With regards to the Live8 concerts and Bono and other organisations' efforts to bring global poverty to the spotlight, there were many who felt that it was a grand spectacle with good intentions and spirit but excluded the very people who they were trying to help, in terms of sparcity of African participation in the concert performers as well as seeking the opinions of Africans themselves, as Cameroonian journalist writes in the NY Times.(you need to sign up to read this and other articles)

In Iraq, bombings there continued with high casualties caused near Baghdad by a suicide bomber in a fuel truck. There were reports of deaths being as high as 98 from Reuters, and over the weekend there were at least 12 suicide bombers.