Lisbon, Portugal (IAAF) – Reigning World Cross Country champion Gebregziabher Gebremariam opened the IAAF Cross Country Permit season with a victory at the Oeiras Cross Country on Saturday.

The 25-year-old Ethiopian proved his power in Oeiras over the elements – strong winds and hard rains – as well as his opponents. From the outset a group of six ran together at the front and followed a strong pace: Gebremariam, his countryman Tariku Bekele who won in Oeiras in 2004 (and was second in 2005), the Kenyans Edwin Kuambai and Kiprono Menjo (third in Oeiras in 2006), Italian cross country champion Andrea Lalli, and the surprise in the field, the Portuguese Eduardo Mbengani.

Lap after lap, the lead group grew smaller and in the last of the five laps we saw a strong finish sprint between the young Portuguese and the world champion. At the line, Gebremariam take the victory, just one second ahead of Mbengani.

“This wasn´t as easy as some may think,” Gebremariam said. “I’m pleased with the course, it was very good. But the weather was not so good – too much wind and rain – but I’m training to achieve my goals and this event was wonderful for my preparation». He also said that he was pleased to pull off the win over a long sustained sprint against Mbengani. “I’m happy to see that are good runners in Portugal. I tried to help him, but in the final I made my move.”

“This was a surprise,” said Mbengani. “I didn’t expect to be second in this cross, but this was the mirror of my preparation, which wasn’t so good at all because of some injury problems. I’m very happy to achieve my first goal: to make a good showing to get on the national team for the European Cross Country Championships.”

Finishing in third place was Kiprono Menjo, repeating his finish from 2006, followed by the European hope, Italy’s Andrea Lalli, who was fourth ahead of Edwin Kuambai. In fifth place was the Portuguese veteran (41 years old) José Ramos, one second ahead of José Rocha, the winner of last weekend’s contest in Torres Vedras. Bekele was a distant eighth, more than 50 seconds behind the winner.

Portuguese podium sweep – women’s race

In the women’s event, as with predicted, the Portuguese women lived up to their billing as the favourites. Jessica Augusto, who failed to start last weekend in Torres Vedras, moved herself to the lead and showed everybody why she was last year’s European championships runner-up. With a solid pace she moved ahead a created a strong advantage between the following group, which included Inês Monteiro, the European bronze medallist last year, and Anália Rosa. Upping the tempo, they left Kenyan Milka Jerotich more than 90 metres behind.

After them Ana Dias, fifth here the last two years, repeated this place and prove her candidature to the national team.

”The win wasn’t easy,” Augusto said. “It’s never easy win in Oeiras, because this is a tough course. I’m very happy to win today, I expect to get to the national team and I’m doing my best to go there and try to get another medal.”

António Manuel Fernandes for the IAAF

Leading Results –

MEN (9000m):
1. Gebre Gebrmariam ETH 24.41
2. Eduardo Mbengani POR 24.42
3. Kiprono Menjo KEN 24.45
4. Andrea Lalli ITA 24.56
5. Edwin Kuambai KEN 25.19
6. José Rocha POR 25.24
7. José Ramos POR 25.25
8. Tariku Bekele ETH 25.30

WOMEN (5000m):
1. Jessica Augusto POR 15.39
2. Inês Monteiro POR 15.49
3. Anália Rosa POR 15.51
4. Milka Jerotich KEN 16.11
5. Ana Dias POR 16.14
6. Sara Moreira POR 16.17
7. Leonor Carneiro POR 16.23
8. Mónica Rosa POR 16.28

SANA’A, (Saba) — Yemen Ministry of Interior reported that police arrested 277 Ethiopians on Monday, including 18 women, as they tried to illegally to enter the country.

The Ministry quoted security sources as saying that that 202 Ethiopians disembarked at the coast of Abyan Province in south Yemen from a smuggling boat.

In Medi city of the Hajjah Province, additional 72 Ethiopians, including five women, were arrested.

In the City of Mahweet, Yemeni authorities have arrested three Ethiopians aged 18-20 who reached Yemen by smuggling boats.

Spokesman for the inJustice Ministry in Ethiopia, Ato Mekonnen Bezabih, said today that his regime is seeking death penalty against most of the 46 individuals who are accused of plotting coup d’etat and convicted by the Woyanne kangaroo court last week.

VOA’s Peter Heinlein reported the following:

ADDIS ABABA — Prosecutors in Ethiopia are seeking the death penalty for 40 people found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the government. Twenty-seven of the defendants were tried and convicted last week. Thirteen others, most of them living in exile, were earlier found guilty in absentia. This VOA correspondent was in the courtroom as the 27 in custody pleaded for reduced sentences.

One by one, the 27 convicted conspirators were given a chance to explain to a three-judge panel why they should not be executed for planning a campaign of violence aimed at bringing down Meles Zenawi’s government.

The group was convicted of five charges. Among them were trying to incite rebellion within the army, plotting to kill senior government officials and destroy strategic facilities.

All were said to be members of the outlawed Ginbot 7 Movement led by exiled political leader Berhanu Nega.

Berhanu, now a university professor in the United States, was among the 13 convicted in absentia. He has denied the existence of a plot, but has repeatedly called Meles’s government ‘illegitimate’ and said it should be removed by any means.

Many of 27 convicted last week are current or former military officers. Speaking to the court, they pointed to their decades of decorated service. Some spoke of fighting with the forces that overthrew the previous Marxist regime. Several listed the medals they had won and the wounds they suffered fighting for Ethiopia in its Woyanne’s war against Eritrea a decade ago, or serving in Somalia, or in the counterinsurgency campaign against rebels in the independence-minded Ogaden region.

Two defendants, both former army majors, admitted their guilt and threw themselves on the mercy of the court.

Ethiopia’s inJustice Ministry spokesman Mekonnen Bezabeh says while the death penalty is being sought for all 40, the two who pleaded guilty would get special consideration.

“We asked the court for the death penalty, but we also asked the court to minimize the penalty for two persons who told to the court their activities,” Bezabeh said.

The other defendants, including the lone woman among the 40, maintained their innocence throughout the trial, though some said they respect the court’s decision.

Several defendants, including the few represented by attorneys, questioned whether the death penalty is appropriate in a case where the charge is simply planning a coup, not carrying it out. Presiding judge Adem Ibrahim was silent on the matter, but Justice Ministry spokesman Mekonnen said the cumulative weight of all the charges calls for the maximum punishment.

“According to our procedure law, if there are so many charges, each penalty will be added and they will be penalized the sum of the penalties, so when we see their convictions, by acting contradiction with the constitution, and also they conspired to make a crisis between army forces, the penalty would be the highest penalty point, which is the death penalty,” Bezabeh said.

Those facing the maximum penalty include Melaku Teferra, a senior member of Ethiopia’s opposition UDJ, or Unity for Democracy and Justice Party. Melaku was among the scores of political leaders convicted of inciting post-election violence in 2005, then later pardoned.

In outlining the charges Tuesday, Chief Prosecutor Berihun Tewoldeberhan singled out Melaku, saying he should have learned from his past mistakes.

Melaku is one of two top UDJ officials in prison as next May’s elections approach. The party’s main leader, Birtukan Mideksa, was also among those jailed after the 2005 election and then pardoned. But she was sent back to prison last December and ordered to finish serving a life sentence after denying that she had asked for the pardon.

A museum is being erected in Bonga, Ethiopia — the birthplace of coffee. But because small-scale farmers are fragmented and disorganized, they are not reaching the potential of the coffee crop.

Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Ethiopia’s coffee country, where farmers are deciding to plant corn and khat, a leafy drug that is chewed with stimulating effects somewhere between caffeine and cocaine. Watch the report below:

Non-violent demonstrations in Israel by once warmly welcomed Jewish Ethiopian immigrants were shut down by police while political leaders sought an 11th hour deal to allow black students into schools, reminding many of the anti-segregation struggles in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s. Ethiopians were brought into the country in celebrated covert operations during the 1980s and 90s, but now find that racism trumps the shared religion that brought the to Israel in the first place. The root of the problem is made evident in a recent book’s title, One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism.

“We came here because we thought Israel was our country. We didn’t expect this,” said Demelash Belay, a 36-year-old English teacher who moved to Israel in 2006 in a CSM interview. “We heard in Ethiopia that Israel is a democratic country. We found discrimination. And because of it Ethiopians are suffering.” Protest leader Uri Kabadeh wore a T-shirt reading “We want equality, we’re all Jewish” as he led a crowd chanting in both their native Amharric and adopted Hebrew. “Down with racism, down with discrimination.” 100,000 Ethiopians now live in Israel , with more arriving each year. Non-violent demonstrations an police responses are nothing new.

Some say the difference between this situation and U.S. segregation is that the latter was state-supported and this one comes from institutions like schools and the native ethnic Jewish population. But wait a second. “Native ethnic Jewish population”? That’s a term deserving of a bit of deconstruction: the Jews in Israel came and come from every nation in Europe and the Americas, as well as different parts of Asia. What is an ethnic Jew? Is not the identity of Jews based in religion not race, a dangerous conflation that often repeated events of the 20th century make clear? Not for Ethiopian immigrants there.

The Apartheid-like treatment of Palestinian based on Arab ethnicity and religious affiliations (mostly Muslim, also Christian), the actual “native” population, is explicitly supported by the Israeli state. Is the feigned “acceptance” of Ethiopians meant as a palliative or a smokescreen? Israel’s sole Ethiopian parliamentarian rushed to the state’s defense, forgetting that what is happening to his constituents is but a pale reflection of ongoing, racist and religionist current events creating the future of Palestinians, the Middle East region and the world their grandchildren will inherit.

Last week we heard from a U.S. official, Assistant Secretary of State Michele Bond, that this year 2,200 Ethiopian children were imported to the U.S. on adoption. They were sold by the adoption agencies in Ethiopia that are affiliated with Meles Zenawi’s wife Jezebel Mesfin at $30,000 each. Yesterday, it was reported that Meles Zenawi’s regime sold an Indian company 765,000 hectares of fertile land in Ethiopia to grow crops and export them to India. All the while, millions of people in Ethiopia have nothing to eat.  Today, it is reported that the Meles junta has sold gold mines in western Ethiopia that contain 40 tonnes of gold deposit to a Saudi company that is owned by Ethiopian billionaire Al Amoudi. In order to extract the gold, they had to wipe out the population in the area first. Ethiopian women are being sold into slavery in Arab countries. Meles and Jezebel are selling every thing in Ethiopia and when they run out of things to sell, they will implement article 39 and take off for the Republic of Tigray.

The following is a report by Reuters about Woyanne-Saudi gold extraction deal.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia signed a deal on Tuesday for a Saudi firm to extract an estimated 20 tonnes of recoverable gold found in the Horn of African country last month, the mines and energy minister said.

Two firms — Saudi Arabia’s Midroc Gold Co. and Britain’s Golden Prospecting Mining Co. — discovered deposits estimated to contain more than 40 tonnes of gold last month and applied for extraction licences.

“We will sign an extraction agreement with the Saudi company today,” Minister for Mines and Energy, Alemayehu Tegenu, told Reuters in an interview, adding it would be mined over 11 years.

“We hope to sign an agreement with the British company next year,” he said.

The minister said Sakaro, a mining company wholly-owned by Midroc Gold Co., discovered an estimated 20 tonnes in the Lege-Dembi gold belt. Midroc is owned by Ethiopian-born Saudi business tycoon Sheik Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi.

Golden Prospecting Mining’s find of about 23 tonnes is in western Ethiopia.

Under the terms of the deal, Ethiopia gets 5 percent of royalties, takes 2 percent equity and will charge 35 percent tax. The extraction licence expires once 20 tonnes of gold has been extracted.

The Ethiopian government says it has identified possible reserves of up to 500 tonnes in different regions.

The country now makes $105 million a year from gold exports and that could double when Midroc starts its extraction, Alemayehu said.

The Horn of Africa nation has made $450.5 million from about 48 tonnes of gold exports in the last 10 years, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia.