Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights...

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Weinstein Co., Clear Channel, Madison Square Garden Hosting Benefit Concert for Sandy Relief

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Clear Channel Media, The Madison Square Garden Company and The Weinstein Company are joining together to produce a benefit concert to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy.The concert, titled “12-12-12,” will feature live music, although the producers did not reveal who would be performing. The roster should be an A-list...

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Gilead posts positive results in mid-stage Hepatitis C study

(Reuters) – Gilead Sciences Inc on Saturday reported a 100 percent cure rate using a combination of drugs in a small number of patients with the most common and hardest to treat form of hepatitis C.Rival Abbott Laboratories Inc, meanwhile, said a trio of its oral medicines to treat hepatitis C produced unprecedented cure rates in a larger number of patients...

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Four days later, Obama wins Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.No matter the outcome, Obama had already clinched re-election and now has 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.The Florida Secretary of State's Office...

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella...

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On Twitter, pope to get different type of followers

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but he soon will have another type when he enters what for any 85 year old is the brave new world of Twitter.Vatican officials say the pontiff, who is known not to love computers and still writes most of his speeches by hand, will have his own handle...

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Italy lifts ban on Novartis flu vaccine

ROME (Reuters) – Italy lifted a ban on Novartis‘s flu vaccines on Friday after accepting the drugmaker had shown they posed no risk to safety.The company said it hoped to quickly resume regular supplies around the European Union. Italy banned the sale of anti-influenza vaccines produced by Novartis on October 24, pending...

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Boehner: GOP has 'some work to do'

House Speaker John Boehner (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)Reflecting on this week's election, in which Democratic President Barack Obama won re-election and Democrats made gains in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner said the GOP has "some work to do" in how it presents the party's ideas."It's clear that as a political party we've got some work to do," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters during...

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery...

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds. Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions...

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UK PM warns of witch-hunt against gays in pedophile scandal

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister David Cameron warned on Thursday that speculation about the identity of an unidentified member of his ruling Conservative party accused of sexually abusing children could turn into a witch-hunt against gay people.Cameron, who leads a troubled two-party coalition, ordered an investigation this week after a victim...

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FDA reviewing Merck’s experimental insomnia drug

WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J. (AP) — Drugmaker Merck & Co. says the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing its experimental insomnia medication, suvorexant (SOO’vor-eks-ant).The drug minimizes the morning grogginess common with many sleep aids. It could become a big seller for the Whitehouse Station, N.J., company. If...

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Giffords' husband faces shooter in court

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Gabrielle Giffords came face to face Thursday with the man who tried to kill her last year, but chose not to speak.Her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, did all the talking for her, as the couple told Jared Lee Loughner how the 24-year-old's deadly rampage at the former congresswoman's political meeting had upended her life."Her life has been forever changed. Plans she had for our...

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Canada firms to capitalize on nuclear trade with India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal.Once implemented, the agreement will end a ban on nuclear cooperation Canada imposed in 1976 after...

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Apple's shares slide 4 percent to five-month low

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“Dad’s Army” star Clive Dunn dies aged 92

LONDON (Reuters) – British actor Clive Dunn, best known as a bumbling old butcher in the popular World War Two sitcom “Dad’s Army”, has died, his agent said on Wednesday.Dunn passed away on Tuesday, Peter Charlesworth said, adding that he believed the actor died in Portugal where he has lived for many years. He was 92. As...

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Obama win clears health law hurdle, challenges remain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama‘s re-election eliminates the possibility of a wholesale repeal of his signature healthcare reform law, but leaves questions about how many of the changes will be implemented as the national focus shifts to tackling the U.S. debt and deficit.The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the biggest overhaul...

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Election night was a good night for Calif., civility and statheads

By Jeff GreenfieldForgive me if I don’t offer thoughts on the impending Republican civil war, the brilliance of the Obama campaign team, the effect of Hurricane Sandy, the demographic nightmare confronting the GOP, or prospects for the 2016 Iowa caucuses, now just a short 1,100 days or so away.There’s plenty of that for your Wednesday pleasure. But Tuesday night produced other news that’s worth your...

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Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making...

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Exclusive: EU regulators to accept Apple, publishers e-book offer

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Ivorian reggae singers bury rivalry for “peace” tour

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – As darkness falls over Ivory Coast‘s lagoon-side commercial capital a steady thumping cuts through the tropical night.

But where once the thud of heavy weapons set the Abidjan‘s residents scrambling indoors for cover, tonight it is a reggae bass line that draws them out.

Here, little over a year ago, supporters of then-president Laurent Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara were fighting a brief post-election civil war, the final deadly showdown of a decade-long political crisis.

After years teetering precariously between war and peace, the flames of division, xenophopia and anger – fanned in no small degree by some of the country’s most famous musicians – exploded into a conflict in which more than 3,000 people died.

One of Ivory Coast’s leading reggae artists, Serge Kassy, even rose to become a leader and organizer of Gbagbo’s Young Patriots street militia – a group accused of numerous atrocities during the war. Kassy is now in exile.

“When I looked at the musical scene in Ivory Coast, I realized that we ourselves went too far,” said Asalfo Traore of the zouglou band Magic System, one of the few groups that refused to take sides during the crisis years.

“It was when everything was ruined that we wanted to glue the pieces back together. But it was too late.”

Now, long-divided musicians are once again coming together, hoping to use their influence, so destructive for so long, to help Ivory Coast heal its deep wounds, and the country’s leading rival reggae artists are showing the way.

REGGAE RIVALRY

The long feud between Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly is a thing of legend in the reggae world, though neither has been willing to say what was behind the bad blood.

Both men come from Ivory Coast’s arid north and share a musical genre. But the similarities stop there.

Alpha, considered the father of Ivorian reggae, takes the stage in Abidjan clad in a shimmering pink suit, golden tie and Panama hat of an urban dandy. Tiken wears the traditional flowing robes of his northern Malinke tribe.

During the crisis, Alpha remained in Ivory Coast, while Tiken, a vocal critic of President Gbagbo‘s regime, went into exile in neighboring Mali.

They had so successfully avoided each other during their long parallel careers that before he picked up the phone to approach Alpha with the idea of uniting for a series of peace concerts, Tiken claimed they’d met only twice.

“Before going to the Ivorians to ask them to move towards reconciliation, it was important for us to show a major sign. That’s what we did,” Tiken told Reuters.

Out of a meeting in Paris was born a simple idea: six concerts in six towns across a country once split between a rebel north and government-held south, bringing together musicians from across the political spectrum to push for peace.

“No one’s died over the problems between Tiken and me,” said Alpha. “There are things that are more serious than our little spats, our pride and our vanities.”

Uniting the Ivorian music scene proved relatively easy in the end. Uniting the country could prove a tougher task.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Some 18 months since the war ended, reconciliation in Ivory Coast is going nowhere.

Though Ouattara is praised by international partners for quicky turning around the economy, critics complain he has done little to foster unity. He has so far refused to prosecute those among his supporters accused of atrocities during the war.

Meanwhile Gbagbo, who lost the run-off election but garnered 46 percent of votes, is in The Hague on war crimes charges.

The leaders of his FPI political party are either dead, in jail or living in exile, from where they are accused by United Nations investigators of organizing deadly armed raids on Ivorian police, military and infrastructure targets.

“People came here for Alpha, Tiken Jah and artists they only ever see on TV, not for reconciliation,” said high school teacher Michel Loua in Gagnoa, the second stop on the tour in Gbagbo’s home region.

“The politicians have made a business of it. They talk up reconciliation when it suits them, otherwise they could care less,” he said.

Unity was never a problem, Alpha said, until politicians began to play the ethnic identity card in the struggle for power that followed the death of independence President Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1993. And even after the violence and massacres, it is still not the problem today.

“Ivorians are not divided. That’s what I discovered,” he said on the last night of the tour. “If there are people that need reconciliation, it’s not the artists or the people. It’s the politicians,” he said.

Minutes later he was on stage singing “Course au Pouvoir”, a 16-year-old song that has found new relevance today with its lyrics: “There’s blood on the road that leads to the tower of power. Innocent blood.”

Having wrapped up their tour, Tiken, Alpha and the rest of the musicians are due to meet with President Ouattara and plan to call for the release of all pro-Gbagbo prisoners not accused of involvement and killings as a sign of good will.

The move has been called for by human rights groups as well as the FPI, who list it as one of their pre-conditions for dialogue. And though Ouattara has given no indication he is open to the possibility, many feel it is an unavoidable step towards lasting peace.

(Editing by Richard Valdmanis, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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