EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a good news since the flower farms in Ethiopia are destroying the soil. The Woyanne-affiliated flower exporters are using chemical fertilizers that are toxic to the soil and nearby lakes.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia says it is seeking new buyers for its fresh flowers because the global economic downturn is cutting sales in its main market, The Netherlands.
Tsegaye Abebe, head of the state-run Horticulture Development Association, told a news conference late on Saturday the Netherlands bought 65 percent of Ethiopia’s flower exports.
“But the recession affecting the European country is also affecting our revenue,” he said.
Abebe said Ethiopia was now only expecting to earn 60 percent of a projected $280 million from flower exports this year.
The Horn of Africa nation earned $177.6 million last year from the sale of some 1.5 billion stems, the government says.
Ethiopia is now trying to attract buyers in Dubai, Asia, Scandinavia, Russia and the United States to boost income, Tsegaye said.
Offering tax breaks to attract investment, Ethiopia hopes flower exports will overtake coffee and be worth $1 billion annually within five years. Flower farming employs about 60,000 people in the huge country, mostly women.
Neighbouring Kenya earned about $1 billion from horticulture in 2007. Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are also developing their fresh flower export industries.
An Internet {www:security} company claims that Iran has taken {www:advantage} of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama’s helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh.
Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the {www:transfer} of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.
The channel quoted the company’s CEO, Bob Boback, who said Tiversa found a file containing the entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One.
“What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One,” Boback told WPXI.
Tiversa makes products that monitor the sharing of files online. A representative for the company was not immediately available for comment.
Boback believes that the files probably were transferred through a peer-to-peer file-sharing network such as LimeWire or BearShare, then compromised.
CHICAGO (AP) — Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90.
Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.
Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.
“My father and mother created from thin air what one day became radio and television news,” Paul Harvey Jr. said in a statement. “So in the past year, an industry has lost its godparents and today millions have lost a friend.”
Known for his resonant voice and trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” Harvey had been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks.
He became a heartland icon, delivering news and commentary with a distinctive Midwestern flavor. “Stand by for news!” he told his listeners. He was credited with inventing or popularizing terms such as “skyjacker,” “Reaganomics” and “guesstimate.”
“Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation’s history,” ABC Radio Networks President Jim Robinson said in a statement. “We will miss our dear friend tremendously and are grateful for the many years we were so fortunate to have known him.”
In 2005, Harvey was one of 14 notables chosen as recipients of the presidential Medal of Freedom. He also was an inductee in the Radio Hall of Fame, as was Lynne.
Former President George W. Bush remembered Harvey as a “friendly and familiar voice in the lives of millions of Americans.”
“His commentary entertained, enlightened, and informed,” Bush said in a statement. “Laura and I are pleased to have known this fine man, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”
Harvey composed his twice-daily news commentaries from a downtown Chicago office near Lake Michigan.
Rising at 3:30 each morning, he ate a bowl of oatmeal, then combed the news wires and spoke with editors across the country in search of succinct tales of American life for his program.
At the peak of his career, Harvey reached more than 24 million listeners on more than 1,200 radio stations and charged $30,000 to give a speech. His syndicated column was carried by 300 newspapers.
His fans identified with his plainspoken political commentary, but critics called him an out-of-touch conservative. He was an early supporter of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy and a longtime backer of the Vietnam War.
Perhaps Harvey’s most famous broadcast came in 1970, when he abandoned that stance, announcing his opposition to President Nixon’s expansion of the war and urging him to get out completely.
“Mr. President, I love you … but you’re wrong,” Harvey said, shocking his faithful listeners and drawing a barrage of letters and phone calls, including one from the White House.
In 1976, Harvey began broadcasting his anecdotal descriptions of the lives of famous people. “The Rest of the Story” started chronologically, with the person’s identity revealed at the end. The stories were an attempt to capture “the heartbeats behind the headlines.” Much of the research and writing was done by his son, Paul Jr.
Harvey also blended news with advertising, a line he said he crossed only for products he trusted.
In 2000, at age 82, he signed a new 10-year contract with ABC Radio Networks.
Harvey was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa, Okla. His father, a police officer, was killed when he was a toddler. A high school teacher took note of his distinctive voice and launched him on a broadcast career.
While working at St. Louis radio station KXOK, he met Washington University graduate student Lynne Cooper. He proposed on their first date (she said “no”) and always called her “Angel.” They were married in 1940 and had a son, Paul Jr.
They worked closely together on his shows, and he often credited his success to her influence. She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997, seven years after her husband was. She died in May 2008.
CHINHOYI, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was celebrating his 85th birthday with a lavish all-day party Saturday despite the fact that the country is gripped by an economic and health crisis.
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party said it raised at least $250,000 to hold the party in Mugabe’s hometown of Chinhoyi, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) outside of the capital, Harare.
Critics of the president say the country is desperate for that amount of money to be spent instead on its citizens, who are suffering from a cholera outbreak, food shortages, and spiraling hyperinflation. On Friday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai visited a hospital’s closed intensive care unit that he said needed $30,000 to resume operating.
During the celebrations, Mugabe announced that his controversial land reform would not be reversed. The program is designed to have white-owned farms given to blacks, and there have been violent seizures of such farms since the program began in 2000.
He emphasized that the country’s “indigenization program” — which forces all major foreign companies operating in Zimbabwe to have at least 51 percent black ownership — will be carried out. It began last year and hasn’t been implemented yet.
Mugabe’s birthday falls on February 21 but his party loyalists postponed the celebrations as they were raising money for the event.
“I think it is going to be a great day for the legend and icon whose birthday we are celebrating today here,” said Mugabe’s nephew Patrick Zhuwawo, one of the fund-raisers for the birthday. “The country might be having problems, but we need to have a day to honor the sacrifices the president has made for this country.” What do you think about the celebrations?
Zhuwawo said about 100 beasts would be slaughtered for the birthday bash. iReport.com: What do you think about Mugabe’s lavish party?
Mugabe also invited schoolchildren from around the country to attend the party, being held at Chinhoyi University.
The farming town of Chinhoyi is usually quiet, but Saturday’s event has changed everything. Cars with Mugabe’s supporters could be seen hooting and some ZANU-PF supporters sang Mugabe’s praises.
A banner in Chinhoyi read, “Age ain’t nothing but a number.”
Mugabe invited Tsvangirai, his new partner in a power-sharing government, but a Tsvangirai spokesman said the opposition party leader turned it down. He said it is political party function, with most of the attendees being ZANU-PF elite. As the prime minister, Tsvangirai is not obligated to attend, the spokesman said.
The spokesman would not acknowledge whether Tsvangirai had initially agreed to attend, but it was widely reported in Zimbabwean media that he had agreed to do so.
“Mr. Tsvangirai has other commitments, as far as I know,” said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.
Tsvangirai last year said Mugabe’s birthday party was “a gathering of the satisfied few.” But at that point, he and the president were preparing to face off in a hotly contested presidential election.
As Saturday’s celebrations began in a carnival atmosphere, just less than a kilometer (0.62 miles) away stood a deserted Chinhoyi government hospital — a reflection of the country’s dire health situation. A few nurses are attending to patients.
“There are no medicines. These patients have no option but to come here, but there is nothing we can do,” said one nurse at the hospital.
On Friday Tsvangirai visited Harare Hospital, one of the country’s biggest, and said its intensive care unit will need $30,000 in order to start operating again after a funding shortage.
Once a darling of Zimbabwe, Mugabe is blamed for driving the country into a meltdown.
A cholera epidemic that broke out in August has since hit every corner of the country, killing 3,731 people and infecting nearly 80,000, according to the World Health Organization, which quoted Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health.
The preventable disease has spread through Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces through lack of access to clean water, faulty sewage systems, and uncollected refuse, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which released a report this month on the outbreak.
The problems, MSF said, are “clear symptoms of the breakdown in infrastructure resulting from Zimbabwe’s political and economic meltdown.”
On Sunday, Tsvangirai appealed to the international community to help Zimbabwe’s crippled economy, saying it would take $5 billion to stabilize the country.
The cholera outbreak has worsened Zimbabwe’s economic crisis. Failed government policies and an acute food shortage because of years of poor agricultural production and widespread corruption have ravaged the currency of Zimbabwe, which has the world’s highest inflation rate.
KUWAIT CITY – Anti-drug officials acting on the directives of the head of the Drug Control General Department (DCGD) Sheikh Ahmed Al-Khalifa Al-Sabah arrested an Ethiopian for selling “Qat” which is proscribed by Kuwaiti authorities, to his fellow African expatriates. ‘Qat’ is a leafy intoxicant commonly used in Yemen. Armed with sufficient information regarding the suspect’s activities, Brigadier Al-Khalifa set up an undercover team to track him down. Officials cleverly lured the accused into a trap by assigning an African to purchase a kilo of “Qat” worth KD 400. The suspect who was arrested during the buy-bust operation later guided the team to his flat in Hawally where another 45 kilos of the stuff were seized.
He confessed during interrogation importing the stuff which he always packed in small bags under the label “Henna” into the country on countless occasions. Two women compatriots who he referred to his “partners” were also arrested in their Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh hideouts in possession of 3 kilos of “Qat.” The three later claimed ignorance to the illegality of the stuff in Kuwait, which according to them is not “a forbidden commodity” in their home country. They were referred to the concerned authorities for further investigations.
Here is another interesting review of Tesfaye GebreAb’s book, “The Journalists Memoir” (YeGazetegnaw Mastawesha). It is written by Prof. Getatchew Haile who has a lot of positive things to say about the book, as well as the author, perhaps to the surprise of many, and rebukes those who are circulating the forged version of the book. Click here to read the review [Amharic, pdf]
An Internet {www:security} company claims that Iran has taken {www:advantage} of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama’s helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh.