- World Report 2024: Somalia (hrw.org)
An uptick in fighting in several parts of the country resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and forced almost 650,000 people to flee. While famine conditions were averted, five consecutive below-average annual rains continued to have a devastating impact on the realization of the rights to food and health, with at least 4.3 million people in urgent need of food assistance.
- Tenino — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
The community that would become Tenino, located in Thurston County, was founded in 1851 when Stephen Hodgden (1807-1882) filed a claim under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850. In 1872 the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived, giving the local economy a major boost by enabling local timber and especially sandstone to be transported to market. By the time the city of Tenino was incorporated in 1906, sandstone quarries were anchoring the economy. But almost as soon as the city was incorporated, a series of major economic challenges arose. Most significantly, new building materials resulted in collapsing markets for sandstone. The Great Depression of the 1930s also took a toll on the already struggling local economy. In recent decades the city has found new life as a bedroom community for those working in nearby Olympia and Tacoma.
- Somalia (Wikipedia)
Somalia, officially the Federal Republic of Somalia, is the easternmost country in continental Africa. The country is on the Horn of Africa and is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, and Kenya to the southwest. Somalia has the longest coastline on Africa’s mainland. Somalia has an estimated population of around 17.1 million, of which over 2 million live in the capital and largest city Mogadishu. Around 85% of its residents are ethnic Somalis. The official languages of Somalia are Somali and Arabic, though the former is the primary language. The people of Somalia are Muslims, the majority of them Sunni.
