HENGELO, THE NETHERLANDS – The organisers of the Fanny Blankers Koen Games announced yesterday that Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie will attack his own World record for the One Hour in Hengelo on 1 June 2009.

The Fanny Blankers-Koen Games is an Grand Prix status meeting as part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour 2009.

Gebrselassie nicknamed ‘Mister Hengelo’ will start for the 11th time in Hengelo, where he broke his first World record in the 5000 metres in 1994.

He first attempted the One Hour run in hengelo in 2002 but had to pull out of the race partway through with an injury.

But last year Running before a near capacity crowd at the Mestsky Stadium at Ostrava’s Golden Spike meeting on 27 June, covered 21,285 metres over the course of 60 minutes to break the previous best, 21,101 metres, set by Mexican Arturo Barrios in La Fléche, France, on 30 March 1991. En route, he also broke the World record for 20,000 metres, covering 50 laps in 56:25.98, well within the previous 56:55.6 also set by Barrios.

Haile Gebrselassie will be guided by his friend and manager Jos Hermens who himself is a former two-time World record holder for the Hour. Hermens clocked-up 20.90765 metres on 28 September 1975 on the track of Papendal near Arnhem, bettering Gaston Roelants 20.784 metres from Brussels, 20 Sept 1972.

The second time Hermens broke the World record was on 1 May 1976 also on the Papendal track with a distance of 20.944,40 metres. With this distance Hermens remains the best European athlete ever over the hour.

Half Marathon attempt in The Hague

Gebrselassie will start coming Saturday (14 March) in the 35 edition of the Fortis City-Pier-City Half Marathon in The Hague. The Ethiopian is going for a World record at the half marathon, which is held by Samuel Wanjiru, who clocked 58:33 on the fast Hague course two years ago. Gebrselassie is trying to run the 27th world record in his career!

Wim van Hemert for the IAAF

By Simon Vozick-Levinson | Entertainment Weekly

As if 2009 hasn’t already been jam-packed for Beyonce Knowles, the singer-actress is currently preparing a year-long world tour with dates in Canada set to launch later this month. “I’ve been working on this tour for eight months,” Beyonce told EW when we caught up with her on the set of a TV ad she was taping. “It’s crunch time! I’ve been rehearsing and trying to make sure I put my set list together. Right now I’m anxious and I can’t sleep — I’ll be wanting to be at rehearsal. That’s the only thing I can think about. But I can’t wait.” While details are still being worked out, she has dates tentatively penciled in for the U.K., Ethiopia, Japan, Brazil, and more, plus a run through the U.S. this summer. She’ll be backed once more at each show by the all-female band from 2007’s The Beyonce Experience tour.

Beyonce has also finished two new music videos to keep fans happy while she’s crisscrossing the globe: “Broken-Hearted Girl,” from the ballad-heavy I Am… half of her recent double album, and …Sasha Fierce‘s up-tempo “Ego.” Beyonce co-directed the latter clip with her choreographer. “My goal for [the ‘Ego’ video] is simplicity,” she says. “In ‘Single Ladies,’ I saw this old tape of Bob Fosse’s wife, and I used that as inspiration. I thought in this world, with all the technology and everything that’s going on, to strip everything down — great idea. So I kind of did the same thing, but glossy and black, for ‘Ego.'”

One thing that the video for “Ego” won’t share with “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” is a certain animatronic appendage. “I didn’t have the Sasha Fierce hand [in the video],” she laughs. “But I have it on the tour. It’s actually even more wild — I have to figure out how I’m going to perform with that hand!”

By Melissa Allison

Starbucks does not know when it will open a support center for coffee farmers in Ethiopia that was scheduled to open last year, according to spokeswoman Deb Trevino.

The economic slowdown, along with delays in opening a more regionally-focused center in Rwanda last year, have “made it challenging for us to move as quickly as we would like,” she said in an e-mail. “We remain committed to opening a Farmer Support Center in Addis, but do not have an opening date to announce at this time.”

The delay was originally reported by the Ethiopian news site Capital, which cited Starbucks’ head of public relations, Vivek Varma, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

When Starbucks announced plans for the support centers in Ethiopia and Rwanda in late 2007, both were scheduled to open in 2008.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We believe that the majority of the poor and exploited people of Tigray must not suffer because of the criminal and anti-Ethiopia acts of the Tigrean elites, including some of those who claim to oppose the Meles regime, but continue to promote Tigrean supremacy. A public dialogue is necessary to avoid potential violent backlash against fellow Ethiopians of Tigrean ethnic group as a result of the evil deeds of the politicians who claim to represent them. It’s is with this spirit that the following article is published.

By Assta B. Gettu

When that Day comes what will happen to the Tegarues (Tigreans)? That Day is to some a Day of doom; to others a Day of Joy and celebration, and that Day is the final Day of Meles Seitanawi (Zenawi).

After Meles Seitanawi’s regime is terminated and all of his political gangs have vanished from the face of the earth, I always fear many Ethiopians who have been marginalized for so many years under Meles’ political party whose main purpose has been to enrich the few selected tribes may retaliate disproportionately against the Tegarues, who are also to be Ethiopians but badly misguided by one of their evil sons – Meles Seitanawi.

To protect such fallen victims from being completely erased from the map of Ethiopia, the avengers – the Amharas, the Oromos, the Somalis in the Ogaden and the other Ethiopian tribes – must gingerly take immediate actions against those hot-tampered Ethiopians who want to destroy the Tegarues because of Meles’ vicious political leadership.

As in all wars or conflicts, the victors do not always completely destroy their enemies: some they capture and send them to jail, and some they pardon and send them home without harming them. In this way, all Ethiopians, it is my hope, are expected to do better than this toward the Tegarues, their own people, not their foreign enemies. This does not mean the few criminals must go unpunished, and most Ethiopians well know who these hard core criminals are and who have been terrorizing Ethiopia for almost twenty years. If captured, these evil men and women who have been eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the unfortunate Ethiopians should face justice and should be told what they have done to their own people and why they have done such heinous crimes against humanity.

The conflict in Ethiopia is a family conflict, and as such it could be solved by the Ethiopians themselves; in fact, it could have been solved long time ago if, for instance, Washington’s support for Meles Seitanawi were a legitimate one to help Ethiopia elect a democratic government.

Conflicts occasionally exist in a family, no matter how strong, or spiritual, the family is, and when the family is unable to solve its conflicts, a good neighbor comes in and tries to solve the conflict; however, Ethiopia, at this time, does not have a very concerned neighbor, thanks to Meles Seitanawi for a job well done in rendering Ethiopia almost a friendless nation.

The friendship between Ethiopia and the West is an artificial one on which Ethiopians should not rely at all; if it were a genuine one, the West, with all its overwhelming power and economic might, could have helped Ethiopia to remove the dictator Meles Seitanawi from his corrupt regime as the West helped Iraq by overthrowing Saadam Hussein; rather, the West has emboldened Meles Seitanawi by training his army and by financing his criminal activities continuously and shamelessly.

Therefore, when the conflict in Ethiopia comes to an end naturally or by waging war against Meles Seitanawi, the Tegarues who have not committed any crime should not fear any retaliation from the oppressed Ethiopian tribes, for most Ethiopians could remember the divine words: “Vengeance is mine” – and they should prevent themselves from shedding the bloods of some innocent Tegarues. The Apostle Paul firmly declares: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). These particular divine words should be learned diligently and practiced effectively by every Ethiopian who has the propensity to harm another Ethiopian from the region of Tigray.

When Meles Seitanawi divided the country on ethnic lines, the main purpose was to give the Tigreans an economic and political advantage over the other tribes without first thinking carefully what would happen to them after he leaves office. By doing special favor for them, he is, in fact, isolating them from the rest of the Ethiopian people and making them an easy target to fall into the hands of an angry mob from the other tribes of the Ethiopian people as soon as he is removed from power.

So in the long run, Meles is hurting the Tegarues rather than helping them, and some of the Tegarues may not yet realize the danger they are heading to after their master Meles Seitanawi abandons them and flees the country and asks for an asylum in America or Saudi Arabia to save his life before he is caught and handed over to the International Court for his crimes against his own people.

We may fail to identify all the criminals, but we will never fail to identify Meles, Azeb, Abune Paulos, and Al Amoudi when that final Day – a “Day of Reckoning” – comes, and those who escape from the wraths of the Ethiopian people on that final Day are those who have never given up their struggles to overthrow the Meles regime, and these heroes are the ones who can determine the final fate of the Tegarues.

These well-disciplined Ethiopian heroes will not automatically destroy everyone who speaks Tigrigna but carefully examine if one has been involved with Meles criminal activities when Meles was in power and bring him/her to justice. In this way, the innocent Tegarues are spared from being executed, and they will be reconciled with the rest of the Ethiopian people.

After all, most Ethiopians follow the teaching of Jesus, that is, they can forgive the Tegarues as many times as the Tegarues ask for forgiveness; what matters here the most is not revenge on one’s own people but forgiveness for the sake of Christ, who taught us to forgive our brothers and sisters and live together in peace. As it has been difficult to live in peace with our neighbors during Meles’ reign of terror, it would be possible for every Ethiopian to enjoy freedom and to live in peace under a democratically elected Ethiopian Prime Minister whose priority is the Ethiopian people not his/her own interest.

Someone may say that the Jews persecuted, one by one, the Nazi criminals wherever they had been hiding but forgave the world that failed to protect the Jews, and it would be the same thing with the oppressed Ethiopians: they would hunt the Meles family and his death squads and impel them to confess their atrocities toward the helpless Ethiopians but allow the peace-loving Tegarues to go free and work in their country without a fear of any reprisal from the other oppressed Ethiopians.

Mengistu Haile Mariam and Meles Seitanawi slaughtered many Ethiopian students, priests, and political leaders without giving them a chance to defend themselves in the court, but such offensive and arbitrary killings will never happen again in Ethiopia once Ethiopia has a democratically elected leader from whatever tribe he or she might be. This is my dream, and, I think, it is also the dreams of many Ethiopians in the diaspora and at home; of course, dreams sometimes may not come true, but I hope this time they will come true because Meles is morally, economically, and politically weaker than ever before.

The good Tegarues, the Amharas, the Oromos, and the many other Ethiopian tribes should stick together and work hard never to bring to power the evil leaders to govern them once the Meles regime is over through peaceful negotiation or arms struggles or through what ever means necessary.

No one in his or her right mind wants to see Ethiopians wage an ethnical war except Meles Seitanawi so that he could stay in power indefinitely; an ethnically divided country, like Ethiopia, may not prosper because of the conflict that exists among the different tribes, each tribe claiming superiority over the other tribe instead of thinking as one nation, as one Ethiopia. If, for example, the Tegarues believe in the Abay Tigray; the Oromos in their big number; and the Amharas in their Imperial dynasty, then such conflict of interest would take Ethiopia further to more disintegration and instability. Such uncalled for disintegration and instability would create continuous hostility between each tribe, and each tribe claiming victory over the other tribe and trying to subjugate the weaker tribe. In such rare or perhaps common cases, the weaker tribe may ally itself with the other stronger tribe, and the internal conflict will continue until a lasting solution to the conflict is found through a democratically elected leader, and this democratically elected leader will benefit not only the Tegarues who fear retaliations from the other tribes but all the tribes of Ethiopia after that final Day of doom for Meles Seitanawi and his entire political advisers.

(Originally posted on Aug. 11, 2008)

By Tesfa-alem Teklem | Sudan Tribune

MEKELLE — A Dubai-based Sudanese communication company, MURD, installed an FM radio station in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray.

MURD carried out the project after it won an international tender announced by the government of Ethiopia.

According to Yikum Haile, General Manager of the radio station, a total of 6 million birr has spent to build station.

The General Manager believes that the newly established radio station will have a major value in bringing positive changes in different aspects.

“The radio station will play a great role in promoting the socio-economic and political part of the people in the Region” Yikum said adding “the transmission will cover Mekelle town and its environs within 100 kilometers radius”.

Sudanese electronic engineer and director of the project Mohamed Al-Mubarek told Sudan Tribune that the company, Murd, has similar contract deal to execute in Ethiopia

“We have a contract deal with the Addis administration to set up an educational FM Radio station in the capital, Addis Ababa” Mohamed said

He appreciated the Regional government’s close cooperation to successfully accomplish the project.

Mekelle Radio station which was inaugurated last week is expected to play significant Role by serving as a bridge between government and the people.

Established since 1996, MURD erected several radio stations in northern, southern and western part of the country. Currently it is working on AM station in Gedaref, eastern Sudan. The firm is also working on three radio transmission stations in the United Arab Emirates.

By Ayda Million

U.S.-based BirrituExpress.com claims to provide a secure, quick, cost-effective and easy way to remit money abroad.

“Sending money to Ethiopia does not have to be difficult or expensive. Your family, friends or business associates cannot wait weeks to receive funds, and cannot afford the expensive fees, complications and insecurities typical of traditional money remittance services. They can count on BirrituExpress.com, built by Ethiopians for the Global Ethiopian Community,” says General Manager Getachew Jirane.

This is my first in a series of articles introducing pioneering Ethiopian owned businesses. The following is a brief description of the company as stated on its web site:

BirrituExpress.com is the service that brings much needed value to money remittance to Ethiopia currently dominated by expensive and inconvenient companies. Much value is lost to the Ethiopian Community by hidden fees and exchange rate spreads that add cost to the sender, the recipient and the economy of Ethiopia. We aim to recover that lost value to the benefit of our customers and our beloved country, and serve our clients with an economical yet rich service. Over $370 million is remitted to the country annually, and BirrtuExpress brings transparency and low cost to funds sent through our system.

Convenient and Easy – our innovative site allows you to send money to Ethiopia from the comfort of your home or workplace or from any computer with an Internet connection. There are no long lines and no need to interrupt your busy day to travel to a merchant, agent or bank to send money. Simply log on to www.birrituexpress.com, register as a user, enter your recipients contact address and the amount you wish to send, and send the money. It’s that easy!

Fast and Flexible – You can charge the amount you would like to send to your credit card or debit card or deduct the money directly from your bank account. You can also use our exchange rate calculator to determine the amount your recipient will be receiving in birr. Your remittance will be processed instantly over the Internet and the money disbursed to your recipient thru cash pick-up at our affiliates The Cooperative Bank of Oromia/Ethiopian Postal Service or direct deposit to the beneficiaries account thru our affiliate bank within 48 to 72 hours. The recipient does not need to have a bank account or computer access. You can verify the status of your money transfer at any time by logging into our website. We will immediately send you confirmation regarding each step of your transaction until completion via email.

Secure and Regulatory Compliant – In addition, we have taken the anxiety out of international money transfers by incorporating industry-leading security features as the Strong 128 bit SSL encryption into the process while funds are handled by an FDIC-insured bank in the US and disbursed by the most accessible and trusted financial institutions in Ethiopia. Furthermore, all money transfers are completely regulatory compliant. This means, unlike many traditional remittance service providers, BirrituExpress.com remittances are processed in adherence with United States regulatory compliance requirements (U.S. Patriot Act, Anti-Money Laundering, Bank Secrecy Act, OFAC, NACHA, CHAPS and BACS processing policies), as well as the Laws of Ethiopia and Regulations of the National Bank of Ethiopia.

Low Cost – Typical transactions cost much less than western and traditional competitors operating in Ethiopia. You receive the most favorable exchange rate making the most out of every dollar for our esteemed customers.

(Ayda Million is the editor of Ethiopedia.com, an online encylopedia of Ethiopia)