Stories: Barack Obama
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After Grisly Mosque Attack, Nigeria’s Boko Haram Terrorist Group Calls Out Obama
Konduga is a tiny community on the banks of a river in northeastern Nigeria. Its residents are mostly farmers who are accustomed to a simple life filled with days that pass like the one before. That has recently changed, as an insurgency waged by Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram has spilled over from the heart of the war, in nearby...
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Obama Step-Grandma on Women’s Rights
No visit to Kenya is complete without calling on Sarah Obama, President Obama's remarkably sharp 90-year-old step-grandmother, the woman who raised his father, Barack Obama Sr. Since the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Westerners have trooped to her door, eager to learn about the president's African heritage from the woman he calls "Granny." Obama used her accounts of the...
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Sarah Obama: Barack Was Born in America
When I was in Kenya earlier this summer with the International Reporting Project, we met with Sarah Obama at her home near Kisumu for a 45-minute interview. She is President Obama's step-grandmother, and she attended his presidential inauguration. During the interview, she was asked by Irin Carmon about "people who believe the president was born in Kenya." Sarah Obama...
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No jardim de ‘Mama’ Obama
Read an English translation. Avó postiça de Barack Obama, Sarah Onyango Obama tornou-se uma atração turística no Quênia, país do avô paterno do presidente dos EUA, Barack Obama Sr., onde ele se casou, pela terceira vez, com esta mulher, hoje com 90 anos. Matriarca conservadora, respeitada e poderosa, '...
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In the Garden of “Mama” Obama
Barack Obama's step-grandmother, Sarah Onyango Obama, 90, has become a tourist attraction in Kenya, homeland of the U.S. president’s paternal grandfather, Barack Obama, Sr., and the country in which she married the patriarch (his third marriage). A conservative, respected, and powerful matriarch, “Mama” Sarah has a full schedule, and is available only by appointment. ...
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“Barack Obama Wasn’t Born in Kenya”
These days, you need an appointment to see Obama’s Granny, and yesterday we had one. In Kogelo they call her Mama Sarah Obama, and the once-modest home of Barack Obama’s step-grandmother, 90, is now a heavily guarded compound, reached by a namesake road. The money comes from donations, she told us, though the Kenyan...
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Mama Sarah Obama
We are visiting with Barack Obama's step-grandmather, Mama Sarah Obama, to talk about her work helping orphans and the elderly. If the iPhone video turned out, I may post a few of her repsonses to our questions.
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A New Start
For decades no one could enter or leave Elektrostal without the permission of the Soviet security services. After World War II, the city (whose name means "electric steel") had been chosen as a uranium-development site. Only 36 miles east of Moscow, Elektrostal became a closely controlled hub in the Soviet nuclear weapons program, and a kind of prison for scientists working...