Revealed today, at the Television Critics Association, PBS announced that it will offer its 2nd annual Online Film Festival, featuring short form films, beginning Monday, March 4, and will offer a multi-platform Independent Film Showcase this fall. Both will feature films from POV and ITVS' INDEPENDENT LENS, as well as other public media partners. No lineup revealed yet for the Online Film Festival, although I'm sure one is forthcoming. But the Independent Film Showcase lineup will include a few familiar titles like Brooklyn Castle and The Waiting Room. Full details below via press release from PBS... PBS Continues Commitment to Independent...

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Ethiopia's Expanding Sectors Prone to Corruption Photo AfDB Ethiopia: Corruption On the Rise - Survey Source: Addis Fortune Five years in the making and two years later than the scheduled launch time, a survey conducted to gauge the level of cor...

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Huajian shoe factory in Ethiopia Kenya plans road show to Ethiopia capital Source: Daily Nation The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and private sector firms are planning a major road caravan to Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, through Northern Keny...

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Lynne Featherstone Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development Aid to Ethiopia: British MP responds to Guardian article Published in The Guardian Your report (Report, 10 January) accusing the government of funding the Li...

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Among the major contributors to the U.S. incarceration epidemic are harsh schemes for sentencing, and some of the most disproportionate sentences come about as a result of statutorily mandated minimum sentences. Just last week, a former medical marijuana distributor who declined to plead guilty was sentenced to a ten-year minimum prison sentence by a federal [...]

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A new poll released Monday from The Hill shows that Americans are expecting stronger gun laws as a response to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. In a survey of voters, only 19 percent said that the tragedy made them want looser gun laws. Forty seven percent said it made them want stronger laws. Of [...]

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What if Japan actually gets its economic act together?

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had a succinct message today for lawmakers looking to monkey around with the debt ceiling -- don't do it. He also blew a hole in the myth that the debt ceiling has something to do with future spending, as opposed to spending already authorized by Congress: Likening Congress to a [...]

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First, the usual recap of the series (feel free to skip ahead, if you'll already read it)... As I noted in an entry towards the end of last year, 2013 should be an interesting year for black cinema (at the studio level, indie, and across the disapora). Looking down my continuously-growing list of black films scheduled for release (theatrical, TV, or home video), as well as those that will debut on the film festival circuit this year, it's quite long, and, as noted, is still growing. In fact, I'd say that we might find ourselves in one of those rare years, when there's a fuller than usual slate of studio-backed black films, to complement the indies - an indie...

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In a move that could end up serving as a model for both private and public health care systems across the country, New York City's public hospitals are poised to begin linking doctors' paychecks to the quality of the care they provide patients, the New York Times reports. Obamacare already attempts to shift the nation's [...]

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Whew, Mali. French air raids against Islamist positions in Mali began Thursday night, and the dust hasn't settled yet. The news is changing fast, but, three things emerge from the haze. First, fierce fighting in the North and the East, with French forces in the lead, will open up a whole new set of dangers. [...]

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According to the New York Times, the French intervention in Mali to halt the southern march of Islamist forces has...

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Often, our analysis of the fight to eliminate Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, stops with the act of defection. However, as this video from the Grassroots Reconciliation Group vividly demonstrates, for former child soldiers, the struggle for normalcy continues well after escape from the LRA. For many ex-combatants, reintegrating into their home communities can be a huge obstacle after years spent in the bush. These survivors need assistance as they find a way to become contributing members of northern Ugandan society and come to terms with their difficult histories. Grassroots Reconciliation Group's livelihood development programming and leadership training helps to bridge that gap.

Over 400 participants have graduated from Grassroots Reconciliation Group's programs and have ...

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The Discovery Channel and the BBC have joined forces to produce a new seven part series entitled, Africa. The series is four years in the making and brings together stunning footage of the landscapes and animals within the continent. The first episode focuses on the Kalahari Desert, while later ones will capture the wildlife in [...]

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Levi-Strauss writes of a Native American people for whom every dream has a hidden sexual meaning, except explicitly sexual dreams, for which it is imperative that non-sexual interpretations be found. I am reaching for an Oscar Wilde aphorism here. Everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power. The Freudian in me demurs against [...]

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Nana Oforiatta-Ayim in Frieze:

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He performs to packed-out theatres and is a regular correspondent on a satirical television news show, Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola (LNN) on South African private TV channel, Etv. He's at times raucously funny and almost always on point. He writes, he tweets and he tjunes white okes (for the non-South Africans: he gives [...]

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More borrowing from China. China recently signed a K65m ($13m) interest-free loan towards the "poverty reduction projects". To sweeten the deal, an additional grant of K16m ($3m) was added. The Ministry of Finance says the funds will be utilised to eradicate poverty and finance other projects, which will be mutually agreed upon by the two governments. More detail via Daily Mail.

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Jess Engebretson writing in Guernica:

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AFP

Egypt's Appeals Court court said Sunday that it has accepted an appeal lodged by former President Hosni Mubarak's against his life sentence for the death of protesters in the 2011 uprising that ousted him. The court ordered a retrial.

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