Emergency food aid is not getting out fast enough to the people who need it in Ethiopia’s troubled Somali region, a top US official says.

Michael Hess, of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), says only 41% of the food allocated for July has reached its intended recipients.

 The nomadic people of the eastern deserts accuse the Ethiopian government Woyanne regime of deliberately starving people to death, reports Jonathan Rugman of channel 4 news.

Deliberately starving people to death: that’s the accusation being levelled at the Ethiopian government ruling Tigean People Liberation Front (Woyanne) by the poor nomadic people of the country’s eastern deserts.

JIJIGA, Ethiopia – Ethiopia(waoyanne) has been accused of deliberately underestimating the scale of a deadly drought facing millions of its people, some of whom are being deprived of emergency food aid by the country’s military. More on Ethiopia(Woyanne) accused of hiding famine as millions starve

ADDIS ABABA, 17 September 2008 (IRIN) – The Somali region of south-eastern Ethiopia is facing critical food and water shortages, with many families eating only one meal a day and others migrating to urban areas, the UN and aid agencies said.

As a result, malnutrition levels are increasing, especially in Korahe, Warder, Degehabur, Gode, Fiiq and parts of Liben and Afder zones, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), reported.

More on ETHIOPIA: Somali region facing food and water crisis

(CBS) In a sign that John McCain’s convention bounce has dissipated, Barack Obama has taken a 48 percent to 43 percent lead over his Republican rival among registered voters in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

McCain had a two percentage point lead among registered voters in a CBS News poll released on September 8th, just after the Republican National Convention. Prior to the party conventions, Obama led McCain by 3 points.

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — The United Nations on Tuesday warned that a shortage of food and water was worsening the effects of a searing drought in Ethiopia’s restive Somali region.

“The overall humanitarian situation in the region has worsened due to progressive shortages of water and food,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement. More on UN says drought worsening in Ethiopian restive region

NAIROBI,  (IRIN) – More than half of Djibouti’s population is food insecure and needs emergency aid due to drought and high food prices, an early warning information service has said.

At least 340,000 of the country’s 632,000 people are at risk, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), which is funded by the US Agency for International Development, said in a September 12 report.

The opportunity to do a masters degree on the Universities of Ethiopia will be in the hands of the EPRDF/TPLF and no longer will the intellectual abilities of the candidate be decisive, but the loyalty to the party. It is a further step to totalitarianism and it proves again that the Marxist Leninist way of thinking, which was the basic principle of the TPLF, has never been gone. The discussion about academic freedom is already far behind us. More on Economic downfall in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government is preparing to introduce for passage a Charities and Societies Proclamation (draft law) to regulate all domestic and international civil society organizations (CSOs) carrying out activities in the country. The law is ostensibly a tool for enhancing the transparency and accountability of civil society organizations. But in fact, its provisions would create a complex web of arbitrary restrictions on the work civil society groups can engage in, onerous bureaucratic hurdles, draconian criminal penalties, and intrusive powers of surveillance.