Word: prized
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...Byatt's 1990 novel Possession was a hot, epistolary Victorian romance framed as a literary mystery, complete with epic poems, lost letters, adultery, suicide, lesbians, a bastard child, a grave robbery and hilarious send-ups of contemporary academics. No wonder it won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide: it satisfies every possible literary constituency...
When Sudanese-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim announced an annual $5 million prize to reward Africa's best leaders, he warned that there would be years when "we wouldn't award the prize." Just three years on, and despite considering "some credible candidates," the prize committee said on Monday that no prize would be awarded in 2009. In announcing the decision, committee member and former Botswana President Ketumile Masire said the panel "noted the progress made with governance in some African countries, while noticing with concern recent setbacks in other countries...
...award is, of course, a powerful indictment of Africa's still patchy governance and the continent's most recently retired leaders. The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership considers democratically elected former heads of state or government who have left office in the last three years. The prize is worth $5 million over 10 years and $200,000 a year for life thereafter. By making the reward so big - it is the largest annually awarded prize in the world - Ibrahim has said he wanted to create something to encourage African leaders to do good while in power, in part...
...prize committee, which is appointed by former cell-phone magnate turned philanthropist Ibrahim and his board, is nevertheless completely independent. It's a star-studded lineup that is chaired by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and includes former Finnish President and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari, former International Atomic Energy Agency head and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and former Irish President Mary Robinson. The committee said it would not discuss its thinking behind this year's non-award, though Robinson did note that it would have been hard to award a similar prize to a recently retired leader from...
...therein lies a powerful message. Candidates for this year's prize included former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who resigned last year, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who left office in May 2007, and former Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who stood down at the end of his two terms in January. All three have been lauded for their roles in what Mbeki once called an "African Renaissance." But all three were also accused by rivals of consolidating power to the detriment of democracy in their countries. Mbeki was also regularly criticized while in power for his inaction on AIDS...