The U.N. Security Council was set to impose sanctions on the Horn of Africa state of Eritrea on Wednesday because of aid council members say it has given to Islamist insurgents in Somalia.
The United States and other nations accuse Eritrea of supplying al Shabaab rebels with funds and arms as they fight to topple a fragile U.N.-backed transitional government in Somalia, a state that has been virt...
US senators are preparing for the second of three procedural votes on a major healthcare reform bill.
This follows Monday’s vote in the Senate to end debate on the bill, putting the legislation on course to face a final vote on Christmas Eve.
President Barack Obama hailed the late-night vote, which followed a long, often acrimonious debate, as a “big victory for the American peopleR...
Users of the new operating system say the upgrading process is buggy. But once the kinks are worked out, customers are liking Windows 7 a lot more than Vista
Microsoft launched Windows 7 in late October to much fanfare. But, just like with previous Windows upgrades, complaints about bugs have already started rolling in.
A whopping 31% of clients have reported problems with upgrading to Windows 7, ...
International officials fear the spread of floggings, amputation, torture and death by stoning.
The current and former United Nations experts responsible for human rights in Somalia have condemned a series of stonings in the war-torn country.
Dr Shamsul Bari, an independent expert appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to report on Somalia, expressed concern over a rise in stonings and targete...
Al-Qaeda proxy in Somalia, Al-Shabaab has seized a Somali town near the Kenyan border which resulted in civilians fleeing towards the neighbouring country. The rebel group moved into the town of Dhobley after Hizbul Islam a rival rebel group fled the town. The two rebel groups have been fighting the Western-backed government in the capital Mogadishu but recently fell out over the control of the ...
MOGADISHU — The gunfire outside does not disturb them as they speak, explaining what led them to leave behind their lives as Islamist fighters and defect to the side of Somalia’s weak transitional government.
One of them tells the AFP journalist interviewing him he would have killed him if they had met a month earlier.
“If I’d met you in the street, I wouldn’t have spared...
While armed guards have been credited with repelling today’s Somali pirate attack on the US-flagged Maersk Alabama, a separate industry based on the development of nonlethal weaponry to protect ships is booming.
BCB International, a British firm, has developed a pirate-busting “stinger,” a device designed to stop attackers by tangling their propeller up in ropes.
In a demonstrati...
HANOI, Vietnam – Diarrhea doesn’t make headlines. Nor does pneumonia. AIDS and malaria tend to get most of the attention.
Yet even though cheap tools could prevent and cure both diseases, they kill an estimated 3.5 million kids under 5 each a year globally — more than HIV and malaria combined.
“They have been neglected, because donor or partnership mechanisms shifted their emphasis...
The government has admitted that it is helping to train Somalis in a bid to help the Somali Federal government but denies that any Kenyans are among those being trained. Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang says 2,000 Somalis have been trained by the Kenyan government. Kajwang was speaking when he appeared before a joint Parliamentary committee on Administration and National Security and Defense an...
BERBERA, Somalia — Somali livestock farmers who have converged massively on the port of Berbera after losing all their animals said that this year’s drought is the worst in ten years.
“We were in a drought for the past six months. It was very severe. We lost 50 percent of all our livestock. Then it rained and the rain brought other problems — disease, deaths and flooding,”...
BRUSSELS — The European Union is to endorse next week a plan to train up to 2,000 security personnel from Somalia, as the EU broadens engagement in the crisis hit Horn of Africa country, officials said on Friday.
The plan would see up to 200 EU soldiers train Somali military and police in neighbouring Uganda, probably for a year, following a request from the interim government in Mogadishu to he...
Nairobi — The flow of illegal settlers out of Mau Forest started on Wednesday, a day after the government deployed security officers ready to evict them.
The settlers, frightened by the show of force and a history of brutal evictions, appealed to the government to give them alternative land even as they packed their belongings, ready to leave.
Though there was panic in some of the villages, a fu...
Somaliland has been hailed as a beacon of stability in the troubled Horn of Africa region since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991.
But Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Adow, reports that some experts now believe the self-declared republic is at crisis point, as an election row deepens.
The current tension in Somaliland centres on the presidential election, which was due to have been held on...
Suspected Islamist gunmen have kidnapped two Kenyans working for a printing firm in Somalia’s capital.
They were seized by a group of 10 masked men from a shop in Mogadishu’s main Bakara market, controlled by the Islamist al-Shabab militia.
Two Somalis seized at the same time late on Sunday have since been freed.
Aid workers and foreigners are frequently kidnapped in Somalia, which has...
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali pirates are holding three sailors from a Spanish fishing vessel on shore, a gang member said on Sunday, rejecting Madrid’s assertion that they had been reunited with the remaining crew aboard their ship.
A pirate who identified himself only as Mohamed said the return of the three to their vessel, the Alakrana, depended on the release of two pirates being he...
Somali pirates were engaged in a deadly stand-off with Spanish forces last night after threatening to kill three fishermen held hostage for more than a month.
The pirates, who seized the Spanish tuna trawler Alakrana, moved three hostages ashore from the boat off the Somali coast and threatened to kill them if the Spanish Government refused to release two captured pirates.
The pirates’ tactics m...
The United Nations says it’s running out of food for millions of starving Somalis in part because the United States is delaying aid amid fears it could be intercepted by militants linked to al Qaeda.
Starting last month, the U.N. World Food Program has cut rations by up to half for some people in the lawless, impoverished east African nation and will run out of supplies in December, the Rome...
NAIROBI, Saturday, Aid agencies operating in Somalia say they need more money but that some donors are holding back, concerned at where resources might end up in areas too dangerous for international staff.
“Some of the largest donors in 2008 have given much less or almost no support so far this year,” said Kiki Gbeho, head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for...
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali livestock exports to the Gulf States are expected to double to one million animals this month after the Saudi government lifted a long-standing ban, traders and a company official said on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia, formerly the biggest buyer of Somali livestock, lifted the nine-year ban this week to secure meat supplies for haj pilgrims. Riyadh had imposed it due to...
(CNN) — It was the kind of phone call military families dread receiving from Iraq and Afghanistan — not from Texas.
Peggy McCarty’s daughter called Thursday afternoon to say she had been wounded by a gunshot in her left shoulder. Keara Bono, 21, assured her mother that she was OK, but McCarty’s heart skipped.
She knew she had much to fear when Bono, an Army specialist, arri...
The Montgomery County school system could be forced to pay millions of dollars in penalties under an opinion Wednesday by Maryland’s attorney general that its county government had “artificially” satisfied a state law that sets a minimum funding level for education.
The 21-page opinion issued by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler could leave Montgomery County liable for $16 mi...
