CHICAGO (AP) — Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90.
Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.
Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.
“My father and mother created from thin air what one day became radio and television news,” Paul Harvey Jr. said in a statement. “So in the past year, an industry has lost its godparents and today millions have lost a friend.”
Known for his resonant voice and trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” Harvey had been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks.
He became a heartland icon, delivering news and commentary with a distinctive Midwestern flavor. “Stand by for news!” he told his listeners. He was credited with inventing or popularizing terms such as “skyjacker,” “Reaganomics” and “guesstimate.”
“Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation’s history,” ABC Radio Networks President Jim Robinson said in a statement. “We will miss our dear friend tremendously and are grateful for the many years we were so fortunate to have known him.”
In 2005, Harvey was one of 14 notables chosen as recipients of the presidential Medal of Freedom. He also was an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame, as was Lynne.
Former President George W. Bush remembered Harvey as a “friendly and familiar voice in the lives of millions of Americans.”
“His commentary entertained, enlightened, and informed,” Bush said in a statement. “Laura and I are pleased to have known this fine man, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”
Harvey composed his twice-daily news commentaries from a downtown Chicago office near Lake Michigan.
Rising at 3:30 each morning, he ate a bowl of oatmeal, then combed the news wires and spoke with editors across the country in search of succinct tales of American life for his program.
At the peak of his career, Harvey reached more than 24 million listeners on more than 1,200 radio stations and charged $30,000 to give a speech. His syndicated column was carried by 300 newspapers.
His fans identified with his plainspoken political commentary, but critics called him an out-of-touch conservative. He was an early supporter of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy and a longtime backer of the Vietnam War.
Perhaps Harvey’s most famous broadcast came in 1970, when he abandoned that stance, announcing his opposition to President Nixon’s expansion of the war and urging him to get out completely.
“Mr. President, I love you … but you’re wrong,” Harvey said, shocking his faithful listeners and drawing a barrage of letters and phone calls, including one from the White House.
In 1976, Harvey began broadcasting his anecdotal descriptions of the lives of famous people. “The Rest of the Story” started chronologically, with the person’s identity revealed at the end. The stories were an attempt to capture “the heartbeats behind the headlines.” Much of the research and writing was done by his son, Paul Jr.
Harvey also blended news with advertising, a line he said he crossed only for products he trusted.
In 2000, at age 82, he signed a new 10-year contract with ABC Radio Networks.
Harvey was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa, Okla. His father, a police officer, was killed when he was a toddler. A high school teacher took note of his distinctive voice and launched him on a broadcast career.
While working at St. Louis radio station KXOK, he met Washington University graduate student Lynne Cooper. He proposed on their first date (she said “no”) and always called her “Angel.” They were married in 1940 and had a son, Paul Jr.
They worked closely together on his shows, and he often credited his success to her influence. She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997, seven years after her husband was. She died in May 2008.
CHINHOYI, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was celebrating his 85th birthday with a lavish all-day party Saturday despite the fact that the country is gripped by an economic and health crisis.
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party said it raised at least $250,000 to hold the party in Mugabe’s hometown of Chinhoyi, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside of the capital, Harare.
Critics of the president say the country is desperate for that amount of money to be spent instead on its citizens, who are suffering from a cholera outbreak, food shortages, and spiraling hyperinflation. On Friday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai visited a hospital’s closed intensive care unit that he said needed $30,000 to resume operating.
During the celebrations, Mugabe announced that his controversial land reform would not be reversed. The program is designed to have white-owned farms given to blacks, and there have been violent seizures of such farms since the program began in 2000.
He emphasized that the country’s “indigenization program” — which forces all major foreign companies operating in Zimbabwe to have at least 51 percent black ownership — will be carried out. It began last year and hasn’t been implemented yet.
Mugabe’s birthday falls on February 21 but his party loyalists postponed the celebrations as they were raising money for the event.
“I think it is going to be a great day for the legend and icon whose birthday we are celebrating today here,” said Mugabe’s nephew Patrick Zhuwawo, one of the fund-raisers for the birthday. “The country might be having problems, but we need to have a day to honor the sacrifices the president has made for this country.” What do you think about the celebrations?
Zhuwawo said about 100 beasts would be slaughtered for the birthday bash. iReport.com: What do you think about Mugabe’s lavish party?
Mugabe also invited schoolchildren from around the country to attend the party, being held at Chinhoyi University.
The farming town of Chinhoyi is usually quiet, but Saturday’s event has changed everything. Cars with Mugabe’s supporters could be seen hooting and some ZANU-PF supporters sang Mugabe’s praises.
A banner in Chinhoyi read, “Age ain’t nothing but a number.”
Mugabe invited Tsvangirai, his new partner in a power-sharing government, but a Tsvangirai spokesman said the opposition party leader turned it down. He said it is political party function, with most of the attendees being ZANU-PF elite. As the prime minister, Tsvangirai is not obligated to attend, the spokesman said.
The spokesman would not acknowledge whether Tsvangirai had initially agreed to attend, but it was widely reported in Zimbabwean media that he had agreed to do so.
“Mr. Tsvangirai has other commitments, as far as I know,” said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.
Tsvangirai last year said Mugabe’s birthday party was “a gathering of the satisfied few.” But at that point, he and the president were preparing to face off in a hotly contested presidential election.
As Saturday’s celebrations began in a carnival atmosphere, just less than a kilometer (0.62 miles) away stood a deserted Chinhoyi government hospital — a reflection of the country’s dire health situation. A few nurses are attending to patients.
“There are no medicines. These patients have no option but to come here, but there is nothing we can do,” said one nurse at the hospital.
On Friday Tsvangirai visited Harare Hospital, one of the country’s biggest, and said its intensive care unit will need $30,000 in order to start operating again after a funding shortage.
Once a darling of Zimbabwe, Mugabe is blamed for driving the country into a meltdown.
A cholera epidemic that broke out in August has since hit every corner of the country, killing 3,731 people and infecting nearly 80,000, according to the World Health Organization, which quoted Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health.
The preventable disease has spread through Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces through lack of access to clean water, faulty sewage systems, and uncollected refuse, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which released a report this month on the outbreak.
The problems, MSF said, are “clear symptoms of the breakdown in infrastructure resulting from Zimbabwe’s political and economic meltdown.”
On Sunday, Tsvangirai appealed to the international community to help Zimbabwe’s crippled economy, saying it would take $5 billion to stabilize the country.
The cholera outbreak has worsened Zimbabwe’s economic crisis. Failed government policies and an acute food shortage because of years of poor agricultural production and widespread corruption have ravaged the currency of Zimbabwe, which has the world’s highest inflation rate.
KUWAIT CITY – Anti-drug officials acting on the directives of the head of the Drug Control General Department (DCGD) Sheikh Ahmed Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah arrested an Ethiopian for selling “Qat” which is proscribed by Kuwaiti authorities, to his fellow African expatriates. ‘Qat’ is a leafy intoxicant commonly used in Yemen. Armed with sufficient information regarding the suspect’s activities, Brigadier Al-Khalifa set up an undercover team to track him down. Officials cleverly lured the accused into a trap by assigning an African to purchase a kilo of “Qat” worth KD 400. The suspect who was arrested during the buy-bust operation later guided the team to his flat in Hawally where another 45 kilos of the stuff were seized.
He confessed during interrogation importing the stuff which he always packed in small bags under the label “Henna” into the country on countless occasions. Two women compatriots who he referred to his “partners” were also arrested in their Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh hideouts in possession of 3 kilos of “Qat.” The three later claimed ignorance to the illegality of the stuff in Kuwait, which according to them is not “a forbidden commodity” in their home country. They were referred to the concerned authorities for further investigations.
Dhuko, Oromiya, Ethiopia – The numbers of livestock held by southern pastoralist families have fallen drastically over the past two decades as animals die from {www:disease} induced by climate change and the {www:severe} drought it brings, according to a new {www:report} by Ethiopian and Netherlands researchers.
In one of three areas surveyed, Borena zone of Oromiya region, the average numbers of livestock owned by pastoralist households were found to have declined from 10 to 3 oxen, 35 to 7 cows, and 33 to 6 goats.
For families entirely {www:dependent} on their animals for income and as a food {www:source}, losses on this scale would be disastrous.
Climate-change impacts increased {www:poverty} and food insecurity as livestock possession fell, according to the report, Climate Change-Induced Hazards, Impacts and Responses in Southern Ethiopia.
Unidentified diseases
The {www:research} was carried out by the Ethiopian Forum for Social Studies and the Netherlands group, Cordaid – a partner of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in The Hague, with {www:experience} of drought management in the Horn of Africa.
Tick and skin diseases in camels, cattle, goats and sheep are common anyway during severe droughts, the study said, while even camels and goats – normally considered more resistant to drought and adopted as a “coping strategy” by pastoralists in place of cattle – are affected by newly prevalent diseases.
The distribution of diseases and pests has also changed in the study area, according to senior researcher Aklilu Amsalu. “Existing diseases… are expanding and new types are emerging,” he said, while unidentified new diseases were also causing the {www:sudden} death of camels and goats.
As their animals died, people became dependent on aid, while dry seasons triggered local “resource conflicts” over water and pasture, the study found. “About a quarter” of all households in Borena and Guji zones suffered from cattle-raiding related to {www:conflict} in the period 2004–8.
Recent press reports in Ethiopia, meanwhile, said 50 per cent of people in the country’s Somali region will remain dependent on international food-aid until at least the middle of the year. In Somali region “humanitarian access and aid remains very erratic”, said the Reporter newspaper. The International Federation in December launched an appeal for nearly US$ 100 million – one of its biggest ever for a “hidden disaster”– and with the Ethiopian Red Cross Society is planning to carry out food distributions shortly in mainly pastoralist areas.
However, donor response to date has been very limited. As things stand, only one major {www:distribution} “hub” – out of a planned four in Ethiopia – is guaranteed.
“I pray for rain”
“We’re doing the very best we can with the donor backing we’ve had,” says Roger Bracke, the Federation’s Addis Ababa-based head of operations for the Horn of Africa.
“Everyone was pleased the latest inter-agency assessment brought the Ethiopian national total of people outside the government {www:safety} net needing emergency food aid down to just under 5 million last month,” he adds. “But that’s still a very large number.”
Ute-Muda Garero knows all about rustling. He’s one of the few pastoralist herdsmen who have stayed behind in Dhuko village, Oromiya, to sit out the dry season, fearful of getting mixed up in a local conflict over water and pasture he says bedevils an area where hundreds of other men from the village have temporarily migrated, seeking better grazing.
But his animals are suffering for it. They have already deteriorated to the exact mid-point of the official yardstick of animal health: between two and three on a four-point scale, four meaning near death. “I pray for rain,” he says.
“My cattle will be ‘threes’ even if the rains start on time,” he explains, referring to the main seasonal rains due next month. “If the rains fail, they’ll die for sure.”
Apart from the women and children, only a handful of community leaders and elders are left Dhuko.
Reduced rations
It’s there and in countless thousands of settlements like it that the {www:disaster} in the Horn of Africa is hidden: difficult to see, even standing in the middle of it.
Children who look half their age from malnutrition; unnecessarily high infant-mortality statistics; “resource wars” fought between tribes who might otherwise live in {www:peace}; the gradual erosion of an ancient lifestyle –- pastoralism.
Earlier this month the World Food Programme (WFP), the Federation’s main UN partner in the Horn operation, reported a relief-funding shortfall of just over US$ 400 million for 2009.
Reduced food rations have applied since July 2008, WFP said, adding that households continue to engage in “negative coping strategies in order to meet their basic food needs [including] selling a higher number of productive assets than usual (44 per cent), reducing the number of meals… (92 per cent), and borrowing food or money (69 per cent).”
In February WFP was distributing reduced rations for cereals and oil and prioritizing blended food for beneficiaries “in hotspot areas only, including Somali region”.
(BBC) – Tens of thousands of people have reportedly fled their homes as a result of fighting between rival groups in a remote part of southern Ethiopia.
The BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt says 300 people may have been killed – mostly in a major {www:battle} on 5 February.
People are moving away to safer areas following the {www:clash} between the Borana people and the Gheri, a Somali clan.
While the fighting has now stopped, the area is still {www:tense} and some reports {www:estimate} more than 100,000 displaced.
Ethiopia’s Minister of State Responsible for Emergency and Disaster Planning Mitiku Kassa acknowledged the {www:existence} of the problem but said the figure of 100,000 was an exaggeration.
The fighting, which took place near the town of Moyale, was so severe that for a time the main road to the Kenyan border was closed.
Immediately after the peak of the clashes on 5 February, the Gheri people began moving away from the area in large numbers.
The BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says armed conflicts, particularly over water, are not unusual in this part of southern Ethiopia.
They have been increasing in recent years because of boundary changes, and because of drought which has made control over wells and water points even more critical.
A long term observer of the area told the BBC it was tragic that something like this happens virtually every year, and is now considered almost normal.
MOSCOW (IPS) – When the 13th Addis Ababa International Trade Fair officially opens tomorrow, the Russian trade delegation hopes to make its presence felt with participating industrial companies and business enterprises.
About 50 Russian industry and trade representatives are attending the trade fair, which ends on Mar 3, where they will display their products.
They are also aiming to hold fresh business talks and review existing relations with Ethiopian counterparts that could further boost trade and economic cooperation, a senior diplomat at Ethiopia’s embassy in Moscow, Amha Hailegeorgis [a cadre of Ethiopia’s tribalist regime], told IPS.
The delegation is due to first meet with Ethiopia’s trade and industry minister, Girma Biru, for discussions with Ethiopian investors who are particularly interested in exporting various traditional goods such as leather products, coffee and floriculture.
[Most of these companies are owned by the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne).]
The Russian business representatives from large companies will brief the gathering on potential opportunities for trade and investment in Russia.
Hailegeorgis believes that Ethiopia, with an annual average growth rate of about 11 percent over the past four years and allowances for preferential market access, holds advantages to prospective foreign businesspeople.
The two countries have had long-standing ties in the spheres of culture, economy and politics. Trade ties between the two countries have steadily been improving since the official launching of their joint economic and trade commission in November 1999.
But there’s a lot of room for more growth. Ethiopia exported goods were worth a mere seven million dollars to Russia in 2006 while imported goods were valued at 72 million dollars that year.
The imports and exports baskets are typical for an African state. Ethiopia’s main exports to Russia were flowers, coffee and oil seeds while imports from Russia included chemicals, fertiliser and machinery. [And weapons to terrorize the people of Ethiopia and Horn of Africa.]
Russian investors are interested in the sectors of agriculture, industry, mining, energy and construction as well as telecommunications.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Saltanov has reiterated that despite the global recession and other negative trends, work on strengthening the traditionally friendly relations with African continent has remained one of the important components of Russian foreign policy.
He added that Russia is interested in developing multi-sided cooperation with African countries that are considered as promising partners.
Despite the unfavorable tendencies linked to the global economic and financial crisis, purposeful work was conducted to reinvigorate economic and trade cooperation with some African countries whose current level do not yet match their considerable potential, Saltanov explained.
He said that ‘‘great significance was attached to raising the effectiveness of the activities of bilateral intergovernmental commissions so as to promote direct economic ties, and especially in the small and medium-sized business.’’
Saltanov indicated that assistance to the expansion of Russian business is a major priority.
Russia will continue providing the necessary politico-diplomatic follow-up for the African activities of such leading Russian companies as Alrosa, Gazprom, Lukoil, Rusal, Renova, Gammakhim, Technopromexport and VEB and VTB banks, which are engaged in large-scale investment projects on the continent.
‘‘Positive dynamics are evident in the development of Russian-African cooperation in the minerals and raw materials, infrastructure, energy and other spheres. This has helped to create conditions in the region for the successful tackling of the socio-economic problems facing it,’’ he argued.
Among Russia’s principal partners are Angola, Guinea, Libya, Namibia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and South Africa.
Gashaw Abate, a senior manager at the Addis Ababa Chamber of Commerce, said that the basic aim of the trade exhibition is to bring different business actors to one venue to exchange business information. Business deals could result from this.
Abate told IPS in an interview that, ‘‘at this moment we are eager to see the Russian delegation because we understand that their arrival will further strengthen Ethiopian-Russian relations and important results could follow. As is well known, the Ethiopian-Russian relationship is one of the oldest and closest in African history’’.
But, what is unique this time, Abate explained further, is the fact that many Russian business organisations will come to Ethiopia to participate in the trade fair to showcase what the Russian federation could provide the world at large and the Ethiopian market, more specifically.
About 17 business companies will be hosted in a single booth exhibiting their respective goods and services. Another five Russian companies will present papers on their respective business operations, he added.
