Somali Peacekeeping Mission to Go Ahead Despite Current Troop Shortfall
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Also in the news: [Producer of 'YEtechekonu KeLdoch' arrested] - [Military Rule?] - [UN Security Council cuts troop levels in Eritrea-Ethiopia peacekeeping mission] - [Somalia: Mortars Fired At an Ethiopian Base, Several Injured] - [NPR: Saving the World in Ethiopia]International: [First bird flu death in Nigeria] - [Bush Says Invading Iran 'Not the Plan'] - [Germany seeks 13 over CIA 'kidnap'] - [British Police Arrest 8 in Alleged Kidnapping Plot] - [Cuban TV Airs New Castro Images] - [Best-selling author Sidney Sheldon dead at 89]and more of today's top stories!
In the U.S, Canada, Australia and Europe; Ethiopians are preparing for mass demonstrations to bring to the world’s attention the plight of Human rights activists, journalists and opposition party leaders who are unjustly incarcerated by the government of Ethiopia _________________________________________________________
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Amnesty International USA
Present:
"Peaceful Resistance and Civil Disobedience as Treason: Sustained Crackdown on Dissent in Ethiopia"
(More...)
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Producer of 'YEtechekonu KeLdoch' arrested
(Ethio-ZagoL): The attack on free speech by the EPRDF continues unabated. Daniel Fisseha, executive producer of "Oppressed Jokes", was arrested on Saturday. "Oppresssed Jokes", the brilliant collection of works of stand-up comedy, had become instant hit in the country last year.
The jokes by up and coming comedians focused on social and political issues, including satires on the personality and rule of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's dictator. Art critics considered the collection as the first of its kind in the country in content and form. (Source)
See video Clips from YETechekonu KeldoCH:
-Clip 1 - Meles Interview
-Clip 2 - Eritrea Propaganda
-Clip 3 - Palace guards
Military Rule?
Lewit, from Addis Abeba
Today Addis truly reflects the virtual police state in which we live. Over the past week thousands of federal policemen have descended upon the city for the AU summit and, while this may help to ease the fears of the most corrupt African leaders visiting from abroad, residents here feel anything but safe.
I have never seen the city like this—a comparable number of forces were deployed during Meskel (but concentrated entirely around the Square), but the atmosphere now feels even more oppressive due to their overwhelming omnipresence.
Under the watch of conspicuous rooftop snipers, federal and military wagons currently rule the roads, spilling out dozens upon dozens of blue-clad, heavily armed soldiers at a moment’s notice. These policemen are literally EVERYWHERE, waiting with guns cocked outside retaurants and cafes, schools and churches, in abandoned lots and on crowded corners, both on the main streets and side roads.(More...)
UN Security Council cuts troop levels in Eritrea-Ethiopia peacekeeping mission
UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council voted Tuesday to reduce the peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea from 2,300 troops to 1,700, expressing disappointment in the stalled process to draw the border between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbors.
The 15-member council unanimously approved extending the mission in the tense 620-mile-long buffer zone for another six months.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the extension last week, warning that another war could break out between the two countries if progress is not urgently made on the peace process.
Ban said resumed fighting would risk destabilizing the entire region, given the precarious security situation in neighboring Somalia, where African leaders are trying to muster an 8,000-member African Union peacekeeping force. (More...)
Somalia: Mortars Fired At an Ethiopian Base, Several Injured
Unknown gunmen fired several missiles at the Ethiopian military base in El-arfid, a settlement on the edge of north of the capital Mogadishu, on Tuesday night. At least three huge explosions could be heard in some parts of the capital last night.
Witnesses told Shabelle that a group of unknown armed men reportedly riding in a car has fired at least three mortars at the Ethiopian military barrack that lies between El-arfid and Darmoley, settlements, about 10 km south of the capital.(More...)
[NPR] Saving the World in Ethiopia: One Child at a Time
...One of the patients, Fantan Dere, is a young girl unsure of her age. She tells nurse Bethlehem Tesfaye that she may be 10, but the nurse thinks it's more likely Fantan is 12. Fantan says she has been married for four years; marriages happen at a very early age for girls in rural Ethiopia. But they usually aren't consummated until the girl is ready to conceive. Fantan didn't live with her husband until two years ago. In July, she went into labor with her first child. She was in labor for three days before she was taken to a hospital in Dessie. By then, the baby had died and Fantan was severely injured.(More...)
Somali Peacekeeping Mission Will Go Ahead Despite Current Troop Shortfall
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia Jan 31, 2007 (AP)— Three battalions of peacekeepers from Uganda and Nigeria are ready to be deployed in Somalia and will be airlifted in as soon as possible, a senior AU official said Wednesday.
The African Union was pressing ahead with its peacekeeping mission to Somalia despite securing only half the 8,000 troops needed at a key summit of African leaders that ended Tuesday. The hope is the African force will prevent a routed Islamic movement from taking advantage of a power vacuum created by the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces who have been supporting Somalia's internationally recognized government. (More...)
Best-selling author Sidney Sheldon dead at 89
Sidney Sheldon, who enjoyed very successful careers in cinema, theatre, and later television before turning to fiction and becoming a spectacularly popular novelist, has died in Los Angeles following complications from pneumonia. He was 89.Sheldon, who was born in Chicago in 1917, sold his first written work at the tender age of 10, securing $10 for a poem. After trying a variety of jobs during the Depression, he found his first Hollywood job as a script reader at the age of 17, while writing his own screenplays at night. He also enjoyed precocious success on another coast, in another medium, at one time having three musicals on Broadway: a rewritten The Merry Widow, Jackpot and Dream with Music.(More..)
Today's Top Stories
-First bird flu death in Nigeria-Bush Says Invading Iran 'Not the Plan'
-US money is 'squandered' in Iraq
-Germany seeks 13 over CIA 'kidnap'
-British Police Arrest 8 in Alleged Kidnapping Plot
-Cuban TV Airs New Castro Images
-Berlusconi's Wife Demands His Apology
-Town to immigrants: you can't kill women
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Libya's President Muammar al-Gaddafi is escorted by his (female) bodyguards after the morning session of the African Union Summit of Heads of States in the United Nations office in Addis Ababa January 30, 2007. REUTERS/Andrew Heavens 
Jan. 26, 2007 — With her good looks, the 28-year-old Ethiopian knockout is one of the fashion world's "it" girls and the first black woman chosen as the face of Estee Lauder. 
The following article takes a critical look at the synopsis of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s “
Since she was 6 years old, Maselech Mercho has hiked up into the lush Entoto hills near Addis Ababa to gather wood, illegally, from the protected eucalyptus forests. She has no tools but her hands, so she pulls the branches she can reach, and carries out some 65 pounds of firewood on her back.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 01/25 - African leaders will make a solid commitment to holding the first-ever World Cup on the continent in 2010 in South Africa when they convene here 29 January for their annual summit, a top African Union (AU) official said here Wednesday.
NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger has met top Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who is being held by Kenyan intelligence in Nairobi, a U.S. embassy official said on Wednesday.
The U.S. official, who confirmed the meeting which a source had told Reuters about earlier, spoke on condition of anonymity and declined to give any details. Ahmed, one of the most visible faces of the defeated Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) during its six-month rule of most of southern Somalia, surrendered at the Kenya-Somalia border.
Ryszard Kapuscinski, a globe-trotting journalist from Poland whose writing, often tinged with magical realism, brought him critical acclaim and a wide international readership, died yesterday in Warsaw. He was 74.
Ethiopian Police beat and killed activist Tesfaye Tadesse, age 25, after dragging him out of his friends home. Tesfaye's autopsy revealed that he had lost three of his front teeth and one eye due to severe beating. This is believed to be the sixth politically motivated killing in Addis Ababa, by govt. Police in the past week.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- A top leader of Somalia's ousted Islamic movement seen by the U.S. as a potential key to preventing a widespread insurgency there surrendered to authorities and is under protection in Nairobi, officials said Monday.
The ousted speaker of Somalia's parliament, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, said on Thursday the impoverished east African nation risked sliding into dictatorship and accused President Abdullahi Yusuf of seeking to rule by force and fear.
ADDIS ABABA -- Wubit Shiferaw blanches at the smell from the open latrine pit that passes underneath her feet in her Addis Ababa slum dwelling and declares: "The conditions are simply just unbearable." 
Jan 18, 2007 — A top U.N. envoy on Thursday stressed the need to protect Somalia's government so Ethiopian troops can pull out without leaving the country vulnerable to remnants of the ousted Islamic movement. 
This was expressed Tuesday in Tripoli by visiting Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin, during a meeting with his Libyan counterpart Abderrahmane Chalgham to whom he handed a message from Zenawi to Col Kadhafi.
The AU summit in Addis Ababa scheduled for January 29th to 30th will address three of the world's most visible hot spots - the Darfur region of Sudan, Somalia, and the Congo. "Africa will be the focus of many of my priorities, and my first major trip will reflect that focus," Ban Ki-moon told a news conference.