New York (IANS) — Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie is planning to build an AIDS clinic in Ethiopia for her daughter Zahara to manage when she grows up. Jolie will make a trip to her adopted daughter’s native country to discuss building the clinic as part of the work of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, a charity she set up with her husband Brad Pitt in 2006 for humanitarian aid around the world, reports Contactmusic.com.
“We will be building a Tuberculosis/AIDS clinic in Ethiopia. The one we plan for Zahara to take over when she is older,” Jolie told Britain’s Hello magazine.
Jolie also hopes to take son Maddox to his native place Cambodia as part of a separate charity trip that the family is planning once newborn twins Knox and Vivienne Marcheline grow up a little.
“The next trip for our foundation will most likely be Asia to follow up on the situation in Burma and our work in Cambodia. The boys have been asking to go there, so we will take them when Knox and Vivienne are a bit older,” she added.
Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa) — The Japanese construction firm, Kajima, is near to closing the four-metres gap on the newly constructed bridge over Abay River, 208Km north of Addis Abeba. The bridge will be open to traffic in October 2008, according to Samson Wondimu, Public Relations head of the Ethiopian Roads Authority (ERA).
Financed by a 14 million dollar Japanese government grant, the new structure has been constructed alongside a 60-year old bridge built by an Italian construction firm; the government of Italy covered the cost of the older bridge as a compensation for war damages it had caused during its brief occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s.
The new bridge, when completed, will be 55 metres high, standing 22 metres above the existing one. There are also nine cables stretched on either side of the bridge, tied to the columns on each side, and there is no supporting framework put in the middle of the river. This feature makes it the first cable-stayed bridge in East Africa. It also has a clear 145-metre span.
The design and construction of the bridge is state of the art, according to experts familiar with the project. It was designed by Oriental Consultants Company Ltd of Japan. Kajima, operational in 20 countries, was awarded the project in August 2005.
This bridge is part of a three-phase project financed by the Japanese government. At a total cost of 46 million dollars, Kajima has rehabilitated the Goha-Tsion trunk road, as well as the 186Km stretch from Addis Abeba to Dejen. The latter was inaugurated in April 2004.
The completion of this bridge marks the final phase of the project, and is believed to have immense significance in the traffic flow connecting the capital with the north western part of the country. Experts foresee that driving speed will double to 60Km per hour, and the volume is expected to increase from the current 360 vehicles a day to 729 in six years.
(AFP) ADDIS ABABA: At the age of 35, Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie has won all the honours in long-distance running but is risking his status by lining up in a competitive 10,000m showdown in Beijing.
So is one of Africa’s greatest athletes of all time poised to climb further up the Olympic firmament or could it be one race too far for a star overtaken by his legend?
Irrelevant, says Gebrselassie, putting on his trademark smile as he tells AFP he hopes to still be vying for gold in 2012 …and, why not, in 2016.
“I am too young to retire,” he remarked, as he trains on the newly-refurbished Addis Ababa national stadium track, which hosted the African championships in May.
Gebrselassie, who won the 10,000m gold medals in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000 knows very well the big task he will face against the younger runners in the Chinese city, where pollution fears forced him to pull out of the marathon event.
Four years ago in Athens, Gebrselassie finished fifth in the race won by his compatriot and heir-apparent Kenenisa Bekele who is threatening to surpass his mentor as the next great distance runner to emerge from the African nation.
The 26-year-old Bekele holds both the world records in the 5,000m and the 10,000m which he snatched from Gebrselassie.
Even his own countrymen have given him little chance of making an impact in Beijing.
But win or lose, Gebrselassie has already cushioned himself for a good life, away from athletics after he hangs up his running shoes.
Known as the Little Emperor, he is an avid patriot and hopes to go into politics after his retirement.
“I would like to serve my country in the political arena in the future,” he said. “But I need to mature and learn more.”
The diminutive athlete has already shown some leadership qualities in running his huge business empire inside the country.
From sports marketing to cinema to the hotel industry, he has used his huge earnings to change the skyline of the capital city of Addis Ababa, where a massive construction boom is taking place.
“He has contributed a lot to the country – his businesses offers employment to hundreds of his people,” said Kibrom Gebrezgi, a self-confessed fan of the athlete.
“Who knows, maybe he will repeat his success as a political leader as he has done in athletics,” he added.
Gebrselassie has come a long way from where he grew up in the fertile Arsi region of south Ethiopia.
One of 10 children, he used to run to school but his father did not approve of his aspirations to be become an athlete in later life.
It was only after his victory in the World Junior Championships in Seoul in 1992 that he was allowed to continue running, and he has repaid their patience in full.
His family now live on a sprawling mansion on a hill overlooking the capital, a far-cry from the tiny village of Assella where he grew up. Gebrselassie and his wife Alem have four children – three girls and a boy.
(Capital) ADDIS ABABA – A project for a multi- billion dollar bridge that would span the Red Sea at an 18-mile-wide strait, connecting the southern tip of Yemen with Djibouti, was launched on Monday, July 28, in Djibouti with the initial stage of the project scheduled to start next October.
The venture is part of a 200 billion dollar, Al Noor Cities Project, to be developed by Al Noor Holding Investment Co. (Al Noor), a United Arab Emirates based company owned by Sheik Tarek M. bin Laden and his two sons, Bandar and Amr, the former being the brother of Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda.
The ‘Bridge of the Horns’ will have a six-lane highway with four light rail lines as well as water and oil pipelines. Connecting East Africa and the Middle East, the project involves the development of two new cities that would eventually be connected by a 28.5 km road and rail bridge between Yemen and Djibouti. It will also comprise suspension bridge structures, with the suspension portion to become the longest in the world. Moreover, to allow large vessels to pass underneath, the bridge would have two main suspension spans, each about 2.7kilometers long.
Speaking at the launching, CEO of Al Noor Mohammed Ahmed Al Ahmed said, “It is a new city and it is happening. Africa is the center of the world with a population of close to 1 billion, while the Middle East North Africa region has a population of 400 million. We have all the ingredients to make this project a reality.”
More than 50 top companies in the world, many of them from the US, are closely associated with the project, which has an estimated price tag ranging from 10 to 20 billion USD and was conceptualized by Sheikh Tarek bin Laden. bin Laden’s company, Al Noor Holding Investment, will be responsible for the projects execution in phases to be spread out across 12 to 15 years.
Mesfin Asfaw, representative of Middle East Development LLC Tarek and Elias Taha, Coordinating Committee of the project both based in Ethiopia, jointly told Capital that Al Noor Alliance, which has already been formed as a group of 50 world class companies, will be responsible for the management of the project.
“The Alliance Program Management Office has been established by the alliance and will staff, develop and manage this program through its entire life cycle,” Mesfin said, “There will be no constraint of funding”.
Present at the launch announcement were Prime Minister of Djibouti, Mohammed Dileita, Shiek Tarik bin Laden and his two sons, Bandar and Amr, several Djiboutian officials and some 200 journalists from nearly 80 countries.
Tarek bin Laden is an elder brother of the world’s most famous terrorist.
The bin Laden family, from Saudi Arabia, has operated a construction empire for decades. In the mid-1990s, the clan cut its financial ties with Osama bin Laden, founder of al-Qaeda, around the time he declared war on the United States and called for the overthrow of the Saudi ruling family.
Since then, the rest of the bin Ladens — Osama has 24 half brothers and 29 half sisters — have quietly gone on with their business. The bridge would be their most ambitious project to date, overshadowing their renovations of Islamic holy sites in the Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina.
New York (Tadias) — Among some of the most exciting out-door music events scheduled in New York this summer, is a concert on August 20th, featuring Ethiopia’s most noted musical artists: Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete and the legendary saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya.
The artists burst forth into the Ethiopian music scence in the 1960s, during a time of prolific music recording in Addis Ababa, where the nightlife and club scene was buzzing with live Afro-pop, Swing and Blues riviling those in Paris and New York… Read more >>
Kangaroo court judge Leul Gebremariam has ordered the arrest of Teddy Afro’s lawyer, Ato Million Assefa today. On the judge’s order, and publishers of AddisNeger newspaper, Ato Mesfin Negash and Ato Girma Tesfaw, have also been arrested today in Addis Ababa, according to Ethiopian Review sources.
Judge Leul ordered the arrest of the lawyer and the newspaper publishers after they published a report last Saturday that Ato Million was about to lodge a complaint against the judge and the translator for Menilik Hospital to the board of judicial administration.
Publisher Mesfin Negash and Deputy Publisher Girma Tesfaw were picked up by police in the morning and brought before Judge Leul for hearing in the afternoon. After answering some questions, the judge released the deputy publisher, but ordered the chief publisher to return to jail and come back to court tomorrow.
The lawyer, Ato Million Assefa, was arrested later tonight local time.
Ato Million is a Woyanne sympathizer who is also said to be one of authors of the new restrictive press law that was recently passed by the rubber-stamp parliament.
Teddy Afro’s friends and fans are puzzled why Million was hired to represent the popular singer. Legal expert say that Million has so far done a poor job of representing Teddy in and outside of the court.
