Muslim faithful gather at the Plain of Arafat near Makkah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday. (Associated Press) ARAFAT: HANI HAZAIMEH & SIRAJ WAHAB More than two million pilgrims performed the most important rite of Haj on Friday as they stood in prayer from dawn to dusk on the plains of Arafat, 15 km east of Makkah....
November 14, 2026
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A mother’s tenacity and cash freed Somali hostage
BY: JAMES RAINEY and RUBEN VIVES Journalist kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2012 was released this week. LOS ANGELES – The first phone call jolted the modest Redondo Beach townhouse in the middle of the night. Many others like it would follow, for nearly three years. The voices on the other end of the line...
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NYC OFFICIALS DENOUNCE ANTI-ISLAM TRANSIT ADS
BY JONATHAN LEMIRE NEW YORK (AP) — Elected officials and religious leaders from several faiths on Tuesday denounced anti-Islamic ads that are appearing soon on New York City transit buses and subway stations. Six different ads will appear this week on some Manhattan subway entrances and next week on 100 buses. Some of the ads...
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Al-Amoudi to Invest $500 Million in Ethiopian Coffee, Oranges
By William Davison Horizon Plantations Ethiopia Plc, majority-owned by Saudi billionaire Mohamed al-Amoudi, plans to almost double annual revenue within three years by investing at least $500 million in coffee and orange projects. The agriculture company will train workers, improve roads and replace washing units at the Limmu andBebeka coffee plantations, which together have over...
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Kenya Eager to Return Somali Refugees Wants Jubaland Settlement
By Sarah McGregor Kenya is proposing that Somali refugees living at camps in the country’s north be moved to a settlement in southern Somalia as part of the United Nations-supported repatriation process, an Interior Ministry official said. Kenya, Somalia and the UN signed an agreement last year to pave the way for Somali refugees to...
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Kenya’s Somali community ‘isolated, scapegoated’ following last year’s Westgate mall attack
By Martin Cuddihy Africa correspondent Martin Cuddihy writes that in the security crackdown following last year’s Westgate mall attack, Kenya’s significant Somali community has been regularly targeted. here is a suburb of Nairobi, not far from town, with the quaint English name of Eastleigh. Like a lot of inner suburbs there are multistorey concrete tower...
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Girl power: Meet the Spice Girls of Ethiopia
PANASHE CHIGUMADZI Women’s rights activists Yegna have established themselves as the Spice Girls of the Horn of Africa “Women are sisters, women are mothers, women are wives. Let’s respect them. Tell that guy to respect girls and we will respect him.” So go the lyrics of the song This House, sung by Yegna (pronounced Yen-ya,...
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Scottish referendum campaigns make final pitches in last 24 hours before vote
Yes and no campaign leaders out in force across Scotland, as Alistair Darling admits vote will go ‘right down to the wire’ Rowena Mason, Severin Carrell and Patrick Wintour Two women take a photograph of themselves on the border. The three latest polls suggest the no campaign has a slight lead of 52% to 48%...
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Sexual Abuse, Somali Sisters, and the Secretes of AMISOM (SASMO)
By Faisal A. Roble Yesterday was a time of a relative peace, where Beerlula was both beautiful and honorable; today, she is cursed because she is at the cusp of being raped and bestially abused by men from afar. If Hadrawi eloquently portrayed Beerlula’s beauty, Mahmoud Tukale exposed her distant fears that one day she...
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Somali-American Says Son Joined Syrian Jihadists
Armed Free Syrian Army fighters near Wadi Al-Dayf camp in the southern Idlib countryside, Sept. 14, 2014. Harun Maruf A Somali-American man says his son has left the United States to join an Islamist extremist group in Syria. In an exclusive interview with VOA’s Somali Service, the father of Mohamud Mohamed, 19, said his son...