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Somaliland gets wind in its sails for revamping power sector

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nicholas Parkinson, Matthew Newsome - Apr. 15 (Comment) - The region's antiquated, piecemeal power grid is constraining growth – but a new energy bill may change that In 2009, Hassan Ahmed Hussein brought an industrial bread-making machine from abroad to install in his hotel in downtown Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. Hassan's idea was part business, part self-interest. Wholewheat bread is not available in Somaliland, and he envisioned selling it to small-scale vendors. He baked bread for four months before coming to the unfortunate conclusion that the machine wasn't cost effective. Electricity in Somaliland is too expensive. While the rest of the world pays an average $0.15-0.30 per kilowatt hour, Hargeisa's residents pay $1 per kWh. He abandoned the bakery and, in 2009, bought a diesel generator, poles, wires and transformers to start his own power company, Iftin, which rapidly gained nearly 2,000 customers in a catchment area of 10,000 residents. He has since merged his power stations with the city's largest provider, KAAH, and now ...

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Hunt for Kony becomes a casualty of Central African Republic overthrow

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Apr. 04 (News Analysis) - The country's membership in the African Union has been suspended, putting a freeze on the AU's military effort there to catch notorious warlord Joseph Kony. ...

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Campaign Stops: The View From Nairobi

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Murithi Mutiga - Nov. 06 (Opinion) - For many Kenyans, the 2012 presidential campaign has been a curious experience, to say the least.

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Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won't Be Raised in the Debates

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Peter Van Buren - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - SUMMARY: The second Obama-Romney debate coming up this Tuesday will focus on foreign policy. This is an analysis of some of the questions that aren't on the table posted by left-leaning magazine Mother Jones. WHAT'S NEW: This article, by a former state department official, departs from the back and forth arguments over Libya, to point out that Obama and Romney aren't that far apart in their positions and that many of the larger questions about the role of the U.S. in the world aren't on the table.

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Tunisia: Final Draft of New Constitution Preamble Causes Controversy

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Ahmed Medien - Jun. 18 (Opinion) - Tunisians are fuming over the final draft of the preamble (prelude) of the new constitution, drafted by their first elected parliament after the fall of the Ben Ali regime. Many netizens did not agree with the assembly members' vision of post-revolution Tunisia. Ahmed Medien summarises reactions.

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Famine in Somalia is over, says UN

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 03 - Exceptional harvest and food deliveries have improved conditions, but millions of people are still at risk An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia, although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations have said. The UN declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the country. The UN said initially 750,000 Somalis faced imminent starvation and lowered this to 250,000 by November. Six months after famine was declared, 4 million Somalis were in need of aid and the UN said the number now stood at 2.34m. "The gains are fragile and will be reversed without continued support," said Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "There are 1.7 million people in southern Somalia still in crisis. Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected ...

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Somalia Faces Alarming Rise in Rapes of Women and Girls

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jeffrey Gettleman - Dec. 27 (Special Report) - With the famine putting hundreds of thousands of women on the move, more rapes are being reported now in Somalia than at any time in recent memory.

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Planet Likely to Become Increasingly Hostile to Agriculture

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Scientific American - By Douglas Fischer - Dec. 07 (News Report) - YTo get a glimpse of the future, look to East Africa today. The Horn of Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in 60 years: Crop failures have left up to 10 million at risk of famine; social order has broken down in Somalia, with thousands of refugees streaming into Kenya; British Aid alone is feeding 2.4 million people across the region. That's a taste of what's to come, say scientists mapping the impact of a warming planet on agriculture and civilization.

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Somalia denies CIA detention base

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Sep. 09 (News Report) - The centre is alleged to be under the presidential palace in Mogadishu Somalia has dismissed reports that the US runs an underground detention centre where the CIA helps interrogate terror suspects in the capital

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In Somalia, a failure in 1992 has led to a famine today

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Nuruddin Farah - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - After the United States left Somalia, the rest of the world stood by, leaving the warlords to profit from their criminality. Al-Qaeda strengthened its presence in the country. Foreign vessels entered Somali waters and engaged in illegal fishing, which caused piracy to balloon into an ugly reality. Somalia lived on mortgaged time, leased out to criminals of one sort or another, an ideal world for terrorists to flourish.

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Ethiopia plans ambitious resettlement of people buffeted by East Africa drought

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By William Davison - Aug. 02 (Special Report) - In Ethiopia's rain-starved eastern badlands, livestock is the sole asset for most. Swaddled in robes, pastoralist families traverse huge tracts searching for water and pasture for their herds, uprooting camps as they go. When seasonal rains fail, life becomes a battle for survival.

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Somalia crisis one of 'largest in decades'

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Jul. 16 (News Report) - East Africa's worsening famine is one of the largest humanitarian crises in decades, a US official said, pledging "significant" aid. The US already pledged $5m on Friday to help Somali refugees on top of a previously budgeted $63m. Reuben Brigety, the de

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Somalis flee to Kenya in search of food

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Nazanine Moshiri - Jul. 13 (News) - Somali refugees have become the victims of the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in nearly 60 years. Faced with starvation and caught in conflict, thousands of Somalis are fleeing their country and heading for Kenya. They have travelled through harsh conditions with little food or water, and no humanitarian assistance. Many head across the border into northern Kenya to seek help at the Dadaab refugee camp.

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Red Cross Provided With Location of Secret Somali Prison Used by CIA

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Jeremy Scahill, Amy Goodman - Jul. 13 (News Report) - Democracy Now! correspondent and The Nation investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill provides an International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson with the location of the secret prison used by the CIA he uncovered in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, which the Red Cross says it didn't know existed. "There are scores of people that have been held without charge in this basement and some for more than 18 months," Scahill says. "The Red Cross should be insisting on access to the prison, which is within [a] Somali government compound."

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Lauded Somalian Prime Minister Resigns Under Pressure

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jeffrey Gettleman - Jun. 19 (News Analysis) - Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, the American-educated’ prime minister of Somalia, resigned Sunday after weeks of pressure to abide by a deal between two other top officials that extends Somalia’s wobbly transitional government for another year. Mr. Mohamed, who studied in Buffalo and served as a commissioner for the Municipal Housing Authority there, was appointed just eight months ago as premier of one of the world’s most chaotic countries. Western diplomats said he had proven himself one of the more capable and professional politicians in Somalia, and attributed his departure to backroom politicking. Earlier this month Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and the speaker of parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden, agreed to sack him as part of their deal to extend the transitional government. Analysts said the speaker wanted to appoint his own cronies to high positions, and though the president was reluctant to see Mr. Mohamed go, he agreed in order to keep his own job.

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Warning: extreme weather ahead

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Jun. 14 (News Report) - Tornados, wildfires, droughts and floods were once seen as freak conditions. But the environmental disasters now striking the world are shocking signs of 'global weirding' Drought zones have been declared across much of England and Wales, yet Scotland has just registered its wettest-ever May. The warmest British spring in 100 years followed one of the coldest UK winters in 300 years. June in London has been colder than March. February was warm enough to strip on Snowdon, but last Saturday it snowed there. Welcome to the climate rollercoaster, or what is being coined the "new normal" of weather. What was, until quite recently, predictable, temperate, mild and equable British weather, guaranteed to be warmish and wettish, ensuring green lawns in August, now sees the seasons reversed and temperature and rainfall records broken almost every year. When Kent receives as much rain (4mm) in May as Timbuktu, Manchester has more sunshine than Marbella, and soils in southern England are drier than ...

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Is Mexico at war? Conflict prompts linguistic debate

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - Feb. 04 - MEXICO CITY — Over a 48-hour period this week, gangsters tossed grenades, torched buses, set up roadblocks and strafed police units in Mexico's second and third largest cities.

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South Korean Commandos Battle Somali Pirates In Rare Raid

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

NPR - Jan. 21 (News) - In a top-secret operation reportedly lasting five hours, South Korean special forces scrambled up a ladder onto a hijacked vessel in the Arabian Sea at dawn and saved all 21 crew members aboard the Samho Jewelry. Eight Somali pirates were killed and five were captured alive.

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What Makes Somalis So Different?

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Miller-McCune - By Michael Scott Moore - Dec. 22 () - You’d expect their children would be — on the whole — relieved to live in a stable Western country where even the president is black. But the Somalis who settled in Minneapolis and other selected corners of the U.S. were war refugees, with little money and not many job skills. A recent U.S. census study said Somali immigrants, statistically, were among the “youngest and poorest” newcomers to the U.S., with 82 percent of the community in Minneapolis living below the poverty line.

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Heroic, Female and Muslim

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By NIcholas D. Kristof - Dec. 16 (Opinion) - The greatest religious battles are often not between faiths, but within faiths. The widest gulfs are often not those that divide one religion from the next, but those between extremists and progressives within a single faith. And in this religious season, there’s something that we can all learn from the courage, compassion and tolerance of Dr. Hawa Abdi.

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Somali-born teen held in Oregon car-bomb plot

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Associated Press Staff - Nov. 27 (News Report) - The young man is arrested after dialing a cell phone that he thought would detonate a van laden with explosives in downtown Portland, authorities say. The van was parked near a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony.

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Somali Pirates Free British Couple

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jeffrey Gettleman - Nov. 14 (News) - A British couple who had been kidnapped by Somali pirates and held in captivity in a remote, swelteringly hot patch of central Somalia for more than a year were finally released, Somali officials said Sunday.

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Dadaab Journal: Somalia’s Wars Swell a Refugee Camp in Kenya

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Josh Kron - Nov. 12 (News Report) - The refugee population in Dadaab, Kenya, has grown to nearly 300,000, virtually all Somali, making it the largest refugee complex in the world.

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U.S. extends temporary status to Somali immigrants

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

San Diego Union Tribune - Nov. 09 (News) - Hundreds of refugees and immigrants from the war-torn nation of Somalia will be allowed to extend their temporary residency in the U.S. through September 2012. Most qualifiers would have had asylum requests rejected for one reason or another, explained Abdi Mohamoud, executive director of the San Diego aid group Horn of Africa.

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Who's funding Al Shabaab's war in Somalia?

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Tristan McConnell - Nov. 05 (Investigative Report) - Somalia's Al Shabaab rebels have stepped up fighting in Mogadishu with support from international sources. Here Somali women demonstrate their support of Al Shabaab in Mogadishu.

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