ADDIS ABABA (VOA) – Ethiopia’s [tribal junta] says its economic growth rate has topped 10 percent for the sixth year in a row, and could do it again in the current year, despite the global economic turndown. But international economists and Ethiopia’s political opposition are questioning the figures.
President Girma Woldegiorgis says Ethiopia’s economy grew at a 10.1-percent rate during the past year, even though poor rains crippled the dominant agriculture sector and curtailed power generation, forcing a partial shutdown of factories. [Ato Girma is not a real president. He is Meles Zenawi’s puppet.]
Speaking to the opening session of Ethiopia’s [rubber-stamp] parliament, Mr. Girma called the growth “a remarkable achievement.”
“The fact that our economy has been able continuously to register growth rates of more than 10 percent annually for the last six consecutive years in such difficult global and domestic circumstances is an attestation of the success of our policies and strategies designed to speed up our development,” he said.
The Ethiopian president chided economists who had warned that Ethiopia could not achieve double-digit growth without fueling inflation. He suggested, but stopped short of predicting, that government policies would succeed in achieving the same economic feat this year.
“Our objective will be to continue the pace of rapid economic growth by registering a growth rate of 10-percent for the 7th consecutive year, and while controlling inflation at less than 10 percent,” he added.
Mr. Girma’s announcement came just weeks after Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pegged the growth rate for the past year as low as 9.2 percent. As recently as April, the government had forecast 11.2 percent growth.
Ethiopia’s political opposition immediately rejected Mr. Girma’s figures. Prominent opposition leader Merera Gudina accused the government of ‘cooking’ (changing) the data. He said average Ethiopians would know the figures were false because their standard of living has failed to improve.
International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials were not immediately available for comment, but the IMF earlier estimated an increase of 6.5 percent or less for Ethiopia during the fiscal year that ended in July.
Ethiopia is among the world’s poorest countries. Its agriculture sector, which supports more than 80 percent of the population, has been hit by a third consecutive year of drought.
The government’s latest figures suggest one out of six Ethiopians, or nearly 14 million people, are in need of food aid.
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — Ethiopia is stockpiling medicine to counter an expected surge in malaria cases due to hotter weather, its health ministry said on Saturday.
In a statement, Kesetebirhan Admasu, head of the disease prevention directorate, said the El Nino effect would raise temperatures, reduce rain and generally aggravate conditions for the spread of malaria.
In response to the threat, he said, “there is sufficient medicine in store that could treat 12 million people,” for which 12.6 million birr (685,000 euros, one million dollars) has been spent.
The government has already purchased malaria diagnosis kits and medicines, insecticides and spraying equipment, and plans to distribute 13 million mosquito nets, he added.
Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed “Ardi.” (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.)
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin’s time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today’s apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas (interactive: Ardi’s key features). As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like.
Announced at joint press conferences in Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the analysis of the Ardipithecus ramidus bones will be published in a collection of papers tomorrow in a special edition of the journal Science, along with an avalanche of supporting materials published online.
“This find is far more important than Lucy,” said Alan Walker, a paleontologist from Pennsylvania State University who was not part of the research. “It shows that the last common ancestor with chimps didn’t look like a chimp, or a human, or some funny thing in between.” (Related: “Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossils Found, Experts Say” [June 11, 2003].)
Ardi Surrounded by Family
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia’s harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
Older hominid fossils have been uncovered, including a skull from Chad at least six million years old and some more fragmentary, slightly younger remains from Kenya and nearby in the Middle Awash.
While important, however, none of those earlier fossils are nearly as revealing as the newly announced remains, which in addition to Ardi’s partial skeleton include bones representing at least 36 other individuals.
“All of a sudden you’ve got fingers and toes and arms and legs and heads and teeth,” said Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, who co-directed the work with Berhane Asfaw, a paleoanthropologist and former director of the National Museum of Ethiopia, and Giday WoldeGabriel, a geologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
“That allows you to do something you can’t do with isolated specimens,” White said. “It allows you to do biology.”
Ardi’s Weird Way of Moving
The biggest surprise about Ardipithecus’s biology is its bizarre means of moving about.
All previously known hominids—members of our ancestral lineage—walked upright on two legs, like us. But Ardi’s feet, pelvis, legs, and hands suggest she was a biped on the ground but a quadruped when moving about in the trees.
Her big toe, for instance, splays out from her foot like an ape’s, the better to grasp tree limbs. Unlike a chimpanzee foot, however, Ardipithecus’s contains a special small bone inside a tendon, passed down from more primitive ancestors, that keeps the divergent toe more rigid. Combined with modifications to the other toes, the bone would have helped Ardi walk bipedally on the ground, though less efficiently than later hominids like Lucy. The bone was lost in the lineages of chimps and gorillas.
According to the researchers, the pelvis shows a similar mosaic of traits. The large flaring bones of the upper pelvis were positioned so that Ardi could walk on two legs without lurching from side to side like a chimp. But the lower pelvis was built like an ape’s, to accommodate huge hind limb muscles used in climbing.
Even in the trees, Ardi was nothing like a modern ape, the researchers say.
Modern chimps and gorillas have evolved limb anatomy specialized to climbing vertically up tree trunks, hanging and swinging from branches, and knuckle-walking on the ground.
While these behaviors require very rigid wrist bones, for instance, the wrists and finger joints of Ardipithecus were highly flexible. As a result Ardi would have walked on her palms as she moved about in the trees—more like some primitive fossil apes than like chimps and gorillas.
“What Ardi tells us is there was this vast intermediate stage in our evolution that nobody knew about,” said Owen Lovejoy, an anatomist at Kent State University in Ohio, who analyzed Ardi’s bones below the neck. “It changes everything.”
Against All Odds, Ardi Emerges
The first, fragmentary specimens of Ardipithecus were found at Aramis in 1992 and published in 1994. The skeleton announced today was discovered that same year and excavated with the bones of the other individuals over the next three field seasons. But it took 15 years before the research team could fully analyze and publish the skeleton, because the fossils were in such bad shape.
After Ardi died, her remains apparently were trampled down into mud by hippos and other passing herbivores. Millions of years later, erosion brought the badly crushed and distorted bones back to the surface.
They were so fragile they would turn to dust at a touch. To save the precious fragments, White and colleagues removed the fossils along with their surrounding rock. Then, in a lab in Addis, the researchers carefully tweaked out the bones from the rocky matrix using a needle under a microscope, proceeding “millimeter by submillimeter,” as the team puts it in Science. This process alone took several years.
Pieces of the crushed skull were then CT-scanned and digitally fit back together by Gen Suwa, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tokyo.
In the end, the research team recovered more than 125 pieces of the skeleton, including much of the feet and virtually all of the hands—an extreme rarity among hominid fossils of any age, let alone one so very ancient.
“Finding this skeleton was more than luck,” said White. “It was against all odds.”
Ardi’s World
The team also found some 6,000 animal fossils and other specimens that offer a picture of the world Ardi inhabited: a moist woodland very different from the region’s current, parched landscape. In addition to antelope and monkey species associated with forests, the deposits contained forest-dwelling birds and seeds from fig and palm trees.
Wear patterns and isotopes in the hominid teeth suggest a diet that included fruits, nuts, and other forest foods.
If White and his team are right that Ardi walked upright as well as climbed trees, the environmental evidence would seem to strike the death knell for the “savanna hypothesis”—a long-standing notion that our ancestors first stood up in response to their move onto an open grassland environment.
Sex for Food
Some researchers, however, are unconvinced that Ardipithecus was quite so versatile.
“This is a fascinating skeleton, but based on what they present, the evidence for bipedality is limited at best,” said William Jungers, an anatomist at Stony Brook University in New York State.
“Divergent big toes are associated with grasping, and this has one of the most divergent big toes you can imagine,” Jungers said. “Why would an animal fully adapted to support its weight on its forelimbs in the trees elect to walk bipedally on the ground?”
One provocative answer to that question—originally proposed by Lovejoy in the early 1980s and refined now in light of the Ardipithecus discoveries—attributes the origin of bipedality to another trademark of humankind: monogamous sex.
Virtually all apes and monkeys, especially males, have long upper canine teeth—formidable weapons in fights for mating opportunities.
But Ardipithecus appears to have already embarked on a uniquely human evolutionary path, with canines reduced in size and dramatically “feminized” to a stubby, diamond shape, according to the researchers. Males and female specimens are also close to each other in body size.
Lovejoy sees these changes as part of an epochal shift in social behavior: Instead of fighting for access to females, a male Ardipithecus would supply a “targeted female” and her offspring with gathered foods and gain her sexual loyalty in return.
To keep up his end of the deal, a male needed to have his hands free to carry home the food. Bipedalism may have been a poor way for Ardipithecus to get around, but through its contribution to the “sex for food” contract, it would have been an excellent way to bear more offspring. And in evolution, of course, more offspring is the name of the game (more: “Did Early Humans Start Walking for Sex?”).
Two hundred thousand years after Ardipithecus, another species called Australopithecus anamensis appeared in the region. By most accounts, that species soon evolved into Australopithecus afarensis, with a slightly larger brain and a full commitment to a bipedal way of life. Then came early Homo, with its even bigger brain and budding tool use.
Did primitive Ardipithecus undergo some accelerated change in the 200,000 years between it and Australopithecus—and emerge as the ancestor of all later hominids? Or was Ardipithecus a relict species, carrying its quaint mosaic of primitive and advanced traits with it into extinction?
Study co-leader White sees nothing about the skeleton “that would exclude it from ancestral status.” But he said more fossils would be needed to fully resolve the issue.
Stony Brook’s Jungers added, “These finds are incredibly important, and given the state of preservation of the bones, what they did was nothing short of heroic.
Recently, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned that the African delegation he is expected to lead to the climate change talks in Copenhagen in December would walk out of any “negotiations that threaten to be another rape of the continent.”
The Ethiopian dictator, who was speaking in Addis Ababa at a meeting arranged by United Nations Economic Commission for Africa to promote the African negotiating position, demanded that the West pay billions of dollars annually in exchange for Africa’s acquiescence to a global warming agreement. African Union Chairman Jean Ping took an even harder line, threatening to “never accept any global deal that does not limit global warming to the minimum unavoidable level, no matter what levels of compensation.”
It is unprecedented for African dictators to take the moral offensive against the “evil” Western imperialists, who for centuries have exploited Africa and ruptured its social fabric. In the climate change debate, Africa’s leaders – many with blood on their hands – profess to capture the moral high ground and name and shame the West for its abuse of Africa and the planet in general. The strategy is refreshingly Ghandian: Use moral outrage and international civil disobedience to make the West squirm into doing right by Africa. Ghandi taught “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.” He exhorted that the only way to get the British to abandon their evil ways in South Africa and India was to actively resist their colonial rule through civil disobedience, particularly through a campaign of non-cooperation. For Zenawi and company, that message translates into a very public act of non-cooperation with the Western overlords on issues of fair play, equity and environmental justice.
But are African leaders genuinely concerned about climate change, or are they motivated by the sheer potential for billions of dollars of annual compensation to line their pockets. Are they engaged in non-cooperation or political extortion?
The answer is obvious. The bluster about “walking out” and “delegitimizing” the Copenhagen talks is nothing more than a cynical appeal to lofty moral virtues in order to guilt-trip and shakedown Western countries into paying billions in “blood money.” That is certainly the conclusion of the Economist magazine, which in its recent issue stated that the wrath of African leaders is aimed at “making the rich world feel guilty about global warming. Meles has made it clear he is seeking blood money—or rather carbon money—that would be quite separate from other aid to the continent.”
In the end, all of the climate change pontification is about African dictators extorting a $67 billion bribe every year to enrich themselves. It has very little to do with remedying the ecological disasters facing Africa.
Consider the case of Ethiopia. While Meles has managed to convince other African leaders to make him the point man at the global warming negotiations, he has ignored the ecological apocalypse facing Ethiopia. Though he speaks with moral fervor and indignation about the negative role of the West in aggravating the environmental consequences of climate change on Africa, he has not made a single statement or offered a single policy initiative on environmental issues in Ethiopia.
The environmental facts on Ethiopia are incontrovertible. Ethiopia is facing ecological collapse caused by deforestation, soil erosion, over-grazing, over-population, desertification and loss of biodiversity and chemical pollution of its rivers and lakes. Even the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute – a government agency – admits that the country “loses up to 200,000 hectares of forest every year.” The Institute has warned that “if the trend continues the country would lose all of its forest resources by the year 2020.” Other studies have also shown that between 1990 and 2005, Ethiopia lost 14 percent of its forest cover and 3.6 percent of its forest and woodland habitat.
Just a few kilometers outside the capital, Lake Koka has attracted considerable international attention and become the iconic image of the country’s environmental decline. A community of 17,000 people is facing severe illnesses and high morbidity from drinking and using the lake’s water. Massive pollution caused by the sugar factories in the country have resulted in illness and deaths of tens of thousands of people. Nothing has been done to hold criminally or civilly accountable the parties responsible for the environmental crimes.
Africa’s knights in shining armor should take care of environmental disasters in their own backyards – lakes, rivers and factories – before mounting their steeds on a crusade to save Africa from global warming. As for Ethiopia’s arch dictator and Africa’s chief climate change negotiator, he is merely trying to rehabilitate his image from the continent’s foremost human rights abuser to its chief environmental redeemer. Before Africa can be rescued from the ill effects of climate change, it needs to save itself from predatory dictators like Zenawi. For Ethiopia and most of Africa the rallying cry should be, “Regime change before action on climate change.”
(Alemayehu G. Mariam is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He can be reached at [email protected].)
(Sudan Tribune) — Despite Ogaden rebels repeated warnings against foreign oil exploration in Somali region, the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy vowed to continue the oil project.
Two weeks ago the Ogaden National liberation Front (ONLF) threatened foreign oil firms to refrain from engaging in oil exploration in the region or face harsh consequences.
However Ethiopia’s ministry of mines and energy down plays the threats saying that every empty threat by the Ogaden rebels cannot obstruct the ongoing oil venture.
“There is no any serious security threat in the region that could lead to closure or endanger foreign oil firms” said minister Alemayehu Tegenu.
Ethiopian forces launched an assault against the rebels after the 2007 attack on a Chinese-owned oil exploration field which killed 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese. Addis Ababa now says the ONLF has been defeated.
“The group, unlike it bluffs, is so weaken at this point and doesn’t have capacity to carry out attacks” he added.
ONLF’s latest warning came after a Malaysian oil firm reportedly resumed drilling at the region.
In a statement it issued on September 16, the rebel group said “No business should be conducted in Ogaden, until there is a political solution to the conflict,”
We “will not be responsible for any collateral damages that occur from its engagements with the Ethiopian army,” it added accusing oil companies of “disinheriting the Ogaden people of their natural resources.”
The rebel group in the past directly threatened Petronas , the Malaysian state-owned company, which is one of more than a dozen international explorers hunting for oil and gas in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s Bonnie and Clyde embarrass themselves on the red carpet:
Next arrives Ethiopian President the butcher of Addis Ababa Meles Zenawi, who clearly did something in the car to anger his wife because she glares at him, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Obama, and anyone unfortunate enough to cross her line of vision.
(Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama laughed while they waited for their guests to arrive.)
The Times’s Helene Cooper has an entertaining pool report on tonight’s dinner of world leaders at the Phipps Conservatory:
Well, there was no red carpet lining the walkway to the Phipps Conservatory for the leaders’ dinner tonight hosted by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. But since the First Couple nonetheless spent almost two hours greeting each of their 60 or so guests as they arrived, one by one — or in the case of couples, two by two — and since your pooler’s dream job is actually to work for E Channel covering the Academy Awards Red Carpet, consider this your Red Carpet report.
At 6:15 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Obama stepped out of the Phipps Conservatory, underneath an awning to greet their first guests. Mr. Obama in a dark blue suit, Mrs. Obama in a taupe, pink and green patterned cocktail dress with straps. Pink patent leather two-inch heels. Hair pulled back in a full, bouffant faux ponytail. Long pearl necklace, pearl earrings. No stockings.
Mr. Obama: “Where’d my First Lady go?”
Mrs. Obama: “Right here,” stepping beside him, as it started to drizzle.
Mr. Obama pokes fun at the pool, whispering something to Reggie Love and Mrs. Obama, then looking at pool and saying: “We’re talking about how you guys are all waiting to write something down.”
First to arrive is an Allegheny County official who’s name your pooler didn’t get. (There’ll be a lot of that to come).
Then the mayor of Pittsburgh, Luke Ravenstahl and his wife.
Mr. Obama: “Hey Luke, sorry about those Steelers, man.”
Mr. Ravenstahl: “So am I.”
There’s a pause for a while between arrivals, and the First Couple turns to the pool for entertainment.
Mrs. Obama: “You guys are so quiet. Somebody should sing.”
Mr. Obama: “We should have music. Where’s the music?”
Then, “I’m teasing, Emmett, don’t freak out,” looking back at, presumably, the first Music Supplier.
Then, to Mrs. Obama: “No, don’t stress these guys out.”
Long interval, then more arrivals, the director general of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, the chairman of the Financial Stability Board, Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Doyle.
Mr. Obama is teasing Mrs. Obama. “You’re standing on the wrong side of me.” She moves to his other side. He says, “I’m just teasing.” She stares straight ahead with a smile.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives with his wife. They get a warm welcome from both Obamas, the warmest so far. There’s a lot of familiarity. Hugs, chats about daughters.
Next is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stag. He gets familiarity, but not so much warmth.
Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, in a royal blue suit.
Ooh, next is South African President Jacob Zuma! Which wife did he bring? The youngest of course, Nompumelelo Ntuli, who puts her arm around Mrs. Obama and holds her hand during the photo op. Mrs. Obama tells Mr. Zuma that she expects him to solve the global economic mess “by Friday.”
Next arrives Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, who clearly did something in the car to anger his wife because she glares at him, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Obama, and anyone unfortunate enough to cross her line of vision.
The Obamas both look slightly taken aback by her. Wonder what happened in the car? The Ethiopian First Couple are quickly dispatched inside.
Thankfully, Angela Merkel of Germany, arriving stag, comes down the non-red carpet next, exuding warmth, familiarity, and chattiness. She’s wearing a pantsuit.
It’s 7:07, the Obamas have been greeting for almost an hour.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon gets cordiality.
Australian head Kevin Rudd gets familiarity and warmth, and brings with him his wife, who brings with her the first cleavage of the evening, in a black suit with low low-cut top. Five-inch stilettos. “Kevin, you finally brought your better half,” says Mr. Obama.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is next, with his wife, Ermine, wearing the first hijab of the evening.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mrs. Brown get hugs, kisses, more hugs, more kisses, handholding, you name it. Mrs. Brown holds Mr. Obama’s hand during the photo op. She’s the first woman to bring a handbag, a really cute black patent leather number with gold chain strap.
Prince Saud al Faisal of Saudi Arabia arrives stag.
President of Korea gets a mention because his wife is fabulous in a long dress that comes dangerously close to formal when everyone else is in cocktail attire.
Mr. Obama greets the Korean interpreter, then says to Mrs. Obama: “he’s the best-dressed interpreter.”
It’s 7:15 and here comes a fashion plate walking down the non-red carpet. It’s Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, resplendent in lavender silk suit with matching shoes and hair.
The Indonesian leader is next. Mr. Obama says “Selamat Malam.” Hah! Didn’t know your pooler could speak Indonesian, huh? The Indonesian First Lady is in a long silk tunic with a floor-length under skirt.
7:20 — Carla Bruni!!!!
Carla Bruni Sarkozy and Nicholas Sarkozy arrive. Sarko is wearing a suit. Carla Bruni is in a stunning black silk sheath dress, stops just below the knee. She’s holding a green wool scarf, and is wearing Christian Louboutins black evening shoes.
Mr. Obama kisses her four times. “I’m not going to get a chance to see you much.”
Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Sarkozy chat warmly. A lot of touching there too.
Hu Jintao comes stag.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell appears not to know that these days people kiss on both cheeks, not one, withdrawing from Mrs. Obama as she is leaning in to kiss his other cheek, so he has to come back in as she’s pulling back. Sigh.
Then he tells Mrs. Obama that Mr. Obama “inspired me when he made fun of me over cheesesteaks so I decided to lose weight.”
Mr. Obama says, “He just lost like 20 pounds.”
Russian President Dimitri Medvedev is next, with his wife, who is in an ultra bright peach cocktail suit with frills around the collar with matching earrings and taupe pumps.
Mr. Obama says to Mr. Medvedev: “Dimitri, come, we don’t have enough pictures together.”
Mrs. Obama tells Mr. Medvedev to “figure it out tonight.”
Then it’s Brazilian President Lula da Silva, with his wife, and, finally, at 7:50 p.m., Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, and his wife, Miyuki, back from Venus. She is in an elegant black suit with a bubble skirt and carries a burgundy shawl.
Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
The team also found some 6,000 animal fossils and other specimens that offer a picture of the world Ardi inhabited: a moist woodland very different from the region’s current, parched landscape. In addition to antelope and monkey species associated with forests, the deposits contained forest-dwelling birds and seeds from fig and palm trees.
Next is Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stag. He gets familiarity, but not so much warmth.