflation and shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.

The bill still has to go to the upper house - the Senate - for final approval. It already has the support of President Robert Mugabe’s government. If passed in the Senate, the practical effect of the bill may, however, be severely limited, says the BBC’s Peter Biles in Johannesburg. Many foreign companies in Zimbabwe are already operating at a low level, with reduced turnover resulting from the seven-year economic crisis.

Critics have said the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill could hurt investor confidence in Zimbabwe. It stipulates that no company restructuring, merger or acquisition can be approved unless 51% of the firm goes to indigenous Zimbabweans. If we do not dismantle the structure of colonialism that we inherited then we have not given back all the country’s resources to its rightful owners.

The empowerment bill defines “indigenous Zimbabwean” as anyone disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on race grounds before independence in 1980. It also provides for the establishment of an empowerment fund which will offer assistance to the “financing of share acquisitions” from the public-owned firms or assist in “management buy-ins and buy-outs.” MPs from the governing Zanu-PF party supported the bill in parliament on Wednesday.

“If we do not dismantle the structure of colonialism that we inherited then we have not given back all the country’s resources to its rightful owners, who are our people,” Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Paul Mangwana said, quoted by Reuters news agency.

Members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) walked out of parliament in protest at the bill before voting began. “We see it as a strategy to amass wealth by the ruling elite, and nothing to do with the empowerment of people,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told the BBC News website. All government departments and statutory bodies will be asked to obtain 51% of their goods and services from businesses in which controlling interest is held by indigenous Zimbabweans.

Some firms dually listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange and London Securities Exchange firms include Old Mutual, NMB bank and Hwange. Multi-national firms that may be affected by the new policy include Barclays Bank, Bindura Nickel Corporation and miner Rio Zim. Senior British officials say the Zimbabwean government will be disappointed if it thinks it will gain much of value from the move.

Source: BBC News

NEW YORK - After eating dinner at a famed Harlem restaurant recently, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly told a radio audience he “couldn’t get over the fact” that there was no difference between the black-run Sylvia’s and other restaurants. “It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun,” he said. “And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”

O’Reilly said his fellow patrons were tremendously respectful as he ate dinner with civil rights activist Al Sharpton. The comments were made during O’Reilly’s nationally syndicated radio broadcast last week. The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America called attention to them by distributing a transcript and audio clip on the Internet.

“This is nothing more than left-wing outlets stirring up false racism accusations for ratings,” said Bill Shine, senior vice president for programming at Fox News Channel. “It’s sad.” O’Reilly spoke during a general discussion about racial relations with Fox News analyst Juan Williams. O’Reilly said he believed black Americans were “starting to think more and more for themselves” and backing away from a race-based culture encouraged by Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. He said he treated Sharpton to dinner to thank him for appearing on his Fox News Channel show.

O’Reilly pointed to the lack of difference between Sylvia’s and other restaurants as a marker of racial progress. He also noted that he went to an Anita Baker concert recently where the audience was evenly mixed between blacks and whites.
“The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedoes, and this is what white America doesn’t know, particularly people who don’t have a lot of interaction with black Americans,” he said. “They think the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris and Snoop Dogg.”

Williams concurred that too many people believe there’s little else in black culture beyond profane rap. “That’s right,” O’Reilly said.

“There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M.F.-er, I want more iced tea.”

Sharpton said he was taken aback that anyone would be surprised at how blacks acted at Sylvia’s and will ask O’Reilly on “The O’Reilly Factor” Wednesday to explain what he meant. Nothing O’Reilly said at the dinner was offensive, said Sharpton spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger. Karl Frisch, a spokesman for Media Matters, called O’Reilly’s comments “ignorant and racially charged.”

Source: MSNBC & AP

High-tech equipment from federal authorities will be brought in to assist police in the investigation into a missing Chicago businesswoman, officials said Monday. Nailah Franklin, 28, was reported missing Sept. 19. Since then a pond in Calumet City has been searched and her car was recovered in Hammond.

Now Chicago Police are using FBI resources and equipment to further the search. Finding out what happened to Franklin will depend largely on physical evidence, sources said. Detectives were still waiting for forensic tests to be finished on Franklin’s car. They also were tracing Franklin’s last steps and checking security tapes from her condominium building in the 1500 block of South Sangamon.

Two laptops were missing from the condo: her work and her personal computer, her family said. Detectives also were pursuing information about a complaint Franklin made to Chicago Police about a man who had made threatening phone calls to her. The man, whom she met this year and dated for a few months, also has been named in an order of protection by another woman and has a criminal background, sources said.

Franklin’s family went downtown to pass out fliers and ask the public to come forward with any information. The family said Franklin was last seen Sept. 16 attending a wedding. Franklin works as a representative for Eli Lilly & Co. pharmaceuticals. “Somebody needs to find her,” said her sister Lehia Franklin Acox. “We hold out hope that she is alive.”

Source: Chicago Sun Times

Naomi Campbell put her younger and skinnier rivals in the shade yesterday when she strutted down the catwalk in a barely-there swimsuit. Campbell, 37, showed that she still has what it takes as she modelled the skimpy creation for the Miss Bikini Luxe spring/summer 2008 collection at Milan Fashion Week.

The Italian shows opened with collections by the Argentine designer Claudio Montias and the Milanese couturier, Andrea Turchi. Montias, known for blending Art Deco style with vintage fabrics, showed puffball micro-minidresses worn with visors and pink velvet hotpants teamed with a leather and lace top. In his first ready-to-wear collection Turchi, formerly a knitwear specialist, included silk slip dresses with bicycle motifs and elegant asymmetric knitted evening dresses accessorised with monochrome striped hats.

Tonight, Dame Vivienne Westwood, the grand dame of British fashion, will take centre stage in Milan as guest of honour at a gala dinner to mark the opening of a major retrospective exhibition in the city to celebrate her 35-year career. The exhibition, curated by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, features more than 150 designs from the museum’s own collection and Dame Vivienne’s personal archive. It traces her remarkable career, spanning the time from the punk era, when she designed outfits for the Sex Pistols, up to present day, where her ornate ballgowns are worn by celebrities such as Madonna and Tracey Emin.

Milan Fashion Week, which continues until Friday, features spring/summer 2008 collections by many of Italy’s most influential designers including Giorgio Armani, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci, together with the British heritage labels Burberry and Daks.

Source: Telegraph - UK

Do you want more from your job, your man, your life? Well, in this insightful guide, Amy DuBois Barnett, the former editor in chief of Teen People and Honey magazine, shows you how to GET YOURS…today, this year and forever! With humor and honesty, Amy shares her own story of transformation from awkward, insecure people-pleaser to strong, independent woman. She reveals the personal philosophy that allowed her to look and feel amazing, find love and achieve history-making professional success. Amy also includes intimate interviews with celebrities to get their perspective on topics ranging from career and finance to health and spirituality to style and creativity to friends and family. The list of interviewees includes: Gayle King, Sanaa Lathan, Mo’Nique, India.Arie, Gabrielle Union, Venus Williams, Hill Harper, Kelly Rowland, and Kelis.

Get Yours! is your personal guidebook to a lifetime of happiness, love, success and fulfillment.

Look for our exclusive interview with Amy in our November Issue!

Having a sweet tooth doesn’t make it easy to fit into my favorite jeans. I mean, I can’t pass by a cupcake counter, a vending machine with candy bars or a movie theater snack counter, without giving my taste buds something to sample. So naturally any beauty product that even remotely smells sweet I am drawn to. So when I recently stumbled upon the lip scrub by sara happ I was obsessed from the first smell. The lip scrub is concocted with an exfoliating sugar base and infused with natural extracts. This amazing scrub comes in six yummy flavors—Almond Crème, Brown Sugar, Cinnamon Sugar, Cocoa, Peppermint, and Vanilla Bean ($20, thelipscrub.com).

The flavors alone made me try the lip scrub, but in order to make it into my daily makeup and skincare routine it would have to really deliver. Could the lip scrub, the original lip exfoliator, make my lips soft and supple? I would have to test it out and see. One day after dipping my nose in it for five straight minutes, I exfoliated my lips as I showered, dried off and went to apply my makeup. Right away my lipstick went on much smoother. Two days into my trial run my lips were noticeably less dry and my lipgloss stayed on better. I was sold and a true believer in the lip scrub. And I am not the only one—celebrities such as Kate Homes, Charlize Theron, and Lindsay Lohan have been snatching this product off of their favorite boutiques shelves. So now I can have soft, supple lips as I bite into my favorite cupcake. What? As much as I love to smell things, sometimes a girl has got to have a taste or two. Or three. OK, the whole cupcake!

Some Highlights from Our October Issue…

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - President Robert Mugabe, accusing the West of trying to push Zimbabwe into collapse, declared it would survive thanks to its people’s resilience and support from Africa, state radio reported. Mugabe said Britain, the former colonial ruler, and his opponents sought his ouster.

“In spite of their heinous attempts to destroy the country and bring down its democratically elected government, Zimbabwe has not collapsed and will not collapse,’” the radio quoted him as saying at a state banquet recently for visiting President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of the oil-rich West African nation of Equatorial Guinea.

Mugabe thanked Equatorial Guinea and other African nations for their “solidarity.” He told President Obiang Zimbabwe would always be grateful for his support against enemies who “sought to demonize the country’s leadership at every opportunity and deceive the world about what is happening in my country.” Mugabe said his nation had not come to a standstill because of what he called “the resilience and revolutionary spirit of the Zimbabwean people.”

Western countries have imposed a travel ban on Mugabe and ruling party leaders to protest violations of democratic and human rights, following the government ordered, often violent seizures of thousands of White-owned commercial farms that began in 2000 and disrupted the agriculture-based economy. Some U.S. enterprises are barred from trading with Zimbabwe.

Foreign loans, development aid and investment have dried up in seven years of political and economic turmoil in the former regional breadbasket. Zimbabwe is facing the world’s highest official inflation of 7,634 percent, though independent estimates put real inflation closer to 25,000 percent. The International Monetary Fund has forecast inflation reaching 100,000 percent by the end of the year, prompting some predictions of economic collapse and Mugabe’s departure from office.

Cornmeal, bread, meat and most staples have disappeared from the shelves since a government edict June 26 to slash prices of all goods and services by about half in efforts to tame inflation. Acute shortages of gasoline have crippled transport and delivery services. The food shortages have spurred illegal black market trading in scarce goods sold at more than four times the government’s fixed prices. Stores were mostly left with a few canned foodstuffs. Bathsoap, toothpaste, biscuits and tea were among the latest goods to disappear. Equatorial Guinea President Obiang arrived in Harare recently and was scheduled to officially open the country’s main agriculture show in the capital.

Officials at the showground said the government allowed pricing controls to be lifted for a single livestock auction that was part of the show. State media has given prominence to this year’s show, arguing farming is reviving. Amid Zimbabwe’s growing international isolation, the government and distant Equatorial Guinea have signed an extradition treaty and a series of trade and cooperation deals since a group of mercenaries plotting to overthrow President Obiang were arrested in 2004 when their plane landed in Harare to collect weapons from the Zimbabwe state arms maker.

Source: AP & The Final Call