Saturday, October 23, 2010
Famine in Karamoja, Uganda (Uganda)
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Untitled (South Africa)
AWB Colonel Alwyn Wolfaardt, AWB General Johannes Fourie and Veldkornet (Field Cornet) Jacobus Stephanus Uys were driving a blue Mercedes at the end of a convoy of AWB vehicles, firing into a crowd of Bophuthatswanan civilians. Members of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force returned fire and hit the driver of the car, Nicolaas Fourie, in the neck, another gunman, Alwyn Wolfaardt, in the arm and the remaining gunman, Jacobus Uys, in the leg. When Wolfaardt got out of the car and waved a pistol, a Bophuthatswana police officer quickly took his pistol. Another policeman tried to fire on journalists but his rifle jammed and it was taken from him by another policeman. The wounded survivor Alwyn Wolfaardt waved a pistol but was advised not to start shooting by nearby journalists.
Menyatsoe approached and spoke to Wolfaardt, asking if he was a member of the AWB. Wolfaardt confirmed this, saying they came from Naboomspruit, and pleaded for his life and the lives of the other two wounded AWB members. Menyatsoe then shot the three wounded men dead at point blank range with an R4 rifle, saying "what are you doing in my country". The shooting was captured by the watching journalists and broadcast worldwide.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Helicopter Downed (Brazil)
Drug traffickers shot down the police helicopter during a gun battle between two rival gangs on 17 October 2009, killing two officers. Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro was engulfed in a renewed outburst of violence a mere two weeks after winning its bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
Bullets ripped into the helicopter as it hovered over a shoot-out between the police and drug traffickers in the Morro dos Macacos slum in northern Rio de Janeiro. The pilot was hit in the leg, causing him to lose control and crash.
Two officers died, while the pilot and three other policemen escaped after the aircraft hit the ground on a football field and burst into flames.
Despite the mayhem, officials defended Rio’s ability to control violence ahead of the Olympics, as well as before 2014, when Brazil will host the World Cup, with key games in Rio.
The downing of the helicopter happened amid intense firefights involving rival gangs in the slum as one tried to seize a rival’s territory, authorities said.
The city has previously hosted the 2007 Pan American Games without incident.
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Survivor Tree (USA)
The force of the blast ripped most of the branches from the Survivor Tree, glass and debris were imbedded in its trunk and fire from the cars parked beneath it blackened what was left of the tree. Most thought the tree could not survive. However, almost a year after the bombing, family members, survivors and rescue workers gathered for a memorial ceremony under the tree noticed it was beginning to bloom again. In that instant the tree became a symbol of what the city had come through.
The inscription around the inside of the deck wall around the Survivor Tree reads:
The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us.
Hundreds of seeds from the Survivor Tree are planted annually and the resulting saplings are distributed each year on the anniversary of the bombing. Thousands of Survivor Trees are growing today in public and private places all over the United States; saplings were sent to Columbine High School after the massacre there, to New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, and various times.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Neda (Iran)
The death of Neda Agha-Soltan drew international attention when her death was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the internet. The video quickly became a rallying point for the reformist opposition.
As captured on amateur video, she collapsed to the ground and was tended to for several seconds. Someone in the crowd around her shouted, "She has been shot! Someone, come and take her!" The videos were accompanied by a message from a doctor, later identified as Dr. Arash Hejazi, who said he had been present during the incident (but has since fled Iran out of fear of government reprisals):
"At 19:05 June 20th Place: Kargar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father [sic, later identified as her music teacher] watching the protests was shot by a Basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about one kilometer away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gas used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me."
Her last words were, "I'm burning, I'm burning!"] She was pronounced dead en route to Tehran's Shariati hospital, aged 27.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Columbine Massacre (USA)
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on 20 April 1999, at Colimbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide.
It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, after the 1927 Bath School Disaster, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, and the deadliest for an American High School.
The above still, Eric (left) and Dylan (right), is taken from the infamous Columbine High School cafeteria surveillance video.
School shootings were already a problem before 20 April 1999. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris knew that theirs had to stand out. So they planned to make every previous incident look insignificant, and they videotaped their boast so the world would know what they had set out to do.
And so they turned Columbine High School into an abattoir: murdering 13, wounding 24 other people and then, finally, killing themselves in a drama seen live on television.
It was not quite the 250 they had hoped to kill, but it was enough to make the incident the worst school shooting in American history.
This sudden eruption of violence in the middle of one of the most solidly upper middle class communities in America set off months of soul searching. Parents and school officials discussed the prevalence of violent music and video games. Parents asked: what are the warning signs that our children are turning out to be their own enemies? On their tapes, Klebold and Harris talk about anger management but not the expected kind. Rather, they were learning to ratchet up their anger and yet keep it secret from everyone else -- until the day they had to turn it on full blast.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Real Life, Amidst Chaos (Lebanon)
This photo (shot by Spencer Platt) shows a group of young Lebanese driving through a South Beirut neighborhood devastated by Israeli bombings. Taken on 15 August 2006, the first day of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah when thousands of Lebanese started returning to their homes." World Press Photo jury chair Michele McNally describes the winning image: "It's a picture you can keep looking at. It has the complexity and contradiction of real life, amidst chaos. This photograph makes you look beyond the obvious."
Those in the picture are: The driver- Jad Maroun; his sister Tamara, the blond girl sitting in the front; his other sister, Bissan sitting in the back of the car; Liliane Nacouzi - held a tissue to her face in the winning picture because of the fumes from the fires still burning in the rubble. Nour Nasser is hidden behind Liliane.
Four of the young people in the group are actually residents of the area and had to flee during the shelling. This was the first time they returned to the suburbs and they were eager to check on their apartment and their belongings. All the people in the picture, were displaced by the war and were put up by their employers in the same hotel in the centre of Beirut, where they became friends.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Famine in Niger (Niger)
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Misery in Darfur (Sudan)
The very weather-beaten arm of her mother goes over her left shoulder and there are the very small weather-beaten hands of the child, who is about five or six, clinging on to this one piece of security that she has, which is the weather-beaten hand of her mother.
The mother is not in the image, she's in the background. But then slightly further in the background you see the other hands of her brothers and sisters as they wait in this village.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Flames of Hate (South Africa)
It was late afternoon when Krog heard that someone had been set alight in Ramaphosa (east of Johannesburg). At the scene, he saw Mozambican national Ernesto Nhamwuave struggling beneath a burning mattress as emergency service workers and police tried to extinguish the flames.
Upon publication, outrage swept across a nation that we were once again seeing intolerance and brutality that many believed should have remained in the country’s Apartheid past.
During the late eighties and early nineties, South Africans had become desensitized to endless images of violence and by the time of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994 people were only too ready to believe him when he said: "Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another." But 14 years later the nation was seeing it repeated.
Nhamwuave died in hospital later that afternoon. His body was transported to his home in Mozambique.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Palestinian Woman Pleads with Soldier (Lebanon)
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Betty Grable (USA)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Toppling of the Saddam Statue (Iraq)
Friday, December 5, 2008
Mumbai Attacker (India)
Initially, a previously unknown organization called the Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility. Later Azam Amir Kasav, the single terrorist who was captured alive, disclosed that the attackers were members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamic terrorist group.
The attacks drew widespread condemnation across the world.
The Mumbai attacks highlighted the increasing importance of social media and citizen journalism in the way events are reported. Many people covered the unfolding event on websites like Twitter and Flickr, which are largely clustered under search tags such as "mumbai" and "attack".
The day after the attacks, the Indian government asked Mumbai citizens to cease updating Twitter with live coverage of police activity. The New York Times and BBC offered live textual coverage online, as did many Indian bloggers; A map of the attacks was set up using Google Maps. The attacks have been dubbed by some journalists as "India's 9/11", a reference to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States of America.
Source wikipedia