YEMEN – Habebah Hussein Mohamed, an Ethiopian national residing in Yemen as a refugee for more than 26 years has been a long-time volunteer to defend other Ethiopians in need of someone to report their daily sufferings to the Yemeni authorities.
Because of that, she has encountered many problems and harassment, either from Ethiopians working for the new government or from Yemenis unsympathetic to Ethiopians. She says an encounter has resulted in losing one of her eyes.
With regards to the current situation of the Ethiopian refugees, Habebah said that she is dedicating her time to defending the 530 who remain; the rest having been either repatriated or moved to another country.
She said that the problem of refugees began in 1995 when the Yemeni Government halted the material support, shelter, food and water and kicked out from their camp in Taiz. They were technically homeless in Yemen, she says. The security authorities later on began to arrest them and several were imprisoned.
Only Habebah was writing complaints to Refugees Division of Ministry of Interior for their release. Their situation was deteriorating from bad to worse, she said.
The Yemeni Authority asked the High Commissioner for Refugee in Geneva to find solutions for the 530 Ethiopian former officers and files in which they received assistant from end of 1995 till 1999, represented temporary resident permit and protection as refugees. The Refugee Commission to Sana’a stopped issuing these permits as refugees on the pretext the instruction of the Yemeni authorities not to grant them this identity.
Habebah, through the various media means, is urging the Yemeni Authorities and High Commissioner for Refugees to deal with the Ethiopian in Yemen humanly and not to vow to pressure the Ethiopian Government to repatriate them against their wills.
She also calls on the international organization and the United Nations affiliated organizations on refugees and peaceful settlement of disputes to intervene to accept them as refugees n Yemen or find a third country for them as their lives are still in danger by the current regime in Addis Ababa.
Modern humans may have evolved more than 80,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study of sophisticated stone tools found in Ethiopia.
The tools were uncovered in the 1970s at the archaeological site of Gademotta, in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. But it was not until this year that new dating techniques revealed the tools to be far older than the oldest known Homo sapien bones, which are around 195,000 years old.
Using argon-argon dating—a technique that compares different isotopes of the element argon—researchers determined that the volcanic ash layers entombing the tools at Gademotta date back at least 276,000 years.
Many of the tools found are small blades, made using a technique that is thought to require complex cognitive abilities and nimble fingers, according to study co-author and Berkeley Geochronology Center director Paul Renne.
Some archaeologists believe that these tools and similar ones found elsewhere are associated with the emergence of the modern human species, Homo sapiens.
“It seems that we were technologically more advanced at an earlier time that we had previously thought,” said study co-author Leah Morgan, from the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings are published in the December issue of the journal Geology.
Desirable Location
Gademotta was an attractive place for people to settle, due to its close proximity to fresh water in Lake Ziway and access to a source of hard, black volcanic glass, known as obsidian.
“Due to its lack of crystalline structure, obsidian glass is one of the best raw materials to use for making tools,” Morgan explained.
In many parts of the world, archaeologists see a leap around 300,000 years ago in Stone Age technology from the large and crude hand-axes and picks of the so-called Acheulean period to the more delicate and diverse points and blades of the Middle Stone Age.
At other sites in Ethiopia, such as Herto in the Afar region northeast of Gademotta, the transition does not occur until much later, around 160,000 years ago, according to argon dating. This variety in dates supports the idea of a gradual transition in technology.
“A modern analogy might be the transition from ox-carts to automobiles, which is virtually complete in North America and northern Europe, but is still underway in the developing world,” said study co-author Renne, who received funding for the Gadmotta analysis from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
Morgan, of UC Berkeley, speculates that the readily available obsidian at Gademotta may explain why the technological revolution occurred so early there.
Complicated family tree
The lack of bones at Gademotta makes it difficult to determine who made these specialist tools. Some archaeologists believe it had to be Homo sapiens, while other experts think that other human species may have had the required mental capability and manual dexterity.
Regardless of who made the tools, the dates help to fill a key gap in the archaeological record, according to some experts.
“The new dates from Gademotta help us to understand the timing of an important behavioral change in human evolution,” said Christian Tryon, a professor of anthropology from New York University, who wasn’t involved in the study.
If anything, the story has now become more complex, added Laura Basell, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in the U.K.
“The new date for Gademotta changes how we think about human evolution, because it shows how much more complicated the situation is than we previously thought,” Basell said.
“It is not possible to simply associate specific species with particular technologies and plot them in a line from archaic to modern.”
Let me entice you with yet another book that I cannot put down despite the busy schedule toward the end of the semester. Cutting For Stone is the debut novel of Dr. Abraham Verghese, who is a Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University. Set in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, in 1954, Sister Mary Joseph Praise died in childbirth. She is survived by twin sons Marion and Shiva. Rumor has it that Dr. Thomas Stone for whom Sister has worked as an assistant in the surgery room is the father of the twins.
The novel is narrated by one of the twin brothers. The gripping read takes opens in a mission hospital in Ethiopia and travels on a boat out of India to Yemen, then an inner-city hospital in New York City, and finally back in Ethiopia to complete the epic story of the twin brothers who seek to unlock the life of their mother.
“We two unnamed babies, newly arrived, were without breath. If most newborns meet life outside the womb with a shrill, piercing wail, ours was the saddest of all songs: the stillborn’s song of silence…The legend of our birth is this: identical twins born of a nun who died in childbirth, father unknown, possibly yet inconceivably Thomas Stone. The legend grew, ripened with age, and, in the retelling, new details came to light. But looking back after fifty years, I see that there are still particulars missing.” [98]
The novel is scheduled to release by Knopf in February 2009. Dr. Verghese will kick off his 14-city book tour in our very own Palo Alto in the Bay Area.
Las Vegas (ASSOCIATED PRESS) – A broken O.J. Simpson was sentenced Friday to as much as 33 years in prison for a hotel armed robbery after a judge rejected his apology and said, “It was much more than stupidity.”
The 61-year-old football Hall of Famer stood shackled and stone-faced as Judge Jackie Glass rattled off the punishment. Moments before, Simpson made a rambling, five-minute plea for leniency, simultaneously apologizing for the holdup as a foolish mistake and trying to justify his actions.
He choked back tears as he told her: “I didn’t want to steal anything from anyone. … I’m sorry, sorry.”
Simpson said he was simply trying to retrieve sports memorabilia and other mementos, including his first wife’s wedding ring, from two dealers when he stormed a Las Vegas hotel room on Sept. 13, 2007.
But the judge emphasized that it was a violent confrontation in which at least one gun was drawn, and she said someone could have been shot. She said the evidence was overwhelming, with the planning, the confrontation itself and the aftermath all recorded on audio or videotape.
Glass, a no-nonsense judge known for her tough sentences, imposed such a complex series of consecutive and concurrent sentences that even many attorneys watching the case were confused as to how much time Simpson got.
Simpson could serve up to 33 years but could be eligible for parole after nine years, according to Elana Roberto, the judge’s clerk.
The judge said several times that her sentence in the Las Vegas case had nothing to do with Simpson’s 1995 acquittal in the slaying of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
“I’m not here to try and cause any retribution or any payback for anything else,” Glass said.
Simpson was immediately led away to prison after the judge refused to permit him to go free on bail while he appeals.
Simpson’s co-defendant and former golfing buddy, Clarence “C.J. Stewart, also was sentenced to at least 15 years.
‘A bittersweet moment’
Outside court, Goldman’s father, Fred Goldman, and sister, Kim, said they were delighted with the sentence.
“We are thrilled, and it’s a bittersweet moment,” Fred Goldman said. “It was satisfying seeing him in shackles like he belongs.”
The Goldmans took a measure of credit for Simpson’s fate, saying their relentless pursuit of his assets to satisfy a $33.5 million wrongful-death judgment “pushed him over the edge” and led him to commit the robbery to recover some of his sports memorabilia.
Simpson and Stewart were both brought to the courtroom in dark blue jail uniforms, their hands shackled to their waists with chains. Simpson, who looked weary and had not been expected to speak, delivered a somber statement to the judge.
As he spoke in a hoarse voice, the courtroom was hushed. His two sisters, Shirley Baker and Carmelita Durio, sat in the front row of the courtroom, along with his adult daughter.
‘Not bright, not smart’
Both men were convicted Oct. 3 of 12 criminal charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery.
“As stupid and as ill-conceived as it was, it wasn’t something that was from this evil mind they teach us about,” Simpson attorney Yale Galanter said before sentencing.
“Not bright, not smart, not well thought out, but certainly not from an evil mind,” Galanter said.
Most of the 63 seats in the courtroom were taken by media, lawyers and family members of the defendants. Fifteen members of the public were also allowed.
After sentencing was over, the Goldmans left the courtroom and Kim threw her arms around her father and wept.
Simpson’s sisters declined to comment, but Shirley Baker said on her way out: “It’s not over.”
Jurors who heard 13 days of testimony said after the verdict that they were convinced of Simpson’s guilt because of audio recordings that were secretly made of the Sept. 13, 2007, robbery at the Palace Station casino hotel.
The confrontation involved sports memorabilia brokers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong. It was recorded by collectibles dealer Thomas Riccio, who was acting as middleman.
“Don’t let nobody out of this room!” Simpson commands on the recordings, and instructs other men to scoop up items he insists had been stolen from him.
On Tuesday, Glass is scheduled to sentence four former co-defendants who took plea deals and testified against Simpson and Stewart.
Michael McClinton, Charles Cashmore, Walter Alexander and Charles Ehrlich could receive probation or prison time. McClinton could get up to 11 years; the others face less.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s best-known pop star, Teddy Afro, was sentenced to six years in jail on Friday for killing a homeless man when driving his BMW in the capital Addis Ababa.
The 31-year-old singer, whose real name is Tewodros Kassahun, was found guilty of manslaughter earlier this week for the death of 18-year-old Degu Yibelte in a hit-and-run incident late last year.
Afro denied the charge and said he was out with friends on the night the man died.
Many Ethiopians believe the charges were politically motivated. Last month’s Great Ethiopian Run — a road race for more than 30,000 people through the capital — was marked by constant shouts from the crowd of “Free Teddy”.
The singer is hugely popular among young Ethiopians and sings mainly in the local Amharic language. Hundreds protested outside the court when Afro’s trial began in April — an unusual event in a country where dissent is extremely rare.
Afro’s last album, Yasteseryal (Redemption), coincided with Ethiopia’s 2005 election that led to violent protests and the jailing of opposition leaders.
Some of his lyrics were construed as critical of the government and his songs were used as protest anthems by opposition supporters who took to the streets.
“This court will not hand out a sentence based on a vendetta but based on fairness and justice,” Judge Leul Gebremariam said before sending Afro to jail and fining him $1,800.
On streets nearby young Ethiopians gathered in small groups to discuss the sentencing.
“All Ethiopians will be sad today,” said Mikias Sisay, a 23-year-old student. “Many people have accidents but are not sent to prison like this. It is because of politics.”
A defiant Afro — wearing his trademark black sunglasses — raised one finger in the air to a smattering of applause from friends and family when he walked from the courtroom.
“I feel free,” he said to reporters as he was led away by police.
US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen thought she was being hoaxed when a man who sounded a lot like Barack Obama called her – so she hung up on him.
In fact, the man at the other end of the line was indeed President-elect Obama himself.
It took two further phone-calls before Ms Ros-Lehtinen was convinced that the telephone call was genuine.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was recently fooled by a DJ pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
‘I won’t be punked’
“I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me,” Ms Ros-Lehtinen told the Miami Herald newspaper.
“They’ve gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, ‘Oh, no, I won’t be punked’.”
Mr Obama was calling to congratulate her on her re-election, and to say that he looked forward to working with her in her role as the most senior Republican on the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee.
After a minute or so, Ms Ros-Lehtinen cut Mr Obama off, telling him she was not fooled by the hoax and that he was a better Obama impersonator than Fred Armisen, the man who does an impression of Mr Obama on the TV comedy show Saturday Night Live.
Shortly afterwards, Mr Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel called Ms Ros-Lehtinen back to persuade her to take the call, but she hung up on him as well.
It was only when Howard Berman, a fellow member of her committee, called her that she was persuaded to take the call.
“I asked Howard to tell me a private joke we share about colleagues in the House to make sure it really was him,” Ms Ros-Lehtinen said.
“When he did, I realised it was the real deal.”
Mr Obama then called her back, and was amused by the incident, according to Ms Ros-Lehtinen.
“He laughed a lot, saying ‘in Chicago they do it all the time – I don’t blame you for being sceptical’.”
The pair then had a constructive discussion about foreign affairs, according to the congresswoman.
