Denmark: Pirate Hostages Killed In Rescue Attempt In Somalia. After Three Decades, Federal Tax Credit for Ethanol Expires. Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times A tariff on imported ethanol, which expired Saturday along with a tax credit that cost $6 billion in 2011, aided producers like Marquis Energy, which operates an ethanol plant in Hennepin, Ill. The tax break, created more than 30 years ago, had long seemed untouchable. But in the last year, during which Congress was preoccupied with deficits and debt, it became a symbol of corporate welfare.
Fiscal conservatives joined liberal environmentalists to kill it, with help from a diverse coalition of outside groups. In the United States, most ethanol is produced from corn. “We are in a fairly prosperous period for agriculture,” said Dean C. Mr. Nearly 40 percent of the United States corn crop goes to ethanol and byproducts, including animal feed.
The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said, “The increasing demand for corn for ethanol production has contributed to higher corn prices.” Michal L. Senator Charles E. Mr. Season of rape in Somalia: ‘Climate of fear’ sweeps IDP camps. NAIROBI - The number of reported rapes in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, has risen sharply, creating "a climate of fear", according to a civil society source. "We have had the problem of rape in the city but what we are witnessing now is on a scale never seen before," said Mama Hawo Haji, a women's rights activist. "For instance, in the last two days alone, we have taken 32 rape cases to the hospital; in the past four months we recorded 80 cases.
" The numbers could be higher, Haji said, as many women do not report rape, fearing that the perpetrators could return to hurt them. "In many cases, the perpetrators are government security forces who are supposed to protect the women; this has led to a climate of fear in the camps," she said. Haji said one of the reasons for the surge in rape cases was the fact that there were many more IDPs without protection in the city - "be it protection from the clan or the government". SOMALIA: Failing law leaves children unprotected in Somaliland. Source: IRIN Child rights activists have expressed concern over the stagnation of a juvenile justice law in Somalia's self-declared independent Republic of Somaliland, where officials say an average of 200 children are detained every month by police.
According to Khadar Nour, a child protection activist in the capital, Hargeisa, children are regularly detained for minor offences and "end up being detained with adults because there are no rehabilitation centres for children or prisons for children". Somaliland passed a juvenile justice law in 2007 but is yet to implement it due to what government officials say are financial constraints and lack of knowledge of the law by the responsible institutions and their staff.
The law puts the age of criminal liability at 15, and requires that punishment be proportionate to the circumstances of the child and the gravity and nature of the offence. Police fail to apply law. Somalia: Suicide Bomber Wounds 2 AU Peacekeepers. Israel to back Kenya offensive in Somalia. Israel to back Kenya offensive in Somalia Kenyan soldiers in Somalia. (File photo) Kenyan officials say Israel is ready to help their country in its offensive against al-Shabab fighters in Somalia, Press TV reports. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has requested Tel Aviv's assistance in carrying out intensified offensives inside neighboring Somalia. In response to the request, Israeli President Shimon Peres has vowed to aid Kenya with whatever it needs in its fight against Al-Shabab fighters. Meanwhile Al-Shabab says its fighters have killed 27 Kenyan troops and destroyed a military vehicle carrying ammunition. Kenyan troops invaded Somalia last month in a bid to fight off the local fighters.
Kenya blames the fighters for a spate of abductions of foreign nationals in northern Kenya, near the Somali border. The US is also currently militarily involved in war-torn Somalia. Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Sidibouzid Report. Horn of Africa food crisis remains dire as famine spreads in Somalia – UN.
5 September 2011 – The United Nations agricultural agency today called for greater efforts bring the food crisis in the Horn of Africa under control, saying that famine conditions had spread to a sixth area in Somalia, putting an estimated 750,000 people in the country at risk of starvation over the next four months. The latest data released by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU), which is managed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), indicated that famine has spread to the Bay region, one of Somalia's most productive areas.
Famine was earlier declared in five other areas in southern and central Somalia. The number of Somalis in need of humanitarian assistance has increased from 2.4 million to 4 million in the past eight months, with 3 million of them in the country's south, according to FAO. Bay region produces 80 per cent of Somalia's sorghum harvest and is considered the country's breadbasket.
Turkish aid to Somalia: A new pulse in Africa. As drought hits Somalia, resulting in the famine of the century, the international system has yet to come up with a comprehensive solution to the ongoing human tragedy in the Horn of Africa. In the midst of all the dust and poor security measures, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been the only leader to visit Somalia together with his crowded delegation of Turkish politicians, celebrities, journalists and representatives of aid organisations.
Is Turkey running a flamboyant public relations campaign to secure its rise as an emerging world leader or is it really into raising a voice of conscience in line with its new policy of supporting the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)? Whatever the reason, Erdogan's latest visit to Somalia reminds us of the 192 other UN leaders who stayed home. The Least Developed Countries (LDCs), consisting of 48 states including Somalia, remain in a power vacuum within the international system.
Turkey's new foreign policy Celebrity power.