Study Shows Amara and Tigre Gave the World Its First Written Language of Commerce

A new study shows that Amara and Tigre merchants, from today's Ethiopia and Eritrea, founded the ancient civilization of Gebts 5100 years ago and as a result developed the world’s first written language of business and trade. Gebts represented a prime location to sell their goods and products, which Amara and Tigre merchants appear to have done in the area since 6000 years ago. But the key to establishing the ancient civilization that we all know about was when the Amara and Tigre merchants moved their farms and production into Gebts. Once they did, they needed to develop a way to document workers, wages, productions and sales.

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U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals are meant to be reached 2015 when there is supposed to be enough doctors to meet overall global needs, but Ethiopia has been rated as one of the countries to still be far short in that regard, World Health Organisation (WHO) experts said on Wednesday.

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Dr. Yacob Hailemariam, vice-chairperson, UDJ

Dr. Yacob Hailemariam was elected last week vice-chairperson and head of foreign affairs of the Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party. The party, which consists of many members of the leadership from the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP) or Kinijit as it was formerly known, held its first congress last week and elected its chairperson and four vice-chairpersons.
Dr. Yacob spoke to Bruck Shewareged on the tasks and the challenges facing them. Excerpts:

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Rap21 / July 03, 2008

In Ethiopia, the political happenings have more than often dictated the activities of the private press. Whether tensions flare on the borders of Eritrea or Somalia or the incumbent government is in danger of losing power the press has always felt the repercussions.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), following the 2005 elections, at least twenty journalists were jailed and a further 100 Ethiopian media practitioners, including 37 journalists, have fled the country in search of freedom and safety since 2001.


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By a contributor in Addis Ababa

The Ethiopian federal high court has on Wednesday,July 2 2008, issued an order to the federal police to collect monetary fines imposed on
four publishing houses convicted by a kangaroo court on charges stemming from the post 2005 election riots.

The publishing houses are:
1. Serkalem Publishing, owner of Menelik, Asqual and Satenaw
newspapers, fined 120, 000 birr
2. Sisay Publishing, owner of Ethiop newspaper, fined 100,000 birr
3. Zekarias Publishing, owner of Netsanet newspaper, fined 60,000 birr
4. Fasil Publishing, owner of Addis Zena newspaper, fined 15,000 birr

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Argaw Ashine and Agencies, Addis Ababa

Ethiopia's Parliament has endorsed a new Media Bill despite fierce opposition at home and abroad.

The new law bans censorship of private media and detention of journalists, but critics said that it retains other threats to free expression.
"Under the new law, previous restrictions against private media outlets, such as detention of journalists suspected of infringement of the law, has been scrapped," a parliament statement said.

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The former Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party (CUDP) majority, which its chair Engineer Hailu Shaul claims is formed by ex-members that are operating outside the party’s mainstream, held a founding congress on Wednesday, June 18, 2008, after gathering the required signatures to form a new party, Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ).
For the first time in the nation’s political history, UDJ’s founding congress elected a woman as chairperson. A judge by profession, Birtukan Midekssa, sat down with Capital’s Kirubel Tadesse to explain what prompted the group to form the party and also discussed objectives over the next three years of her leadership of Ethiopia’s newest political party.

Capital: Speaking to Capital a few months ago, you stated that the formation of a new party was only among options and you would wait for Hailu Shaul (Eng) to return to the country before persuing this [if at all]. That didn’t happen as you had already started collection of signatures before Hailu returned. What changed in the last few months that caused you to rush to set up UDJ?

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As reported last week in The Hill and also by an overseas blogger at an E.U. hearing in Brussels, DLA Piper is lobbying on behalf of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and his Ethiopian government on Capitol Hill. For a minimum of $50,000 a month, DLA Piper lobbyists are urging Congress not to sanction the country for human rights violations. It’s a bold move, given that Zenawi’s violent crackdown on protesters following contested national elections in 2005 was strongly condemned by human rights advocates.

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Zenawi’s parliament has passed a new media law, which bans censorship of private media and detention of journalists, but which critics say retains other threats to free expression.The parliament, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front, said on Wednesday that the new Mass Media and Freedom of Information Law was based on international concepts of press freedom.

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NAIROBI,From The Economist print edition
Will Somalia ever get the peacekeepers it needs?

AFTER months of delicate negotiations, Somalia’s internationally recognised but feeble transitional government and its Islamist opposition agreed to work together to rebuild their ruined country. Under an agreement signed in neighbouring Djibouti in June, Ethiopia, which invaded Somalia in late 2006 to prop up the ailing secular-minded Somali government, was to withdraw its troops. Somalia’s Islamists, who have been fighting an insurgency ever since, would stand their fighters down. It would have been a breakthrough for a country that has lacked a central government since the fall of its long-time dictator, Siad Barre, in 1991. But the deal was stillborn. Since then, Somalia has rotted away, a victim of international indifference and its own internecine history.

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GURI Ethiopian troops deployed in parts of central Somalia came under heavy fire Tuesday as they traveled the major north-south highway, Radio Garowe reported. The Ethiopian army convoy left the town of Guri El, in Galgaduud region, and was traveling south towards Hiran region when Islamist rebels ambushed them, igniting a bloody battle where artillery and rockets were used.

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Repressive new legislation should be amended or scrapped
Human Rights Watch | July 1, 2008
NEW YORK - Ethiopia’s government should immediately abandon plans to impose strict government controls and draconian criminal penalties on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. The two groups called on donor governments, whose behind-the-scenes efforts to see the bill reformed appear to have failed, to speak out publicly against the de facto criminalization of most of the human rights, rule of law and peace-building work currently being carried out in Ethiopia.

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The tyrant’s reunion
To the traditional accompaniment of wailing sirens, African leaders have arrived at the opening of their summit - a summit dominated by the crisis in Zimbabwe.
But a visitor arriving in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh without this prior knowledge might find it difficult to be believe.

The summit's host, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, made a strong speech in which he said that Africa's conflicts were a major impediment to development."There can be no development without peace and no advancement without stability," he said.And he went on to enumerate the continent's conflicts: between Djibouti and Eritrea, Chad and Sudan, and in Somalia.

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Nation midia, By Michael Deibert / June 30, 2008

When it was announced last month that the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had swept local polls in this vast Horn of Africa nation, few expressed surprise.Zenawi’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition was declared by the country’s national electoral board to have won 559 districts in the kebele and woreda divisions of local government and all but one of 39 parliament seats contested in the by-election.

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Sharm Al Shaikh: African leaders are convening in Egypt on Monday in a summit that will likely be dominated by the political situation in Zimbabwe. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak opened the two-day closed-door summit held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm Al Shaikh with newly re-elected Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in attendance.

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June 27, 2008 (Computerworld) The ice and minerals found using a robotic arm in the Martian soil could make it easier for humans to live on the planet in the not-so-distant future.

The ice on the northern pole of Mars has been a particularly important find for NASA scientists because robots and astronauts could extract usable, even drinkable, water from it, helping to sustain an extended stay on the Red Planet, according to Ray Arvidson, a co-investigator for the Mars Lander's robotic arm team and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.


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By Yilma Bekele (28 June 2008) Some days more than others it is becoming hard to wake up being an Ethiopian. It seems like there isn’t anything good about it. Today was one of those days. First to hit me was a report from Brussels. My fellow brother, Dr. Berhanu, was making a presentation regarding the current situation in our country. I do not have a problem with that. It takes an Ethiopian to speak about Ethiopia. My problem is with the people who were sitting across the table from him. As diverse as we are there is no way you would mistake them for an Ethiopian.

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EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL

Late on June 26, Education International (EI) received a disturbing update from Gemoraw Kassa, General Secretary of the ETA, established in 1949 and EI Member, informing EI that the court of cassation at the Federal Supreme Court ruled against the original ETA, 26 June.

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Addis Ababa, 26 June, 2008 – Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in the Oromiya and Southern Nations and Nationalities People's regions (SNNPR) of southern Ethiopia have treated about 6,500 children for severe malnourishment. Since May 13, MSF has been continually scaling up its activities in the areas where it works to respond to the alarming nutritional situation there.

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Aid workers must now choose who's the most malnourished, and experts say the crisis could become as bad as the infamous 1984 famine.
Hadero, Ethiopia - – One by one, the children are placed on a scale hanging from a makeshift wooden stand.

The mothers look pleadingly at the Doctors Without Borders aid worker, but he keeps his eyes on his clipboard, tallying the figures that determine whether each child is sick enough to eat today.The scales in a rural clinic in Hadero, Ethiopia, are the latest indicator of the severity of the global food crisis.

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