Refugee names her child ‘Angela Merkel’

BERLIN: A Ghanaian refugee who has been granted asylum in Germany named her newborn daughter after Chancellor Angela Merkel in gratitude for being allowed to stay in the country.
Ophelya Ade, 26, who comes from a small town near the Ghanaian capital Accra, called the child Angela Merkel Ade, the registry office in Hanover said. Nadine Heese, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Red Cross, which runs the shelter where Ade lives, told Reuters that Ade wanted to express her gratitude toward Merkel, who she considers to be a “great woman.”
The child was born in the central German city on Feb. 2, but German news media only reported it this week.
In July, Merkel was confronted by a young Palestinian girl on a television show who politely explained her family might be sent back to Lebanon after four years in Germany. After the girl started crying, Merkel stroked her back but told her that Germany could not admit everyone who wanted to live there. That family has not yet been deported.
Germany approved Ade’s application for asylum earlier this year and issued her with a three-year residency permit.

Found in plane hold

Meanwhile, an Ethiopian asylum seeker who stowed away aboard a flight from Addis Ababa to Sweden was found safe and sound Friday in the plane’s hold at Stockholm airport.
“The baggage handlers discovered him and alerted us this morning. We were afraid he was suffering from hypothermia... but he was doing fine,” police spokesman Stefan Fardigs said. The man took advantage of his job at Addis Ababa airport to smuggle himself aboard the Ethiopian Airlines flight.