Daily News Channel
Spirit Bird, the seventh album from Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Xavier Rudd, who plays Wellington tonight, was inspired by a unique encounter in the middle of nowhere with a red-tailed black cockatoo. “It’s very powerful that song, Spirit Bird,” Rudd explains.
Illegal diamond mining by Zimbabwean troops is leading to bloodshed and attacks against civilians, said a global watchdog group formed to cut the flow of so-called "blood diamonds." Residents and workers contributed accounts of attacks detailed by the interim findings of the Kimberley Process after a weeklong investigation in Zimbabwe. The probe started days after a Human Rights Watch report accused the nation’s armed forces of violently taking over the diamond fields in Marange district and killing about 200 people since last year.