Read the full story: improveverywhere.com Like us on Facebook: facebook.com Follow us on twitter: twitter.com Subscribe on YouTube: bit.ly For our latest mission we filled a New York park with eight sets of identical quadruplets, creating a surreal experience for anyone who happened to be walking through the park. Created by Charlie Todd improveverywhere.com Edited [...]

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A suicide bomb attack on the newly reopened Somali National Theater in Mogadishu has killed at least eight people, including two top sports officials. The Islamist militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack. VOA was on the scene when the explosion occured: Witnesses said a female suicide bomber blew herself up inside the theater Wednesday as Prime Minister Abdiwelli Mohammed Ali began addressing the audience. He and other top officials in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) were participating in a ceremony marking the first anniversary of the Somali national television station. The heads of Somali Olympic committee, Aden Yabarow Wiish, and the Somali football federation, Said Mohamed Nur, were killed in the attack. Several ministers and journalists were among those wounded. Later, speaking on government-run Radio Mogadishu, Prime Minister Ali described the attack as a cowardly act. He said “whatever has happened today will not stop the government from achieving its goal of bringing peace and stability to the country.” He said it is normal that international terrorists and al-Shabab come back and kill innocent people whenever they are defeated in the battlefield.  As a government, he said “we will fight with them until we finish them.” Al-Shabab said it had planted explosives at the theater, and denied that a female suicide bomber had been deployed. The attack came just as life appeared to be getting back to normal in the Somali capital, after African Union forces drove al-Shabab militants from the city last year. But the al-Qaida-linked group has claimed responsibility for some isolated attacks in the capital, including a suicide bombing outside the presidential palace last month that killed four people.

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While deadly explosions rocked Syria’s capital one year into an ongoing but stuttering uprising, a peaceful protest took place in Washington Saturday with demands for more U.S. help to protect civilians.   Protesters mixed between Arabic and English as they chanted for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to step down.  They also called for more U.S. assistance to help speed his resignation. Some of them traveled hours to take part. A Syrian-American doctor now living in North Carolina, Mazen Hamad, was among them. “Assad is getting mixed messages.  On the one hand, saying you have to leave, but on the other hand nobody is forcing him to leave or not threatening to use external measures to make him leave,” he said. Hamad is from the city of Hama, where in the 1980s, Syria’s former president, Hafez al-Assad, the deceased father of the current president, oversaw the crushing of a previous insurgency. Michigan resident and Syrian-American Abe Alo is from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, where in the current uprising, more than 280 people are estimated to have been killed. In the past year, people in Syria have been in constant movement, trying to flee violence as fluid conflict zones have engulfed many cities. Saturday in Washington, Alo was taking pictures and taking part in the protest as a show of solidarity. “It is very important when they see somebody in the heart of the free world, in front of the White House, that we are here to support you guys.  I think that is a big moral boost,” he said. Egyptian-American student Mariam Ghanem, who last year took part in the early days of Egypt’s own uprising in Cairo, said she also needed to show support in Washington for Syrian victims. She said the struggle for human rights across the Middle East is only at an early stage. “It is going to take time but things have to change because people cannot keep living like this.  People cannot live in their own countries and feel insecure and feel like someone could barge in, either take their land or murder them, or just do awful things that are happening right now.  You cannot say that it is going to change this year or tomorrow or next month, it is going to take time, but it has to change,” she said. Between 8,000 and 10,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Syria’s uprising, most of them civilians. Of all the long-time rulers who have faced sustained civilian protests and or armed uprisings with varying degrees of external action – with several of them already out of power, killed, incarcerated or in exile – analysts say Syria’s president appears to have put up the most brutal and effective defense.

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