Coup ousts Mauritania's first democratic president

Soldiers overthrew Mauritania's first democratically elected president in a coup yesterday and announced a military junta was taking charge of the northwest African Islamic state.
Soldiers seized President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi at his palace after he sacked senior army officers during a political crisis in the country, which is one of the continent's newest oil producers.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2008/08/07/coup_ousts_mauritanias_first_democratic_president/

Obama shows hints of his year in global finance

Barack Obama has authored two books, heralded for their poetic reflections on the conundrums of identity and the possibilities of politics. But his first professional writing was for a weekly newsletter more concerned with how investing in gold futures in Sao Paulo and London could be used to hedge against the fluctuating value of Brazilian cruzeiros.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/08/06/obama_shows_hints_of_his_year_in_global_finance/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed5

Is Morocco a Model for Curbing Extremism?

The British government's recent announcement about tackling religious extremism by giving young Muslims "citizenship lessons" among other things is an interesting one. It's easy to sneer at initiatives in the face of the omnipresent threat of Muslim religious extremism worldwide, but Britain is not the only country pursuing such an approach. So too is Morocco, where I live for part of the year.
http://www.metimes.com/Opinion/2008/08/06/is_morocco_a_model_for_curbing_extremism/1186/172~1218042002~1/

South Africa wakes up to growing white poor

Townships are used to visits and pledges from politicians. What made special the visit of the man expected to be South Africa's next president to a settlement called Bethlehem was that the population there is white and Afrikaans.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa-wakes-up-to-growing-white-poor-882631.html