MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — Gunmen in the southern Somali town of Baidoa, the base of the transitional Somali parliament have shot dead a senior Somali government official, local media reports said Sunday.
Hussein Runow Sheik, second deputy Governor of the southern Bay region, was killed by three men armed with pistols, as the Governor was on his way back to his home in Baidoa, 245 km south west of Mogadishu, the local Shabelle radio reported.
Somali government security forces, who have reportedly arrived at the scene minutes after the gunmen escaped, cordoned off the area and started house-to-house searches for the men.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the killing of the official but Islamist insurgent fighters have been waging deadly guerilla attacks on Somali government officials and security forces as well as Ethiopian troops backing it.
Baidoa, where the transitional Somali Parliament is based has been relatively stable but recently insurgent fighters have been carrying out attacks on targets of Somali government forces and Ethiopian military forces.
Insurgent fighters have killed numerous Somali government officials since the insurgency against the internationally recognized government began in early 2007, shortly after allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled an Islamist administration that ruled much of south-central Somalia for the latter half of 2006.
The Islamist administrators were accused by Somali and Ethiopian governments of challenging the authority of the national institutions and of threatening the national security of Ethiopia.
A ceasefire agreement between a main faction of the opposition of the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) and Somali government forces was supposed to come into effective on Nov. 5.
But a number of other opposition factions including the hard line Al-shabaab Islamist movement and a breakaway group of the ARS rejected the agreement and vowed to continue fighting until an Islamic state is established in Somalia.
MUMBAI, INDIA – Infrastructure development firm C&C Constructions of India plans to diversify into construction of power transmission towers as a part of its future growth plan.
The company is a major player in road-building and water pipelines with over Rs 2,100 crore worth of projects under execution at present.
“Building power transmission towers will be another vertical in the infrastructure segment for us. It is a high-growth segment and we have big plans here,” C&C Constructions Chairman G S Johar told PTI here.
The company has already entered the segment in a small way by bidding for around half-a-dozen projects, Johar said.
Another new area for the company would be building parking lots in metros and “we will bid for these projects on a BoT basis”, he said.
C&C is eyeing a Rs 1,500-crore turnover by FY’10. “Our turnover in FY’08 (June 30, 2008) was Rs 538 crore. We hope to touch Rs 850 crore in June 2009 and Rs 1,500 crore in FY’10,” Johar said.
The company has already built 600 kilometres of roads in Afghanistan and a by-pass in Assam. It has also built runways at Amritsar and Port Blair airports.
“We have now bid for constructing the Afghanistan Parliament building, the project cost of which is around USD 130-million,” Johar said, adding “the Indian Government has cleared our proposal”.
This will be built in a joint venture with Hyderabad- based BSCPL Infrastructure Ltd, he said.
Apart from the Afghan Parliament, C&C has on hand a dedicated freight corridor project in Bihar worth Rs 800 crore and a USD 100 million road-building project in Ethiopia. “We have eight projects under execution in Bihar, two in Himachal Pradesh and three in Punjab,” Johar said.
The company will be completing 40 per cent of its business in the next one year. “Besides, we have Rs 1,200 crore of orders in the pipeline,” he said.
C&C recently won a Rs 963 crore order for improvement and upgradation of state highway roads from the Bihar Government. These orders have to be executed over an average period of 33-months and have been funded by the Asian Development Bank, Johar said.
LONDON (Reuters) – Jamaica’s triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt was among six Beijing gold medallists shortlisted for the 2008 World Athlete of the Year awards on Monday, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said.
Bolt, who set world records in winning the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4×100 metres relay, joined Cuba’s 110 metres hurdles champion Dayron Robles and Olympic long-distance double winner Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia in the men’s category.
Fellow Ethiopian 5,000 and 10,000 metres champion Tirunesh Dibaba, 800 metres gold medallist and Golden League winner Pamela Jelimo of Kenya and Russian pole vault champion and world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva were the three women chosen.
The finalists were chosen following a poll of internet fans and the IAAF Family consisting of IAAF officials, member federations, ambassadors, leading athletes and selected members of the international press.
The winners will be announced during the 2008 World Athletics Gala in Monaco on Nov. 23.
(Writing by Padraic Halpin; editing by Justin Palmer)
Ireland’s Sara Louise Treacy leads the pack in the
junior girls category of the Lotto CrossCup in Mol,
Belgium.
The build up to the 15th SPAR European Cross Country Championship to be held in Belgian capital Brussels on December 14 is reaching a crescendo. The local fans got a first glimpse of the keen competition on cards at the Belgian capital, during the run-up event Lotto CrossCup meeting in Mol, Belgium this weekend.
Belgian Almensch Belete set the pace winning the women’s race in23.04 and was closely followed by compatriot Veerle Dejaeghere in the runners-up position ahead of 2006 European U23 silver medallist Fionnualla Briton of Ireland who announced her intentions with a third place finish at 23.26. Fionnualla had finish seventh in the last edition of SPAR European Cross Country Championship in Toro Spain. There were further top Irish performances as Linda Byrne took fifth ahead of her team mate Aoife Byrne in seventh.
In the senior men’s category Belgians put in a brave performance to take six of the top 10 positions. Atelaw Yeshetela Bekele of the host nation finished second with 30.22 while Pieter Desmet finished third at 30.36. Compatriots Willem van Hoof and Krijn Van Koolwijk secured fifth and sixth positions respectively.
In the junior girls’ category, Ireland’s Sara Louise Treacy romped home at 15.03 and was followed by Natasha Doel from Great Britain who finished 15.08. Belgian Katrijn Vande Riviere finished third with a timing of 15.24.
While in the boy’s category top honours were shared by Belgian and German athletes. Jeroen D’Hoedt of Belgium bagged the top prize with 20.49 and was followed closely by Nick Goolab of Germany who finished 20.50. Belgium’s Soufiane Bouchikhi came third with 21.19.
SALES of guns in the US are on the rise as gun enthusiasts fear president-elect Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress will impose new restrictions on firearms.
In October, as Senator Obama appeared headed for victory, sales of guns jumped 15 per cent, with about 150,000 long guns sold for a total of 1.18 million firearms purchased, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which checks police records of gun buyers.
Although more recent figures are not yet available, the spike in sales of rifles, handguns and semi-automatics began in the spring and surged in October.
“Certainly the election has something to do with it, certainly in October it did. As it got closer and closer and it looked more and more like an Obama victory, the sales went skyrocketing in late October,” said Tony Aeschliman, spokesman for the National Shooting Sport Foundation.
In gun shops across the country, sales were brisk.
“They are afraid of gun control. The Second Amendment says legally by law we can have firearms. He’s going to attempt to take that right away from us,” said Jimmy, owner of the Republic Arms gun shop in Houston, Texas, referring to the president-elect.
At the Continental Arms gun shop in Baltimore, Maryland, the owner said it was clear Senator Obama’s electoral triumph was driving gun sales even if customers were not saying so openly.
“People are not really saying something, but I’m sure it does have something to do with Obama’s election, because he’s very anti-guns,” said Jay, whose store has had a sales increase in recent weeks.
During the election campaign, Senator Obama said he respected rights associated with the Second Amendment of the US Constitution – which gun advocates say allows them to own a firearm – but as a state politician in Illinois, he voted for several measures restricting sales of certain categories of firearms.
“The philosophy behind this is that people are legitimately concerned that under the Obama administration with a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, there will be an attempt to ban certain types of firearms,” including semi-automatic rifles, said Dave Workman, senior editor of Gun Week.
The last election of a Democratic president in 1992 sparked a similar gun-buying spree, said Mr Aeschliman.
“That same phenomenon had happened when (Bill) Clinton was first elected. There was a lot of panic buying because he was not perceived to be favourable to guns,” he said.
A rise in unemployment – the jobless rate hit 6.5 per cent, the highest in 14 years – could also help explain the surge in sales.
“One thing we do know is when unemployment starts to climb, hunters tend to hunt more. They have time on their hands and they can put meat in the freezer. That’s definitely a factor,” Mr Aeschliman said.
Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (AFP) – An aircraft crash on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has claimed the lives of four tourists and left the pilot seriously injured.
The Kenyan-registered plane was flying over Africa’s highest peak, Kilimanjaro regional police commander Lucas Ngh’oboko said.
“We have yet to determine the nationalities of the dead, but they were whites and two of them were women.
“The aircraft has Kenyan registration numbers and so far we don’t know what it was doing in the area.”
Rescuers and wardens from the Kilimanjaro National Park Authority collected remains from the accident scene and took the injured pilot to a hospital in nearby Moshi.
Ngh’oboko said the six-seater Cessna 206 crashed near Kilimanjaro’s Mawenzi peak, 4 330 metres above sea level. At 5 963 metres, Kilimanjaro is Africa’s highest mountain.
Police said Tanzanian civil aviation detectives were probing the cause of the accident and trying to establish the identities of the victims.
In June 2006, three American mountain climbers died when they were struck by a cascade of falling rocks and boulders dislodged by strong wind on Kilimanjaro.
The spectacular mountain, which is near Tanzania’s border with Kenya, attracts thousands of tourists a year.
Scientists have long warned that global warming has degraded the snow and glaciers on the mountain, immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s 1938 short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro and later by a Hollywood film version of the title.
