July 8, 2014 | Morning Headlines.

Main Story

Somali capital one step short of famine: UN

07 Jul – Source: AFP/Yahoo News – 312 Words

War-torn Somalia is sliding back into an acute hunger crisis with parts of the capital facing emergency levels just short of famine, the United Nations warned Monday. “Somalia’s food security crisis is expected to worsen over the next several months following poor performance of the major rainy season, shrinking humanitarian assistance and access, increasing malnutrition, conflict and surging food prices,” the UN’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) said Monday. The warning comes three years since over 250,000 people, half of them children, died in a devastating famine. In Mogadishu, the UN said the crisis is expected to spiral into “emergency” phase, just one step short of famine on its classification scale of hunger.

Key Headlines

Somali officials: “ Al Shabaab threaten El-Bur residents” (Radio Goobjoog)
Puntland’s Ministry of Education announce Grade 12 Exam result (Somali Channel TV)
Somali capital one step short of famine: UN (AFP/Yahoo News)
Graduate vets hope to build the country’s livestock (Radio Ergo)
Kenya Tribal Attacks (NTV Uganda)
Somaliland President names Assistant Minister and presidential advisor (Somaliland Informer)
North Coast police arrest three suspects over Hindi village attack (Coastweek/Xinhua)
Kenya opposition demands troops quit Somalia after attacks (Reuters)

SOMALI MEDIA

Somali officials: “ Al Shabaab threaten El-Bur residents”

07 Jul – Source: Radio Goobjoog – 110 words

Government officials in El-Bur district of Central Somalia region confirmed that al Shabaab threatened to kill the residents who fled the town during the offensive military operations if they return to their houses. Col. Mohamed Kaariye Araale, one of the military officials in Galgadud region told Radio Goobjoog that the residents on the outskirts of the town face constant threats from al Shabaab since the resident ran away from the town earlier this year. He affirmed that government forces are carrying out massive operations against al Shabaab in localities under El-Bur district where the group vacated. The families that fled from the town are in desperate conditions following drought caused by delayed rainfall and violence.

Puntland’s Ministry of Education announce Grade 12 Exam result

07 Jul – Source: Somali Channel TV/Garowe Online/Radio Bar-kulan – 136 words

Puntland Ministry of Education has announced Grade 12 exam result during a well organized event at its headquarters in the state capital of Garowe on Monday. Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentarians, secondary school principals and parents attended the ceremony at ministry complex. Minister of Education Mr. Ali Haji Warsame in his opening remarks declared top ten students in front of the crowd by name. The head of Puntland National Examination Board (PNEB), Ahmed Sahid said of the 2560 students who sat for PNEB exams, 2450 secured pass marks: “Omar Samatar, Gambool and Bossaso secondary schools dominated grade A lineup this year”. Event speakers hailed the secondary school exam result as impressive, saying it notifies the people of the progress being pressed ahead when it comes to region’s education sector.

Graduate vets hope to build the country’s livestock

07 Jul – Source: Radio Ergo – 197 words

Somalia’s first home-grown veterinary doctors in more than 30 years officially graduated in Mogadishu on 25 June. Twenty-three men and seven women successfully completed their four year studies at Horseed University’s faculty of Livestock Training and Surgery Institute. “This is the first time since the civil war in 1990 that veterinary doctors have graduated from a medical school in the country,” said Dr Mohamed Hassan Bubi, the deputy director of the faculty. Bubi said the new crop of veterinary graduates would help to improve standards in the livestock sector, which contributes Somalia’s biggest export earnings to the economy. There has been an acute shortage of skilled veterinarians in the country.

Somaliland President names Assistant Minister and presidential advisor

07 Jul – Source: Somaliland Informer – 60 words

Somaliland President H.E Ahmed Mohamed Mohamud alias Silanyo issued a presidential decree # RSL/M/XERM/249-2624/072014 named Mr. Abdikarim Ahmed Mooge to become the new Assistant Minister for Fisheries & Marine Resources. The president at the same time named Mr. Mohamed Iid Dhimbil to become the presidential advisor on Social affairs with immediate effect.

REGIONAL MEDIA

Kenya Tribal Attacks

07 Jul – Source: NTV Uganda – 02:15mins

Across the boarder now, Police have blamed the proscribed Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) for yesterdays attacks in Lamu and Tana Delta that left 20 people dead. In a press Conference, Kenya’s Deputy Inspector General Grace Kaindi said that an armed group of between 30 to 50 people attacked police officers who were manning Gamba Police Station. But earlier, a spokesman for Somalia’s al Shabaab group issued a statement claiming that their fighters had carried out the attack in the area.

North Coast police arrest three suspects over Hindi village attack

07 Jul – Source: Coastweek/Xinhua – 98 words

Kenya’s security forces on Monday arrested three suspects in connection with the attacks on Saturday night in the coastal region where at least 22 people were killed and several others injured. Kilifi County Commander James Kithuka said the suspects, two Somalis and a Kenyan, are members of the coast-based secessionist group, the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC). “We are holding the three whom we believe will assist in apprehending others members of the group blamed for recent attacks. “They have been being questioned to assist in investigation,” Kithuka told Xinhua by telephone.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Somali capital one step short of famine: UN

07 Jul – Source: AFP/Yahoo News – 312 Words

Kenya opposition demands troops quit Somalia after attacks

07 Jul – Source: Reuters – 664 words

Kenya’s opposition leaders demanded on Monday the country withdraw troops from Somalia after a spate of bloody attacks by militants at home, but dropped a demand for talks with the government. Before the opposition rally began, police fired tear gas at protesters who chanted slogans against President Uhuru Kenyatta and clambered over statues in Nairobi’s streets. They also shot gas canisters at youths who hurled stones at them at the park venue of the gathering. But the rally passed off calmly, after many Kenyans had feared it would stoke tensions in a nation battling an upsurge in political violence. In the latest assaults on Saturday, gunmen killed at least 29 people at two locations on the coast. Somali Islamist group al Shabaab said it carried out those and other attacks, vowing to drive Kenyan and other African Union forces out of Somalia. The government has blamed local politicians instead, drawing angry denials from the opposition.

Early Warning Alert: Food Security worsens as Drought looms in Somalia – Emergency unfolding among Mogadishu IDPs

07 Jul – Source: Relief Web – 528 words

Somalia’s food security crisis is expected to worsen over the next several months following poor performance of the major rainy season (Gu), shrinking humanitarian assistance and access, increasing malnutrition, conflict and surging food prices, analysts have warned. A severe water shortage is also expected in the months to come. In early February 2014, The FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU) and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), estimate that 857,000 people remain in Crisis and Emergency (IPC Phases 3 and 4)1 requiring urgent humanitarian assistance through June 2014. An estimated 203,000 acutely malnourished children under the age of 5 also require urgent treatment and nutrition support through mid 2014.

Somali expats fear bank curbs on sending money home

07 Jul – Source: Reuters – 978 words

Each month, 42-year-old Abdirizak Alibos shows up at a money transfer business in the heart of Minneapolis to send $500 to his three children in war-torn Somalia. “I send them money that they can pay for … groceries, school fees, that they can buy health insurance, medication,” said Alibos, who escaped to the United States seven years ago and now has a business driving people to medical appointments. “I can say that 50 or 60 percent of my children’s lifeline is remittance,” he said.

SOCIAL MEDIA

CULTURE / OPINION / EDITORIAL / ANALYSIS / BLOGS/ DISCUSSION BOARDS

“Even though Keynan’s murder represents a huge loss for the local press, my colleagues’ resilience to inform the people about the country’s political and socioeconomic challenges at this critical stage will only grow. Every time we have suffered such tragedies, Somali journalists only come back more determined. The fight for truth continues because that is what all journalists who died for reporting the truth want us to do.”

Reflections on my fallen colleague: Yusuf Keynan

07 Jul – Source: CPJ Blog – 786 words

My mother once sarcastically told me she could allow for my death, but couldn’t live with seeing my leg or hand amputated or with a lost eye after reporting from a battlefield. It was when she first learned that I had been secretly studying journalism in May 2005. The news made her distraught. She wanted me to go to school for medicine upon completing high school and become a doctor; my father wanted me to be a sheikh–an Islamic scholar. I wanted to be a journalist, but didn’t dare tell them. “Being a journalist is like being a soldier, and that is a bit like a dead man walking. I don’t want such a career for you,” she told me in a soft voice an hour after I survived a huge explosion 10 yards from the speaker’s podium at Mogadishu’s largest football stadium in 2005. The country’s transitional Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, in his first trip to the capital since he had taken office in Nairobi, was speaking to large crowd of people there. It was my first terrifying experience in the real world of journalism. More than 20 people died–most of them were standing around me just seconds earlier. Fire and smoke filled the stadium while blood and screams could be seen and heard all over the place. Panicked people were stepping over dead bodies and the injured, falling and pushing others out of the way to escape. Some were jumping over the walls. I was pushed over and stepped on several times, but managed to get up each time.