It started with a warning. "The problem of the 20th century will be the colour line," said one of the black diaspora's foremost intellectuals, WEB Du Bois, at a Pan-Africanist conference in London in 1900. The fight for full citizenship was creating what Du Bois, an African-American, referred to as an "eternal twoness" - "An American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." A similar tension would be felt throughout the diaspora, until the end of the century, between the present - where we happen to be - and the past - where we are from. It would spawn a period of vibrancy both in politics and the arts. With his slogan "Up Ye Mighty Race", Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey called on black people to return to Africa to rebuild the continent.

Such is the fate of a white southern intellectual with slavery, the civil war and segregation in his heritage. But that did not stop him returning to the south, attracted not only by its rich literary and political history, but by a fascination with its constantly shifting significance to America as a whole. "I go back to the south physically and in my memories, to remind myself who I am, for the south keeps me going," he wrote in Terrains of the Heart and Other Essays on Home.

Jelica, 87, a Serb, is under virtual house arrest in the northern Kosovan town of Podujevo, left at the mercy of ethnic Albanians eager to wreak revenge on the Serb community because of the persecutions once inflicted on them by the Serb security forces. Jelica wants to stay put so that when she dies she can be laid to rest with her late husband. She may get her wish sooner than she thinks.

Olaf Ullmann, 40, died at 7.24am yesterday - the first person to be killed by yellow fever in Germany for more than 50 years. His health had deteriorated rapidly in the last 24 hours as his liver and kidneys failed and he lost consciousness.