A small asteroid was headed for a fiery but harmless dive into Earth’s atmosphere early Tuesday morning over Africa, astronomers said in a first of its kind advance warning.
Harvard scientists announced late Monday afternoon that the asteroid 2008 TC3 would burn up in the sky, making a fireball potentially visible to people in northern Africa. Measuring between 3 feet and 15 feet in diameter, the rock was expected to enter Earth’s atmosphere above Sudan at 10:46 p.m. EDT Monday, just before dawn in Africa.
Harvard astronomer Tim Spahr said the asteroid was so small it wouldn’t reach the ground before burning up and wouldn’t hurt anyone, but the fireball should be seen heading from west to east.
“It’s the first time we’ve been able to predict an impactor in advance and it’ll be quite a celestial show for the world,” said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object program, which tracks asteroids and comets that come close.
There are 5,681 such objects, but only 757 of them are large enough to cause any damage if they hit Earth.
This object, spotted by an Arizona telescope late Sunday and calculated on Monday to be heading toward Earth, isn’t one of them. Astronomers don’t know precisely how big it is or what it is made of, but they know that it is small enough that it will burn up harmlessly. As it enters the atmosphere becoming a meteor, it compresses the air in front of it, which then gets hotter, causing a fireworks display.
Rocks this size hit Earth’s atmosphere about two or three times a year, but without warning, Yeomans said.
Astronomers were only able to give the world about six hours notice because the rock is so dark and small. It was spotted a little farther away from Earth than the moon, said Spahr, director of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. Astronomers hope by scanning the sky they can eventually give Earth warning for more worrisome rocks that come this way.
“If this were something larger and it was going to hit the ground we would be able to get people out of the way,” Spahr said. But with something this size, they can tell people to look up for a sight that could be “pretty cool from the ground,” he said.
A Somali pirate on a hijacked cargo ship transporting tanks reduced the ransom Tuesday to $8 million, but it was unclear if he was speaking officially for the bandits holding the Ukrainian vessel.
A man who identified himself as Jama Aden and spoke by satellite phone Tuesday is not the usual spokesman for the pirates. He answered the telephone of the spokesman, Sugule Ali, and said Ali was not immediately available.
“There are high hopes we will release the ship within hours if they pay us $8 million,” Aden told The Associated Press. “The negotiations with the ship owners are going on well.”
The pirates originally demanded $20 million.
Aden said a small boat was resupplying the vessel with food and qat, a narcotic leaf popular in Somalia. “The crew is doing well,” he added.
Six U.S. warships are surrounding the Faina, which was hijacked late last month with 21 crew on board. Officials in Moscow say the ship’s Russian captain died of a heart condition soon after the hijacking nearly two weeks ago.
A Russian frigate also is headed toward the standoff. The U.S. Navy warships have been tracking the ship amid fears its weapons might fall into the hands of al Qaeda-linked insurgents in Somalia.
The Faina’s hijacking, the most high-profile this year, illustrates the ability of a handful of pirates from a failed state to menace a key international shipping lane despite the deployment of warships by global powers. More than two dozen ships have been hijacked off Somalia’s coast this year.
Somalia’s government has given foreign powers the freedom to use force against the pirates, raising the stakes significantly. Russia, whose warship is not expected for several days, has used commando tactics to end several hostage situations on its own soil, but hundreds of hostages have died in those efforts.
Somalia, a nation of around 8 million people, has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other. A quarter of Somali children die before age 5 and nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence, with violent deaths reported nearly every day.
Islamic militants with ties to al Qaeda have been battling the government and its Ethiopian Woyane allies since their combined forces pushed the Islamists from the capital in December 2006. Within weeks of being driven out, the Islamists launched an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians.
Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Ahmed Jama said the government wants world powers to coordinate their approach to Somalia’s violent insecurity.
It is not an issue “that is going to go away. There are a number of dimensions, whether it is pirates, whether it is humanitarian issues, whether it is counterterrorism,” Jama said at a news conference in Kenya’s capital.
Senator Barack Obama, facing a broad new assault on his character from rival John McCain and the Republican Party, punched back aggressively yesterday with a multi-pronged attack on McCain’s ethics, marking a sharp, personal turn in the presidential race as the two candidates face off tonight in their second debate.
Obama’s campaign raised, for the first time, McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five controversy, an influence-peddling scandal in Congress 20 years ago that remains a major blemish on the Arizona senator’s political career. In an unusual 13-minute Internet documentary, a new website, and an e-mail to hundreds of thousands of supporters, Obama’s team asserted that the Keating case raises serious questions about McCain’s judgment and ability to manage the deeply troubled economy.
The attack by Obama, which has unnerved some supporters drawn to the Illinois senator’s pledge to run an issues-based campaign, was a response to a new tack from the McCain camp: stoking concern among voters about Obama’s past associations and his background, in an effort to stall his momentum just four weeks from Election Day.
Both campaigns have signaled a willingness to engage on character in tonight’s debate, a town hall-style event at Belmont University in Nashville in which the candidates will answer questions submitted by the audience and from voters online at www.mydebates.org. GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told voters in Florida yesterday that McCain “might as well take the gloves off.” And a senior Obama strategist suggested the Illinois senator was prepared to cite the Keating case if warranted.
Over the past few days, Palin accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” because of his past associations with William Ayers, a founding member of the 1970s radical group Weather Underground, and she raised anew the inflammatory rhetoric of Obama’s former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
McCain’s campaign “wants to say the issue here is character and judgment,” said Anita Dunn, a senior Obama adviser. “And that is frankly an argument that we are happy to have with John McCain.”
This new chapter in the presidential contest was precipitated by concern in McCain’s campaign that the race is slipping from its grasp, with national and state polls moving in Obama’s direction since the economic crisis began dominating headlines last month. McCain advisers have been quoted as saying that targeting Obama’s character may offer their best chance to change the trajectory of the race.
But yesterday’s economic news illustrated how difficult it will be to change the subject: The Dow Jones industrial average, following big losses in foreign markets, slid below 10,000 for the first time in five years, closing down more than 360 points.
The GOP’s primary line of attack centers around Obama’s relationship with Ayers, a fellow Chicagoan and an education professor who hosted a political event for Obama’s 1996 Illinois Senate campaign and also served with Obama on two nonprofit boards. Ayers was quoted in 2001 as saying he did not regret bombing government buildings during the Vietnam War.
Speaking to donors Saturday in Colorado, Palin said Obama was “someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” She made a similar attack in speeches yesterday in Florida.
The use of Ayers is designed to fit into a broader GOP critique of Obama as an unknown quantity who is out of the mainstream.
“You need to know who you’re putting in the White House and where the candidate came from and what he or she believes,” McCain said at a rally yesterday in Albuquerque. “Who is the real Barack Obama?” he went on. “Ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.”
The Obama campaign took a grave tone in bringing up the Keating scandal, in which McCain was accused of intervening with federal bank regulators on behalf of a failing savings and loan owned by a friend and campaign donor, Charles Keating. The Internet film is a collage of Senate testimony, news clippings, and narration by a former regulator.
McCain’s political opponents have long treated the Keating case as off-limits, largely because he has embraced the experience, in which he was criticized but not censured by a Senate committee in 1991, as the formative episode in his emergence as a born-again reformer crusading against special interests. In his 2002 memoir, he wrote that it was the “worst mistake of my life.” Last winter, McCain said that the Keating scandal “will be on my tombstone” and raised the case, unprompted, to correct a reporter who described McCain’s “squeaky-clean record” on ethics.
The episode, though, remains a sore spot for McCain, who “can’t tolerate anybody questioning his judgment,” said former Arizona Democratic senator Dennis DeConcini, a Keating Five senator who was an Obama convention delegate. “That’s his weak point.”
In May, after Obama’s associations with Ayers and Wright made headlines during the Democratic primaries, Obama said the Keating case was “not germane to the presidency,” but signaled that he did not necessarily consider it off-limits.
With millions of voters watching tonight’s debate – the second of three – McCain and Obama will have a wide audience to question each other’s character, something they avoided doing in their first meeting late last month. But they also risk coming across as negative and nasty, and may instead choose to leave the most pointed attacks to their running mates, as is customary.
Obama yesterday criticized McCain for trying to distract voters with “political shenanigans and scare tactics.” Dunn dismissed a suggestion that the Obama camp was doing the same by raising the Keating case. “This is a very relevant way to show people that there’s a real risk in putting somebody in charge of the economy who has a track record, not just this year, not just last year, but 26 years of fundamentally believing that financial institutions, insurance companies, and everybody should just be left alone to do whatever the heck they want,” she said.
It is unclear, though, how Obama’s supporters – many of whom praise his restraint in returning fire from the GOP – will react.
“I admire him for not feeding into that, not lashing back,” said Eduard Davis, a 44-year-old clothing designer from Atlanta who saw Obama in Las Vegas last month.
Fortunately for Obama, analysts say, the associations Republicans are raising about him were aired during his primary fight against Senator Hillary Clinton.
“Given how cluttered the airwaves are with information about the economic situation . . . it’s going to be hard to move it from its trajectory unless we get blatantly new information,” said Ken Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who teaches political communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said it’s possible that undecided voters, who tend to have less information, will be persuaded by an attack late in the game.
“The larger question is, when you situate it in the candidate’s entire life, is it relevant at all?” she said. “We don’t know what inference the electorate draws.”
I love spontaneous trips and when a friend from a German NGO invited us to join her on a short road trip to Blue Nile Falls, I couldn’t resist. Traveling in a private vehicle is a true treat and one would be crazy to pass the opportunity up! The Blue Nile Falls are located just south of Bahar Dar, northern Ethiopia, and used to be quite the destination. Lately, however, the falls have gotten a bad rap due to the construction of a hydro-electric plant, which diverts nearly 95% of the water. The locals have always referred to the falls as Tis Abay (Smoke of the Nile) because of the spray that clouds the air as the water thunders over the falls. Nowadays that name might not be so fitting. In fact, my fabulous Bradt Ethiopia guidebook refers to the falls as THE CLIFF FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE BLUE NILE FALLS. Given all of this information, I went with ZERO expectations. Thunderous or not, it was an opportunity to see a new part of the country. Much to my surprise, I was pleasantly surprised! Of course, I have nothing to compare the falls of now with the falls of yesteryear, but I found them to be impressive. It’s not Niagra, but Tis Abay is beautiful in its own way. Just the sound of moving water was music to my ears.
On our hike up to the falls, we walked through a very tiny village that was lined with handcrafts for sale and manned by “less than bashful” children. In fact, I’m pretty sure that these children must have taken “Entrepreneurship 101” at the local school because they had their spiel down to a science. We heard a chorus of, “My name is Tigist/Hannah/Mehiret. I go to school. You will buy from me when you turn back. I wait you here. My name, again, is Tigist/Hannah/Mehiret.” Given that it had started to rain on the return hike we didn’t know if the “I wait you here” promise would still apply, but rain is not a deterrent for these little businesspeople. As we came in sight of the village, we heard the patter of running feet and the cries of “you promised to buy from me, remember.” We walked away from this village with a few less birr (the local currency), a few more trinkets, dirty shirts from over-zealous children trying to divert our attention away from the competition, and a feeling that we had just run the gauntlet and lived to tell about it!
Swedish independent oil and gas exploration and production company Lundin Petroleum has signed a farmout agreement with New Age African Global Energy for the production sharing contracts in Ethiopia.
Lundin Petroleum will transfer a 15% license interest to New Age, in the production sharing contracts (PSCs) covering Blocks 2, 6, 7 and 8 located in the onshore Ogaden Basin, southern Ethiopia and a 50% interest in the PSC covering the Adigala Area, northern Ethiopia.
New Age will pay a disproportionate share of the costs related to the 2D seismic programs to be carried out on the blocks, as well as its interest share of Lundin Petroleum’s past costs and other ongoing costs. Lundin Petroleum will remain as operator of all of the Ethiopian blocks.
The farmout transaction is subject to approval of the appropriate regulatory authorities from the government of Ethiopia.
ADDIS ABABA (ST) — Ethiopia dictatorial regime rejected torture claims by Human Rights Watch against terror suspects saying the claims by HRW are “unsubstantiated and most are simply untrue”
“HRW, as usual, did not make a series of claims for which a close reading of its 60 page report fails to provide evidence” Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Despite HRW’s claims none of these people has been maltreated” it said adding “one publicly testified to this when questioned by journalists last year, a point totally ignored by HRW”
The New York-based rights watchdog on Wednesday last week said that at least 90 people were rendered from Kenya to Somalia and then to Ethiopia in the aftermath of Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia.
“In fact many of the details claimed by HRW are unsubstantiated and most are simply untrue.” The statement said.
The ministry added that the suspects were not “arbitrarily” arrested, but “they were found in a theatre of war or trying to cross the Somali-Kenya border.”
“There were strong grounds for suspicion of terrorist involvement. Under the circumstances of the time, it would have been irresponsible to leave them at large,” it said
“They were sent to Ethiopia because of the lack of acceptable or secure facilities in Mogadishu, as Mogadishu lacked secure and acceptable prisons.”
” Ethiopia Woyanne has not hidden the identity, fate or whereabouts of anyone brought from Somalia for investigation,” it said.
Ethiopia Woyanne on Thursday released eight Kenyans of the nine suspected terrorists who has been held in detention without charge since 2006 on suspicion of ties to Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists.
The move comes after Human rights watch (HRW) on Wednesday issued a 60-page report entitled “Why Am I Still Here?” investigating the fate of the detainees, and urged Addis Ababa for an immediate release.
The Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum welcomed their return but said it was outrageous the eight had been held for so long without charge.
“The governments of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia broke humanitarian, international and national laws in the treatment of these people,” it said, accusing Washington of pressuring this African government to violate rights.
A ninth suspect, Abdulkadir Mohamed Aden, who is an Ethiopian-Canadian national still remains in Ethiopian Woyanne custody for yet undisclosed reasons.
In August Nairobi sent a team of officials to Addis Ababa to negotiate their freedom and a deal was reached with Ethiopian Woyanne Authorities.
Ethiopian Woyanne troops invaded Somalia in late 2006 to bolster the country’s feeble government against Islamist insurgents accused of ties with Al-Qaeda.
