Situation dire, dry in Horn of Africa

A lack of rain in the Horn of Africa could further devastate a region where international agencies are feeding 7 million people, a top U.N. official said Monday.

Jean-Jacques Graisse, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said weather predictions for the eastern part of the continent suggest that rains might fail again, as they did late last year when there was “an extremely severe drought.”

The “short rains” season failed totally in northern Kenya and Somalia, Djibouti, the Somali region of Ethiopia, and to some extent in Rwanda and Burundi, Graisse said.

Aid groups so far had managed to prevent famine, but the challenge could become greater, he said.

Southern Africa will continue to have food production problems because so many adults have died of AIDS that the people who remain no longer are capable of farming the land.

DUBLIN, Ireland

Ahern vows push for gay civil unions

Ireland will legalize civil partnerships for gay couples, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern pledged Monday as he opened new offices for the country’s main gay rights group.

“Sexual orientation cannot, and must not, be the basis of a second-class citizenship. Our laws have changed, and will continue to change, to reflect this principle,” Ahern told an audience at Ireland’s Gay and Lesbian Equality Network.

Ahern said it would be more difficult to legalize gay marriage in Ireland than it was in the United Kingdom, which approved the civil unions in December. Ireland’s constitution has a clause requiring the predominantly Roman Catholic state to protect the institution of marriage.

“This challenge, however, is one that the government is determined to meet. We are committed to legislating on this issue,” said Ahern.

MEXICO CITY

Missing journalists focus of story blitz

Dozens of Mexican newspapers frustrated by fruitless police probes of slain and missing journalists simultaneously published the first in a series of reports on the cases Monday.

Monday’s article in Mexican and U.S.-based Spanish-language newspapers focused on the April 2005 disappearance of Alfredo Jimenez Mota, 26, who covered drug trafficking for El Imparcial, the daily newspaper in Hermosillo, Sonora, which borders Arizona.

The report named and described Sonora state families tied to drug trafficking, and pointed to evidence that Jimenez’s likely abductor was Raul Enriquez Parra, an alleged smuggler whose tortured body was found in November 2005 after being thrown from a plane.

Monday’s report suggested that police – some of whom were Jimenez’s sources – may be linked to his disappearance.

The journalists hope that by publishing the reports simultaneously they can protect themselves from revenge attacks by organized crime.

Compiled from wire reports