Miyang gere Blog: Ethiopian troops impose curfew on a Somali town

Also in the news: Eritrea refuses to rule out a new war with Ethiopia, Why is the International community silent?, Ethiopia one of the most dangerous place for newborns, Ethiopia's lion cubs being poisoned at a zoo in Addis Ababa

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Two rare Ethiopian lion cub's rest inside their enclosure at the Lion Zoo in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006. The zoo is poisoning rare lion cubs and selling the corpses to be stuffed because it doesn't have enough money to care for the animals, which are the national symbol, the zoo's administrator said Wednesday. 'These animals are the pride of our country,' Muhedin Abdulaziz of the Lion Zoo told The Associated Press. 'But our only alternative right now is to send them to the taxidermist.' Ethiopia's lions, famous for their black manes, adorn statues and the local currency. Wildlife experts estimate that only 1,000 Ethiopian lions,, remain in the wild. (AP Photo/Les Neuhaus)

Hailu Shawel; less rhetoric and more Truth
(EZ)

Political pragmatism isn't usually inspired by exotic nature. It grows from an attempt to make sense of the quiddities thrown by human existence. Kinijit's charismatic chairman Hailu Shawel though isn't your normal pragmatic politician.

He switches from idealism to the most practical aspects of politics as effortlessly as children absorb their native tongue.The Greek root of the Latin Natura means "to give birth", to be native...life. The public life of Hailu Shawel was born of nature's inspiration.

In 1958, as an adventurous 22 year old Hailu returned to Ethiopia barely weeks after he graduated from Wayne State in Civil engineering. His destination was the world's most marvelous water -the Blue Nile. There, as a chief Hydrologist in Blue Nile Investigation Project, he reviled the bewildering contrast between Ethiopia's great potential and its failure. Where the beautiful Nile snaked around with arrogance and grace, the soil was lost to erosion and wildlife decimated. Nature vanishes when development surges.(More...)

Ethiopia one of the most dangerous places for newborns

Up to half a million African babies die on the day they are born, with Liberia having the world's highest neonatal mortality rate at 66 deaths per 1,000 births, compared with fewer than two deaths for 1,000 births in Japan.

Half of Africa's 1.16 million neonatal deaths occur in Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, the report said.

Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda had made significant progress in reducing infant deaths over the last 10 years, thanks to increased government spending on basic health care.

The report said opportunities to save the lives of newborns within existing programmes were often missed, with only one-tenth of women in Africa attending antenatal care receiving preventive treatment for malaria.

Only one percent of mothers with HIV had treatment to avoid transmitting the virus to their babies during childbirth.

"Up to 800,000 babies a year could be saved if 90 percent of women and babies received feasible, low-cost health interventions," the report said, adding this would cost about $1 billion per year.(More...)

Ethiopian troops impose curfew on a Somali town

Mogadishu 22, Nov.06 ( Sh.M.Network) –– Ethiopian forces in Balanballe in Galgaduud province in central Somalia have imposed curfew on the town.

Reliable sources told Shabelle Radio in Mogadishu that Balanballe, a Somali district, which has become a military base for Ethiopian troops, have been imposed on curfew by Ethiopian forces that began searching residents going in and out of the town.

Earlier UN revealed that thousands of Ethiopian troops are in Somalia as Ethiopian government insisted that the troops were in the country to train forces and protect the weak government based in the small town of Baidoa, 245 km southwest of the capital.

The transitional government was formed in Kenya in 2004 after protracted negotiations but remained largely powerless ever since it moved to Somalia.(More...)

Why is the International community silent? (Amharic)

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Eritrea refuses to rule out a new war with Ethiopia

ASMARA (AFP) - Eritrea has warned that the current stalemate over its tense border with Ethiopia was "not sustainable" and refused to rule out a new war with its arch-foe Horn of Africa neighbor.

At the same time, Asmara repeated denials that Somalia had become a proxy battleground for it and Addis Ababa amid reports the two countries are backing rival factions there to settle scores from their bloody 1998-2000 conflict.

Two days after Eritrea and Ethiopia both rejected plans by a UN-appointed border panel to demarcate their contentious frontier on paper, further raising tensions, a senior Eritrean official said that all options were on the table.

"Eritrea is a sovereign country and we cannot accept the reality of our territory being occupied by a foreign power indefinitely," said Yemane Gebremeskel, director of Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki's office Wednesday.

"I don't want to speculate on what can happen, but I can only tell you this situation is not sustainable, it cannot be acceptable legally and there is no reason why it should stay this way," he told reporters in an interview here.

On Monday, the two nations boycotted a meeting of the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission in The Hague designed to gather comment about a proposal to delineate the border on maps without marking it on the ground.(More...)

Rare Abyssinian lion cubs are being poisoned at a zoo in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa

The zoo, founded by Ethiopia's former Emperor Haile Selassie, says it poisons a number of cubs each year because it does not have the space or money to look after them. "We can send them to the forest and to some governmental palaces but most of the time we send them to the taxidermists," said the Lion Zoo administrator Muhedin Abdulaziz.

He said the taxidermists paid about $175 (£90) for each cub and they were then sold for $400 (£210). No-one at the zoo is happy about the situation and local conservationists are angry.

One Ethiopian conservationist, who did not want to be named, said he had been offered 11 cubs last year."They told me I could take and keep them but I don't have land to keep them... and it was not easy to get land." (More...)