BRUSSELS (Reuters) — World and Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele is driven by the prospect of breaking his 10,000 and 5,000 meters records and is also is considering an attempt at the 3,000 world best set 13 years ago.
The 27-year-old Ethiopian told reporters on the eve of the Brussels Golden League meeting he felt there was no particular part of his racing he needed to improve.
“Really it’s perfect,” Bekele said on Thursday with a broad smile. “The only thing is I want to run faster than my records. I also want to attack the 3,000 meters. It has stayed for a long time.”
Bekele’s 5,000 and 10,000 meter records date back to 2004 and 2005 respectively. The 3,000 record of seven minutes 20.67 was run by Kenyan Daniel Komen in 1996.
Coach Jos Hermens said Bekele would aim to be selective in 2010, a year with no major championships, in a bid to better his times.
“The 3,000 meters is a longer dream… then he would need to put in a few 1,500 meters for pace,” Hermens said.
Bekele also said he would like to run the marathon, but was not willing to be drawn on when that would happen.
He is one of three athletes still in the hunt for at least a share of the $1 million Golden League jackpot going into the final meeting in Brussels.
To earn the jackpot, competitors must win their events at all six Golden League meetings.
“Those races are not easy… To win six is very tough. For many, four or five is tough. It’s very good to win all six,” said Bekele, who spent four days recuperating in Ethiopia after last week’s Zurich meeting.
Olympic pole vault gold medalist Yelena Isinbayeva and 400 meters world champion Sanya Richards are the other two athletes with 100 percent Golden League records so far.
Bekele argued he faced the most difficult challenge of the three given the strength of the 5,000 meters field on Friday and the chance of a new athlete breaking through.
“In the 400 meters or the pole vault you can’t really get strong new athletes,” he said.
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Alison Wildey)
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (AFP) — African nations dictators will walk out of climate change talks in Copenhagen if their demands, including hefty compensations from the West, are not met, Ethiopian Prime Minister warlord Meles Zenawi said Thursday.
[Meles, who has just returned from Belgium where he received medical treatment, must be hallucinating.]
One of the key demands that the world’s poorest most looted continent is making is billions of dollars in compensation to help it cope with the effects of climate change to line up the pockets of Africa’s thieves, rapists and genocidal killers like Meles.
However a panel representing the continent at the talks is yet to come up with a figure. [Meles and Azeb must have come up with the figure after an afternoon of khat chewing.]
“If need be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threatens to be another rape of the continent,” said Meles, who leads the panel.
“While we reason with everyone to achieve our objective we are not prepared to rubber stamp any agreement by the powers,” he told African officials and experts from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development at a meeting in Addis Ababa.
“We will use our numbers to delegitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position.”
According to a study by the UK-based Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, global warming could cost the continent around 30 billion dollars a year by 2015.
That figure could rise to between 50 billion and 100 billion dollars by 2020 due to increasing costs to cope with climate change effects such as frequent and more severe floods, droughts and storms, as well as extreme changes in rainfall patterns, the group said.
African Union chairman Jean Ping urged rich nations not to renege on their financial commitments.
“It is my expectation that such financial resources must be from public funds and must be additional to the usual overseas development assistance,” he told the gathering.
African countries will also demand that industrialised nations take measures to limit global warming to two degrees celsius and cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.
“What we are not prepared to live with is global warming above minimum unavoidable levels,” Meles said.
“We will therefore never accept any global deal that does not limit global warming to the minimum unavoidable level, no matter what levels of compensation and assistance are promised to us.”
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters ) – An Ethiopian [kangaroo] court has sentenced six members of the Benishangule-Gumuz community ethnic group to death and another 97 to prison terms for the massacre of Oromo villagers last year, a state agency reported on Thursday. [The Woyanne tribal junta that is in charge of the kangaroo court massacres Oromos every day. It is likely that the massacre was carried out by Meles Zenawi’s death squads and is being blamed on innocent people.]
The 103 had been charged with genocide for killings that took place in May 2008. They gunned down or speared to death 93 members of the Oromo tribe, the state Woyanne-run Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported.
The two groups have for centuries lived side by side in western Ethiopia.
“The court found guilty the 103 members of the Benishangule-Gumuz after examining documents, pictures and video tape evidence presented by the prosecution and after the accused failed to exercise their right to defence,” ENA said.
Those that escaped the death sentence were handed prison terms ranging between six years to life imprisonment with hard labour.
(Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse, editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura)
ADDIS ABABA (MSF) — Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health has also reported patients suffering from acute watery diarrhea in several other regions of the country.
Since August 19, joint Ministry of Health and MSF teams have been providing medical care to patients with acute watery diarrhea in and around the capital city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
In collaboration with Ethiopian health authorities, MSF has set up a total of eight treatment facilities within Ministry of Health structures in the city. These treatment facilities are located in Yekatit 12 hospital, Ras Desta hospital, Zewditu hospital, Sint Petros hospital, Akaki health centre, Kaliti health centre, Bole and Kotebe Youth centre.
In total 5,178 patients have been cared for by medical teams from August 19 to 31 in Addis Ababa, of whom five have died. This very low mortality rate has been achieved thanks to the quick mobilisation of the Ethiopian health authorities and MSF. Over the last few days, the number of daily admissions to these treatment facilities has been decreasing.
People suffering from acute watery diarrhea have contracted the disease mostly by drinking unclean water. If left untreated, they run a risk to become dehydrated. While most severe cases need to be hospitalised and receive intravenous therapy, people who are moderately sick can be treated with oral rehydration salts only.
Since the beginning of July, MSF has also been responding to a watery diarrhea outbreak in the northeastern region of Afar. In two months, the team, in collaboration with the health authorities, has provided care to 570 patients in two treatment facilities.
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Health has also reported patients suffering from acute watery diarrhea in several other regions of the country.
Additional staff have been sent to Ethiopia to augment the MSF teams on the ground.
More than a dozen pupils of Ethiopian origin had yet to be accepted by any school in Petah Tikva on Wednesday, despite a widely praised, last-minute agreement between the Education Ministry and the city regarding the placement of over 100 such pupils in a number of schools.
Ministry officials said they might not have the problems sorted out until the start of next week.
Additionally, the ministry and municipality had conflicting information as to the number of pupils still in need of placement. While the ministry said that 16 first graders were facing “admission difficulties,” the Petah Tikva Municipality put the number at 20.
Ministry officials also said that the problem was not that the schools were refusing to admit the pupils, but that there were discrepancies between the municipality, the schools and the ministry, regarding the lists of pupils and where they were supposed to be enrolled.
On Tuesday, Education Ministry Director-General Shimshon Shoshani, along with municipality officials, said that some children had been sent to the wrong school by mistake, while some of pupils’ families complained of language difficulties.
Under the agreement, which was reached during a meeting between Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Petah Tikva Mayor Yitzhak Ohayon, and Shoshani, 30 of the 108 Ethiopian pupils in question were supposed to begin their studies on Tuesday at the three “recognized but unofficial” religious schools that had been reluctant to admit them – Lamerhav, Da’at Mevinim and Darkei Noam.
An additional 18 pupils are set to begin studying in those semi-private institutions as well when they arrive in Petah Tikva in the coming weeks.
The remaining 60 pupils, who are expected to arrive in the city throughout the school year, will be admitted to semi-private schools in accordance with Education Ministry assignments.
Additionally, the city and the Education Ministry said they were to appoint a joint task force to examine the implementation of the pupils’ enrollment and the general integration of Ethiopian pupils in the city’s schools.
It was unclear what role, if any, that task force was playing in helping sort through Wednesday’s confusion.
Kenenisa Bekele may receive a huge check this Friday at the sixth and final meet of the IAAF Golden League. Bekele will be racing the 5000 meters at the Memorial Van Damme meet in Brussels. Should he win the race, he may be pocketing up to $1 million dollars.
The IAAF Golden League, which includes six meets over the course of the summer, offers one of the largest cash prizes in athletics. In order to claim the million-dollar purse, an athlete must win their event in all six Golden League meets.
Kenenisa Bekele is one of three athletes still in the running for the jackpot. Sanya Richards and Yelena Isinbayeva have also won their respective events. If all three athletes win in Brussels, they will split the million-dollar jackpot, which is still a pretty hefty payday.
Bekele has attracted a great deal of attention over the summer for his dominating performances. He won both the 10000 and 5000 meters at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, and many have called him the greatest distance runner of all time. Just yesterday, Ian Chadband at the Telegraph said, “Bekele is the Bolt of distance running, a record breaker, a ground breaker, a supreme champion who is well nigh unbeatable when he chooses.” Most believe that Bekele will move up to the marathon, where he could very likely be a contender to break Haile Gebrselassie’s world record.
So will Bekele win his share of the jackpot on Friday? It’s not smart to bet against him. On Friday, you can watch the action in Brussels on the live feed at UniversalSports.com, which starts at 12:50 p.m. in Dallas.
