As we commemorate International Human Rights Day today, December 10, I can't help but recall the moment 17 years ago in Beijing when then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton proclaimed, "Women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights."

Today, for many of us, these 11 words may seem obvious, even instinctive. But in 1995, they were a revelation. I remember being among the delegates at the Fourth World Conference on Women, and feeling a current of excitement wash across the room. It was perhaps one of the first times the world had heard a person of global stature assert at a global forum in such unequivocal terms that women's rights and human rights were one and the same.

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New Vision ( Uganda ) reports

S.African women rights at risk as Zuma woos tribal chiefs

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The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Asikuma-Odobeng- Brakwa, has questioned the intellectual ability of Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby who has attributed NPP’s electoral defeat on complacency.

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Activists filmmakers in Cairo set up a projector outside the presidential palace on Sunday night and showed video shot at the same location last week during deadly street battles.

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Ethiopia: EX-'GENERAL HOSPITAL' STAR Senait Ashenafi Booted Off Airplane -- Arrested for Public Intoxication Former "General Hospital" star Senait Ashenafi is the passenger from hell -- TMZ has learned, she was arrested at a Dallas airport for public...

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As you blog followers may have guessed I have been favouring Facebook over the blog lately, but felt that I must also share the following video with y'all here (I just shared it on FB).

I'm not, as a rule, given to sharing stuff other people have posted, but this movie of a leopard in South Africa (the setting is not specified, but it looks like the Sabi Sand Game Reserve to me) by Martha van Rensburg is just breathtaking.

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I didn't even know it aired; did you? But it'll be re-broadcast on Wednesday, December 12, at 8pm, on ESPN 2. The full story via press release from ESPN... "30 for 30" Film "You Don't Know Bo" is ESPN's Highest Rated Documentary You Don't Know Bo, the latest film in ESPN Films' Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated 30 for 30 film series, earned a 2.3 metered market rating to become ESPN's highest rated documentary on an overnight basis, according to the Nielsen Company. The film, which aired Sunday night after the Heisman Trophy presentation, topped The Fab Five, an ESPN Films documentary that premiered to a 2.0...

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Until last week, Pierre Brassard was the world's most famous royal prankster, thanks to a 14-minute conversation he had with Queen Elizabeth in 1995.

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Surprised right? But I'll bet you didn't know that a brother, Christopher Judge, was in The Hobbit? Most of you will be familiar with him from the hit TV sci-fi series Stargate SG-1, on which he was a regular for 10 years; and he's also appeared in dozens of TV and film roles over the past 22 years. However, I have to confess that Im not talking about Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, but rather Joseph J. Lawson's Age of The Hobbits - a straight-to-DVD release, produced by The Asylum production company, and which is scheduled to be released tomorrow. Well maybe not... Turns out that today, a California federal judge granted Warner Bros' request to...

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Today is the celebration of the 101st birthday of the great Egyptian novelist (and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature), Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006). Last year, for the centenary, I published a lengthy interview with Dr. Raymond Stock, who has translated many of Mahfouz' works and is working on a definitive biography. He told many stories of the great man, and if you didn't read it then I commend it to you now, (If you did read it then, go read it again, then go read some Mahfouz).

As Dr. Stock noted in that interview, his birthday has always been celebrated on December 11, the date the birth was registered, but his research discovered the actual record of the birth showed he was born December 10.

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Kamene Okonjo, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's mother, who is a medical doctor and the wife of a traditional ruler, was kidnapped on...

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A few days ago Tom posted another installment of 10 African films to watch out for, one of which is the documentary "Underground/On the Surface," on the popular "second-class" youth music genre mahragan shaabi. While we wait to see the documentary for ourselves next year, above and below are some home-made videos of young men dancing [...]

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