ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – (APA) Ethiopia and a Canadian petroleum company on Thursday signed an agreement in Addis Ababa for the exploration of oil in several locations in the African country.
Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Calvalley Petroleum Inc, a Canada-based company, signed the agreement that allows the company to explore for oil and develop petroleum products in the Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, and Benishangul Gumuz States of Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Minister of Mines and Energy, Alemayehu Tegenu and Company Chief Executive Officer, Edmund M. Shimon, representing the company signed the agreement.
The company will be exploring for oil on more than 46,000 sq. meter area of land and will bear all the necessary costs.
“The initial term of the exploration period shall be 4 years to be extended twice for two years.
The total development and production period will be 25 years to be extended if required,” the agreement said.
Ethiopian starlet Tirunesh Dibaba’s hopes of ending the year with the IAAF Female athlete of the year received a boost this week when she was named in the shortlist of ten women up for the awards.
In an extremely productive year, Tirunesh made history in 2008 by winning double gold over the 5000m and 10000m at the 29th Beijing Olympic Games in China. She also sliced more than five seconds off the world 5000m recod when she won the 2008 Bislett Games in 14:11.15. Other achievements in the year include a third world cross country long course title in Edinburgh, Scotland and an African 10000m record when she won the 10000m Olympic title in Beijing in 29:54.66, the second fastest time in the history of the women’s 10000m.
As a fan, you can help Tirunesh’s chances of winning the coveted award by voting for the Ethiopian star on the official website of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF). Please click here to go diretly to the voting page.
MOSHI, TANZANIA – Dr Asrat Mengiste arrives at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania. It’s 8am, and already 70 patients are lined up for a consultation. In the operating room are 20 local doctors. Dr Mengiste talks them through every action and explains every decision. After four days he will have operated on 40 patients and passed his knowledge and expertise on to another group of medical staff, eager to put into practice what they have learned.
Dr Asrat Mengiste (left) and a team of local doctors monitor the progress of a baby on a screen at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania [amref.org, 2008]
Outreach patients travel for miles to reach Dr Mengiste’s team. Dr Mengiste insists: “The operations make a big difference to the lives of my patients. Most of them have suffered for a long time, often since birth. It may be a cleft palate so that one is unable to talk, eat or go to school. It may be a burn that has left one unable to walk or to hold things.”
More than 60% of the patients waiting in line are children. Amongst those awaiting surgery is four-month-old Angelina, whose mouth and nostrils are badly disfigured due to a cleft lip and palate. Angelina’s mother carried her for six hours to the nearest bus stop in order to bring her to the AMREF team in Moshi. Angelina cannot be breastfed because of her disfigurement – her mother has to feed her milk andporridge drop by drop.
Angelina is first on the operating table. Like with all his operations, Dr. Mengiste explains to observing medical students what has caused the condition, answers their questions, talks them through the surgery, and discusses aftercare.
This simple operation will transform Angelina’s life and her mother is overjoyed by the results: “Before the operation I had so many worries, that she would not survive, have friends or find a husband, now I am sure she will survive and live a normal, happy life”.
Next in line is a boy who injured his hand by falling into an open cooking fire. His little fingers were badly burned and have not healed well; his forefinger is now attached to his thumb by scar tissue. Nearly 99% of Tanzanians cook on open fires. Too often children fall into fires or scald themselves with boiling liquid. If the burns are not treated they form thick cobwebs of scar tissue, causing crippling deformities, making the simplest of tasks such as dressing or eating impossible.
During surgery Dr Mengiste separates the boys thumb and finger so they move independently again. Such a small operation will make an enormous difference to this little boy’s life. While recovering from surgery the boy tells Dr. Mengiste he is looking forward to going back to school and being able to write like the other children in his class.
Dr Mengiste and his team spend their lives travelling to remote rural hospitals. The challenges of performing surgery in these hospitals are immense. Water supplies are often scarce, surgical facilities and basic medical equipment are poor or non existent, and power cuts happen every day.
Despite these challenges, Dr Mengiste has carried out 1,702 consultations and 801 operations during 80 outreach trips in the last twelve months. “The fact that we are able to make a difference in the lives of many desperate people in our region makes me proud.”
MOGADISHU (AFP) — At least 23 people were killed in the Somali capital Mogadishu when insurgents attacked camps housing African Union and Ethiopian Woyanne troops on Thursday, triggering heavy clashes, witnesses and police said.
The insurgents shelled bases housing AU peacekeepers and Ethiopian Woyanne troops in southern Mogadishu’s K4, Shirkole and Hamarjadid quarters, drawing retaliatory fire. Somali [mercenary] forces joined the battle to support the peacekeepers, they said.
Witnesses said several residents were also wounded in outlying districts in some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu, the epicenter of heavy clashes for nearly two decades.
“I saw four civilians, one of them a woman, and an insurgent fighter killed in Taleh area. The civilians were caught in the crossfire,” said witness Hasan Yahye.
Colonel Farah Abdullahi, a Somali policeman, said two officers were killed in the clash between AU troops and insurgents.
Sixteen other civilians died in fighting between Ethiopian Woyanne troops and insurgents, bringing the death toll to 23.
“Four civilians died and three others wounded when an artillery shell hit their house near a vegetable market in Bakara,” Osmail Adan, a witness told AFP.
Another witness Ali Mohamed Siyad reported five fatalities in a Bakara teashop.
“I was drinking tea when a mortar struck, killing five people. There was smoke and shrapnel all over the teashop. I was very lucky not to die but I sustained small injuries,” Siyad said.
A family of three was killed when a mortar crashed into their house.
“My father and my two sisters were killed by a mortar shell and their bodies are still lying in the house. I don’t know what to say, its dark moment,” said Shafici Ahmed.
A man and woman were killed when a shell crashed into a telephone booth in Bakara.
“It was terrible, I saw my friend die as a result of serious injuries caused by a mortar shell that destroyed his telephone booth. A woman also died after shrapnel cut her to pieces,” said Ali Osman, a witness.
Witness Sirad Nur Roble said two other civilians were killed elsewhere in Bakara, one of the most volatile zones in the battle-wracked seaside capital.
Witnesses said the shells destroyed residential and business premises in Mogadishu, where hundreds of thousands of residents have fled the bloody duels for dominance in the recent months.
The AU force in Somalia, AMISOM, has been in Mogadishu since March 2007 and currently numbers around 3,400 troops, from Uganda and Burundi.
The figure is far below the 8,000 peacekeepers the AU pledged to deploy in Somalia to bolster the country’s weak government and protect humanitarian operations.
Aid groups have scaled down operations in Somalia because of growing insecurity largely blamed on Islamist militants who have waged a guerrilla war since they were ousted last year by a joint Somali-Ethiopian Woyanne offensive.
It is reported by Sunday Herald that Woyanne has already started withdrawing troops.
By Peter Heinlein, VOA
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – Ethiopia’s dictator Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has rejected opposition calls for a timetable for withdrawing his country’s troops from Somalia. As VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports from Addis Ababa, Mr. Meles indicated there would be no change in Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s determination to keep troops in Somalia until a credible international force is ready to replace them.
Speaking in parliament Thursday, the Ethiopian Woyanne leader expressed impatience with the international community’s failure to respond adequately to the violence and lawlessness that has enveloped Somalia for the past 17 years.
He suggested it might soon be time to consider ending Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s nearly two-year military campaign to prop up Somalia’s weak Transitional Federal Government.
The Ethiopian Woyanne presence is viewed by many Somalis as an occupation force, prompting a violent backlash from extremist clan-based militias. But, Prime Minister Meles said withdrawal would be considered only when stability is assured.
“In the following months, the time for us to take a once and final decision is approaching,” he said. “The time has come to take a final decision on the issue, in particular when our troops entered Somalia, those of us who felt our intervention was based on national security interests, then our withdrawal should also be responsible.”
The prime minister brushed aside calls by leaders of some opposition factions for a troop withdrawal timetable.
“However, some have proposed something outside, stating that we should leave Somalia on this specific date, outside our strategic goal, interests,” he said. “It would not be correct to state we would leave on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday.”
Ethiopia Woyanne is believed to have more than 10,000 soldiers in Somalia supporting the interim government. The African Union also maintains a peacekeeping force in and around the capital, Mogadishu. But only 3,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops are on the ground, out of an authorized eight thousand.
The U.N. Security Council has said it would only consider sending blue-helmeted peacekeepers after security conditions improve.
On another issue, Mr. Meles said he sees no early end to Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s longstanding boundary dispute with Eritrea. With tensions high following the withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers along the frontier, Mr. Meles expressed determination to maintain Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s troop presence indefinitely.
“If we don’t find peace, the situation this is preparing [we are prepared], even for ten years. It will not affect us substantially,” he said.
Ethiopia Woyanne and Eritrea fought a two-year border war from 1998 to 2000 that killed an estimated 70,000 people. Both sides still have tens of thousands of troops massed along the frontier, at some places within eyesight of each other.
U.N. peacekeepers had maintained calm along the frontier for the past seven and a half years, but the Security Council shut down the mission in July, saying the countries had rejected options for a continued presence. The last of the U.N. troops are going home this week.
SINGAPORE/TOKYO (Reuters) – Oil fell for a third day on Thursday, plumbing a 13-month low near $72 as commodity investors again rushed for the exit on fears of a collapse in demand growth, with the world economy tilting toward recession.
Bleak U.S. economic data and warnings from the Fed that tough times are not over led Wall Street and Japan’s Nikkei to their worst day since the 1987 stock market crash, wiping out earlier optimism fed by government steps to avert a financial meltdown.
U.S. crude for November delivery fell $2.44, or 3.3 percent, to $72.10 a barrel by 2:15 a.m. EDT. The front-month contract has lost nearly a third in value in three weeks, the steepest such decline since it began trading in 1983.
London Brent crude fell $2.31 to $68.49.
“The oil markets are now highly correlated to the stock markets. Everyone now uses the stock markets to gauge the health of the economy,” said Clarence Chu at U.S.-based options trader Hudson Capital Energy.
Crude now stands more than 50 percent off its July peak above $147, and analysts have scaled back global demand growth estimates after a recent slew of gloomy data that has overshadowed OPEC’s talk of possible production cuts and a hurricane that is disrupting Caribbean refining operations.
Japan’s crude oil inventories hit a 14-month high last week as crude runs stayed low, in part due to slack domestic demand, industry data showed on Thursday.
JP Morgan cut its average oil price forecast for 2009 to $74.75 a barrel, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries also reduced its forecasts for world demand for crude next year in its latest monthly report.
The cartel meets in November in Vienna to assess the global financial crisis’s effect on the oil market, with growing expectations it will want to lend support to a market that has been swept up in the deleveraging across commodity markets.
The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index tumbled 4.5 percent on Wednesday to its lowest in three-and-a-half years.
“Sentiment is just so bearish. I would think $70 is a pretty strong support, but the way the market is selling down, we just don’t know,” Chu said.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said oil prices would probably keep falling as the U.S. economy headed south.
“The price of oil is falling? Yes. The price will carry on falling? Probably. But Venezuela will not drown,” he said. Venezuela is one of the United States’ biggest oil suppliers, with about half its government revenue derived from oil.
U.S. weekly oil inventory data due later in the day is expected to show that crude oil stocks probably rose for the third straight week, gaining 1.9 million barrels, while distillate and gasoline stocks also increased amid weak demand, an expanded Reuters poll showed.
The data is to be announced at 11 a.m. EDT, a day later than usual due to Columbus Day on Monday.
Hurricane Omar, which disrupted shipments from Venezuela this week, strengthened into a major Category 3 storm on Thursday as it headed toward Puerto Rico and the northeastern Caribbean, but was on a northeast trajectory away from the U.S. Gulf, the National Hurricane Center said.
Processing units at the 500,000 barrel-per-day Hovensa refinery on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a large supplier of gasoline and heating oil to the U.S. East Coast, were being shut down ahead of Omar’s arrival, Hess Corp said.
(Reporting by Chua Baizhen and Osamu Tsukimori in TOKYO; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Ethiopian starlet Tirunesh Dibaba’s hopes of ending the year with the IAAF Female athlete of the year received a boost this week when she was named in the shortlist of ten women up for the awards.