This is about all of the aviation news that has come into my
 basket (?) over the past 24 hours.
                                  Jim
       Planes drop emergency food to flooded Somalis
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     NAIROBI - November 25, 1997 11:53 a.m. EST - A light aircraft
 dropped food to marooned Somalis on Tuesday for the first time, U.N.
 World Food Program spokeswoman Michele Quintaglie reported.
     She said the Twin Otter flew low over Afmadou, in the south, to
 drop 600 kilograms of high-protein biscuits nearby. Another 750
 kilograms were being dropped later at nearby Hagar.
     "It was an experiment -- it was successful," Quintaglie said,
 adding that American Refugee Committee (ARC) workers were on the
 ground to distribute the rations.
     Andrew Rosauer of the ARC said Afmadou was under 6 feet of water,
 with some people on roofs but the rest of the population of 8,000 on
 nearby high ground, along with 4,000 people from nearby villages.
     Forty-four people had died there, from drowning, malaria, and
 dysentry, he said.
     The confirmed death toll in Somalia since the Juba River burst
 its banks on Oct. 18 rose to 1,386 on Tuesday, an inter-agency com-
 mittee reported. More than 230,000 Somalis have fled their submerged
 villages in the worst floods in living memory.
     The torrential rains up and down East Africa are taking a brief
 swing to the south, which will provide short-lived relief for
 Ethiopia and Somalia but further batter Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania,
 the Kenya-based Drought Monitoring Service reported.
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     And these people continue to murder their own people at
 Mogadushu? Jim
--- DB 1.39/004487
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