The News Review:

- Sierra Leone eyes a golden future
- Sa Leone athletes granted permanent stay
- When Cutting Isn’t Cruel
- The fight reflex, an essay by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad | Comment is free |…

Sierra Leone eyes a golden future
BBC News – Aug 20, 2006
Gesturing to the small but heavy pile of gold on the table she proudly admits to mining the flakes herself. Elegantly dressed in a traditional African headscarf and matching skirt she introduces her “team” of fellow miners gathered around her, a group of colourful, lively young women, many of them carrying small children. This team and others like them form the backbone of Sierra Leone’s small scale alluvial gold mining industry, where 90% of the prospecting is done by women. Whilst the men follow the dream of finding a winning diamond, it is the women who resolutely pan the tailings of the diamond gravel with nothing more than their kitchen calabashes and a shovel.

Sa Leone athletes granted permanent stay
The Age – Aug 20, 2006
The other four athletes from war-torn Sierra Leone who wentmissing from the athletes’ village during the Melbourne games inMarch hope to be granted visas this week. Refugee advocate David Addington said on Sunday 12 of the 14athletes, all now living in Sydney, were working in a variety ofoccupations, including in factories, markets and the constructionindustry. Of the remaining two, one was studying and the other was betweenjobs. “They have already been accepted by the community and settledinto the Australian way of life,” Mr Addington said. The four athletes who were yet to be granted permanent visashoped this would occur by the end of the week.

When Cutting Isn’t Cruel
Washington Post – Aug 20, 2006
The governments of Djibouti and Mauritania have campaigned against it; public support has diminished in Egypt, Ethiopia and Senegal. Last year, dozens of practitioners in Ivory Coast renounced the trade and gave up their instruments. Three weeks ago, a group of colleagues in.

The fight reflex, an essay by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad | Comment is free |…
Guardian Unlimited – Aug 19, 2006
We were waiting for them in the low lands between Khiam and Marjeyoun. We were four groups of Hizbullah and Amal fighters, we fired at them from everywhere, we hit few tanks and they couldn’t retrieve them till Sunday night. “Abu Ali is a professional fighter: when the Lebanese civil war ended, he went to Africa, fighting in the jungles between Sierra Leone and Liberia, made some money and came back to his home town after the Israelis withdrew in 2000 with enough money to build a big house. But he never stopped thinking about fighting. “Its just like when you flirt with a girl. Hitting a tank is the same: you get closer and closer and then you hit. It’s not really different from hunting a bird.