Why it’s critical that we boost the aspirations of black children | Hugh Muir Monday 30 June 2014

One in 5 black children believe their skin colour impedes their success prospects – how do we change this perception?

Forty per cent of black children and 39% of Asian children imagine their teachers might describe them as clever.
The world as we would like it to be would provide a special space for the innocence of childhood. We tell our children that with focus and hard work, and a little bit of luck, they can be whoever and whatever they want to be. But this is not the world as we would like it to be, and today there is evidence that some of that innocence is lost, and childhood aspirations have been blunted. Aim high, we say; imagine there is no ceiling. But perhaps they know too much.

Research for BBC Newsround reveals that one in five black children aged eight to 14 believe their skin colour could hinder their job prospects. Just 2% of white children felt the same anxiety, along with 13% of the children polled of Asian origin. Twenty-one per cent of black children felt their skin colour would make it harder to succeed in the future, and 40% imagined that their teachers might describe them as clever, compared with 46% of white children, 39% of Asian and 47% of mixed or other origins. One of those polled told Newsround that “this generation is still being judged and stereotyped, so it’s going to be difficult for us to do what we want to do when we’re older”.

It’s no surprise that young black people might hold these views. In other generations, it was accepted that the playing field was not level. The generation schooled in the 1970s, 80s and 90s were repeatedly told by parents and other adults that the only safe course was to assume that there was no equality of opportunity. Work twice as hard, was the standard advice. But it wasn’t advice for an eight-year-old. At eight, we hoped that children could still thrive in a bubble of hope and aspiration, shielded from the realities of unequal employment, policing, schooling. If an eight-year-old can’t exist in that bubble, a bad situation must have got very much worse.

The Oscar-winning film director Steve McQueen, who is making a BBC drama on the lives of a black family, today declared the situation upsetting. “When I was at school myself, there was this situation where black children were not deemed as intelligent or deemed to be able to go on to do anything of any real purpose. The circle has to be broken, it’s upsetting to think that it hasn’t. When you narrow people’s possibilities then they become narrow.”

There is reality and perception. On the one hand young black people face an unemployment rate of almost 45%. In the first three months of last year, the number of African-Caribbean inmates in youth offender institutions, secure training centres and children’s homes rose 10.4%, while for white youths in custody it fell 42%. On the other hand, black teenagers are more likely to apply to university than white youngsters.

There are possibilities to focus upon, but also gravitational pull to fight against. The dampening effect of race, and – as is also the case with white working-class children with low aspirations and achievement – the heavy millstone of class. In the BBC survey, of 1,600 eight- to 14-year-olds, 25% of white children, 30% of black children and 24% of Asian children said they wanted to be footballers; 27% of black children and 21% white said they wanted to be musicians or rappers. Not doctors, or pilots, or journalists or judges. They cite professions that seem attainable because they see people they identify already doing them: the value of role models.

The MP and former minister David Lammy – later to become a barrister and product of Harvard – urged universities to better consider the backgrounds of applicants as part of the selection process, on the basis that “if you’re on the 15th floor of a tower block in London and you manage to get an A and 2 Bs, despite sharing two bedrooms with seven brothers and sisters and having just a single mum … you are as bright as that child from Chelsea who’s had the benefit of tutoring,” he told the BBC. That’s addressing the reality. But then there is the perception. I once made a young black teenage drug dealer explain to me the processes of his work: the buying, the selling, the calculations, the judgments, all conducted under threat of violence and arrest. I put to him that bankers and traders have much the same skill set. “Who’s going to give me that kind of job?” he asked. That’s also within the cycle that needs breaking.

The Guardian

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Mantashe’s ill temper has hurt the ANC |Ebrahim Harvey mg.co.za

The secretary general must take some blame for the spectacular rise of Amcu and the EFF.

For those of us who were in the trade union movement in the 1980s, Gwede Mantashe was widely recognised as a very strong and militant worker leader in the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), then the largest and most powerful affiliate of the trade union federation Cosatu.

He worked at the Matla colliery in Witbank. We saw him as an emerging leader of the NUM, one who would probably go places.

True to prospects, Mantashe rose to the position of general secretary of the NUM in 1997, taking the place of Kgalema Motlanthe, who was elected secretary general of the ANC at its Mafikeng conference that year. Mantashe held the post until he, in turn, became party secretary general at the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007.

Mantashe has strong leadership qualities, which we must recognise. But he often overreaches himself, shoots from the hip and is temperamental, tough and even harsh, especially with the media and critics of the ANC.

He told me that his temper comes from his mother, who apparently had a strong, dominant personality, even in relation to his father. She was a no-nonsense woman who shaped Mantashe’s character. He seemed proud of the fact.

The problem, politically, is that he has a very strong – even excessive – sense of himself. His lack of discretion and restraint may have had serious consequences for the organisations he has led.

It was mainly because of Mantashe that Joseph Mathunjwa was expelled from the NUM and formed the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu). The rest is history, and a very dramatic and telling one at that.

A poignant case of the “vengeance of history” was not just the birth of Amcu in direct opposition to the NUM, but that it also went on to wrest control of key mines from the NUM, especially in Marikana, which has come to symbolise the new, militant class struggle of miners and the broader working class.

I often wonder how Mantashe feels about the dramatic developments in which Amcu has become the majority union in former NUM strongholds. In hindsight, did he have any regrets about Mathunjwa’s expulsion and what it led to?

Mantashe also played a big role in the expulsion of the former president of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, with political consequences as serious and dramatic as the consequences to labour of the expulsion of Mathunjwa from the NUM.

The million-plus votes won by Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters in the recent elections, just eight months after being formed, is unprecedented in any election in the history of South Africa. I have no doubt that many in the new ANC leadership elected at Mangaung in 2012 regretted the expulsion of Malema.

There was much speculation at the time that Mantashe had been wanting Malema out before that. How Mantashe dealt with Malema and the rest of the youth league leadership in Luthuli House was decidedly not nice, constructive, comradely or exemplary. Mantashe wanted Malema to be put in his place in a very authoritarian manner.

Mantashe may have followed in Motlanthe’s footsteps when it came to key positions such as the NUM leadership and then the secretary generalship of the ANC, but Mantashe seems to have taken no lessons from Motlanthe’s leadership style. On the Malema matter, as Motlanthe tells us in the biography of him that I wrote, he favoured a “political solution” rather than expulsion for the errant ANCYL leader. For Motlanthe, how the parent body dealt with the league was critical to the future of both organisations.

Mantashe’s often angry, cold and scornful condemnation of critics has been chilling at times. But nothing prepared me for the public relations disaster of two weeks ago when he accused “foreign forces” of attempting to use the strike by Amcu to “destabilise” the South Afri­can economy – and this because a white Swedish woman is part of the Workers and Socialist Party, which supported the Amcu-led platinum strike. The accusation was so far-fetched and misplaced that it was laughable.

Besides the implicit xenophobia and racism of his utterance, it was terribly condescending and insulting to the affected mineworkers – the constituency from which he comes. Did he forget that internationalism and solidarity have always been hallmarks of the international trade union movement? Would he have complained if the NUM had been on strike and received such support? No!

What has happened to the progressive, anti-racist and revolutionary former mineworker? When the Mail & Guardian interviewed him in 2011 and asked if he had presidential ambitions, he did not discount the possibility.

This is a man who can be infectiously jovial, even reasonable – but not, unfortunately, when such attributes are most needed in the hurly-burly of his political work.

Ebrahim Harvey is an independent political writer and the biographer of former deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe.

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Zimbabwe’s MDC fires Morgan Tsvangirai Times LIVE | 30 June, 2014

Morgan Tsvangirai has been expelled from the MDC-T after being found guilty by a three-member tribunal set-up by the MDC Renewal Team to probe a host of allegations levelled against him.

According to myzimbabwe.co.zw, the party’s national chairman Lovemore Moyo was also expelled alongside Tsvangirai for his role in causing problems in the party, among other accusations.

A faction led by secretary-general, Tendai Biti, instituted the disciplinary action that saw Tsvangirai facing 17 counts of violating the party’s constitution.

The faction expelled Tsvangirai and Moyo despite a High Court order to stop implementing the Mandel meeting resolutions.

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Thirty dead bodies found on Italy-bound migrant boat |Lizzy Davies in Rome Monday 30 June 2014

Corpses discovered off coast of Sicily during rescue mission with cause of death believed to be asphyxiation

A fishing boat containing the bodies of about 30 people is being towed by an Italian navy frigate to the Sicilian port of Pozzallo in the latest tragedy to hit the busy crossing route across the Mediterranean sea.

The Italian navy said the discovery was made in the bow during a rescue mission on Sunday afternoon as part of the country’s Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) operation, which aims to intercept migrant vessels before they run into trouble.

The likely cause of death was asphyxiation and drowning, according to medical staff at the scene who also advised against the bodies “being removed due to restricted space”, said a navy statement.

There were no more details immediately available concerning the circumstances of the fatalities.

Once the navy had finished transferring the 566 survivors on to the Grecale, the frigate began towing the boat to Pozzallo, a small port on the south-east coast of Sicily, where it is expected to arrive on Tuesday.

Although the Italian government would like to see other EU countries help shoulder the burden of its €9m-a-month costs, Rome is committed to the Mare Nostrum operation, which it and non-governmental organisations say has saved countless lives.

The operation was launched in the aftermath of twin disasters in October, in which about 400 people died.

But, as the discovery on Sunday shows, the mission has not managed to prevent deaths. In May, 36 people died and 42 were missing after their boat ran into trouble off the coast of Libya, while at least 17 more died when their vessel sank south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The tragedies have prompted rightwing political critics of Mare Nostrum to demand an end to thew operation, arguing that it has simply encouraged more people to make the perilous crossing.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the xenophobic Northern League, accused the prime minister, Matteo Renzi, of having blood on his hands following the latest tragedy. “Another 30 dead on a boat. Another 30 dead on the consciences of those who defend Mare Lorum [Their Sea]. Stop the departures, help them in their own countries, immediately,” he wrote on Facebook.

After a busy weekend in which the navy said more than 5,000 migrants and refugees had been rescued, the pressure looked certain to be raised on southern Italy’s already overstretched ports and reception facilities.

Last Thursday the interior ministry said almost 60,000 people – including more than 10,000 Syrian refugees – had arrived in Italy by sea this year. Although there are not yet official figures, the weekend’s arrivals would appear to indicate that, in the first half of this year, as many migrants and refugees have arrived in Italy by sea as came in the whole of 2013.

Local authorities in Sicily remain broadly supportive of Mare Nostrum, but are pleading for more resources. As the Grecale headed towards Pozzallo, the town’s mayor, Luigi Ammatuna, was quoted as saying the latest tragedy was “an emergency that we cannot tackle alone”.

He reportedly raised the alarm over how the bodies would be treated once on land, owing to a lack of spaces in Pozzallo’s morgue, already taken up by two migrants awaiting burial.

On Monday morning the navy said that, as well as the Grecale, the Chimera, a navy corvette, was due to dock in Pozzallo with 353 migrants on board. The navy ship Orione and merchant ship Mare Atlantic were due to come into the port of Messina, north-east Sicily, with 396 and 235 on board respectively. The Dattilo, a coastguard vessel, was due to dock at the port of Augusta with 1,096 people on board, the navy added.

The Etna was carrying 1,044 migrants to Salerno on the Italian mainland and the San Giorgio was heading to the Puglian city of Taranto with 1,170 people on board.

Two merchant ships were taking 295 people to Trapani, on the west coast of Sicily. Porto Empedocle, on the south coast of the island, was due to receive 341 migrants and refugees being taken to safety by the coastguard.

The Guardian

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Arjen Robben says sorry for diving… but not for the penalty which was a foul according to the winger.

Dutchman apologises for earlier dive during 2-1 win in Fortaleza

Arjen Robben apologised for diving during the Netherlands’ dramatic victory over Mexico, but insisted that the crucial penalty that sent Louis van Gaal’s side through to the quarter-finals was legitimate.
The Mexico manager, Miguel Herrera, accused the Bayern Munich forward of cheating to win the penalty that knocked his side out and demanded that the Portuguese referee, Pedro Proenca, be sent home from the tournament.

Speaking to Dutch television, Robben said: “The one at the end was a clear penalty but I have to admit there was an incident in the first half where I did dive. I must apologise. I should not be doing that.”
With Robin van Persie off the field, it was expected that Robben himself would take the kick but he gave it to Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, on the grounds that Robben had been the one fouled.

Robben was perhaps remembering the 2012 European Cup final, where he had won a second-half penalty against Chelsea, took the kick himself and saw it saved by Petr Cech.

Nevertheless, Van Gaal will back himself to win the quarter-final in Salvador, although when he spoke he did not know whether he would be facing Costa Rica or Greece. However, he admitted to using the water breaks to reorganise his team from a 3-5-2 into a 4-3-3. This is outside the spirit of the water breaks but demonstrates the kind of cunning in which Van Gaal specialises.

“The players showed they have the belief to fight through to the end,” he said. “Let me tell you that the Dutch media thought we would never survive the first round and so how we are suddenly favourites to qualify for the semis is something I have difficulty imagining. But with the team spirit that brought us this victory I think we will be very difficult to beat.”
Louis van Gaal used the cooling break to change his tactics
That the spectacular equaliser was scored by Wesley Sneijder was, Van Gaal thought, significant. “It is not a surprise because he is one of the fittest players in the Dutch team, certainly he is the one that runs the longest and the hardest,” the manager said.

“But it will be difficult to imagine Nigel de Jong, who broke down with a groin injury, being fit in time for the quarter-finals. Bringing off Robin van Persie was purely tactical. This is a coach who wants to win tournaments and to do that I have to make changes.”

The Independent

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Exclusive: Graça Machel breaks her silence 29 June 2014 15:00 Ferial Haffajee @ferialhaffajee

The black is gone. The scarf and shawl, the widow’s ­identity, is packed away. But her eyes, usually commanding and curious, remain sad. Graça Machel enters a room to capture it. She has a leader’s tall, determined gait, similar to that of her late husband.

We meet at Johannesburg’s Saxon Hotel, where she turns every eye. And although Friday marked the end of her formal mourning, her sadness is still palpable. She is dressed like a states­woman: a smart winter two-piece suit, heels and a pashmina, which she spreads over her legs as much for comfort as for warmth.

She speaks of Madiba in the present tense, in words and sentences that linger in the air like she is checking in with him. “Madiba is … a lot of things to me. He means a lot of things to me. He is that very good friend you feel you connect with even if you don’t talk. It’s not only because of what you say. Just looking into the eyes…”

And she breaks off.

What does she miss about the man she married at the age of 53 when he was 80? Madiba died last year, aged 96. The two had a ­marriage that was both fairy tale and old school.

For the last two years of his life, Madiba was often ill. Machel undertook a vigil of love, caring for him at their Houghton home, which was turned into a hospital, and also at the Pretoria Heart hospital, where he spent 12 weeks last year.

“I miss sitting with him in the lounge. I miss feeding him. I’d be holding his hand with one hand and feeding him with the other,” she says, imitating the gesture, honed through regular practice – an act of love and nurturing, not of nursing.

“The communication and intimacy from that was so profound. When I stopped feeding him, because there was no need to feed him [when the elder statesman was fed intravenously], I felt ‘how will I communicate with him?’”

Soon after, Madiba was hospitalised.

“The way of communicating was different, but we always communicated. Even at hospital, Madiba would recognise my touch. Even in a deep sleep, if I touched him, he would know it was me. The expression in his face would tell: he heard me; he hears me. I would say, ‘Good morning. Did you sleep well? It’s Monday, it’s the third. It’s Sunday the fifth.’ I would tell him who called, who sent an SMS…”

That was one year ago, when the Heart Hospital became the site of a national outpouring of love for Madiba. Machel kept a tally of the choirs, church and school groups that visited, and gave Madiba a running commentary.

“I wanted him to keep contact with the outside world. It was important that he didn’t withdraw into himself,” she says.

Tata’s journey into night

Did Madiba understand? “The doctors confirmed to us that the last thing that goes is the hearing. He would listen and I knew he heard. Sometimes he would try to open his eyes. I would sit there and read and hold his hand until I felt he was asleep. I slept in a small cubicle, but I was able to feel when something was wrong. I’d jump up from bed and see why the machine was complaining,” she says.

Machel will not confirm this, but she almost lived at the hospital. Her daughter, Josina, dropped off fresh clothes for her.

“Of course, there were times I would help him to calm down when he was agitated and I’d say ‘Papa, papa, please…’ and he’d rest. The doctors knew I could calm him down.”

At the time, a debate raged over whether Madiba should be at Qunu, in the Pretoria hospital or in their Houghton home.

“The doctors said to me: ‘You know, at this point in time you can take him to China. What’s important for him is where you are.’ They said ‘where I am, he is fine’. [They said] I shouldn’t worry about the physical place.”

A love that kept them young

Madiba and Machel made their relationship public in Paris while on a state visit, where they sneaked around with the aid of South ­Africa’s then ambassador Barbara Masekela.

Earlier this year, Jan-Jan Joubert revealed a delightful anecdote in the Sunday Times that on a rendezvous at the river-bank retreat in Mpumalanga of billionaire Johann Rupert, Machel arrived late at the bush airport.

It was closed, but that didn’t deter them. Machel climbed the airport fence. For a moment, there is joy in the air as Machel remembers and giggles.

“Even for myself, it was revealing. Age doesn’t have anything to do with falling in love. You do all the silly things you do when you are in love. Madiba was about to turn 80; I was in my early 50s. But we became like adolescents. You appreciate the voice, the touch, the being together.

“Being who he was, we couldn’t walk where we wanted to. But if you have been watching us, you’d see all along our life we’d walk hand in hand. It was something which was automatic. We would get out of the car; his security would help him out and the first thing Madiba wanted was my hand. That’s what I miss.”

Photographs of the pair reveal their hands glued together, and often their lips too. “Age does not matter. You become a youngster again. He’d say I was blossoming and I said ‘of course’.

“Let me tell you, Madiba was more gorgeous when he was older than when he was younger. I’d look at his photographs and say: ‘You are much handsomer now.’ He was a tower. I mean, I’m not a short person, but next to him I had to look up. He was a tower.”

Machel met Madiba at a lonely time in his life.

“I met Madiba when he was separated [from Winnie Madikizela-Mandela], not yet divorced,” she says.

She speaks effusively about what he brought to her life. But what did she bring to his? She tries to squirm out of answering, saying I should have asked her husband. It’s too late for that, I say.

“It was about having someone who would restore dignity, that is what he would say: I restored dignity to him.

“I don’t think I should be talking about this. Madiba had felt rejected and just to be accepted again and to be valued and loved and cared for. The thing that was special with me was that for the first time Madiba would have a family life. A family life where there is predictability.

“You can wake up in the morning, and you know the person is there. You can go to work and you say you will meet at lunch. And you know in the evening you will be together. In his first and second marriages, with his political activism, he could not give his wives that sense of normalcy in their lives.”

The couple would speak twice a day, or more, if they were travelling separately. Even with his schedule, Madiba would drop everything to fetch his wife from the airport, even if she was only hop-skipping to Maputo for the day.

Graça moves on 

“Literally, it’s the company I miss. It’s his presence … his presence. Sometimes we’d be sitting in the lounge … he would be reading and I’d be doing my own thing. And we’d talk and talk and talk … and you feel that there’s that connection.”

She laughs. “We didn’t always agree, of course, but you’d know there are no no-go areas. You feel that you have your mind and your soul there. You don’t have to protect yourself. That’s the friend I have in him and, to be honest, that’s the friend I miss.”

She pauses, and repeats herself quietly.

“That’s the friend I miss. What is hard in this is the transition from a reality where you have your beloved one. You can talk, you can touch him, and you can communicate in different ways. Now he is somewhere and you can still communicate with him, but this is difficult.

“This new reality of communicating with him as spirit [is one] I am learning. But it hasn’t hit properly yet.”

This week, Machel will resume her slate of global roles – from her work with women and children to her role in the Elders, a UN group of leaders including Kofi Annan, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Richard Branson.

She rules out running for president of Mozambique, a prediction that surfaces periodically. She will live in South Africa and Mozambique – she is a citizen of both.

She moved out of the Houghton house she shared with Madiba ­because it held too many painful memories. She now lives elsewhere in Johannesburg.

“The mourning has not ended. The grieving has not ended. What has ended is the formal mourning,” says Machel.

“The dressing, not talking in public, that you can’t be away at night. The family and the Tembu elderly acknowledged that I work and it would be extremely difficult for me to be confined for a whole year, so they shortened it to six months.”

Throughout the interview, she speaks of “our family” – the extended, troubled Mandela family. She will not talk about Madiba aide Zelda la Grange’s book, Good Morning, Mr Mandela, which detailed family schisms and feuds.

La Grange wrote about how Machel was poorly treated by Madiba’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, who reportedly made Machel apply for accreditation to attend her husband’s funeral.

In the way of the schooled stateswoman, Machel says nothing of this, only that she is still reading the book and that “It’s Zelda’s life, her journey, her experience and I respect that.

“She [and I] are on easier ground talking about love.”

City Press

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Oscar Pistorius to return to dock after psychiatric tests | David Smith in Johannesburg Sunday 29 June 2014

Judge is expected to receive reports by panel of experts who assessed whether athlete has anxiety disorder

Oscar Pistorius has spent a month being assessed at the Weskoppies psychiatric hospital in Pretoria.

Oscar Pistorius returns to the dock on Monday after a month of psychiatric tests to determine whether mental illness played any part in his actions on the night he shot dead his girlfriend.

The Paralympian will be back in the high court in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, after a six-week gap that left one of the most world’s most eagerly watched murder trials in limbo.

Pistorius is accused of murdering Reeva Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, at his home on Valentine’s Day last year. The 27-year-old denies the charge and insists he opened fire by accident after mistaking her for an intruder.

Pistorius, who has since been staying at his uncle’s mansion, was assessed as an outpatient over 30 days at Weskoppies psychiatric hospital in Pretoria.

On Monday the trial judge, Thokozile Masipa, is expected to receive the reports of a panel of one psychologist and three psychiatrists who evaluated whether the athlete was suffering a generalised anxiety disorder that could have impaired his ability to distinguish right from wrong when he shot Steenkamp through a locked toilet door.

One of the psychiatrists, Dr Leon Fine, was hospitalised on Thursday after reportedly suffering a heart attack but this is not expected to delay the resumption of the trial.

Nathi Mncube, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, told the Saturday Star newspaper: “We are expecting the reports to be handed in on Monday and the case should proceed. How we will proceed will be determined by the judge and by the outcome of the reports. But Pistorius has to be at court.”

On 20 May the court ruled that Pistorius’s observation would inquire if he was “at the time of the commission of the offence criminally responsible” and if he could appreciate the “wrongfulness of his actions and act according to that appreciation”.

The prosecutor Gerrie Nel has alleged that Pistorius killed the 29-year-old model after an argument and is an arrogant gun obsessive who refuses to take responsibility for his actions. But he requested an independent inquiry into his state of mind after a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Merryll Vorster, testified that Pistorius’s generalised anxiety disorder, combined with his physical vulnerability – he had both lower legs amputated as a baby – could have affected his actions.

Vorster, a defence witness, told the court: “He certainly was able to appreciate the difference between right and wrong, but it may be that his ability to act in accordance with such appreciation was affected by this generalised anxiety disorder.”

Kelly Phelps, a senior lecturer in the public law department at the University of Cape Town, told the Associated Press that if the panel backed Vorster’s diagnosis it could add weight to Pistorius’s account and compel the judge to consider the question: “Is it more likely that he is telling the truth about what occurred on that night?”

Even if the judge rules that Pistorius is guilty despite any disorder that he is suffering, Phelps added, the diagnosis could be a mitigating factor when he is sentenced.

“That is the area of law that is often referred to as diminished responsibility,” she added.

Once Masipa receives the conclusions from the mental health experts, it is thought the defence will call around three more witnesses, prior to closing arguments and Masipa’s deliberation on a verdict. If, however, the experts who observed Pistorius are not unanimous in their conclusions, the judge can call them to the stand to clarify their findings.

There are no juries at trials in South Africa, so the fate of the “blade runner” will ultimately be decided by the judge, assisted by two assessors. If found guilty of murder, Pistorius could face life imprisonment. If he is acquitted of that charge, the court will consider an alternative charge of culpable homicide.

The Guardian

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Eminem’s daughter Hailie graduates high school with honors | DAVID HARDING

He once rapped about how “proud” he was of his daughter.

And Eminem must now be bursting with fatherly happiness after seeing his daughter Hailie graduated high school with the highest honors.

The 18-year-old achieved Summa Cum Laude status given to those who achieve a 3.9 or above Grade Point Average at her school in Clinton, Michigan.

Hailie thanked her parents for helping her succeed at school.

Eminem is a proud father now — his daughter Hailie just graduated from high school with honors.
Asked by the school’s website to name her most important influences, Hailie said: “My mother and father are because they have pushed me to be the person I am and have given me all the support to achieve what I have.”

She also stated that she is heading to Michigan State University and her career plans were in “psychology” or becoming an “entrepreneur.”

The Macomb Daily News reported that Eminem, 41, watched on from inside the school because “he didn’t want to cause a scene”.

Mom Kim Scott kisses her daughter as Hailie Jade Scott is chosen Chippewa Valley high school homecoming queen in a video posted October 7, 2013.
One parent said, “he opened the door and looked out like, “that’s my daughter!” He just looked like a proud father.”

Hailie was also named homecoming queen at her high school last October as her parents watched on.

Daily News

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Brazil fan dies of heart attack while watching World Cup penalty shootout | 29 June 2014 By Rebecca Younger

The 69-year-old man was watching the tense end to Saturday’s match at a bar near the stadium when he became unwell

Brazil’s forward Neymar scores during the penalty shootout
A Brazilian football fan has died of heart failure while watching the World Cup penalty shootout which saw his country win against Chile.

The 69-year-old man was watching the tense finale to Saturday’s match, in a bar close to the Mineirao Stadium in Belo Horizonte.

The fan, who was diabetic, complained of feeling unwell and was taken to hospital but died a shortly after his arrival, according to the Brazillian newspaper, Estado de Minas .

The paper added that health officials had to treat at least 98 supporters during the match, including a 50-year-old woman with a heart problem and a young man whose nose was broken in a fight.

The match finished 1-1 after extra time, with the hosts Brazil winning 3-2 in the penalty shootout .

This year’s tournament has had its fair share of casualties both off an on the pitch.

Mirror

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