Free Republic

<p>Now as the city celebrates its 125th birthday, creative South Africans are seeing gold in warehouses and cheap office space, and they're revitalizing neighborhoods with galleries, museums, shops, studios, clubs and restaurants.</p> <p>JOHANNESBURG - (AP) -- Johannesburg dates its beginnings to the discovery of gold in 1886. Its downtown, where skyscrapers tower over deep mines, was abandoned by business in recent decades, and squatters turned the office towers into high-rise slums. But now, as the city celebrates its 125th birthday, creative South Africans are seeing gold in warehouses and cheap office space, and they're revitalizing neighborhoods with galleries, museums, shops, studios, clubs and restaurants.</p>

GENEVA — The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that the United States would use all the tools of American diplomacy, including the potent enticement of foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world. On Tuesday, she also announced a $3 million program to finance gay-rights organizations to combat discrimination, violence and other abuses.

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer  of money from poor people in rich countries  to rich people in poor countries." - Douglas Casey  Namibia's new (presidential) 'State House' I wonder if that hyperactive savior-of-the-downtrodden Bono's ever visited any these cribs -you know, just to see where all the cash he guilt-trips from people (inc. GWB) actually goes...? Just another Nigerian mansion under construction... Living The Good Life in Gabon Ghana's garish Presidential Palace (2005) McMansion in Trasacco Valley , Accra , Ghana Mansion (68 rooms!) belonging to Mugabe's nephew... Zimbabwe Sudanese Presidential Palace Jubilee Palace - Addis Ababa, Ethiopa Palais Presidentiel, Djibouti Palais...

Clinton in Libya to offer financial assistanceBy Matthew Lee/ Associated Press Posted: 10/19/2011 01:02:09 AM PDT TRIPOLI, Libya -- The Obama administration offered millions of dollars in new aid to Libya as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton encouraged the country's unsteady new leadership to commit to a democratic future free of retribution, and acknowledged in unusually blunt terms that the United States would like to see former dictator Moammar Gadhafi dead. "We hope he can be captured or killed soon so that you don't have to fear him any longer," Clinton told students and others at a town hall-style...

The United States Congress has blocked nearly $200m in aid to the Palestinians, the U.K’s Independent newspaper reported on Saturday. The aid, which was destined for projects related to food aid, health care, and state building efforts, was to have been transferred to the Palestinian Authority during the U.S. fiscal year that ends today, according to the report. However, following what the Independent described as an “unpublicized block” imposed on funding to the Palestinians since August this year, in response to the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN, the remainder of the aid allocated to the Palestinian Authority for...

Egyptian daily Al-Masry al-Youm reported Monday that Israel is behind a US bid to force Cairo to reduce tensions with Israel following a deadly border incident wherein at least three Egyptian soldiers were inadvertently killed by Israeli soldiers pursuing terrorists involved in a deadly terror attack that left 8 Israelis dead. According to the report Washington has threatened to reduce aid to Cairo - which it was planning to dramatically increase - unless it releases Ilan Grapel, an Israeli-American tourist in Egypt who has been accused of being a Mossad spy. Grapel was arrested at his downtown Cairo hotel by...

The United States announced Thursday it would provide $900,000 worth of emergency aid to flood-ravaged North Korea less than a month after the two sides resumed high-level dialogue... The U.S. provided $600,000 in September.. Earlier this month, South Korea offered $4.7 million to North Korea.

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy is promoting a bill to suspend U.S. assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Leahy, a Democrat and senior member of the U.S. Senate, wants assistance withheld from the Israel Navy's Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force's Shaldag unit. (Snip) According to a senior Israeli official in Jerusalem, Leahy began promoting the legislation in recent months after he was approached by voters in his home state of Vermont.

DADAAB, Kenya -- Hundreds of thousands of Somali children could die in the country's famine unless more help arrives, a top U.S. official said Monday as Washington prepared to announce $100 million in new famine aid. To highlight the crisis, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden visited a refugee camp on a patch of desert in eastern Kenya where tens of thousands of Somalis have massed. A drought has turned into famine because little aid can reach militant-controlled south-central Somalia. Jill Biden is the highest-profile U.S. visitor to East Africa since the number of refugees coming across the Somali...

A raucous debate is raging in Egypt over whether to accept some $200 million in US aid to build up long-suppressed civil society organizations, as critics denounce Washington for "meddling" in internal Egyptian affairs by providing assistance to groups not authorized by the interim authorities in Cairo. Several weeks after the February 11 ouster of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) allocated around $65 million to democracy-development programs in Egypt, part of an economic and civil assistance package of $200 million.

U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority has become an increasingly controversial matter in the wake of the group's decision to bypass peace negotiations and go to the United Nations for recognition of an independent state. But the outlay of funds to the Palestinians may become even more toxic after the release of a report by a media watch organization detailing the payment of salaries from the U.S.-funded PA to imprisoned terrorists. The report from Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli-based organization that monitors the Palestinian media and culture, said that more than 5,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are getting salaries...

FOREIGN aid has helped fund a multi-million-pound Paris property portfolio for African ­dictators, it emerged yesterday.Scores of the most luxurious houses and flats in the French capital are now owned by men who regularly receive vast handouts – including British cash via European funding. They include Ali Bongo, President of Gabon, with at least 39 properties, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, President of the Republic of the Congo, who has 16. The portfolio of Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea, includes a six-floor period building on the prestigious Avenue Foch worth at least £15million. It is used by his family on...

The World Food Program can't reach 2.2 million Somalis in desperate need of aid in militant-controlled areas of Somalia, WFP's director said Saturday, meaning refugee camps in nearby Kenya and Ethiopia are likely to continue seeing thousands of new refugees each week. SNIP Al-Shabab signaled in early July that it would accept aid groups it had previously banned, but changed course on Thursday, saying groups like WFP are not welcome. The group's refusal to accept aid from Western and "Christian" aid groups means millions could starve — or be forced to begin the hike to help to Kenya, Ethiopia or...

WASHINGTON: Federal authorities on Monday arrested a prominent US-based pro-Pakistan activist associated with the Kashmiri separatist movement, accusing him of funneling money from the Pakistani spy agency ISI to lobby US decision-makers. In the process, the Obama administration's law enforcement brigade also blew open the Pakistan and its spy agency's two-decade long subversion of the so-called Kashmir cause. The FBI swooped down on the Virginia residence of Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, a well-known representative of Kashmiri separatists in the US and detained him on charges of ''participating in a long-term conspiracy to act as agents of the Pakistani government in...

Pakistan has made the latest chess move in the escalating feud with the US after the successful raid that killed Osama bin Laden just yards from Pakistan’s most elite military academy. Saying that they will “fight the menace of terrorism in our own national interest using our own resources,” Pakistan’s defense minister publicly threatened to fight terrorism by, er, moving the army out of the region where the terrorists operate: Pakistan’s defense minister has said that the country might withdraw thousands of troops from its volatile border areas in response to a suspension of U.S. military aid, a move that...

As the US announces it is to withhold military aid to Pakistan, find out how much money America has given to the country since 1948. The dataset comes from Wren Elhai, at the Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD), who in May published a report along with Nancy Birdsall and Molly Kinder analysing the long-term impact of US aid to Pakistan. The numbers - which come from the US Overseas Grants and Loans database and the Congressional Research Service - have been adjusted for inflation and are presented in terms of the value of the US$ in 2009.

U.S. Gave $1.3 Billion to N.Korea Since 1995 U.S. aid to North Korea over the last 15 years totaled more than US$1.3 billion, according to official figures. The U.S. Congressional Research Service in a report Sunday said Washington provided $1.31 billion worth of food, energy and medical aid to North Korea since 1995, when the Geneva accords on the dismantlement of the North's nuclear weapons was signed. North Korea has continued to develop nuclear arms, but U.S. aid to North Korea continued every year except 2006, when the North conducted its first nuclear test. Even last year, when UN and...

The United States is providing hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid to countries that it borrows billions from, according to a report by Congress's research arm. The Congressional Research Service released a report last month, a copy of which Fox News exclusively obtained, showing that in fiscal year 2010, the latest year that data was available, the U.S. handed out a total of $1.4 billion to 16 foreign countries that held at least $10 billion in Treasury securities, including China ($27.2 million), Brazil ($25 million), Russia ($71.5 million), India ($126.6 million), Mexico ($316.7 million) and Egypt ($255.7 million)....

A group of self-proclaimed peace activists bringing dual-purpose materials to Gaza have refused to deliver the goods – preferring that they remain at sea rather than be transported through Israel. The activists are aboard a ship carrying 4.6 miles of sewage pipes. Materials such as pipes have been allowed into Gaza only under international supervision in recent years, as Hamas and other terrorist groups often use the pipes in manufacturing short-range rockets to fire on Israeli civilians (pictured right). However, under an agreement reached with the help of the Egyptian and Malaysian governments, the goods could be delivered to Gaza...

Lavish aid to Africa is turning the continent into a ‘spoilt child’, according to the head of a charity backed by Nelson Mandela. Mike Kendrick, founder of the respected Mineseeker Foundation, warned that aid often increased the hardship faced by the world’s poorest people. In a devastating verdict, he told the Daily Mail last night: ‘I sometimes use the analogy of a spoilt child. We have all seen rich parents give their child everything they need, without earning it.