Officials in Beledweyn town in Hiran region have announced that the pro government Islamic Courts Union administration has collapsed; witnesses on Saturday.

Reports from Belwedweyn town say that there are more pro government Islamic Courts Union officials who resigned themselves.

The officials who left their offices are including, Sheik Abdinasir Jalil Ahmed, head of the training, Sheik Osman Abdulle Barqadle, the army commander of Ugas Khalif airport in Beledweyn town, Sheik Abdullahi Garamgaram, a deputy chief of the emergency forces of the pro government Islamic Courts Union in Hiran region in central Somalia.

African leaders asked the United Nations on Friday to impose sanctions on Eritrea, saying it was aiding the Islamist rebels fighting government forces in nearby Somalia.

But the African Union, at a summit in Libya, did not adopt a proposed resolution to give African Union peacekeepers in Somalia a mandate to do more than just defend themselves from rebel attacks.

In the third day of heavy fighting in the north of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, at least 16 people were killed and 30 were wounded, according to hospital officials, taking the death toll since Wednesday to more than 50.

African leaders gathered at the summit of the African Union Thursday agreed on the creation of an African "Authority" to replace the AU Commission. Its main function is to "coordinate" defence and foreign policies: This is a bold step towards a "United States of Africa" encouraged by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who nevertheless wished that "Authority has higher powers."
Muammar Gaddafi’s wishes have not been completely granted. Despite repeated calls for the creation of a common defence secretariat for the whole of Africa, made by the Libyan leader and President of the African Union (AU), leaders of African states have rather opted for a compromise. After lengthy late night discussions at the AU summit, they agreed, between Thursday night and early Friday morning, on the establishment of a common "Authority" which will coordinate defence and foreign policies.

Ethiopia has criticised the Human Rights Watch over its report that the country's draft anti-terrorism law would violate human rights.

"HRW's so-called analysis is replete with harsh generalisations," Ethiopia's foreign ministry said in a statement Friday.

"It cannot be considered a credible commentary on compatibility of the draft law with Ethiopia's human rights obligations."

Ethiopians don’t require anymore testimony to know what Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) is and what it is really standing for. No one is interested to any further extent to be clued-up about EPRDF. The reason is – there is no EPRDF in reality; there is only a Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF).

When TPLF came to power in 1991, its devious leaders promised to Ethiopians and to the Westerns who backed them during the war that they will form a political party and a government that comprises of all Ethiopians. They dreadfully condemned the Derg regime and vowed to create a new democratic system that treats all Ethiopians equally. Many pro-democracy devotees, including the Westerns believed the TPLF and gave it a chance to prove what it preached. Some freedom fighters even turned in their weapons and joined EPRDF not knowing that they were to be used as bondsmen by the TPLF power mongers.

After Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba pulled out of a highly anticipated duel against Meseret Defar in the women's 5,000 meters at the Bislett Games on Thursday, Defar won the Game easily, but it was far short of world record.

Kenenisa Bekele and Meseret Defar will each get $16,000 for their victories in 5km at the Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway; Deresse Mekonnen will get $8,000 for his victory in 1-mile run.

In the 5000m it was a second triumph for Ethiopia with Kenenisa Bekele besting Qatari James Kwalia clocking 13:04.87 as Kenyan Vincent Kiprop Chepkok took third.

We flew into the region, unsure what reception we could expect from the commanders of al-Shabab, the radical Islamist insurgent group, viewed by some as al-Qaeda's proxy in the Horn of Africa.

Our plan was to stay overnight in a town called Wajid - until we learned that al-Shabab had just publicly beheaded three men in the area and shot dead a community leader.

We changed our schedule fast.

We were travelling with the United Nation's World Food Programme, which, despite operating in one of the world's most dangerous environments, is managing to feed some 3.5 million Somalis.

"It is very, very difficult," said WFP's deputy country director Denise Brown.

In the following analysis, "More Red Tears", Saleh Gadi criticizes Dawit Wolde Giorgis´s recent essay, "The Way Forward for Ethiopia and Eritrea" as an attempt to rewrite the history of relations of the two countries. Saleh sees as short sighted Dawit´s call on fellow Ethiopians to side with Eritrea´s President Isayas Afewerki in order to get rid of the government in Addis Ababa. Instead, Saleh calls for a peaceful struggle leading to an "ideal democracy" in Ethiopia.

Until Dawit makes up his mind, I am claiming that to the marginalized people of the region, the history of Ethiopia has been a continuous saga about oppression, savagery, aggression, violence and subjugation—and bigotry. When Ethiopian kings invaded Muslim lands, it is always "the king asserted his control over the Muslims." Muslims are never referred to as Ethiopian Muslims, they are just Muslims. The situation of the Oromo was even worse, people who were considered and treated as Slaves by the Abyssinian elite for centuries. For details of such historical fallacies, look at most of the Ethiopian history textbooks, especially the history of the Eastern parts of Ethiopia, with Harrer at the center. I think 1400 years is long enough for the elite to decide whether they consider Ethiopian Muslims as equal citizens or illegal aliens.

Hundreds of women have rallied to demand the death penalty for a man who shackled a girl with dogs for 18 years and abused her, the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported on Friday.

The unnamed suspect from Adama -- a town 100 km east of the capital Addis Ababa -- imprisoned the girl from the age of four, the agency said.

The man took custody of her when his mother, who had been caring for the girl, died. The victim's own mother suffered from mental illness.

"The suspect tortured, violated and brutally abused the girl for 18 years, shackling her with dogs in a secluded room inside his home," police told ENA.

Heavy fighting in the Somali capital killed at least 20 people on Thursday, the second day of fierce clashes as government forces tried to drive hardline Islamists out of their Mogadishu bases.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters in Somalia's al Shabaab rebel group are battling to oust President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, himself a former Islamist insurgent who joined a peace process last year.

Al Shabaab and allied fighters control much of southern and central Somalia and have boxed the government and 4,300 African Union peacekeepers into a few blocks of Mogadishu.

After a slow start on Africa, the Obama administration is picking up the pace. President Barack Obama will make his first stopover in a sub-Saharan African country next week when he and First Lady Michelle Obama visit Ghana. (Egypt was included in a presidential trip last month.)

In early August, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to take part in the 8th Annual African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum in Nairobi, Kenya and visit several other countries on the continent.

Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew is currently on a multi-country African journey. The administration's point person for Africa, Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, who has been on the job since May 7, says the Obama team is now fully engaged on a range of issues.

In this first AllAfrica interview with the assistant secretary, we explore some of the challenges for United States policies towards Africa. An upcoming conversation will discuss other challenges, other countries - and the progress and potential of Africa in this decade.

While city cab drivers know their work isn’t much of a living, driving a cab shouldn’t cost a driver his life.

Last Friday afternoon, Abraham Messun, 50, was resting and still visibly weak while recovering from a chest wound he received while being robbed in his taxi. What should have been nothing more than a routine $10 fare through the city’s west-end turned into every driver’s nightmare when Messun saw his client point a pistol at his head just before she pulled the trigger..

“She was so nice,” he said. “She was very kind and polite so it’s still difficult to understand why she tried to kill me.”

Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba pulled out of a highly anticipated duel against fellow Ethiopian Meseret Defar in the women's 5,000 meters at the Bislett Games on Thursday due to a leg injury.

After having avoided each other the past two years in the Golden League meet at Bislett Stadium, the two finally seemed set to compete in the same race. But Dibaba sustained a minor leg injury during training on Tuesday and was forced to push back her return to competition.

Thermal anomalies and dense sulphur dioxide plumes in Ethiopia appear to indicate that a significant effusive eruption has taken place in the Manda Hararo area of the western Afar region. There is as yet no visual confirmation of the eruption from the ground.

There was a VEI=2 eruption at the Manda Hararo volcanic complex in August 2007, and a larger (possibly VEI=3) eruption in the Alu-Dalaffilla region in November 2008. In terms of size, volcanic SO2 expert Prof Simon Carn of Michigan Technical University reports that the current Manda Hararo event seems to lie somewhere between the two.

More Ethiopian troops with armed vehicles have reached near Beledweyn town in central Somalia as Ethiopia said that it does not plan to send troops into Somalia, witnesses told Shabelle radio on Thursday.

Residents in El-gal and Ilka’adde villages about 20 kilometers north of Beledweyn town said that they had seen more Ethiopian units with many battle wagons pouring in there at overnight until Thursday morning adding that the troops made military movement in Kala-beyrka intersection in Hiran region.

“The Ethiopian troops arrived at El-gal village last night and they had been there for several hours and lately returned back from the village. They were including infantry troops and others with armed trucks,” one resident said.