Gallup Daily: Obama’s Lead Edges Higher
PRINCETON, NJ
Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Friday through Sunday gives Barack Obama an 11 percentage point lead over John McCain in the presidential vote preferences of all registered voters, 52% to 41%.
Author: Berhan
Protest rally in DC against genocide in Ogaden – Oct 24
Ethiopians in Washington DC will hold a rally in Washington DC at the State Department on Oct. 24, 2008, to protest the atrocities and war crimes that are being committed against the people of Ethiopia by the regime of Tigrean People Liberation Front.
The protest will particularly focus on the genocide in Ogaden and the atrocities in the Oromiya region.
As reported by international human rights groups and media, the Meles regime is systematically eliminating Ogadenis by burning their villages, terrorizing the population, and starvation (read more about war crimes in Ogaden here here).
Place: U.S. Department of State
Time/Date: Friday, Oct. 24, 2008, at 9:00 AM
VIDEO: Back from the ‘African Guantanamo’
After spending eight years behind bars in Ethiopian jails for presumed links with the terrorist Al Qaeda network, eight Kenyans speak out about their terrible ordeal.
After being secretly detained in Ethiopia for more than one year, eight Kenyans were allowed to return home. These men were arrested in January of last year soon after the collapse of the Islamic courts in Somalia.
Accused of being members of Al Qaeda, they were detained without being officially charged of any crime, and were not allowed to contact a lawyer before being sent to Ethiopia. Thirty three year old Kassim Moussa, returns to his village of Bongwe, 30 km south of Mombasa. He lost everything and can only now help his parents to cultivate their land.
Today Kassim Moussa’s father explains to the village how he had no news about his son or his whereabouts for over a year. The meeting is organised by the Muslim forum for human rights who accuses the Kenyan government of deporting illegally its own citizens. All these ex-detainees are telling the same story. They recount how they remained handcuffed and blindfolded for months.
Bashir Hussein shows wounds he says he incurred while being detained by Ethiopian soldiers TPLF Thugs and also while he was interrogated by CIA agents. These accusations have been denied by the Ethiopian government Woyanne. Some ex-detainees had to be admitted to hospital upon their arrival here. The Muslim forum for human rights have gathered their testimonies in order to sue the Kenyan government but Kenyan authorities still consider that their innocence has not yet been proven.
Angelina Jolie to adopt Ethiopian child
Angelina Jolie is said to be planning to adopt another child in the New Year.
The actress, who gave birth to Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline in July, is thought to be keen to give a home to an African baby to bond with daughter Zahara, 3.
Angelina, 33, is expected to travel to Ethiopia – Zahara’s birthplace – with partner Brad Pitt, 44, as soon as the twins are 6 months old.
‘This time Angelina and Brad plan to adopt a child from the same place they adopted Zahara from,’ a source tells the Sunday Mirror.
‘They want another black child so that Zahara will have another child like her in the family. But it won’t be a newborn, it will be a child who is at least 2 years old – maybe 3.’
Earlier this month Angelina talked about expanding her brood.
‘You can’t start the process until any new children are 6 months old, to understand how they have settled and what you can absorb,’ she said.
‘That’s the smart thing to do. You have to wait until it’s the right time to bring in a new child.’
She and Brad are also parents to Shiloh, 2, and adopted kids Maddox, 7, and Pax, 4.
UN worker assassinated in Somalia
An engineer working for the UN in Somalia has died in the latest of a series of assassination-style killings of aid workers.
The Somali official, employed by UN childrens’ fund, Unicef, was shot several times in the head and then the body, intelligence sources said.
Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 and is now facing an Islamist and nationalist insurgency.
It is not clear which group is behind the targeted assassinations.
The latest targeted killing took place in the southern town of Hudur.
Two days earlier, another UN aid worker was killed in a similar way in the coastal town of Merka.
Trained killers
Intelligence sources, who asked not to be named, said the cold-blooded assassination of aid workers by trained killers had become the norm in the past four months, the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent Mark Doyle reports.
He says head shots, followed by bullets to the chest, are now the chillingly familiar method.
The UN co-ordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said that with 28 aid workers killed in the country over the past year, it had become one of the most dangerous places in the world for humanitarian staff.
In recent months, all of those killed have been Somali nationals because most foreign humanitarian workers have left the country.
The current Somali government is internationally recognised but has lost control of large parts of the country to an insurgency driven by Islamist and nationalist groups.
The government is backed by troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, TPLF, who are deeply unpopular with many Somalis.
More than three million people in Somalia – almost half the population – are in acute need of food or medical aid, according to the UN.
VIDEO: TPDM attacks Woyanne forces in Adwa