Word: foreigner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...manuscripts might just change that. The books date from between the 14th and 16th centuries, a time when the town was a thriving trading hub and intellectual center for West Africa. Now, scared that Timbuktu's 50,000 or so surviving books might disintegrate or be sold off to foreign collectors, African and Western organizations are racing to salvage the treasures, preserving them from the ravages of climate, dust and the passage of hundreds of years. Millions of dollars have been spent in laborious conservation and cataloguing of the works. A sleek new museum, completed last April, is scheduled...
...growing sense that the manuscripts are tangible proof of Africa's sophisticated history has inspired a series of projects to restore, conserve and keep them in Mali. A few of the 32 family libraries in Timbuktu have received foreign funding from institutions such as the Ford Foundation or governments such as those of Spain, Norway and Dubai. Six years ago, South Africa's government began the museum project to house the Ahmed Baba Institute's huge collection. Until now there has been no building in Timbuktu with the space or sophisticated temperature control in which to keep old documents. Curators...
...protesters who planned to march in the streets. "We are not joking," he declared to the semi-official Fars news agency. "We will confront those who want to fight against the clerical establishment." The same day, Press TV, a state-sponsored broadcast station, reported that "an underground network providing foreign media outlets with photos and footage of the post-election unrest has been identified and arrested in Iran." Despite such threats and the existence of undercover Basij within the crowds, witnesses said that protesters were defiantly snapping videos and pictures with cell-phone cameras during Thursday's demonstrations...
...Western diplomats worry that the security vacuum may allow foreign terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to move in. Osama bin Laden is widely admired in the arid north. It has become fashionable for Muslims to name their sons after him, while his picture adorns T-shirts and posters. In a speech in 2000, bin Laden named Nigeria as among "the region[s] most qualified for liberation." "Clearly there is a lot of concern in Washington with the idea that al-Qaeda can gain a foothold within the 65 million-strong Muslim population in northern Nigeria," says the U.S. official...
...There was activity recently in Washington as well, on the Iran front. At a congressional hearing on Iran on July 23, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Howard Berman announced that if Iran doesn't engage in talks, he would move ahead "in the early fall" with a widely supported bill that would ban U.S. commercial ties with any company that sells refined petroleum products to Iran. Despite Iran's massive oil reserves, its lack of refining capacity forces the nation to import almost half the gasoline it consumes. Berman introduced the bill at Ross's urging last spring. (See pictures...