Africa

A woman who challenged knife-wielding assailants suspected of hacking to death a British soldier in London says she intervened to protect others.

PRESS RELEASE Terence Blanchard: MagneticMay 22, 2013(Los Angeles, CA): Accompanying the release of Magnetic, Terence Blanchard’s stunning new album set for release May 28 on Blue Note Records, will be an unprecedented schedule of worldwide tour dates kicking off with a five-night run at The Jazz Standard in New York City on May 29th and hitting cities across the United States, Europe, Tokyo, South Africa and Brazil. The tour will feature Terence, Brice Winston on sax, Fabian Almazan on piano, Robert Hurst III on bass, Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums and Lionel Loueke on guitar and will take-in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Denver, The Newport Jazz Festival, Boston, Washington D.C., London, Paris, the Czech Republic, Tokyo, Johannesburg and the Choro Festival in Brazil. A complete list of dates can be seen at terenceblanchard.com.

On Saturday the Champions League final will be plate in London between two German clubs, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. All people of sound principles will hope for a Bayern defeat, even if they couldn’t care less about Dortmund. To mark the all-German final, here is a mix of German curiosities, some chosen because they are very good or interesting (or both), and a couple of football-themed songs at the end, selected because they are entertaining in their musical poverty. Some tracks have featured here before, but he links are long dead. I’ve also cribbed a few notes from those instalments. For a whole mix of songs recorded by international stars in German go HERE (posted almost exactly a year ago). As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and includes hausgemachte covers. 1. Die Toten Hosen – Bayern (2000) The title refer to Germany’s most dominant football club, whom non-fans regard, with no exaggeration, as a cancer in the body of German football. So the alternative rock band Die Toten Hosen (The Dead Trousers) composed a very catchy number explaining how, if they were “super-talented” young footballers, they would never sign a contract with that club because such an act would be thoroughly corrupting. At one point the singer demands to know: “What kind of parents must one have to be so stupid as to sign for that shit club?” Well, Mario Götze, just how verdommen are you, and what kind of parents do you have? 2. Alexander Wolfrum – Hey Büblein (2006) When somebody records an acoustic version of “Hey Joe” and renders the title as, roughly translated, Hey Little Boy, it’s worth listening to. The lyrics have nothing to do with the original either: it deals with metaphors involving thin ice, drowning in a lake and a rescue. And in-between a female voice warns that Joe is going to catch a cold. Wolfrum, known by everybody as Sandy, is a singer-songwriter who performs in the dialect of Franconia  — the region around Nuremberg — and founded a Festival der Liedermacher (or Festival of Songwriters) in Bayreuth, the home town of Richard Wagner.  Check out more by Alexander Wolfrum at http://www.gogoyoko.com/artist/Alexander_Wolfrum 3. David Bowie – Helden (1977) In his Berlin period Bowie fused the cultures of the Weimar Republic cabarets, Krautrock and Kraftwerk, and the local junkie scene. It’s very nice that David Bowie sought to pay tribute to the city that served as his muse by recording in German, but since he lived and recorded there, one might quibble that he could have taken better care with his pronunciations. As it turns out, he put as much effort in enunciating German words correctly as English football commentators do in pronouncing the names of German (or any non-Latinate) football players. 4. Cindy & Bert – Der Hund von Baskerville (1970) Husband-and-wife duo Cindy & Bert were a Schlager duo that epitomised square in the 1970s. My grandmother thought Cindy & Bert were delightful, so Oma would have been shocked to discover that Cindy & Bert’s catalogue included a cover version of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, with the lyrics taking a Sherlock Holmes theme.  It need no pointing out that my grandmother probably wasn’t a hardcore Sabbath fan. Alas, Bert died last July—and was not even noted in the In Memoriam series! 5. Howard Carpendale – Du hast mich (1970) In German Schlager history, Howard Carpendale wrote a particularly successful chapter. Unable to hack it in his home country South Africa as an Elvis impersonator, the former shotput champion moved to Germany, learned to speak the language with just enough of a touch of an accent (German audiences really got off on foreign accents; but only in entertainment and romance, not in shops, pubs or public transport), and became the leading romantic singer of the 1970s and ’80s Schlager scene, selling some 25 million records. None of those 25 million records soiled my collection, I am pleased to say. His first breakthrough came w

For hard-pressed Stormers captain Jean de Villiers, playing at outside centre against the Reds almost amounts to a break.

Bulls CEO Barend van Graan has admitted it is a major concern the way Bulls players are being targeted by overseas clubs.

By Martin Khor, Executive Director of the South Centre, Geneva. Cross-posted from Triple Crisis. A key threshold measuring the march of global warming was crossed recently, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million. On 10 May scientists announced that 400.03ppm had been measured at a climate-observing station in Hawaii that is often used as a benchmark. The global average is expected to cross the 400ppm mark in the next year. This means that there in for every one million molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, there are 400 molecules of carbon dioxide. CO2 concentration in the air is linked to the Earth’s temperature. The widely believed relationship is that the 450ppm level should not be crossed if global warming is to be below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial revolution level of around 1750. In fact more recently, some prominent scientists like James Hansen have found that crossing 350ppm is already dangerous. In line with this, the existing CO2 in the atmosphere should be reduced – though how this can be done is really unclear. Already the impacts of climate change are being felt in dramatic ways in the increase in extreme weather events, ranging from higher rainfall and extensive flooding in Pakistan, China, Southeast Asia and United Kingdom, drought in parts of Africa and the United States, raging fires in Australia and Russia, and big storms or hurricanes in the Philippines, Central America and the United States. How far worse will the situation be when more climate change is induced when the CO2 concentration increases from 400ppm to 450ppm and beyond? The increase in concentration has been dramatic. In 1958, it was 315ppm, and this rose to about 375ppm in 2000 before jumping to 400ppm now. At this rate, we are on track not for a 2 degree but for a 3 to 5 degree increase in temperature by the end of the century – a catastrophe. The present temperature is 0.8 degrees above the pre-industrial level and we are already seeing the major adverse effects. Imagine a 2 degree and worse a 4 degree world that our children and grandchildren will inherit. What needs to be done? Most importantly, the level of emissions has to be cut significantly. The UN Environment Programme’s 2012 report on “emissions gap”, written by 55 scientists, shows that the total global emission in 2011 was 50 billion or giga tonnes (gton) of CO2 equivalent (meaning CO2 plus other greenhouse gases like methane but expressed in terms of CO2). The CO2 equivalent emission level has been rising rapidly; it was 40gton in 2000 before climbing to 50.1gton in 2011. This means that the annual global emission has risen by10gton or by 25% in just a decade. The UNEP report estimates that if we are to keep the world’s temperature to 2 degrees below the pre-industrial level, the annual global emissions must be brought down to 44gton by 2020 and then continue to decrease. However, if there are no policy changes (a business as usual scenario), the emissions are projected to rise to 58gton in 2020. The good news is that governments of many countries have pledged to take actions to cut their emissions. The bad news is that these pledges are not enough. In the best scenario (if governments succeed in keeping their best pledges and in the best conditions), the 2020 emission level will be 52gton. That is way higher than the 44gton limit required to keep temperatures below the 2 degree level, though lower than business-as-usual. And in the worst scenario (governments take actions but in the lower end of the range in their pledge, and with bad conditions), the 2020 emission level will be 57gton, which is almost the same as the business-as-usual level of 58gton. In any case, the projected emissions in 2020 will miss the 2 degree boat. They are in line with boats going towards 3 to 5 degrees, in other words towards a climate disaster. How to bring the emissions by 2020 down to 44gton? The technical solutions are not tha

Quentin Harley released SCARA based “RepRap Morgan” 3D printer and its design, via 3ders: Reprap Morgan is a concentric dual arm SCARA FDM 3D printer, designed and built by Quentin Harley. The SCARA stands for Selective Compliant Assembly Robot Arm or Selective Compliant Articulated Robot Arm. Harley has been working on this project for a couple of years, and in February Harley released pictures showing off the build. The extruder of this Reprap Morgan 3D printer moves along the x and y axes and the bed itself moves along the Z axis. Its major parts, such as the arms, driving gears, pipe adapters are printed on a 3D printer. Yesterday Harley has officially released the Morgan plans, this is a big step for the development of entry-level 3D printers. This printer is very simple and easy to assemble, and built with only affordable consumables. “RepRAP Morgan is all about a dream. A dream to make it easy for anyone in South Africa, or anywhere else in the world to build a 3D printer without needing exceedingly expensive materials, hard to find components, stuff that has to be shipped at sometimes more than the cost of the components, requiring advanced tools.” Notes Harley. “Morgan is to be a tool for creation, not a toy or end product. It should be used in education, and must be affordable and safe enough for school kids to use.” adds Harley. Read more here, and check out the source on Github.

Egypt tourist attractions!Submitted by Angellas on May 22, 2013 - 10:55pm. Egypt, the jewel of Africa, is a delightful country and a major tourist attraction. Globe-trotters from all over the planet love to pack their bags and scurry over to this historical land to feast on its myriad attractions and marvelous manmade creations. Egypt travel brings with it a wide range of things including plenty of sightseeing and even the memorable Nile cruise. Meet you in Egypt......:)

The AU is celebrating 50 years of existence this year. Set up in 1963 in the Ethiopian capital, the body had 32 initial signatory governments, with 21 more nations joining over the years.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co Ltd will recall about 841,000 vehicles worldwide including the Micra compact car, also known as the March, as a result of a steering wheel glitch, Japan's No.2 automaker said on Thursday. Nissan is recalling certain models of the Micra compact car produced in Britain and Japan between 2002 and 2006, as well as the Cube, produced in Japan around the same period. It is pulling back vehicles in Japan, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. ...