world

First lady Michelle Obama made a surprise visit to Haiti Tuesday, on her way to Mexico. Mrs. Obama and Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, landed in Port-au-Prince shortly before 11 a.m. and were met by Haitian President René Préval and his wife. The two women took a helicopter tour of the devastated…

Homophobia Runs Amok in Senegal: Dead, Dug-Up and DumpedFresh from the “are you kidding me” file, homophobes are digging up the bodies of gays and dumping them on the doorsteps of their family members in Senegal. Yes, you read right — there is no “rest in peace,” for gays in that country.  It is truly…

“I really don’t believe it was ever a decision I had to make but more like, yeah … I’m gonna say it, a calling,” my brother, Hervé, writes to me in an e-mail from Jacmel, Haiti. He traveled there two weeks ago from his home in Los Angeles to assist in what had previously been…

The United States is playing a leading role in the meeting at the United Nations this week, where countries will announce their commitment to help rebuild Haiti. The involvement of the United States with Haiti is not new, and it has not always been benign. The two countries have had consistent interactions since the mid-18th…

The first time I wrote an essay about relocating from Harlem to Paris, I’d been living in France for all of 10 months. My newbie reflections concerning the City of Lights were based on less than a year’s life experience in my adopted city. May 2010 will mark six years since I uprooted my hip-hop-media-centric…

Imagine that one day President Barack Obama disappears. It is rumored that he has gone to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment of a condition that nobody is quite certain about. After three months, the public starts to speculate as to whether or not he is still alive. As a result of failing to follow the…

The images out of Haiti are haunting and horrifying: the bodies, the despair, the endless devastation, the desperate scramble for food and water. Watching this devastation from afar reminds me of being sent back home to Louisiana to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Recovery in the initial days was difficult to imagine. But distance…

Relief efforts for Haiti will culminate in a massive telethon this Friday that will be the most widely seen event of its kind, according to MTV. Featuring performances from Los Angeles, New York and London, the telethon will be broadcast through MTV networks available in 640 million homes worldwide, including for the first time China’s…

His own father was so worried about his involvement with extremist groups that he informed U.S. authorities about him. His name was on American security watch lists. Yet Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab cleared security in Lagos and Amsterdam and was able to board a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. When he attempted to set off an…