4 soldiers from Ethiopia arrive in Asmara (ETHIO REVIEW)

www.nazrett.com Home of Ethiopian News and Blog Breaking News ASMARA — Four soldiers who opposed the tribal junta's ethnic apartheid polices in Ethiopia, have arrived in Asmara this week, according to Tigist Tesfa, Ethiopian Review's correspondent in Eritrea. The four solider are: 1. Corporal AbdulWahab AbudlGalf from Northern Command's 21st Division, 2. Corporal GebreEgzihabher Amare from Northern Command's 21st Division, 3. Corporal Jemal Mohammed Miruts from Northern Command's 2oth Division, and 4. Private Abrham Getu Zeleke from Northern Command 21st Division. Every day about 20 -30 Ethiopians who are brutalized by the Woyanne junta are currently escaping to Eritrean. The refuguees include students, professionals in various field, soldiers and in recent days priests. Many of the refugees join Ethiopian freedom fighters, and others live in Eritrea as political asylees or move on to other places such as Europe.

Prison Terms Upheld for Two Crimnal protestants in Ethiopia

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Please Visit also youtube page where truth is revbieled by the Ethiopian Orthodox church pastor, WATCH ENTIRE VIDEO HERE October 1, 2009 NAIROBI, Kenya (CDN) -- An Ethiopian court on Sept. 21 threw out an appeal by two evangelists said to be falsely accused of offering money and gifts to people to convert to Christianity, thus upholding their six-month prison sentences. Temesgen Alemayehu and Tigist Welde Amanuel of Wengel Lealem church in Addis Ababa went to Debiretabor, Amhara state, to plant a church in July. After a week in the area, according to area Christian sources, their proclamation of Christ led several people to confess their sins and receive Him as Savior. On July 19, however, some passersby began to question the two evangelists, and Christian sources said a heated argument led to a group attack on the two evangelists, wounding Alemayehu. Amanuel sustained minor injuries, the sources said, but managed to escape to a nearby home; the mob followed her into the compound, demanding she be handed over to them. The homeowners refused, saying they would not cooperate with criminals and would instead hand her over to police. "I would not allow any attack against the woman," the unidentified owner of the home said, according to one church leader. Police arrived at the scene of the attack and protected Alemayehu from the violent band, made up of members of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), and took him into custody. The attacking group accused Alemayehu and Amanuel of insulting their religion. Christian sources said a group within the EOC called "Mahibere Kidusan" ("Fellowship of Saints") had incited members to attack the two evangelists as they were proclaiming Christ on the roadside. The increasingly powerful group's purpose is to counter all reform movements within the EOC and shield the denomination from outside threats. In time the EOC attackers fabricated accusations of offering money or gifts to make converts, Christian sources said, but under police questioning Alemayehu and Amanuel said they had only shared their faith to interested people without making such offers. They also tried to explain to police that it was their constitutional right to do so. Police, however, submitted the attackers' false statements to the district prosecutor, Christian sources said. False Testimony On July 22, Alemayehu and Amanuel appeared at district court in Debiretabor to hear charges against them. A charge sheet claimed that they were caught offering money and gifts to people to change their religion, and Christian sources said witnesses falsely testified to that effect. The next day, the court delivered a guilty verdict. Alemayehu stated that his only sin was telling of his faith in Christ to interested persons, and that he had a constitutional right to do so. The judge sentenced him and Amanuel to six months of prison. Police immediately transferred both Christians to Debiretabor prison. "There is an open conspiracy between judges, police and prison officers," the church leader said. "Police speeded up the investigation and brought it to the district prosecutor's attention within a day. Witnesses were organized to falsely testify at court. The judges passed the sentence refusing the right to defense." Debiretabor is the seat for south Gondar Zone administration in Amhara state. As in the rest of Amhara, Debiretabor's population is predominantly EOC with hostile attitudes towards evangelicals, Christian sources said. They added that churches already operating in Debiretabor and surrounding areas meet with continued EOC resistance. In some cases, the sources said, EOC priests have urged attacks against Christians, and government authorities influenced by Mahibere Kidusan have infringed on Christians' rights. It was unknown if the judge and police officers in Alemayehu and Amanuel's case were under the influence of Mahibere Kidusan, but the local church leader said there were signs of bias in the case. "Prison officials are handling both believers with harsh treatments, and after all these, no one is questioned for either the process or its result," the church leader said. "We are waiting for God's intervention on all this." In the rejection of the appeal, the high court judge said that he found "no mistake of law interpretation" to change the verdict of the lower court, a Christian source said. "That means now the two believers have to serve the six-month sentence unless they appeal and achieve something at the regional State Supreme Court," he said. "We heard that the two are thinking of appealing at the regional State Supreme Court in Bahirdar soon." Amanuel is assigned to a cell where criminals including serial killers are serving their terms, a source said, and they have threatened her. Both she and Alemayehu continue to share their faith in Christ with other inmates, in spite of insults from the prisoners. Church leaders in Debiretabor said they brought the case to the attention of the regional state vice president, and that he sent his representative to visit Alemayehu and Amanuel in prison. The representative discussed the situation with the district court and with police. Sources said the visits,

Ottawa to pressure Ethiopia to release Canadian

Oct 01, 2009 11:03 AM Debra Black Staff Reporter Minister of Transportation John Baird hopes to go to Ethiopia later this month to pressure the Ethiopian government to release a Canadian citizen who is serving a life sentence there. Bashir Makhtal, who was convicted in August of being a member of a separatist group and engaging in an armed struggle against the Ethiopian government, is an ethnic Somali born in Ethiopia's Ogaden region. The former Torontonian was arrested more than two and a half years ago. He and his family here have always maintained his innocence. Baird said he has been increasingly frustrated by the case and the government's many attempts to meet with senior Ethiopian officials both in New York during the UN meetings last week and in Addis Ababa. He has attempted to go to Ethiopia and meet with officials there on several occasions, but his trip has repeatedly been postponed because senior officials were unable to meet with him. "I'm frustrated," said Baird. "Bashir's family is frustrated. We need to step it up a notch and take the case directly to senior officials in Addis Ababa." Baird said he has applied for a visa to travel to Ethiopia and hopes to fly there during the Parliamentary break after Thanksgiving weekend. Baird said he respects the fact Ethiopia is an independent country, but the Ethiopian government must understand for the Canadian government this case continues to be an "important priority." "I'm prepared to take the case to Addis Ababa directly on behalf of the government and the people of Canada," Baird said. "He's (Makhtal) a Canadian and there is no evidence he has done a thing wrong and his government is standing behind him 100 per cent. We'll keep up the fight for Bashir. We're not going away on this. My desire to go to Ethiopia underlines the priority the government gives the case. We consider Ethiopia a friend and we want to make the case directly to that friend." Baird's comments come just before a news conference that took place this morning on Parliament Hill with Bashir Makhtal's cousin Said, representatives from Amnesty International, the NDP, and Bashir Makhtal's Canadian lawyer Lorne Waldman. The group plans to plead for direct intervention in the case from the Prime Minister of Canada. Said Makhtal – while appreciative of Baird's repeated attempts to help his cousin and other efforts by government representatives such as Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Deepak Obhrai and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon – is also frustrated by what he sees as a lack of action. "I've been getting all kinds of promises that our government is doing the best it can ...but I would like to see some results from that. We have given enough time to the Ethiopian government to settle the case. I want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bring my cousin back to Canada. The government admits it's a wrongful conviction. What are we waiting for? I'm asking the government of Canada to forcefully request the release of my cousin. I believe the pressure has to come from the Prime Minister of Canada."

'Ardi' Skeleton Sheds Light on Origin of Human Species

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Washington Post Staff Writer


Thursday, October 1, 2009; 5:07 PM



Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago in the woodlands of East Africa. She spent most of her time in the trees. She stood about four feet tall, weighed 110 pounds, and had long arms, short legs, and a grasping big toe that was perfect for clambering branch to branch. She ate in the trees, raised her offspring in the trees, slept in the trees.



This Story

'Ardi' Skeleton Sheds Light on Origin of Human Species

Sharpening the Focus On Human Evolution

Human's Oldest Relative Found

But sometimes she came down to the ground, and stood upright. She could walk on two legs. She was, in a sense, taking baby steps on a journey that would change the world.



"Ardi" is the nickname given to a shattered skeleton that an international team of scientists painstakingly excavated from the Ethiopian desert, analyzed over the course of 15 years, and declared Thursday to be a major breakthrough in the study of human origins. Ardi lived more than a million years before "Lucy," a much-celebrated, 3.2 million-year-old fossil of an early human progenitor found just 45 miles away.



If the scientists are correct, Ardi and her kind were the ancestors of our ancestors. She was a transitional figure, almost a hybrid -- a tree creature who could carry food in her arms as she explored the woodland floor on two legs.



The skeletal remnants of Ardi were recovered along with bones from at least 35 other members of a species that the scientists call Ardipithecus ramidus. Their arduous investigation had incited grumbling in a scientific community that had grown impatient to find out what exactly had been found in the silty clay of Ethiopia. The answers are dramatic, detailed in 11 papers published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science and discussed in dual press conferences in Washington and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.





The discovery of Ardi "further confirms that Ethiopia is the cradle of humankind," said Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the paleontologist who found the first two bones of Ardi in 1994.



Human origins is a field with high stakes and small bones, and the elaborate roll-out of the new research probably will trigger debate about the message contained in fossils so fragile they had to be excavated with dental picks and porcupine quills.



"It was a sort of a time capsule from 4.4. million years ago with contents that nobody had ever seen before," said Tim White, a University of California at Berkeley paleoanthropologist who led the Ardi research team. "We worked for years at opening that time capsule by collecting every shred of evidence that we could find."



The scientists who found Ardi do not contend that she necessarily evolved into Lucy. The human line of primates could have splintered, with some species turning into genetic dead ends. Lucy's line of primates could have diverged from Ardi's line long before Ardi lived. Even so, White said he believes that his team has documented an evolutionary sequence that shows, at the genus level, where people came from. Ardipithecus, then Australopithecus, then Homo.



Lucy, a member of the species Australopithecus afarensis, was a small-brained primate that had fully adapted to a bipedal life and had expanded its habitat beyond the forest into the savannah of Africa. Unlike Ardi, she lacked the grasping big toe. Ardi and Lucy had different teeth, with Lucy's enlarged molars more adapted to a wide-ranging diet on the savannah.



"Ardi tells us twice as much as Lucy did. We have hands and feet, a more complete environment, a more complete skeleton, it's older, it's more primitive, it shows us the process of transformation from common ancestor to hominid," said C. Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent State University who was part of the Ardi team.



White and colleagues found the first signs of the new species in 1994 in what is known as the Middle Awash, a site in a treeless desert that 4 million years ago would have been much wetter, teeming with birds, reptiles, primates and thickly covered with fig and palm trees. On Nov. 5, 1994, Haile-Selassie, then a Berkeley graduate student and now a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, found two finger bones. Further digging turned up scraps of a pelvis, feet, hands, chips from a skull. By the end of three years of digging, the scientists realized they'd found a paleontological treasure, a partial skeleton, broken up and ravaged by time. This was Ardi.

Man 'looking to kill blacks' murdered Sudanese

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CLINTON Rintoull, drunk and stoned, spray painted ''F--- da niggas'' on the loungeroom wall of his Noble Park share-house before stepping outside armed with a metal pole.




A resident walking his dog saw him in the street yelling: ''These blacks are turning this town into the Bronx. I'm going to take my town back. I'm looking to kill the blacks.''



Still fuming about an incident three days earlier when he reported being chased by a group of 20 Sudanese men, some carrying knives, Rintoull found Liep Gony. Rintoull's mate Dylan Sabatino, 21, also armed with a metal pole, joined him. The pair hit Gony, 19, repeatedly with their metal poles, fracturing his skull, and left him to die in the gutter about 10.30pm on September 26, 2007.



They returned home, where Sabatino's girlfriend, Shandelle Laurie, saw them go to the backyard and wash blood off the poles, which had been bent out of shape in the attack. Rintoull, 24, told her: ''I bashed a nigger and I think he's dead.''



Prosecutor Aaron Schwartz detailed the killing yesterday in the Supreme Court, where Rintoull pleaded guilty to murder, and Sabatino pleaded guilty to manslaughter.



While Rintoull and Sabatino were planning to flee with their girlfriends to Adelaide, where they were arrested four days later, Mr Gony's family was making the decision to switch off his life support system after being told he would never recover.



After escaping war-torn Sudan and surviving a fire in an Ethiopian refugee camp, Mr Gony's mother, Martha Alma, thought her family's troubles were over when they were granted asylum in Australia in 1999. She had lost her husband to the war and a son in the fire. She said in a statement that her two surviving sons and daughter were having difficulty coming to terms with the death of Liep - a ''wonderful son and brother''.



Mr Gony's sister Nyachoul Gony said: ''Liep was not just my brother, he was my best friend. I have two hands, my right hand and left. The right-hand was Liep, it is gone now. Everything is so heavy.''



Former immigration minister Kevin Andrews sparked a race row at the time of Mr Gony's death when he said it was linked to a failure of Sudanese people to integrate. The Press Council last year upheld a complaint that The Australian newspaper incorrectly implied his death was at the hands of a Sudanese gang.



George Georgiou, for Rintoull, said it was ''overly simplistic'' to characterise the attack as racially motivated. He said Rintoull was driven by anger about being previously chased by a group of Sudanese youths when he went to give a sandwich to a boy of African descent in a derelict house.



''He chose the unfortunate word [nigger], but we submit what he is really describing is a gang that operates out of the Noble Park [train] station.''



Justice Elizabeth Curtain said Rintoull had not simply misused language. ''You cannot get over what is painted on those walls … it is all part of the one episode and he is geed up in that mood and he goes out looking for them [black people].''



The pre-sentence hearing continues.

Kenyan and Ethiopian authorities have seized over 1,200 kilograms (2,600 pounds) of ivory - representing the killing of about 100 elephants.

www.nazrett.com Home of Ethiopian News and Blog Breaking News Raids in the main airports of Kenya and Nairobi have netted two shipments of bloodstained tusks headed for Thailand. While the final destination is not known at the moment, these shipments may be part of the growing link between China and elephant poaching. » See also: 163 New Species Discovered in Asia » Get EcoWorldly by RSS or sign up by email. Earlier this year, an illegal shipment with a final destination of China was seized in Laos - and late last year, a disturbing connection was noted: Most ivory smugglers arrested at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport were found to be Chinese nationals. In the same BBC report, it was noted that poaching is on the increase due to the insatiable demand for ivory in Asia - no matter what the cost. Elephant poaching and Chinese workers in Kenya Wildlife experts on the ground in Kenya are reporting a disturbing increase in elephant killings that coincides with the arrival of Chinese workers for massive road projects. Most of the elephants have been killed in close proximity to where the Chinese are working. Moses Litroh, Kenya Wildlife Service elephant program coordinator, sums it up. More than 50 per cent of the dead elephants we have found have been in that area in the north where the Chinese are working on the road. We can perhaps assume that they have had a hand in it, maybe not all of them, but the coincidence is causing us great concern. And Wildlife Direct’s Paula Kahumbu pointed out in Reuters out that there are Chinese in Kenya who are obtaining ivory at “local prices” and then reselling when they return to China. We’ve seen a huge increase in the amount of poaching. We believe it is primarily due to the fact that the ivory sale last November has actually stimulated the markets … There’s a massive influx of people, who are not very wealthy, who can afford to buy ivory at local prices and who make a lot of money out of it when they get it back to China. She also points out that the ease of shipping containers of ivory is suspicious. It (should) not be easy to move a container load of ivory from a country to another when there are such strict regulations. It means there is facilitation going on. A recent Financial Times article - Shopping Habits of China’s ‘Suddenly Wealthy’ - revealed that the rise in Chinese workers and illegal ivory activity are connected. In a scramble for Africa’s minerals and resources, the continent has seen a recent influx of Chinese workers – a presence that is visibly reflected in the illegal retailing of ivory. Naturally, the Chinese government has denied that there is connection to elephant poaching. Mainstream media is attempting to bury the information by repeatedly syndicating reports linking elephant deaths to droughts, but not poaching. A search on the topic will illustrate this point. Of course, China’s response is little more than a PR exercise - similar to the handling of the Uighur riots earlier this year, when China blocked Twitter and other social networking sites to keep information from getting out of the country. There is more at China Denies Links to Elephant Poaching in Kenya. Coincidences? Really? The growing flow of information linking China to elephant poaching is too strong to ignore. And at this point, it is irresponsible to continue to do so. Who will step forward and hold China accountable on the world stage for its role in Kenya’s elephant atrocities? Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/snake3yes/ / CC BY 2.0 Tweet This Post Tags: China, chinese, Chinese workers Kenya, elephant poaching, Ethiopia, illegal wildlife trade, ivory, Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Kenya, Kenya Wildlife Service, Nairobi, Paula Kahumbu, poaching, smuggling, Thailand, Wildlife Direct