ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — The United Nations’ humanitarian chief John Holmes arrived in Ethiopia Monday to tour regions affected by drought, which has left some eight million people in need of urgent food aid.
Holmes will visit the country’s drought-hit Southern Nationalities and People’s Region in the south and the Somali region in the southeast, said Greg Beals, the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) spokesman in Ethiopia.
He will also hold talks with Ethiopian officials during the three-day trip, Beals told AFP.
According to OCHA, 4.6 million Ethiopians need emergency assistance and eight million need immediate food relief.
In June, the UN had appealed for 325.2 million dollars mainly in food aid for drought victims. Only 52 percent of this appeal has been met.
Other badly hit areas include the southern region of Oromiya, where 6,700 more children were diagnosed as suffering from severe malnutrition between 23 July and August 12.
Ethiopia was hit with severe floods last year which destroyed most of the food crops, while this year a drought has worsened the situation, leading to food prices that soared 330 percent.
Kenenisa Bekele, who completed a 5,000m and 10,000m double in Beijing, produced a storming final lap of his 3,000m race to win in a world-leading time and stadium record at the Aviva British Grand Prix in Gateshead on Sunday.
While almost everyone else in Gateshead suffered the inevitable post-Olympic hangover, Bekele set this year’s best time for the 3,000 metres – 7min 31.95sec. This came on the back of doing the same for the 5,000 metres in Zurich on Friday. He has spent the past week celebrating, sitting on planes for 18 hours and setting unfathomable times.
It could have been termed a tale of two champions as the smog of Beijing gave way to the rain of Gateshead. There was Christine Ohuruogu, a woman whose name will forever come with a comma, and Kenenisa Bekele, a foot smaller than Usain Bolt but still able to rub shoulders with him. Both may have felt that they had reasons to be aggrieved as they turned up for the Aviva British Grand Prix.
Ohuruogu has made tentative noises about being the poster girl for 2012, but others continue to manacle her to her past. Just as she knew it would, winning gold in Beijing exhumed all the old arguments and cynicism. The pros and cons have been well aired, but it is worth remembering that, as Dave Collins departs, the outgoing UK Athletics performance director said two years ago that 70 British athletes were on missed tests. In addition, Pierre Weiss, the IAAF general secretary, admitted last September that as many as 1,000 people had missed tests within the previous year. The statistics do not excuse Ohuruogu, but they do lend her some context.
The result, however, is that Ohuruogu has not received the ticker-tape parade or open-top bus trip that others have. She ran the fastest time in the world this year to win the Olympic 400 metres, but is still a partial heroine in some eyes. Yesterday, the fans stuck around in torrential rain to watch her homecoming. In typical Ohuruogu style, she won at a canter, the modest time of 51.27sec underlining her remarks that she trains for championships and not one-off meetings. Mary Wineberg, of the United States, was second, with Nicola Sanders third. Only Kelly Sotherton, the moonlighting heptathlete, had reason to be cheered by her time, 52.19sec representing a personal best.
“It’s not about silencing people, it’s about doing the best I could,” Ohuruogu said. “I’m so thankful to the British public for their support and I wanted to come out to say thank you.”
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If all of Britain steadfastly refuses to acknowledge Ohuruogu’s feats, Ethiopia takes the opposite view on Bekele. They call him “the Lion” at home, but he does not dance, wear golden boots or have chicken nuggets for his pre-race meal. So the Olympics belonged to Usain Bolt, even though Bekele had every right to put in a counterclaim after winning the 5,000 and 10,000 metres double.
It was a feat that put him in an elite band, including Miruts Yifter, his compatriot, but Bekele, albeit a legend in the making in athletics, is far from the household name that Bolt has become in the space of a fortnight. He says that being overshadowed by the Jamaican sprinter does not bother him, but that is a lingering injustice because his story is every bit as colourful.
While Jamaica awaits Bolt’s return and a never-ending knees-up, Bekele has already been back to Addis Ababa, where a million people turned out to welcome him, including the prime minister and president. That was a far cry from the time Yifter went home after missing the 5,000 metres final at the 1972 Olympics because he was late coming out of the toilet; “The Shifter” was thrown in jail.
Elsewhere yesterday, Lisa Dobriskey won the 1,500 metres and admitted that finishing fourth in Beijing provided motivation. “I visualised that lap of honour at the Olympics so many times, it’s really hard to deal with it,” she said. “I was emotionally, physically drained, but my dad said, ‘Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.’ I can use it to fuel my future performances.”
Those Britons who did leave China with medals had mixed days. Tasha Danvers ran almost two seconds slower than in taking bronze in the 400metres hurdles, leaving Melanie Walker, Jamaica’s Olympic champion, to add another notch to her belt, while an out-of-sorts Phillips Idowu managed only fourth and 16.42 metres in the triple jump. “I’ve been ill all week with a cold and sore throat,” he said.
Germaine Mason did manage a win, however, his leap of 2.27 metres enough to beat allcomers in the high jump, then he credited Stephen Francis’s strict coaching regime in Jamaica for his success. Another Francis charge, Asafa Powell, also found some late-season form. After Tyson Gay romped through the 200 metres to provide himself with some post-Bolt therapy, Powell won the 100metres in 9.87sec, a time that lent credence to the view that he is brilliant when not at a leading championship. The Jamaican was only fifth in the final in Beijing, but is running well enough to dip below 9.8 before the season is out.
Goldie Sayers, Marilyn Okoro and Martyn Rooney were other home winners, while Vivian Cheruiyot, of Kenya, set the year’s best time in the 3,000 metres. As for Ohuruogu, it may have rained on her parade, but at least she had one.
Kenenisa Bekele speeds to win the
5000 meters competition during the
IAAF “Weltklasse Zurich” Golden
League meeting at the Letzigrund
stadium in Zurich, Switzerland on
Friday, Aug. 29, 2008
[AP Photo/Daniel Maurer]
Approaching 9:35 pm in the Letzigrund Stadion on Friday night, Kenenisa Bekele picked up the pace at the front of the field with four laps remaining in the men’s 5,000m at the Weltklasse meeting. He pulled clear with seemingly effortless ease, much to the delight of the crowd jammed into the compact Swiss arena.
By the time the bell sounded, they had whipped themselves into a state of frenzy, shouting, screaming and banging their palms on the metal advertising hoardings skirting the track. In Mexican Wave fashion, they followed the Ethiopian’s progress around the last lap by raising both arms and bowing like 26,000 unworthy Wayne Campbells paying homage to an awesome Alice Cooper.
They know a class act when they see one in Zurich, and no one in the opening show on the post-Olympic European track-and-field circuit got the locals going quite like the breathtaking Bekele. Not even the headlining Usain Bolt, who performed all of his gallery-playing moves either side of coasting to victory in the men’s 100m in 9.83sec. Or the 18-year-old Kenyan phenomenon Pamela Jelimo, who crossed the line in the women’s 800m in 1min 54.01sec, a time that has been bettered only by the great Czech hulk of a woman Jarmila Kratochvilova (1:53.28) and the Russian Nadezhda Olizarenko (1:53.43).
No, Bekele was the show-stealer in the penultimate meeting of the season’s Golden League programme. And with good reason. Just six days previously he had been on the track in the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, running away from the field in the men’s 5,000m final.
In doing so, he became only the fifth man to complete an Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m double, following in the spike marks of Hannes Kolehmainen, Emil Zatopek, Vladimir Kuts and his fellow countryman Miruts Yifter – or “Yifter the Shifter,” as David Coleman rechristened the balding Ethiopian when he took his leave of Steve Ovett on the final scorching lap of the 5,000m at the Gateshead Games in 1977.
Quite apart from his Olympian exertions in China, before arriving in Zurich in the early hoursof Thursday Bekele had spent most of Wednesday back home in Addis Ababa receiving the kind of welcome that even Jamaica will struggle to match when the Lightning Bolt returns home with his three gold medals a week tomorrow. “The prime minister and the president were at the airport to meet myself and the rest of the Ethiopian team,” Bekele said. “On the road from the airport and in the main square in Addis there were so many people to greet us. One million,at least.
“It was an 11-hour flight from Beijing to Addis on Wednesday and then seven hours from Addis to here overnight, arriving Thursday morning. I am feeling a little bit tired but I am happy to win here and run the fastest time in the world this year [12min 50.18sec]. I have one race left now. I will concentrate on winning and not on the time.”
That race is the 3,000m in the Aviva British Grand Prix at Gateshead this afternoon. The organisers might not have the Lightning Bolt on the bill but they have the 5ft 4in Bekele, as giant a phenomenon in the distance-running world as the 6ft 5in Jamaican has become in the sprinting fraternity. At 26, Bekele has put the 5,000m and 10,000m world records beyond the reach of his contemporaries, and like Bolt he has three Olympic gold medals in his possession now, having pocketed the 10,000m in Athens four years ago.
“It does not upset me that Bolt is taking the spotlight,” he insisted. “Like everyone else, I enjoyed watching his performances in Beijing. They were very special. He broke three world records and I think nobody is going to do this again. He is a very special athlete.”
So, for that matter, is Bekele. He has yet to losea 10,000m race. He haswon the main race at the World Cross Country Championships on a record six occasions. With his smooth, gliding gait he covers the ground on track, road and country with the ease of a Sunday-morning club runner.
In his private life, too, Bekele has found a serenity. In January 2005 he was training in woods outside Addis Ababa with his fiancée, Alem Techale, when she collapsed and died in his arms. In November last year he was married to Danawit Gebregziabher, an Ethiopian film actress. “For me right now, life is good,” the diminutive king of distance running reflected.
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. Ken Livingstone’s Venezuelan adventure follows in some surprising footsteps
By Graham Stewart
“A prophet is not without honour save in his own country,” as the electorally rejected will tell you. Unfortunately, the international transfer market that finds foreign employment for footballers does not really operate for former politicians.
After all, one cannot really extol Britishness one moment and lead the German Christian Democrats the next. Either dumped politicians must develop an enthusiasm for the supranational EU or endorse revolution sans frontières. With its Che Guevara chic, the latter clearly appeals to Ken Livingstone, who has just accepted a post as an adviser to President Chávez of Venezuela.
At least in Caracas Mr Livingstone can still hang out with radical socialists. A far more adventurous journey was travelled by the suffragette activist Sylvia Pankhurst.
Having been jailed for her militant prosecution of the “votes for women” campaign, Pankhurst did not revel in the victory. She despaired at how little women voters wanted to change Britain. When her flirtation with communism ended sourly, avenues for British political adventure dried up.
Yet few imagined that, in 1936, she would pop up at the League of Nations in Geneva as adviser to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God.
Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia excited her anti-fascist ire. But Pankhurst’s former feminist and socialist comrades found it surprising that she could become not only the displaced emperor’s groupie but also an apologist for his semi-feudal regime where slavery was only just beginning to be curbed and the population was largely illiterate.
Following Haile Selassie’s triumphant return to Addis Ababa in 1941, she argued vociferously for Ethiopia’s absorption of Eritrea and Somaliland and never missed an opportunity to denounce British policy. She also claimed that Ethiopian women enjoyed better rights than British women. How many Ethiopians she asked may be disputed as she never bothered learning the Amharic language.
The Ethiopian Government bankrolled her activities and, from 1956, she lived there at the Emperor’s expense. Thus the former agitator against the British Establishment ended up with the Order of the Queen of Sheba.
She died believing that her work for Ethiopia was of far greater value than anything she had done for ungrateful British womanhood. Perhaps Mr Livingstone may get a statue in Caracas long before anyone decides who should top the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.
(CPJ) — Reliable sources in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa have informed CPJ this week that our site was inaccessible on the servers of the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation, the country’s official Internet service provider. A handful of separate Internet users in the country have independently confirmed seeing “The page cannot be displayed” messages when attempting to access our site. The same sources have reported that e-mails they have tried to send to CPJ have not gone through.
Web sites, particularly foreign-based independent sites and blogs discussing political reform and human rights, have been blocked on a recurring basis in Ethiopia since the government cracked down on free media following disputed elections in 2005. In 2007, OpenNet said it has gathered “overwhelming evidence” that Ethiopia was among the nations worldwide restricting the Internet access of its citizens.
This time, the reports emerged over the weekend as CPJ was investigating the detention of newspaper editor Amare Aregawi in northern Ethiopia. Last year, sources in the country disclosed that the CPJ site was blocked on World Press Freedom Day, when CPJ named Ethiopia the world’s worst backslider on press freedom. The moves are part of the Ethiopian government’s pattern of restricting coverage of issues deemed sensitive such as the political activities of the foreign-based opposition, the high-profile trial of Ethiopian pop singer Teddy Afro, food shortage conditions, or the insurgency in the western Ogaden region.
Ethiopian journalists sent CPJ this screen shot of what they see when they try to access our site.
Authorities have repeatedly denied blocking Web sites, even casting doubt “if the problem really exists,” to quote Information Ministry Spokesman Zemedkun Tekle.
This week, in a telephone interview with CPJ, Bereket Simon, a top senior advisor to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, echoed the same position. “The government has no policy of blocking Web sites. Accessibility to any Web site is open,” he told me. He said he had not received any complaints from Ethiopians about blocked sites, and questioned whether such reports were credible. The government has no control over foreign-based sites, he said.
In July, Simon asserted that the mushrooming of private electronic media in Ethiopia was a sign that political dissent and free speech were not “shrinking.” Still, many foreign-based news and human rights sites besides ours–including the popular U.S.-based Nazret—remain inaccessible.
Kenenisa Bekele at the Weltklasse Zürich,
ÅF Golden League press conference on
Thu 28 Aug 2008 [Photo:Chris Turner]
(IAAF) Zürich, Switzerland – In Beijing last week, Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele achieved a feat that even his great compatriot Haile Gebrselassie was unable to match in his illustrious track career. Joining Hannes Kolehmainen (FIN), Emil Zatopek (CZE), Vladimir Kuts (URS), Lasse Viren (FIN) and Miruts Yifter (ETH), Bekele is now one of only six men to win the 5000m and 10,000m double at the Olympic Games since those metric distances were introduced to the Olympic programme in 1912.
But Bekele’s historic achievement in China, as that of his female compatriot Tirunesh Dibaba over the same distances which was unique in women’s Olympic distance running history, was largely overlooked by the world because of one man, Jamaican Usain Bolt, whose phenomenal sprint successes transcended Athletics to make him the overall star of Beijing 2008, along with swimmer Michael Phelps.
Bekele, the World record holder for 5000 and 10,000m, was at a press conference in Zürich this afternoon ahead of tomorrow night’s Weltklasse Zürich,ÅF Golden League meeting (Fri 29) where he’ll run the 5000m. Was he upset that the 22-year-old Jamaican had upstaged the rest of the athletics programme which had produced so many other outstanding results including his own?
“No, I’m not upset (that Bolt’s success took all the headlines).”
“We cannot compare Bolt with myself. Sprinting and distance running, it is not possible to compare.”
“Bolt is very strong, very special,” said Bekele. “To break two World records (three with the sprint relay) in an Olympic Games is very special.”
The phrase ‘very special’ was constantly on Bekele’s lips this afternoon, and is how he also summed up his own Olympic double. The magnitude of his successes left him searching for an adequate description, and eventually to concede – “there are no words to describe how I feel…what can I say, its so very special for me.”
A very famous place to race
After a total of three races and Olympic records in both the 5000m (12:57.82) and 10,000m (27:01.17) finals, Bekele could be excused for wanting to take a holiday before competing again.
It’s been a busy few days of travel since his 5000m victory on Saturday (23). With the rest of the Ethiopian team Bekele has already made the trip back home to receive the expected rapturous welcome in the capital Addis Ababa.
“People at home expect success, they are waiting to celebrate after each Games. Yes, there were a million or more on the streets to welcome us, and the Prime Minister and President were there to greet us.”
Zürich Meeting Director Patrick Magyar revealed today that it took a great effort to persuade the Ethiopian Federation to let Bekele leave Addis Ababa early during the celebrations so that he could compete here on Friday.
“IAAF President Lamine Diack greatly supported us on this and convinced the Federation to allow Kenenisa to compete in Zürich,” confirmed Magyar.
But the matter was always clear in Bekele’s mind at least.
“Yes, I always intended to run in Zürich,” said the three-time World and two-time Olympic 10,000m champion. “It is a good place, with good organisation, a very famous place to race.”
I just come here to win
But what of his hopes for Friday’s race?
“I’m a little tired, as it is very close to the Olympic Games. I can’t push for a World record anymore (this season).”
“So I don’t talk of records for this race. After my successes in Beijing, I just come here to win.”
Many more years on the track
What of the longer term future, and following Haile Gebrselassie to the marathon?
“The Marathon? It’s too early for me to think of this yet. I still have time to run many more 5000 and 10,000m races, with faster times and breaking records. I want to keep running these distances at World Championships and Olympic Games for many more years,” confirmed Bekele.
It’s a statement which should concern anyone with Olympic aspirations in 2012, and as Bekele only turned 26-years-old in June, perhaps even in 2016!
