BAHRAIN – AN Ethiopian housemaid was found dead hanging from a ceiling fan yesterday, reports SARA SAMI.

Her sponsor found her body when he returned to his home in Hamad Town after work.

“The sponsor and his wife were said to have left for work in the morning with the housemaid alone until they came back,” a Public Prosecution spokesman said yesterday.

The woman, in her late 20s, is said to have committed suicide in the family’s outdoor kitchen.

“No signs of foul play have been found so far, but the family and their relatives will be questioned for further details,” said the spokesman.

– Gulf Daily News

INDONESIA (Reuters) – Obama’s popularity has really spread around the world. Everything from streets, hotels, and even people are being named after the newly elected President of the United States.

For one photographer in Indonesia, it is not the name Obama that has thrown him into almost instant fame, but rather his face.

Ilham Anas bares a striking resemblance to the president-elect Barack Obama in this recent commercial.

The whole thing initially started as a job for Ilham.

“When Obama won, my colleagues played a practical joke on me — they made me wear a suit, a tie, and took pictures of me posing as Obama,” said Ilham.

“The pictures spread very quickly on the Internet. It was phenomenal. Then TV stations and an advertising agency got in touch with me.”

Ilham says he is often mistaken for Obama and people ask to take pictures with him.

“I never thought I would be a star in a commercial, then this happened. It’s very fortunate,” Ilham said.

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By Josh Meyer | Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Washington — As the multitudes arrive for the historic inauguration of Barack Obama, the most high-tech security bubble ever created is in place to protect the incoming president from any foreseeable act of God, nature or man.

But authorities say they still dread the “X factor” — intangibles that they cannot control and that could upend their most carefully laid plans by panicking the immense crowd.

At the top of that list, they say, is the lone-wolf individual or small group capable of slipping through the intelligence and security net. A burst of gunfire or an explosion, they know, could cause significant casualties or pandemonium.

That is considered extremely unlikely. Law enforcement and intelligence officials say they have seen nothing to suggest the president-elect or his inauguration are being targeted.

Still, they say, no one can know for sure. And the inauguration of the first black president — coming in the first White House transition since the Sept. 11 attacks and about two months after the terrorist strike in Mumbai — poses special concerns, U.S. law enforcement and security officials say.

“We can prepare and we can prepare, but there are always variables,” said one senior FBI official involved in the planning. “It only takes one person to come in and cause havoc.”

Many disgruntled individuals fly under the radar, officials say, keeping violent thoughts and plans to themselves and out of Internet chat rooms that have been monitored for years by undercover agents.

And they easily could hide among millions of visitors expected to overload transit systems and wedge into every nook and cranny of indoor and outdoor space, straining crowd-control measures.

By most accounts, the Secret Service has done everything possible to safeguard not only the president-elect and his entourage, but the parade route, the National Mall and other locations that will be part of Obama’s short but symbolic path to the swearing-in.

For instance, Obama will be riding in a new limousine — nicknamed “The Beast” — considered the most secure ever, virtually impervious to chemical and biological attacks and rocket-propelled grenades.

And as in all major events, the Secret Service has spent months working with dozens of local, state and federal agencies on security, crowd control and logistical support.

Thousands of extra police officers and military troops are being brought in from around the country, and measures to protect against chemical and biological attack will be in place, along with decontamination tents.

At least 150 multiagency “intel teams” will deploy throughout the region so that undercover FBI agents and other behavior analysis specialists can look for trouble. Of particular interest: individuals or small groups of men with backpacks lurking in large crowds, or entering the Metro from distant suburban stations — a pattern similar to the deadly attacks in London’s subways in 2005.

In some areas, Washington will look like an occupied city. Sharpshooters will be on virtually every building. Law enforcement and intelligence nerve centers and mobile command posts are sprouting. The FBI is deploying a scary-looking armored assault vehicle and a weapons-of-mass-destruction response truck.

The military, supporting civilian authorities, is using sophisticated surveillance systems developed for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to monitor the Mall. A P-3 Reconnaissance plane will fly above the Mall to collect information that can instantaneously be transmitted to the ground in the event of a threat. The high-tech system is known as “Rover.”

The Pentagon also will station cameras and other detectors on buildings around the Mall on Inauguration Day to ensure a constant picture, Defense officials said.

Officials familiar with the military surveillance efforts say they will be able to do much more than watch the crowd. They can sense radiation associated with a dirty bomb and in some cases detect a conventional explosive device.

In addition to response, officials have worked on prevention. Authorities have been scouring the Internet and other extremist gathering places to look for signs of trouble. So far, they say, they aren’t seeing any.

Domestically, white supremacists have discussed Obama in threatening terms since early in his candidacy. Threats increased after Obama won the Democratic primary and again after he won the election.

Obama has been a lightning rod not only because of his race, but due to what extremists believe to be his ties to Islam, perceived sympathy for Israel and even support for gun control measures.

But in recent weeks, the threatening “chatter” has died down, according to law enforcement officials and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is active in tracking U.S.-based extremist activity.

Yet current and former security specialists say that such screening procedures usually can’t catch the kind of zealots Obama might attract.

“He brings dynamics into this that we haven’t seen before. And they can’t be taken lightly,” said Joseph J. Funk, a former top Secret Service official who spent eight years protecting Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Obama will remain safe even if some event causes a stampede during his inauguration or along the parade route, said Funk, whose U.S. Safety & Security firm headed Obama’s campaign security until spring 2007. The incoming president will have secure escape routes and other contingency plans.

The Secret Service took over security for Obama in May 2007, at the earliest stage ever for a presidential candidate.

“Your concern is the person who wants to make a statement, the person who wants to use this as the day to ‘make myself famous,’ ” Funk said. “You can’t get to the president to cause harm, but you can hurt a lot of other people and cause an embarrassing situation. You know there’s enough media here, and you think, ‘Watch this.’ ”

Few protections exist against such assailants, Funk and others said.

Metal detectors will screen ticket holders to events. All inaugural personnel — even waiters and doormen — undergo criminal background checks. But there are always last-minute replacements and changes in plans.

There will be pressure for security to be unobtrusive, and to avoid aggravating long waits, especially where VIPs are concerned.

At that, most would-be assassins of political figures — such as John W. Hinckley Jr., President Reagan’s assailant — would have passed background checks anyway, because they had never done anything wrong before.

Authorities warn that attackers could also strike soft targets that are virtually impossible to protect, such as hotels, mass transit and large crowds at inauguration-related concerts and other events.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned of such Mumbai-style attacks on the inauguration in a recent confidential Joint Threat Assessment, portions of which were leaked to reporters.

“How do you predict what is in a person’s mind?” said FBI spokesman William Carter. “A person who sits in their basement and self-radicalizes or has some type of grievance and decides to take some action — that is part of the makeup of the lone-wolf individual. They fall below the radar.”

(Times staff writer Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.)

By MARCIA VANDERLIP | Columbia Tribune

CULUMBIA, MISSOURI – You can learn a lot about a person’s culture by exploring her pantry. I didn’t know anything about teff, for example, until my Eritrean {www:friend} Akbaret Hailu Hagos invited me into her pantry last week to see the 10-pound bag of teff flour. She goes through the teff pretty quickly because it is used in the family’s daily bread, injera. She buys the big bags online, to save a little. “It’s hard to find here,” she said, adding that it is more expensive than all-purpose flour.

Last week, after spending some time sampling Akbaret’s delicious native food — including the spongy, pancake-like injera made with teff — I wondered why teff is so, well, foreign to this country. Farmers here grow lots of corn, wheat and sorghum, but not so much teff. This is puzzling because the tiny grain is high in protein, nutrient-rich and it is gluten-free. It’s also drought-resistant and, by some accounts, can be grown just about anywhere.

In East Africa, teff is the staple grain, ground into flour to make the injera, which is shared at daily meals in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

I couldn’t find a Missouri farmer who grew teff for food. The closest I came to Missouri was Kansas. Edgar Hicks, a grain-marketing consultant in Omaha, Nebraska, told me about a handful of farmers in Nicodemus, Kansas, who are growing teff, thanks to a USDA Conservation Innovation grant received a year ago, administered by Solomon Valley Resource Conservation and Development Area in Kansas. This year, the farmers used a grass drill to plant 40 acres of the tiny seed in May, June and July. The May crop grew well in warm, dry weather. The later crops failed to mature because of unusually wet weather late in the season. “It’s a learning process,” said Teresa Webb, program assistant at Solomon Valley. “People need to know that food does not magically appear in the grocery store. It’s a process that is sometimes not easy.” Still, teff is growing in Kansas, and it looks promising as an “alternative” rotation crop, a way to supplement farmers’ income. “We wanted to sell it to ethnic markets” and health markets, Webb explained, “for people with celiac” disease who are allergic to gluten, “and people from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea who want their native grain.”

When Hicks first imagined the market for teff in Kansas, he envisioned “an ecomomic development tool” for these particular Kansas farmers, descendents of African slaves. “Originally, my intention was to grow teff like they do in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where it is hand-grown and labor intensive. We wanted to create something with a value-added feel,” he said. Hicks wanted to see “the farmer, the grower and the buyer all coming together. People could come to this community, get to know the culture, learn how people are sharing, how they eat. I think we need to get back to the way people used to eat — sharing a meal in a communal way.”

He thinks the Ethopians and Eritreans have something to teach us about sharing crops and meals. He also thinks there is demand for teff as a food crop, but communities and farmers will need to be educated about how to use it and grow it. By the way, the grain is currently grown for flour in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Idaho. Farmers in other states, like Ohio and Tennessee, are planting the sturdy teff grass as forage food for horses and cattle.

Meanwhile, out in Western Kansas, Solomon Valley has been getting lots of calls from California, Texas, Maine and even Europe. People want to know where to get teff seed to process into flour, Webb said.

Back in Columbia, I picked up a 24-ounce bag in the gluten-free section at Clover’s Natural Market for just less than $7. (I later found the small bags in the health food aisles at Hy-Vee and Gerbes. Also, if you don’t mind buying on Amazon.com, you can purchase from Barry Farms, a 1-pound bag for $3 or a 5-pound bag for $14.20.)

I mixed up my package of flour with some yeast and water and let it sit, covered, for a day. The next day, my husband poured the all-teff flour batter into a crepe pan and made mini injera, which looked more like a cross between a tortilla and a crepe, only it was deep brown in color, smelled of cocoa and had a robust, nutty flavor. Teff pancakes might not appeal to everyone. I liken it to drinking stout or a hearty microbrew as opposed to a thinner lager.

We lined a wide plate with our injera tortillas and ladled on some Spanish pot roast to share with a friend who is allergic to wheat. Our American adaptation was pretty good, though it did not come close to the soft, delicate injera made by Akbaret. We ate it with our hands, in solidarity and communion with Eritreans. Try it some time. The kids will love it. This kid did.

(Reach Marcia Vanderlip at (573) 815-1704 or [email protected].)