WINNIPEG, CANADA – Police have indentified the woman killed on Balmoral Street this weekend and charged a man with murder for her death.
Police say the incident was reported as a domestic disturbance around 3:50 a.m. Sunday in the 600 block of Balmoral.
Valerie Ann Paypompee, 36, was located and taken to hospital in critical condition where she later died from stab wounds to the lower body.
Mulugeta Geddy Gillamichael, 34, an immigrant from {www:Ethiopia}, has now been charged with second-degree murder in her death.
The killing occurred at the same inner-city property where a man was murdered just two months ago.
The witness, who didn’t want to be named, said there was a lot of wrestling-like noise coming from the woman’s room, then paramedics carried her out.
“I heard a lot of wrestling in her room,” the witness said of the incident. “I saw paramedics carry her out on a stretcher out the front door and they were trying to revive her. I asked police what happened and they were saying she got stabbed.”
The witness said he believed the victim was aboriginal and resided on the third floor of the rooming house, located across the street from the Balmoral Motor Hotel.
Police said the woman was taken to hospital in critical condition but later succumbed to her injuries. Police did not release any other details of the incident, noting that the official cause of death has yet to be confirmed by an autopsy.
Mulugeta Geddy Gillamichael has been arrested in connection with the crime, said Const. Chris Wingfield, a spokesman for Winnipeg police.
HOUSTON — Ethiopia’s Deriba Merga broke the 20-year-old Chevron Houston Marathon course record by more than two minutes en route to winning the 37th annual race with the fastest marathon run in Texas.
Aided in the early stages of the race by three pacesetters, Merga, 28, set a blistering pace, which, at mile 18, found him in range of running the fastest marathon ever on U.S. soil. When the final pacesetter stepped off the course after mile 17, Merga ran solo to hit the finish line in 2:07:52, breaking the course record of 2:10:04 set by Richard Kaitany (KEN) in 1989.
“I really tried to get the record,” Merga said through a translator of his attempt to run under 2:05:42, the fastest marathon run in the U.S. by Khalid Khannouchi in 1999. “I can run better next year.”
Merga’s winning time was nearly four minutes faster than runner-up Benson Cheruiyot (KEN), who ran 2:11:33. Yuriy Abramov (RUS) finished third in 2:12:21.
The course record in the women’s race also fell, as Teyba Erkesso (ETH) made it an Ethiopian sweep of the marathon titles. Running her debut marathon, the 26-year-old Erkesso won in 2:24:18, 22 seconds faster than the time fellow Ethiopian and training partner, Dire Tune, ran in Houston in 2008. Erkesso’s time also set a new marathon standard for Texas.
Romania’s Nuta Olaru finished second in 2:27:25, a time that would have won all but two previous women’s marathons in Houston, while Lioudmila Kortchaguina of Canada was third in 2:30:43.
Both Merga and Erkesso earned $35,000 for their victories and bonuses of $10,000 for the course records.
Keflezighi, Boulet set personal bests en route to USA titles.
Meb Keflezighi (San Diego, Calif.) rebounded from an injury-plagued 2008 to win the 2009 USA Half Marathon Championships, hosted by the Aramco Houston Half Marathon.
Keflezighi, 33, who suffered a serious hip-flexor injury following the 2008 Olympic Trials Marathon, took the lead within the first mile of the race and ran to the finish virtually unchallenged to win his first U.S. championship since 2007.
“I’ve won 15 or 16 national championships, but this one is the most special,” Keflezighi said after setting a personal half-marathon record by three seconds. “It feels good to be healthy again.”
Dathan Ritzenhein (Eugene, Ore.), the race’s No. 1 seed, was second in 1:01:35. Brett Gotcher (Flagstaff, Ariz.) was third in 1:02:09, which established a personal record by nearly two minutes.
Magdalena Boulet (Oakland, Calif.) broke from a pack of about five at mile 10 and went on to win the women’s USA Half Marathon Championships in 1:11:47, 19 seconds in front of second-place finisher Kelly Jaske.
The victory earned Boulet, a naturalized citizen born in Poland, her first national title. Jaske produced the surprise performance of the race. While unable to track down Boulet late in the race, Jaske’s runner-up finish came in her first U.S. championship road race. Colleen De Reuck (Boulder, Colo.), the 2004 Aramco Houston Half Marathon champion, was third in 1:12:16.
Including participants in the EP5K, more than 22,000 runners competed in the three Chevron Houston Marathon weekend events, establishing a participation record for the event for the eighth consecutive year.
Runners in this year’s race are expected to raise $1.5 million for 45 charities as part of the event’s Run for a Reason program.
The Chevron Houston Marathon, a Running USA founding member, is the nation’s premier winter marathon, annually attracting participants from all 50 U.S. states and nearly 30 foreign countries. In 2008, more than 23,000 runners took part in four marathon weekend events (marathon, half marathon, 5K and children’s run). The Chevron Houston Marathon offers the only closed marathon course in Texas and is ranked among the top five in the nation by the Ultimate Guide to Marathons for fastest course, organization and crowd support. More than 5,000 volunteers organize the race, which is Houston’s largest single-day sporting event.
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.
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.)
YEMEN (AP) – Hundreds of people are missing and feared dead after boats carrying about 400 African migrants capsized near Yemen on Saturday, the UN says.
At least a dozen bodies have washed ashore in Yemen, said Laila Nassif, who heads the United Nations High Commission for Refugees office in the coastal city of Aden.
Nassif said two boats carrying some 300 migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia capsized in the Red Sea. Only 30 people have been rescued so far, and rescue efforts were complicated by bad weather in the area, Nassif said.
In another incident, a boat carrying 120 migrants capsized in the Arabian Sea and 80 of the migrants made it safely to shore, Nassif said.
All of the ships originated in Somalia, the UN official said.
Hundreds of Africans die every year trying to reach Yemen, with many drowning or being attacked by pirates and smugglers in the dangerous waters separating Somalia and the Arabian peninsula.
The UN refugee agency last year reported that more than 43,500 migrants – mostly Somalis – arrived illegally by boat to Yemen.
In 2007, Yemen had reported more than 1,400 dead and missing while crossing into its shores from Africa.
U.S. Senators Russell D.Feingold, Johnny Isakson, Patrick J. Leahy, and Richard J. Durbin wrote the following letter to Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi [pdf]:
Dear Mr. Prime Minister,
We write to express our concern about several recent developments in your country, which we fear could make the important partnership between the United States and Ethiopia more difficult. We are deeply troubled that these events together appear to indicate an erosion of political freedom and the rule of law in Ethiopia.
First, we are concerned by the re-arrest of Unity for Democracy and Justice Party leader Birtukan Midekssa and reports that her life sentence in prison has been reinstated. As you know, a political opposition with the right to freedom of speech, press and association is essential to any vibrant democracy. We worry that Birtukan’s re-arrest signals your government’s waning commitment to those democratic principles. This is a disappointing signal in advance of your country’s elections next year, which we believe have great potential.
Second, we were disappointed to learn of the passage of your government’s law restricting civil society groups receiving more than 10percent of their funding from sources outside Ethiopia from doing any work related to human rights, gender equality, the rights of the disabled, children’s rights or conflict resolution.
While we respect your government’s right to regulate non-governmental organizations operating within Ethiopia, we fear that as written, this law will undermine the important work done by many organizations in those respective fields. We hope you will ensure that the broad discretionary powers granted to the government by this law are not used as a political tool to impede the independence of civil society.
Third and finally, we are concerned by reports over the last year that several civil society leaders and traditional elders in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia have been detained for extended periods without charge and then tried without due process.
Many of those arrested have reportedly been involved in important and much needed peace efforts in the region. We appreciate the fact that Ethiopia has legitimate security concerns in the Ogaden, but fear that this pattern of arrests, if true, risks exacerbating local grievances and contributing to radicalization rather than effective counter-insurgency and stabilization. As you know, civil society is a critical partner in the work of building peace, and we urge you to work with it as much as possible.
We feel strongly about the importance of our countries’ partnership and hope it will continue in the years ahead. That is why we are writing to you now to raise our concern about these troubling developments in your country that risk undermining democratic progress and the rule of law. If these trends persist, we believe they will have adverse impacts on our close relationship. We hope this is not the case and look forward to working together toward our shared goals of peace and prosperity.
Sincerely,
Russell D. Feingold
Chairman, Subcommittee on African Affairs
United States Senate
Johnny Isakson
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on African Affairs
Committee on Foreign Relations Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate
Patrick J. Leahy
Chairman, State & Foreign Ops Subcommittee
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
Richard J. Durbin
Chairman, Human Rights & the Law Subcommittee
Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
CC:
1. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
2. U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamoto
HOUSTON — Ethiopia’s Deriba Merga broke the 20-year-old Chevron Houston Marathon course record by more than two minutes en route to winning the 37th annual race with the fastest marathon run in Texas.
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.
YEMEN (AP) – Hundreds of people are missing and feared dead after boats carrying about 400 African migrants capsized near Yemen on Saturday, the UN says.