ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia removed an annual $800 million fuel subsidy on Saturday and said the money would be used to stabilise rising food prices. "The $800 million which the government was spending on fuel subsidies will be channelled to ease the spiralling cost of food grain during the current harvest season," the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement.

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Ethiopia - another famine, another avoidable disaster Population explosion and a misguided land policy - two reasons why Addis Ababa is the architect of its own misery

Rosemary Righter

The Times - August 20, 2008 -It was at a railway crossing near Diri Dawa, the provincial capital in the Ethiopian Ogaden desert, that I saw them: small children’s hands, blackened by sun, clutching at the slats of a cattle truck dumped on a siding. The year was 1984, the height of the Ethiopian famine that claimed about a million lives. These young things must have expired, hours later, of heat and thirst in temperatures peaking at about 48C, in the truck where they had deliberately been left to die.

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Salim Awadh is talking to me from inside a cell somewhere in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.There are seven other prisoners kept in the same small, dark room, he starts to tell me.Then he suddenly stops speaking. I can hear frantic whispering in the background. Then he says it is safe to carry on.

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(Washington, DC, October 1, 2008) – At least 10 victims of the 2007 Horn of Africa rendition program still languish in Ethiopian jails and the whereabouts of several others is unknown, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Several of the detained men were interrogated by US officials in Addis Ababa soon after they were secretly transferred from Kenya to Somalia, and then to Ethiopia in early 2007.

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By Tsegaye Tadesse

ADDIS ABABA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Instability in U.S. financial markets could cut vital remittances to Ethiopia, now worth $1.2 billion annually, a central bank official said on Thursday.Millions of Ethiopians impoverished during the regime of Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam are dependant on money sent by relatives living mainly in the United States.

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ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — An outbreak of African horse sickness has killed more than 2,000 horses, mules and donkeys in Ethiopia since March, an official said Wednesday.The disease has swept through the country's southwestern regions since the first outbreak was reported, said Berhe Gebreegziabher, the head of animal health in the agriculture ministry.

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ADDIS ABABA (AFP)
At least three people were killed and 15 injured Sunday in an explosion in eastern Ethiopia, as investigators scrambled to determine if it was an act of terrorism or an accident, police said.The blast occurred near a hotel in Jijiga, the capital of Ethiopia’s eastern Somali province, federal police spokesman Demsash Hailu told AFP.

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September 28, 2008 - Haile Gebrselassie smashed the world record he set in last year’s Berlin Marathon to retain his title with an historic time of two hours three minutes and 59 seconds.The 35-year-old Ethiopian’s performance was the first time the milestone of two hours and four minutes has been breached and easily bettered his previous mark of 2hr 4min 26sec.

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.. Ethiopia, for example, is marketing its farmland to Saudi Arabia, yet the Horn of Africa nation has a history of famine and is currently combating serious drought. Under such circumstance, foreign growers planning to export food could face potential protests, even riots, from hungry locals, experts said. …

Some of the world’s richest nations are coming to grow crops and export the yields, hoping to turn the global epicenter of malnutrition into a breadbasket for themselves. By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer.

September 28, 2008

WAD RAWAH, SUDAN — Africa’s abundant natural resources have long invited foreign exploitation.

Over generations, foreign empires and companies stripped the continent of its gold and diamonds, then its oil. Rubber and ivory were plundered from Congo. Even Africa’s people were exploited: captured and sold into slavery abroad.

Now foreigners are enjoined in a new scramble in Africa. The latest craze? Food. Amid a global crisis that for a time this year doubled prices for wheat, corn, rice and other staples, some of the world’s richest nations are coming to Africa to farm, hoping to turn the global epicenter of malnutrition into a breadbasket for themselves.

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Concerned Ethiopians in Seattle have forced the cancellation of an event at the Seattle University where Woyanne ambassador and full time drunkard Samuel Assafa was scheduled to speak. It was rumored dictator Meles Zenawi might also appear at the event.

The event, which was named "Understanding Ethiopia," was scheduled to coincide with the exhibition of Lucy (Dinknesh).

The University has canceled the meeting after Dr Shakespear Feyissa, a prominent Ethiopian attorney in Seattle, demanded a meeting with the president and other high level officials of the university to lodge a complaint. Shakespear, on behalf of the Ethiopian community in Seattle, informed the university about the atrocities of the Woyanne regime and appealed that the prestigious Seattle University should not provide a forum to mass murderers.
The University agreed and has canceled the meeting as shows below.
Source: World Affairs Council

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Joe Michael - 25 Sept. 2008 — No matter how strong EPRDF is getting, it still lacks confidence when it comes to giving opportunity to its opponents. The ruling party, which is consisting of four ethnic based political parties, has been reportedly growing in organizational and financial resources. However, the apparent fact behind EPRDF’s advancement is that while it is growing and continually opening new offices through out the country, it has been closing opposition offices and has been denying them their rights to campaign freely.

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Amharic Duetche Welle’s Tadesse Engdaw interviewed UDJP’s Chairwoman, Wzrt. Birtukan Mideksa prior to the Press Conference.

According to the Chairwoman, the woyanne regime claims double digit economic growth on one hand and high rising inflation grips the country on the other hand. The Regime’s explanation for the economic crisis is insane. The dire economic situation and famine gripping Ethiopia is blamed on the bankrupt woyanne’s economic policy and extravagant expenditure to strengthen its own party line. Andenet supports S3457 but argues it is short of HR2003’s list.

Addis Ababa - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Monday appealed for 460 million dollars as a food crisis in Ethiopia and the wider Horn of Africa continued to grow. "The Horn of Africa region is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since 1984, and Ethiopia is caught in the middle," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said in a statement.

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By Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Corruption in poor countries has created a humanitarian disaster which threatens to derail the global fight against poverty, Transparency International said.Releasing its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on Tuesday, the anti-corruption watchdog said donor countries should address the problem by carefully targeting aid.

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Two aid workers working for Medecins du Monde in Ethiopia have been abducted from the Ogaden region that borders Somalia, the French aid agency says. Eyewitnesses say the man and woman, whose nationalities are not known, have been taken to Somalia's central region of Galguduud by well-armed gunmen.

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Until two years ago, before the rains failed and the price of maize tripled, Alem Tesfu dreamt that her daughter Ager would one day finish her education at the village school and start work as a nurse.

“We used to pray to God that Ager would study hard and make something of herself so she could serve her community,” Mrs Tesfu said. “Now our animals are all dead and we eat only one meal a day. We just pray that we will not starve.”

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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Sept. 18 (UPI) –Ethiopia underestimates the scale of a deadly drought affecting millions in the Africa country, U.N. agencies said.Some of the needy are allegedly being deprived of emergency food aid by the country’s military, the Times of London reported Thursday.


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By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Mogadishu's main airport was largely shut down on Wednesday after militant Somali Islamists threatened to attack any planes using it.

Staff at the airport said carriers using the sea-front facility in south Mogadishu had decided not to take any risk following the threat by al Shabaab to target aircraft landing or taking off after midnight on Tuesday.

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