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Major US County Recongnizes Continental Africans as a Distinct Ethnic Group
TTimes World USA Report
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Major US County Recognizes Continental Africans as a Distinct Ethnic Group From Black Americans
A new day has dawn in American political landscape, the birth of Continental Africans as a separate sub ethnic group from the Black Americans or the more contemporary African American. Montgomery County the third wealthiest County in the United States, main commercial and economic hub of Maryland Washington DC area, which boast of the most educated, and probably the highest number and income of Continental African population in all the United States was the first to officially recognize this distinct sub ethnic group of African Americans in the United States.
Inaugurating the county recognition yesterday was no less than the County Executive Ike Leggett, flank by his assistants Mr. Bruce Adams, and Harold McDougall the designated coordinator from the County for the group. County Executive Ike Leggett in addition to the Latino Community Groups, Asian Community Groups, Middle Eastern Community Groups, officially recognised the Continental African Community Group as a distinct ethnic group for the purposes of services, business, community affairs and all such activities of Montgomery County. He selected representative to the Montgomery African Advisory Council.
Speaking with the group organizer and member of the Council Ms Evelyn Joe who migrated to the United States from Cameroons, the French African accented and articulate organizer of the group said most people don't even stop to think about the distinct identity of Continental Africans. Though we are African Americans we a distinct group, our needs are different, our problems are different, our communities though culturally similar with African Americans are often time very different from African Americans. Now we have first, second, third generations, though some of them are intermix with other African Americans, we are becoming a larger and distinct group.
Further commenting on this was Dan Edokpolo Austin M.D, President of Cignet Health Corp., a Physician and a former Chairman of the Conglomerate organization of All Nigerian American Congress (ANAC) and a Trustee of the Organization and a member of the Council. Dr. Austin said, Continental Africans are well represented in America today, estimates run from 4 to 7 million across America. Unfortunately even the US government statistics on this group is poor because they are lumped together with African Americans. Most US Universities would distinctly reveal the staggering proportion of this group. They are probably the most educated group among all ethnic migrants to the United States and contribute immensely to the educated work force in the United States and most especially Montgomery County in the Washington DC/Maryland National Capital area.
The Advisory Council on the affairs of the African Ethnic group to the County was commenced, other representatives to county on the African affairs included Dunyako Ahmadu, Mumie Barre of the Somalian community, Soffie Ceesay of Gambian community, Emmanuel Edokobi, Amie Jallah, Alexandar Mboukou of Congo, Dave Moktoi, Joshua Moses an Attorney from Silver Spring, Augustin Mutemberezi, Rwanda, Rev. Kennedy Kwasi Odzaffi of Ghana, Chief Alexander Taku of Cameroon, Patrick Tangelo, Ivo Tasong, Winta Teferi Ethiopia.
Indeed this is a great step forward for the new generation of people in these minority communities. Little would it be recognized that Barrack Obama the democratic nominee for President of the United States actually belong this the sub group of the African American Community, how be it, he is from a white American mother from Kansas and married into a Chicago African American community. However in areas like Washington DC, New York, Houston Texas, Atlanta Georgia, the population of the distinct Continental African Americans are quite significant and warrants the specific distinction. We hail this first recognition by Montgomery County, a true leading county in the country. Its such foresight that is necessary to sustain leadership, no wonder that Montgomery county continue to lead the nation and Maryland in many areas of development. County Executive Ike Leggett should be applauded for his vision, leadership and foresight in harnessing the huge growth potentials and holding to task these groups community responsibilities. Its only wise to bring every group to task for the overall responsibility of their community, if we don't, such group would inadvertently be working against the common good of any society and we would be working with our hand tied to one-side of our back to use the term from the democrat.
Speaking with Mr. Bruce Adams of the Montgomery County Executive office, he revealed that in the view of this administration, the world has come to Montgomery County and we welcome them. Immigrants and their hardwork has worked well for America for many generations, we welcome these, legal, productive and well meaning peoples from all nations who come here to seek a better life.
The County Executive is planning a trade mission to Africa soon, we are going to need the input of the African Advisory Council, we also have sister city projects planned for cities abroad and the County will declare September an Ethnic African month.
Our goal is to have the ethnic groups work well together for the overall goal of a better Montgomery county.
We look forward to the Ethnic Continental Africans becoming as organized, and involved as other ethnic groups in our county, like the Latinos and Asian groups to name a few and their meaningful participation for the overall progress of Montgomery county.
Detective Agency to be serialised
The best-selling book The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is to be made into a television series.
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Alexander McCall Smith's novel, which follows the adventures of detective Precious Ramotswe, is to be made into 13 episodes.Singer and actress Jill Scott will star in the lead role.A 90-minute pilot directed by Anthony Minghella and co-written with Richard Curtis is to be screened on BBC One this Easter.Minghella is famed for winning an Oscar in 1996 for directing The English Patient, and he was also Oscar-nominated for writing the screenplay for 1999's The Talented Mr Ripley.Curtis has written screenplays for Bridget Jones's Diary and the sequel The Edge of Reason, Love Actually, Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. He has also been behind TV series including Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley.US television network HBO is partnering the BBC, which is part-funding it, to make the series. Filming will begin this summer.
'Highly entertaining'
"Alexander McCall Smith's wonderful books have been a sensation around the world for years, and we're thrilled to be teaming up with the BBC to adapt these highly entertaining stories for HBO," said HBO's co-president, Richard Plepler."And needless to say, the opportunity to work with the exceptionally gifted Anthony Minghella and Richard Curtis makes this project all the more exciting."Joining Jill Scott on the series will be Dreamgirls star Anika Noni Rose as Precious' highly-efficient, yet rather peculiar, secretary Mma Makutsi.It is not yet confirmed whether British actors Colin Salmon, David Oyelowo and Idris Elba who starred in the pilot, will return for the series.The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency chronicles the adventures of Precious Ramotswe, the proprietor of the only female-owned detective agency in Botswana.Aided by Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe investigates cases, helps people solve problems in their lives, and begins a special friendship with the owner of a local garage.McCall Smith has had global success with the nine novels he has written about Mma Ramotswe.
Blair to Resign, Legacy Overshadowed by Iraq Miscalculation
TTimes World Report
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been in office for 10 years, is expected to announce soon that he'll step down. No one has offered as much enthusiasm, or risked such political cost, in supporting the Bush war in Iraq.
Blair vision of a new labor party was catapulted to power in 1997, propelled by a public thirst for change reflected in his party's theme song, "Things Can Only Get Better."
The new prime minister brought a new flair to 10 Downing Street. "Cool Britannia" was the slogan for the Blair years. He exuded optimism and possessed a natural ability to gauge the public mood.
Blair rallied to America's aid after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and committed British troops to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He did so despite opposition from a majority of British citizens. One million anti-war demonstrators marched in London's Trafalgar Square shortly before U.S. and British troops rolled into Iraq.
As British casualties in Iraq mounted, Blair's popularity plummeted. When he was first elected, 63 percent of Britons said he could be trusted, according to a recent poll by YouGov/Daily Telegraph . Today, that number is 22 percent. His unwavering support for the war in Iraq explains a lot of that decline.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who wrote a biography of Blair, voiced a view shared by many British voters:
"For all of his fervent loyalty, Blair has never really understood America — nor how little he and his country now matter in American calculations. … His relationship was 'special' on only one side of the Atlantic."
In recent months, Tony Blair has been lampooned regularly in the British media as "Bush's poodle" — a caricature underscored by comments overheard during a G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, last year. President Bush beckoned for the British Prime Minister by shouting "Yo, Blair."
Former Defense Minister Peter Kilfoyle, a Blair critic, called that view "delusional."
"In the depths of night, he [Blair] must realize how very wrong he has judged where Britain's national interests lie," Kilfoyle said.
The man expected to succeed Blair, Gordon Brown, is also pro-American, but not as fervently so as Blair.
"Gordon Brown is a traditionalist, but he's clearly not going to have the warm personal relationship with Bush that Blair had," said Philip Stephens, a columnist with the Financial Times newspaper. "The special relationship is loosening."
Death Sentence, Forced Marriage, Tales of Prison in Iran
TTimes Books Magazine
Marina Nemat's name had been scrawled on her forehead, and she was about to be shot.
She had been locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since early 1982, when, at age 16, she complained that math and history lessons in her school had been replaced by Koran instruction and political propaganda.
Nemat was rounded up for speaking out against the Ayatollah Khomeini's brutal regime, and she was sent to Evin to be interrogated, tortured and executed.
Just minutes from death, her life was spared. But the blessing came with a heavy price.
A prison guard named Ali had fallen in love with Nemat and used his father's connection to the Ayatollah to commute her sentence to life in prison. Threatening to harm her family and friends, he forced Nemat — a Christian — to marry him and convert to Islam.
In her new memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, Nemat tells the story of her life as a political and domestic prisoner, married to a man she feared. Though she grew to care for Ali's family, Nemat lived in a constant state of anxiety and guilt about what her family would think when they learned of her marriage to Ali and her conversion to Islam.
Twenty months after Nemat was imprisoned, Ali was gunned down on the doorstep of his parents' home. Six months later, Nemat returned home. It was only after her mother's death, when Nemat started filling notebooks with memories, that Nemat's family and friends learned of her past.
Get a copy of book, Prison in Iran
Chinese Food Heals Broken Heart
TTimes World Report
Can Chinese food heal a broken heart?
In her new novel, The Last Chinese Chef, Nicole Mones weaves her experience writing about Chinese food for Gourmet magazine into a story about a woman trying to find solace from her husband's untimely death.
Using Chinese culinary history, language and tantalizing descriptions of fine cuisine, Mones shows how food can both nourish the body and the soul.
Her protagonist, Maggie, flies to Beijing on a dual assignment: cover a chef competition and investigate a paternity suit that has been filed against her late husband. Maggie meets a chef, Sam, whose family's culinary history goes back to Imperial times.
His old-school recipes and history lessons of high Chinese cuisine revive Maggie's passion for food, even as she learns the truth about her husband.
Mones first visited China in 1977, six weeks after the end of the Cultural Revolution. In 1999 she began writing about Chinese food for Gourmet magazine, covering the food scenes in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Yunnan Province and Los Angeles.
Her extensive research for The Last Chinese Chef takes readers into the philosophy and artistic ambitions of Chinese cuisine — and leaves them hungry for her recipes.
My Marriage Proposal
I was doing housework while my Romeo watched TV. During a commercial
break, he asked me to "fetch him another cold one." When I returned with his beer, he looked into my eyes and said, "How would ya like to do this full-time?"
"I never asked your mother to marry me. I merely wanted to know if she could marry a man like me. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she had misinterpreted my question, so I thought it best to go along with her."
We met on a blind date. We talked for hours, through a cruise on Boston Harbor and dinner. That evening he said, "Someone is going to marry you and it might as well be me."
He looked at me very seriously and asked if I wanted to get married. If I did, I could get an engagement ring; if not, he was going to get a new gun.
Who’s Raising Our Children – Parents or Child Care Providers?
Children’s author eases the fears of child care for parents and children
Childcare workers in America held 1.3 million jobs in 2004, and that number is expected to increase 27-percent over all other occupations by 2014 according to Department of Labor.
Today, preschool children often spend much of their time in the care of someone other than their mother or father. In fact, many children are in childcare from 9 to 10 hours a day, 5 days a week before they are a year old. For many this continues until they enter kindergarten.
There is debate as to whether it’s good or bad for children, and while child development experts do not agree on the answer to this question, one professional Southern California child caregiver feels that as a society we have the responsibility to create materials that allow children to visually relate to being in the care of a babysitter. The traditional picture book of a mom home with her children is a fading reality.
“I want to soften the anxieties that parents and children may have when away from each other,” says Suanne Margaret Hastings, author of Many Moods of Maddie, the first of many books in the Baby-Sitter Series. “My books comfort children with the idea that it’s okay to be away from mom or dad and left with a babysitter and that it can be fun!” With that in mind, Hastings developed a distinctive tool for children and their parents – as well as caregivers - in today’s dual-income household. The book set, called The Baby Sitter Series, is designed for children ages 2-7.
“I initially began writing stories to help entertain the children in my care, but found such a love and a joy in the process that I continued over the last four years developing an entire series of books as well as other products to help children figure out just why these ‘people’ are in their lives and help make them feel good about it,” Hasting adds.
“Baby sitters, nanny’s and daycare workers often times become children’s ‘best friends’ and are the literal role models of the 21st century where in many cases both parents are pursuing careers,” says Hastings. “Throughout ten years of providing child care, I noticed that there are no tools or children’s books out there that help kids feel comfortable with the idea of being left alone with a caregiver.”
For better or for worse, childcare is here to stay as the need for two incomes continues to rise in America. The most important thing is that in making the decision when and where to put a child in a childcare setting, parents should understand the impacts of childcare. They need to become informed about the pros and cons of daycare. Parents who are educated about the childcare process can prepare their children better for that next step into kindergarten and elementary school.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Suanne Margaret Hastings is a Canadian born writer/actress who majored in Fine Arts at York University in Toronto, Ontario.
Defiance; The Book
Defiance; The Book
Here's some current event news to help you find a possible newspeg to feature this newly released intriguing book. Today comes news of an assassination of a top Russian banking official (http://tinyurl.com/qrapv). In Alex Konanykhin's true-tale book - www.DefianceTheBook.com - he shows that in his real-life situation as well, the Russian Mafia tried to assassinate him as a Russian banker -- even though he was in the USA at the time. This mirrors closely his situations detailed in the book and that timely newspeg may warrant your looking into this as a possible angle to feature the book.
Below is a release detailing a true story of international intrigue and survival that sounds like it came straight from a Hollywood spy movie -- but it is all a true story chronicled in the book "Defiance -- How to Succeed in Business While Being Targeted by the FBI, the KGB, the Department of Homeland Security, the INS and the Mafia Hit Men."
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Kidnapped Businessman Exposes International Government Corruption In New Tell-All Book.
"Defiance" - How A Targeted Entrepreneur Stood Up To Gangsters & Governments.
http://DefianceTheBook.com/
(NEW YORK, N.Y.) -- Alex Konanykhin was a wanted man. The Russian mafia took out a contract on his life. The KGB, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security were also on his trail. With paid assassins and two governments in hot pursuit, Konanykhin was running out of time and places to hide.
What happened to Konanykhin, once one of Russia's wealthiest entrepreneurs, who by his mid-20's amassed a $300 million empire and bankrolled Boris Yeltsin's rise to power, is, as one U.S. judge noted, "a tale worthy of a spy novel."
It is a true-life story so riveting, only Konanykhin himself can tell it.
................For complete story see Transatlantic Times next edition.
from August 2006
"Defiance" - New Tell-All Book Exposes Corruption Behind World Superpowers.
How A Targeted Entrepreneur Stood Up To Gangsters & Governments.
(NEW YORK, N.Y.) -- Alex Konanykhin was a wanted man. The Russian mafia took out a contract on his life. The KGB, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security were also on his trail. With paid assassins and two governments in hot pursuit, Konanykhin was running out of time and places to hide.
What happened to Konanykhin, once one of Russia's wealthiest entrepreneurs, who by his mid-20's amassed a $300 million empire and bankrolled Boris Yeltsin's rise to power, is, as one U.S. judge noted, "a tale worthy of a spy novel." It is a true-life story so riveting, only Konanykhin himself can tell it. His just released "Defiance," is a hair-raising account of betrayal, corruption, conspiracy, kidnapping, high-speed chases, as well as secret government cover-ups. The book goes behind the press headlines Konanykhin's case has generated for the past 10 years. In "Defiance" Konanykhin, 39, the founder of KMGI, a thriving high-tech agency located in New York, describes in gripping detail his against-all-odds ascent from a poor but industrious science student in the former U.S.S.R, to a powerful tycoon in the post-Communist Russia, who lived in the mansion built for the former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and was protected around the clock by Russian Secret Service. But when trusted members of his own security team betrayed him, and the U.S. government became a willing accomplice in an illicit pact with the KGB, the lives of Konanykhin and his wife Elena became a terrifying roller coaster of desperate attempts at survival, vindication, and search for justice. After fleeing the KGB-plotted assassination attempt in Budapest and eventually settling in the United States, the Konanykhins became pawns in a high-level political game between the two countries. Russia's leaders threatened to have the FBI field office in Moscow shut down if the Americans refused to extradite the couple. What followed was an extraordinary and bizarre web of intrigue that started with a KGB search of the Konanyakhins' Watergate apartment and their arrests on fake charges fabricated by the Kremlin. Written in a Virginia jail while Konanykhin awaited his extradition to Russia, "Defiance" chillingly depicts corruption in U.S. government. "The American government was hell-bent on unlawfully sending me to a sure death," Konanykhin says, pointing out that on three occasions the U.S. courts declared the arrests groundless and illegal. "Writing this book was all I could do while locked up in a prison cell - and it looked like the last thing I would be able to do in my life." Freed and granted political asylum in the U.S. - the only post-Soviet Russians to receive this status based on their political activities -- the Konanykhins are still fighting efforts of U.S. government to send them to the KGB - fourteen years after their arrival in the U.S.
Amazingly, despite these ordeals Konanykhin managed to build a new fortune in America from scratch. In 2004 National Republican Congressional Committee chose him as "New York Businessman of the Year."
Title: "Defiance"
Subtitle: How to Succeed in Business While Being Targeted by the FBI, the KGB, the Department of Homeland Security, the INS and the Mafia Hit Men. A True Story
ISBN: 0-9727377-0-7
Renaissance Publishing, 2006
Price: $27.95
http://DefianceTheBook.com/
Magazine Review: Decoy Magazine
Making the Art of Deception an Art
By Ed Rust, Proprietor, MagSampler.com
Politicians, lovers and merchants have practiced the arts of deception for centuries. But one of the purest forms of the art perhaps originated and certainly blossomed in North America over the past couple of centuries. It's celebrated in Decoy Magazine, a recent addition to our newsstand.
Carved waterfowl decoys were once purely utilitarian, created to be placed in water and to bob up and down, luring live fowl to join them under the guns of waiting vice presidents and other hunters. Apparently mallards, geese and the like are not stupid, and the more realistic the decoys, the more success the hunter can expect. Many a hunter in America's past was also good with his hands, and the happy result has been a significant number of hand-carved and painted decoys. Our mania for collecting has taken many of these old ersatz birds out of the water and onto mantels or inside display cases.
Decoy Magazine, published bimonthly in Lewes, DE, chronicles the stories of these decoys and monitors the many shows and auctions where they pass from hand to hand, often at what seem to be outrageous prices. In a recent issue editor and publisher Joe Engers notes that the biggest decoy auction house, which runs three sales a year, has reported gross sales in excess of $2 million for each auction over the past two years, with at least one decoy in every sale going for more than $100,000.
Stories of these decoys, their carvers and their collectors fill the pages of the magazine. The cover article of a recent issue is about Alfred Moes, a strong, silent Minnesotan, son of an expert woodcarver, who ran a gas station and garage in the little town of Lakeville. For some reason, the 44-year-old Moes, an avid hunter, decided in the winter of 1938 to carve a group of mallard decoys, the first he is believed to have made. The 15 decoys he created are now legendary for their craftsmanship and artistic appeal. He never made any more. Some are sleeping, some upright, and some are headless. Can't figure out why they have no heads? Because they're supposed to be feeding, with their heads in the water. It took me a while to get it too. A real mallard sure has to think fast to avoid becoming a dead duck.
A fascinating bit of detective work is reported in the issue. It's about a pair of pintail duck decoys that Bart Woloson, author of the article, picked up at a Milwaukee decoy show. Made from composite ground cork, they feature unusual swinging weights that are supposed to hang from the bottom of the decoy when it's in the water. His only clue as to the origin of the decoys was a patent number embossed on the weights. Research in the patent records led him to discover that a fellow named Anthony A. Oeding, living near St. Louis, patented the swing weight system in 1939. The weights are designed to oscillate in the water and propel the decoy. Google and phone book searches turned up nothing on Oeding, until Woloson found a 1961 newspaper picture that showed the inventor shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy! It turns out that Oeding had just turned 65 and was the 15 millionth recipient of Social Security benefits in the nation's history. The accompanying article provided Woloson with a few facts about the inventor?he was born in 1896 and had worked in an airplane factory?but the frustrated collector still doesn't know if the two pintail ducks in his possession are the only ones that Oeding made.
It's my sad duty to report that one of the articles in the magazine mentions that many modern waterfowl decoys are made of plastic.
Ed Rust is proprietor of www.MagSampler.com, a newsstand on the Internet that provides sample copies of hundreds of interesting magazines by mail for $2.59 each.
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