(AME Info) — Ethiopian Airlines, the fastest growing African carrier, has announced its plan to launch flight services to Kuwait and Riyadh starting June 2. The flights will operate Addis Ababa-Riyadh-Kuwait-Addis Ababa twice weekly on Mondays and Thursdays with the return flights on Tuesdays and Fridays. Ethiopian currently operates 35 flights weekly to six destinations in the Middle East: Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Beirut, Dubai, Jeddah and Sana’a.
(Reuters) — Twice Olympic champion Haile Gebrselassie will run in the 10,000 metres at the Beijing Olympics.
Gebrselassie, who suffers from asthma and has pulled out of the Olympic marathon over about pollution in Beijing, will also be the standard bearer for Ethiopia at the August Games.
“As I said, earlier, I would not participate in the marathon event due to my health. But I would certainly run in the 10,000 metres event,” Gebrselassie, 34, said.
“I am the standard bearer and it is my earnest determination to lead my country’s athletes at the Beijing Olympics.”
He also denied speculation he would boycott the Games, saying such rumours were being spun by “people of ill will against China”.
“I respect the leadership and people of that country very much,” he said. [Haile, the leadership of China is a gang of mass murderers. Look what they are doing in Tibet. They should be opposed, not respected.]
In a separate interview, Ethiopian chief athletics coach Woldemeskel Kostre clarified comments made to Reuters through an interpreter on April 1 when he said Gebrselassie was “not ready to run 10,000 metres at the Olympics”.
“I did not say Haile would not run in the 10,000 metres event at Beijing. What I said was as long as Haile meets the minimum requirement he would run in the 10,000 metres,” he said.
The four times world 10,000 champion retired from the track after finishing fifth in the 2004 Athens final to concentrate on the marathon where he is the world record holder.
Gebrselassie will run in a 10,000 race at Hengelo, Netherlands on May 24 where he will face his compatriot — the Olympic champion and world record holder Kenenisa Bekele.
Reuters
ADDIS ABABA (Associated Press) — “We are getting out of the whole process. The whole process is an illegal process,” Beyene Petros, leader of the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces, a national coalition of opposition parties, told The Associated Press.
Ethiopia The Woyanne regime in Ethiopia, a key U.S. ally in the Horn of Africa, has a long history of human rights abuses and flawed elections. Government security forces killed 193 civilians protesting alleged fraud in the 2005 general elections, which the European Union said were flawed.
Ethiopia will hold local, regional and some federal elections on April 13 and 20, with some 4 million seats up for grabs. But the main opposition groups, including UEDF and the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, say at least 17,000 of their candidates have dropped out under pressure.
Many of the dropouts are in volatile western Ethiopia, where a rebellion by the Oromo ethnic group has been simmering for decades, the opposition said.
The dropout figures, which the opposition cited from their own tallies, could not be independently verified.
The Ethiopian Woyanne government strongly denied the allegations.
“That’s simply baseless,” said Bereket Simon, special adviser to Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi. “There is no harassment, that’s why nobody can prove it. We haven’t experienced that, and they haven’t experienced it either. Both the opposition and the ruling party haven’t experienced any intimidation.”
But the AP interviewed a dozen candidates and voters who gave independent accounts of intimidation by local officials with the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne).
“Intimidation is going on on a mass scale,” said Bulcha Demeksa, a lawmaker who heads the opposition Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement. “People have been told all kinds of scary things, like their children won’t find jobs when they finish school … that if they starve, they will not get any food.”
David Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, told a congressional committee in Washington in March that he was concerned about this month’s elections.
“The local elections are an opportunity for advancing democracy in Ethiopia,” Shinn told the panel. “If they fail to achieve this goal, it will be an enormous lost opportunity.”
In the tiny town of Nedjo, nestled deep in Ethiopia’s western coffee country, aspiring teacher Seifu Tamiru said local officials from the ruling party forced him to abandon his ambitions of becoming a member of the town council.
“They said, ‘If you keep on running for this position, you will not be employed as a teacher,'” said Seifu, 26, who ran as a member of the OFDM. “They said, ‘Nobody in your family is going to be employed.'”
Seifu’s campaign didn’t even last a week.
“I was registered on Friday,” Seifu said. “They started intimidating me on Saturday. I dropped out on Wednesday.”
Beyene, leader of the UEDF, said at least one candidate from his party faced an attempt on his family’s life.
“They torched a family when they were sleeping,” he said. “The father was running as a candidate on our ticket.”
The family, he said, escaped unharmed.
“That is our biggest success,” Beyene said wryly, “that no one has been killed.”
The National Electoral Board of Ethiopia said it has received complaints but cannot act without more evidence.
“Can they provide the evidence they were forced (to drop out)?” said board secretary Tesfaye Mengesha. “No, we asked them, they can’t. How can they say they are forced? It’s just an allegation.”
OFDM said it has determined that up to 3,000 candidates may have been forced to drop out, according to their internal records. Beyene, the leader of the other opposition party, said the party lost 14,000 candidates for local seats in western and southern Ethiopia.
“This is from our own records,” he said. “We maintain our own records and we tally who has passed, who has qualified and who has been dismissed. Our district managers compiled this information.”
Beyene said he again fears violence in constituencies where his party’s candidates have popular support. He also cited ethnic concerns and popular frustration with the nation’s political elite, which is dominated by Ethiopians from the northern Tigray region.
“My fear is that in many of these places there will be violence,” he said. “The worrisome point is how this society is being polarized. And this follows ethnic lines.”
Also Thursday, about 2,000 people gathered in central Addis Ababa to hold a rare political protest.
“We want to be free,” said Tayib Mohammed, 37, a member of the Welene, a predominantly Muslim tribe from the south of Ethiopia. That group also claims exclusion from the political process.
But despite promises by the government to bolster freedoms, many critics, opposition supporters and politicians feel democracy in Ethiopia has regressed since 2005.
“It has not gotten better,” said Bulcha, the opposition lawmaker. “Democracy in Ethiopia is stillborn. It is not active now.”
By Carl Hessler Jr. , North Penn Life
Yeshtila Awoke Ameshe, a resident of Maryland, will not face the death penalty if convicted of murder charges in connection with the fatal shooting of his aunt in Towamencin, Pennsylvania, eight years ago.
“We reviewed the case and we determined there are not sufficient aggravating factors to justify pursuing the death penalty,” Montgomery County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Maloney said Monday after accused killer Yeshtila Awoke Ameshe was arraigned on murder-related charges.
In order to win a death sentence, prosecutors must show that aggravating factors — things that make a killing more heinous — outweigh any mitigating factors — those things in favor of a defendant. Under state law there are about a dozen aggravating factors that prosecutors can use to justify seeking the death penalty.
Ameshe, 34, of Adelphi, pleaded not guilty during his formal arraignment to charges of first- and third-degree murder, aggravated assault and possession of an instrument of crime in connection with the June 27, 2000, shooting death of his aunt, Haregewene Bitew, inside a Dock Village apartment in Towamencin.
Ameshe, who is represented by defense lawyer Scott Krieger, was assisted during the hearing by an Ethiopian interpreter.
Judge S. Gerald Corso scheduled Ameshe’s trial for July 14.
Ameshe’s arraignment came on the heels of Corso’s recent determination that Ameshe is competent to stand trial. Ameshe’s competency was at the heart of several court hearings over the years during which Ameshe’s lawyer claimed he was incompetent to stand trial while prosecutors claimed he was competent.
Ameshe, who had been housed at Norristown State Hospital while lawyers argued about his competency, has been transferred to the county jail, where he will remain without bail while he awaits trial.
During one competency hearing two years ago, Ameshe, through Krieger, claimed he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. At that time, a psychiatrist hired by the defense testified Ameshe had a mental illness that led him to believe his aunt is still alive and that Ameshe showed no ability to adequately assist Krieger in devising trial strategies.
However, at that time, Maloney alleged Ameshe was “malingering,” or faking mental illness in order to avoid prosecution. Maloney called Ameshe’s claims “manipulative, a total fabrication and a ruse.”
Another forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Ameshe and testified for prosecutors claimed Ameshe is competent to proceed to trial. The prosecution’s psychiatrist claimed Ameshe understands the charges and court procedures.
According to court documents, Bitew, a 60-year-old licensed nurse from Silver Spring, Md., died after sustaining gunshot wounds to her head, neck and torso inside the Community Drive apartment. Several relatives of the victim were in the apartment at the time of the 8 p.m. shooting or witnessed the crime, court papers indicate.
Witnesses told detectives that Ameshe, who speaks Amharic, an Ethiopian language, was being counseled by Bitew about a problem with his girlfriend shortly before the shooting, according to the criminal complaint.
Ameshe fled in a vehicle, which was later stopped by state police, according to court documents. Troopers recovered a 9 mm handgun from the car operated by Ameshe, the criminal complaint alleged.
PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama has gained support in the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report for April 4-6, and now leads Hillary Clinton by a statistically significant margin, 52% to 43%. Obama’s current 52% support level matches his highest of the year, although his margin over Clinton was slightly larger, at 52% to 42%, in March 27-29 polling. So far this year Obama has been unable to sustain a significant lead over Clinton for more than a few days… Read more >>
Way before the sun peeks over the horizon, a few chosen people awaken from their slumber and dive head first into their day. These chosen few accomplish a ton before the rest of us would ever consider rising from our nice warm beds. Who are these juggernauts that have command over the morning hours? In theory, your productivity level shouldn’t differ if you rise at 4am or 11am. What matters is the quality of sleep that’s giving your mind and body sufficient time to recover. These early rising juggernauts, these unstoppable agents of productivity, they see things differently. They see these early hours as their chance to lay claim to their share of the day. They rise with purpose, act with determination, and achieve ruthlessly. The world is in awe of these special people, so let’s take a look at what pops them out of bed like a toaster strudel and what gets them up, sometimes before the alarm!… Continue reading >>