The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) has caused heavy damages to Woyanne troops stationed in the Ogaden region, south eastern Ethiopia, during battles that were waged from May 12 – May 17 last month.
ONLF’s coordinated attacks in Kebridhar, Nusradik, Absala, Abola and Dabo Alai resulted in the killing of 57 Woyanes and 47 injured.
ONLF rebuffed Woyanne leader Meles Zenawi’s claim in parliament of destroying ONLF for good.
This and other news are part of this week’s broadcast by ERiTV. Watch below.
“Fatima!” screamed one girl from a passing school bus on Hyde Park Avenue.
“You go Fatima!” hollered a motorist on the same Boston street.
“Can I have a hug?” gushed a starstruck girl who posed for a photo with Fatima Siad, a finalist from the latest season of the popular reality show “America’s Next Top Model.”
Siad didn’t walk away with the wordy title (she came in third), but to her hometown fans here, she’s the next big thing.
“This is crazy!” said Siad, 22, of her brush with fame one recent afternoon.
As she strolled her Hyde Park neighborhood, Siad said she was relieved the show’s over. She wants to forge ahead with her plans: The political science major has one semester left at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She plans to finish after moving this summer to New York with two other models from The CW reality show. Siad’s determined to pursue a career in an industry she stumbled upon last summer when a friend urged her to attend a Boston casting call.
Siad also wants to raise awareness about the dangers of female genital circumcision, a procedure she underwent when she was 7 years old in her native Somalia.
On her first episode, Siad broke down in tears before show host Tyra Banks and the other judges as she explained how the practice is a positive ritual among African women who have all or part of their external genitalia removed. The tradition is believed to promote chastity and cleanliness.
“Yes, I got circumcised. Yes, I am not sad about it. It happened to me, but I am going to try and do something to raise awareness,” Siad says.
Siad was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, to an Ethiopian father and Somali mother. As a young girl, Siad enjoyed playing with her friends on red-hued dunes that dot the shores of the Indian Ocean. But when the country erupted in civil war in 1991, violence and civil unrest gripped the capital.
“When she was 5 years old, the civil war started in my country, and she never had the opportunity to go to school,” says Halima Musse, Siad’s mother, who taught her at home. “People were fighting and killing each other. It was horrible.”
Just as Musse prepared to leave the country with Siad and her two sisters, ages 8 and 10, militiamen stormed their home and fatally shot the two younger sisters, Siad recalls.
“I love my country, but when I was living there, it was hard,” says Siad, whose mother applied for political asylum in the United States. Her father remained behind. “My mother basically wanted a better life for me.”
In 1998, mother and daughter, then 13, fled to Boston, where they had to adapt to a new culture and language. Their first year here, they lived in the YMCA on Huntington Avenue.
Siad learned English within a few months and worked hard to hide her accent. In eighth grade, she became part of the Boston Area Health Education Center, a city program designed to groom minority students for careers in health care. Siad had an interest in medicine.
“She’s always been that person who picks a goal and strives for it and succeeds,” says Keith Gross-Hill, a friend who was also in the program. At Brighton High, Siad took part in Upward Bound, a college prep program for low-income Boston high school students who take summer classes at Boston University.
After high school, Siad won a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College. She later transferred to New York University for her junior year.
Then, as she was almost done with college, she tried out for “America’s Next Top Model.” When the show’s producers told her that she would be one of the 13 women chosen to live in a New York City loft for the competition, Siad decided to drop out of school for a semester. The show was taped last November and December and began airing in February.
Immediately, Siad stood out because of her energy and her classic features, which Banks and others compared to Iman, the famous Somali supermodel. That’s a comparison Siad has mixed feelings about.
“[The other contestants] kept calling me Baby Iman,” Siad says sternly. “First of all, I don’t look anything like Iman. She is beautiful and amazing, and she is such a wonderful woman, and I wish I could be like her. But just because we are from Somalia doesn’t mean we look alike. I want to be known as Fatima.”
The show thrust Siad into the fast-paced world of high fashion. At times, photo shoots were anything but glamorous. One shoot involved contestants wearing slabs of meat as couture. Another involved colorful paint dripping down their faces.
“It was so intense,” she says of the show’s schedule. “It’s not as glamorous as it looks, not even close to it. We were working constantly. . . . The hardest part for me was taking the pictures. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
But now she does, as she strikes casual poses for a photographer and little girls who stop her in Hyde Park, where her mother lives in a triple-decker.
Between takes, Siad reflects on the competition. She doesn’t feel bad that she didn’t strut away with the $100,000 modeling contract or the coveted spread in Seventeen magazine. Siad says she won in so many other ways.
“I found the show to be so therapeutic for me,” she says. “I shared my life. I learned about modeling. It was definitely one of the most amazing journeys of my life and therefore, I don’t need someone to say ‘You’re a winner.’ This is the highlight of my life.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Who is to be believed? Woyanne or the international media and humanitarian organizations on the ground providing assistance to the famine victims?
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Officials in Ethiopia have refuted reports by international media on the current food crisis as bogus and exaggerated. A government statement today, which is backed by UN agencies operating in Addis Ababa, said it was a misrepresentation that Ethiopia was in need of supplementary feeding for its six million children facing acute malnutrition.
“The number of children with severe and acute malnutrition problem is estimated to be 75,000 all over the country,” said Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA) Director General Mr Simon Mechale.
He explained there was a total relief requirement of 300,000 metric tones of food, of which he said the agency had already distributed more than 81,000 metric tones across the nation, adding that some 4.5 million people were in need of emergency food assistance, excluding those people who are beneficiaries of safety-net program.
Referring to children, Mr Mechale said considerable efforts were being made by both the Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners to address prevailing situation in areas where children are affected.
This was reiterated by Minister of Health Dr. Tewodros Adhanom, saying government was aggressively expanding health extension program by deploying extension workers in every village. Some 82% of the work had already been achieved, according to the minister.
United Nations Resident Coordinator Fidele Sarassoro also said there was a good working relations between the Ethiopian government and humanitarian community in meeting the challenges faced by the country, noting government had taken steps to strengthen the coordination of emergency response at all levels to meet the challenges faced in the area of food, nutrition, health and water.
The UN has been providing solid assistance to help Ethiopia address the challenge. The Horn of African country has a history of the world’s worst drought that killed a million Ethiopians in October 1984.
ARRESTED, JAILED, and SEXUALLY ASSAULTED IN ETHIOPIA, SHE FLED TO THE U.S. where she was detained and abused all over again. That is the story Zena Asfaw will tell a hearing chaired by California Democrat Zoe Lofgren, called to investigate problems with immigration detainee medical care.
Asfaw will tell Congress that she was arrested by Ethiopian government forces following the May 2005 elections. She was accused of being part of the opposition because there were messages on her cell phone from friends who strongly opposed the government. Held for 12 days, SHE WAS BEATEN AND SEXUALLY ASSAULTED, and even though she was eventually released, she feared for her life when police began rounding up and throwing people in jail after new riots broke out a few months later. It was then that she fled, traveling through 17 countries in 13 months to reach the United States where she applied for asylum.
Immigration officials welcomed her to the U.S. with a trip to jail.
There, while a judge pondered whether she deserved asylum, she got very sick and a nurse gave her seven pills to take. When Zena Asfaw questioned the nurse, the nurse became very angry and instructed the guards to check her mouth to make sure she swallowed each and every one of them. “Immediately my body started shaking…” Within minutes she suffered a SEIZURE, and fell off the bed. Other detainees yelled for the guards who took her to the detention center medical unit where she was given four more pills. Later that day she would VOMIT VIOLENTLY, BLEED FROM THE MOUTH and FAINT before finally being taken to a hospital.
Zena Asfaw was lucky. She survived BOTH a jail in Ethiopia and an ICE DETENTION CENTER IN THE U.S. Five months later, she got her asylum.
AXUM, Ethiopia (AFP) — Ethiopia on Wednesday began work to relocate the famed Axum obelisk at its original site, seven decades after the 1,700-year-old treasure was removed by Italian troops, a UN expert said.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has overseen a multi-million-dollar operation to restore the obelisk in Axum in northern Ethiopia, where it once stood alongside around 100 other stelae.
The obelisk along with the Axum and Lalibela crosses figure among Ethiopia’s top national treasures and symbols.
“Engineers arrived today and completed the verifying work. The first block will be linked with the foundation tomorrow through cables and cranes,” Nada Al Hassan, UNESCO’s project head, told AFP.
The 150-ton stela, which returned in three pieces to Axum, a listed World Heritage Site in 2005, is expected to be fully re-erected and inaugurated by September this year.
“It’s a delicate object and we are trying to avoid any obstacles. The second and third blocks are scheduled to be reinstalled in the middle and end of July but the inauguration will take place on September 10 this year,” Hassan added.
Italian soldiers carted away the 24-meter (78-foot) third-century AD granite funeral stela in 1937 on the orders of then-dictator Benito Mussolini during his attempt to colonise Ethiopia.
Despite a 1947 agreement to return the obelisk, it remained in Italy until 2005, standing outside the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Axum was the capital of the Axumite kingdom that flourished as a major trading centre from the fifth century BC to the 10th century AD. At its height, the kingdom extended across what are today Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.
Government officials say many Ethiopians attah great significance to the obelisk as it symbolises the country’s long and rich past.
“It is a very important part of the heritage of Ethiopia. It was very hurtful that we couldn’t defend it at the time,” member of parliament Netsanet Asfaw told AFP.
“It is a reminder to us of the war; of the suffering; of the plunder; and of fascist cruelty to our people. Now we are healing as a result of its return,” she added.
British historian Richard Pankhurst joined the chorus of cheers for the obelisk’s return.
“The return of the obelisk is a return of Ethiopia’s historical culture. It shows the entire people that Mussolini was in fact guilty of war crimes and invasion without justification,” he said.
Pankhurst also called for the return of hundreds of manuscripts and crosses looted by British soldiers during an expedition against the Horn of Africa nation’s then-emperor Tewodros in 1855.
His mother, Sylvia Pankhurst, was a prominent British feminist who became a tireless pro-Ethiopian campaigner and virulently opposed Italy’s invasion. She later moved to Ethiopia and was given a state funeral there in 1960.
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the ‘don’t buy gas on a certain day’ campaign that was going around last April or May! It’s worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!
I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.20 a gallon by summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?
We need to take some intelligent, united action. The oil companies and OPEC just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to ‘hurt’ ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.
BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can Really work. Please read on and join with us!
By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.69 for regular unleaded in my town.
Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 – $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace… not sellers.
With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not! purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop buying gas.
But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.
Here’s the idea: For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL.
If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.
But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It’s really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point… keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)… and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)… and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
If it goes one level further, you guessed it… THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all!
(If you don’t understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people… Well, let’s face it, you just aren’t a mathematician. But I am… so trust me on this one.
How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!
I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you!
Acting together we can make a difference.
If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.
“Fatima!” screamed one girl from a passing school bus on Hyde Park Avenue.