A music awards show dubbed the “African Grammys” was hit by an embarrassing series of hitches culminating in the absence on Sunday of star Chris Brown and an apology by the organizer.
The show had been delayed from Saturday to enable rapper Brown to attend, with organizer Ernest Adjovi initially blaming the delay on Brown missing his flight, but later saying heavy rains and other logistical hiccups were behind the postponement.
Brown finally arrived with singer Rihanna in the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan on Sunday, when he was due to perform at the glitzy Kora Awards that recognize musical achievements from around the continent.
Photo: AFP
But while the Koras were going on at a luxury hotel, the US singer was a few minutes away in the national stadium performing at a much-delayed concert for “Peace in Africa.”
Benin businessman Adjovi later apologized for the numerous “dysfunctions” that had occurred during the three-hour ceremony.
R&B star Brown landed overnight in Abidjan. Rihanna, who hails from Barbados, was by his side, wearing dark glasses.
The pair have a tumultuous history, and celebrity watchers obsessed about whether they are an item again after Brown admitted assaulting Rihanna in a case dating back several years.
Brown was sentenced to five years probation, a year-long domestic violence program and 180 days of community labor after pleading guilty to assaulting Rihanna on the eve of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in 2009.
Ivorian quartet Magic System won the Kora award for best African group of the year, while best artist from the continent was DJ Arafat, another Ivorian.
Chidinma from Nigeria enchanted the ceremony and won the award for best musician from west Africa, while Algerian rai singer Cheb Khaled was best north African artist and French rap group Sexion d’Assaut took the award for the “African diaspora” in Europe. Chris Brown, whom fans call “Breezy,” won the US equivalent.
“Mama” Patience Dabany, former first lady of Gabon and mother of current head of state Ali Bongo, was proclaimed “woman of the year.”
Past Kora ceremonies have been attended by former South African president Nelson Mandela and the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson.
For Ivory Coast, which is still recovering from four months of post-election violence that ended in April 2011 after claiming about 3,000 lives, the event signals a return to normalcy.
However, the awards have drawn fire over the price of admission, with tickets costing 1 million CFA francs (US$2,000) for a seat in the luxury hotel for the ceremony.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS