The fairy-tale marriage of Countess LuAnn de Lesseps is crumbling over a princess.
The mysterious Ethiopian beauty at the center of the divorce between Bravo TV’s “The Real Housewives of New York” star and her husband, Count Alexandre de Lesseps, has been unmasked as Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar, reports Ethioplanet.com.
She is the descendant of King Abajifar, the last ruler of a powerful kingdom in the Gibe region of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian news Web site said.
An unnamed source said it was the wish of both the princess and Count Lesseps, 59, that she no longer be identified as “the Ethiopian woman” but rather with her royal credentials.
It was last month that de Lesseps, 43, discovered her husband of 16 years was serious with another woman in Geneva. She said she was “blindsided” by the news and added that she found out after the count sent her an e-mail.
“I just think some people aren’t good at confrontation,” she said.
The former model, who has a book due out next week titled “Class with the Countess,” told People magazine that she quietly separated from her husband more than three months ago but felt “ashamed” when news of his infidelity broke.
“It’s been like a death,” she told People. “You go through anger, bereavement. It’s really an end to a part of your life.”
She and the count have two children: Noel, 12, and Victoria, 14.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The pirate standoff with the U.S. Navy has burned Somalia into the West’s consciousness as a base for lawlessness and terror, but the hostage crisis illuminates a potentially dangerous picture confronting a far greater area.
Much of the Horn of Africa, which is made up of six countries covering roughly half the area of the United States, is beset by a rare set of disadvantages that makes it ripe for chaos. Poverty, hunger, corruption and lawlessness has made the region a haven not only for pirates, but for arms smugglers and Islamic insurgents.
“The situation in the Horn is the most explosive on the continent,” said Francois Grignon, head of the Africa program for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank.
Home to about 165 million people, the six countries that make up the Horn — Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Djibouti — are seen by many as the next possible front in the war on terrorism.
The footpaths, rutted roads and steamy coastal dens along the Horn may seem a world away to many in the West — but the conflicts that fester here have hit home before.
Americans have been targeted in the region in the past, although it is not clear if the pirates who launched a failed effort to capture the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesday knew they were attacking an American ship. The U.S. was negotiating with the pirates Friday for the ship’s American captain, the only hostage after the crew overpowered the bandits.
U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were the targets of deadly twin bombings by al-Qaida in 1998. An Israeli airliner and hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, were targeted by terrorists in 2002.
The attacks emanated from neighboring Somalia, which has had no effective central government since 1992 and has a growing Islamic fundamentalist movement. And in 2006, Kenyan police caught a smuggler trying to bring in an anti-aircraft missile.
The United States worries that Somalia could be a terrorist breeding ground, particularly since Osama bin Laden declared his support for Islamic radicals there. Bin Laden himself has ties to the Horn, having once lived in Sudan.
The U.S. has stationed 1,800 troops in Djibouti to keep terror networks in the Horn of Africa in check. The country, which has close ties to the West, is located at a strategic point where the Red Sea opens into the Indian Ocean.
The Horn of Africa is notorious for corrupt governments, porous borders, widespread poverty and discontented populations, creating a region ripe for Islamic fundamentalism.
When hijackings spiked off the coast of Somalia last year, counterterrorism officials pressed for any evidence that the country’s extremist factions, or even al-Qaida militants operating in East Africa, might be using piracy to fund their violence. But the complicated clan structure and Somalia’s ungoverned black market — there is no functioning banking system — have made it difficult to trace the cash transactions.
U.S. officials have found no direct ties between East African pirates and terrorist groups. But piracy is believed to be backed by an international network that runs from the Horn of Africa to as far as North America. It is made up primarily of Somali expatriates who offer funds, equipment and information in exchange for a cut of the ransoms, according to researchers, officials and members of the racket. With help from the network, Somali pirates brought in at least $80 million last year.
Ethnic Somalis are the common denominator in the Horn of Africa, and their large presence in neighboring countries has long been a source of conflict. In the mid-1970s, then Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre advocated expanding the country’s borders to unite all Somali-speaking people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
Despite Somalia’s disastrous and short-lived invasion of Ethiopia in 1977 and political anarchy since 1992, Somali nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists still advocate this Greater Somalia. An ethnic-Somali insurgency continues in eastern Ethiopia. And many Somalis were angered when Ethiopia sent troops at the request of Somalia’s weak transitional government to oust Islamists who controlled the capital at the end of 2006 and were expanding their influence.
The Islamists’ ascent was marked by a dramatic decline in piracy. The Ethiopians withdrew in January as part of an intricate U.N.-mediated peace deal.
Analysts are warning that the increasingly brazen piracy and its toll on shipping companies is going to lead to higher prices for commodities headed to the West. In addition, more than 10 percent of the world’s petroleum supply is shipped past Somalia and into Gulf of Aden, the shortest route between Asia and Europe.
Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau in London, said piracy is now becoming a global issue because the pirates are targeting foreign ships further afield from Somalia, in part to avoid international naval forces stationed in the Gulf of Aden.
“The worrying issue is that what was originally a Somali problem has spilled over,” Mukundan said. “If you look at what is available, in Somalia itself, nothing can be done. There is no government. It is a failed state.”
As for help from nearby, he said: “The neighboring countries don’t have the resources.”
Elizabeth Kennedy has covered East Africa since 2006.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AFP) — Ethiopia’s dictatorial regime on Saturday criticized the UN for not taking strong measures against arch-foe Eritrea over its failure to withdraw troops from disputed territories along its border with Djibouti.
A UN resolution adopted last January gave Asmara five weeks to pull out, and the Security Council earlier this week concluded that Eritrea had not fulfilled its obligations 10 weeks after the request.
“Unless the international community is prepared to hold Eritrea accountable for such open and reckless defiance of international norms and decisions, there is the real danger Eritrea will be encouraged to continue its regional destabilization,” the Ethiopian foreign ministry said in a statement.
The UN resolution had welcomed the fact that Djibouti withdrew its forces from the disputed areas as requested by the council last June and condemned Eritrea’s refusal to do so.
Eritrea is also involved in a bitter border dispute with Ethiopia’s regime led by Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (Woyanne), whom it fought in a 1998-2000 war that killed some 70,000 people.
The long-running border row between Djibouti and Eritrea over the disputed Ras Doumeira promontory on the shores of the Red Sea flared up last June after previous clashes in 1996 and 1999.
The clashes have assumed a greater strategic significance because both France and the United States have bases in Djibouti, a former French colony.
The United States has more than 1,200 troops stationed in Djibouti, which hosts an anti-terrorism task force in the Horn of Africa.
ADDIS ABABA (Xinhua) — The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) concluded its 120th Assembly here on Friday, adopting resolutions on mitigating effects of the global financial crisis and on boosting its role in issues of freedom of expression, climate change, peace and global security.
More than 1,000 legislators from around the world attended the Addis Ababa meeting to discuss political, economic and social situation in the world under the overall theme of “Parliaments: Building Peace, Democracy and Development in times of crisis”.
Delegates agreed in a resolution that parliaments should play an important role in mitigating the social and political impact of the international economic and financial crisis on the most vulnerable sectors of the global community, especially in Africa.
The document said the global financial crisis has its origins in developed countries, and its solution requires a broad international dialogue with the active participation of all countries under UN auspices to facilitate the thorough reconstruction of the global financial architecture, including the setting up of early warning systems.
Delegates agreed that the crisis necessitates the redesign of current development models to place the value of human life at the center of their concerns.
They voiced support to the communique issued at the G20 London Summit, in which the G20 leaders pledged to take measures to restore confidence, repair the financial system, promote global trade and investment, and build an inclusive, green and sustainable recovery.
According to the IPU resolution, some of the most vulnerable sectors of society are located in Africa, home to more than 920 million people, 60 percent of whom are aged under 25. About two fifths of this population live on less than one U.S. dollar a day. It called for special attention to these countries in times of the crisis.
The document said the greatest challenge facing the world today is poverty eradication and this challenge is all the greater as a result of the ongoing economic and financial crisis.
It expected a global recovery to be delayed until 2010 even if countries adopt the correct policies to fight the recession. While most low-income countries escaped the early phases of the crisis, they are now being hit hard, it warned.
The IPU resolution underlined the importance of parliaments’ role, its cooperation with national governments in trying to reduce the negative impacts of the global crisis on the world’s most vulnerable, and in achieving the development goals set by the international community.
The IPU Assembly also adopted resolutions on freedom of expression, sharing of information, climate change, sustainable development models, renewable energies, peace and international security.
Other issues discussed during the April 5-10 meeting include gender equality, human trafficking, the protection of adolescent girls and nuclear non-proliferation.
Established in 1889, the IPU is the international organization of parliaments of sovereign States. The union, which is the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue, works for peace and cooperation among peoples and for the establishment of democracy.
With over 150 members, the IPU’s main areas of activities include representative democracy, international peace and security, sustainable development, human rights and humanitarian law, women in politics, as well as education, science and culture.
The international body holds two Assemblies a year. The 121st IPU Assembly will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 2009.
ADDIS ABABA, April 10 (Reuters) – An Ethiopian firm has signed a $300 million joint venture deal with a Dubai company to develop a 5,000 hectare (12,360 acre) tea plantation, a government official said on Friday.
“The joint venture agreement to develop tea on 5,000 hectares of land in Illubabor, at a cost of nearly $300 million, was signed between East Africa Agri-business and Dubai World Trading Company early this week,” said Berhanu Tesfaye, a senior agronomist in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
“They plan to produce 421,348 kg of black tea annually within three years’ time,” he told Reuters.
Ethiopia’s current annual tea production from three private estates is around 7,000 tonnes, he said.
The country, Africa’s biggest coffee producer, expects to export over 1,300 tonnes of tea in 2009, for about $2 million, according to government statistics. The remainder will be consumed locally.
“Tea plantations in Ethiopia have failed to expand as expected due to lack of investors with money and the patience to wait for three years to get returns,” Berhanu said.
“The country’s investment code is also inviting. But the initial investment for tea is high and the fact that it requires three years to mature has discouraged investors.”
Ethiopia has identified up to 500,000 hectares suitable for tea production.
Two state-owned estates covering 2,109 hectares were privatized in 2000 for $27 million but there as been little or no expansion of the plantations since, Berhanu said.
The 1,249-hectare Wish Wish plantation and Gumero farm on 860 hectares were first set up nearly 70 years ago. A third estate, owned by East African Agri-business and covering 600 hectares, was established 10 years ago, he said.
Tea growing was introduced in Ethiopia in the early 1900s, but the initiative failed because of lack of official support in a nation of heavy coffee drinkers, economists say.
Coffee is Ethiopia’s main cash crop and about half of the country’s annual production of about 330,000 tones is consumed locally.
(Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Anthony Barker)
“Why, O my friends, did ye so often puff me up, telling me that I was fortunate? For he that is fallen low did never firmly stand. – Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
When the prison guard shouts: Dead man walking! You step aside. The guard is warning people that the inmate walking by is on death row and he has nothing to lose by killing you. You just step out of the way and let the dead man keep his date with destiny.
The President of Sudan General Bashir is a dead man walking. He has a date with the International Criminal Court (ICC). A year ago ICC warned the General that his actions in Darfur were a cause for concern. Human Right watch put him on notice. Amnesty international said Al bashir was abusing his authority.
General Bashir was intoxicated with power. The General with the brain of a foot solder was not in any mood to listen to reason. He told his army full speed ahead. Scorched-earth policy of raping, killing and destroying villages was in effect. Why would he listen to a bunch of ‘liars’ bent in tarnishing his image?
He has friends. He is famous. He is the president of Sudan. He doesn’t have to listen to anybody. He has always said the western colonialists are out to get him. So what if they complain? General bashir is smart. Now that he has oil, he is rich too. They want his oil and those greedy westerners will not lift a finger against him. Especially since his newfound friends the Chinese are not concerned with such trivia as Darfur or human right he is safe. That is right he will play his Chinese hand no one will touch him. Not to mention that he is also surrounded with good honorable friends. No one can ask for better criminal neighbors than Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt and Libya.
So ICC in its slow and deliberative process went ahead gathering information, interviewing victims and buttressing the case. There was no hysteria here. ICC knew this process couldn’t be hurried. Accusing someone of genocide, torture, and human rights abuse is a grave matter. Warning shots were fired for those who can hear. Close friends of the tyrant were briefed. The media was kept in the loop. Al Bashir due to his unsurpassed ability to bully the Sudanese people was not to be bothered by some prosecutor in far away Europe.
The African Union and fellow tyrants were recruited to warn the ICC of the dire consequences if an indictment was returned. Delegates were sent to European capitals to explain how democracy works in Africa. The Ethiopian Foreign Minster appealed to Turkey to stop this process. It was said that Africans have their own solution and it cannot be hurried. In the mean time Al Bashir kept busy by denying the scope of his crimes, accusing the court of lack of jurisdiction and insulting the prosecutor as unrepentant colonialist hell bent on interfering in the internal affairs of Sudan.
Thus, on march 4th. 2009 ICC issued an arrest warrant for Al Bashir. The charges against the tyrant include:
1. five counts of crimes against humanity: murder; extermination, forcible transfer, torture, and rape;
2. two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities, and pillaging.
So where do things stand today? Al Bashir is squirming like a cornered rat. He has showed his defiance by visiting fellow tyrants in the neighborhood. He has expelled NGO’s and aid workers from Sudan. The indictment still stands. The ICC has threatened to add new charges regarding his expulsion of aid workers. Al Bashir is vainly trying to show the support he has in Sudan by ordering, bribing, threatening the people to come out and march in his support. Too little too late.
In an interview with the BBC this is what fellow tyrant Meles Zenawi has to say:
Question: Why are African Union leaders turning a blind eye to the suffering going on in Darfur?
Zenawi: Well clearly there is in justice in Darfur and the AU recognizes that. But there are different methods of addressing injustice. There is the type that we saw in South Africa and everybody aggress that the apartheid system in South Africa committed crimes against humanity. Nobody I know of had opposed the African method of restorative justice and I do not see any reason why similar approach cannot be followed in Darfur. The thing is the crisis in Darfur is primarily a political crisis it is not a humanitarian crisis.
Question: You talk about the reconciliation process of what happened in South Africa but Darfur is a war crime and the war crimes trial suggested by the Sudanese government is a bit late in the day isn’t it?
Zenawi: Well the African Union is suggesting the indictment be differed for a year so that an already complicated peace process does not get more complicated….
You see what I mean. This is a perfect example of mixing apples and oranges to cloud the issue. The reconciliation process in South Africa took place after the Apartheid regime gave up power and authority. The De Klerk regime saw the writing on the wall and moved aside. The reconciliation process was put in place by the newly democratically elected government. Thus, to suggest such a process in Sudan while Al Bashir is in power with his army and security intact is bizarre and self-serving. Even in the South African process there were those that mentioned the weakness by pointing out that justice should have been a prerequisite for reconciliation rather than the alternative to it. Ato Melese’s so called ‘African method of restorative justice’ is another version of ‘revolutionary democracy’. It sounds cute but it is hollow inside.
Another proposal floated by the AU is to ‘differ’ the indictment for one year. I guess this is what you call not ‘unclear on the concept’. You just do not indict and un-indict at will. The indictment took place because there were irrefutable facts that showed a pattern of criminal behavior by the individual. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. People have died, some have been maimed for life, villages have been burned and lives have been disrupted. You cannot undo the damage. What the Africans are saying is the tyrant has killed half a million so let us not upset him further so he does not kill more. It does not work like that.
This sort of suggestion arises due to the practice of using the courts for political ends in most of Africa. If memory serves us right that is the game the Ethiopian regime plays. Kinijit leaders were indicted for attempted genocide, attempt to forcefully overthrow of the regime and other charges. There was no proof, no witnesses and no case but it did not stop the regime to carry out the judicial theatre for two years while the opposition leaders were kept in jail. The two years gave the regime time to disrupt the party, exile it opponents and murder elected leaders. Ato Meles is asking a ‘deferral’ for a year so Al Bashir can do some more house cleaning.
Genocide Watch is calling on UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate Meles Zenawi regarding atrocities committed in Gambella, Awassa and Ogaden. The massacre that took place after the 2005 election is still waiting for resolution. As was the case with Al Bashir the ball has started rolling.
The recent confiscation of coffee in collusion with the so-called ECX is further crime against our people. I see dark clouds hovering over the TPLF Empire. The danger of indictment, the inflation, the economic meltdown, lack of foreign currency reserves and general lawlessness in the country is a clear indication of a crumbling system on its last legs. The criminals are watching each other closely. There are those prone to panic and abandon ship. There are those who are unwilling to take the rap for crimes of the politburo. There are those ‘teletafe’ organizations nervous that they will be the first ones to be thrown to the hyenas at the first indication of trouble. That is the problem with criminal enterprises. It is each to his own. We are familiar with the actions of TPLF. No one is indispensable. As sure as the sun will rise up from the East tomorrow morning, Ato Meles will join Al Bashir in The Hague soon. I believe he is a dead man walking.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The pirate standoff with the U.S. Navy has burned Somalia into the West’s consciousness as a base for lawlessness and terror, but the hostage crisis illuminates a potentially dangerous picture confronting a far greater area.
ADDIS ABABA (Xinhua) — The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) concluded its 120th Assembly here on Friday, adopting resolutions on mitigating effects of the global financial crisis and on boosting its role in issues of freedom of expression, climate change, peace and global security.