Word: africans
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...course, kidnapping foreigners has long been a staple of militant activities in war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan and, at times, even in supposedly more secure settings like Pakistan and Yemen. But apart from a one-off abduction of 32 Europeans trekking in the Algerian desert in 2003, North African militants never showed much of an interest in kidnapping until they linked up with al-Qaeda in 2007. Since then, it's become a veritable habit. (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East...
Although obtaining money to fund its attacks against North African governments remains AQIM's main reason for kidnapping foreigners, analysts believe another motivation is terrorizing the West. A French foreign intelligence official tells TIME that militants executed a British hostage last May, for example, simply to horrify the world after efforts to secure a ransom reportedly failed. The man, Edwin Dyer, was abducted while traveling in Niger in January 2009, and in exchange for his freedom, AQIM demanded $14 million and the release of a radical cleric being held in a British prison. When Britain balked, Dyer was executed less...
...despite the gruesome executions that sometimes happen when ransoms aren't paid, African officials have urged Western governments not to encourage hostage taking by rewarding it. Last September, Algerian President Abellaziz Bouteflika asked the United Nations to adopt an international ban on paying ransoms, which he called "the biggest source of terror financing today." Still, with the clock ticking for the hostages now in AQIM's hands, the decision for Western leaders grows more difficult...
...Zuma, who likes to celebrate his Zulu ancestry by dancing onstage in leopard skins, is unlikely to care what the rest of the world thinks about the fact that he fathered a child out of wedlock - and so far, that unrepentant African pride has won him admirers across South Africa and beyond. The accusation that he is undermining his own AIDS policy is more damaging, though. Zuma already stoked outrage in 2006 when, on trial for rape - a charge of which he was eventually acquitted - he admitted to having unprotected sex with a woman he knew to be HIV positive...
...attempts to restore his claim to responsibility were undermined somewhat by Brian Sokutu, a spokesman for Zuma's African National Congress Party. He told the Associated Press that Zuma's relationship with Khoza was not necessarily adulterous, as he may have been intending to marry her. "There is something called courtship," he said, before adding, "And during that period, anything can happen...