Burkina Faso

Ten years ago, David Roussève found himself at risk of contracting "churning-it-out syndrome." A Los Angeles transplant, he worried that the kind of narrative-driven, deeply personal yet politically resonant dance-theater works that had brought him...

JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child...

THE TRIBAL trend is one of the hottest this summer. The graphic prints and the bold dyes of the fabrics are popping up everywhere, but although most are mere knockoffs -- loomed, printed and dyed simply to look exotic -- a few are the real thing, and...

On my way to the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood Thursday night for a rare local appearance by Lukas Ligeti, I stopped by Amoeba Music to pick up his new solo CD, "Afrikan Machinery." It was temporarily out of stock. A good sign, I thought. This is...

Anger over high food prices has sparked protests in several countries. Surging food prices have posed a particular risk to poor economies. Here are some details of recent price rise protests and disturbances: * BURKINA FASO - Unions called a general...

A few weeks ago, a retired American intelligence officer was asked over lunch about the availability on the black market of portable shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, which government officials fear terrorists might use against civilian...

The terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden has reaped millions of dollars in the past three years from the illicit sale of diamonds mined by rebels in Sierra Leone, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials and two sources with direct...

Not long after 9/11, a French producer named Alain Brigand asked 11 very different directors from across the world to make short films about the catastrophe. Some of Brigand's choices were real head-scratchers: No matter how great Sean Penn can be as an...

FANISAU, Nigeria - If it were possible to wind back the centuries, Halima Umar's village would probably look much as it does today. Umar and her neighbors fetch water by lowering a bucket into a hand-dug well, toil in fields of millet and guinea corn, and...

Bob WEIS was trolling EBay from his 1962 Palm Springs ranch house, hunting for the African artifacts he has collected for the last 20 years, when he hit the mother lode. There, among the carved wooden stools and ceremonial figures, hand-woven textiles,...

Friday May 12, 1995      Haile Gerima's sweeping, powerful "Sankofa," which in the African language of Akan means returning to the past in order to go forward, opens in the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, an ancient fortress where slaves bound for America...

Friday September 29, 1995      Hard-boiled fiction is a been-around genre about done-that individuals, so the pleasant air of newness and excitement that "Devil in a Blue Dress" gives off isn't due to its familiar find-the-girl plot. Rather it's the...