Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
New reports indicate that a few locust swarms are present in Oman and Yemen. In southern Oman, an immature swarm was reported on 11 February in the Dhofar hills near Salalah. On the 13th, there was an unconfirmed report of a large immature swarm in northern Oman on the southern side of Jebel Akhdar near Al Hamra. Ground control operations were in progress earlier in the month in the central interior against late instar hopper bands and immature adults from local breeding that occurred near the Marmul oil fields and the coast. There is an increasing risk that a few swarms could reach the Batinah coastal plains in northern Oman and perhaps cross the Gulf to the Baluchistan coast in southeastern Iran and western Pakistan.
In eastern Yemen, two immature swarms were seen in the Al-Mahra region near the border of Oman between Hat and Shehen of 14 February. There is a high risk that a few swarms could move back and forth along the Yemen / Oman border.
In Ethiopia, immature locust swarms up to about 5 square km in size continue to be reported east of the Rift Valley in the highlands of Oromiya region, mainly in Borena, Arsi and Bale zones, and in southern Somali region in the past few days. Survey and control operations are difficult because of the mountainous terrain and because the swarms are highly mobile. Consequently, there remains a risk that the swarms could move several different directions: (1) south to northern Kenya, (2) west towards SNNPR region, (3) north to Djibouti and cross Bab el Mandeb to Yemen, (4) northwest into the Danakil Depression and to the southern coast of Eritrea, (5) northeast across the Somali plateau to the Gulf of Aden coast in northern Somalia, or (6) reinvade the Ogaden in eastern Ethiopia. In any case, swarms in the Horn of Africa will mature and lay eggs with the onset of the long rains (about March).
The above-mentioned countries should remain on high alert and take the necessary steps to monitoring the situation carefully and undertake control operations as necessary to reduce the threat to crops and livelihoods
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A standoff between Eritrea and the United Nations escalated on Friday as a U.N. spokeswoman said Eritrea had cut off food supplies to U.N. troops on its border and stopped them withdrawing to Ethiopia.
Spokeswoman Marie Okabe said only around half a dozen U.N. vehicles had been allowed to cross into Ethiopia, U.N. personnel had been threatened at gunpoint and the Eritrean company providing food to the peacekeepers had said it could no longer do so.
“Not more than six vehicles have been allowed by the Eritreans to cross into Ethiopia,” she said, adding that peacekeepers trapped on the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia had only had a few days of emergency food rations left.
She said the U.N. Security Council had been informed about the situation with the U.N. force, called UNMEE. The council’s current president, Panamanian Ambassador Ricardo Alberto Arias, said the body would discuss the issue later on Friday.
“The situation of UNMEE is becoming very, very delicate,” Arias told reporters.
Eritrea’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the charges and accused U.N. peacekeeping officials and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s office of making “unwarranted accusations” and “distorting the reality” of the U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Insinuations that UNMEE troops in Eritrea were in danger were “unfounded,” the ministry said in the statement posted on a government Web site.
U.N. troops on the Eritrean-Ethiopian border have been struggling for months to deal with an Eritrean fuel blockade and recently decided they would have to relocate to Ethiopia.
The 1,700-strong U.N. mission started work in 2000, at the end of a two-year war between the two Horn of Africa neighbors that killed an estimated 70,000 people. They have been stationed in a 15.5-mile (25-km) buffer zone inside Eritrea, which has made clear it no longer wants them.
The two countries insist they will not start another war, but both have moved tens of thousands of troops to the border because of a dispute over their 620-mile (1,000 km) frontier. U.N. officials have said their peacekeepers were reluctant to leave because they feared it could spark a new conflict.
BORDER DISPUTE
Okabe said there would be an emergency meeting of countries that contribute peacekeeping troops and added that formal protests would be delivered to Eritrea “at the highest level.”
Eritrea shut off fuel supplies to UNMEE in early December after an independent border commission marked the boundary by map coordinates in a ruling Eritrea accepted, but Ethiopia rejected.
Asmara, which said the commission’s ruling ended the border dispute, has ignored repeated U.N. and Security Council appeals to lift the fuel blockade, forcing UNMEE to begin withdrawing to positions in Ethiopia.
Advance units of the force began moving by road to designated relocation sites on the Ethiopian side of the border on Monday while the main body began moving on Thursday.
Eritrea has said the peacekeepers’ continued presence along the border was tantamount to occupation.
The U.N. Security Council renewed UNMEE’s mandate for six months on January 30 despite a proposal by Secretary-General Ban for an extension of just one month because of the force’s difficulties. Diplomats said the council felt a short extension would mean submitting to “blackmail” by Eritrea.
It is rumored that Meles Zenawi’s wife, Azeb Mesfin, sold this priceless Ethiopian national treasure to the highest bidder?
By Peter Smith
[email protected]
The Courier-Journal
Fallen angels marry human women and spawn a breed of giants that wreak havoc on the earth. A righteous man takes a tour of the cosmos that reveals the throne of God, a prison for wayward stars and the storehouses of wind, hail and fire..
A messianic “Son of Man” comes to judge the earth, punish the wicked and reward the righteous.
It’s all part of the ancient Book of Enoch, an apocalyptic epic that was quoted in the New Testament and has always been revered as Scripture by Ethiopian Christians — even as it’s been largely forgotten in the Western world.
Now one of the world’s oldest manuscripts of Enoch has found at least a temporary a home in Jeffersonville, Kentucky.
The Remnant Trust — a private collection of rare books and documents with the aim of spurring public interest in culture-shaping works — unveiled the manuscript this week at its East Court Avenue building.
The wood-bound manuscript, written in red and black ink on animal-skin pages, is believed to date from the 15th or 16th centuries.
Two private collectors recently acquired it and loaned it to the trust for at least two years and will consider making it a permanent gift to the trust, said Kris Bex, president of the Remnant Trust. He did not disclose the price but said it was “expensive.”
“It’s one of a kind,” Bex said. “It’s the only Book of Enoch that’s ever been likely to have been sold or put on the market.”
Enoch was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic by ancient Jews, and some ancient fragments of it have been found near the Dead Sea.
But the oldest complete versions are in the ancient Ethiopian language of Ge’ez because Ethiopian Christians are the only enduring church group that revered the book as Scripture.
James C. VanderKam, a professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Notre Dame University and a leading expert on the Book of Enoch, has inspected the book and estimates it’s probably one of the five or so oldest manuscripts of the work.
“We don’t have very many that go back that far,” said VanderKam, who co-authored an English translation of Enoch and is now working on a commentary.
VanderKam estimated the text was about 500 years old because it has similar script and contents to another edition of Enoch in the British Museum, although he said specialists in Ethiopian script could make a more decisive determination.
The manuscript came on the market in the last couple of years from an American owner, and the trust has been able to establish a chain of ownership dating back only to 1924. But VanderKam said it appears authentic.
Enoch is considered a prime example of apocalyptic literature — Jewish and Christian books that purport to reveal the hidden secrets of a future in which the evil are punished and the righteous rewarded. They include books inside the Bible, such as Daniel and Revelation, as well as many outside of it, such as Enoch.
“The book is very significant,” said Susan Garrett, professor of New Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. “It attests to a world view that is similar to (one found in) the New Testament.”
Portions of the book — such as references to a messianic Son of Man — have “incredible parallels” to language used about Jesus in the gospels, she added.
In fact, the New Testament book of Jude directly quotes this line: “See, the Lord is coming with tens of thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all.”
The book ultimately influenced Christians more than Jews, who excluded it from their Bible and whose apocalyptic strain largely faded in ancient times as scholarly, rabbinic Judaism came to the fore.
Ancient Jews “moved on to (scholarly texts such as the) Mishnah and Talmud, argued about law,” said Rabbi Joe Rooks Rapport of The Temple synagogue in Louisville. “There’s antiquarian interest in it, but it’s not really functional in the rabbinic context of Judaism.”
The book is attributed to the ancient patriarch Enoch, who is depicted in the book of Genesis as so righteous that “God took” him, apparently without death.
But VanderKam and other scholars say various writers composed the book in Greco-Roman times and attributed it to Enoch to boost its credibility.
The book includes an elaborate retelling of a brief passage in Genesis 6, in which the “sons of God” lusted after the “daughters of humans” and bred a race of destructive giants just before Noah’s flood. In Enoch’s version, the ghosts of these giants continue to haunt the earth.
“What it does is show us a kind of Judaism that reflected on basic problems” such as the “tremendous power of evil in the world, and how might that be explained,” VanderKam said.
“Their explanation had to do with these marriages between these angels and women that they found hinted at in Genesis 6,” he said. “They put more stress on that than they did on the Adam and Eve story in the garden.”
Bex said visitors can view the book by appointment by calling (812) 280-2222.
Watch video here.
