According to Wolframalpha’s website ranking system of worldwide sites, Ethiopian Review is once again the most visited, the most famous Ethiopian website in the world. The system uses many different sources including Alexa ranking so that it is fair and balanced. The global ranking of all websites is used to check the Ethiopian news website standings and rank them. And the Top 10 Ethiopian websites are:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — When Gregg Wenzel died six years ago in Ethiopia, the obituaries said he was a U.S. Foreign Service officer killed by a drunken driver on the streets of Addis Ababa.
Monday the public learned the State Department job was a cover for his real occupation: CIA spy.
At a ceremony commemorating those who died in the line of duty, CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed Wenzel’s affiliation with the agency and noted Wenzel was a member of the first clandestine service class to graduate after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“He helped unite the class and kept its spirits high in the toughest moments,” Panetta said.
Wenzel left his job as an attorney to join the agency. He was 33 years old when the car he was riding in was hit by a drunken driver who to this day remains a fugitive.
There are now 90 stars prominently displayed on the memorial wall in the spacious atrium of CIA headquarters, each commemorating an officer, like Wenzel, who died while serving the country.
The 90th star was added recently, but as with most of the victims, the person’s name and nature of service will remain unknown to the public so as not to compromise secret operations.
At the annual memorial service attended by hundreds of employees, retirees and family members, Panetta paid homage to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. “Their patriotism and leadership, courage and decency are models for all of us,” said the director, adding, “their work is our work now. And their spirit abides with us.”
Panetta also announced the beginning of a new tradition. Family members of the fallen officers will receive a replica of the star from the wall. The first star was given to the brothers of Douglas Mackiernan, the first CIA operations officer killed in the line of duty, shot to death in Tibet after fleeing China in 1950.
HENGELO, Netherlands (AFP) — Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie failed in an attempt to better his own world record for the one-hour run at the Hengelo Grand Prix on Monday.
After setting four world records at previous meets in the eastern Dutch city, Gebrselassie, the current marathon world record holder, was undone by blustery conditions at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour.
The 36-year-old clocked up 20km 822metres, falling short of his record of 21km 285m which he set in June 2007 in Ostrava, the Czech Republic.
He was also little helped by pacemakers who failed to keep up with the 1min 07sec lap times needed to mount a real challenge on the record.
“The wind and rain obviously didn’t make things easy,” said Gebrselassie. “And even if the conditions were not optimal, I wasn’t at 100 percent because of a small asthmatic problem.”
Olympic 5,000 and 10,000m champion Kenenisa Bekele was running in the unfamiliar 1500m but pulled up with one lap to run with a leg injury.
The Ethiopian had chosen the 1500m to test and improve his speed in preparation for August’s World Athletics Championships in Berlin.
“Kenenisa felt a slight pain in his right thigh. He preferred to call a halt as a precaution,” said Bekele’s manager Jos Hermens.
It was Bekele’s first outing since he picked up an ankle problem when finishing a disappointing third in a 15km road race in the Netherlands in November.
The race was won by Kenyan Asbel Kiprop, the Olympic 1500m silver medallist, in 3min 34.45sec ahead of Ethiopian Deresse Mekonnen and Moroccan Mohamed Moustaoui.
There were five season best performances at the meet.
Churandy Martina of the Dutch Antilles gained revenge on Shawn Crawford in the 100m, recording 9.97 seconds as the American finished a disappointing seventh, 0.30sec off the pace.
Martina was stripped of his silver medal in the men’s 200m final in the Beijing Olympics after a protest by the United States team that he had run out of his lane.
The move deprived the Dutch Antilles of their first ever Olympic track and field medal, and saw 2004 Olympic champion Crawford take silver behind Jamaican Usain Bolt, who won the race in a world record of 19.30 seconds.
Other men’s season bests included Ethiopian Ali Abdosh in the 5000m, who topped a strong field in 12:59.56, Kenyan Brimin Kipruto in the 3000m steeplechase (8:06.46), and Panama’s Olympic champion Irving Saladino in the long jump (8.56metres).
In the women’s events, Ethiopian Gelete Burka won the 1500m in a season lead of 3:58.79.
Countries across the African continent devoted May 25 to the observance of the so called African Union’s Day. Few countries, though, have declared the day a holiday and celebrated as such to the neglect of the millions of man hours that could have been put to productive use. Little was heard of the challenges and potential progress that the continent could make in the face austere financial difficulties. It was the grumpy old self-delusory target of ridding the continent of coup makers and now, state-sponsored terrorism. Amusingly, Eritrea was the only culprit fingered and suspended for the latter charge whilst others such as Sudan, Madagascar and Mauritania, renegades of true democracy are still plying their violent and near-violent trade against ordinary citizens.
And Eritrea replied, calling the AU a full house of disenchanted musical chairs, notoriously toothless and straight –jacketed thinkers. Eritrea might just be right. For, how is it that the recently elected AU Chairman, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi made an embarrassing mockery of democracy on the continent when he stated in a keynote address at an AU summit at Addis Ababa, that democracy in Africa only leads to bloodshed. This could be a thought trend for African leaders. In 2005, Africanliberty.org editor and executive director of IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe, and debated former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa on the latter’s call for an African clone of democracy and the need to fear globalisation, as it was the final undoing of the continent after slavery and colonialism had their way.
So what else is the AU, an avowed claimant of continental unity, has little to show for? The AU envisages a political and economic integration across all borders devoid of poverty, conflicts, and diseases. Naturally, the various regional economic groups will strive for integration before the entire continent is united. Such a union could affect the livelihoods of the 800 million plus Africans. But we in Africa are our own friends of protectionism. Nigeria and Ghana, next door neighbours within the Economic Community of West Africa still trade in protectionist goods, with Nigeria still maintaining a near-ban of some 74 Ghanaian products from entering Nigeria, while Ghana is demanding hefty down payments for Nigerian tradesmen to enter the Ghanaian market. But Ghana is awashed with Nigerian banks. The Commission for Africa Report 2005 sadly asserts that shipping a car from Japan to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, for example, costs $1,500. Shipping the same car from Abidjan to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, costs $5,000. Removing regional trade barriers would earn Africa an extra $1.2bn a year, according to the World Bank.
Instead of focusing on removing the log in the eye of the continent, the AU has a mindset that trade ought to be a one-way traffic, with richer countries who also erect annoying barriers to our produce. It is instructive to know that the global economic difficulties have lowered consumer confidence in rich countries and by extension slowed all agri-export-led economies. In April this year, the World Bank Vice-President for Africa Region, Ms Obiageh Ezekwesil, noted that at the beginning of 2008, Africa’s growth rate which was projected at 6.4 per cent dipped to 4.9 per cent. The rate for 2009 now stands at 2.4 per cent.
However, the cacophony of asking for help to weather the raging storm of economic recession has taken centre-stage in the global discussion of stimulus packages. And African leaders are asking for stimulus packages from the staggering West instead of stimulating critical thinking on how to build their own economies from within. However, it seem to have emerged from a recent Economic Conference in Dakar, Senegal, that they are going to rely more on home-grown solutions to these and other problems. These solutions lay not in imposing additional taxes on the 30% visible businesses and small formal sector workers, but ensuring that the close to 70 % of Africa’s underground economy is unearthed and nurtured with low business entry rules, and perhaps taxed a low flat tax regime. Increased corporate taxes on perceived ostentatious products ought to be reflective of the wider implications for government’s own revenue and employment figures. Already many great performing companies on the continent are not salivating at losing employees. An additional tax burden will leave companies no choice but to lay people off.
Ordinary Africans must help African leaders to use AU day to reflect on how to reduce economic intervention in our lives, sensibly regulate financial markets, remove bureaucratic obstacles to setting up businesses, establish property rights and enforce contract law. These are the forces that release entrepreneurial energy to see us through the financial meltdown. There is only one reason why African leaders will do these things- when they are forced to do so as a condition of aid which despite its towering failure to reduce poverty on the continent continues to be supported by activists, whose livelihoods depend on it.
(Franklin Cudjoe is executive director of IMANI, a Ghanaian think tank. He also edits www.AfricanLiberty.org. Alhassan Atta-Quayson is a graduate student in economics and writes for www.AfricanLiberty,org)
NEW YORK — Impunity in Somalia was a major factor maintaining a long-running “genocide in motion” in that Horn of Africa country, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General emphasized to correspondents at a Headquarters news conference this afternoon.
“People who have killed, displaced and maimed are still around, whether in Somalia, Nairobi or in their new country home,” Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said, adding that many who stayed inside Somalia to continue the violence had put their families in safe havens outside the country.
Mr. Ould-Abdallah, who was in New York for consultations at Headquarters, stressed that it was the willingness of anti-Government forces to keep fighting, whether for profit, power or other reasons, that was devastating the country, not the threat of an Ethiopian return or the illegitimacy of the authorities.
The Government might be weak, he said, but it had as strong a claim to legitimacy as most African Governments; overturning it by force would defy Security Council resolutions.
Before last year’s Djibouti Agreement, which facilitated the departure of Ethiopian troops, it was claimed that the foreign presence was prolonging the conflict, he said. After they withdrew, however, the fighting had continued, and he knew of no evidence of continued Ethiopian presence.
“This is a diversion from the real problem,” he said. “Somalis have to stop killing Somalis and reject any alibis.”
As for the support of Eritrea for the Islamist group al-Shabab, he said that there was much talk of such involvement, but there was no way for him to monitor that situation or to know the truth of such a claim. Asked about other foreign rebel fighters, he said the rebel leaders had extended a welcome to such fighters and there was wide information available on them.
When asked what safeguards were in place to make sure international payments to trained police forces in Somalia were not engendering abuse to civilians, Mr. Ould-Abdallah stressed how few trained police there were –- 2,700 –- in that large country in which civilians were being killed every day. Even those police had not been paid for 18 months.
To suggest that they should not be supported was irresponsible, he maintained. “The problem we face today is anarchy and disorder, and not to pay trained policemen because a few of them may have stolen or may have abused is unacceptable,” he said.
On piracy, Mr. Ould-Abdallah said that that the international presence was beginning to show results, because the pirates had to go further afield for their quarry, over 100 pirates had been captured, and their financiers knew they were being watched.
It was important that it be a truly international effort, he said, demonstrating to Somalis that there was international attention being paid to their tragic situation and showing that such efforts could actually work.
Asked about law of the sea issues, he said he was not aware of any connection between Norwegian oil companies and the joint submission for the delineation of the continental shelf made by Somalia and Kenya, assisted by Norway.
He said he did know, however, that Norway had helped other African countries with their submissions, and that Somalia’s was very similar to the ones made by France, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Spain.
Outlining upcoming political activities on Somalia, Mr. Ould-Abdallah said that he planned to be in London for an 8 June meeting with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, after which he would convene in Rome the International Contact Group on Somalia, of which he is the Chair, although that meeting might be postponed.
He also described contacts with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an Africa regional economic group, which he said could play a role in the Somali crisis similar to that played by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the crises in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — Ethiopia’s export revenues are expected to fall short of the target by more than $1 billion this year, bucking the positive trends of the past few years, an official report has indicated.
Demand for Ethiopian goods has fallen on account of the global economic slowdown, while the nation’s biggest export product, coffee, has been affected by hoarding, the government has said.
In a report submitted to parliament’s standing committee, the trade and industry ministry said only 40 percent of the export target for the September 2008-August 2009 financial year has been earned.
Of the $2.56 billion targeted for the entire year, it earned $1.02 billion. This was 56 percent of the revenues targeted for the September-May period, the report said.
Unofficial estimates say going by the trend so far, export revenues would be around $1.33 billion for the whole year, short of last year’s figure by over $170 million.
In fact, Trade and Industry Minister Girma Birru said the only realistic goal he saw for the export sector was to try and match last fiscal’s revenues.
Admitting that it had failed to look for new markets after regular buyers canceled orders, the government said it was now taking measures such as exempting exporters from power shedding to bail them out.
‘For exporters with confirmed export orders in May and June, power will be given without any interruption,’ Birru said.
Coffee has fetched $251 million till now — about 54 percent lower than what was forecast earlier. This, according to the ministry, was on account of hoarding by exporters who were waiting for prices to rise and also derail the newly-established Ethiopian Commodity Exchange.
The licences of six exporters have been revoked, while some are being prosecuted.
Over $229 million was earned from oilseed exports, while the narcotic khat crop accounted for about $102 million.
Mineral exports have shown a slight increase, fetching over $68 million compared to $64.4 million in the corresponding period last year.
