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News hole: Microsoft man takes over Mali and hardly anybody cares | 

Wikipedia

As some of you more astute international news observers may have noted, the usually stable West African nation of Mali recently experienced a military coup with arrests of politicians continuing.

And as Columbia University’s Gregory Mann has noted, hardly anybody in the news media is reporting on this. So Mann did his own report and analysis. In fairness, Voice of America has done a good job covering what’s going on in Mali (only available to Americans on the web, by law….) and the mainstream media did note today the former President has arrived in Senegal.

Cheick Modibo Diarra

What few media have covered is what interests me most — the fact that the former head of Microsoft Africa and genuine rocket scientist Cheick Modibo Diarra is now acting Prime Minister.

Britain’s Independent has done a brief profile of him and his ‘daunting challenge,’ but that’s all I’ve seen. The paper says of Diarra:

Inside the tech giant the job was widely dubbed “Microsoft’s ambassador to Africa” but colleagues credit the astrophysicist with turning that around to become Africa’s ambassador to Microsoft.

Disaster in Japan … and Haiti, Pakistan, Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali | 

Flickr, doegox

We are all focused on the disaster in Japan right now, as we should be.

But what about the other, bigger disasters?

The massive earthquake, tsunami and current concern about damage to a Japanese nuclear power plant are the top news stories today. The quake was huge, the fifth largest in the last century. President Obama said today the U.S. is “marshaling forces” to help Japan deal with the catastrophe.

Local relief organizations like World Vision and Mercy Corps have put the Japanese quake-tsunami on the “front page” of their websites even though it is unlikely either organization will be doing much in response. I talked to both organizations and they are standing by ready to help, but both said it is possible they will not be needed.

Japan can largely take care of itself. World Vision and Mercy Corps take care of those who can’t. Continue reading