Former refugee running as Somalia’s first female president

Once A Somali Refugee, She’s Now Running As Somalia’s First Female President

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July 10, 20168:23 AM ET

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Fadumo Dayib was once a Somali refugee. A Harvard graduate and mother, she now lives a comfortable life in Finland. Despite the overwhelming odds, she running as Somalia’s first female president.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Fadumo Dayib is trying to do something no one has ever done before. Despite overwhelming odds, she is vying to become Somalia’s first female president. Those long odds have a lot to do with her own story. She has been a refugee for most of her life. Despite not learning how to read until she was 14 years old, she now has a master’s degree from Harvard in public administration and is working on a Ph.D. But in a country with a dismal human rights record and a long history of oppression against women, running for the highest public office in the land comes with risks. Fadumo Dayib joins me now. Welcome to the program.

FADUMO DAYIB: Thank you very much, Rachel.

MARTIN: Why do you want to do this?

DAYIB: Because I see what I’m doing as a moral obligation and a civic duty towards my country. I’ve watched for almost 26 years, hoping for a competent leadership to come that can bring us all back. There’s 1.5 million Somalis in the diaspora, 1.2 million internally displaced inside the country. And they’re all yearning to have a dignified existence to go back.

MARTIN: What is life like – if you are a child in Somalia right now, what does your future hold? What is day to day life like?

DAYIB: It’s very bleak. If I speak about a child in Somalia who wakes up and might be in an internally displaced camp, this is a child who sees violence because majority of the women and children also get raped. They, you know, experience attacks by al-Shabab. And of the 12 million Somalis that I spoke about, 75 percent are under the age of 30. Of that, 68 percent are unemployed. That’s why they end up either joining piracy or joining al-Shabab, or going on to migrate and dying on their way to the West.

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Plans to combat poverty in Peru revealed

Peru’s new president reveals ambitious plans to combat poverty

Outgoing President Ollanta Humala, left, and Peru’s President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski at the government palace in Lima, Peru. June 22, 2016. (Credit: AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Just weeks after his election, President-elect Pablo Kuczynski demonstrated his commitment to tackling inequality and poverty in the Andean nation.

“In 2001 we started with 54 percent of Peruvians in poverty, now we are at 23 percent. It’s an ambitious goal, but I want the poverty [rate]no more than 10 percent,” Kuczynski said in an interview with Peruvian broadcaster RPP on Sunday.

To reach his goal, Kuczynski will need to cut Peru’s current poverty rate by more than half, although the poverty rate only inched down 1 percentage point last year. Kuczynski also aims to make significant reductions in extreme poverty – defined by the World Bank as living under$1.90 a day – from the current rate of 4.1 percent to no more than 1 percent or 2 percent.

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N. Korea’s rice production to rise in 2016: U.N. report

N. Korea’s rice production to rise in 2016: U.N. report

2016/06/04 20:17

SEOUL, June 4 (Yonhap) — North Korea’s rice production this year is expected to rise to 1.6 million tons, a news media report said Saturday, apparently due to favorable weather conditions.

Rice production this year is estimated at 1.6 million tons, an increase from 1.3 million tons from a year earlier, U.S.-based media Voice of America (VOA) said, after quoting a report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“The North’s rice output is expected to be more than 1.6 million tons this year,” Kwon Tae-jin, an expert on the North’s agriculture at the GS&J Institute, was quoted by the VOA as saying. “Weather, water and fertilizers were all well prepared.”

FAO forecast the country will additionally import 100,000 tons of rice this year to secure a total of 1.7 million tons, VOA said.

The agency further estimated the North to produce 2.5 million tons of corn this year, about the same level as last year, it said.

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South Korea confirms endangered stork breeding successful

Endangered stork breeding attempt succeeds in central S. Korea

2016/05/23 11:59

YESAN, South Korea, May 23 (Yonhap) — A released stork has hatched two chicks in the wild in the country’s central region, marking the species’ first natural breeding in the country, the Yesan municipal government said Monday, quoting a research center tasked with restoring the endangered bird.

The Oriental White Stork Park in Yesan, a town in South Korea’s central province of South Chungcheong, said its researchers confirmed the chicks in a nest of a female stork named Minhwang and a male stork named Manhwang on Sunday. The two are part of eight storks that the park returned to the wild in September last year.

The female stork Minhwang (L) and male stork Manhwang tend to their newly hatched chicks at a stork park in Yesan, a town about 134 kilometers south of Seoul, in this photo provided on May 23, 2016, by the Yesan municipality. (Yonhap)

Observation of the chicks through a telescope showed they are around 10 centimeters long, and they are believed to have hatched on Friday and Sunday, respectively, based on their body sizes, the center said.

It is the first time since 1971, when the species became extinct in the wild in South Korea that the stork has had natural breeding. About a month ago, the park said Minhwang laid at least two eggs in the wild.

Minhwang and Manhwang had flown as far as North Korea via the southwestern town of Yeonggwang before settling in the nest early last month. The couple were spotted taking turns sitting on the eggs and keeping the nest in good shape, it said.

This file photo, dated Sept. 3, 2015, shows Oriental white storks being released into the wild from a stork park in the town of Yesan, 134 kilometers south of Seoul. (Yonhap)

The Yesan municipal government established the park in 2009 as part of its efforts to promote the reintroduction of the bird, designated as national monument No. 199, and released six adult storks and two young ones into the wild last year. It plans to return 10 storks a year to the wild after reorienting them.

namsh@yna.co.kr

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Norway to ban gas-powered cars

Norway Aims To Ban Sales Of Gas-Powered Vehicles By 2025

CHRIS WHITE

 10:56 PM 06/04/2016

 

 A Tesla Motors Model X electric sports-utility vehicles is seen on stage a presentation in Freemont, California September 29, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Norway has decided to prohibit the selling of all gasoline-powered cars by 2025, according to Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.

The ban, which has received support from political parties on the left and the right, is pegged to be the most aggressive anti-gasoline energy policies of its kind in the world – the irony, of course, is that Norway is one of the largest producers of fossil fuels in the entire world.

Norwegians produced and exported in 2013 more than 1.2 million barrels of oil, placing it 14^th overall on a list of exporting countries, just below Qatar and Mexico.

India and Denmark have discussed the possibility of banning gas-powered cars as well, but India’s policy would begin five years after Norway’s, in 2030, and the Dutch parliament is heavily divided on their version of the ban, which would also start in 2025.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/04/norway-aims-to-ban-sales-of-gas-powered-vehicles-by-2025/#ixzz4AjDKflYp