Lydia Asghedom is an Eritrean-Ethiopian fashion model currently residing and working in Germany. The following is Lydia in her own words:
Lydia Asghedom-Teshome: I was born and raised in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. My mother is Eritrean-Ethiopan from Asmara and my father is Italian. I grew up in Addis Ababa with my sister and grandparents and attended Greek Private school.
I migrated to San Diego at the age of 10 and joined my mother and the rest of my siblings. The reason for the move was mainly for higher education and an easy transition in getting into a College.
As a young adult, I played numerous sports such as soccer, field hockey, water polo, and track and field. But the one sport I truly enjoyed and succeeded in was wrestling.
In my junior and senior years of High School, I was ranked 3rd and 4th in the State of California and I was offered a full scholarship to attend and wrestle for Menlo College, a private business college located in Menlo Park.
In 2001, I studied Business Management and Psychology. Not only did I have a free tuition for 4-years, but I also made history by being one of the 7 women selected throughout the U.S. to be on the First Women College Wrestling Team.
It was in 2006, while living and working in San Francisco, I started modeling under Soma Model Management.
The Ethio-jazz artist Mulatu Astatke will present a public talk titled “Ethiopian Contributions to the Development of World Music Instruments” at the Massachussettes Institute of Technology (MIT) on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008.
The conversation is a result of his recently completed Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, where he researched how to develop the krarr (a traditional Ethiopian five-string instrument) electronically, wrote an opera based on Ethiopian Coptic Church music, and wrote a book on the historical context of instruments used in the Ethiopian Coptic Church music and their development of world music.
The talk comes at the end of a two-week artist-in-residence period at MIT. Thu 7:30 p.m.
Entrance: Free.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 10-250
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA
Tel: 617-253-2787.
US Assistant Secretary of State
for Human Rights and Labour David
Kramer in Addis Ababa
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The United States denied Tuesday accusations that its officers tortured terror suspects detained in Ethiopian jails after Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia.
Rights groups said US and other intelligence services interrogated several people detained by Kenya’s forces on its border with Somalia and transferred to Ethiopia, as they fled Ethiopia’s war with Somali insurgents.
Several detainees, including eight Kenyans released early this month, said they were denied access to legal counsel and their consular representatives as well as tortured by US interrogators.
“The US takes every effort to ensure that any treatment of prisoners is handled in a humane way and any extraditions not be done for people who are subject to torture,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labour David Kramer told journalists in Addis Ababa.
“We stress the importance of transparency and the respect of human rights,” he added.
Addis Ababa has also denied claims it tortured the suspects while in its custody.
Ethiopia has released many of the at least 150 people who were in detention there, rights groups say. They include women and children from more than 18 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Separately, Kramer expressed concern over shrinking freedom in Ethiopia and draft legislation which, if enacted, would severely restrict aid groups’ operations.
The Ethiopian army invaded Somalia in late 2006 to rescue Somalia’s embattled transitional government and oust the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which controlled of much of the country’s central and southern regions.
Since then, ICU fighters have waged a deadly insurgency against the Ethiopian and the transitional government forces.
But Ethiopian troops’ retaliations have caused many casualties among Somali civilians.
Since the Ethiopian invasion, about one million Somalis have fled their homes. An estimated 6,500 civilians have been killed.
Aid workers estimate 2.6 million Somalis need assistance. That number is expected to reach 3.5 million by the end of the year if the humanitarian situation does not improve, according to the UN.
In May 2008, Amnesty International accused the Ethiopian troops in Somalia of increasingly resorting to throat-slitting executions, highlighting an “increasing incidence” of gruesome methods by Ethiopian forces that include rape and torture.
Senior official of the Ethiopian People Patriotic Front’s (EPPF) International Council, Ato Sileshi Tilahun, has returned to Asmara after visiting the freedom fighters and their commanders in the field.
Ato Sileshi held talks with EPPF commander Meazaw Getu and several other top leaders of the resistance group, as well as the fighters, at various military camps. He also met with newly arrived troops who have defected from the Woyanne army in Ethiopia.
Arbegna Meazaw informed Ato Sileshi that his fighters have successfully chased away some of the Sudanese troops who have occupied parts of Gondar after the recent give away of land by the Meles regime to Sudan in exchange for security collaboration.
Upon his arrival in Asmara two weeks ago, Ato Sileshi was warmly received by high-level Eritrean officials and held several hours of talks. The discussion included how to further improve the people to people relationship between Ethiopians and Eritreans in view of the long term stability and prosperity of the Horn of Africa region.
During the talks, Ato Sileshi thanked the Eritrean government for providing shelter to tens of thousands of Ethiopians who have fled their country after being brutalized by the Woyanne tribal junta that is controlling the government in Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Review spoke with Ato Sileshi earlier today on the phone from Eritrea’s capital Asmara about his field trip, which he described as successful. Because of some remaining items on his agenda, he has extended his tour by one more week.
BANGALORE, INDIA – Karuturi Global, a Bangalore-based floriculture company, has enteretd into agriculture business in Ethiopia. The company will engage in cultivation of maize, rice, vegetables and other commercial crops in 11,700 acres of land in Bako area of Ethiopia.
Import of machinary and other infrastructure into Ethiopia is underway and the entire project is expected to be completed by 2014.
“Agriculture segment of the company’s business is expected to contribute nearly 25% of the total revenues during financial year 2009-10 and by 2010, the revenues from agriculture is expected to exceed the forticulture revenues of the company,” said Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, managing director of Karuturi Global.
He also said, “This venture of entering into agriculture sector has given me more satisfaction as an human being than as a business man, as this will initiate the company`s endeavor to meet upto 5% of the global food demand. In addition to this venture, the company has also acquired additional 360 hectares of land in Wolliso, Ethiopia for cultivation of roses.”
Source: IRIS
Shares of the company declined Rs 0.5, or 5.78%, to settle at Rs 8. The total volume of shares traded was 2,084,824 at the BSE (Wednesday).
MOSCOW, Oct. 22 — Russia has been ranked 141 out of 173 countries in the 2008 press freedom index published on Wednesday by the international organization Reporters Without Borders.
The report’s authors say the Russian media “continues to be subject to violence and harassment.” Russia, up from 144th in 2007 and 147th in 2006 but still not back to the 138th spot it occupied in 2005, was ranked between Mexico (140th) and Ethiopia (142nd).
The research is based on events that took place between September 1, 2007, and September 1, 2008. It is aimed to show the degree of freedom that journalists and media enjoy in a country and efforts by its authorities to respect and ensure press freedom.
The index is based on 49 criteria, including “every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment).”
“It is not economic prosperity but peace that guarantees press freedom. That is the main lesson to be drawn from the world press freedom index,” the organization said in the report.
Most of the top 20 countries are European, except for New Zealand (7th) and Canada (13th). The top three countries are Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway. The former Soviet republics Estonia and Latvia were fourth and seventh, respectively.
France has lost four positions in the rating and was ranked 35th. Italy (44th) and Spain (36th) have also showed mediocre rankings, “due, in the former, to a poor overall climate and to mafia threats and violence, and in the latter, to the fear imposed by the Basque armed separatist group ETA.”
The United States is level with Spain in 36th place, climbing 12 spots in part thanks to the “release of Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj after six years in the Guantanamo Bay military base.”
Press freedom has significantly deteriorated in the Caucasus, where “two of its three independent countries – Armenia (102nd) and Georgia (120th) – had major problems and introduced states of emergency.” Several journalists were killed in the brief armed conflict between Georgia and its breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August.
Azerbaijan, which did not introduce the state of emergency during the relevant period was, however, ranked 150th.
The former Soviet Central Asian countries continue to lag far behind, with Turkmenistan (171st) and Uzbekistan (162nd) coming in the bottom 20, along with Belarus (154th). Ukraine (88th), Kazakhstan (125th) and Kyrgyzstan (111th), however, were ranked higher than Russia.
Below Turkmenistan in the bottom three – the “infernal trio,” which is unchanged from last year – are North Korea (172nd) and Eritrea (173rd).
Reporters Without Borders is registered in France as a non-profit organization and has consultant status at the United Nations. (PNA/RIA Novosti)
Lydia Asghedom is an Eritrean-Ethiopian fashion model currently residing and working in Germany. The following is Lydia in her own words:
The Ethio-jazz artist Mulatu Astatke will present a public talk titled “Ethiopian Contributions to the Development of World Music Instruments” at the Massachussettes Institute of Technology (MIT) on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008.