If President Barack Obama fails to win a second term in the White House in November, many African-Americans will blame the activist, author and academic, Prof Cornel West, one of America's most influential black people. West, a former Obama supporter, now says the president is a "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs" and has tried too hard to please the Establishment during his first term in office to the detriment of the poor and the black constituency.

In November, before Herman Cain's campaign ran into trouble, he exhausted the patience of the African-American civil rights activist and preacher, Rev Al Sharpton, forcing him to tell the Republican man what he really, really thought about black men like him. Below is Sharpton's message to Cain.

Leslie Goffe takes a good look at the "black man" who claimed he was the "real black man" and Obama was not. The man who once said: "Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!" The black man who did not use the term "African-American" because it "is socially acceptable for some people, but I am not some people." The man who said: "I'm sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa." And he was the Republican Party's great black hope for 2012 - until some white brunettes turned up this December. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the "real black man" Herman Cain!

The Kenyan nationalist Tom Mboya and the African-American icon Martin Luther King Jnr, whose memorials were inaugurated in October, 40 years after both were assassinated, have one thing in common: Barack Obama. But the US president failed to make the connection.

Agnes Asiimwe reports on the elusive Joseph Kony leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, who has survived several operations by the Ugandan army to capture him. Now the Americans have waded in, but can they catch him?