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Posts published in “International”

Pro Golfer Cheyenne Woods Emerges from Tiger’s Shadow With Australian Ladies Masters Win

By goodblacknews on February 16, 2014
Cheyenne Woods
Cheyenne Woods

Comparisons to her uncle Tiger may be inevitable, but Cheyenne Woods is coming out from under her famous relative’s shadow with a win at the Australian Ladies Masters on Sunday.  ESPN.com reports that Woods earned her first her first major professional tour victory by holding off 17-year-old Australian amateur Minjee Lee by two strokes.  The 23-year-old golfer closed with a 4-under 69 at Royal Pines to finish at 16-under 276. Lee also shot 69 in the event sanctioned by the European and Australian tours. Woods’ two-stroke lead came when she birdied the par-5 15th, hitting a wedge from about 120 yards to 4 feet. On the par-5 18th, she holed out from 1½ feet as she matched Lee with a birdie.

Speaking of the impact of winning a Ladies European Tour event, an emotional Woods labeled the moment as “a huge accomplishment for me.”  “The European Tour has been great to be able to play this past year, she said while acknowledging her fellow golfers. “I’ve been able to see all of these great players, play with Solheim Cup members. … To be able to come out here and compete with them and come out on top was huge for me.”

Ithaca College Students Launch Social Media Campaign to Dispel Myths About Africa

By goodblacknews on February 11, 2014
Ithaca College Students Launch Social Media Campaign to Dispel Myths About Africa
When it comes to Africa, the perception of the continent doesn’t quite match up with reality. While many of us know the Motherland boasts a wealth of history, a diverse collection of countries, a beautiful cross-section people, and some of the world’s most valuable resources, the mainstream media rarely shows Africa in a positive light.  The result? Stereotypes, misconceptions, and horror stories abound. Many Africans both here in the U.S. and abroad have rebuked the negative portrayals of the continent, and the African Student Association (ASA)group at Ithaca College is lending their voice to the chorus.
Exhausted by having to answer ignorant questions such as “Do you speak African?” or “What is Africa’s flag?” the students of the ASA at Ithaca launched an online campaign to pushback against the negativity and educate their classmates about Africa.  In a series of striking images, which depict the students draped in various flags of African countries, the ASA students hope to show “the beauty” of Africa.
“What we wanted to do was embrace the individual flags of the countries of Africa,” Rita Bunatal, head of PR for the organization, told CNN. “We wanted to show the beauty and the power of the flag. We also wanted to break one of the biggest misconceptions about the continent, which is that Africa is a country.”  The images include gripping taglines such as, “Africans do not all look alike,” “Africans don’t need to be saved,” “Africa is not a country” and “Africa is not a land filled with diseases.”
A move Bunatal hopes will not only attract attention, but will also help educate her peers and dispel myths about the continent.  “The simplest actions can create awareness and we are hoping to do this not only campus-wide, but also world-wide.”
article by Britni Danielle via clutchmagonline.com

Rwandan Teen Leonard Kwitonda Overcomes Obstacles And Will Graduate With Honors

By goodblacknews on February 11, 2014
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Leonard Kwitonda’s life definitely hasn’t been a crystal stair. In 1994, his father was killed in the Rwanda genocide and he was left with just his mother and siblings. At 12-years-old, he traveled with the Rwanda Jr. Basketball Team, but while traveling in California. with the team, his uncle was killed and his family fled to Uganda. He was told to stay in the U.S because of safety issues.
When he was just 15-years-old, not able to speak English, he took a two day ride to Kentucky from California. He’s already lived with two foster families, but that hasn’t deterred him.  Leonard excels not only academically, but is also a star athlete on the basketball team and soccer team. This year, he will graduate with honors.
Leornard says, “I think I’ve come a long way. I don’t like to think of myself as a person who has a lot of issues. There is a lot of people who have more than myself, than I have.”  Jeffersonville Coach Matt Pait says Leonard’s story is inspirational, a teen who has overcome so many obstacles and adversity and is still successful.  Pait says, “He brings a lot of energy, he’s always smiling. Immediately when he’s in the game, it’s constant energy and effort. He’s the kid who gives 100 percent at everything he does.”
Audrey Baines, his current foster mother couldn’t be more proud of Leonard. “Leonard, if you meet him once or you meet him a million times, he’s always going to have a smile on his face, something positive to say. He’s as much a part of Jeff. as anybody who has been here forever and he’s so much a part of my family, I can’t imagine not having him in my life.”
Leonard is planning to go to college and study international business.  To see video of this inspirational teen, click here.
article via clutchmagonline.com

Kenyan Firm Turns Discarded Flip-flops into Art

By goodblacknews on February 10, 2014
Flip-flop art
Flip-flop art manufactured by Ocean Sole.

What do you do with a pair of old flip-flops? Not an idle question as the planet produces billions of pairs of non-biodegradable pairs every year.  But now a Kenyan biologist turned businesswoman has at least a partial solution. Julie Church‘s artisan manufacturing company, Ocean Sole, turned about 50 tons of dirty, discarded and damaged flip-flops into animal ornaments and jewellery in 2013. She anticipates doubling that amount this year, and will pay 25p per kilo to whoever brings them in.

In Kenya, where plastic flip-flops cost a dollar, beaches are littered not just with broken and battered domestic varieties but with flip-flops from all over the world. Branded flip-flops turn up on Kenya’s east-facing shoreline from the Middle East, South Asia and Australasia.  Ocean Sole is Church’s private sector attempt to educate consumers and producers alike. Sales have tripled in the last year and it is reaching a global market supplying some of the world’s most famous zoos and aquariums. “Their shops are usually full of stuff that is so bad for the environment,” Church says.
See Picture Gallery of More Flip Flop Art
The UN estimates that every square mile of ocean hosts nearly 50,000 pieces of plastic. “When someone says they’re throwing something away, where is away?” Church says. When plastic is concerned, “away” often equates to ending up in one of the worlds rivers or oceans. Kenyan paleontologist Louise Leakey once warned that the legacy of our era on earth would be a layer of subcutaneous plastic.

"12 Years a Slave" Nabs Top Prize at London Critics’ Circle Awards

By goodblacknews on February 2, 2014
'12 Years Slave' Nabs Top Prize
LONDON — Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave took top prize Sunday at the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards, which started with a tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose death was announced earlier in the day. 12 Years a Slave also won for Best Actor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Supporting Actress (Lupita Nyong’o).  McQueen said that the critic who mattered the most to him was his mother, who had approved of the film. “There’s critics, there’s scholars, but then there’s your mum, so I’m very pleased about that,” he told the Daily Mail.
Alfonso Cuaron took the directing award for Gravity, which was also honored for its special effects, as Tim Webber received the technical achievement award.  The Coen Brothers were named best scriptwriters for Inside Llewyn Davis. The actress prize went to Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine, and the supporting actor award was taken hostage by Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips.
LONDON CRITICS’ CIRCLE FILM AWARDS
Film – 12 Years a Slave
Foreign-language Film – Blue Is the Warmest Colour
Documentary – The Act of Killing
British Film – The Selfish Giant
Director – Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity
Screenwriter – Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, Inside Llewyn Davis
Actor – Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Actress – Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
Supporting Actor – Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Supporting Actress – Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave
British Actor – James McAvoy, Filth/Trance/Welcome to the Punch
British Actress – Judi Dench, Philomena
Young British Performer – Conner Chapman, The Selfish Giant
Breakthrough British Filmmaker – Jon S. Baird, Filth
Technical Achievement Award – Tim Webber, Gravity special effects
Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film – Gary Oldman
article by Leo Barraclough via Variety.com

Fantasy Hollywood: Restaging Classic Films with Black Models

By goodblacknews on January 30, 2014
Black Hollywood Breakfast
Breakfast at Onomo’s, 2013. Photograph: Antoine Tempé

Back in the 80s, my classmates and I piled into Mbabane’s local cinema to watch Top Gun. We’d turn to each other, channeling our best version of Val Kilmer to spout “You can be my wing man anytime” – followed by intense laughter. Who doesn’t have a favourite line, an iconic moment from film lodged in our minds? 

Dakar-based photographers Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempé were counting on just that, the shared experience and ubiquity of film, when the hotel group Onomo International invited them to create a series of photographs using the hotel as a backdrop. They turned to the silver screen, to iconic moments they’ve held onto to and mined for their collaborative project, ONOMOllywood.
In 20 images that pay homage to characters such as Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, these reinventions begin with the a humble “what if…” A question looking to how popular global cultural translates to the local, what could it look like, and what new memories would it create. The project has created conversation, accolades and blowback, but in an interview with Another Africa, Diop takes it all in stride.
Black Hollywood American Beauty
American Beauty, 2013. Photograph: Omar Victor Diop

Missla Libsekal | Representational art usually puts artists in the hot seat, audiences tend to have strong opinions. For example Samuel Fosso’s self-portraits as famous political figures or Pieter Hugo’s Nollywood series. Mimicry steps on the nerve of nostalgia, the sacred or even challenges the status quo. What tale doesONOMOllywood tell and does it hit any nerves? 
Omar Victor Diop | ONOMOllywood is a celebration of cinema, as an artistic discipline and of the magic of a great movie. For Antoine Tempé (the co-author of the series who created 10 out of the 20 images) and myself, what makes a great movie is the fact that the strength of its characters, plot and scenes transcends all geographic, temporal and racial barriers. A great movie is more than a series of sequences, it becomes a moment that is lived across the globe by people who have very little in common, but who relate to extraordinary stories that allow them to dream.
The example I always give is the magic of a James Bond movie; back when I was a kid, I didn’t care whether Roger Moore was white or black, or whether I was a British citizen… to me, he was a hero I could impersonate. After watching A View To A Kill, I firmly believed my pajamas were a tuxedo and that my mom’s kitchen was actually some concrete jungle where I would chase after criminals… That’s what cinema has brought to me and it still somehow does, to my adult life. A great movie is a dream.

Black Hollywood Psycho
Psycho, 2013. Photograph: Antoine Tempé

ONOMOllywood did hit some nerves, especially in the US: after one of my interviews was published on CNN.COM. We were taken aback by the racial dimension of some readers’ comment. To my great surprise, I realised that this series could be seen by some as a sort of “revenge” of black people against a too “white” Hollywood. The “race war” in the comments section was quite epic! 
It was rather amusing to see the way some readers resolutely eluded the fact that this project is the product of a collaboration between a French-American photographer and a Senegalese photographer. It was “just some black dude painting Hollywood in black because the world looked better like this”.
I guess this can be explained by a set of contextual factors. The article about ONOMOllywood was published in late July 2013, after a heated debate over a series of race-related affairs like the Trayvon Martin case in the US, a series of blackface incidents in fashion magazines in Europe, etc. I guess people from both sides were already prepared to shoot at anything that could be seen as an attempt to see the world from a racial perspective… Interesting experience indeed, we’re glad this project started a conversation in other continents, that’s the purpose of art, even though for us, ONOMOllywood remains a celebration, a well deserved homage to geniuses of cinema, to timeless moments.

Black Hollywood Frida
Frida, 2013. Photograph: Omar Victor Diop

Andrew Mupuya Builds Successful Paper Bag Company in Uganda from $14 Start

By goodblacknews on January 26, 2014
Andrew Mupuya is the founder of Uganda's first registered paper bag company. Youth Entrepreneurial Link Investments (YELI) is supplying restaurants, supermarkets and medical centers in Kampala.

Award-winning entrepreneur Andrew Mupuya was just 16 years old when he decided to take on the world.  That was back in 2008, when both of Mupuya’s parents had lost their jobs and could only afford to cover his school fees. “I had to get to meet my basic needs by myself,” remembers the Ugandan businessman. “I decided to face the world alone.”
Inadvertently, the government of Uganda came to Mupuya’s aid. At the time, officials in the country announced that they were considering a ban on plastic bags to curb environmental damage. Mupuya, who was still in secondary school, immediately saw this as an opportunity to launch a paper bag production company.  “I conducted a feasibility study, market research around retail shops, kiosks, supermarkets around Kampala and discovered there is need and potential market for paper bags.”
To start out his small operation, Mupuya figured out he needed a capital of 36,000 Ugandan shillings ($14). He raised the first $11 from selling 70 kilos of used plastic bottles he’d collected over one week. Mupuya then borrowed the remaining $3 from his school teacher and embarked on his entrepreneurial journey producing paper bags on a small scale.  Since then, the business has grown extensively and today, at the age of 21, Mupuya is the owner of Youth Entrepreneurial Link Investments (YELI), the first registered Ugandan company to make paper bags.

Born on This Day in 1892: Pioneering Aviator Bessie Coleman (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on January 26, 2014

Bessie Coleman
Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African-American descent to hold an international pilot license.  Coleman was born in Atlanta,Texas, the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George, who was part Cherokee, and Susan Coleman.
In 1915, at the age of 23, she moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and she worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist, where she heard stories from pilots returning home from World War I about flying during the war. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wckEiKzCBqc&w=560&h=315]
Coleman raised money, studied French, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920.  She learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with “a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot’s feet.”  On June 15, 1921, Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, and the first American of any gender or ethnicity to do so, but the first African-American woman to earn an aviation pilot’s license. Determined to polish her skills, Coleman spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September 1921 sailed for New York. She became a media sensation when she returned to the United States.
To learn more about Coleman’s life and career, click here or watch the Smithsonian Channel video above.
article via wikipedia.com

Central African Republic Chooses Female Mayor Catherine Samba-Panza as New President

By goodblacknews on January 21, 2014
Catherine Samba-Panza
The mayor of Bangui, Catherine Samba-Panza, attends a session at the National Transitional Council (CNT) before being elected interim president of the Central African Republic on January 20, 2014, in Bangui. Samba-Panza was elected in a second-round vote by the transitional parliament, securing 75 votes against 53 for Desire Kolingba, the son of a former Central African president. (AFP PHOTO / Eric FEFERBERG Getty Images)

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — Members of a national transitional council chose the female mayor of Central African Republic’s capital to lead the country out of chaos Monday, as a top U.N. official urged the international community to keep the nation from “crossing the tipping-point into an all-out sectarian conflict.”  At two meetings in Brussels, international donors pledged a total of $496 million in humanitarian assistance and European Union foreign ministers took a first step toward potentially deploying hundreds more troops to reinforce French and African peacekeepers to secure the lawless and violent country where nearly one million people are displaced.
Bangui Mayor Catherine Samba-Panza was chosen as interim president after two rounds of voting, becoming the first female leader in the country’s history. She beat out Desire Zanga-Kolingba, the son of a former president in Monday’s runoff. Samba-Panza, dressed in a bright pink suit jacket, thrust her arms into the air in victory.  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius described the 59-year-old Samba-Panza as a “very remarkable woman.”
Samba-Panza, a longtime corporate lawyer in the insurance industry who took over the mayor’s office last June, now will be tasked with organizing national elections before the end of 2014, a job critics say may be nearly impossible given the amount of looting and destruction to administrative buildings throughout the country. She also faces the enormous task of stemming anarchy and bloodshed that has left an untold number dead since a March 2013 coup. An armed Christian movement known as the anti-Balaka arose in opposition to the mostly Muslim Seleka rebellion that seized power then.
“I call on my children, especially the anti-Balaka, to put down their arms and stop all the fighting. The same goes for the ex-Seleka — they should not have fear. I don’t want to hear any more talk of murders and killings,” she said.  She urged the 100,000 people sheltering near the airport — nicknamed with bitter irony the “Ledger” after the town’s sole five-star luxury hotel — to return home.  “I’m also calling on the international community to help us quickly restore order in our country which today is on the brink of chaos,” she said.

Uganda’s Stacie Aamito Crowned Africa’s First Next Top Model

By goodblacknews on January 18, 2014

Stacie AamitoThe African edition of Next Top Model recently came to a close and Ugandan beauty Stacie ‘Queen’ Aamito claimed the crown.
Aamito beat out 11 contestants from eight different countries—including three women from Nigeria and two from South Africa—to become Africa’s first-ever Top Model winner. The 20-year-old won a contract with New York-based agency DNA Model Management, an endorsement deal with P&G, a one-year contract as ambassador for South African Tourism, along with $50,000 in prize money.
After her win Aamito told reporters, “I would like to thank everybody for their support and for believing in me. It is a dream come true for me and it is truly awesome.”
Africa’s Next Top Model is the brainchild of supermodel Oluchi Onweagba. Onweagba, who’s married to Italian designer Luca Orlandi, has been in the business for over fifteen years, gracing runways for designers like Victoria Secret, Christian Dior, and Giorgio Armani, and snagging covers for publications like Italian Vogue, i-D, Elle, and Surface.
Africa’s Next Top Model was a hit with viewers and many are hopefully this will help catapult African models to international success.
article by Britni Danielle via clutchmagonline.com