Global financial institution, The International Monetary Fund has officially granted its recognition ot the government of the war ravaged nation of Somalia after having no relations with the country for more than two decades.

Mogadishu, March 18: The Supreme Court of Somalia has acquitted a journalist who was jailed after he interviewed a woman who alleged she was raped by government security forces, a media report said.

Judge Aydeed Abdulahi Ilkahanaf said journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur was set free and charges against him were dropped for lack of evidence, Xinhua reported.

Abdinur along with the woman were each sentenced to a year in jail in February but the woman was released by an appeals court earlier this month.

Two pirate boats have been destroyed by a NATO royal warship which was on an anti-piracy mission in Somali. The helicopter of HMS Chatham spotted these two pirate boats around 150 miles in Somali Basin.

After detecting these two boats a marine team had been sent at the night. They were on a well planned operation to destroy them. The two boats were destroyed and ten Somali pirates surrendered after this attack.

Somali insurgents have captured the pirate heaven. They have taken the full control of one of the main pirate heaven in the center of the country. As per the public, hundred numbers of men of the Hizbul Islam group had taken control of the coastal town of Harad here. Somalia is not having proper governance since last 20 years. The Somali Government is not effective and have improper plan of action.

Mogadishu, Jan 8 : At least 20 people were killed and more than 40 wounded when African Union peacekeeping forces and Islamist insurgents exchanged heavy fire here Thursday, officials said.

Most of the victims were civilians, Xinhua reported citing emergency officials.

The fighting started in the northern part of the Somali capital after militants detonated a bomb targeting the Somali Army chief. He survived the attack.

The Somali government and Islamist insurgents are locked in a bitter battle over the control of Mogadishu.(IANS)

London, Jan 2 : Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose caricature of Prophet Muhammad sparked fury in the Muslim world, escaped death when a knife-wielding Somali man broke into his house in Denmark.

Westergaard was stunned when the 28-year-old intruder tried to kill him in front of his five-year-old granddaughter after barging into his house in the western city of Aarhus late Friday, BBC reported.

The report said the cartoonist ran into a specially designed room with the granddaughter and raised an alarm, following which police entered and shot the man, seriously wounding him.

Somali security offices, in a major success, had foiled an attempt to blow up a plane by arresting a young Somali man with chemicals, liquid and a syringe who was set to board a Dubai-bound plane in November in the capital Mogadishu.

The offices were earlier unaware of the intentions of that youth, thinking the chemicals as a part of the so-called "black dollar" scam in which fraudsters claimed to covert bills into U. S. dollars.

Mogadishu, Nov 26 - A Canadian journalist and an Australian photographer freed after 15 months of captivity in Somalia were Thursday due to fly to Nairobi, the capital of neighbouring Kenya.

Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Brennan were set free Wednesday night and stayed overnight in a Mogadishu hotel.

Mogadishu  - Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab has stoned a 29-year-old married woman to death for adultery, the second such execution this month, officials said.

Sheikh Ibrahim Sheikh Abdirahman, an al-Shabaab judge, also ordered the woman's sexual partner, and unmarried man, to receive one hundred lashes.

Hundreds of spectators watched the stoning late Tuesday in the village of Eelbon, southern Somalia.

Earlier this month a 33-year-old man was stoned to death for conducting an affair in the port town of Marka.

Al-Shabaab and its ally Hizbul Islam are battling the weak central government and control much of south and central Somalia.

Berlin  - Afghanistan and Somalia, two countries currently embroiled in conflict, are the world's most corrupt nations, according to a study published in Berlin on Tuesday.

The annual report by Transparency International (TI), an anti- corruption watchdog, scores 180 countries on the perceived level of public sector corruption. The least corrupt state according to the report in 2009 is New Zealand, closely followed by Denmark and Singapore.

"Bribery, cartels and other corrupt practices undermine competition and contribute to massive loss of resources for development in all countries, especially the poorest ones," the report said.

Brussels - European Union defence ministers are expected to give the go-ahead next week to a mission aimed at training Somalia's armed forces to fight insurgents, officials in Brussels said Friday.

Under the plan, up to 200 trainers from the armies of the EU's 27 member states would be sent to Uganda to train around 1,000-2,000 Somali troops, who would then support their country's fragile transitional government against armed insurgents.

Nairobi/Mogadishu - A Somali judge who sentenced four men with links to Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab to jail terms has been shot dead in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, local media reports said Thursday.

Radio Garowe said armed and masked men shot Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aware in Bosasso, the capital of Puntland, as he left a mosque on Wednesday night.

Aware - who was known for sentencing militants and pirates terrorizing international shipping off the coast of Somalia - was shot just days after jailing four al-Shabaab members.

Nairobi, Mogadishu - Pirates on Wednesday seized a Greek cargo ship some 400 nautical miles north-east of the Seychelles, a spokesman for the European anti-piracy mission Atalanta said.

The Marshall Islands-flagged MV Filitsa was carrying three Greek and 19 Filipino crew, according to Atalanta. The vessel, which had been en route to the South African port of Durban, was now sailing in a northerly direction.

Madrid - Spain on Tuesday continued seeking a solution to a piracy drama off Somalia, where pirates holding 36 fishermen are demanding the release of two of their accomplices who were captured and flown to Madrid for trial.

A lawyer representing one of the two detainees proposed that Spain expel them to Somalia, saying that would make it possible to resolve the crisis within three days.

The Basque trawler Alakrana has been held by pirates for 40 days off the Somali coast.

Nairobi/Mogadishu  - Somali pirates on Monday attacked a 330- metre-long oil tanker some 400 nautical miles north-east of the Seychelles but were unable to capture the ship, a spokesperson for the European Union's anti-piracy mission Atalanta said.

The pirates fired grenades at the Hong Kong-flagged tanker BW Lion from two speedboats. The tanker was able to escape through some evasive manoeuvres.

Mogadishu  - Two Kenyans working at a printing shop in the Somali capital of Mogadishu were abducted by a group of masked gunmen, witnesses told the German Press Agency dpa Monday.

The two men - one a Muslim, the other a Christian - were forced to leave by the 12 gunmen late Sunday. "Nobody knows about their whereabouts," a neighbouring shopkeeper told dpa.

It was not clear if the abduction was a simply kidnapping or if there were political motives for it.

Mogadishu - The Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab has stoned a man to death for committing adultery in the port town of Marka, officials said.

"The 33-year-old man Abbas [Hussein Abdurahman] confessed his crime in front of the Islamic court, and today we have implemented his reward in front of the people in accordance with Islamic sharia," al-Shabaab official Sheikh Suldan Aala Mohamed told spectators at the execution late Friday.

Al-Shabaab and its ally Hizbul Islam are battling the weak central government and control much of south and central Somalia.

Bicske, Hungary  - It may seem an unlikely destination for migrants from war-torn or poverty-stricken countries, but many have chosen to make their new beginnings in Hungary.

Daud, a 22-year-old from Somalia, would love to return home some day. For now, he lives at a refugee reception centre in Bicske, Hungary, a small town about 30 kilometres west of Budapest.

"I would like to go back, if there was a new government, if it was stable and safe. I think everyone wants that," Daud told the German Press Agency dpa.

In December 2008, Daud left Somalia for Turkey with three friends. From there, he travelled by bus and on foot for 15 days before being picked up by guards somewhere along the Hungarian border.

London/Nairobi - Somali pirates issued a 7 million dollar ransom demand Saturday for a British couple, kidnapped over a week ago in the Indian Ocean from their yacht.

Paul and Rachel Chandler, aged 59 and 55, were seized from the boat, the Lynn Rival, on October 23 by armed men, and the yacht was later found abandoned in international waters.

In a call to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), a pirate said: "We only need a little amount of 7 million dollars."

Nairobi/Mogadishu  - At least 25 people died in the Somali capital Mogadishu Thursday, following an insurgent mortar attack on the Horn of Africa nation's president, local media reports said.

Insurgents, who have been pushing to oust the Western-backed government, attacked President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as he flew out to Uganda to attend an African Union conference on internally displaced people and refugees.