Column: Doesn’t take a genius to see that China’s catching up

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1B SHANGHAI – Bill Gates has a question he likes to ask when he talks about globalization: Twenty years ago, would you rather have been a B student in Poughkeepsie or a genius in Shanghai? And how about today? (Texans can substitute Mesquite or Waco for Poughkeepsie, if it […]

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Spiritual payback; Foreign priests want to fill need – if Americans let them

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A ENUGU, Nigeria – For generations of Nigerians, “missionary” was a synonym for “Irishman.” Thousands of Irish Catholics left Europe for the wilds of Africa, braving heat and disease to bring the message of Christ to heathen animists.But today’s missionaries are working in the opposite direction. They’re native Nigerians […]

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Moved by the Spirit; Nigerians blend Catholicism, traditional beliefs

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A ENUGU, Nigeria – Ejike Mbaka is telling a story. The 20,000 Nigerians gathered around him in the red-dust lot have gone quiet. “Last week, there was a man who was mad, insane,” he begins, standing on a rickety stage. “For years, the doctors attempted to heal him. But […]

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Southern cross; Far from the cathedrals of Europe, global demographics are inexorably changing the face of Christianity

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1G ENUGU, Nigeria – When the Rev. Humphrey Ani walks out on the poured concrete floor of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, he sees the future of Christianity stretched before him. The pews are packed, even though the slowly turning fans do little to disperse the Sunday morning heat. More […]

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Nigerian nuns happy with German pope; Sisters had rooted for African cardinal but weren’t disappointed

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 17A ENUGU, Nigeria – “The pope is coming! The pope is coming!” Sister Chinyere was yelling at the television the moment she saw the crawl across CNN’s screen. She and three other Sisters of Divine Love were in the front room of the small hostel they run in this […]

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A lesson in dying; Once a refuge from AIDS, Zambia’s schools are now its latest victims

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1H LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – His immune system buckled from tuberculosis. His weight slid to 84 pounds. But Ackim Sakala, a man whose life is built around sharing knowledge, knew he had to keep a secret. “As soon as people know you have HIV, you are put on a death […]

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Where the only growth industry is death; AIDS destroys scarce resources as well as family members

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 4H PARADISE COMPOUND, LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – It took a moment for Mwiche Simukoko’s family to realize she was dead. “There was no big sign,” says her aunt, Terry Nkoma, sitting in the dirt outside the family’s mud-brick house, where Mwiche’s wet tuberculosis cough had echoed a few hours earlier. […]

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A disappearing act for regime; Tracking Hussein’s vanishing vanguard is next task for Americans

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A Only days ago, Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf was Iraq’s public face on the war, giving his unique spin on worldwide television. No American soldiers in Baghdad, he insisted almost comically, with U.S. tanks only blocks away. “We besieged them, and we killed most of them.” And where […]

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Despite educational success, Japan plans to change system; Some leery of radical reforms to country’s rigid school curricula

By Joshua Benton Staff Writer Page 1A TOKYO – From American shores, it’s hard to imagine that anything is wrong with Japanese schools. Japan has finished ahead of the United States through decades of test-score comparisons. And educational success has played a role in building the world’s second-largest economy. But Japanese leaders think their system […]

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Failure of Soviets can teach America: Q&A with David Lesch

Sunday, September 23, 2001 Page 1J Failure of Soviets can teach America Q&A with David Lesch By Joshua Benton Staff Writer When historian David Lesch’s new book was published in July, he had no idea the events he described would echo so quickly in the halls of American government. The book, 1979: The Year That […]

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