By Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Special to CNN Editor's note: Sir Malcolm Rifkind is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Kensington. He is a Defense and Foreign Secretary and currently serves as chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. The views expressed are his own. News last week that Britain's government plans to speed up visas for [...]

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"Heart of Light" , the last words uttered publicly by democratically elected president Patrice Lumumba at his inauguration address, 3 months before his murder by Belgium and CIA because he dared to oppose the Western global forces of oppression and planned to keep the wealth of the Congo for the Congo. Freedom and hope was killed in 1961, with disastrous consequences, but The Heart of Light can never die...

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Casmir Igbokwe President Goodluck Jonathan dispenses goodwill and good luck in great abundance. His latest act of magnanimity was to grant pardon and give appointments to ex-convicts. The former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, and the former Governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, are some of the latest beneficiaries of the President's [...]

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How the U.S. secretary of state can win friends and influence Beijing.

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The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) has done Africa watchers and policy makers an important service by publishing David J....

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Just like in the corporate world, the merger of two established terrorist groups can cause serious disputes over branding and identity strategy. As it happens, the dynamic is driving a wedge through the newly announced alliance between the al Qaeda affiliates al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

In an audio message on Tuesday, ISI chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the merger between the two sides, both of which the State Department considers terrorist organizations. "It is time to declare to the Levant and to the world that the al-Nusra Front is simply a branch of the Islamic State of Iraq," he said, noting that his Iraqi group already provided the al-Nusra Front with half of its budget. A day after the announcement, al-Nusra Front leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani responded ...

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With the passing of England's Sir Robert G. Edwards on Wednesday, the medical community has lost a giant. Edwards, a biologist and professor emeritus at Cambridge, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his groundbreaking work on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) with physician Patrick Steptoe in the 1970s. Together, Edwards and Steptoe pioneered the [...]

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Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), chairman of the House Republicans' campaign arm, attacked the Social Security benefit cut proposals in President Obama's budget Wednesday -- breaking with the rest of the GOP leadership. As House Speaker John Boehner, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell embraced the chained CPI provisions, Walden called [...]

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Now that spring is finally here, video blogger Ikenna Azuike (check out one of his latest videos below) has made the ultimate warm-weather April playlist. Ikenna, creator of African comedy news show What's Up Africa (produced by Radio Netherlands Worldwide), complied some tracks from artists like Magic System, Oliver Mtukudzi, Sam Mangwana and Mayra Andrade that [...]

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Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) and 40 Republicans are passing around a Dear Colleague letter asking Republicans in the House to pressure Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) not to take up a bill expanding background checks for gun purchases "without the support of a majority of the conference." Boehner has brought measures to the floor that are [...]

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The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) has done Africa watchers and policy makers an important service by publishing David J....

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We had been studiously avoiding coverage of Madonna's latest trip to Malawi, but such is the deliciousness of the excoriating 11-point press release put out yesterday by Joyce Banda that we couldn't resist wading in. These two had previous -- Madonna's people had scapegoated Banda's sister over a botched school project -- and the latest [...]

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An interesting statement from Vice President Scott on the public pressure for mining jobs:

"Ideally, Vedanta wouldn't really be worried about Zambian employment levels as it is not their issue...But we are pressurizing them to worry about exactly that. There is a concern that there is a disconnect between investment and employment..."

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Iain Marlow writes in Toronto Review:

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Welcome to the inaugural post of our new feature profiling African foods and drinks (plus other gastronomical related subjects); and the people on the continent and in the diaspora that are defining and reshaping our ideas and tastes of these. We'll call it "Africa is a Kitchen". To kick off the series, we will be [...]

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The day after the CrisisMappers 2011 Conference in Geneva, my colleague Phoebe Wynn-Pope organized and facilitated the most important workshop I attended that year. She brought together a small group of seasoned crisis mappers and experts in protection standards. The workshop ... Continue reading →

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I had the great pleasure of co-authoring the International Peace Institute's (IPI) unique report on "Big Data for Conflict Prevention" (PDF) with my two colleagues Emmanuel Letouzé and Patrick Vinck. The study explores how Big Data may help reveal key insights ... Continue reading →

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Here's a short behind-the-scenes video piece for those who enjoyed Akin Omotoso's well-received film "Man on Ground". (We reviewed it here.) Snippets and anecdotes include those on: The Beginning / The Story / The Funding (crowd-funded initially) / The Shoot, The Cast, The Crew / "Trouble in Paradise" (or: when they feared the production would [...]

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You read this right. The British media, citing French sources, is having a field day with the report that the...

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