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    24 January 2009

    [AFRICA]Deadly 'suicide' blast in Mogadishu


    A suspected suicide car bomb has killed at least 20 civilians in the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses say.

    The attack on Saturday was apparently aimed at a group of African Union peacekeepers but missed its target, they said. 

    "That opposition group has massacred only innocent Somali people," Major Barigye Ba-hoku, spokesman for the AU force, said.

    The attack came just days before more troops from Uganda and Burundi were due to arrive to boost the 1,400 African Union peacekeepers currently deployed in Somalia.

    Abdifatah Shaweye, the city's deputy governor, told the Reuters news agency that police officers stationed near the base had opened fire on the car as it approached, after which it crashed and blew up.

    Gunfights were reported to have broken out after the car exploded. 

    Mohamed Osman Ali, Mogadishu's mayor, said it was unclear who was behind the attack.

    Doctors said at least 30 other people were wounded.

    Abdifatah Ibrahim Shaweye, Mogadishu's deputy governor told the AFP news agency that the bomber was a foreigner.

    "We have one of his arms which is clearly showing that the suicide bomber was a foreigner"

    Abdifatah Ibrahim Shaweye, Mogadishu's deputy governor

    "We have one of his arms which is clearly showing that the suicide bomber was a foreigner," he said, explaining that the bomber's light skin tone showed he was not Somali.

    Somalia is wracked by violence with near-daily attacks on troops loyal to the largely powerless UN-backed transitional government.

    Much of the country is controlled by armed opposition groups who have captured many of the towns and villages seized by government and Ethiopian troops from the Islamic Courts Union in late 2006.

    The interim government has failed to bring stability to the Horn of Africa nation, where more than 16,000 people have been killed in the past two years and one million others driven from their homes.

    Some analysts have said the the recent withdrawal of Ethiopian troops could create a power vacuum as opposition forces scramble for control. 








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    Mariana Bridi da Costa, Brazilian model whose hands, feet were amputated, dies

    Mariana Bridi da Costa, Brazilian model whose hands, feet were amputated, dies


    RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - One month ago, 20-year-old beauty queen Mariana Bridi was living the dream of many young Brazilian women, trading her striking good looks for a modeling career that promised to lift her family out of poverty. Then she contracted a seemingly ordinary urinary tract infection. The bacteria spread quickly and inexorably through her body, proving to be extremely resistant to drugs. In a desperate bid to save her life, doctors amputated her hands and feet. But by Saturday she was dead. "God is comforting our hearts because he wanted her to be with him now," her father Agnaldo Costa told reporters outside the hospital where his daughter died. "I can't accept that my daughter left us so soon." Bridi's Web site says she began modeling at age 14 with the hope of giving "a dignified life to her parents."
    Her father is a taxi driver and her mother a house cleaner. By the age of 18, she was well on her way: In 2007 and 2008, she was a finalist in the Brazilian stage of the Miss World pageant. Her Web site said next month she was to participate in the second stage of a modeling competition held in Sao Paulo by Dilson Stein, the Brazilian model scout who discovered supermodel Gisele Bundchen. Last year, she took fourth in the Face of the Universe competition in South Africa and she had won bikini competitions across the globe. The Miss World Brazil organization said she was an example of someone "who knew how to intensely live her life." Half a dozen memorial groups onFacebook had already sprung up just hours after her death. On Bridi's own page on Orkut — the most popular Web social networking site in Brazil — dozens of memorial messages were left. The course of her illness was swift. In late December, she fell ill and doctors in her native state of Espirito Santo — northeast of Rio de Janeiro — initially diagnosed as having kidney stones. She returned to a hospital on Jan. 3 in septic shock — life-threatening low blood pressure — from the infection that would force doctors to amputate first her feet, then her hands. Doctors said there was little they could do but pump drugs into her and hope for the best. It was a nightmare scenario for anyone with an infection: Her body did not react to the latest and most potent drugs while the bacteria in her veins spread from head to toe. In Bridi's case, the culprit was the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which is known to be drug resistant. According to the January 2008 book "Pseudomonas: Genomics and Molecular Biology," edited by Pierre Cornelis, a researcher at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Brussels, the bacteria has the "worrisome characteristic" of "low antibiotic susceptibility." It also easily mutates to develop resistance to new drugs. Death from infections caused by the bacteria are relatively rare, but not unheard of: In late 2006, an outbreak of the bacteria at White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles sickened five infants — leading to the deaths of two. The bacteria causes about 10 percent of the roughly two million hospital-acquired infections each year in the U.S., according to health officials. A short statement from the Espirito Santo State Health Secretariat announced her death on Saturday "despite all the commitment of the hospital team." Her aunt said the hundreds of messages left on her Web site had lifted Bridi's spirit in the past weeks. "I believe that the serenity on her face came from this spiritual comfort," Oriendina Pereira Wasen said outside the hospital. Bridi's funeral was planned for Saturday afternoon in the town of Marechal Floriano. On the Web: http://www.marianabridi.com.br






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    BBC Under fire for blocking Gaza charity appeal

    LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The British government urged the BBC on Saturday to drop its refusal to broadcast a humanitarian appeal for victims of the war in Gaza.

    The BBC said the appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), a coalition of 13 aid agencies, would compromise the impartiality of its coverage.

    "The most important thing we can do for the people who are suffering is carrying on reporting it and we've done exemplary work in reporting the suffering of the people of Gaza," Chief Operating Officer Caroline Thomson said.

    "If we lose the trust of the audience by appearing...to support one side rather than another, then we will have lost it for the charities themselves as well as everyone else."

    Broadcasters ITV and Channel 4 said they would show it, but satellite broadcaster Sky said it had yet to reach a formal decision.

    But most attention focused on the stance of the BBC, which as the national public broadcaster is funded by a licence fee paid by owners of TV sets.

    International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said the British public could distinguish between support for humanitarian aid and perceived partiality in a conflict.

    "I really struggle to see in the face of the immense human suffering of people in Gaza at the moment that this is in any way a credible argument," he said.

    The BBC has argued that aid access to Gaza is in any case restricted, but Alexander said supplies and personnel had managed to get through on Friday.

    "I do not think the fact that limited access is available at the moment is itself an adequate reason not to broadcast an appeal to try and address what is still a dire humanitarian situation," Alexander told BBC radio.

    Politicians and aid groups have written to the BBC to try to persuade it to reconsider its decision, while hundreds of people demonstrated outside one of the broadcaster's London television centres.

    About 1,300 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 were injured during Israel's 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip, launched in an attempt to stop rocket attacks on its territory by Hamas militants. Thirteen Israelis died.




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