"Taptap Send is an app that lets people send money back home quickly and at very low prices," says Helen Amelga, the company's US-Ethiopia Launcher. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 20th, 2022
New York (TADIAS) — In the following interview Helen Amelga, the US-Ethiopia Launcher at Taptap Send, explains the newly launched mobile money transfer service, which is considered the first app-based platform to specifically focus on remittances from the Diaspora to people back home.
Helen, whom we have previously featured in Tadias for her public service work in the Ethiopian American community, was most recently the Deputy Area Director at Office of Councilmember Kevin de Leon in Los Angeles, California.
Helen Amelga, the US-Ethiopia Launcher at Taptap Send. (Courtesy photo)
TADIAS: Helen, thank you for your time and congratulations on your new position as Taptap Send’s US representative for Ethiopia.
Helen Amelga: Hi Liben, thank you for having me back. It is always a pleasure to chat with the Tadias team.
TADIAS: How are you enjoying your transition from public service to business? What are some of the rewards and challenges?
Helen: I always try to focus my work through a lens of service. From my positions working in local government here in California, to the work I do through the Ethiopian Democratic Club of Los Angeles, the focus is always on serving my community. My work as US-Ethiopia Launcher at Taptap Send is an extension of that service. Through this role I am able to apply my skill set to serve Ethiopians not only in the diaspora, but those directly on the continent as well.
The work is incredibly rewarding, through connecting people to remittance services I am able to help folks get money to loved ones back home, and beyond the individual, I get to help the larger Ethiopian economy. It’s a win win.
TADIAS: Please tell us about Taptap Send and its recently launched mobile money transfer service to Ethiopia. How does it work?
Helen: Taptap Send is an app that lets people send money back home to Africa and Asia quickly and at very low prices. Since launching in summer 2018, we’ve already moved tens of millions of dollars and reached tens of thousands of customers. We just raised $65 million in a Series B funding. We’re live in the UK, EU, US and Canada, and we support payments into Ethiopia and 21 other countries with more countries launching soon.
How it works is simple, a user in the US just needs to download the Taptap Send app from the Apple Store or Google Play, upload their bank or debit card details, then select a recipient in Ethiopia. The recipient does not need a Taptap Send account. Select a dollar amount and hit send. You’re done! The funds will be deposited directly into your loved ones account that day.
TADIAS: Taptap Send is also the first platform to specifically focus on Remittances from the Diaspora to people back home. How does it differ from other money transfer companies and what are the benefits for us here in the Diaspora?
Helen: Great question. Here at Taptap Send we believe in impact first. We exclusively pursue products and strategies that are in the interests of our customers and the communities we serve, while recognizing the tradeoffs this implies.
Direct benefits to Diaspora are that we offer a great exchange rate and same day transfers at no fee. The app provides quick and easy access to sending money quite literally at the tap of a finger. Many of us have been in a situation where a loved one has an emergency back home, whether it be medical or elsewhere, and we need to get them money fast. Taptap Send gives us the power to get that funds there quickly just by using our phone. No need to go into a bank or brick and mortar institution.
Sending money legally also grows the Ethiopian economy which has been experiencing a cash shortage for some time now.
TADIAS: What are the various financial institutions you are working with in Ethiopia?
Helen: We provide Bank transfers to Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and Dashen bank. Mobile money transfers can be made to Amole and HelloCash, both of which provide cash out options at their local service centers. We will expand to include Telebirr mobile wallet in the coming weeks.
E-wallets in particular are great because the recipients can use their wallet to fund transfers, pay bills and pay diverse merchants without needing to cash out. Taptap Send in partnership with these services is revolutionizing the way we send and spend money.
TADIAS: Do people in the U.S. need an account in Ethiopia to send money?
Helen: Nope, all they need is the Taptap Send app and a debit card.
TADIAS: According to a press release from the company “the UN has set a goal for remittance pricing and commissions to be no higher for any company than 3% of the total sent. Taptap Send says that it’s the only company in the space that has publicly committed to that goal.” Please tell our audience about that goal and the various fees involved in sending and receiving money?
Helen: Our CEO put it best:
Cross-border payments are not only a large market — $540B through formal channels alone, with the informal sector estimated to be almost as large — but are also the central source of capital for low and middle income countries: remittance inflows exceeded foreign direct investment plus official development assistance by in 2020. And they’re growing quickly: more than 7x since 2000. So it should come as no surprise that the United Nations included lowering the price of remittances to 3% as a top-level indicator to “reduce inequality” among their Sustainable Development Goals. The cost of global remittances is simply that important to the reduction in inequality. We’re proud to be the only remittance company (of which we’re aware) that has publicly committed to hitting that goal.”
(Courtesy photo)
TADIAS: Given that remittance is an important source of income for Ethiopia and the limitations involved in terms of mobile wallets services outside of major cities, what are your goals in terms of expanding services to the wider population?
Helen: Excellent question. Our goal is to expand our reach to Ethiopians in every corridor. It’s all about creating access and equity. We are currently working on growing our network to partner with banks throughout Ethiopia.
TADIAS: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience?
Helen: Don’t just take my word for it, download and use the app yourself. Leave a review and let us know what you think. I am also happy to connect with folks directly and answer any questions. Helen.Amelga@taptapsend.com
TADIAS: Thank you again, Helen, and best wishes from all of us at Tadias.
Helen: Thanks Liben! It’s always a pleasure talking with you. Until next time.
As the U.S. removes Ethiopia from a critical trade program, it’s clear that the nation should focus on finding sovereign value. (Photo via lobalr2p.org)
The United States’ recent decision to remove Ethiopia from the African Growth And Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade program is a significant and intentional blow to the Ethiopian people and economy.
The country exported around $3 billion worth of product in 2019 — removal from AGOA will cut out approximately half of Ethiopia’s exports to the U.S., which has been the country’s largest export market. According to a recent article in Foreign Policy, this removal will force over 200,000 people, 80% of whom are young women, to lose their jobs. Those most affected by this particular move made by the U.S. are the Ethiopian people, not the Ethiopian Government.
And the reason this is being done to Ethiopia is no secret — it is also no secret to Ethiopians why they were allowed to be a part of AGOA in the first place.
The message of many in Ethiopia to the U.S. regarding this removal has been consistent: It is still not too late to stop what you are doing and start supporting a democratically-elected government. You can reverse the AGOA sanction on Ethiopia and save thousands of people their jobs and life security. This decision also damages Ethiopia’s export market significantly, which will hurt the overall population. America can still support Ethiopia and earn back the trust of the Ethiopian people. We still believe America is capable of standing for its founding values. If this continues, however, it’s clear that America will lose the hearts of Ethiopians to other super power influences.
As Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma from the Republican Party said: Other superpowers are already in Ethiopia, clearly ready to come off as more virtuous and supportive than the U.S. As of now, we still want to believe that it’s not the U.S. as a whole that wants to divide us, but rather a small arm of the current administration which is working hard to lose its longtime friend.
Nothing says “Black Lives Matter” like enforcing the unwanted will of the U.S. onto Africans through unsympathetic and harsh foreign policy on an already impoverished continent.
ETHIOPIA SHOULD CONVERT ENERGY DIRECTLY INTO SOVEREIGN MONEY
For Ethiopia, the only solution is to live outside of the centralized economic system of the world. If, instead of choosing between which foreign superpower should influence us, we want real sovereignty, we will need real, non-fiat, internationally-respected, hard money that we can produce entirely on our own. Freedom and sovereignty isn’t possible when all of the items we seek are audited by the centralized SWIFT system for days before they are allowed or denied.
Our developmental aspirations and wants are controlled by others who say “yes” or “no” based on how it benefits them. We need money we can move when we want to, money we can use to do what we want. We need the most secure, decentralized and incredible achievement of mankind that no superpower can tamper with. We need Bitcoin now more than ever.
ETHIOPIA CAN MAKE BILLIONS FROM MINING BITCOIN WITH LOCAL RESOURCES
Ethiopia doesn’t have much that it can sell without the approval of the superpower nations. The only thing that can be sold without anyone’s approval is energy — not to a nation, but to a network. The Bitcoin network pays energy providers (“miners”) with bitcoin and Ethiopia has enough installed generation capacity to make $4 billion to $6 billion per year, just in the short term — making the damages done by AGOA sanctions seem insignificant.
Ethiopia also has about 60,000 megawatts of untapped potential energy capacity, and with only 6,000 megawatts, Project Mano has projected that bitcoin mining would yield $2 billion to $3 billion annually at $25,000 BTC prices, or more like $4.5 billion to $5 billion at today’s BTC prices. Over 4,500 megawatts of power capacity has been built to support the AGOA-based companies that are leaving. That energy could immediately be used to generate even more money than it was generating while being used by the AGOA manufacturing companies. Ethiopia flagship project, GERD, can generate 6,000 megawatts by itself and remains remote, making it very expensive for internal or external use, but perfect for Bitcoin mining.
Alex Gladstein has written the following about how Bitcoin mining can help developing nations accelerate their growth, while simultaneously increasing their foreign currency and energy access:
Billions of people in developing nations face the stranded power problem. In order for their economies to grow, they have to expand their electrical infrastructure, a capital-intensive and complex undertaking. But when they … build power plants to try and capture renewable energy in remote places, that power often has nowhere to go…
Here is where bitcoin could be an incentives game-changer. New power plants, no matter how remote, can generate immediate revenue, even with no transmission lines, by directing their energy to the Bitcoin network and turning sunlight, water or wind into money…
With bitcoin, any excess energy can be directed to mining until the communities around the plant catch up.”
This is what Ethiopia should be doing to counter the AGOA sanctions: Provide power to the Bitcoin network to generate billions of dollars to use for its own aspirations, with un-sanctionable money that can be converted to any country’s currency at any time without anyone’s approval.
All Ethiopia needs to do to generate billions of dollars is to use its already-installed generation capacity. But that’s not where its potential ends. The 60,000 megawatts of potential energy that the country has is obviously not easy to realize. If Ethiopia invites Bitcoiners around the world to help us realize our energy potential, the kindest souls will come help set up power infrastructure that the population can use, while also helping to convert the excess energy into money that is fully sovereign.
All Ethiopia has to do is open its arms and express its energy aspirations. The nuances of these agreements will matter greatly, but if planned well, all Ethiopians will benefit.
Any power source, no matter how remote, can be used to mine bitcoin. The more energy we realize, the more we will develop our economy, the faster we close our trade deficits — the more bitcoin we will mine, the more energy we will realize, the more our economy grows. And this will all be a repeating cycle.
We sincerely ask the Ethiopian government to seriously look into mining Bitcoin to solve our most challenging problems and say “no more!” to the foreign interference into our culture and economy.
“Ethiopian music was the music I grew up on,” The Weeknd (Abel Makkonen Tesfaye) said in an interview. “Artists like Tilahun Gessesse, Aster Aweke, and Mahmoud Ahmed. These are my subconscious inspirations. ‘The Hills’ was the first time you actually heard the Ethiopian language in my music.” (Photo: @theweekend/instagram)
6ix Buzz
Abel Makkonen Tesfaye started out as a quiet mysterious artist from the 6ix, but eventually grew to become one of the greatest artists of our generations.
With multiple albums under his belt, and with his most recent album “Dawn FM” to add to the collection, the Scarborough native shows no sign of slowing down.
Here are six things you didn’t know about The Weeknd.
1. He is very proud of his Ethiopian heritage
Abel Tesfaye was born to Ethiopian immigrants in Scarborough. He was raised mostly by his mother and his grandmother, which is why the first language he learned was Amharic.
He’s shared in interviews that as he grew older, he learned that his heritage acted as subconscious inspiration.
“Ethiopian music was the music I grew up on,” he told VMan in an interview. “Artists like Tilahun Gessesse, Aster Aweke, and Mahmoud Ahmed. These are my subconscious inspirations. ‘The Hills’ was the first time you actually heard the Ethiopian language in my music.”
2. He and a few other XO members founded a creative arts incubator in Toronto
A few years ago, The Weeknd and business partners La Mar Taylor and Ahmed Ismail launched an incubator in Toronto. Their goal was to create a place that could help encourage young creatives to chase their passions, the same way they did when they were younger.
The founders are responsible for many creative advancements locally and nationally, even participating in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement of $221 million to support Black business.
The positive changes made by HXOUSE don’t include the several hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, that The Weeknd has donated on the side.
Known as the Ethiopian Elvis, Alemayehu became an iconic figure on Ethiopia's jazz scene from the 1960s and performed right up until his last years. (Getty Images)
BBC
Notable African deaths of 2021: From ‘Ethiopia’s Elvis’ to mega pastors
As 2021 [comes] to a close, it is time to remember some of the pioneering, inspiring and controversial figures on the African continent who died this year.
Getty Images
Here is a look at 10 of those to whom we have said farewell.
MUSICIAN Alemayehu Eshete, 80
Known as the Ethiopian Elvis, Alemayehu became an iconic figure on Ethiopia’s jazz scene from the 1960s and performed right up until his last years. From his young days, he was known for his cover versions of Elvis Presley and told the Guardian in 2008 that James Brown later became a great influence.
Getty Images
“I dressed like an American, grew my hair, sang Jailhouse Rock and Teddy Bear – sometimes we would do Strangers in the Night. But the moment that I started singing Amharic songs my popularity shot up,” he said.
In its notes about one of his albums, record seller Rough Trade said “he didn’t so much sing to his audience as seduce it, working himself and his fans into a sweat-soaked frenzy”.
"Now other aid organizations are beginning to appear, little by little, in some areas, we still don't know the real impact of this crisis," Doctors Without Borders says in a press release. "MSF teams are currently delivering medical care in different areas of central, south, and northwestern Tigray. MSF teams are also responding to the health needs of displaced people at the border of the Amhara region and in Sudan." (Photo: MSF)
Since early November, a military escalation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia has caused widespread violence and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Albert Viñas, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), provided the following account today:
Almost three months after the start of the conflict, I am struck by how difficult it has been—and continues to be—to access a community with such acute needs in such a densely populated area. Considering the means and capacity of international organizations and the UN, the fact that this is happening is a failure of the humanitarian world.
Supporting hospitals affected by the violence
After several attempts, I finally entered the capital of Tigray, Mekele, with the first MSF team on December 16, more than a month after the violence started. The city was quiet. There was electricity, but no basic supplies. The local hospital was running at 30 to 40 percent of its capacity, with very little medication [supplies]. Most significantly, there were almost no patients, which is always a very bad sign. We evaluated the hospital, with the idea of referring patients there as soon as possible from Adigrat, 120 kilometers to the north.
We arrived in Adigrat, the second most populous city in Tigray, on December 19. The situation was very tense, and the hospital was in terrible condition. Most of the health staff had left, and there were hardly any medicines. There was no food, no water, and no money. Some patients who had been admitted with traumatic injuries were malnourished.
We supplied the hospital with medicines and bought an emergency supply of food from the markets that were still open. Together with the remaining hospital staff, we cleaned the building and organized the collection of waste. Little by little, we rehabilitated the hospital so that it could function as a medical referral center.
On December 27 we entered the towns of Adwa and Axum, to the west of Adigrat, in central Tigray. There we found a similar situation: no electricity and no water. All the medicines had been stolen from Adwa general hospital, and the hospital furniture and equipment were broken. Fortunately, the Don Bosco institution in Adwa had converted its clinic into an emergency hospital with a small operating theater. In Axum, the 200-bed university hospital had not been attacked, but it was only operating at 10 percent capacity.
On roads where the security situation remained uncertain, we trucked food, medicine, and oxygen to these hospitals and began to support the most essential medical departments, such as the operating theaters, maternity units, and emergency rooms, and to refer critical patients.
Medical needs going unseen and unmet
Beyond the hospitals, around 80 or 90 percent of the health centers that we visited between Mekele and Axum were not functional, either due to a lack of staff or because they had suffered robberies. When primary care services do not exist, people can’t access or be referred to hospitals.
For example, before the crisis, [on average] two appendicitis operations were performed per day at Adigrat hospital. In the past two months, they haven’t done a single one. In every place, we saw patients arriving late. One woman had been in labor for seven days without being able to give birth. Her life was saved because we were able to transport her to Mekele. I saw people arrive at the hospital on bicycles carrying a patient from 30 kilometers away. And those were the ones who managed to get to the hospital.
If women with complicated deliveries, seriously ill patients, and people with appendicitis and trauma injuries can’t get to hospital, you can imagine the consequences. There is a large population suffering, surely with fatal consequences. Adigrat hospital serves an area with more than one million people, and the hospital in Axum serves an area with more than three million people. If these hospitals don’t function properly and can’t be accessed, then people die at home.
When the health system is broken, vaccinations, disease detection, and nutritional programs don’t function either. There have been no vaccinations in almost three months, so we fear there will be epidemics soon.
In recent weeks, our mobile medical teams have started visiting areas outside the main cities, and we are reopening some health centers. We believe our presence brings a certain feeling of protection. We have seen some health staff returning to work. Only five people attended the first meeting we organized in Adwa hospital, but the second was attended by 15, and more than 40 people came to the third. Beyond medical activities, you feel that you offer people some hope: the feeling that things can improve after two months without good news.
People fleeing violence, living in fear
In eastern and central Tigray, we did not see large settlements of displaced people. Instead, most have taken refuge with relatives and friends, so many homes now have 20 or 25 people living together. The impact of the violence is visible in the buildings and in the cars with bullet holes.
Especially at the beginning, we saw a population locked in their homes and living in great fear. Everyone gave us pieces of paper with phone numbers written on them and asked us to convey messages to their families. People don’t even know if their relatives and loved ones are okay, because in many places there are still no telephones or telecommunications.
When we arrived in Adigrat, we saw lines of 500 people next to a water truck waiting to get 20 liters of water per family at most. The telephone line was restored in Adigrat just a few days ago. The situation is improving little by little, but as we moved westward to new places we found the same scenario: fewer services, less transport.
We are very concerned about what may be happening in rural areas. We still haven’t been able to go to many places, either because of insecurity or because it is hard to obtain authorization. But we know, because community elders and traditional authorities have told us, that the situation in these places is very bad.
Large areas of Tigray have very mountainous terrain, with winding roads that climb from 2,000 meters above sea level to 3,000 meters. Cities like Adwa and Axum are built on the fertile highlands, but a large part of the population lives in the mountains. We have heard that there are people who have fled to these more remote areas because of the violence.
Logistical challenges, late response
The efforts of our teams have been enormous at all levels—medical, financial, logistical, and human resources. It’s an incredible challenge without telephone or internet. At first there were no flights to Mekele and we had to move everything nearly 1,000 kilometers by road from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. You couldn’t make money transfers because the banks were all closed. Yet we managed to start our operations.
Now other aid organizations are beginning to appear, little by little, in some areas. We still don’t know the real impact of this crisis, but we have to keep working to find out as soon as possible.
Other MSF teams are currently delivering medical care in different areas of central, south, and northwestern Tigray. MSF teams are also responding to the health needs of displaced people at the border of the Amhara region and in Sudan.
Sundance: Jessica Beshir's striking, black and white hybrid docu-drama meditates on the legend of khat, a stimulant leaf, which was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity. (Photo: Courtesy photo)
IndieWire
‘Faya Dayi’ Review: A Hallucinatory Documentary About Ethiopia’s Most Lucrative Cash Crop
Ethiopian legend has it that khat, a stimulant leaf, was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity. Inspired by this myth, Jessica Beshir’s “Faya Dayi” is a spiritual journey into the highlands of the walled city of Harar, a place immersed in the rituals surrounding this plant, Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop today. Through the prism of the khat trade, the film weaves a tapestry of intimate stories of people caught between government repression, khat-induced reverie, and treacherous journeys across the Red Sea, and offers a window into the dreams of the youth who long for better lives elsewhere.
For centuries in Ethiopia, the Sufi Muslims of Harar have chewed the khat leaf for the purposes of religious meditation. Over the past three decades, khat consumption has broken out of Sufi circles and entered the mainstream to become a daily ritual among people of all ages, religions and ethnicities, for whom chewing khat is a means to achieve Merkhana — a term that describes the high one gets from what is effectively a psychoactive drug not all that different from Cannabis. It has various mental and physical effects, which include euphoria and altered states of mind. For many, Merkhana is provides an escape from everyday realities, and the only place where their hopes, and dreams can actually exist.
Khat, for most unemployed youth, has become a way to overcome the sense of hopelessness, a way to tune out reality. They are all searching for a seemingly elusive sense of agency, as well as living with the contradictions of loving a land that makes it difficult for them to live in peace.
In the last decade, the crops that Ethiopia primarily exported — teff, sorghum, and coffee — have been replaced by the leafy green. With social significance, it has sustained so many who have worked in the fields for generations. However familiar the work is, some young people who have grown up in its shadow want more for themselves — life away from the fields; life without khat; life entirely elsewhere. They consider leaving home and all they have ever known for something new, far away, and, while perhaps more economically beneficial, lonelier and more isolating.
Shot entirely in stunning black and white, “Faya Dayi” opens with a long shot of a somewhat amorphous, barren landscape, nighttime, dark, crickets providing the only soundtrack, and in the distance a lone figure running playfully, starts to come into view. We see that it’s a child, as he or she runs past the camera. Cut to bewitching shots of elders indoors, some faceless, some not, chanting, giving thanks to God, separating khat leaves from their stems, and, in some cases, pounding them, as incense burns in a pot, the smoke it emits, thick and intense.
And then a lengthy shot of an open doorway, on the other side, an ambiguous view — smoky, cavernous, vast, dark depths — a haunting score providing an exclamation mark. It’s interrupted by a meek female voiceover, almost like that of a child, beginning a story about the Harari legend of a man named Azuekherlaini, who was tasked by God to find the Maoul Hayat (water of eternal life). The fable stretches the length of the film, as the voiceover interrupts intermittently to continue where she previously ended.
But that’s just the dressing on this striking, if enigmatic, transgenerational journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, weaving a tapestry of hallucinatory stories that offer a window into the dreams of youth.
Unfolding more like a hybrid scripted narrative and documentary, the central story of “Faya Dayi” doesn’t follow a straight line, as it occasionally checks in on Mohammed, a 14-year-old, and the film’s presumed primary character, who works as an errand boy for the khat users in Harar. He lives with his father who, like so many in town, chews khat daily and often fights with Mohammed due to the mood swings caused by his addiction. Mohammed becomes anxious for a better life, but to have it, he must make a treacherous journey across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.
"Several shortcomings were noted on the arrival in France of flights of the Ethiopian Airlines company," the French transport ministry said in a statement. "It is up to the company to check that each passenger on board has a document showing a negative PCR (Covid-19) test," it added. (Photo via Twitter @flyethiopian)
AFP
The French government is suspending Ethiopian Airlines for four days over a failure to ensure passengers have had negative coronavirus tests, the transport ministry announced Wednesday.
“Several shortcomings were noted on the arrival in France of flights of the Ethiopian Airlines company,” the ministry said in a statement.
“It is up to the company to check that each passenger on board has a document showing a negative PCR (Covid-19) test,” it added.
France warned the Ethiopian flag carrier on Tuesday but, after fresh shortcomings on Wednesday, it “decided to suspend flights by the company from Thursday January 28 to Sunday January 31 inclusive,” the statement said.
French government spokesman Gabriel Attal had earlier Wednesday said Paris wants to consider a Europe-wide “strengthening of border rules” and “sanctions against airlines” outside the European Union which do not ensure the necessary virus checks on passengers.
Such sanctions could lead to “a temporary or definitive ban” on landing or taking off at French airports, he added.
Eden Alene, 20, the first singer of Ethiopian descent to represent Israel in the annual international extravaganza, will perform the song in the first semifinal of the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam on May 18. If it finishes among the top 10, she will sing it again in the May 22 final. (Photo: Eurovisionworld)
Eden Alene to become first Israeli of Ethiopian descent to represent Jewish state at international singing contest in May; last year’s event was canceled by pandemic
Israel’s entry to the 2021 Eurovision song contest is “Set me free,” the Kan public broadcaster announced on Monday.
Eden Alene, 20, the first singer of Ethiopian descent to represent Israel in the annual international extravaganza, will perform the song in the first semifinal of the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam on May 18. If it finishes among the top 10, she will sing it again in the May 22 final.
“Set me free” was chosen by Israeli audiences, edging out two other options: “La La Love” and “Ue La La.”
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The song is mostly in English, with a smattering of Hebrew lyrics.
Eden was Israel’s candidate for the 2020 contest, which was called off last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The song chosen for her 2020 entry was “Feker Libi,” sung in four languages — English, Hebrew, Amharic and Arabic.
The Eurovision Song Contest has a major following in Israel. Israel hosted the 2019 contest in Tel Aviv after Israeli singer Netta Barzilai carried off the top prize with her spunky pop anthem “Toy” in 2018.
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Eden Alene, of Ethiopian Descent, Will Represent Israel at Eurovision
Eden Alene will represent Israel at Eurovision. (photo credit: ORTAL DAHAN / COURTESY OF KESHET)
The Jerusalem Post
Eden Alene became the first Israeli of Ethiopian descent chosen to represent the country at Eurovision when she won Hakokhav Haba (The Next Star) for Eurovision 2020 on Tuesday night.
“I’m so happy and incredibly emotional, I wanted this so much,” she said in an interview with Channel 12’s Nadav Bornstein following her victory. “It is a great honor for me. This is my country, and it is amazing that an Ethiopian will represent the country for the first time.”
Alene was raised in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood by a single mother who immigrated from Ethiopia, and later moved with her family to Kiryat Gat.
“My poor mother, she had a hard time taking it in. She collapsed in my arms,” Alene, 19, said on the Hadshot Haboker (The Morning News) show.
Following a particularly competitive final round, Alene defeated Orr Amrami-Brockman, Gaya Shaki and Ella Lee Lahav. Eurovision, the international singing competition where Israel has won four times, will be held in Rotterdam in May. Israel’s last win came in 2018, when Netta Barzilai won with the song “Toy.”
Survey identifies troubling effect of pandemic on where women give birth in Ethiopia
In urban areas, delivery rates in lower-level health facilities increased and hospital deliveries decreased after social distancing restrictions were put in place
By Johns Hopkins Magazine
A new study from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and researchers at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia has found that as of June, the proportion of women in urban areas—where COVID-19 rates were highest—who delivered in lower-level health facilities significantly increased while deliveries in hospitals declined. A pregnant woman’s place of delivery is a key maternal health service component that has a direct impact on pregnancy and newborn outcomes, and researchers have been monitoring how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women’s delivery patterns. The analysis was conducted using data from the Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia survey, led by Linnea Zimmerman, assistant professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School, and Solomon Shiferaw and Assefa Seme at Addis Ababa University. The project is managed by Johns Hopkins global health affiliate Jhpiego and the Gates Institute. Results from the analysis also showed that at the national level, there was no difference in the proportion of women who delivered in a hospital and home delivery rates remained unchanged. Looking within urban areas, women who delivered during May and June, after COVID-19 restrictions started, were significantly less likely to deliver in a hospital relative to women who delivered prior to the pandemic.
In Ethiopia, as of February 3rd, 2021, there have been 139,408 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Read more »
Assessing Ethiopian women’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 pandemic
By World Bank
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has devastating health and economic impacts globally and has disproportionately affected vulnerable groups. As highlighted in a blog published at the onset of the pandemic, the coronavirus is not gender-blind and pre-existing gender gaps may intensify during and after the pandemic due to worsening human capital, economic, and women’s agency outcomes.
What can high-frequency phone survey data tell us about the gendered effects of the pandemic in Ethiopia?
How Ethiopia prepared its health workforce for the COVID-19 response
Photo via the World Health Organization
By The World Health Organization
In a busy intensive care unit in Eka Kotebe General Hospital, Addis Ababa, Dr Samuel Getnet, 28, a newly-recruited young and energetic physician anxiously monitors the mechanical ventilators, an indispensable form of life support for COVID-19 patients with respiratory distress.
“I never thought my professional journey would bring me to the place where I’m today—at the center of COVID-19 pandemic management team—treating and caring for the most severely ill patients who critically need my support and care. Despite the challenges and risks, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve my people at this critical time,” he said.
Dr Getnet is a general practitioner who came on board as part of the surge capacity planning for human resources announced by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health in February 2020. Before starting his duty in the intensive care unit, he received in-person training from the World Health Organization (WHO), with practical sessions taking place in the hospital. The topics he covered include case management, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), infection prevention and control (IPC), and the application and use of mechanical ventilation. He also benefited from online WHO resources such as Open WHO.org.
‘Relieved’: US health workers start getting COVID-19 vaccine
Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo)
By The Associated Press
The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000.
“I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay said after getting a shot in the arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.
With a countdown of “3-2-1,” workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause.
And in New Orleans, Steven Lee, an intensive care unit pharmacist at Ochsner Medical Center, summed up the moment as he got his own vaccination: “We can finally prevent the disease as opposed to treating it.”
Other hospitals around the country, from Rhode Island to Texas, unloaded precious frozen vials of vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech, with staggered deliveries set throughout the day and Tuesday. A few other countries have authorized the vaccine, including Britain, which started vaccinating people last week, and Canada, which began doing so on Monday.
For health care workers, who along with nursing home residents will be first in line for vaccination, hope is tempered by grief and the sheer exhaustion of months spent battling a coronavirus that still is surging in the U.S. and around the world.
IN PICTURES: On the Frontline Against Covid-19 in Ethiopia – A Photo Essay
Frontline workers at the Eka Kotebe hospital. (Photo by Yonas Tadesse)
By Yonas Tadesse
The first case of Covid-19 in Ethiopia was reported on 13 March, when a team of first responders took in a 48-year-old Japanese man. Having never seen anything like his condition, they did not know what to prepare for, and thus started their new normal of battling the coronavirus in Ethiopia.
Doctors, nurses, janitors, security guards and drivers donned hats they had never dreamed of wearing as they worked to develop systems and techniques to minimise the damage from the virus – often at the cost of their health, their home lives, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
FACTBOX- Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 67.72 million, death toll at 1,548,575
By Reuters
More than 67.72 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,548,575 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 1 million, a Reuters tally showed on Thursday, as the disease began to spread rapidly through a continent whose relative isolation has so far spared it the worst of the pandemic. The continent recorded 1,003,056 cases, of which 21,983 have died and 676,395 recovered. South Africa – which is the world’s fifth worst-hit nation and makes up more than half of sub-Saharan Africa’s case load – has recorded 538,184 cases since its first case on March 5, the health ministry said on Thursday. Low levels of testing in several countries, apart from South Africa, mean Africa’s infection rates are likely to be higher than reported, experts say. Read more »
COVID19 Contact Tracing is a race. But few U.S. states say how fast they’re running
Someone — let’s call her Person A — catches the coronavirus. It’s a Monday. She goes about life, unaware her body is incubating a killer. By perhaps Thursday, she’s contagious. Only that weekend does she come down with a fever and get tested. What happens next is critical. Public health workers have a small window of time to track down everyone Person A had close contact with over the past few days. Because by the coming Monday or Tuesday, some of those people — though they don’t yet have symptoms — could also be spreading the virus. Welcome to the sprint known as contact tracing, the process of reaching potentially exposed people as fast as possible and persuading them to quarantine. The race is key to controlling the pandemic ahead of a vaccine, experts say. But most places across the United States aren’t making public how fast or well they’re running it, leaving Americans in the dark about how their governments are mitigating the risk. An exception is the District of Columbia, which recently added metrics on contact tracing to its online dashboard. A few weeks ago, the District was still too overwhelmed to try to ask all of those who tested positive about their contacts. Now, after building a staff of several hundred contact tracers, D.C. officials say they’re making that attempt within 24 hours of a positive test report in about 98 percent of cases. For months, every U.S. state has posted daily numbers on coronavirus testing — along with charts of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. So far, only one state, Oregon, posts similar data about contact tracing. Officials in New York say they plan to begin publishing such metrics in the coming weeks.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 2.5 million on Sunday morning as a devastating new wave of infections continued to bear down throughout the country’s South and West. Florida, Texas and Arizona are fast emerging as the country’s latest epicenters after reporting record numbers of new infections for weeks in a row. Positivity rates and hospitalizations have also spiked. Global cases of covid-19 exceeded 10 million, according to a count maintained by Johns Hopkins University, a measure of the power and spread of a pandemic that has caused vast human suffering, devastated the world’s economy and still threatens vulnerable populations in rich and poor nations alike.
Read more »
WHO warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’ as coronavirus accelerates; Americas now hardest hit
By The Washington Post
The World Health Organization warned Friday that “the world is in a new and dangerous phase” as the global pandemic accelerates. The world recorded about 150,000 new cases on Thursday, the largest rise yet in a single day, according to the WHO. Nearly half of these infections were in the Americas, as new cases continue to surge in the United States, Brazil and across Latin America. More than 8.5 million coronavirus cases and at least 454,000 deaths have been reported worldwide. As confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb in the U.S., new mask requirements are prompting faceoffs between officials who seek to require face coverings and those, particularly conservatives, who oppose such measures. Several studies this month support wearing masks to curb coronavirus transmission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend their use as a protective measure. Read more »
World Bank Provides Additional Support to Help Ethiopia Mitigate Economic Impacts of COVID-19
JUNE 18, 2020
The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved $250 million ($125 million grant and $125 million credit) in supplemental financing for the ongoing Second Ethiopia Growth and Competitiveness Programmatic Development Policy Financing. This funding is geared towards helping Ethiopia to revitalize the economy by broadening the role of the private sector and attaining a more sustainable development path.
“The COVID 19 pandemic is expected to severely impact Ethiopia’s economy. The austerity of the required containment measures, along with disruptions to air travel and the collapse in international demand for goods exported by Ethiopia are already taking a toll on the economy,” said Carolyn Turk, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea. “Additionally, an estimated 1.8 million jobs are at risk, and the incomes and livelihoods of several million informal workers, self-employed individuals and farmers are expected to be affected.”
The supplemental financing will help to mitigate the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on the Government’s reform agenda. Specifically, the program is intended to help address some of the unanticipated financing needs the Government of Ethiopia is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis. Additional financing needs are estimated to be approximately $1.5 billion, as revenue collection is expected to weaken, and additional expenditure is needed to mitigate the public health and economic impacts of the crisis.
Once the coronavirus epicenter in the U.S., New York City begins to reopen
After three months of a coronavirus crisis followed by protests and unrest, New York City is trying to turn a page when a limited range of industries reopen Monday, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo)
100 days after the first coronavirus case was confirmed there, the city that was once the epicenter of America’s coronavirus pandemic began to reopen. The number of cases in New York has plunged, but health officials fear that a week of protests on the streets could bring a new wave.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) estimated that between 200,000 to 400,000 workers returned to work throughout the city’s five boroughs.
“All New Yorkers should be proud you got us to this day,” de Blasio said at a news conference at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a manufacturing hub.
US Deaths From Coronavirus Surpass 100,000 Milestone
By The Associated Press
The U.S. surpassed a jarring milestone Wednesday in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 deaths. That number is the best estimate and most assuredly an undercount. But it represents the stark reality that more Americans have died from the virus than from the Vietnam and Korea wars combined. “It’s a striking reminder of how dangerous this virus can be,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington. The true death toll from the virus, which emerged in China late last year and was first reported in the U.S. in January, is widely believed to be significantly higher, with experts saying many victims died of COVID-19 without ever being tested for it. Read more »
Ethiopia Coronavirus Cases Reach 5,846
By Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health
Report #111 የኢትዮጵያ የኮሮና ቫይረስ ሁኔታ መግለጫ. Status update on #COVID19Ethiopia. Total confirmed cases [as of June 29th, 2020]: 5,846 Read more »
New York Times Memorializes Coronavirus Victims as U.S. Death Toll Nears 100,000
America is fast approaching a grim milestone in the coronavirus outbreak — each figure here represents one of the nearly 100,000 lives lost so far. Read more »
Spotlight: Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System Tebita Adds Services Addressing COVID19
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Twelve year ago when Kibret Abebe quit his job as a nurse anesthetist at Black Lion Hospital and sold his house to launch Tebita Ambulance — Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System — his friends and family were understandably concerned about his decisions. But today Tebita operates over 20 advanced life support ambulances with approval from the Ministry of Health and stands as the country’s premier Emergency Medical Service (EMS). Tebita has since partnered with East Africa Emergency Services, an Ethiopian and American joint venture that Kibret also owns, with the aim “to establish the first trauma center and air ambulance system in Ethiopia.” This past month Tebita announced their launch of new services in Addis Abeba to address the COVID-19 pandemic and are encouraging Ethiopians residing in the U.S. to utilize Tebita for regular home check-ins on elderly family members as well as vulnerable individuals with pre-existing conditions. The following is an audio of the interview with Kibret Abebe and Laura Davis of Tebita Ambulance and East Africa Emergency Services: Read more »
WHO reports most coronavirus cases in a day as cases approach five million
By Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization expressed concern on Wednesday about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations have begun emerging from lockdown. The global health body said 106,000 new cases of infections of the novel coronavirus had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. “We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.” Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, said: “We will soon reach the tragic milestone of 5 million cases.” Read more »
WHO head says vaccines, medicines must be fairly shared to beat COVID-19
By Reuters
Scientists and researchers are working at “breakneck” speed to find solutions for COVID-19 but the pandemic can only be beaten with equitable distribution of medicines and vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday. “Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.
Doctors face new urgency to solve children and coronavirus puzzle
By Axios
Solving the mystery of how the coronavirus impacts children has gained sudden steam, as doctors try to determine if there’s a link between COVID-19 and kids with a severe inflammatory illness, and researchers try to pin down their contagiousness before schools reopen. New York hospitals have reported 73 suspected cases with two possible deaths from the inflammatory illness as of Friday evening. Read more »
COVID-19 and Its Impact on African Economies: Q&A with Prof. Lemma Senbet
Prof. Lemma Senbet. (Photo: @AERCAFRICA/Twitter)
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Last week Professor Lemma Senbet, an Ethiopian-American financial economist and the William E. Mayer Chair Professor at University of Maryland, moderated a timely webinar titled ‘COVID-19 and African Economies: Global Implications and Actions.’ The well-attended online conference — hosted by the Center for Financial Policy at University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business on Friday, April 24th — featured guest speakers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the World Bank who addressed “the global implications of the COVID-19 economic impact on developing and low-income countries, with Africa as an anchor.” In the following Q&A with Tadias Prof. Lemma, who is also the immediate former Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium based in Nairobi, Kenya, explains the worldwide economic fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the African continent, including Ethiopia. Read more »
US unemployment surges to a Depression-era level of 14.7%
By The Associated Press
The coronavirus crisis has sent U.S. unemployment surging to 14.7%, a level last seen when the country was in the throes of the Depression and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assuring Americans that the only thing to fear was fear itself…The breathtaking collapse is certain to intensify the push-pull across the U.S. over how and when to ease stay-at-home restrictions. And it robs President Donald Trump of the ability to point to a strong economy as he runs for reelection. “The jobs report from hell is here,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, “one never seen before and unlikely to be seen again barring another pandemic or meteor hitting the Earth.” Read more »
Hospitalizations continue to decline in New York, Cuomo says
By CBS News
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the number of people newly diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19 has continued to decrease. “Overall the numbers are coming down,” he said. But he said 335 people died from the virus yesterday. “That’s 335 families,” Cuomo said. “You see this number is basically reducing, but not at a tremendous rate. The only thing that’s tremendous is the number of New Yorkers who’ve still passed away.” Read more »
Los Angeles offers free testing to all county residents
By The Washington Post
All residents of Los Angeles County can access free coronavirus testing at city-run sites, Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said on Wednesday. Previously, the city had only offered testing to residents with symptoms as well as essential workers and people who lived or worked in nursing homes and other kinds of institutional facilities. In an announcement on Twitter, Garcetti said that priority would still be given to front-line workers and anyone experiencing symptoms, including cough, fever or shortness of breath. But the move, which makes Los Angeles the first major city in the country to offer such widespread testing, allows individuals without symptoms to be tested. Health experts have repeatedly said that mass testing is necessary to determine how many people have contracted the virus — and in particular, those who may not have experienced symptoms — and then begin to reopen the economy. Testing is by appointment only and can be arranged at one of the city’s 35 sites. Read more »
Researchers Double U.S. COVID-19 Death Forecast
By Reuters
A newly revised coronavirus mortality model predicts nearly 135,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by early August, almost double previous projections, as social-distancing measures for quelling the pandemic are increasingly relaxed, researchers said on Monday. The ominous new forecast from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) reflect “rising mobility in most U.S. states” with an easing of business closures and stay-at-home orders expected in 31 states by May 11, the institute said. Read more »
Global coronavirus death toll surpasses 200,000, as world leaders commit to finding vaccine
By NBC News
The global coronavirus death toll surpassed 200,000 on Saturday, according to John Hopkins University data. The grim total was reached a day after presidents and prime ministers agreed to work together to develop new vaccines, tests and treatments at a virtual meeting with both the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody. As the U.S. coronavirus death tollpassed 51,000 people, according to an NBC News tally, President Donald Trump took no questions at his White House briefing on Friday, after widespread mockery for floating the idea that light, heat and disinfectants could be used to treat coronavirus patients.”
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has announced the first clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine. The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the regulatory authority which helps develop and authorizes vaccines in Germany, has given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of BNT162b1, a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was developed by cancer researcher and immunologist Ugur Sahin and his team at pharmaceutical company BioNTech, and is based on their prior research into cancer immunology. Sahin previously taught at the University of Mainz before becoming the CEO of BioNTech. In a joint conference call on Wednesday with researchers from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Sahin said BNT162b1 constitutes a so-called RNA vaccine. He explained that innocuous genetic information of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is transferred into human cells with the help of lipid nanoparticles, a non-viral gene delivery system. The cells then transform this genetic information into a protein, which should stimulate the body’s immune reaction to the novel coronavrius.
Webinar on COVID-19 and Mental Health: Interview with Dr. Seble Frehywot
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Dr. Seble Frehywot, an Associate Professor of Global Health & Health Policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her colleague Dr. Yianna Vovides from Georgetown University will host an online forum next week on April 30th focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on mental health. Dr. Seble — who is also the Director of Global Health Equity On-Line Learning at George Washington University – told Tadias that the virtual conference titled “People’s Webinar: Addressing COVID-19 By Addressing Mental Health” is open to the public and available for viewing worldwide. Read more »
Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes
By The Washington Post
Doctors sound alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead. Some didn’t even know they were infected. Read more »
CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating
By The Washington Post
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean…We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said. Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said. The first wave of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has already killed more than 42,000 people across the country. It has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed gaping shortages in test kits, ventilators and protective equipment for health-care workers.
Americans at World Health Organization transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration
By The Washington Post
More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials. A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States. Read more »
In Ethiopia, Dire Dawa Emerges as Newest Coronavirus Hot Spot
By Africa News
The case count as of April 20 had reached 111 according to health minister Lia Tadesse’s update for today. Ethiopia crossed the 100 mark over the weekend. All three cases recorded over the last 24-hours were recorded in the chartered city of Dire Dawa with patients between the ages of 11 – 18. Two of them had travel history from Djibouti. Till date, Ethiopia has 90 patients in treatment centers. The death toll is still at three with 16 recoveries. A patient is in intensive care. Read more »
COVID-19: Interview with Dr. Tsion Firew, an Ethiopian Doctor on the Frontline in NYC
Dr. Tsion Firew is Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University. She is also Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. (Courtesy photo)
By Liben Eabisa
In New York City, which has now become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, working as a medical professional means literally going to a “war zone,” says physician Tsion Firew, a Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University, who has just recovered from COVID-19 and returned to work a few days ago. Indeed the statistics coming out of New York are simply shocking with the state recording a sharp increase in death toll this months surpassing 10,000 and growing. According to The New York Times: “The numbers brought into clearer focus the staggering toll the virus has already taken on the largest city in the United States, where deserted streets are haunted by the near-constant howl of ambulance sirens. Far more people have died in New York City, on a per-capita basis, than in Italy — the hardest-hit country in Europe.” At the heart of the solution both in the U.S. and around the world is more testing and adhering to social distancing rules until such time as a proper treatment and vaccine is discovered, says Dr. Tsion, who is also a Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. Dr. Tsion adds that at this moment “we all as humanity have one enemy: the virus. And what’s going to win the fight is solidarity.” Listen to the interview »
Ethiopia Opens Aid Transport Hub to Fight Covid-19
By AFP
Ethiopia and the United Nations on Tuesday opened a humanitarian transport hub at Addis Ababa airport to move supplies and aid workers across Africa to fight coronavirus. The arrangement, which relies on cargo services provided by Ethiopian Airlines, could also partially offset heavy losses Africa’s largest carrier is sustaining because of the pandemic. An initial shipment of 3 000 cubic metres of supplies – most of it personal protective equipment for health workers – will be distributed within the next week, said Steven Were Omamo, Ethiopia country director for the World Food Programme (WFP). “This is a really important platform in the response to Covid-19, because what it does is it allows us to move with speed and efficiency to respond to the needs as they are unfolding,” Omamo said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Addis gateway is one of eight global humanitarian hubs set up to facilitate movement of aid to fight Covid-19, according to WFP.
Covid-19: Ethiopia to buy life insurance for health workers
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
The Ethiopian government is due to buy life insurance for health professionals in direct contact with Covid-19 patients. Health minister Lia Tadesse said on Tuesday that the government last week reached an agreement with the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation but did not disclose the value of the cover. The two sides are expected to sign an agreement this week to effect the insurance grant. According to the ministry, the life insurance grant is aimed at encouraging health experts who are the most vulnerable to the deadly coronavirus. Members of the Rapid Response Team will also benefit.
U.N. says Saudi deportations of Ethiopian migrants risks spreading coronavirus
By Reuters
The United Nations said on Monday that deportations of illegal migrant workers by Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia risked spreading the coronavirus and it urged Riyadh to suspend the practice for the time being.
Ethiopia’s capital launches door-to-door Covid-19 screening
Getty Images
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa is due to begin a door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening across the city, Addis Ababa city administration has announced. City deputy Mayor, Takele Uma, on Saturday told local journalists that the mass screening and testing programme will be started Monday (April 13) first in districts which are identified as potentially most vulnerable to the spread of the highly infectious coronavirus. The aggressive city-wide screening measure intends to identify Covid-19 infected patients and thereby to arrest a potential virus spread within communities. He said, the mass screening will eventually be carried out in all 117 districts, locally known as woredas, of the city, which is home to an estimated 7 million inhabitants. According to the Mayor, the door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening will be conducted by more than 1,200 retired health professionals, who responded to government’s call on the retired to join the national fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus has hit 100,000, according to the running tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. The sad milestone comes as Christians around the globe mark a Good Friday unlike any other — in front of computer screens instead of in church pews. Meanwhile, some countries are tiptoeing toward reopening segments of their battered economies. Public health officials are warning people against violating the social distancing rules over Easter and allowing the virus to flare up again. Authorities are using roadblocks and other means to discourage travel.
Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team: Interview with Mike Endale
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
A network of technology professionals from the Ethiopian Diaspora — known as the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team – has been assisting the Ethiopian Ministry of Health since the nation’s first Coronavirus case was confirmed on March 13th. The COVID-19 Response Team has since grown into an army of more than a thousand volunteers. Mike Endale, a software developer based in Washington, D.C., is the main person behind the launch of this project. Read more »
Ethiopia eyes replicating China’s successes in applying traditional medicine to contain COVID-19
By CGTN Africa
The Ethiopian government on Thursday expressed its keen interest to replicate China’s positive experience in terms of effectively applying traditional Chinese medicine to successfully contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the East African country.
This came after high-level officials from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MoIT) as well as the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH) held a video conference with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners and researchers on ways of applying the TCM therapy towards controlling the spread of coronavirus pandemic in the country, the MoIT disclosed in a statement issued on Thursday.
“China, in particular, has agreed to provide to Ethiopia the two types of Chinese traditional medicines that the country applied to successfully treat the first two stages of the novel coronavirus,” a statement from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology read.
WHO Director Slams ‘Racist’ Comments About COVID-19 Vaccine Testing
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has angrily condemned recent comments made by scientists suggesting that a vaccine for COVID-19 should be tested in Africa as “racist” and a hangover from the “colonial mentality”. (Photo: WHO)
By BBC
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has condemned as “racist” the comments by two French doctors who suggested a vaccine for the coronavirus could be tested in Africa.
“Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine,” said Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The doctors’ remarks during a TV debate sparked outrage, and they were accused of treating Africans like “human guinea pigs”.
One of them later issued an apology.
When asked about the doctors’ suggestion during the WHO’s coronavirus briefing, Dr Tedros became visibly angry, calling it a hangover from the “colonial mentality”.
“It was a disgrace, appalling, to hear during the 21st Century, to hear from scientists, that kind of remark. We condemn this in the strongest terms possible, and we assure you that this will not happen,” he said.
Ethiopia declares state of emergency to curb spread of COVID-19
By Reuters
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in the country to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, his office said on Twitter. “Considering the gravity of the #COVID19, the government of Ethiopia has enacted a State of Emergency,” Abiy’s office said.
Ethiopia virus cases hit 52, 9-month-old baby infected
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia on Tuesday reported eight new Covid-19 cases, the highest number recorded so far in one day since the country confirmed its first virus case on March 12. Among the new patients that tested positive for the virus were a 9-month-old infant and his mother who had travelled to Dubai recently. “During the past 24 hours, we have done laboratory tests for a total of 264 people and eight out of them have been diagnosed with coronavirus, raising the total confirmed number of Covid-19 patients in Ethiopia to 52,” said Health Minister Dr Lia Tadese. According to the Minister, seven of the newly confirmed patients had travel histories to various countries. They have been under forced-quarantine in different designated hotels in the capital, Addis Ababa. “Five of the new patients including the 9-month-old baby and the mother came from Dubai while the two others came from Thailand and the United Kingdom,” she said
The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate
By The Washington Post
As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the United States, it appears to be infecting and killing black Americans at a disproportionately high rate, according to a Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country. The emerging stark racial disparity led the surgeon general Tuesday to acknowledge in personal terms the increased risk for African Americans amid growing demands that public-health officials release more data on the race of those who are sick, hospitalized and dying of a contagion that has killed more than 12,000 people in the United States. A Post analysis of what data is available and census demographics shows that counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.
In China, Wuhan’s lockdown officially ends after 11 weeks
After 11 weeks — or 76 days — Wuhan’s lockdown is officially over. On Wednesday, Chinese authorities allowed residents to travel in and out of the besieged city where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported in December. Many remnants of the months-long lockdown, however, remain. Wuhan’s 11 million residents will be able to leave only after receiving official authorization that they are healthy and haven’t recently been in contact with a coronavirus patient. To do so, the Chinese government is making use of its mandatory smartphone application that, along with other government surveillance, tracks the movement and health status of every person.
U.S. hospitals facing ‘severe shortages’ of equipment and staff, watchdog says
By The Washington Post
As the official U.S. death toll approached 10,000, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams warned that this will be “the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives.”
Ethio-American Tech Company PhantomALERT Offers Free App to Track & Map COVID-19 Outbreak
By Tadias Staff
PhantomALERT, a Washington D.C.-based technology company announced, that it’s offering a free application service to track, report and map COVID-19 outbreak hotspots in real time. In a recent letter to the DC government as well as the Ethiopian Embassy in the U.S. the Ethiopian-American owned business, which was launched in 2007, explained that over the past few days, they have redesigned their application to be “a dedicated coronavirus mapping, reporting and tracking application.” The letter to the Ethiopian Embassy, shared with Tadias, noted that PhantomALERT’s technology “will enable the Ethiopian government (and all other countries across the world) to locate symptomatic patients, provide medical assistance and alert communities of hotspots for the purpose of slowing down the spread of the Coronavirus.”
By Dr. Lia Tadesse (Minister, Ministry of Health, Ethiopia)
It is with great sadness that I announce the second death of a patient from #COVID19 in Ethiopia. The patient was admitted on April 2nd and was under strict medical follow up in the Intensive Care Unit. My sincere condolences to the family and loved ones.
The Next Coronavirus Test Will Tell You If You Are Now Immune. And It’s Fast.
People line up in their cars at the COVID-19 testing area at Roseland Community Hospital on April 3, 2020, in Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
By Chicago Tribune
A new, different type of coronavirus test is coming that will help significantly in the fight to quell the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and scientists say. The first so-called serology test, which detects antibodies to the virus rather than the virus itself, was given emergency approval Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And several more are nearly ready, said Dr. Elizabeth McNally, director of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Center for Genetic Medicine.
‘Your Safety is Our Priority’: How Ethiopian Airlines is Navigating the Global Virus Crisis
By Tadias Staff
Lately Ethiopian Airlines has been busy delivering much-needed medical supplies across Africa and emerging at the forefront of the continent’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic even as it has suspended most of its international passenger flights.
Ethiopia races to bolster ventilator stockpile for coronavirus fight
By AFP
Ethiopia’s government — like others in Africa — is confronting a stark ventilator shortage that could hobble its COVID-19 response. In a country of more than 100 million people, just 54 ventilators — out of around 450 total — had been set aside for COVID-19 patients as of this week, said Yakob Seman, director general of medical services at the health ministry.
New York City mayor calls for national enlistment of health-care workers
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. (AP photo)
By The Washington Post
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday called for a national enlistment of health-care workers organized by the U.S. military.
Speaking on CNN’s New Day, he lamented that there has been no effort to mobilize doctors and nurses across the country and bring them to “the front” — first New York City and then other areas that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
“If there’s not action by the president and the military literally in a matter of days to put in motion this vast mobilization,” de Blasio said, “then you’re going to see first hundreds and later thousands of Americans die who did not need to die.”
He said he expects his city to be stretched for medical personnel starting Sunday, which he called “D-Day.” Many workers are out sick with the disease, he added, while others are “just stretched to the limit.”
The mayor said he has told national leaders that they need to get on “wartime footing.”
“The nation is in a peacetime stance while were actually in the middle of a war,” de Blasio said. “And if they don’t do something different in the next few days, they’re going to lose the window.”
Over 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March as economy collapsed
By The Washington Post
More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a new record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The past two weeks have seen more people file for unemployed claims than during the first six months of the Great Recession, a sign of how rapid, deep and painful the economic shutdown has been on many American families who are struggling to pay rent and health insurance costs in the midst of a pandemic. Job losses have skyrocketed as restaurants, hotel, gyms, and travel have shut down across the nation, but layoffs are also rising in manufacturing, warehousing and transportation, a sign of how widespread the pain of the coronavirus recession is. In March alone, 10.4 million Americans lost their jobs and applied for government aid, according to the latest Labor Department data, which includes claims filed through March 28. Many economists say the real number of people out work is likely even higher, since a lot of newly unemployed Americans haven’t been able to fill out a claim yet.
U.N. Chief Calls Pandemic Biggest Global Challenge Since World War II
By The Washington Post
The coronavirus outbreak sickening hundreds of thousands around the world and devastating the global economy is creating a challenge for the world not seen since World War II, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said late Tuesday. Speaking in a virtual news conference, Guterres said the world needs to show more solidarity and cooperation in fighting not only the medical aspects of the crisis but the economic fallout. The International Monetary Fund is predicting an economic recession worse than in 2008.
US death toll eclipses China’s as reinforcements head to NYC
By The Associated Press
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China’s official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
Getting Through COVID 19: ECMAA Shares Timely Resources With Ethiopian Community
By Tadias Staff
The Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Association (ECMAA) in the New York tri-state area has shared timely resources including COVID-19 safety information as well as national sources of financial support for families and small business owners.
The highly anticipated 2020 national election in Ethiopia has been canceled for now due to the coronavirus outbreak. The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that it has shelved its plans to hold the upcoming nationwide parliamentary polls on August 29th after an internal evaluation of the possible negative effect of the virus pandemic on its official activities.
Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia on lockdown as coronavirus cases grow
By The Washington Post
Maryland, Virginia and the District issued “stay-at-home” orders on Monday, joining a growing list of states and cities mandating broad, enforceable restrictions on where residents can go in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
U.S. Approves Malaria Drug to Treat Coronavirus Patients
By The Washington Post
The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval to a Trump administration plan to distribute millions of doses of anti-malarial drugs to hospitals across the country, saying it is worth the risk of trying unproven treatments to slow the progression of the disease in seriously ill coronavirus patients.
A top U.S. infectious disease scientist said U.S. deaths could reach 200,000, but called it a moving target. New York’s fatalities neared 1,000, more than a third of the U.S. total.
Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed spoke with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, over the weekend regarding the Coronavirus response in Ethiopia and Africa in general.
Virus infections top 600,000 globally with long fight ahead
By The Associated Press
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide topped 600,000 on Saturday as new cases stacked up quickly in Europe and the United States and officials dug in for a long fight against the pandemic. The latest landmark came only two days after the world passed half a million infections, according to a tally by John Hopkins University, showing that much work remains to be done to slow the spread of the virus. It showed more than 607,000 cases and over 28,000 deaths. While the U.S. now leads the world in reported infections — with more than 104,000 cases — five countries exceed its roughly 1,700 deaths: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France.
Gouged prices, middlemen and medical supply chaos: Why governors are so upset with Trump
By The Washington Post
Masks that used to cost pennies now cost several dollars. Companies outside the traditional supply chain offer wildly varying levels of price and quality. Health authorities say they have few other choices to meet their needs in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ battle.
Worshippers in Ethiopia Defy Ban on Large Gatherings Despite Coronavirus
By VOA
ADDIS ABABA – Health experts in Ethiopia are raising concern, as some religious leaders continue to host large gatherings despite government orders not to do so in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this week, Ethiopia’s government ordered security forces to enforce a ban on large gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Ethiopia has seen only 12 cases and no deaths from the virus, and authorities would like to keep it that way. But enforcing the orders has proven difficult as religious groups continue to meet and, according to religious leaders, fail to treat the risks seriously.
It began as a mysterious disease with frightening potential. Now, just two months after America’s first confirmed case, the country is grappling with a lethal reality: The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States, a toll that is increasing at an alarming rate.
A record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits as the coronavirus slams economy
By The Washington Post
A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and more shut down in a nationwide effort to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April.
Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once.
“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures. The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.
Ethiopia: Parents fear for missing students as universities close over Covid-19
Photo via amnesty.org
As universities across Ethiopia close to avert spread of the COVID-19 virus, Amnesty International is calling on the Ethiopian authorities to disclose measures they have taken to rescue 17 Amhara students from Dembi Dolo University in Western Oromia, who were abducted by unidentified people in November 2019 and have been missing since.
The anguish of the students’ families is exacerbated by a phone and internet shutdown implemented in January across the western Oromia region further hampering their efforts to get information about their missing loved ones.
“The sense of fear and uncertainty spreading across Ethiopia because of COVID-19 is exacerbating the anguish of these students’ families, who are desperate for information on the whereabouts of their loved ones four months after they were abducted,” said Seif Magango, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa.
“The Ethiopian authorities’ move to close universities in order to protect the lives of university students is commendable, but they must also take similarly concrete actions to locate and rescue the 17 missing students so that they too are reunited with their families.”
UPDATE: New York City is now reporting 26,697 COVID-19 cases and 450 deaths.
BY ABC7 NY
Temporary hospital space in New York City will begin opening on Monday and more supplies are on the way as an already overwhelmed medical community anticipates even more coronavirus patients in the coming days. Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted 20 trucks were on the road delivering protective equipment to hospitals, including surgical masks, N95 masks, and hundreds more ventilators.
*Right now* there are 20 trucks on the road delivering protective equipment to New York City hospitals. They’re carrying:
• 1 million surgical masks • 200,000 N95 masks • 50,000 face shields • 40,000 isolation gowns • 10,000 boxes of gloves pic.twitter.com/x77egOwCYE
L.A. mayor says residents may have to shelter at home for two months or more
By Business Insider
Los Angeles residents will be confined to their homes until May at the earliest, Mayor Eric Garcetti told Insider on Wednesday.
“I think this is at least two months,” he said. “And be prepared for longer.”
In an interview with Insider, Garcetti pushed back against “premature optimism” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying leaders who suggest we are on the verge of business as usual are putting lives at risk.
“I can’t say that strongly enough,” the mayor said. Optimism, he said, has to be grounded in data. And right now the data is not good.
“Giving people false hope will crush their spirits and will kill more people,” Garcetti said, adding it would change their actions by instilling a sense of normality at the most abnormal time in a generation.
Ethiopia pardons more than 4,000 prisoners to help prevent coronavirus spread
By CNN
Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde has granted pardon to more than 4,000 prisoners in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Sahle-Work Zewde announced the order in a tweet on Wednesday and said it would help prevent overcrowding in prisons.
The directive only covers those given a maximum sentence of three years for minor crimes and those who were about to be released from jail, she said.
There are 12 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ethiopia, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
Authorities in the nation have put in place a raft of measures, including the closure of all borders except to those bringing in essential goods to contain the virus. The government has directed security officials to monitor and enforce a ban on large gatherings and overcrowded public transport to ensure social distancing.
— U.S. House passes $2 trillion coronavirus emergency spending bill
Watch: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York breaks down massive coronavirus aid package (MSNBC Video)
By The Washington Post
The House of Representatives voted Friday [March 27th] to approve a massive $2 trillion stimulus bill that policy makers hope will blunt the economic destruction of the coronavirus pandemic, sending the legislation to President Trump for enactment. The legislation passed in dramatic fashion, approved on an overwhelming voice vote by lawmakers who’d been forced to return to Washington by a GOP colleague who had insisted on a quorum being present. Some lawmakers came from New York and other places where residents are supposed to be sheltering at home.
In Ethiopia, Abiy seeks $150b for African virus response
By AFP
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday urged G20 leaders to help Africa cope with the coronavirus crisis by facilitating debt relief and providing $150 billion in emergency funding.
The pandemic “poses an existential threat to the economies of African countries,” Abiy’s office said in a statement, adding that Ethiopia was “working closely with other African countries” in preparing the aid request.
The heavy debt burdens of many African countries leave them ill-equipped to respond to pandemic-related economic shocks, as the cost of servicing debt exceeds many countries’ health budgets, the statement said.
Worried Ethiopians Want Partial Internet Shutdown Ended (AP)
Ethiopians have their temperature checked for symptoms of the new coronavirus, at the Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Wednesday, March 18, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough and the vast majority recover in 2-6 weeks but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health issues, the virus that causes COVID-19 can result in more severe illness, including pneumonia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Rights groups and citizens are calling on Ethiopia’s government to lift the internet shutdown in parts of the country that is leaving millions of people without important updates on the coronavirus.
The months-long shutdown of internet and phone lines in Western Oromia and parts of the Benishangul Gumuz region is occurring during military operations against rebel forces.
“Residents of these areas are getting very limited information about the coronavirus,” Jawar Mohammed, an activist-turned-politician, told The Associated Press.
Ethiopia reported its first coronavirus case on March 13 and now has a dozen. Officials have been releasing updates mostly online. Land borders have closed and national carrier Ethiopian Airlines has stopped flying to some 30 destinations around the world.
In Global Fight vs. Virus, Over 1.5 Billion Told: Stay Home
A flier urging customers to remain home hangs at a turnstile as an MTA employee sanitizes surfaces at a subway station with bleach solutions due to COVID-19 concerns, Friday, March 20, 2020, in New York. (AP)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — With masks, ventilators and political goodwill in desperately short supply, more than one-fifth of the world’s population was ordered or urged to stay in their homes Monday at the start of what could be a pivotal week in the battle to contain the coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe.
Partisan divisions stalled efforts to pass a colossal aid package in Congress, and stocks fell again on Wall Street even after the Federal Reserve said it will lend to small and large businesses and local governments to help them through the crisis.
Warning that the outbreak is accelerating, the head of the World Health Organization called on countries to take strong, coordinated action.
“We are not helpless bystanders,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, noting that it took 67 days to reach 100,000 cases worldwide but just four days to go from 200,000 to 300,000. “We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
China’s Coronavirus Donation to Africa Arrives in Ethiopia (Reuters)
An Ethiopian Airlines worker transports a consignment of medical donation from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation to Africa for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing, upon arrival at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, March 22, 2020. (REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri)
The first batch of protective and medical equipment donated by Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma was flown into the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, as coronavirus cases in Africa rose above 1,100.
The virus has spread more slowly in Africa than in Asia or Europe but has a foothold in 41 African nations and two territories. So far it has claimed 37 lives across the continent of 1.3 billion people.
The shipment is a much-needed boost to African healthcare systems that were already stretched before the coronavirus crisis, but nations will still need to ration supplies at a time of global scarcity.
Only patients showing symptoms will be tested, the regional Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Sunday.
“The flight carried 5.4 million face masks, kits for 1.08 million detection tests, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 sets of protective face shields,” Ma’s foundation said in a statement.
“The faster we move, the earlier we can help.”
The shipment had a sign attached with the slogan, “when people are determined they can overcome anything”.
New York (TADIAS) — Last week Ethiopian Soccer Referee Lidya Tafesse Abebe made African history when she led the first ever all-female officiating team refereeing the men’s African Nations Championship quarter-finals game in Cameroon between Namibia and Tanzania.
Lidya, who is a former professional basketball player, “gave a flawless performance as Tanzania edged Namibia 1-0 in Cameroon city Limbe,” AFP reported, noting that Lidya was joined by her assistants, Malawian Bernadettar Kwimbira and Nigerian Mimisen Iyorhe, during the landmark match that was fully controlled by women referees.
Lidya Tafesse was also the first ever woman FIFA centre referee from Ethiopia. (Photo via cafonline)
According to AFP:
Tafesse exuded confidence in every decision she made, was extremely fit and tolerated no foul play as she yellow-carded three Tanzanians within 10 minutes during the second half.
African male footballers often dispute decisions against them, but most accepted without hesitation the rulings of Tafesse at the Stade Omnisport in the southwestern coastal resort.
CAF referees manager Eddy Maillet from the Seychelles was overjoyed as the trio created history eight days into the sixth edition of the Nations Championship.
Below is a profile of Lidya Tafesse courtesy of CAFOnline.com, the official website of the governing body of African Soccer, Confederation of African Football:
From basketball to top level refereeing
“It was very difficult when I started because sometimes, some people would ask why I decided to go into refereeing as a woman when there were no any other women doing the same” — Lidya Tafesse (cafonline)
Starting off as a professional basketball player, not many thought Lidya Tafesse Abebe would trade the rims and bounces for the whistle, and not in basketball, but football. The 40-year old has been on a 20 -year journey of refereeing, becoming the first ever woman to officiate a men’s top flight game in Ethiopia.
She was also the first ever woman FIFA centre referee in the East African nation.
“I started off in Jimma while still playing basketball. I played football in school but basketball was my first sport. I was interested when I met one of the instructors doing some courses and some of us from the basketball team were invited. I liked how he was teaching and I got interested more,” Tafesse says.
The seed planted in her soul by the FIFA/CAF instructor Shiferaw Eshetu continued to germinate and grow as the days went on.
When she moved to the capital Addis Ababa to continue her basketball career and pursue a course in Pharmacy, the interest continued and soon, she started building on with more courses and when it became apparent that she had found some new love, dumped the old one; basketball.
“I was part of the female referees project and I started off by doing the Under-15, 17 games, the local tournaments as well as some Federation tournaments. I got more certification and I started doing the Men’s Premier League as an assistant referee and in 2005, I became a centre referee,” narrates Tafesse.
The journey, though satisfying hasn’t been easy for the mother of one. When she started, there were no women referees and when she officiated men’s games, there was even more difficulty.
But her resilience and desire to make a mark in Ethiopian football drover her passion.
“It was very difficult when I started because sometimes, some people would ask why I decided to go into refereeing as a woman when there were no any other women doing the same. But my family supported me and I am grateful for them,”
“Also, I came from a sports background and the fact that while playing basketball we trained and played against some men teams gave me confidence and it wasn’t so difficult for me at times, even when I did men’s games,” explains Tafesse.
Lidya Tafesse (cafonline)
She also remains grateful to the Ethiopian Football Federation who gave her and her colleagues confidence to continue and even handed them Premier League matches to boost their confidence. She vividly remembers the influence former vice president Tihaye Egziaber had on her.
“He would talk to us as women referees and really encouraged us. He gave us so much support,” she states.
Her impressive performances earned her a first ever international assignment in 2006 when she officiated an Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between Nigeria and Liberia in Abuja and that opened the floodgates for her to grow.
“I will not forget that match because it was so different. The stadium was bigger than what we are used to here in Ethiopia, the crowd was amazing and the level was definitely good,” Tafesse remembers.
(cafonline)
She has gone on to progress, doing the All Africa Games in 2007 and 2011, before going on to do the Total Africa Women’s Cup of Nations (AWCON) four times in a row in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018.
On top of that, she has officiated at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2015 and 2019, did the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in 2016 as well as the Under-20 in 2018.
But in between all those wonderful assignments, she faced a challenge that nearly slowed down her sailing career. In 2013, she conceived her first born child who will be turning seven years old in October. But, the aftermath of her return seven months later was full of challenges.
“Physiologically as women, we have so many body changes after pregnancy and I was not different. I gained so much weight and I had to work very hard to get back in shape. I worked a lot and eventually I was better and in 2014, I got a chance to go for the Cup of Nations,”
“But while training there, I got injured and in my mind, it was all over for me. I tried to do some tests and see whether I could go on but I had decided I would go home. However, the director came and told me ‘Lydia you are not going. Just try and see whether you can recover’. I started treating the sprain on my ankle everyday and ultimately, I got better,”
“I did a match in the semi-final, Cameroon vs Côte d’Ivoire which went up to extra time. Surprisingly, I was stronger and fitter than both teams when the game went to 120 minutes. I was so pleased,” Tafesse remembers.
This is one of her most memorable matches. The other one was in 2012 when she officiated another semi-final pitting Nigeria and South Africa, a match that the Banyana Banyana won 1-0.
“It was such a great game to officiate because both of them are brilliant teams. Also, it was very hot and I remembered hoping it would not go to extra time,” jokes Tafesse.
(cafonline)
Despite the stoppages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tafesse has continued to train on her own and has also use the time off competitions to give back to the community.
She is using her background as a pharmacist and knowledge in medicine to raise awareness on the virus and help the community keep themselves safe from contracting and spreading the virus.
“I have been doing education on social media and in radio and TV stations just trying to tell people on the dangers of the virus. I also go to the communities and teach them how to wash hands and keep hygiene. Also, I have been giving back to the community by helping the vulnerable who have not had a chance to get food and basic commodities,” she states.
On her training, Tafesse admits that it has been tough but notes she has not had a reason to put the feet off the gas. “I train outside three times a week and also indoors where I have tried to put up my own small gym. We have a system where we have to make reports daily as well as GPS trackers to ensure we are training.”
Lidya Tafesse (cafonline)
As a woman, Tafesse says it has been great balancing between her family and refereeing, a career she has given her full attention to. The support from her husband and the motivation of her seven-year old keeps her going, Tafesse says.
And now, she hopes she can influence the next generation of women referees in Ethiopia and the continent at large to take up the career. She hopes that after her active years, apart from continuing with her profession as a pharmacist, she will switch to become an instructor as she looks to get more and more following her path.
Her hopes to continue getting high profile games and getting the chance to officiate at a CAF men’s tournament for the first time finally became true in the Total African Nations Championship (CHAN), Cameroon 2020.
According to organizers Soliyana's submission called "Mathstainement" won the Pan-African prize topping participants from 54 countries. (Courtesy photo)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 27th, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — 10 years old Soliyana Gizaw from Ethiopia has been named the winner of the 2020 African Code Challenge, a newly launched continent-wide tech competition where young people were asked to create an educational computer game.
According to organizers Soliyana’s submission called “Mathstainement” won the Pan-African prize leading participants from 54 countries.
“After a rigorous round of judging for this year’s AfriCAN Code Challenge, SAP Africa Code Week’s top 10 winners were announced and special highlights include the top 3 being all-female, aged 10 – 16 years, with Soliyana, 10 years old from Ethiopia as the Pan-African winner of the competition,” the press release stated.
Africa Code Week’s Global Coordinator Olajide Ademola Ajayi said: “Despite the COVID disruption for schools which impacted hundreds of millions of youth across Africa, children from more than 54 countries stepped-up to share their vision of the future of education.”
The announcement notes that “the AfriCAN Code Challenge is a pan-African coding competition where youth aged 8 – 16 were tasked with coding a game using the Scratch programming language to answer the question: “How will your tech change the future of education?”
In her video presentation Soliyana explains that her app “is not only a game,” but also “creates awareness about COVID-19.”
Watch: An app called MATHSTAINMENT made with SCRATCH_ Educational game_ African Code Challenge_ Ethiopia by Soliyana Gizaw
The press release adds:
During the AfriCAN Code Challenge youth were able to enter alone or in teams of up to five people, and entries featured a two-minute YouTube clip showcasing how their game works and why it should be considered a winning entry. The unique initiative and entry mechanism called upon the children’s ability to design a project that would solve a community-issue, code it, and communicate it.
During the opening rounds of the challenge, participation reached across 40 countries and featured 100 project video clips, only the top three entries from 36 countries made it into the continental final, followed by 22 countries in the final judging stage.
Selected by a high-level jury composed of key Africa Code Week delegates and STEM education experts, the top three of the AfriCAN Code Challenge is: Ethiopia – Mathstainement (Soliyana, 10 years old); South Africa-Space Quest (Kayla, 15 years old); Algeria-Welcome to the Best School (Sarah, 16 years old)
Followed by:
4th: Mauritius – Mr. E-Bin
5th: Nigeria – I-Learn
6th: Tunisia – Warrior
7th: Morocco – Abdelilah Hashas
8th: Zimbabwe – HeadStart Game
9th: Rwanda – Math Puzzles for Kids
10th: Ivory Coast – Easy Preterit
In 1986, as the apartheid regime resisted international pressure, an ambitious Democratic senator from Delaware launched into a passionate rebuke of US government policy towards the pariah state.
Challenging secretary of state George Shultz on the ambiguity of Reagan administration policy, the energetic senator offered vocal support to the embattled black population of SA in a committee hearing.
“Dammit, we have favourites in SA. The favourites in SA are the people that are being repressed by an ugly white regime. We have favourites! Our loyalty is not to SA, it’s to South Africans. And the South Africans are majority black. They are being excoriated!”
Thirty-four years later, nearly two weeks after his victory over Donald Trump, that senator — now US President Joe Biden — spoke to President Cyril Ramaphosa, his first call with an African head of state after the election win. The leaders recalled Biden’s earlier visit to SA during the “dark days of apartheid”, and spoke of Biden’s recognition of Africa as “a major player in international affairs and in the advancement of multilateralism”.
Such a rapport would have been unthinkable during the administration of Trump, whose attention in the 1980s was not directed towards apartheid but to real estate, the gossip columns of New York tabloids and Manhattan’s Studio 54 nightclub.
Throughout his one-term presidency, Trump’s engagement with Africa appeared scarcely more developed, as relations with the continent flitted between perfunctory and hostile. From launching an attempted travel ban on citizens from Muslim-majority countries including Libya, Somalia and Sudan to reportedly dismissing some African nations as “sh*thole countries” in an unrecorded Oval Office meeting, Trump did little to play down his “America First” stereotype.
Disengagement went beyond tactless comments. While Trump saw Africa as an arena for US competition with China, important diplomatic posts in Africa went unfilled and he failed to visit the continent. Now with Biden at the helm, US foreign policy experts hope an outward-looking presidency will re-engage with Africa by resetting trade policy, boosting investment and co-operating on security and climate change. But after four years of drift, it will take more than a change of tone to re-establish the US as a big partner.
“I think US diplomatic relations with African states have not been given the level of seriousness or mutual respect they deserved under the Trump administration,” says Grant Harris, CEO of Harris Africa Partners and a senior director for African affairs in Barack Obama’s White House.
“Under Trump, the US didn’t even have an ambassador in SA for two and a half years, a lot of ambassadorships were slow to appoint, embassies were understaffed, and Trump said racist things about the continent. Trade and investment ties with Africa received little to no high-level attention, the president was not engaged and didn’t travel. There weren’t champions in the cabinet who understood the importance of increasing trade in and within African markets. Biden brings literally decades of experience on foreign policy issues. For decades he’s understood the importance of strong relations with African states.”
Yet even Trump’s critics concede that behind the crass exterior and shocking faux pas, the former president’s transactional instincts shaped the outlines of an African commercial strategy that Biden can build on.
“With the Trump Africa policy, the tone was wrong — it was derisive, dismissive, disrespectful. Obviously that was a problem and we lacked senior-level engagement,” says Aubrey Hruby, a Washington DC-based Africa investment adviser. “However, there were interesting positive aspects of the last four years that I hope are continued into the new administration. One was a focus on the commercial aspects of US-Africa policy.”
On October 5 2018, Trump signed into law the Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act (Build), which established the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), a new development bank that will invest in sectors across the emerging world including energy, health care, infrastructure and technology.
The act gave DFC a lending capacity of $60bn, double that of its forerunner, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — an organisation Trump considered scrapping before being convinced by allies that US overseas finance could combat the influence of a rising China. The unlikely product of the Trump era could become a game-changer driving US investment in Africa.
“The high point, the single most positive legacy of the Trump administration in my mind, will be the creation of the DFC. That is really important, that has a lot of potential,” says Harris. “It gives more resources and flexibility to the US government to support companies. It’s a work in progress, the statutory authority is there, the resources are increased. The DFC currently has about $8bn worth of exposure to Africa, which is over half its exposure currently.”
While it’s too early to judge the DFC’s influence, its creation — and that of Trump’s Prosper Africa initiative, which combines the resources of more than 15 government agencies to connect US and African businesses — offers a timely boost to US development finance capabilities as Africa emerges from the economic ruin of the Covid-19 pandemic.
UPDATE: U.S. Senate Confirms Blinken as Secretary of State in Biden Administration
Antony Blinken served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and is one of Biden’s closest and longest-serving foreign policy advisers. He will succeed Mike Pompeo as the nation’s top diplomat. (The Washington Post)
The Washington Post
Updated: January 26th, 2021
Blinken, Biden’s nominee to become secretary of state, won Senate confirmation Tuesday, becoming the fourth member of the new president’s Cabinet to clear that hurdle.
The vote was 78 to 22.
Blinken served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and is one of Biden’s closest and longest-serving foreign policy advisers.
He will succeed Mike Pompeo as the nation’s top diplomat as the new administration faces numerous challenges from China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Schumer hailed Biden’s choice.
“Mr. Blinken is just the right person to rebuild and reassert America’s national security prerogatives on the national stage and reestablish the first instrument of American power: diplomacy,” the Senate majority leader said.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Blinken’s nomination in a 15-to-3 vote Monday, clearing the way for it to be taken up on the Senate floor.
Blinken was staff director of the committee when Biden, as a senator from Delaware, was its chairman. Blinken later joined the Obama administration as a senior adviser to Biden when he was vice president.
The Senate has confirmed Avril Haines as Biden’s director of national intelligence, Lloyd Austin as his defense secretary and Janet Yellen as his treasury secretary.
Nearly a week into Biden’s presidency, several other picks are moving forward.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday advanced Alejandro Mayorkas’s nomination for secretary of homeland security. Mayorkas served as Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary under President Barack Obama.
And the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is holding a hearing Tuesday on Gina Raimondo’s nomination to be secretary of commerce. Raimondo (D) is serving as governor of Rhode Island.
—
UPDATE: Controversial Head of VOA Resigns at President Biden’s Request
Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who sought to remake the Voice of America, resigned on Wednesday, bringing an end to a short and tumultuous tenure. He said that his resignation came at Biden’s request. Biden is expected to name a replacement, although no successor was announced on Wednesday. (Photo: Voice of America headquarters on Capitol Hill/The Washington Post)
Controversial head of Voice of America resigns hours after President Biden takes office
Updated: Jan. 20, 2021
Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who sought to remake the Voice of America and other government-funded overseas news agencies, resigned on Wednesday, bringing an end to a short and tumultuous tenure.
Pack quit a few hours after President Biden took office and less than eight months into his three-year term as chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The government agency oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and other networks that produce and distribute news to millions of people in countries whose governments suppress independent reporting.
He said that his resignation came at Biden’s request. During the president campaign, Biden’s staff had signaled that he would replace Pack if Biden won election.
Biden is expected to name a replacement from within USAGM, although no successor was announced on Wednesday.
Pack, a former documentary filmmaker who has worked with former Trump adviser Steve K. Bannon, left a trail of controversies, lawsuits and general criticism inside and around the agencies he oversaw.
He characterized his efforts — which included replacing top managers and asserting the right to direct VOA’s newsgathering, despite a firewall of regulations intended to keep the news product independent — as an attempt to restore the venerable news agency’s tradition of nonpartisan reporting. Critics, however, saw his initiatives as an effort to turn VOA into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration.
How Trump’s obsessions with media and loyalty coalesced in a battle for Voice of America
“I firmly believe that — thanks to your support, patriotism, and understanding — a great amount of much-needed reform was achieved in the past eight months,” Pack wrote in a resignation letter to staff on Wednesday.
He added: “USAGM and the CEO position are meant to be non-partisan. As such, every single day, I was solely focused upon reorienting the agency toward its mission. I sought, above all, to help the agency share America’s story with the world objectively and without bias.”
Others inside USAGM and VOA strongly disagreed with that self-assessment.
One VOA journalist said Pack’s resignation triggered “sighs of relief and cheers” among employees.
“Most if not all of us are celebrating Pack’s resignation as the first step toward a return to normalcy,” the journalist said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she isn’t authorized to comment.
She said she was among a number of staff members who are hopeful that the director and deputy director appointed by Pack, Robert Reilly and Elizabeth Robbins, respectively, would soon follow Pack out the door. “They must be removed immediately or the damage to the credibility of the VOA brand will be permanent,” she said.
Pack swept aside top managers of USAGM and the directors of the agencies under his supervision, replacing them with a cadre of conservative appointees. Reilly and Robbins have been on the job for just the past month.
It’s not clear whether Pack’s appointees, including those on supervisory boards, will be replaced by Biden.
He also declined to renew the expiring visas of foreign journalists who work for VOA, saying that they had not been properly vetted and suggesting the agency was harboring foreign spies.
According to a whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday on behalf of former employees, Pack used about $2 million in taxpayer funds to hire a law firm to compile personnel dossiers on some of the managers he targeted for removal. The dossier were developed to support his decision to replace them, the complaint said.
Earlier this month, more than two dozen VOA employees objected to a directive, apparently from Pack, to broadcast a speech by Mike Pompeo, the outgoing secretary of state, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The employees said the mandate to carry the speech from a political appointee amounted to government “propaganda” — the very thing VOA was established to counter in countries abroad. They demanded the resignations of Reilly and Robbins.
Reilly did not allow reporters to question Pompeo at the event. He later demoted the agency’s White House correspondent, Patsy Widakuswara, after as she fired questions at Pompeo as he was leaving the building.
Pack did not respond to a request for comment, continuing a practice he has observed since his appointment began. Since June, he has given interviews only to conservative media outlets and to USAGM-supervised agencies.
—
UPDATE: Biden Sworn in as America’s 46th President
Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Jill Biden holds the Bible during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (Photo via AP)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration (all times local):
12:00
Joe Biden has officially become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden took the oath of office just before noon Wednesday during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. The presidential oath was administered by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Biden was sworn in using a Bible that has been in his family since 1893 and was used during his swearing-in as vice president in 2009 and 2013. The 5-inch thick Bible, which could be seen on a table next to Biden’s chair on the dais, has a Celtic cross on its cover and was also used each time he was sworn- n as a U.S. senator.
Biden’s late son, Beau, also used the Bible for his own swearing-in ceremony as attorney general of Delaware and helped carry the Bible to his father’s 2013 ceremony.
Inauguration Live Updates: Biden Takes Power as Trump Leaves White House
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Facing crush of crises, Biden will take helm as president
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden swears the oath of office at noon Wednesday to become the 46th president of the United States, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation and inheriting a confluence of crises arguably greater than any faced by his predecessors.
The very ceremony in which presidential power is transferred, a hallowed American democratic tradition, will serve as a jarring reminder of the challenges Biden faces: The inauguration unfolds at a U.S. Capitol battered by an insurrectionist siege just two weeks ago, encircled by security forces evocative of those in a war zone, and devoid of crowds because of the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Stay home, Americans were exhorted, to prevent further spread of a surging virus that has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the United States. Biden will look out over a capital city dotted with empty storefronts that attest to the pandemic’s deep economic toll and where summer protests laid bare the nation’s renewed reckoning on racial injustice.
He will not be applauded — or likely even acknowledged — by his predecessor.
Flouting tradition, Donald Trump planned to depart Washington on Wednesday morning ahead of the inauguration rather than accompany his successor to the Capitol. Trump, awaiting his second impeachment trial, stoked grievance among his supporters with the lie that Biden’s win was illegitimate.
Biden, in his third run for the presidency, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. On his first day, Biden will take a series of executive actions — on the pandemic, climate, immigration and more — to undo the heart of Trump’s agenda. The Democrat takes office with the bonds of the republic strained and the nation reeling from challenges that rival those faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Biden will face a series of urgent, burning crises like we have not seen before, and they all have to be solved at once. It is very hard to find a parallel in history,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “I think we have been through a near-death experience as a democracy. Americans who will watch the new president be sworn in are now acutely aware of how fragile our democracy is and how much it needs to be protected.”
Biden will come to office with a well of empathy and resolve born by personal tragedy as well as a depth of experience forged from more than four decades in Washington. At age 78, he will be the oldest president inaugurated.
More history will be made at his side, as Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be vice president. The former U.S. senator from California is also the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency and will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government.
The two will be sworn in during an inauguration ceremony with few parallels in history.
Tens of thousands of troops are on the streets to provide security precisely two weeks after a violent mob of Trump supporters, incited by the Republican president, stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.
The tense atmosphere evoked the 1861 inauguration of Lincoln, who was secretly transported to Washington to avoid assassins on the eve of the Civil War, or Roosevelt’s inaugural in 1945, when he opted for a small, secure ceremony at the White House in the waning months of World War II.
Despite security warnings, Biden declined to move the ceremony indoors and instead will address a small, socially distant crowd on the West Front of the Capitol. Some of the traditional trappings of the quadrennial ceremony will remain.
The day will begin with a reach across the aisle after four years of bitter partisan battles under Trump. Biden invited Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leaders of the Senate and House, to join him at a morning Mass, along with Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders.
Once at the Capitol, Biden will be administered the oath by Chief Justice John Roberts; Harris will be sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The theme of Biden’s approximately 30-minute speech will be “America United,” and aides said it would be a call to set aside differences during a moment of national trial.
Biden will then oversee a “Pass in Review,” a military tradition that honors the peaceful transfer of power to a new commander in chief. Then, Biden, Harris and their spouses will be joined by a bipartisan trio of former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Ceremony.
Full Coverage: Biden’s inauguration
Later, Biden will join the end of a slimmed-down inaugural parade as he moves into the White House. Because of the pandemic, much of this year’s parade will be a virtual affair featuring performances from around the nation.
In the evening, in lieu of the traditional glitzy balls that welcome a new president to Washington, Biden will take part in a televised concert that also marks the return of A-list celebrities to the White House orbit after they largely eschewed Trump. Among those in the lineup: Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lady Gaga will sing the national anthem at the Capitol earlier in the day.
Trump will be the first president in more than a century to skip the inauguration of his successor. He planned his own farewell celebration at nearby Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One for the final time as president for the flight to his Florida estate.
Trump will nonetheless shadow Biden’s first days in office.
Trump’s second impeachment trial could start as early as this week. That could test the ability of the Senate, poised to come under Democratic control, to balance impeachment proceedings with confirmation hearings and votes on Biden’s Cabinet choices.
Biden was eager to go big early, with an ambitious first 100 days that includes a push to speed up the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations to anxious Americans and pass a $1.9 trillion virus relief package. On Day One, he’ll also send an immigration proposal to Capitol Hill that would create an eight-year path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally.
He also planned a 10-day blitz of executive orders on matters that don’t require congressional approval — a mix of substantive and symbolic steps to unwind the Trump years. Among the planned steps: rescinding travel restrictions on people from several predominantly Muslim countries; rejoining the Paris climate accord; issuing a mask mandate for those on federal property; and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border.
The difficulties he faces are immense, to be mentioned in the same breath as Roosevelt taking office during the Great Depression or Obama, under whom Biden served eight years as vice president, during the economic collapse. And the solution may be similar.
“There is now, as there was in 1933, a vital need for leadership,” said presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “for every national resource to be brought to bear to get the virus under control, to help produce and distribute the vaccines, to get vaccines into the arms of the people, to spur the economy to recover and get people back to work and to school.”
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UPDATE: Biden Outlines ‘Day One’ Agenda of Executive Actions
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event at The Queen theater, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first hours as president, Joe Biden plans to take executive action to roll back some of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor and to address the raging coronavirus pandemic, his incoming chief of staff said Saturday.
The opening salvo would herald a 10-day blitz of executive actions as Biden seeks to act swiftly to redirect the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency without waiting for Congress.
On Wednesday, following his inauguration, Biden will end Trump’s restriction on immigration to the U.S. from some Muslim-majority countries, move to rejoin the Paris climate accord and mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel. Those are among roughly a dozen actions Biden will take on his first day in the White House, his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in a memo to senior staff.
Other actions include extending the pause on student loan payments and actions meant to prevent evictions and foreclosures for those struggling during the pandemic.
“These executive actions will deliver relief to the millions of Americans that are struggling in the face of these crises,” Klain said in the memo. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward.”
“Full achievement” of Biden’s goals will require Congress to act, Klain wrote, including the $1.9 trillion virus relief bill he outlined on Thursday. Klain said that Biden would also propose a comprehensive immigration reform bill to lawmakers on his first day in office.
Providing a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally will be part of Biden’s agenda, according to people briefed on his plans. Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum and among those briefed, said immigrants would be put on an eight-year path. There would be a faster track for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields people from deportation who came to the U.S. as children, and for those from strife-torn countries with temporary status.
On Thursday, the new president’s second day in office, Biden would sign orders related to the COVID-19 outbreak aimed at reopening schools and businesses and expanding virus testing, Klain said. The following day, Friday, will see action on providing economic relief to those suffering the economic costs of the pandemic.
In the following week, Klain said, Biden would take additional actions relating to criminal justice reform, climate change and immigration — including a directive to speed the reuniting of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump’s policies.
More actions will be added, Klain said, once they clear legal review.
Incoming presidents traditionally move swiftly to sign an array of executive actions when they take office. Trump did the same, but he found many of his orders challenged and even rejected by courts.
Klain maintained that Biden should not suffer similar issues, saying “the legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the President.”
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UPDATE: Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 & Economic Plan
President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during an event at The Queen theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
Updated: January 15th, 2021
Biden unveils $1.9 Trillion plan to stem COVID-19 and steady economy
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan to end “a crisis of deep human suffering” by speeding up vaccines and pumping out financial help to those struggling with the pandemic’s prolonged economic fallout.
Called the “American Rescue Plan,” the legislative proposal would meet Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration, and advance his objective of reopening most schools by the spring. On a parallel track, it delivers another round of aid to stabilize the economy while the public health effort seeks the upper hand on the pandemic.
“We not only have an economic imperative to act now — I believe we have a moral obligation,” Biden said in a nationwide address Thursday. At the same time, he acknowledged that his plan “does not come cheaply.”
Biden proposed $1,400 checks for most Americans, which on top of $600 provided in the most recent COVID-19 bill would bring the total to the $2,000 that Biden has called for. It would also extend a temporary boost in unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through September.
And it shoehorns in long-term Democratic policy aims such as increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding paid leave for workers, and increasing tax credits for families with children. The last item would make it easier for women to go back to work, which in turn would help the economy recover.
The political outlook for the legislation remained unclear. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer praised Biden for including liberal priorities, saying they would move quickly to pass it after Biden takes office next Wednesday. But Democrats have narrow margins in both chambers of Congress, and Republicans will push back on issues that range from increasing the minimum wage to providing more money for states, while demanding inclusion of their priorities, such as liability protection for businesses.
“Remember that a bipartisan $900 billion #COVID19 relief bill became law just 18 days ago,” tweeted Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. But Biden says that was only a down payment, and he promised more major legislation next month, focused on rebuilding the economy.
“The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, and there’s not time to waste,” Biden said. “We have to act and we have to act now.”
Still, he sought to manage expectations. “We’re better equipped to do this than any nation in the world,” he said. “But even with all these small steps, it’s going to take time.”
His relief bill would be paid for with borrowed money, adding to trillions in debt the government has already incurred to confront the pandemic. Aides said Biden will make the case that the additional spending and borrowing is necessary to prevent the economy from sliding into an even deeper hole. Interest rates are low, making debt more manageable.
Biden has long held that economic recovery is inextricably linked with controlling the coronavirus.
That squares with the judgment of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbying group and traditionally an adversary of Democrats. “We must defeat COVID before we can restore our economy and that requires turbocharging our vaccination efforts,” the Chamber said in a statement Thursday night that welcomed Biden’s plan but stopped short of endorsing it.
The plan comes as a divided nation is in the grip of the pandemic’s most dangerous wave yet. So far, more than 385,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. And government numbers out Thursday reported a jump in weekly unemployment claims, to 965,000, a sign that rising infections are forcing businesses to cut back and lay off workers.
Under Biden’s multipronged strategy, about $400 billion would go directly to combating the pandemic, while the rest is focused on economic relief and aid to states and localities.
About $20 billion would be allocated for a more disciplined focus on vaccination, on top of some $8 billion already approved by Congress. Biden has called for setting up mass vaccination centers and sending mobile units to hard-to-reach areas.
With the backing of Congress and the expertise of private and government scientists, the Trump administration delivered two highly effective vaccines and more are on the way. Yet a month after the first shots were given, the nation’s vaccination campaign is off to a slow start with about 11 million people getting the first of two shots, although more than 30 million doses have been delivered.
Biden called the vaccine rollout “a dismal failure so far” and said he would provide more details about his vaccination campaign on Friday.
The plan also provides $50 billion to expand testing, which is seen as key to reopening most schools by the end of the new administration’s first 100 days. About $130 billion would be allocated to help schools reopen without risking further contagion.
The plan would fund the hiring of 100,000 public health workers, to focus on encouraging people to get vaccinated and on tracing the contacts of those infected with the coronavirus.
There’s also a proposal to boost investment in genetic sequencing, to help track new virus strains including the more contagious variants identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Throughout the plan, there’s a focus on ensuring that minority communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic are not shortchanged on vaccines and treatments, aides said.
With the new proposals comes a call to redouble efforts on the basics.
Biden is asking Americans to override their sense of pandemic fatigue and recommit to wearing masks, practicing social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings, particularly larger ones. It’s still the surest way to slow the COVID-19 wave, with more than 4,400 deaths reported just on Tuesday.
Biden’s biggest challenge will be to “win the hearts and minds of the American people to follow his lead,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert and emergency physician.
The pace of vaccination in the U.S. is approaching 1 million shots a day, but 1.8 million a day would be needed to reach widespread or “herd” immunity by the summer, according to a recent estimate by the American Hospital Association. Wen says the pace should be even higher — closer to 3 million a day.
Biden believes the key to speeding that up lies not only in delivering more vaccine but also in working closely with states and local communities to get shots into the arms of more people. The Trump administration provided the vaccine to states and set guidelines for who should get priority for shots, but largely left it up to state and local officials to organize their vaccination campaigns.
It’s still unclear how the new administration will address the issue of vaccine hesitancy, the doubts and suspicions that keep many people from getting a shot. Polls show it’s particularly a problem among Black Americans.
“We will have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated,” Biden said.
Next Wednesday, when Biden is sworn in as president, marks the anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States.
Among the questions that Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield -- a veteran American diplomat who was the head of the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs until 2017 -- was asked about during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday included her take on the current situation in Ethiopia. (Getty Images)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 27th, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — President Joe Biden’s nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield fielded lawmakers’ questions during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
Among the questions that Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield — a veteran American diplomat who was the head of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs until 2017 — was asked about during her confirmation hearing included her take on the current situation in Ethiopia.
Below is video of her answer regarding Ethiopia:
—
Related:
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Michael Raynor Holds Final News Briefing
Ambassador Michael Raynor. (VOA)
Voice of America
By Eskinder Firew
Departing US Envoy Warns Ethiopia Against Violence
ADDIS ABABA – Calling Ethiopia “the critical actor in Horn of Africa stability,” outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Michael Raynor voiced confidence in a strengthened bilateral relationship but warned that violence – especially in the northern Tigray region – threatens the country’s progress.
“We remain concerned about ethnic violence around the country and the threat it poses to achieving the country’s potential,” Raynor said of Ethiopia, speaking at a press conference Monday in Addis Ababa, the capital.
It was Raynor’s final news briefing as ambassador, a post he has held since September 2017. He has focused on Africa for many of his 30-plus years as a diplomat.
Rivalries among some of Ethiopia’s 80 ethnic groups have spawned deadly violence, including the Jan. 12 killings of more than 80 civilians in Metekel, a town in the western Benishangul-Gumaz region, the Associated Press reported, citing information from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
Raynor said the U.S. government also is “particularly alarmed by the ongoing situation in Tigray,” where Ethiopian federal forces launched a military operation in early November to put down a rebellion by regional forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Ethiopia’s government said that it had regained control of the region by late November, but reports of extrajudicial killings and other sporadic violence have continued to filter out.
Since the conflict’s outbreak, more than 58,000 have fled northern Ethiopia for neighboring Tigray, the International Organization for Migration reported Monday. While thousands are believed to have been killed and many more internally displaced, numbers are difficult to verify because of limited communications with, and access to, Tigray. The United Nations estimates that roughly 4.5 million people in Tigray desperately need food, medicine and other basics, and U.N. agencies have criticized Ethiopian authorities for blocking humanitarian aid.
“After almost three months, we’re still not seeing enough humanitarian assistance reach the most vulnerable areas,” Raynor told journalists. “Much more needs to be done, and urgently, to ensure humanitarian organizations – both Ethiopian and international – have full and secure access to the region to provide lifesaving support to the millions of people who are suffering.”
The U.N’s special representative on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, last week released a statement that she was “greatly concerned by serious allegations of sexual violence” in the region.
Raynor acknowledged that concern, saying the U.S. government continues “to call on all parties to cease any hostilities, ensure the protection of all civilians in Tigray, including refugees and humanitarian workers, and to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law.”
He also brought up the U.S. assessment that soldiers from Eritrea were helping Ethiopian federal forces in Tigray, despite Ethiopian authorities’ denials.
“We continue to be troubled by the activities of Eritrean actors in the Tigray region,” Raynor said, “and we continue to call for an immediate halt to — and independent investigations of — all credible reports of atrocities. sexual violence, human rights violations of all kinds in Tigray and other places.”
Improved bilateral relations
Raynor said that when Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in April 2018, replacing Hailemariam Desalegn after 23 years and introducing an array of reforms, “there was a fundamental reset, a realignment of core values fully in sync with U.S. core values, both in terms of economic opportunity and job creation and in terms of political space and respect for rights. So that formed a strong basis for us to expand our engagement.”
During his tenure as ambassador, Raynor said, the U.S. government “brought well over $3 billion” to support Ethiopia’s governance, development and humanitarian priorities. These range from enhancing the country’s food security and health systems to reforming judicial activities and updating economic policies to encourage private investment.
Raynor also observed that Ethiopia’s ability “to focus on our areas of partnership has been strained by some degree due to the rate of ethnic tensions and Ethiopian-on-Ethiopian violence and certainly the current Tigray crisis. But by and large I feel very optimistic about the trajectory we have been on and that my successor will be able to build upon.”
A successor has not yet been named.
“This is a pivotal time for Ethiopia,” Raynor said. “What Ethiopia does in the coming months — particularly in promoting democracy, organizing free and fair credible elections this year, protecting basic human rights including freedom of the press and freedom of expression, resolving conflict and addressing ethnic tension, maintaining regional harmony and promoting economic opportunity — will impact this country’s prospects for generations to come.”
Departing US Envoy Warns Ethiopia Against Violence
ADDIS ABABA – Calling Ethiopia “the critical actor in Horn of Africa stability,” outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Michael Raynor voiced confidence in a strengthened bilateral relationship but warned that violence – especially in the northern Tigray region – threatens the country’s progress.
“We remain concerned about ethnic violence around the country and the threat it poses to achieving the country’s potential,” Raynor said of Ethiopia, speaking at a press conference Monday in Addis Ababa, the capital.
It was Raynor’s final news briefing as ambassador, a post he has held since September 2017. He has focused on Africa for many of his 30-plus years as a diplomat.
Rivalries among some of Ethiopia’s 80 ethnic groups have spawned deadly violence, including the Jan. 12 killings of more than 80 civilians in Metekel, a town in the western Benishangul-Gumaz region, the Associated Press reported, citing information from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
Raynor said the U.S. government also is “particularly alarmed by the ongoing situation in Tigray,” where Ethiopian federal forces launched a military operation in early November to put down a rebellion by regional forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Ethiopia’s government said that it had regained control of the region by late November, but reports of extrajudicial killings and other sporadic violence have continued to filter out.
Since the conflict’s outbreak, more than 58,000 have fled northern Ethiopia for neighboring Tigray, the International Organization for Migration reported Monday. While thousands are believed to have been killed and many more internally displaced, numbers are difficult to verify because of limited communications with, and access to, Tigray. The United Nations estimates that roughly 4.5 million people in Tigray desperately need food, medicine and other basics, and U.N. agencies have criticized Ethiopian authorities for blocking humanitarian aid.
“After almost three months, we’re still not seeing enough humanitarian assistance reach the most vulnerable areas,” Raynor told journalists. “Much more needs to be done, and urgently, to ensure humanitarian organizations – both Ethiopian and international – have full and secure access to the region to provide lifesaving support to the millions of people who are suffering.”
The U.N’s special representative on sexual violence, Pramila Patten, last week released a statement that she was “greatly concerned by serious allegations of sexual violence” in the region.
Raynor acknowledged that concern, saying the U.S. government continues “to call on all parties to cease any hostilities, ensure the protection of all civilians in Tigray, including refugees and humanitarian workers, and to uphold international human rights and humanitarian law.”
He also brought up the U.S. assessment that soldiers from Eritrea were helping Ethiopian federal forces in Tigray, despite Ethiopian authorities’ denials.
“We continue to be troubled by the activities of Eritrean actors in the Tigray region,” Raynor said, “and we continue to call for an immediate halt to — and independent investigations of — all credible reports of atrocities. sexual violence, human rights violations of all kinds in Tigray and other places.”
Improved bilateral relations
Raynor said that when Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in April 2018, replacing Hailemariam Desalegn after 23 years and introducing an array of reforms, “there was a fundamental reset, a realignment of core values fully in sync with U.S. core values, both in terms of economic opportunity and job creation and in terms of political space and respect for rights. So that formed a strong basis for us to expand our engagement.”
During his tenure as ambassador, Raynor said, the U.S. government “brought well over $3 billion” to support Ethiopia’s governance, development and humanitarian priorities. These range from enhancing the country’s food security and health systems to reforming judicial activities and updating economic policies to encourage private investment.
Raynor also observed that Ethiopia’s ability “to focus on our areas of partnership has been strained by some degree due to the rate of ethnic tensions and Ethiopian-on-Ethiopian violence and certainly the current Tigray crisis. But by and large I feel very optimistic about the trajectory we have been on and that my successor will be able to build upon.”
A successor has not yet been named.
“This is a pivotal time for Ethiopia,” Raynor said. “What Ethiopia does in the coming months — particularly in promoting democracy, organizing free and fair credible elections this year, protecting basic human rights including freedom of the press and freedom of expression, resolving conflict and addressing ethnic tension, maintaining regional harmony and promoting economic opportunity — will impact this country’s prospects for generations to come.”
Antony Blinken served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and is one of Biden’s closest and longest-serving foreign policy advisers. He will succeed Mike Pompeo as the nation’s top diplomat. (The Washington Post)
The Washington Post
Blinken, Biden’s nominee to become secretary of state, won Senate confirmation Tuesday, becoming the fourth member of the new president’s Cabinet to clear that hurdle.
The vote was 78 to 22.
Blinken served as deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and is one of Biden’s closest and longest-serving foreign policy advisers.
He will succeed Mike Pompeo as the nation’s top diplomat as the new administration faces numerous challenges from China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Schumer hailed Biden’s choice.
“Mr. Blinken is just the right person to rebuild and reassert America’s national security prerogatives on the national stage and reestablish the first instrument of American power: diplomacy,” the Senate majority leader said.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Blinken’s nomination in a 15-to-3 vote Monday, clearing the way for it to be taken up on the Senate floor.
Blinken was staff director of the committee when Biden, as a senator from Delaware, was its chairman. Blinken later joined the Obama administration as a senior adviser to Biden when he was vice president.
The Senate has confirmed Avril Haines as Biden’s director of national intelligence, Lloyd Austin as his defense secretary and Janet Yellen as his treasury secretary.
Nearly a week into Biden’s presidency, several other picks are moving forward.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday advanced Alejandro Mayorkas’s nomination for secretary of homeland security. Mayorkas served as Department of Homeland Security deputy secretary under President Barack Obama.
And the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is holding a hearing Tuesday on Gina Raimondo’s nomination to be secretary of commerce. Raimondo (D) is serving as governor of Rhode Island.
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UPDATE: Controversial Head of VOA Resigns at President Biden’s Request
Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who sought to remake the Voice of America, resigned on Wednesday, bringing an end to a short and tumultuous tenure. He said that his resignation came at Biden’s request. Biden is expected to name a replacement, although no successor was announced on Wednesday. (Photo: Voice of America headquarters on Capitol Hill/The Washington Post)
Controversial head of Voice of America resigns hours after President Biden takes office
Updated: Jan. 20, 2021
Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who sought to remake the Voice of America and other government-funded overseas news agencies, resigned on Wednesday, bringing an end to a short and tumultuous tenure.
Pack quit a few hours after President Biden took office and less than eight months into his three-year term as chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The government agency oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and other networks that produce and distribute news to millions of people in countries whose governments suppress independent reporting.
He said that his resignation came at Biden’s request. During the president campaign, Biden’s staff had signaled that he would replace Pack if Biden won election.
Biden is expected to name a replacement from within USAGM, although no successor was announced on Wednesday.
Pack, a former documentary filmmaker who has worked with former Trump adviser Steve K. Bannon, left a trail of controversies, lawsuits and general criticism inside and around the agencies he oversaw.
He characterized his efforts — which included replacing top managers and asserting the right to direct VOA’s newsgathering, despite a firewall of regulations intended to keep the news product independent — as an attempt to restore the venerable news agency’s tradition of nonpartisan reporting. Critics, however, saw his initiatives as an effort to turn VOA into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration.
How Trump’s obsessions with media and loyalty coalesced in a battle for Voice of America
“I firmly believe that — thanks to your support, patriotism, and understanding — a great amount of much-needed reform was achieved in the past eight months,” Pack wrote in a resignation letter to staff on Wednesday.
He added: “USAGM and the CEO position are meant to be non-partisan. As such, every single day, I was solely focused upon reorienting the agency toward its mission. I sought, above all, to help the agency share America’s story with the world objectively and without bias.”
Others inside USAGM and VOA strongly disagreed with that self-assessment.
One VOA journalist said Pack’s resignation triggered “sighs of relief and cheers” among employees.
“Most if not all of us are celebrating Pack’s resignation as the first step toward a return to normalcy,” the journalist said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she isn’t authorized to comment.
She said she was among a number of staff members who are hopeful that the director and deputy director appointed by Pack, Robert Reilly and Elizabeth Robbins, respectively, would soon follow Pack out the door. “They must be removed immediately or the damage to the credibility of the VOA brand will be permanent,” she said.
Pack swept aside top managers of USAGM and the directors of the agencies under his supervision, replacing them with a cadre of conservative appointees. Reilly and Robbins have been on the job for just the past month.
It’s not clear whether Pack’s appointees, including those on supervisory boards, will be replaced by Biden.
He also declined to renew the expiring visas of foreign journalists who work for VOA, saying that they had not been properly vetted and suggesting the agency was harboring foreign spies.
According to a whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday on behalf of former employees, Pack used about $2 million in taxpayer funds to hire a law firm to compile personnel dossiers on some of the managers he targeted for removal. The dossier were developed to support his decision to replace them, the complaint said.
Earlier this month, more than two dozen VOA employees objected to a directive, apparently from Pack, to broadcast a speech by Mike Pompeo, the outgoing secretary of state, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The employees said the mandate to carry the speech from a political appointee amounted to government “propaganda” — the very thing VOA was established to counter in countries abroad. They demanded the resignations of Reilly and Robbins.
Reilly did not allow reporters to question Pompeo at the event. He later demoted the agency’s White House correspondent, Patsy Widakuswara, after as she fired questions at Pompeo as he was leaving the building.
Pack did not respond to a request for comment, continuing a practice he has observed since his appointment began. Since June, he has given interviews only to conservative media outlets and to USAGM-supervised agencies.
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UPDATE: Biden Sworn in as America’s 46th President
Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Jill Biden holds the Bible during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (Photo via AP)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration (all times local):
12:00
Joe Biden has officially become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden took the oath of office just before noon Wednesday during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. The presidential oath was administered by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Biden was sworn in using a Bible that has been in his family since 1893 and was used during his swearing-in as vice president in 2009 and 2013. The 5-inch thick Bible, which could be seen on a table next to Biden’s chair on the dais, has a Celtic cross on its cover and was also used each time he was sworn- n as a U.S. senator.
Biden’s late son, Beau, also used the Bible for his own swearing-in ceremony as attorney general of Delaware and helped carry the Bible to his father’s 2013 ceremony.
Inauguration Live Updates: Biden Takes Power as Trump Leaves White House
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Facing crush of crises, Biden will take helm as president
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden swears the oath of office at noon Wednesday to become the 46th president of the United States, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation and inheriting a confluence of crises arguably greater than any faced by his predecessors.
The very ceremony in which presidential power is transferred, a hallowed American democratic tradition, will serve as a jarring reminder of the challenges Biden faces: The inauguration unfolds at a U.S. Capitol battered by an insurrectionist siege just two weeks ago, encircled by security forces evocative of those in a war zone, and devoid of crowds because of the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Stay home, Americans were exhorted, to prevent further spread of a surging virus that has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the United States. Biden will look out over a capital city dotted with empty storefronts that attest to the pandemic’s deep economic toll and where summer protests laid bare the nation’s renewed reckoning on racial injustice.
He will not be applauded — or likely even acknowledged — by his predecessor.
Flouting tradition, Donald Trump planned to depart Washington on Wednesday morning ahead of the inauguration rather than accompany his successor to the Capitol. Trump, awaiting his second impeachment trial, stoked grievance among his supporters with the lie that Biden’s win was illegitimate.
Biden, in his third run for the presidency, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. On his first day, Biden will take a series of executive actions — on the pandemic, climate, immigration and more — to undo the heart of Trump’s agenda. The Democrat takes office with the bonds of the republic strained and the nation reeling from challenges that rival those faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Biden will face a series of urgent, burning crises like we have not seen before, and they all have to be solved at once. It is very hard to find a parallel in history,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “I think we have been through a near-death experience as a democracy. Americans who will watch the new president be sworn in are now acutely aware of how fragile our democracy is and how much it needs to be protected.”
Biden will come to office with a well of empathy and resolve born by personal tragedy as well as a depth of experience forged from more than four decades in Washington. At age 78, he will be the oldest president inaugurated.
More history will be made at his side, as Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be vice president. The former U.S. senator from California is also the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency and will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government.
The two will be sworn in during an inauguration ceremony with few parallels in history.
Tens of thousands of troops are on the streets to provide security precisely two weeks after a violent mob of Trump supporters, incited by the Republican president, stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.
The tense atmosphere evoked the 1861 inauguration of Lincoln, who was secretly transported to Washington to avoid assassins on the eve of the Civil War, or Roosevelt’s inaugural in 1945, when he opted for a small, secure ceremony at the White House in the waning months of World War II.
Despite security warnings, Biden declined to move the ceremony indoors and instead will address a small, socially distant crowd on the West Front of the Capitol. Some of the traditional trappings of the quadrennial ceremony will remain.
The day will begin with a reach across the aisle after four years of bitter partisan battles under Trump. Biden invited Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leaders of the Senate and House, to join him at a morning Mass, along with Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders.
Once at the Capitol, Biden will be administered the oath by Chief Justice John Roberts; Harris will be sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The theme of Biden’s approximately 30-minute speech will be “America United,” and aides said it would be a call to set aside differences during a moment of national trial.
Biden will then oversee a “Pass in Review,” a military tradition that honors the peaceful transfer of power to a new commander in chief. Then, Biden, Harris and their spouses will be joined by a bipartisan trio of former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Ceremony.
Full Coverage: Biden’s inauguration
Later, Biden will join the end of a slimmed-down inaugural parade as he moves into the White House. Because of the pandemic, much of this year’s parade will be a virtual affair featuring performances from around the nation.
In the evening, in lieu of the traditional glitzy balls that welcome a new president to Washington, Biden will take part in a televised concert that also marks the return of A-list celebrities to the White House orbit after they largely eschewed Trump. Among those in the lineup: Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lady Gaga will sing the national anthem at the Capitol earlier in the day.
Trump will be the first president in more than a century to skip the inauguration of his successor. He planned his own farewell celebration at nearby Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One for the final time as president for the flight to his Florida estate.
Trump will nonetheless shadow Biden’s first days in office.
Trump’s second impeachment trial could start as early as this week. That could test the ability of the Senate, poised to come under Democratic control, to balance impeachment proceedings with confirmation hearings and votes on Biden’s Cabinet choices.
Biden was eager to go big early, with an ambitious first 100 days that includes a push to speed up the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations to anxious Americans and pass a $1.9 trillion virus relief package. On Day One, he’ll also send an immigration proposal to Capitol Hill that would create an eight-year path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally.
He also planned a 10-day blitz of executive orders on matters that don’t require congressional approval — a mix of substantive and symbolic steps to unwind the Trump years. Among the planned steps: rescinding travel restrictions on people from several predominantly Muslim countries; rejoining the Paris climate accord; issuing a mask mandate for those on federal property; and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border.
The difficulties he faces are immense, to be mentioned in the same breath as Roosevelt taking office during the Great Depression or Obama, under whom Biden served eight years as vice president, during the economic collapse. And the solution may be similar.
“There is now, as there was in 1933, a vital need for leadership,” said presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “for every national resource to be brought to bear to get the virus under control, to help produce and distribute the vaccines, to get vaccines into the arms of the people, to spur the economy to recover and get people back to work and to school.”
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UPDATE: Biden Outlines ‘Day One’ Agenda of Executive Actions
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event at The Queen theater, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first hours as president, Joe Biden plans to take executive action to roll back some of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor and to address the raging coronavirus pandemic, his incoming chief of staff said Saturday.
The opening salvo would herald a 10-day blitz of executive actions as Biden seeks to act swiftly to redirect the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency without waiting for Congress.
On Wednesday, following his inauguration, Biden will end Trump’s restriction on immigration to the U.S. from some Muslim-majority countries, move to rejoin the Paris climate accord and mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel. Those are among roughly a dozen actions Biden will take on his first day in the White House, his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in a memo to senior staff.
Other actions include extending the pause on student loan payments and actions meant to prevent evictions and foreclosures for those struggling during the pandemic.
“These executive actions will deliver relief to the millions of Americans that are struggling in the face of these crises,” Klain said in the memo. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward.”
“Full achievement” of Biden’s goals will require Congress to act, Klain wrote, including the $1.9 trillion virus relief bill he outlined on Thursday. Klain said that Biden would also propose a comprehensive immigration reform bill to lawmakers on his first day in office.
Providing a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally will be part of Biden’s agenda, according to people briefed on his plans. Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum and among those briefed, said immigrants would be put on an eight-year path. There would be a faster track for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields people from deportation who came to the U.S. as children, and for those from strife-torn countries with temporary status.
On Thursday, the new president’s second day in office, Biden would sign orders related to the COVID-19 outbreak aimed at reopening schools and businesses and expanding virus testing, Klain said. The following day, Friday, will see action on providing economic relief to those suffering the economic costs of the pandemic.
In the following week, Klain said, Biden would take additional actions relating to criminal justice reform, climate change and immigration — including a directive to speed the reuniting of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump’s policies.
More actions will be added, Klain said, once they clear legal review.
Incoming presidents traditionally move swiftly to sign an array of executive actions when they take office. Trump did the same, but he found many of his orders challenged and even rejected by courts.
Klain maintained that Biden should not suffer similar issues, saying “the legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the President.”
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UPDATE: Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 & Economic Plan
President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during an event at The Queen theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
Updated: January 15th, 2021
Biden unveils $1.9 Trillion plan to stem COVID-19 and steady economy
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan to end “a crisis of deep human suffering” by speeding up vaccines and pumping out financial help to those struggling with the pandemic’s prolonged economic fallout.
Called the “American Rescue Plan,” the legislative proposal would meet Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration, and advance his objective of reopening most schools by the spring. On a parallel track, it delivers another round of aid to stabilize the economy while the public health effort seeks the upper hand on the pandemic.
“We not only have an economic imperative to act now — I believe we have a moral obligation,” Biden said in a nationwide address Thursday. At the same time, he acknowledged that his plan “does not come cheaply.”
Biden proposed $1,400 checks for most Americans, which on top of $600 provided in the most recent COVID-19 bill would bring the total to the $2,000 that Biden has called for. It would also extend a temporary boost in unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through September.
And it shoehorns in long-term Democratic policy aims such as increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding paid leave for workers, and increasing tax credits for families with children. The last item would make it easier for women to go back to work, which in turn would help the economy recover.
The political outlook for the legislation remained unclear. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer praised Biden for including liberal priorities, saying they would move quickly to pass it after Biden takes office next Wednesday. But Democrats have narrow margins in both chambers of Congress, and Republicans will push back on issues that range from increasing the minimum wage to providing more money for states, while demanding inclusion of their priorities, such as liability protection for businesses.
“Remember that a bipartisan $900 billion #COVID19 relief bill became law just 18 days ago,” tweeted Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. But Biden says that was only a down payment, and he promised more major legislation next month, focused on rebuilding the economy.
“The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, and there’s not time to waste,” Biden said. “We have to act and we have to act now.”
Still, he sought to manage expectations. “We’re better equipped to do this than any nation in the world,” he said. “But even with all these small steps, it’s going to take time.”
His relief bill would be paid for with borrowed money, adding to trillions in debt the government has already incurred to confront the pandemic. Aides said Biden will make the case that the additional spending and borrowing is necessary to prevent the economy from sliding into an even deeper hole. Interest rates are low, making debt more manageable.
Biden has long held that economic recovery is inextricably linked with controlling the coronavirus.
That squares with the judgment of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbying group and traditionally an adversary of Democrats. “We must defeat COVID before we can restore our economy and that requires turbocharging our vaccination efforts,” the Chamber said in a statement Thursday night that welcomed Biden’s plan but stopped short of endorsing it.
The plan comes as a divided nation is in the grip of the pandemic’s most dangerous wave yet. So far, more than 385,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. And government numbers out Thursday reported a jump in weekly unemployment claims, to 965,000, a sign that rising infections are forcing businesses to cut back and lay off workers.
Under Biden’s multipronged strategy, about $400 billion would go directly to combating the pandemic, while the rest is focused on economic relief and aid to states and localities.
About $20 billion would be allocated for a more disciplined focus on vaccination, on top of some $8 billion already approved by Congress. Biden has called for setting up mass vaccination centers and sending mobile units to hard-to-reach areas.
With the backing of Congress and the expertise of private and government scientists, the Trump administration delivered two highly effective vaccines and more are on the way. Yet a month after the first shots were given, the nation’s vaccination campaign is off to a slow start with about 11 million people getting the first of two shots, although more than 30 million doses have been delivered.
Biden called the vaccine rollout “a dismal failure so far” and said he would provide more details about his vaccination campaign on Friday.
The plan also provides $50 billion to expand testing, which is seen as key to reopening most schools by the end of the new administration’s first 100 days. About $130 billion would be allocated to help schools reopen without risking further contagion.
The plan would fund the hiring of 100,000 public health workers, to focus on encouraging people to get vaccinated and on tracing the contacts of those infected with the coronavirus.
There’s also a proposal to boost investment in genetic sequencing, to help track new virus strains including the more contagious variants identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Throughout the plan, there’s a focus on ensuring that minority communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic are not shortchanged on vaccines and treatments, aides said.
With the new proposals comes a call to redouble efforts on the basics.
Biden is asking Americans to override their sense of pandemic fatigue and recommit to wearing masks, practicing social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings, particularly larger ones. It’s still the surest way to slow the COVID-19 wave, with more than 4,400 deaths reported just on Tuesday.
Biden’s biggest challenge will be to “win the hearts and minds of the American people to follow his lead,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert and emergency physician.
The pace of vaccination in the U.S. is approaching 1 million shots a day, but 1.8 million a day would be needed to reach widespread or “herd” immunity by the summer, according to a recent estimate by the American Hospital Association. Wen says the pace should be even higher — closer to 3 million a day.
Biden believes the key to speeding that up lies not only in delivering more vaccine but also in working closely with states and local communities to get shots into the arms of more people. The Trump administration provided the vaccine to states and set guidelines for who should get priority for shots, but largely left it up to state and local officials to organize their vaccination campaigns.
It’s still unclear how the new administration will address the issue of vaccine hesitancy, the doubts and suspicions that keep many people from getting a shot. Polls show it’s particularly a problem among Black Americans.
“We will have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated,” Biden said.
Next Wednesday, when Biden is sworn in as president, marks the anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States.
The owners of Buunni Coffee say they will have to close by the end of January because they can't meet their landlord's rent demands. Activists are calling on state and city lawmakers to pass already proposed legislation to help businesses like Buunni survive. (Courtesy photo)
ABC 7 News
Activists Rally to Save Ethiopian Coffee Shop in Bronx
RIVERDALE, Bronx (WABC) — An Ethiopian coffee shop in the Bronx has become the center of a cry for help to save small businesses in danger of closing amid the pandemic.
The owners of Buunni Coffee say they will have to close by the end of January because they can’t meet their landlord’s rent demands.
Activists are calling on state and city lawmakers to pass already proposed legislation to help businesses like Buunni survive.
“Small businesses faced serious problems before COVID, and now the pandemic has brought us to a breaking point,” Sarina Prabasi, co-founder of Buunni Coffee, said. “This is not about any one business. It’s beyond time to create bold, comprehensive support for the smallest of businesses and our workers. We have an opportunity to address long-standing inequities, to level the playing field and to invest in our neighborhoods for the long term. But this will take courage and political will from our elected representatives.”
Those at the rally said Buunni has been a vital part of the neighborhood, a center for local activism, art, and music for the past three years.
“Immigrant-owned small businesses, such as Buunni Coffee, have become one of the biggest casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic with them closing at an alarming rate all across the City, including The Bronx,” Sen. Gustavo Rivera said. “The federal government’s inaction has left hard working businesses owners such as Ms. Prabasi at risk of losing their livelihoods and our borough in danger of a deeper economic crisis. I join local leaders and Riverdale residents in calling on our local government to fill the void left by Washington and enact legislation that will help businesses like Buunni Coffee to remain open and successfully recover from this unprecedented crisis.”
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Hosanna Yemiru was 11 when her family [both former journalists in Ethiopia] moved to the Dallas area, where she grew up and has made a name for herself as a political campaign organizer. Now, she’s decided to step out from behind the scenes and into the spotlight as a candidate for District 11. (Photo: courtesy Hosanna Yemiru)
District 11 Council Candidate Hosanna Yemiru Wants to Defend Programs for Working Stiffs
District 11 City Council candidate Hosanna Yemiru is moving from helping other candidates’ campaigns to mounting her own.courtesy Hosanna Yemiru
Hosanna Yemiru is not a typical Dallas City Council candidate, and she doesn’t plan on running a typical Dallas-style campaign, either.
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she was 11 when her family moved to the Dallas area, where she grew up and has made a name for herself as a political campaign organizer. Now, she’s decided to step out from behind the scenes and into the spotlight as a candidate for District 11.
Yemiru’s upbringing is a representation of the working-class immigrant experience. Her parents, both former journalists in Ethiopia, had to work multiple low-paying jobs to make ends meet after immigrating to Dallas.
“When we moved here it was a really big adjustment. People warn you about culture shock … but nothing really prepares you for what kind of adjustment you have to make,” Yemiru says.
Growing up, Yemiru had to rely on public libraries for access to books she couldn’t afford and DART to get around town. She attended public schools in RISD and eventually made her way to the University of Texas at Dallas, where she majored in American studies.
Professionally, Yemiru is a veteran political organizer. She has worked on several campaigns, starting on U.S. Rep. Colin Allred’s campaign as an organizer and eventually as a canvassing director focusing on communities of color. She went on to become the field director for Scott Griggs when he ran for Dallas mayor in 2019 and managed Tom Ervin’s primary campaign for the Texas House in 2020.
Before working on political campaigns, she worked in various positions in retail and as a legal assistant. “I just did odd jobs here and there because I needed to,” Yemiru says.
As a working-class immigrant growing up in Dallas, Yemiru experienced first hand how difficult it can be to rely on the patchwork of public services that many Dallasites rely on every day.
“Whether it was utility payment assistance or food banks that we relied on, as I started growing up I started to see that they were the first ones on the chopping block when it comes to our City Council,” Yemiru says.
Indeed, DART faced budget cuts in 2020 while funding for homeless services remained flat despite continued growth in the homeless population.
Yemiru, a self-described progressive, believes the city government of Dallas can do more for people who can identify with her experience.
“In the wake of COVID, we need strong progressive voices on council fighting for everyday Dallasites,” Yemiru says.
The manner in which Dallas has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic is central to Yemiru’s decision to run. She believes that much more could have been and could still be done to provide critical relief to struggling people in Dallas. “I’m very disappointed with the way we have handled COVID in the city, and I think we could do better,” Yemiru says.
I think it’s the fact that we run municipal candidates that don’t speak to the larger electorate. They don’t run on issues that matter to anyone other than like your very active homeowners.” – Hosanna Yemiru, District 11 council candidate
Yemiru cites the city government’s inability to distribute millions in mortgage and rental assistance as one major failure. In 2020, Yemiru tried to help a neighbor identify which assistance programs they could apply for after the passage of the CARES act.
“It was so difficult to figure out … and in the end, we ended up applying, and he didn’t receive any aid, and of course we know now that one in four people who applied for rental assistance to the city of Dallas didn’t receive it,” Yemiru says.
She said Dallas has failed to implement creative programs that connect the health of the community with the health of local businesses, such as the Meal Assistance Program in New Orleans that utilizes federal funding to partner with restaurants and delivery services to provide food to qualifying residents.
“Why are we not doing something like that in Dallas? I would like to see some political urgency, some political will,” Yemiru says.
Part of the problem, in Yemiru’s mind, is that voter turnout is low when it comes to City Council. It is not an irregular occurrence for fewer than 10% of eligible voters to participate in municipal elections.
“I don’t think that that is the fault of voters at all. I think it’s the fact that we run municipal candidates that don’t speak to the larger electorate. They don’t run on issues that matter to anyone other than like your very active homeowners,” Yemiru says.
This is something Yemiru hopes to change with her campaign, which is aimed to expand the electorate by amplifying the voices of minorities and working people in the city.
“I’m really excited to be able to run a campaign that’s really going to focus on that, on organizing and investing into our communities and not just talking to the same 5,000 people that we rely on to decide everything that happens in our city,” Yemiru says.
To do that, Yemiru intends on doing it the old-fashioned way: knocking on doors, making phone calls and sending postcards. “We’re going to try every single avenue possible to reach as many voters as possible,” Yemiru says.
She also intends to focus on priorities that she believes will resonate with average voters, such as public health, public safety, infrastructure, environmental and energy issues and homelessness, to name a few.
“These issues don’t just stop at the federal level or state level. There’s tons that we can do on the local level to ensure that we are protecting and investing in our communities. All politics is local,” Yemiru says.
Dr. Lemma W. Senbet is the William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance at the University of Maryland, College Park. Beyond his academic career, Professor Lemma has been an influential member of the global finance community. He has advised the World Bank, IMF, the UN and other international institutions on issues of financial sector reform and capital market development. (Photo: UMD)
As the William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance, Lemma Senbet, PhD ’76, has helped transform the finance program at the University of Maryland into one of the best in the world.
He’s made such an impact that the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland recently named an undergraduate finance program after him—The Lemma Senbet Fund, which gives undergrads hands-on experience in portfolio management and equity analysis.
But Senbet never planned to earn a PhD. He came to the U.S. from Ethiopia to earn an MBA at UCLA, which he selected because they offered a fast-track program he could complete in a year and keep his expenses down.
Senbet had planned to go home after completing his MBA, but didn’t want to leave after just one year in the U.S. Determined to find a way to earn an income so he could stay another year, Senbet turned to a trusted professor at UCLA who encouraged him to pursue a PhD.
“I got accepted to the PhD program at UCLA, but there wasn’t much money for students,” says Senbet. “So, I went back to my professor and he told me that Governor Rockefeller was handing out tuition waivers to foreign students, and encouraged me to apply to a finance program in New York—particularly UB.”
He got accepted into Columbia University and the University at Buffalo, but decided UB was the better fit. Still, he wasn’t fully committed to spending three or four years in a doctoral program, since he had passion to go back home. But civil unrest in Ethiopia forced him to stay longer in the program.
“This path turned out to be the correct one,” he says. “I didn’t know it then, but UB had one of the best finance programs—better than the Big Ten schools at the time. But since the program was so small, we got very close mentorship. We were like colleagues with faculty.”
After earning his doctorate, Senbet joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor of finance. There, he progressed rapidly along the tenure track, earning the rank of full professor after just seven years, followed by the Charles Albright Chaired Professorship, before joining the University of Maryland.
Beyond his academic career, Senbet has been an influential member of the global finance community. He has advised the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and other international institutions on issues of financial sector reform and capital market development. He is a past president of the Western Finance Association and a two-time director of the American Finance Association.
He also took a five-year leave from the University of Maryland to serve as executive director and CEO of the African Economic Research Consortium, the largest and oldest economic research and training network in Africa. He is succeeded by the former governor of the Central Bank of Kenya.
Senbet has received numerous recognitions for his impact on the profession. In 2000 he was inducted into the Financial Economists Roundtable, was named a Fellow of the Financial Management Association International in 2006 and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Addis Ababa University in 2005. In 2012, he was awarded the Ethiopian Diaspora (SEED) award for exemplary lifetime achievements and community service.
Throughout his career, Senbet has mentored a generation of doctoral students who have become distinguished professors around the country, including at Carnegie Mellon University and Vanderbilt University.
“So, UB has PhD ‘grandchildren’ so to speak,” he says.
When his students come to him seeking advice about what to do in their life, Senbet offers a simple response: Do your best.
“You don’t know where an opportunity will lead or who is watching you,” he says. “This uncharted journey has defined my life—from my college major to Wisconsin to Maryland to Africa. No matter what path is given to you—whether by luck or by plan—give it your all.”
According to the Ministry of Health the number of coronavirus cases in Ethiopia has reached 134,569 as of January 26th , 2021. (Photo: Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health, via Twitter @lia_tadesse )
Survey identifies troubling effect of pandemic on where women give birth in Ethiopia
In urban areas, delivery rates in lower-level health facilities increased and hospital deliveries decreased after social distancing restrictions were put in place
By Johns Hopkins Magazine
A new study from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and researchers at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia has found that as of June, the proportion of women in urban areas—where COVID-19 rates were highest—who delivered in lower-level health facilities significantly increased while deliveries in hospitals declined. A pregnant woman’s place of delivery is a key maternal health service component that has a direct impact on pregnancy and newborn outcomes, and researchers have been monitoring how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women’s delivery patterns. The analysis was conducted using data from the Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia survey, led by Linnea Zimmerman, assistant professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School, and Solomon Shiferaw and Assefa Seme at Addis Ababa University. The project is managed by Johns Hopkins global health affiliate Jhpiego and the Gates Institute. Results from the analysis also showed that at the national level, there was no difference in the proportion of women who delivered in a hospital and home delivery rates remained unchanged. Looking within urban areas, women who delivered during May and June, after COVID-19 restrictions started, were significantly less likely to deliver in a hospital relative to women who delivered prior to the pandemic.
In Ethiopia, as of January 26th, 2021, there have been 134,569 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Read more »
Assessing Ethiopian women’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 pandemic
By World Bank
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has devastating health and economic impacts globally and has disproportionately affected vulnerable groups. As highlighted in a blog published at the onset of the pandemic, the coronavirus is not gender-blind and pre-existing gender gaps may intensify during and after the pandemic due to worsening human capital, economic, and women’s agency outcomes.
What can high-frequency phone survey data tell us about the gendered effects of the pandemic in Ethiopia?
How Ethiopia prepared its health workforce for the COVID-19 response
Photo via the World Health Organization
By The World Health Organization
In a busy intensive care unit in Eka Kotebe General Hospital, Addis Ababa, Dr Samuel Getnet, 28, a newly-recruited young and energetic physician anxiously monitors the mechanical ventilators, an indispensable form of life support for COVID-19 patients with respiratory distress.
“I never thought my professional journey would bring me to the place where I’m today—at the center of COVID-19 pandemic management team—treating and caring for the most severely ill patients who critically need my support and care. Despite the challenges and risks, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve my people at this critical time,” he said.
Dr Getnet is a general practitioner who came on board as part of the surge capacity planning for human resources announced by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health in February 2020. Before starting his duty in the intensive care unit, he received in-person training from the World Health Organization (WHO), with practical sessions taking place in the hospital. The topics he covered include case management, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), infection prevention and control (IPC), and the application and use of mechanical ventilation. He also benefited from online WHO resources such as Open WHO.org.
‘Relieved’: US health workers start getting COVID-19 vaccine
Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo)
By The Associated Press
The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000.
“I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay said after getting a shot in the arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.
With a countdown of “3-2-1,” workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause.
And in New Orleans, Steven Lee, an intensive care unit pharmacist at Ochsner Medical Center, summed up the moment as he got his own vaccination: “We can finally prevent the disease as opposed to treating it.”
Other hospitals around the country, from Rhode Island to Texas, unloaded precious frozen vials of vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech, with staggered deliveries set throughout the day and Tuesday. A few other countries have authorized the vaccine, including Britain, which started vaccinating people last week, and Canada, which began doing so on Monday.
For health care workers, who along with nursing home residents will be first in line for vaccination, hope is tempered by grief and the sheer exhaustion of months spent battling a coronavirus that still is surging in the U.S. and around the world.
IN PICTURES: On the Frontline Against Covid-19 in Ethiopia – A Photo Essay
Frontline workers at the Eka Kotebe hospital. (Photo by Yonas Tadesse)
By Yonas Tadesse
The first case of Covid-19 in Ethiopia was reported on 13 March, when a team of first responders took in a 48-year-old Japanese man. Having never seen anything like his condition, they did not know what to prepare for, and thus started their new normal of battling the coronavirus in Ethiopia.
Doctors, nurses, janitors, security guards and drivers donned hats they had never dreamed of wearing as they worked to develop systems and techniques to minimise the damage from the virus – often at the cost of their health, their home lives, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
FACTBOX- Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 67.72 million, death toll at 1,548,575
By Reuters
More than 67.72 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,548,575 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 1 million, a Reuters tally showed on Thursday, as the disease began to spread rapidly through a continent whose relative isolation has so far spared it the worst of the pandemic. The continent recorded 1,003,056 cases, of which 21,983 have died and 676,395 recovered. South Africa – which is the world’s fifth worst-hit nation and makes up more than half of sub-Saharan Africa’s case load – has recorded 538,184 cases since its first case on March 5, the health ministry said on Thursday. Low levels of testing in several countries, apart from South Africa, mean Africa’s infection rates are likely to be higher than reported, experts say. Read more »
COVID19 Contact Tracing is a race. But few U.S. states say how fast they’re running
Someone — let’s call her Person A — catches the coronavirus. It’s a Monday. She goes about life, unaware her body is incubating a killer. By perhaps Thursday, she’s contagious. Only that weekend does she come down with a fever and get tested. What happens next is critical. Public health workers have a small window of time to track down everyone Person A had close contact with over the past few days. Because by the coming Monday or Tuesday, some of those people — though they don’t yet have symptoms — could also be spreading the virus. Welcome to the sprint known as contact tracing, the process of reaching potentially exposed people as fast as possible and persuading them to quarantine. The race is key to controlling the pandemic ahead of a vaccine, experts say. But most places across the United States aren’t making public how fast or well they’re running it, leaving Americans in the dark about how their governments are mitigating the risk. An exception is the District of Columbia, which recently added metrics on contact tracing to its online dashboard. A few weeks ago, the District was still too overwhelmed to try to ask all of those who tested positive about their contacts. Now, after building a staff of several hundred contact tracers, D.C. officials say they’re making that attempt within 24 hours of a positive test report in about 98 percent of cases. For months, every U.S. state has posted daily numbers on coronavirus testing — along with charts of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. So far, only one state, Oregon, posts similar data about contact tracing. Officials in New York say they plan to begin publishing such metrics in the coming weeks.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 2.5 million on Sunday morning as a devastating new wave of infections continued to bear down throughout the country’s South and West. Florida, Texas and Arizona are fast emerging as the country’s latest epicenters after reporting record numbers of new infections for weeks in a row. Positivity rates and hospitalizations have also spiked. Global cases of covid-19 exceeded 10 million, according to a count maintained by Johns Hopkins University, a measure of the power and spread of a pandemic that has caused vast human suffering, devastated the world’s economy and still threatens vulnerable populations in rich and poor nations alike.
Read more »
WHO warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’ as coronavirus accelerates; Americas now hardest hit
By The Washington Post
The World Health Organization warned Friday that “the world is in a new and dangerous phase” as the global pandemic accelerates. The world recorded about 150,000 new cases on Thursday, the largest rise yet in a single day, according to the WHO. Nearly half of these infections were in the Americas, as new cases continue to surge in the United States, Brazil and across Latin America. More than 8.5 million coronavirus cases and at least 454,000 deaths have been reported worldwide. As confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb in the U.S., new mask requirements are prompting faceoffs between officials who seek to require face coverings and those, particularly conservatives, who oppose such measures. Several studies this month support wearing masks to curb coronavirus transmission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend their use as a protective measure. Read more »
World Bank Provides Additional Support to Help Ethiopia Mitigate Economic Impacts of COVID-19
JUNE 18, 2020
The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved $250 million ($125 million grant and $125 million credit) in supplemental financing for the ongoing Second Ethiopia Growth and Competitiveness Programmatic Development Policy Financing. This funding is geared towards helping Ethiopia to revitalize the economy by broadening the role of the private sector and attaining a more sustainable development path.
“The COVID 19 pandemic is expected to severely impact Ethiopia’s economy. The austerity of the required containment measures, along with disruptions to air travel and the collapse in international demand for goods exported by Ethiopia are already taking a toll on the economy,” said Carolyn Turk, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea. “Additionally, an estimated 1.8 million jobs are at risk, and the incomes and livelihoods of several million informal workers, self-employed individuals and farmers are expected to be affected.”
The supplemental financing will help to mitigate the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on the Government’s reform agenda. Specifically, the program is intended to help address some of the unanticipated financing needs the Government of Ethiopia is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis. Additional financing needs are estimated to be approximately $1.5 billion, as revenue collection is expected to weaken, and additional expenditure is needed to mitigate the public health and economic impacts of the crisis.
Once the coronavirus epicenter in the U.S., New York City begins to reopen
After three months of a coronavirus crisis followed by protests and unrest, New York City is trying to turn a page when a limited range of industries reopen Monday, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo)
100 days after the first coronavirus case was confirmed there, the city that was once the epicenter of America’s coronavirus pandemic began to reopen. The number of cases in New York has plunged, but health officials fear that a week of protests on the streets could bring a new wave.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) estimated that between 200,000 to 400,000 workers returned to work throughout the city’s five boroughs.
“All New Yorkers should be proud you got us to this day,” de Blasio said at a news conference at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a manufacturing hub.
US Deaths From Coronavirus Surpass 100,000 Milestone
By The Associated Press
The U.S. surpassed a jarring milestone Wednesday in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 deaths. That number is the best estimate and most assuredly an undercount. But it represents the stark reality that more Americans have died from the virus than from the Vietnam and Korea wars combined. “It’s a striking reminder of how dangerous this virus can be,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington. The true death toll from the virus, which emerged in China late last year and was first reported in the U.S. in January, is widely believed to be significantly higher, with experts saying many victims died of COVID-19 without ever being tested for it. Read more »
Ethiopia Coronavirus Cases Reach 5,846
By Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health
Report #111 የኢትዮጵያ የኮሮና ቫይረስ ሁኔታ መግለጫ. Status update on #COVID19Ethiopia. Total confirmed cases [as of June 29th, 2020]: 5,846 Read more »
New York Times Memorializes Coronavirus Victims as U.S. Death Toll Nears 100,000
America is fast approaching a grim milestone in the coronavirus outbreak — each figure here represents one of the nearly 100,000 lives lost so far. Read more »
Spotlight: Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System Tebita Adds Services Addressing COVID19
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Twelve year ago when Kibret Abebe quit his job as a nurse anesthetist at Black Lion Hospital and sold his house to launch Tebita Ambulance — Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System — his friends and family were understandably concerned about his decisions. But today Tebita operates over 20 advanced life support ambulances with approval from the Ministry of Health and stands as the country’s premier Emergency Medical Service (EMS). Tebita has since partnered with East Africa Emergency Services, an Ethiopian and American joint venture that Kibret also owns, with the aim “to establish the first trauma center and air ambulance system in Ethiopia.” This past month Tebita announced their launch of new services in Addis Abeba to address the COVID-19 pandemic and are encouraging Ethiopians residing in the U.S. to utilize Tebita for regular home check-ins on elderly family members as well as vulnerable individuals with pre-existing conditions. The following is an audio of the interview with Kibret Abebe and Laura Davis of Tebita Ambulance and East Africa Emergency Services: Read more »
WHO reports most coronavirus cases in a day as cases approach five million
By Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization expressed concern on Wednesday about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations have begun emerging from lockdown. The global health body said 106,000 new cases of infections of the novel coronavirus had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. “We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.” Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, said: “We will soon reach the tragic milestone of 5 million cases.” Read more »
WHO head says vaccines, medicines must be fairly shared to beat COVID-19
By Reuters
Scientists and researchers are working at “breakneck” speed to find solutions for COVID-19 but the pandemic can only be beaten with equitable distribution of medicines and vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday. “Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.
Doctors face new urgency to solve children and coronavirus puzzle
By Axios
Solving the mystery of how the coronavirus impacts children has gained sudden steam, as doctors try to determine if there’s a link between COVID-19 and kids with a severe inflammatory illness, and researchers try to pin down their contagiousness before schools reopen. New York hospitals have reported 73 suspected cases with two possible deaths from the inflammatory illness as of Friday evening. Read more »
COVID-19 and Its Impact on African Economies: Q&A with Prof. Lemma Senbet
Prof. Lemma Senbet. (Photo: @AERCAFRICA/Twitter)
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Last week Professor Lemma Senbet, an Ethiopian-American financial economist and the William E. Mayer Chair Professor at University of Maryland, moderated a timely webinar titled ‘COVID-19 and African Economies: Global Implications and Actions.’ The well-attended online conference — hosted by the Center for Financial Policy at University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business on Friday, April 24th — featured guest speakers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the World Bank who addressed “the global implications of the COVID-19 economic impact on developing and low-income countries, with Africa as an anchor.” In the following Q&A with Tadias Prof. Lemma, who is also the immediate former Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium based in Nairobi, Kenya, explains the worldwide economic fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the African continent, including Ethiopia. Read more »
US unemployment surges to a Depression-era level of 14.7%
By The Associated Press
The coronavirus crisis has sent U.S. unemployment surging to 14.7%, a level last seen when the country was in the throes of the Depression and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assuring Americans that the only thing to fear was fear itself…The breathtaking collapse is certain to intensify the push-pull across the U.S. over how and when to ease stay-at-home restrictions. And it robs President Donald Trump of the ability to point to a strong economy as he runs for reelection. “The jobs report from hell is here,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, “one never seen before and unlikely to be seen again barring another pandemic or meteor hitting the Earth.” Read more »
Hospitalizations continue to decline in New York, Cuomo says
By CBS News
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the number of people newly diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19 has continued to decrease. “Overall the numbers are coming down,” he said. But he said 335 people died from the virus yesterday. “That’s 335 families,” Cuomo said. “You see this number is basically reducing, but not at a tremendous rate. The only thing that’s tremendous is the number of New Yorkers who’ve still passed away.” Read more »
Los Angeles offers free testing to all county residents
By The Washington Post
All residents of Los Angeles County can access free coronavirus testing at city-run sites, Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said on Wednesday. Previously, the city had only offered testing to residents with symptoms as well as essential workers and people who lived or worked in nursing homes and other kinds of institutional facilities. In an announcement on Twitter, Garcetti said that priority would still be given to front-line workers and anyone experiencing symptoms, including cough, fever or shortness of breath. But the move, which makes Los Angeles the first major city in the country to offer such widespread testing, allows individuals without symptoms to be tested. Health experts have repeatedly said that mass testing is necessary to determine how many people have contracted the virus — and in particular, those who may not have experienced symptoms — and then begin to reopen the economy. Testing is by appointment only and can be arranged at one of the city’s 35 sites. Read more »
Researchers Double U.S. COVID-19 Death Forecast
By Reuters
A newly revised coronavirus mortality model predicts nearly 135,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by early August, almost double previous projections, as social-distancing measures for quelling the pandemic are increasingly relaxed, researchers said on Monday. The ominous new forecast from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) reflect “rising mobility in most U.S. states” with an easing of business closures and stay-at-home orders expected in 31 states by May 11, the institute said. Read more »
Global coronavirus death toll surpasses 200,000, as world leaders commit to finding vaccine
By NBC News
The global coronavirus death toll surpassed 200,000 on Saturday, according to John Hopkins University data. The grim total was reached a day after presidents and prime ministers agreed to work together to develop new vaccines, tests and treatments at a virtual meeting with both the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody. As the U.S. coronavirus death tollpassed 51,000 people, according to an NBC News tally, President Donald Trump took no questions at his White House briefing on Friday, after widespread mockery for floating the idea that light, heat and disinfectants could be used to treat coronavirus patients.”
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has announced the first clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine. The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the regulatory authority which helps develop and authorizes vaccines in Germany, has given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of BNT162b1, a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was developed by cancer researcher and immunologist Ugur Sahin and his team at pharmaceutical company BioNTech, and is based on their prior research into cancer immunology. Sahin previously taught at the University of Mainz before becoming the CEO of BioNTech. In a joint conference call on Wednesday with researchers from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Sahin said BNT162b1 constitutes a so-called RNA vaccine. He explained that innocuous genetic information of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is transferred into human cells with the help of lipid nanoparticles, a non-viral gene delivery system. The cells then transform this genetic information into a protein, which should stimulate the body’s immune reaction to the novel coronavrius.
Webinar on COVID-19 and Mental Health: Interview with Dr. Seble Frehywot
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Dr. Seble Frehywot, an Associate Professor of Global Health & Health Policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her colleague Dr. Yianna Vovides from Georgetown University will host an online forum next week on April 30th focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on mental health. Dr. Seble — who is also the Director of Global Health Equity On-Line Learning at George Washington University – told Tadias that the virtual conference titled “People’s Webinar: Addressing COVID-19 By Addressing Mental Health” is open to the public and available for viewing worldwide. Read more »
Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes
By The Washington Post
Doctors sound alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead. Some didn’t even know they were infected. Read more »
CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating
By The Washington Post
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean…We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said. Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said. The first wave of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has already killed more than 42,000 people across the country. It has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed gaping shortages in test kits, ventilators and protective equipment for health-care workers.
Americans at World Health Organization transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration
By The Washington Post
More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials. A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States. Read more »
In Ethiopia, Dire Dawa Emerges as Newest Coronavirus Hot Spot
By Africa News
The case count as of April 20 had reached 111 according to health minister Lia Tadesse’s update for today. Ethiopia crossed the 100 mark over the weekend. All three cases recorded over the last 24-hours were recorded in the chartered city of Dire Dawa with patients between the ages of 11 – 18. Two of them had travel history from Djibouti. Till date, Ethiopia has 90 patients in treatment centers. The death toll is still at three with 16 recoveries. A patient is in intensive care. Read more »
COVID-19: Interview with Dr. Tsion Firew, an Ethiopian Doctor on the Frontline in NYC
Dr. Tsion Firew is Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University. She is also Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. (Courtesy photo)
By Liben Eabisa
In New York City, which has now become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, working as a medical professional means literally going to a “war zone,” says physician Tsion Firew, a Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University, who has just recovered from COVID-19 and returned to work a few days ago. Indeed the statistics coming out of New York are simply shocking with the state recording a sharp increase in death toll this months surpassing 10,000 and growing. According to The New York Times: “The numbers brought into clearer focus the staggering toll the virus has already taken on the largest city in the United States, where deserted streets are haunted by the near-constant howl of ambulance sirens. Far more people have died in New York City, on a per-capita basis, than in Italy — the hardest-hit country in Europe.” At the heart of the solution both in the U.S. and around the world is more testing and adhering to social distancing rules until such time as a proper treatment and vaccine is discovered, says Dr. Tsion, who is also a Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. Dr. Tsion adds that at this moment “we all as humanity have one enemy: the virus. And what’s going to win the fight is solidarity.” Listen to the interview »
Ethiopia Opens Aid Transport Hub to Fight Covid-19
By AFP
Ethiopia and the United Nations on Tuesday opened a humanitarian transport hub at Addis Ababa airport to move supplies and aid workers across Africa to fight coronavirus. The arrangement, which relies on cargo services provided by Ethiopian Airlines, could also partially offset heavy losses Africa’s largest carrier is sustaining because of the pandemic. An initial shipment of 3 000 cubic metres of supplies – most of it personal protective equipment for health workers – will be distributed within the next week, said Steven Were Omamo, Ethiopia country director for the World Food Programme (WFP). “This is a really important platform in the response to Covid-19, because what it does is it allows us to move with speed and efficiency to respond to the needs as they are unfolding,” Omamo said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Addis gateway is one of eight global humanitarian hubs set up to facilitate movement of aid to fight Covid-19, according to WFP.
Covid-19: Ethiopia to buy life insurance for health workers
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
The Ethiopian government is due to buy life insurance for health professionals in direct contact with Covid-19 patients. Health minister Lia Tadesse said on Tuesday that the government last week reached an agreement with the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation but did not disclose the value of the cover. The two sides are expected to sign an agreement this week to effect the insurance grant. According to the ministry, the life insurance grant is aimed at encouraging health experts who are the most vulnerable to the deadly coronavirus. Members of the Rapid Response Team will also benefit.
U.N. says Saudi deportations of Ethiopian migrants risks spreading coronavirus
By Reuters
The United Nations said on Monday that deportations of illegal migrant workers by Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia risked spreading the coronavirus and it urged Riyadh to suspend the practice for the time being.
Ethiopia’s capital launches door-to-door Covid-19 screening
Getty Images
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa is due to begin a door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening across the city, Addis Ababa city administration has announced. City deputy Mayor, Takele Uma, on Saturday told local journalists that the mass screening and testing programme will be started Monday (April 13) first in districts which are identified as potentially most vulnerable to the spread of the highly infectious coronavirus. The aggressive city-wide screening measure intends to identify Covid-19 infected patients and thereby to arrest a potential virus spread within communities. He said, the mass screening will eventually be carried out in all 117 districts, locally known as woredas, of the city, which is home to an estimated 7 million inhabitants. According to the Mayor, the door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening will be conducted by more than 1,200 retired health professionals, who responded to government’s call on the retired to join the national fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus has hit 100,000, according to the running tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. The sad milestone comes as Christians around the globe mark a Good Friday unlike any other — in front of computer screens instead of in church pews. Meanwhile, some countries are tiptoeing toward reopening segments of their battered economies. Public health officials are warning people against violating the social distancing rules over Easter and allowing the virus to flare up again. Authorities are using roadblocks and other means to discourage travel.
Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team: Interview with Mike Endale
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
A network of technology professionals from the Ethiopian Diaspora — known as the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team – has been assisting the Ethiopian Ministry of Health since the nation’s first Coronavirus case was confirmed on March 13th. The COVID-19 Response Team has since grown into an army of more than a thousand volunteers. Mike Endale, a software developer based in Washington, D.C., is the main person behind the launch of this project. Read more »
Ethiopia eyes replicating China’s successes in applying traditional medicine to contain COVID-19
By CGTN Africa
The Ethiopian government on Thursday expressed its keen interest to replicate China’s positive experience in terms of effectively applying traditional Chinese medicine to successfully contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the East African country.
This came after high-level officials from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MoIT) as well as the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH) held a video conference with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners and researchers on ways of applying the TCM therapy towards controlling the spread of coronavirus pandemic in the country, the MoIT disclosed in a statement issued on Thursday.
“China, in particular, has agreed to provide to Ethiopia the two types of Chinese traditional medicines that the country applied to successfully treat the first two stages of the novel coronavirus,” a statement from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology read.
WHO Director Slams ‘Racist’ Comments About COVID-19 Vaccine Testing
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has angrily condemned recent comments made by scientists suggesting that a vaccine for COVID-19 should be tested in Africa as “racist” and a hangover from the “colonial mentality”. (Photo: WHO)
By BBC
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has condemned as “racist” the comments by two French doctors who suggested a vaccine for the coronavirus could be tested in Africa.
“Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine,” said Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The doctors’ remarks during a TV debate sparked outrage, and they were accused of treating Africans like “human guinea pigs”.
One of them later issued an apology.
When asked about the doctors’ suggestion during the WHO’s coronavirus briefing, Dr Tedros became visibly angry, calling it a hangover from the “colonial mentality”.
“It was a disgrace, appalling, to hear during the 21st Century, to hear from scientists, that kind of remark. We condemn this in the strongest terms possible, and we assure you that this will not happen,” he said.
Ethiopia declares state of emergency to curb spread of COVID-19
By Reuters
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in the country to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, his office said on Twitter. “Considering the gravity of the #COVID19, the government of Ethiopia has enacted a State of Emergency,” Abiy’s office said.
Ethiopia virus cases hit 52, 9-month-old baby infected
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia on Tuesday reported eight new Covid-19 cases, the highest number recorded so far in one day since the country confirmed its first virus case on March 12. Among the new patients that tested positive for the virus were a 9-month-old infant and his mother who had travelled to Dubai recently. “During the past 24 hours, we have done laboratory tests for a total of 264 people and eight out of them have been diagnosed with coronavirus, raising the total confirmed number of Covid-19 patients in Ethiopia to 52,” said Health Minister Dr Lia Tadese. According to the Minister, seven of the newly confirmed patients had travel histories to various countries. They have been under forced-quarantine in different designated hotels in the capital, Addis Ababa. “Five of the new patients including the 9-month-old baby and the mother came from Dubai while the two others came from Thailand and the United Kingdom,” she said
The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate
By The Washington Post
As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the United States, it appears to be infecting and killing black Americans at a disproportionately high rate, according to a Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country. The emerging stark racial disparity led the surgeon general Tuesday to acknowledge in personal terms the increased risk for African Americans amid growing demands that public-health officials release more data on the race of those who are sick, hospitalized and dying of a contagion that has killed more than 12,000 people in the United States. A Post analysis of what data is available and census demographics shows that counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.
In China, Wuhan’s lockdown officially ends after 11 weeks
After 11 weeks — or 76 days — Wuhan’s lockdown is officially over. On Wednesday, Chinese authorities allowed residents to travel in and out of the besieged city where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported in December. Many remnants of the months-long lockdown, however, remain. Wuhan’s 11 million residents will be able to leave only after receiving official authorization that they are healthy and haven’t recently been in contact with a coronavirus patient. To do so, the Chinese government is making use of its mandatory smartphone application that, along with other government surveillance, tracks the movement and health status of every person.
U.S. hospitals facing ‘severe shortages’ of equipment and staff, watchdog says
By The Washington Post
As the official U.S. death toll approached 10,000, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams warned that this will be “the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives.”
Ethio-American Tech Company PhantomALERT Offers Free App to Track & Map COVID-19 Outbreak
By Tadias Staff
PhantomALERT, a Washington D.C.-based technology company announced, that it’s offering a free application service to track, report and map COVID-19 outbreak hotspots in real time. In a recent letter to the DC government as well as the Ethiopian Embassy in the U.S. the Ethiopian-American owned business, which was launched in 2007, explained that over the past few days, they have redesigned their application to be “a dedicated coronavirus mapping, reporting and tracking application.” The letter to the Ethiopian Embassy, shared with Tadias, noted that PhantomALERT’s technology “will enable the Ethiopian government (and all other countries across the world) to locate symptomatic patients, provide medical assistance and alert communities of hotspots for the purpose of slowing down the spread of the Coronavirus.”
By Dr. Lia Tadesse (Minister, Ministry of Health, Ethiopia)
It is with great sadness that I announce the second death of a patient from #COVID19 in Ethiopia. The patient was admitted on April 2nd and was under strict medical follow up in the Intensive Care Unit. My sincere condolences to the family and loved ones.
The Next Coronavirus Test Will Tell You If You Are Now Immune. And It’s Fast.
People line up in their cars at the COVID-19 testing area at Roseland Community Hospital on April 3, 2020, in Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
By Chicago Tribune
A new, different type of coronavirus test is coming that will help significantly in the fight to quell the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and scientists say. The first so-called serology test, which detects antibodies to the virus rather than the virus itself, was given emergency approval Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And several more are nearly ready, said Dr. Elizabeth McNally, director of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Center for Genetic Medicine.
‘Your Safety is Our Priority’: How Ethiopian Airlines is Navigating the Global Virus Crisis
By Tadias Staff
Lately Ethiopian Airlines has been busy delivering much-needed medical supplies across Africa and emerging at the forefront of the continent’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic even as it has suspended most of its international passenger flights.
Ethiopia races to bolster ventilator stockpile for coronavirus fight
By AFP
Ethiopia’s government — like others in Africa — is confronting a stark ventilator shortage that could hobble its COVID-19 response. In a country of more than 100 million people, just 54 ventilators — out of around 450 total — had been set aside for COVID-19 patients as of this week, said Yakob Seman, director general of medical services at the health ministry.
New York City mayor calls for national enlistment of health-care workers
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. (AP photo)
By The Washington Post
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday called for a national enlistment of health-care workers organized by the U.S. military.
Speaking on CNN’s New Day, he lamented that there has been no effort to mobilize doctors and nurses across the country and bring them to “the front” — first New York City and then other areas that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
“If there’s not action by the president and the military literally in a matter of days to put in motion this vast mobilization,” de Blasio said, “then you’re going to see first hundreds and later thousands of Americans die who did not need to die.”
He said he expects his city to be stretched for medical personnel starting Sunday, which he called “D-Day.” Many workers are out sick with the disease, he added, while others are “just stretched to the limit.”
The mayor said he has told national leaders that they need to get on “wartime footing.”
“The nation is in a peacetime stance while were actually in the middle of a war,” de Blasio said. “And if they don’t do something different in the next few days, they’re going to lose the window.”
Over 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March as economy collapsed
By The Washington Post
More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a new record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The past two weeks have seen more people file for unemployed claims than during the first six months of the Great Recession, a sign of how rapid, deep and painful the economic shutdown has been on many American families who are struggling to pay rent and health insurance costs in the midst of a pandemic. Job losses have skyrocketed as restaurants, hotel, gyms, and travel have shut down across the nation, but layoffs are also rising in manufacturing, warehousing and transportation, a sign of how widespread the pain of the coronavirus recession is. In March alone, 10.4 million Americans lost their jobs and applied for government aid, according to the latest Labor Department data, which includes claims filed through March 28. Many economists say the real number of people out work is likely even higher, since a lot of newly unemployed Americans haven’t been able to fill out a claim yet.
U.N. Chief Calls Pandemic Biggest Global Challenge Since World War II
By The Washington Post
The coronavirus outbreak sickening hundreds of thousands around the world and devastating the global economy is creating a challenge for the world not seen since World War II, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said late Tuesday. Speaking in a virtual news conference, Guterres said the world needs to show more solidarity and cooperation in fighting not only the medical aspects of the crisis but the economic fallout. The International Monetary Fund is predicting an economic recession worse than in 2008.
US death toll eclipses China’s as reinforcements head to NYC
By The Associated Press
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China’s official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
Getting Through COVID 19: ECMAA Shares Timely Resources With Ethiopian Community
By Tadias Staff
The Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Association (ECMAA) in the New York tri-state area has shared timely resources including COVID-19 safety information as well as national sources of financial support for families and small business owners.
The highly anticipated 2020 national election in Ethiopia has been canceled for now due to the coronavirus outbreak. The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that it has shelved its plans to hold the upcoming nationwide parliamentary polls on August 29th after an internal evaluation of the possible negative effect of the virus pandemic on its official activities.
Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia on lockdown as coronavirus cases grow
By The Washington Post
Maryland, Virginia and the District issued “stay-at-home” orders on Monday, joining a growing list of states and cities mandating broad, enforceable restrictions on where residents can go in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
U.S. Approves Malaria Drug to Treat Coronavirus Patients
By The Washington Post
The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval to a Trump administration plan to distribute millions of doses of anti-malarial drugs to hospitals across the country, saying it is worth the risk of trying unproven treatments to slow the progression of the disease in seriously ill coronavirus patients.
A top U.S. infectious disease scientist said U.S. deaths could reach 200,000, but called it a moving target. New York’s fatalities neared 1,000, more than a third of the U.S. total.
Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed spoke with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, over the weekend regarding the Coronavirus response in Ethiopia and Africa in general.
Virus infections top 600,000 globally with long fight ahead
By The Associated Press
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide topped 600,000 on Saturday as new cases stacked up quickly in Europe and the United States and officials dug in for a long fight against the pandemic. The latest landmark came only two days after the world passed half a million infections, according to a tally by John Hopkins University, showing that much work remains to be done to slow the spread of the virus. It showed more than 607,000 cases and over 28,000 deaths. While the U.S. now leads the world in reported infections — with more than 104,000 cases — five countries exceed its roughly 1,700 deaths: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France.
Gouged prices, middlemen and medical supply chaos: Why governors are so upset with Trump
By The Washington Post
Masks that used to cost pennies now cost several dollars. Companies outside the traditional supply chain offer wildly varying levels of price and quality. Health authorities say they have few other choices to meet their needs in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ battle.
Worshippers in Ethiopia Defy Ban on Large Gatherings Despite Coronavirus
By VOA
ADDIS ABABA – Health experts in Ethiopia are raising concern, as some religious leaders continue to host large gatherings despite government orders not to do so in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this week, Ethiopia’s government ordered security forces to enforce a ban on large gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Ethiopia has seen only 12 cases and no deaths from the virus, and authorities would like to keep it that way. But enforcing the orders has proven difficult as religious groups continue to meet and, according to religious leaders, fail to treat the risks seriously.
It began as a mysterious disease with frightening potential. Now, just two months after America’s first confirmed case, the country is grappling with a lethal reality: The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States, a toll that is increasing at an alarming rate.
A record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits as the coronavirus slams economy
By The Washington Post
A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and more shut down in a nationwide effort to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April.
Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once.
“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures. The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.
Ethiopia: Parents fear for missing students as universities close over Covid-19
Photo via amnesty.org
As universities across Ethiopia close to avert spread of the COVID-19 virus, Amnesty International is calling on the Ethiopian authorities to disclose measures they have taken to rescue 17 Amhara students from Dembi Dolo University in Western Oromia, who were abducted by unidentified people in November 2019 and have been missing since.
The anguish of the students’ families is exacerbated by a phone and internet shutdown implemented in January across the western Oromia region further hampering their efforts to get information about their missing loved ones.
“The sense of fear and uncertainty spreading across Ethiopia because of COVID-19 is exacerbating the anguish of these students’ families, who are desperate for information on the whereabouts of their loved ones four months after they were abducted,” said Seif Magango, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa.
“The Ethiopian authorities’ move to close universities in order to protect the lives of university students is commendable, but they must also take similarly concrete actions to locate and rescue the 17 missing students so that they too are reunited with their families.”
UPDATE: New York City is now reporting 26,697 COVID-19 cases and 450 deaths.
BY ABC7 NY
Temporary hospital space in New York City will begin opening on Monday and more supplies are on the way as an already overwhelmed medical community anticipates even more coronavirus patients in the coming days. Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted 20 trucks were on the road delivering protective equipment to hospitals, including surgical masks, N95 masks, and hundreds more ventilators.
*Right now* there are 20 trucks on the road delivering protective equipment to New York City hospitals. They’re carrying:
• 1 million surgical masks • 200,000 N95 masks • 50,000 face shields • 40,000 isolation gowns • 10,000 boxes of gloves pic.twitter.com/x77egOwCYE
L.A. mayor says residents may have to shelter at home for two months or more
By Business Insider
Los Angeles residents will be confined to their homes until May at the earliest, Mayor Eric Garcetti told Insider on Wednesday.
“I think this is at least two months,” he said. “And be prepared for longer.”
In an interview with Insider, Garcetti pushed back against “premature optimism” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying leaders who suggest we are on the verge of business as usual are putting lives at risk.
“I can’t say that strongly enough,” the mayor said. Optimism, he said, has to be grounded in data. And right now the data is not good.
“Giving people false hope will crush their spirits and will kill more people,” Garcetti said, adding it would change their actions by instilling a sense of normality at the most abnormal time in a generation.
Ethiopia pardons more than 4,000 prisoners to help prevent coronavirus spread
By CNN
Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde has granted pardon to more than 4,000 prisoners in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Sahle-Work Zewde announced the order in a tweet on Wednesday and said it would help prevent overcrowding in prisons.
The directive only covers those given a maximum sentence of three years for minor crimes and those who were about to be released from jail, she said.
There are 12 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ethiopia, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
Authorities in the nation have put in place a raft of measures, including the closure of all borders except to those bringing in essential goods to contain the virus. The government has directed security officials to monitor and enforce a ban on large gatherings and overcrowded public transport to ensure social distancing.
— U.S. House passes $2 trillion coronavirus emergency spending bill
Watch: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York breaks down massive coronavirus aid package (MSNBC Video)
By The Washington Post
The House of Representatives voted Friday [March 27th] to approve a massive $2 trillion stimulus bill that policy makers hope will blunt the economic destruction of the coronavirus pandemic, sending the legislation to President Trump for enactment. The legislation passed in dramatic fashion, approved on an overwhelming voice vote by lawmakers who’d been forced to return to Washington by a GOP colleague who had insisted on a quorum being present. Some lawmakers came from New York and other places where residents are supposed to be sheltering at home.
In Ethiopia, Abiy seeks $150b for African virus response
By AFP
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday urged G20 leaders to help Africa cope with the coronavirus crisis by facilitating debt relief and providing $150 billion in emergency funding.
The pandemic “poses an existential threat to the economies of African countries,” Abiy’s office said in a statement, adding that Ethiopia was “working closely with other African countries” in preparing the aid request.
The heavy debt burdens of many African countries leave them ill-equipped to respond to pandemic-related economic shocks, as the cost of servicing debt exceeds many countries’ health budgets, the statement said.
Worried Ethiopians Want Partial Internet Shutdown Ended (AP)
Ethiopians have their temperature checked for symptoms of the new coronavirus, at the Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Wednesday, March 18, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough and the vast majority recover in 2-6 weeks but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health issues, the virus that causes COVID-19 can result in more severe illness, including pneumonia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Rights groups and citizens are calling on Ethiopia’s government to lift the internet shutdown in parts of the country that is leaving millions of people without important updates on the coronavirus.
The months-long shutdown of internet and phone lines in Western Oromia and parts of the Benishangul Gumuz region is occurring during military operations against rebel forces.
“Residents of these areas are getting very limited information about the coronavirus,” Jawar Mohammed, an activist-turned-politician, told The Associated Press.
Ethiopia reported its first coronavirus case on March 13 and now has a dozen. Officials have been releasing updates mostly online. Land borders have closed and national carrier Ethiopian Airlines has stopped flying to some 30 destinations around the world.
In Global Fight vs. Virus, Over 1.5 Billion Told: Stay Home
A flier urging customers to remain home hangs at a turnstile as an MTA employee sanitizes surfaces at a subway station with bleach solutions due to COVID-19 concerns, Friday, March 20, 2020, in New York. (AP)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — With masks, ventilators and political goodwill in desperately short supply, more than one-fifth of the world’s population was ordered or urged to stay in their homes Monday at the start of what could be a pivotal week in the battle to contain the coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe.
Partisan divisions stalled efforts to pass a colossal aid package in Congress, and stocks fell again on Wall Street even after the Federal Reserve said it will lend to small and large businesses and local governments to help them through the crisis.
Warning that the outbreak is accelerating, the head of the World Health Organization called on countries to take strong, coordinated action.
“We are not helpless bystanders,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, noting that it took 67 days to reach 100,000 cases worldwide but just four days to go from 200,000 to 300,000. “We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
China’s Coronavirus Donation to Africa Arrives in Ethiopia (Reuters)
An Ethiopian Airlines worker transports a consignment of medical donation from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation to Africa for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing, upon arrival at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, March 22, 2020. (REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri)
The first batch of protective and medical equipment donated by Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma was flown into the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, as coronavirus cases in Africa rose above 1,100.
The virus has spread more slowly in Africa than in Asia or Europe but has a foothold in 41 African nations and two territories. So far it has claimed 37 lives across the continent of 1.3 billion people.
The shipment is a much-needed boost to African healthcare systems that were already stretched before the coronavirus crisis, but nations will still need to ration supplies at a time of global scarcity.
Only patients showing symptoms will be tested, the regional Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Sunday.
“The flight carried 5.4 million face masks, kits for 1.08 million detection tests, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 sets of protective face shields,” Ma’s foundation said in a statement.
“The faster we move, the earlier we can help.”
The shipment had a sign attached with the slogan, “when people are determined they can overcome anything”.
The World Bank says it will invest over $5 billion over the next five years including in Ethiopia to help improve "livelihoods as countries recover from the COVID-19 pandemic." The money will fund interventions in agriculture, water, community development, food security, resilient infrastructure, landscape restoration, and renewable energy, World Bank Group President David Malpass said. The countries are Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. (Getty Images)
Reuters
World Bank to invest $5 bln in 11 African countries
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The World Bank said it would invest over $5 billion over the next five years to help restore degraded landscapes, improve agriculture productivity, and promote livelihoods in 11 African countries as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
World Bank Group President David Malpass said the investment would help improve livelihoods as those countries recovered from the outbreak and dealt with the impact of biodiversity loss and climate change through 2025.
Malpass announced the aid at the One Planet Summit, a high-level meeting co-hosted with France and the United Nations that is focused on addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.
The money will fund interventions in agriculture, water, community development, food security, resilient infrastructure, landscape restoration, and renewable energy, Malpass said.
The funds would benefit countries in the Sahel region, Lake Chad and Horn of Africa, the Bank said in a statement. The countries are Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.
Malpass said the World Bank’s PROGREEN global fund dedicated to boosting countries’ efforts to address landscape degradation would add $14.5 million for projects in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.
He said the Sahel region, in particular, was one of the most vulnerable to desertification and land degradation, with temperature increases projected to be 1.5 times faster than the global average. Eighty percent of farmlands in the region were degraded and about 30 million people food insecure, he said.
Malpass said investing in restoring the Sahel’s landscapes was crucial to mitigate these trends. COVID-19 was exacerbating poverty levels, with extreme poverty rates in the Sahel expected to increase for the first time in decades, by 1.5 percentage points on average in 2020.
This translated into 1.23 million additional people who were extremely poor in the Sahel region.
The government said last year it will retain a 55% stake in Ethio Telecom, with 40% going to international companies and the remainder to local investors. (Reuters photo)
Reuters
State-run Ethio Telecom, expected to be partly sold off as Ethiopia liberalises its economy, reported a 12% rise in first-half revenue to end-December to 25.6 billion birr ($650 million), it said on Thursday.
The government said last year it will retain a 55% stake in Ethio Telecom, with 40% going to international companies and the remainder to local investors.
Ethio Telecom said mobile voice services contributed 49% of the revenue and data services some 26%.
The company plans to launch mobile money services soon, it said, but did not give a timeframe.
In June, the telecoms regulator said it had received 12 bids for two telecom licences the government plans to award to multinational companies.
The regulator has not given a deadline for when it will award the licences.
Ethiopia’s telecoms industry is considered the big prize in a push to liberalise the economy as a protected market which serves more than 110 million people.
In an urgently worded letter sent Sunday, the Chicago-based attorneys warned Ethiopian CEO Tewolde GebreMariam that the offer falls “grossly short” of what the airline could win before a U.S. jury — particularly since Boeing recently accepted responsibility for criminal fraud during the plane’s certification by regulators. (AP photo by Mulugeta Ayene)
Seattle Times
American attorneys for Ethiopian Airlines, which lost 157 passengers and crew in the second fatal crash of a Boeing 737 MAX in early 2019, have advised the carrier not to accept a settlement Boeing has offered but instead to sue the manufacturer for punitive damages in the U.S.
In an urgently worded letter sent Sunday, the Chicago-based attorneys warned Ethiopian CEO Tewolde GebreMariam that the offer falls “grossly short” of what the airline could win before a U.S. jury — particularly since Boeing recently accepted responsibility for criminal fraud during the plane’s certification by regulators.
The settlement Boeing has offered is “a mere fraction” of the actual damage, the lawyers told Tewolde, and accepting it “will inevitably leave substantial money on the table and would be a tremendous political and financial mistake for Ethiopian Airlines.”
Yet like many airlines, Ethiopian is now desperate for cash.
Before the 2019 crash of Flight ET302, state-owned Ethiopian was the largest and most successful airline in Africa. It lost business after the tragedy and the subsequent grounding of the MAX fleet. Then last year its revenue plummeted further when the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed air travel.
The letter conveys the attorneys’ concern that direct settlement negotiations between Boeing and the airline’s management are close to done and that a “financially disastrous” deal may be imminent.
A person familiar with developments in the private negotiations shared details from the letter with The Seattle Times.
It offers a rare look inside what are normally secret negotiations. And with the MAX back in the air and the second anniversary of the second crash approaching, it highlights a Boeing push to conclude customer compensation discussions and put the MAX crisis behind it.
The letter from law firm DiCello Levitt Gutzler, which Ethiopian hired to provide advice on its claims against Boeing, is signed by co-founding partner Adam Levitt.
Boeing declined to comment on discussions with its customer. Ethiopian Airlines did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Levitt did not return a call seeking an interview.
Levitt’s letter argues that Boeing’s Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier this month provides Ethiopian new legal leverage because of “Boeing’s admission of its criminal conduct.”
The DOJ settlement staves off a criminal fraud charge against Boeing with a relatively light $244 million penalty.
It also explicitly exonerates senior management while pinning the fraud on two Boeing technical pilots who misrepresented to airlines the details of new flight control software on the MAX — the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) — that was a key contributing factor in both crashes.
However, Boeing admitted in the deferred prosecution agreement that the accusations of fraud involving the two pilots were “true and accurate” and acknowledged that the company is responsible for criminal acts by its employees.
Boeing Reaches $2.5 Billion Settlement in 737 MAX Crashes in Ethiopia & Indonesia
Ethiopian officials deliver the Black Box for Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 to the headquarters of France’s BEA air accident investigation agency in Le Bourget, France on March 14, 2019. As NPR reports the families of the passengers who died in the crash will be compensated from a fund of $500 million. (Reuters photo)
Boeing To Pay $2.5 Billion Over 737 Max Fraud, Faces No Other Charges
Boeing will pay more than $2.5 billion to settle criminal charges that it repeatedly concealed and lied about the 737 Max’s engineering problems that led to two catastrophic crashes claiming hundreds of lives.
The company admitted to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States as part of the deferred prosecution agreement announced on Thursday and will face no further charges from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” Acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, wrote in a statement.
Boeing, which is the country’s second-biggest defense contractor behind Lockheed Martin, will pay the DOJ a criminal penalty of $243.6 million.
The families and legal beneficiaries of the 346 passenger victims who died in the Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in Ethiopia five months later will be paid from a fund of $500 million. If split equally among them, that amounts to a little over $1.4 million for each family.
The vast majority of the settlement is allocated for airline companies that had purchased the faulty 737 Max aircraft and were subsequently forced to ground the planes following the crashes. Together they will receive $1.77 billion in compensation for their financial losses, according to the DOJ.
“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” Burns added in the statement.
In both cases, the crashes were caused by changes to the jet’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System that forced the nose of the 737 Max toward the ground and left pilots unable to control the planes.
In a note to employees, Boeing President and Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun said, “I firmly believe that entering into this resolution is the right thing for us to do—a step that appropriately acknowledges how we fell short of our values and expectations.”
He added: “This resolution is a serious reminder to all of us of how critical our obligation of transparency to regulators is, and the consequences that our company can face if any one of us falls short of those expectations.”
Internal Boeing documents revealed during a U.S.House panel’s inquiry showed that engineers notified the company of the MCAS “egregious” problems as early as 2016.
Yene Damtew has been Michelle Obama's hairstylist since 2008. Regarding the former first lady's recent look at Joe Biden's inauguration this week that has attracted international attention, Yene says: “I personally loved her look and was very happy to see how it came together, but did not expect it to resonate with viewers the way it has." (Photos: Courtesy of Yene Damtew and Getty Images)
The Washington Post
The woman behind Michelle Obama’s instantly iconic hair
It was a moment watch parties and group chats are made for: former first lady Michelle Obama, hand in hand with former President Barack Obama, emerging from the U.S. Capitol in a regal, floor-length plum coat and statement belt, her voluminous curls bouncing with each step.
The monochromatic pantsuit designed by Sergio Hudson was striking, but the star of the show was Obama’s hair: a silk press so perfect, it launched thousands of social media shares. In the middle of the inauguration ceremony, “laid” — a reference to the flawlessness of Obama’s hair — began trending.
Obama’s coif came courtesy of her longtime hairstylist, Yene Damtew, who has been part of the former first lady’s glam squad since 2008. For her, Wednesday began as a “typical day at work.” It wasn’t until a client tagged her in a tweet about Obama’s hair that she got a sense of how much the style had resonated with people, particularly Black women.
“I personally loved her look and was very happy to see how it came together, but did not expect it to resonate with viewers the way it has,” Damtew wrote in an email.
She has helped craft memorable looks for Obama before.
Damtew picked up her passion for hair from watching her mother get ready for church, enamored with her hot rollers and the full, bouncy hair they produced. As a teenager, she became the go-to person in her Orange County, Calif., neighborhood when someone wanted their hair done.
“I did everyone’s hair from football players to the kids, and then my high school classmates,” she told Allure.
At 21, she began working alongside Obama’s hairstylist Johnny Wright, whom she met while completing an assignment for cosmetology school. Damtew started doing Malia and Sasha Obama’s hair, as well as styling Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson. At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, when Obama delivered her famous “When they go low, we go high” line, Damtew was behind Obama’s striking, chestnut brown color that she custom-created and hand-painted onto Obama’s hair, according to Elle. In 2017, when Damtew opened her own business, Aesthetics salon in Arlington, Va., Obama attended the opening.
To create Obama’s inauguration look, Damtew consulted with Obama’s wardrobe stylist Meredith Koop and makeup artist Carl Ray. Since Obama was going for a monochromatic look, Damtew says she knew “the hair would stand out a lot on its own.”
“As I thought about the hairstyle that would complement her outfit and suit the weather, these bouncy curls came to life,” she said.
But Damtew couldn’t predict just how much life they would give to viewers of the inauguration, many of whom wanted to know who was behind the look. Within hours of Damtew revealing herself as Obama’s hairstylist on Twitter, thousands of compliments and requests for tips starting pouring in.
“The support of Black Women Twitter has been amazing,” said Damtew, who is Ethiopian American. “As a salon owner who caters to women with textured hair, I know the importance that hair holds, particularly to Black women and the crowns that they wear. Black women hold their hair in high regard.”
She noted that it was important to continue showing versatility with Obama’s looks because “representation matters.” To celebrate her 57th birthday this week, Obama posted a selfie rocking her natural hair.
But Obama’s hair was about more than just serving a look. It was celebratory, “showing out” hair — a stark contrast not just to the modest bun Obama wore at Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony four years ago, but to the scenes at the Capitol earlier this month. During an inauguration ceremony that needed to acknowledge the deep divisions that remain in this country, as well as the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to the coronavirus in the United States, being able to gush over a coat or a blowout felt like a brief respite.
This is not lost on Damtew.
“The truth is we are still very much in a hard time in this nation,” she said. “But if, for a few minutes, people found joy in seeing a former first lady supporting her friends and wearing a beautiful coat and bouncy curls — I’m OK with that. We all need something to give us hope and make us smile.”
Dinaw Mengestu is an Ethiopian-American novelist, freelance journalist and professor of creative writing. This week Dinaw was the keynote speaker at MLK commemorative event held via Zoom at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The following is a Q&A with Dinaw by the University's main student newspaper The Vanderbilt Hustler. (Getty Images)
The Vanderbilt Hustler
Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu speaks to The Hustler about his experiences as a writer and immigrant
Vanderbilt Hustler: Your novels tell very unique immigrant narratives, how do you intend for your novels to speak to your readers?
Dinaw Mengestu: I do not know who my readers are, and I never want to underestimate them. Your readers are always a slightly-amorphous body of people. The audience that I am most concerned with, strangely enough, are my fictional characters. I feel the most obligation to my characters. That obligation can be thought of as a respect for them and their desire for the complexity and depth of experience that I think people deserve.
I am never thinking about the characters under any category or label, but I am definitely thinking about them as people who have lost a lot. As immigrants, they are people who have lost their homes, their families and in many cases, are struggling to rebuild their lives in America.
That movement away from the things they had to leave behind to the construction of a new identity, a new home, trying to make sure that experience isn’t defamiliarized and contains as many layers of meaning as I have seen in my own families and witnessed in my own life—that is the kind of experience I hope will be born out of the page.
The reader on the other end of it is hopefully present and engaged by it. Hopefully, they feel that they are reading an experience that actually is complicated. I think they can connect to the complexity because the person they are reading about is actually fully alive. It is not because it is familiar to their own experiences, but because it actually has the emotional complexity of a real, living person.
How do you think underrepresented voices in fiction can be more widely represented?
I think there are a lot of systemic problems, and I think one is making sure underrepresented voices actually feel and believe that there is a world that will represent them accurately. I think so many potential artists and voices actually count themselves out of that conversation long before anything else even happens.
Once we get a number of South Asian writers or African American or Black writers, then we have diverse writers. Why do we need another one? We have Toni Morrison—how many more of those voices do we need? There is a sense that we only need to occupy so much space. We only need to give so much room to those voices because those voices are important, but they are not really valued. They are important in the way in which they can be pointed to and signified, so we need to move further still in a cultural embrace of what it means to have a real diversity of voices.
It is not about making sure we have that experience checked off, which is oftentimes where we still are. We want to make sure that we have certain narrative trends blocked off, and once we have them blocked off, it is really easy to feel that that work is done. I think that the creators of those stories, especially the younger generations, are aware of that.
I remember the first time I tried writing my first novel, being told no one is going to care about a bunch of African immigrants in Washington D.C. I think that sense is still pervasive. I think people still feel like there is not much attention or care about who they are. So, I think we need to make sure that we are actively encouraging and inviting people to start making stories and know that there is a world of people who care about them and those narratives.
What does the American Dream mean to you?
America is very distinct in that it is the only country that has this espoused Dream. I remember writing my first novel, and people thought I was being critical of the American Dream. The characters in it do not acquire the usual trapping of American success. There is this idea that if your characters are not going around declaring how wonderful it is to be an American, they are opposed to this American Dream or this American value system. That is kind of ridiculous.
I think that this American Dream is being honest about what America is while still believing you can be a part of it. That is the radical nature of that Dream. We were talking about Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream speech on the Capitol. The fact that MLK still continued to believe in the possibility of this fight, having experienced this full-scale American violence and oppression—to still believe in something positive and better on the other side is something remarkable and a radical notion.
It is not one that is connected or tied to a material wealth. It is tied to the possibility of worth and collectively to somewhere other than where we are right now. That is a remarkable thing to believe in.
I think it is why immigrants continue to come to America. They do not believe that America is going to be a wonderful, perfect land. This idea that immigrants arrive in America delusional about the nature of America is ridiculous. They arrive fully aware of how problematic America is and yet still persist in coming and bringing their children, raising their children here and pushing America a bit forward, toward something fuller and more complicated than what it already is. That is the Dream for me. The ability to believe in it when it is giving you so many reasons not to.
What insights do you have about the turbulent events of this past week?
As people have noted, this isn’t a surprise. What we have witnessed is actually just a punctuation of four years. It is like the groundwork has been laid for years for us to get to this point. My curiosity has been: how has this been possible, and how have they created this narrative of this movement and these supporters as being somehow decent and law-abiding people? How have they managed to get away with that rhetoric when clearly what we witnessed is the exact opposite?
It is violent and unfair. But the ability to continue to present themselves as this party of law and order, of people who believe in the Constitution and are supporting democracy—that is the thing that I am most fascinated by because it is the construction of a narrative, and it is a narrative that has a lot of political power and weight. It is a narrative that to some degree exists far more on the right in its ability to assert that whatever they do is good.
Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who sought to remake the Voice of America, resigned on Wednesday, bringing an end to a short and tumultuous tenure. He said that his resignation came at Biden’s request. Biden is expected to name a replacement, although no successor was announced on Wednesday. (Photo: Voice of America headquarters on Capitol Hill/The Washington Post)
Controversial head of Voice of America resigns hours after President Biden takes office
Updated: Jan. 20, 2021
Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who sought to remake the Voice of America and other government-funded overseas news agencies, resigned on Wednesday, bringing an end to a short and tumultuous tenure.
Pack quit a few hours after President Biden took office and less than eight months into his three-year term as chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The government agency oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and other networks that produce and distribute news to millions of people in countries whose governments suppress independent reporting.
He said that his resignation came at Biden’s request. During the president campaign, Biden’s staff had signaled that he would replace Pack if Biden won election.
Biden is expected to name a replacement from within USAGM, although no successor was announced on Wednesday.
Pack, a former documentary filmmaker who has worked with former Trump adviser Steve K. Bannon, left a trail of controversies, lawsuits and general criticism inside and around the agencies he oversaw.
He characterized his efforts — which included replacing top managers and asserting the right to direct VOA’s newsgathering, despite a firewall of regulations intended to keep the news product independent — as an attempt to restore the venerable news agency’s tradition of nonpartisan reporting. Critics, however, saw his initiatives as an effort to turn VOA into a mouthpiece for the Trump administration.
How Trump’s obsessions with media and loyalty coalesced in a battle for Voice of America
“I firmly believe that — thanks to your support, patriotism, and understanding — a great amount of much-needed reform was achieved in the past eight months,” Pack wrote in a resignation letter to staff on Wednesday.
He added: “USAGM and the CEO position are meant to be non-partisan. As such, every single day, I was solely focused upon reorienting the agency toward its mission. I sought, above all, to help the agency share America’s story with the world objectively and without bias.”
Others inside USAGM and VOA strongly disagreed with that self-assessment.
One VOA journalist said Pack’s resignation triggered “sighs of relief and cheers” among employees.
“Most if not all of us are celebrating Pack’s resignation as the first step toward a return to normalcy,” the journalist said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she isn’t authorized to comment.
She said she was among a number of staff members who are hopeful that the director and deputy director appointed by Pack, Robert Reilly and Elizabeth Robbins, respectively, would soon follow Pack out the door. “They must be removed immediately or the damage to the credibility of the VOA brand will be permanent,” she said.
Pack swept aside top managers of USAGM and the directors of the agencies under his supervision, replacing them with a cadre of conservative appointees. Reilly and Robbins have been on the job for just the past month.
It’s not clear whether Pack’s appointees, including those on supervisory boards, will be replaced by Biden.
He also declined to renew the expiring visas of foreign journalists who work for VOA, saying that they had not been properly vetted and suggesting the agency was harboring foreign spies.
According to a whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday on behalf of former employees, Pack used about $2 million in taxpayer funds to hire a law firm to compile personnel dossiers on some of the managers he targeted for removal. The dossier were developed to support his decision to replace them, the complaint said.
Earlier this month, more than two dozen VOA employees objected to a directive, apparently from Pack, to broadcast a speech by Mike Pompeo, the outgoing secretary of state, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. The employees said the mandate to carry the speech from a political appointee amounted to government “propaganda” — the very thing VOA was established to counter in countries abroad. They demanded the resignations of Reilly and Robbins.
Reilly did not allow reporters to question Pompeo at the event. He later demoted the agency’s White House correspondent, Patsy Widakuswara, after as she fired questions at Pompeo as he was leaving the building.
Pack did not respond to a request for comment, continuing a practice he has observed since his appointment began. Since June, he has given interviews only to conservative media outlets and to USAGM-supervised agencies.
—
UPDATE: Biden Sworn in as America’s 46th President
Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Jill Biden holds the Bible during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (Photo via AP)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration (all times local):
12:00
Joe Biden has officially become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden took the oath of office just before noon Wednesday during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. The presidential oath was administered by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Biden was sworn in using a Bible that has been in his family since 1893 and was used during his swearing-in as vice president in 2009 and 2013. The 5-inch thick Bible, which could be seen on a table next to Biden’s chair on the dais, has a Celtic cross on its cover and was also used each time he was sworn- n as a U.S. senator.
Biden’s late son, Beau, also used the Bible for his own swearing-in ceremony as attorney general of Delaware and helped carry the Bible to his father’s 2013 ceremony.
Inauguration Live Updates: Biden Takes Power as Trump Leaves White House
—
Facing crush of crises, Biden will take helm as president
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden swears the oath of office at noon Wednesday to become the 46th president of the United States, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation and inheriting a confluence of crises arguably greater than any faced by his predecessors.
The very ceremony in which presidential power is transferred, a hallowed American democratic tradition, will serve as a jarring reminder of the challenges Biden faces: The inauguration unfolds at a U.S. Capitol battered by an insurrectionist siege just two weeks ago, encircled by security forces evocative of those in a war zone, and devoid of crowds because of the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Stay home, Americans were exhorted, to prevent further spread of a surging virus that has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the United States. Biden will look out over a capital city dotted with empty storefronts that attest to the pandemic’s deep economic toll and where summer protests laid bare the nation’s renewed reckoning on racial injustice.
He will not be applauded — or likely even acknowledged — by his predecessor.
Flouting tradition, Donald Trump planned to depart Washington on Wednesday morning ahead of the inauguration rather than accompany his successor to the Capitol. Trump, awaiting his second impeachment trial, stoked grievance among his supporters with the lie that Biden’s win was illegitimate.
Biden, in his third run for the presidency, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. On his first day, Biden will take a series of executive actions — on the pandemic, climate, immigration and more — to undo the heart of Trump’s agenda. The Democrat takes office with the bonds of the republic strained and the nation reeling from challenges that rival those faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Biden will face a series of urgent, burning crises like we have not seen before, and they all have to be solved at once. It is very hard to find a parallel in history,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “I think we have been through a near-death experience as a democracy. Americans who will watch the new president be sworn in are now acutely aware of how fragile our democracy is and how much it needs to be protected.”
Biden will come to office with a well of empathy and resolve born by personal tragedy as well as a depth of experience forged from more than four decades in Washington. At age 78, he will be the oldest president inaugurated.
More history will be made at his side, as Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be vice president. The former U.S. senator from California is also the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency and will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government.
The two will be sworn in during an inauguration ceremony with few parallels in history.
Tens of thousands of troops are on the streets to provide security precisely two weeks after a violent mob of Trump supporters, incited by the Republican president, stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.
The tense atmosphere evoked the 1861 inauguration of Lincoln, who was secretly transported to Washington to avoid assassins on the eve of the Civil War, or Roosevelt’s inaugural in 1945, when he opted for a small, secure ceremony at the White House in the waning months of World War II.
Despite security warnings, Biden declined to move the ceremony indoors and instead will address a small, socially distant crowd on the West Front of the Capitol. Some of the traditional trappings of the quadrennial ceremony will remain.
The day will begin with a reach across the aisle after four years of bitter partisan battles under Trump. Biden invited Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leaders of the Senate and House, to join him at a morning Mass, along with Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders.
Once at the Capitol, Biden will be administered the oath by Chief Justice John Roberts; Harris will be sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The theme of Biden’s approximately 30-minute speech will be “America United,” and aides said it would be a call to set aside differences during a moment of national trial.
Biden will then oversee a “Pass in Review,” a military tradition that honors the peaceful transfer of power to a new commander in chief. Then, Biden, Harris and their spouses will be joined by a bipartisan trio of former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Ceremony.
Full Coverage: Biden’s inauguration
Later, Biden will join the end of a slimmed-down inaugural parade as he moves into the White House. Because of the pandemic, much of this year’s parade will be a virtual affair featuring performances from around the nation.
In the evening, in lieu of the traditional glitzy balls that welcome a new president to Washington, Biden will take part in a televised concert that also marks the return of A-list celebrities to the White House orbit after they largely eschewed Trump. Among those in the lineup: Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lady Gaga will sing the national anthem at the Capitol earlier in the day.
Trump will be the first president in more than a century to skip the inauguration of his successor. He planned his own farewell celebration at nearby Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One for the final time as president for the flight to his Florida estate.
Trump will nonetheless shadow Biden’s first days in office.
Trump’s second impeachment trial could start as early as this week. That could test the ability of the Senate, poised to come under Democratic control, to balance impeachment proceedings with confirmation hearings and votes on Biden’s Cabinet choices.
Biden was eager to go big early, with an ambitious first 100 days that includes a push to speed up the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations to anxious Americans and pass a $1.9 trillion virus relief package. On Day One, he’ll also send an immigration proposal to Capitol Hill that would create an eight-year path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally.
He also planned a 10-day blitz of executive orders on matters that don’t require congressional approval — a mix of substantive and symbolic steps to unwind the Trump years. Among the planned steps: rescinding travel restrictions on people from several predominantly Muslim countries; rejoining the Paris climate accord; issuing a mask mandate for those on federal property; and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border.
The difficulties he faces are immense, to be mentioned in the same breath as Roosevelt taking office during the Great Depression or Obama, under whom Biden served eight years as vice president, during the economic collapse. And the solution may be similar.
“There is now, as there was in 1933, a vital need for leadership,” said presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “for every national resource to be brought to bear to get the virus under control, to help produce and distribute the vaccines, to get vaccines into the arms of the people, to spur the economy to recover and get people back to work and to school.”
___
UPDATE: Biden Outlines ‘Day One’ Agenda of Executive Actions
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event at The Queen theater, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first hours as president, Joe Biden plans to take executive action to roll back some of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor and to address the raging coronavirus pandemic, his incoming chief of staff said Saturday.
The opening salvo would herald a 10-day blitz of executive actions as Biden seeks to act swiftly to redirect the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency without waiting for Congress.
On Wednesday, following his inauguration, Biden will end Trump’s restriction on immigration to the U.S. from some Muslim-majority countries, move to rejoin the Paris climate accord and mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel. Those are among roughly a dozen actions Biden will take on his first day in the White House, his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in a memo to senior staff.
Other actions include extending the pause on student loan payments and actions meant to prevent evictions and foreclosures for those struggling during the pandemic.
“These executive actions will deliver relief to the millions of Americans that are struggling in the face of these crises,” Klain said in the memo. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward.”
“Full achievement” of Biden’s goals will require Congress to act, Klain wrote, including the $1.9 trillion virus relief bill he outlined on Thursday. Klain said that Biden would also propose a comprehensive immigration reform bill to lawmakers on his first day in office.
Providing a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally will be part of Biden’s agenda, according to people briefed on his plans. Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum and among those briefed, said immigrants would be put on an eight-year path. There would be a faster track for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields people from deportation who came to the U.S. as children, and for those from strife-torn countries with temporary status.
On Thursday, the new president’s second day in office, Biden would sign orders related to the COVID-19 outbreak aimed at reopening schools and businesses and expanding virus testing, Klain said. The following day, Friday, will see action on providing economic relief to those suffering the economic costs of the pandemic.
In the following week, Klain said, Biden would take additional actions relating to criminal justice reform, climate change and immigration — including a directive to speed the reuniting of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump’s policies.
More actions will be added, Klain said, once they clear legal review.
Incoming presidents traditionally move swiftly to sign an array of executive actions when they take office. Trump did the same, but he found many of his orders challenged and even rejected by courts.
Klain maintained that Biden should not suffer similar issues, saying “the legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the President.”
—
UPDATE: Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 & Economic Plan
President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during an event at The Queen theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
Updated: January 15th, 2021
Biden unveils $1.9 Trillion plan to stem COVID-19 and steady economy
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan to end “a crisis of deep human suffering” by speeding up vaccines and pumping out financial help to those struggling with the pandemic’s prolonged economic fallout.
Called the “American Rescue Plan,” the legislative proposal would meet Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration, and advance his objective of reopening most schools by the spring. On a parallel track, it delivers another round of aid to stabilize the economy while the public health effort seeks the upper hand on the pandemic.
“We not only have an economic imperative to act now — I believe we have a moral obligation,” Biden said in a nationwide address Thursday. At the same time, he acknowledged that his plan “does not come cheaply.”
Biden proposed $1,400 checks for most Americans, which on top of $600 provided in the most recent COVID-19 bill would bring the total to the $2,000 that Biden has called for. It would also extend a temporary boost in unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through September.
And it shoehorns in long-term Democratic policy aims such as increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding paid leave for workers, and increasing tax credits for families with children. The last item would make it easier for women to go back to work, which in turn would help the economy recover.
The political outlook for the legislation remained unclear. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer praised Biden for including liberal priorities, saying they would move quickly to pass it after Biden takes office next Wednesday. But Democrats have narrow margins in both chambers of Congress, and Republicans will push back on issues that range from increasing the minimum wage to providing more money for states, while demanding inclusion of their priorities, such as liability protection for businesses.
“Remember that a bipartisan $900 billion #COVID19 relief bill became law just 18 days ago,” tweeted Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. But Biden says that was only a down payment, and he promised more major legislation next month, focused on rebuilding the economy.
“The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, and there’s not time to waste,” Biden said. “We have to act and we have to act now.”
Still, he sought to manage expectations. “We’re better equipped to do this than any nation in the world,” he said. “But even with all these small steps, it’s going to take time.”
His relief bill would be paid for with borrowed money, adding to trillions in debt the government has already incurred to confront the pandemic. Aides said Biden will make the case that the additional spending and borrowing is necessary to prevent the economy from sliding into an even deeper hole. Interest rates are low, making debt more manageable.
Biden has long held that economic recovery is inextricably linked with controlling the coronavirus.
That squares with the judgment of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbying group and traditionally an adversary of Democrats. “We must defeat COVID before we can restore our economy and that requires turbocharging our vaccination efforts,” the Chamber said in a statement Thursday night that welcomed Biden’s plan but stopped short of endorsing it.
The plan comes as a divided nation is in the grip of the pandemic’s most dangerous wave yet. So far, more than 385,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. And government numbers out Thursday reported a jump in weekly unemployment claims, to 965,000, a sign that rising infections are forcing businesses to cut back and lay off workers.
Under Biden’s multipronged strategy, about $400 billion would go directly to combating the pandemic, while the rest is focused on economic relief and aid to states and localities.
About $20 billion would be allocated for a more disciplined focus on vaccination, on top of some $8 billion already approved by Congress. Biden has called for setting up mass vaccination centers and sending mobile units to hard-to-reach areas.
With the backing of Congress and the expertise of private and government scientists, the Trump administration delivered two highly effective vaccines and more are on the way. Yet a month after the first shots were given, the nation’s vaccination campaign is off to a slow start with about 11 million people getting the first of two shots, although more than 30 million doses have been delivered.
Biden called the vaccine rollout “a dismal failure so far” and said he would provide more details about his vaccination campaign on Friday.
The plan also provides $50 billion to expand testing, which is seen as key to reopening most schools by the end of the new administration’s first 100 days. About $130 billion would be allocated to help schools reopen without risking further contagion.
The plan would fund the hiring of 100,000 public health workers, to focus on encouraging people to get vaccinated and on tracing the contacts of those infected with the coronavirus.
There’s also a proposal to boost investment in genetic sequencing, to help track new virus strains including the more contagious variants identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Throughout the plan, there’s a focus on ensuring that minority communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic are not shortchanged on vaccines and treatments, aides said.
With the new proposals comes a call to redouble efforts on the basics.
Biden is asking Americans to override their sense of pandemic fatigue and recommit to wearing masks, practicing social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings, particularly larger ones. It’s still the surest way to slow the COVID-19 wave, with more than 4,400 deaths reported just on Tuesday.
Biden’s biggest challenge will be to “win the hearts and minds of the American people to follow his lead,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert and emergency physician.
The pace of vaccination in the U.S. is approaching 1 million shots a day, but 1.8 million a day would be needed to reach widespread or “herd” immunity by the summer, according to a recent estimate by the American Hospital Association. Wen says the pace should be even higher — closer to 3 million a day.
Biden believes the key to speeding that up lies not only in delivering more vaccine but also in working closely with states and local communities to get shots into the arms of more people. The Trump administration provided the vaccine to states and set guidelines for who should get priority for shots, but largely left it up to state and local officials to organize their vaccination campaigns.
It’s still unclear how the new administration will address the issue of vaccine hesitancy, the doubts and suspicions that keep many people from getting a shot. Polls show it’s particularly a problem among Black Americans.
“We will have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated,” Biden said.
Next Wednesday, when Biden is sworn in as president, marks the anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States.
Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Jill Biden holds the Bible during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (Photo via AP)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden has officially become the 46th president of the United States.
Biden took the oath of office just before noon Wednesday during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol. The presidential oath was administered by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Biden was sworn in using a Bible that has been in his family since 1893 and was used during his swearing-in as vice president in 2009 and 2013. The 5-inch thick Bible, which could be seen on a table next to Biden’s chair on the dais, has a Celtic cross on its cover and was also used each time he was sworn- n as a U.S. senator.
Biden’s late son, Beau, also used the Bible for his own swearing-in ceremony as attorney general of Delaware and helped carry the Bible to his father’s 2013 ceremony.
Inauguration Live Updates: Biden Takes Power as Trump Leaves White House
—
Facing crush of crises, Biden will take helm as president
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden swears the oath of office at noon Wednesday to become the 46th president of the United States, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation and inheriting a confluence of crises arguably greater than any faced by his predecessors.
The very ceremony in which presidential power is transferred, a hallowed American democratic tradition, will serve as a jarring reminder of the challenges Biden faces: The inauguration unfolds at a U.S. Capitol battered by an insurrectionist siege just two weeks ago, encircled by security forces evocative of those in a war zone, and devoid of crowds because of the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Stay home, Americans were exhorted, to prevent further spread of a surging virus that has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the United States. Biden will look out over a capital city dotted with empty storefronts that attest to the pandemic’s deep economic toll and where summer protests laid bare the nation’s renewed reckoning on racial injustice.
He will not be applauded — or likely even acknowledged — by his predecessor.
Flouting tradition, Donald Trump planned to depart Washington on Wednesday morning ahead of the inauguration rather than accompany his successor to the Capitol. Trump, awaiting his second impeachment trial, stoked grievance among his supporters with the lie that Biden’s win was illegitimate.
Biden, in his third run for the presidency, staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. On his first day, Biden will take a series of executive actions — on the pandemic, climate, immigration and more — to undo the heart of Trump’s agenda. The Democrat takes office with the bonds of the republic strained and the nation reeling from challenges that rival those faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Biden will face a series of urgent, burning crises like we have not seen before, and they all have to be solved at once. It is very hard to find a parallel in history,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “I think we have been through a near-death experience as a democracy. Americans who will watch the new president be sworn in are now acutely aware of how fragile our democracy is and how much it needs to be protected.”
Biden will come to office with a well of empathy and resolve born by personal tragedy as well as a depth of experience forged from more than four decades in Washington. At age 78, he will be the oldest president inaugurated.
More history will be made at his side, as Kamala Harris becomes the first woman to be vice president. The former U.S. senator from California is also the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency and will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government.
The two will be sworn in during an inauguration ceremony with few parallels in history.
Tens of thousands of troops are on the streets to provide security precisely two weeks after a violent mob of Trump supporters, incited by the Republican president, stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.
The tense atmosphere evoked the 1861 inauguration of Lincoln, who was secretly transported to Washington to avoid assassins on the eve of the Civil War, or Roosevelt’s inaugural in 1945, when he opted for a small, secure ceremony at the White House in the waning months of World War II.
Despite security warnings, Biden declined to move the ceremony indoors and instead will address a small, socially distant crowd on the West Front of the Capitol. Some of the traditional trappings of the quadrennial ceremony will remain.
The day will begin with a reach across the aisle after four years of bitter partisan battles under Trump. Biden invited Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leaders of the Senate and House, to join him at a morning Mass, along with Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders.
Once at the Capitol, Biden will be administered the oath by Chief Justice John Roberts; Harris will be sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The theme of Biden’s approximately 30-minute speech will be “America United,” and aides said it would be a call to set aside differences during a moment of national trial.
Biden will then oversee a “Pass in Review,” a military tradition that honors the peaceful transfer of power to a new commander in chief. Then, Biden, Harris and their spouses will be joined by a bipartisan trio of former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Ceremony.
Full Coverage: Biden’s inauguration
Later, Biden will join the end of a slimmed-down inaugural parade as he moves into the White House. Because of the pandemic, much of this year’s parade will be a virtual affair featuring performances from around the nation.
In the evening, in lieu of the traditional glitzy balls that welcome a new president to Washington, Biden will take part in a televised concert that also marks the return of A-list celebrities to the White House orbit after they largely eschewed Trump. Among those in the lineup: Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Lady Gaga will sing the national anthem at the Capitol earlier in the day.
Trump will be the first president in more than a century to skip the inauguration of his successor. He planned his own farewell celebration at nearby Joint Base Andrews before boarding Air Force One for the final time as president for the flight to his Florida estate.
Trump will nonetheless shadow Biden’s first days in office.
Trump’s second impeachment trial could start as early as this week. That could test the ability of the Senate, poised to come under Democratic control, to balance impeachment proceedings with confirmation hearings and votes on Biden’s Cabinet choices.
Biden was eager to go big early, with an ambitious first 100 days that includes a push to speed up the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations to anxious Americans and pass a $1.9 trillion virus relief package. On Day One, he’ll also send an immigration proposal to Capitol Hill that would create an eight-year path to citizenship for immigrants living in the country illegally.
He also planned a 10-day blitz of executive orders on matters that don’t require congressional approval — a mix of substantive and symbolic steps to unwind the Trump years. Among the planned steps: rescinding travel restrictions on people from several predominantly Muslim countries; rejoining the Paris climate accord; issuing a mask mandate for those on federal property; and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from their families after crossing the border.
The difficulties he faces are immense, to be mentioned in the same breath as Roosevelt taking office during the Great Depression or Obama, under whom Biden served eight years as vice president, during the economic collapse. And the solution may be similar.
“There is now, as there was in 1933, a vital need for leadership,” said presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “for every national resource to be brought to bear to get the virus under control, to help produce and distribute the vaccines, to get vaccines into the arms of the people, to spur the economy to recover and get people back to work and to school.”
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UPDATE: Biden Outlines ‘Day One’ Agenda of Executive Actions
President-elect Joe Biden speaks during an event at The Queen theater, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his first hours as president, Joe Biden plans to take executive action to roll back some of the most controversial decisions of his predecessor and to address the raging coronavirus pandemic, his incoming chief of staff said Saturday.
The opening salvo would herald a 10-day blitz of executive actions as Biden seeks to act swiftly to redirect the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency without waiting for Congress.
On Wednesday, following his inauguration, Biden will end Trump’s restriction on immigration to the U.S. from some Muslim-majority countries, move to rejoin the Paris climate accord and mandate mask-wearing on federal property and during interstate travel. Those are among roughly a dozen actions Biden will take on his first day in the White House, his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in a memo to senior staff.
Other actions include extending the pause on student loan payments and actions meant to prevent evictions and foreclosures for those struggling during the pandemic.
“These executive actions will deliver relief to the millions of Americans that are struggling in the face of these crises,” Klain said in the memo. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward.”
“Full achievement” of Biden’s goals will require Congress to act, Klain wrote, including the $1.9 trillion virus relief bill he outlined on Thursday. Klain said that Biden would also propose a comprehensive immigration reform bill to lawmakers on his first day in office.
Providing a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally will be part of Biden’s agenda, according to people briefed on his plans. Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum and among those briefed, said immigrants would be put on an eight-year path. There would be a faster track for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields people from deportation who came to the U.S. as children, and for those from strife-torn countries with temporary status.
On Thursday, the new president’s second day in office, Biden would sign orders related to the COVID-19 outbreak aimed at reopening schools and businesses and expanding virus testing, Klain said. The following day, Friday, will see action on providing economic relief to those suffering the economic costs of the pandemic.
In the following week, Klain said, Biden would take additional actions relating to criminal justice reform, climate change and immigration — including a directive to speed the reuniting of families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under Trump’s policies.
More actions will be added, Klain said, once they clear legal review.
Incoming presidents traditionally move swiftly to sign an array of executive actions when they take office. Trump did the same, but he found many of his orders challenged and even rejected by courts.
Klain maintained that Biden should not suffer similar issues, saying “the legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the President.”
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UPDATE: Biden Unveils $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 & Economic Plan
President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the COVID-19 pandemic during an event at The Queen theater, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Wilmington, Del. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
Updated: January 15th, 2021
Biden unveils $1.9 Trillion plan to stem COVID-19 and steady economy
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan to end “a crisis of deep human suffering” by speeding up vaccines and pumping out financial help to those struggling with the pandemic’s prolonged economic fallout.
Called the “American Rescue Plan,” the legislative proposal would meet Biden’s goal of administering 100 million vaccines by the 100th day of his administration, and advance his objective of reopening most schools by the spring. On a parallel track, it delivers another round of aid to stabilize the economy while the public health effort seeks the upper hand on the pandemic.
“We not only have an economic imperative to act now — I believe we have a moral obligation,” Biden said in a nationwide address Thursday. At the same time, he acknowledged that his plan “does not come cheaply.”
Biden proposed $1,400 checks for most Americans, which on top of $600 provided in the most recent COVID-19 bill would bring the total to the $2,000 that Biden has called for. It would also extend a temporary boost in unemployment benefits and a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures through September.
And it shoehorns in long-term Democratic policy aims such as increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, expanding paid leave for workers, and increasing tax credits for families with children. The last item would make it easier for women to go back to work, which in turn would help the economy recover.
The political outlook for the legislation remained unclear. In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer praised Biden for including liberal priorities, saying they would move quickly to pass it after Biden takes office next Wednesday. But Democrats have narrow margins in both chambers of Congress, and Republicans will push back on issues that range from increasing the minimum wage to providing more money for states, while demanding inclusion of their priorities, such as liability protection for businesses.
“Remember that a bipartisan $900 billion #COVID19 relief bill became law just 18 days ago,” tweeted Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. But Biden says that was only a down payment, and he promised more major legislation next month, focused on rebuilding the economy.
“The crisis of deep human suffering is in plain sight, and there’s not time to waste,” Biden said. “We have to act and we have to act now.”
Still, he sought to manage expectations. “We’re better equipped to do this than any nation in the world,” he said. “But even with all these small steps, it’s going to take time.”
His relief bill would be paid for with borrowed money, adding to trillions in debt the government has already incurred to confront the pandemic. Aides said Biden will make the case that the additional spending and borrowing is necessary to prevent the economy from sliding into an even deeper hole. Interest rates are low, making debt more manageable.
Biden has long held that economic recovery is inextricably linked with controlling the coronavirus.
That squares with the judgment of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobbying group and traditionally an adversary of Democrats. “We must defeat COVID before we can restore our economy and that requires turbocharging our vaccination efforts,” the Chamber said in a statement Thursday night that welcomed Biden’s plan but stopped short of endorsing it.
The plan comes as a divided nation is in the grip of the pandemic’s most dangerous wave yet. So far, more than 385,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. And government numbers out Thursday reported a jump in weekly unemployment claims, to 965,000, a sign that rising infections are forcing businesses to cut back and lay off workers.
Under Biden’s multipronged strategy, about $400 billion would go directly to combating the pandemic, while the rest is focused on economic relief and aid to states and localities.
About $20 billion would be allocated for a more disciplined focus on vaccination, on top of some $8 billion already approved by Congress. Biden has called for setting up mass vaccination centers and sending mobile units to hard-to-reach areas.
With the backing of Congress and the expertise of private and government scientists, the Trump administration delivered two highly effective vaccines and more are on the way. Yet a month after the first shots were given, the nation’s vaccination campaign is off to a slow start with about 11 million people getting the first of two shots, although more than 30 million doses have been delivered.
Biden called the vaccine rollout “a dismal failure so far” and said he would provide more details about his vaccination campaign on Friday.
The plan also provides $50 billion to expand testing, which is seen as key to reopening most schools by the end of the new administration’s first 100 days. About $130 billion would be allocated to help schools reopen without risking further contagion.
The plan would fund the hiring of 100,000 public health workers, to focus on encouraging people to get vaccinated and on tracing the contacts of those infected with the coronavirus.
There’s also a proposal to boost investment in genetic sequencing, to help track new virus strains including the more contagious variants identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
Throughout the plan, there’s a focus on ensuring that minority communities that have borne the brunt of the pandemic are not shortchanged on vaccines and treatments, aides said.
With the new proposals comes a call to redouble efforts on the basics.
Biden is asking Americans to override their sense of pandemic fatigue and recommit to wearing masks, practicing social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings, particularly larger ones. It’s still the surest way to slow the COVID-19 wave, with more than 4,400 deaths reported just on Tuesday.
Biden’s biggest challenge will be to “win the hearts and minds of the American people to follow his lead,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a public health expert and emergency physician.
The pace of vaccination in the U.S. is approaching 1 million shots a day, but 1.8 million a day would be needed to reach widespread or “herd” immunity by the summer, according to a recent estimate by the American Hospital Association. Wen says the pace should be even higher — closer to 3 million a day.
Biden believes the key to speeding that up lies not only in delivering more vaccine but also in working closely with states and local communities to get shots into the arms of more people. The Trump administration provided the vaccine to states and set guidelines for who should get priority for shots, but largely left it up to state and local officials to organize their vaccination campaigns.
It’s still unclear how the new administration will address the issue of vaccine hesitancy, the doubts and suspicions that keep many people from getting a shot. Polls show it’s particularly a problem among Black Americans.
“We will have to move heaven and earth to get more people vaccinated,” Biden said.
Next Wednesday, when Biden is sworn in as president, marks the anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States.
Naya Ali, who was born in Ethiopia, came to Montreal as a preschooler and grew up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Naya says the Ethiopian roots of her family has a defining influence on her art. According to the Canadian Postmedia Network: "Those songs rooted in Ethiopian culture will make up the second half of her debut album" that set to be released this year. “That’s where I’m from, those are my roots, those are my foundations,” Naya explains. “There’s a lot of history there.” (Photo: Montreal Gazette)
Naya Ali is proud to be the only artist not from Ontario to win one of the five prizes at the inaugural Black Canadian Music Awards. The SOCAN Foundation announced Monday that the Montreal rap artist had won an award at the Toronto-based event, along with Ontario artists TOBi, RAAHiim, Hunnah and Dylan Sinclair. More than 300 artists from across Canada were competing for the awards.
It means a lot to Ali, she says, because it’s a sign her music is gaining recognition outside Montreal. Francophone hip hop in Quebec has made big progress commercially in recent years, but she feels more isolated as an anglophone rapper here, which is why it felt so good to win this prize at a Toronto-based event.
“It’s recognition,” said Ali, who was born in Ethiopia, came to Montreal as a preschooler and grew up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. “To get an award from (songwriters group) SOCAN, it enables me to get on people’s radars, of people who haven’t heard of me before, in Toronto and across Canada. It’s going to facilitate more connections with key people, and that’s one of the greatest things about this prize.
“I never thought it was a problem being an English artist from here, being a Black woman from Montreal who raps. It kind of looks like on paper, ‘Ugh, what are the odds of this working?’ But at the end of the day, it gives me my edge.”
The stars seemed to be aligning for Ali early in 2020. She launched the first half of her debut album, Godspeed: Baptism (Prelude), in March, garnering much buzz, and she was set to launch the project at the prestigious South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex. She was also booked to be on the same bill as hip-hop superstar Travis Scott at the Metro Metro fest in Montreal in May.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard, and everything was cancelled. Like every other musical artist, Ali was stuck at home wondering what to do next, with most revenue streams shut down and little opportunity to promote her album.
But Ali isn’t one to stay down for long. The distinctive blend of gritty rapping and radio-friendly pop sounds on the eight songs on Godspeed: Baptism (Prelude) continued to win over folks in the industry. It was one of the nominees at the ADISQ gala, the Quebec music awards ceremony, as anglophone album of the year, a prize ultimately won by Patrick Watson’s Wave. Ali also had the chance to perform at the top-rated gala, delivering an intense version of Get It Right, belting it out standing on top of a giant freight container under the Jacques-Cartier Bridge.
For the ADISQ performance, she wore a hoodie with names on the back of Black women killed as a result of police brutality. It also included the name of Joyce Echaquan, the Indigenous woman who died in a Joliette hospital last year as staff made degrading comments about her.
“The whole Black Lives Matter movement became more mainstream because people had a lot more time on their hands,” said Ali. “Because of confinement, they were not so distracted. Which is great. But at the end of the day, Black lives matter yesterday, today and tomorrow. It’s not a trend or a wave. If you actually believe in it, then it’s something you embody every day in your actions.”
Ali says N.D.G. helped form her musical persona. “It played a great part in me becoming the person I am today. When I was a teenager, rap music was really in the streets. It opened my ears to a whole culture and community.”
Another defining influence was the Ethiopian roots of her family, and she says that’s having a greater impact on the music she’s making now. Those songs rooted in Ethiopian culture will make up the second half of her debut album, which will launch this year.
“That’s where I’m from, those are my roots, those are my foundations,” said Ali. “There’s a lot of history there.”
According to the Ministry of Health the number of coronavirus cases in Ethiopia has reached 133,298 as of January 23rd , 2021. (Photo: Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health, via Twitter @lia_tadesse )
Survey identifies troubling effect of pandemic on where women give birth in Ethiopia
In urban areas, delivery rates in lower-level health facilities increased and hospital deliveries decreased after social distancing restrictions were put in place
By Johns Hopkins Magazine
A new study from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and researchers at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia has found that as of June, the proportion of women in urban areas—where COVID-19 rates were highest—who delivered in lower-level health facilities significantly increased while deliveries in hospitals declined. A pregnant woman’s place of delivery is a key maternal health service component that has a direct impact on pregnancy and newborn outcomes, and researchers have been monitoring how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women’s delivery patterns. The analysis was conducted using data from the Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia survey, led by Linnea Zimmerman, assistant professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School, and Solomon Shiferaw and Assefa Seme at Addis Ababa University. The project is managed by Johns Hopkins global health affiliate Jhpiego and the Gates Institute. Results from the analysis also showed that at the national level, there was no difference in the proportion of women who delivered in a hospital and home delivery rates remained unchanged. Looking within urban areas, women who delivered during May and June, after COVID-19 restrictions started, were significantly less likely to deliver in a hospital relative to women who delivered prior to the pandemic.
In Ethiopia, as of January 22nd, 2021, there have been 133,298 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Read more »
Assessing Ethiopian women’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 pandemic
By World Bank
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has devastating health and economic impacts globally and has disproportionately affected vulnerable groups. As highlighted in a blog published at the onset of the pandemic, the coronavirus is not gender-blind and pre-existing gender gaps may intensify during and after the pandemic due to worsening human capital, economic, and women’s agency outcomes.
What can high-frequency phone survey data tell us about the gendered effects of the pandemic in Ethiopia?
How Ethiopia prepared its health workforce for the COVID-19 response
Photo via the World Health Organization
By The World Health Organization
In a busy intensive care unit in Eka Kotebe General Hospital, Addis Ababa, Dr Samuel Getnet, 28, a newly-recruited young and energetic physician anxiously monitors the mechanical ventilators, an indispensable form of life support for COVID-19 patients with respiratory distress.
“I never thought my professional journey would bring me to the place where I’m today—at the center of COVID-19 pandemic management team—treating and caring for the most severely ill patients who critically need my support and care. Despite the challenges and risks, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve my people at this critical time,” he said.
Dr Getnet is a general practitioner who came on board as part of the surge capacity planning for human resources announced by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health in February 2020. Before starting his duty in the intensive care unit, he received in-person training from the World Health Organization (WHO), with practical sessions taking place in the hospital. The topics he covered include case management, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), infection prevention and control (IPC), and the application and use of mechanical ventilation. He also benefited from online WHO resources such as Open WHO.org.
‘Relieved’: US health workers start getting COVID-19 vaccine
Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo)
By The Associated Press
The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000.
“I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay said after getting a shot in the arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.
With a countdown of “3-2-1,” workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause.
And in New Orleans, Steven Lee, an intensive care unit pharmacist at Ochsner Medical Center, summed up the moment as he got his own vaccination: “We can finally prevent the disease as opposed to treating it.”
Other hospitals around the country, from Rhode Island to Texas, unloaded precious frozen vials of vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech, with staggered deliveries set throughout the day and Tuesday. A few other countries have authorized the vaccine, including Britain, which started vaccinating people last week, and Canada, which began doing so on Monday.
For health care workers, who along with nursing home residents will be first in line for vaccination, hope is tempered by grief and the sheer exhaustion of months spent battling a coronavirus that still is surging in the U.S. and around the world.
IN PICTURES: On the Frontline Against Covid-19 in Ethiopia – A Photo Essay
Frontline workers at the Eka Kotebe hospital. (Photo by Yonas Tadesse)
By Yonas Tadesse
The first case of Covid-19 in Ethiopia was reported on 13 March, when a team of first responders took in a 48-year-old Japanese man. Having never seen anything like his condition, they did not know what to prepare for, and thus started their new normal of battling the coronavirus in Ethiopia.
Doctors, nurses, janitors, security guards and drivers donned hats they had never dreamed of wearing as they worked to develop systems and techniques to minimise the damage from the virus – often at the cost of their health, their home lives, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
FACTBOX- Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 67.72 million, death toll at 1,548,575
By Reuters
More than 67.72 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,548,575 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 1 million, a Reuters tally showed on Thursday, as the disease began to spread rapidly through a continent whose relative isolation has so far spared it the worst of the pandemic. The continent recorded 1,003,056 cases, of which 21,983 have died and 676,395 recovered. South Africa – which is the world’s fifth worst-hit nation and makes up more than half of sub-Saharan Africa’s case load – has recorded 538,184 cases since its first case on March 5, the health ministry said on Thursday. Low levels of testing in several countries, apart from South Africa, mean Africa’s infection rates are likely to be higher than reported, experts say. Read more »
COVID19 Contact Tracing is a race. But few U.S. states say how fast they’re running
Someone — let’s call her Person A — catches the coronavirus. It’s a Monday. She goes about life, unaware her body is incubating a killer. By perhaps Thursday, she’s contagious. Only that weekend does she come down with a fever and get tested. What happens next is critical. Public health workers have a small window of time to track down everyone Person A had close contact with over the past few days. Because by the coming Monday or Tuesday, some of those people — though they don’t yet have symptoms — could also be spreading the virus. Welcome to the sprint known as contact tracing, the process of reaching potentially exposed people as fast as possible and persuading them to quarantine. The race is key to controlling the pandemic ahead of a vaccine, experts say. But most places across the United States aren’t making public how fast or well they’re running it, leaving Americans in the dark about how their governments are mitigating the risk. An exception is the District of Columbia, which recently added metrics on contact tracing to its online dashboard. A few weeks ago, the District was still too overwhelmed to try to ask all of those who tested positive about their contacts. Now, after building a staff of several hundred contact tracers, D.C. officials say they’re making that attempt within 24 hours of a positive test report in about 98 percent of cases. For months, every U.S. state has posted daily numbers on coronavirus testing — along with charts of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. So far, only one state, Oregon, posts similar data about contact tracing. Officials in New York say they plan to begin publishing such metrics in the coming weeks.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 2.5 million on Sunday morning as a devastating new wave of infections continued to bear down throughout the country’s South and West. Florida, Texas and Arizona are fast emerging as the country’s latest epicenters after reporting record numbers of new infections for weeks in a row. Positivity rates and hospitalizations have also spiked. Global cases of covid-19 exceeded 10 million, according to a count maintained by Johns Hopkins University, a measure of the power and spread of a pandemic that has caused vast human suffering, devastated the world’s economy and still threatens vulnerable populations in rich and poor nations alike.
Read more »
WHO warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’ as coronavirus accelerates; Americas now hardest hit
By The Washington Post
The World Health Organization warned Friday that “the world is in a new and dangerous phase” as the global pandemic accelerates. The world recorded about 150,000 new cases on Thursday, the largest rise yet in a single day, according to the WHO. Nearly half of these infections were in the Americas, as new cases continue to surge in the United States, Brazil and across Latin America. More than 8.5 million coronavirus cases and at least 454,000 deaths have been reported worldwide. As confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb in the U.S., new mask requirements are prompting faceoffs between officials who seek to require face coverings and those, particularly conservatives, who oppose such measures. Several studies this month support wearing masks to curb coronavirus transmission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend their use as a protective measure. Read more »
World Bank Provides Additional Support to Help Ethiopia Mitigate Economic Impacts of COVID-19
JUNE 18, 2020
The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved $250 million ($125 million grant and $125 million credit) in supplemental financing for the ongoing Second Ethiopia Growth and Competitiveness Programmatic Development Policy Financing. This funding is geared towards helping Ethiopia to revitalize the economy by broadening the role of the private sector and attaining a more sustainable development path.
“The COVID 19 pandemic is expected to severely impact Ethiopia’s economy. The austerity of the required containment measures, along with disruptions to air travel and the collapse in international demand for goods exported by Ethiopia are already taking a toll on the economy,” said Carolyn Turk, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea. “Additionally, an estimated 1.8 million jobs are at risk, and the incomes and livelihoods of several million informal workers, self-employed individuals and farmers are expected to be affected.”
The supplemental financing will help to mitigate the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on the Government’s reform agenda. Specifically, the program is intended to help address some of the unanticipated financing needs the Government of Ethiopia is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis. Additional financing needs are estimated to be approximately $1.5 billion, as revenue collection is expected to weaken, and additional expenditure is needed to mitigate the public health and economic impacts of the crisis.
Once the coronavirus epicenter in the U.S., New York City begins to reopen
After three months of a coronavirus crisis followed by protests and unrest, New York City is trying to turn a page when a limited range of industries reopen Monday, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo)
100 days after the first coronavirus case was confirmed there, the city that was once the epicenter of America’s coronavirus pandemic began to reopen. The number of cases in New York has plunged, but health officials fear that a week of protests on the streets could bring a new wave.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) estimated that between 200,000 to 400,000 workers returned to work throughout the city’s five boroughs.
“All New Yorkers should be proud you got us to this day,” de Blasio said at a news conference at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a manufacturing hub.
US Deaths From Coronavirus Surpass 100,000 Milestone
By The Associated Press
The U.S. surpassed a jarring milestone Wednesday in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 deaths. That number is the best estimate and most assuredly an undercount. But it represents the stark reality that more Americans have died from the virus than from the Vietnam and Korea wars combined. “It’s a striking reminder of how dangerous this virus can be,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington. The true death toll from the virus, which emerged in China late last year and was first reported in the U.S. in January, is widely believed to be significantly higher, with experts saying many victims died of COVID-19 without ever being tested for it. Read more »
Ethiopia Coronavirus Cases Reach 5,846
By Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health
Report #111 የኢትዮጵያ የኮሮና ቫይረስ ሁኔታ መግለጫ. Status update on #COVID19Ethiopia. Total confirmed cases [as of June 29th, 2020]: 5,846 Read more »
New York Times Memorializes Coronavirus Victims as U.S. Death Toll Nears 100,000
America is fast approaching a grim milestone in the coronavirus outbreak — each figure here represents one of the nearly 100,000 lives lost so far. Read more »
Spotlight: Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System Tebita Adds Services Addressing COVID19
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Twelve year ago when Kibret Abebe quit his job as a nurse anesthetist at Black Lion Hospital and sold his house to launch Tebita Ambulance — Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System — his friends and family were understandably concerned about his decisions. But today Tebita operates over 20 advanced life support ambulances with approval from the Ministry of Health and stands as the country’s premier Emergency Medical Service (EMS). Tebita has since partnered with East Africa Emergency Services, an Ethiopian and American joint venture that Kibret also owns, with the aim “to establish the first trauma center and air ambulance system in Ethiopia.” This past month Tebita announced their launch of new services in Addis Abeba to address the COVID-19 pandemic and are encouraging Ethiopians residing in the U.S. to utilize Tebita for regular home check-ins on elderly family members as well as vulnerable individuals with pre-existing conditions. The following is an audio of the interview with Kibret Abebe and Laura Davis of Tebita Ambulance and East Africa Emergency Services: Read more »
WHO reports most coronavirus cases in a day as cases approach five million
By Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization expressed concern on Wednesday about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations have begun emerging from lockdown. The global health body said 106,000 new cases of infections of the novel coronavirus had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. “We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.” Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, said: “We will soon reach the tragic milestone of 5 million cases.” Read more »
WHO head says vaccines, medicines must be fairly shared to beat COVID-19
By Reuters
Scientists and researchers are working at “breakneck” speed to find solutions for COVID-19 but the pandemic can only be beaten with equitable distribution of medicines and vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday. “Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.
Doctors face new urgency to solve children and coronavirus puzzle
By Axios
Solving the mystery of how the coronavirus impacts children has gained sudden steam, as doctors try to determine if there’s a link between COVID-19 and kids with a severe inflammatory illness, and researchers try to pin down their contagiousness before schools reopen. New York hospitals have reported 73 suspected cases with two possible deaths from the inflammatory illness as of Friday evening. Read more »
COVID-19 and Its Impact on African Economies: Q&A with Prof. Lemma Senbet
Prof. Lemma Senbet. (Photo: @AERCAFRICA/Twitter)
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Last week Professor Lemma Senbet, an Ethiopian-American financial economist and the William E. Mayer Chair Professor at University of Maryland, moderated a timely webinar titled ‘COVID-19 and African Economies: Global Implications and Actions.’ The well-attended online conference — hosted by the Center for Financial Policy at University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business on Friday, April 24th — featured guest speakers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the World Bank who addressed “the global implications of the COVID-19 economic impact on developing and low-income countries, with Africa as an anchor.” In the following Q&A with Tadias Prof. Lemma, who is also the immediate former Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium based in Nairobi, Kenya, explains the worldwide economic fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the African continent, including Ethiopia. Read more »
US unemployment surges to a Depression-era level of 14.7%
By The Associated Press
The coronavirus crisis has sent U.S. unemployment surging to 14.7%, a level last seen when the country was in the throes of the Depression and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assuring Americans that the only thing to fear was fear itself…The breathtaking collapse is certain to intensify the push-pull across the U.S. over how and when to ease stay-at-home restrictions. And it robs President Donald Trump of the ability to point to a strong economy as he runs for reelection. “The jobs report from hell is here,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, “one never seen before and unlikely to be seen again barring another pandemic or meteor hitting the Earth.” Read more »
Hospitalizations continue to decline in New York, Cuomo says
By CBS News
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the number of people newly diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19 has continued to decrease. “Overall the numbers are coming down,” he said. But he said 335 people died from the virus yesterday. “That’s 335 families,” Cuomo said. “You see this number is basically reducing, but not at a tremendous rate. The only thing that’s tremendous is the number of New Yorkers who’ve still passed away.” Read more »
Los Angeles offers free testing to all county residents
By The Washington Post
All residents of Los Angeles County can access free coronavirus testing at city-run sites, Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said on Wednesday. Previously, the city had only offered testing to residents with symptoms as well as essential workers and people who lived or worked in nursing homes and other kinds of institutional facilities. In an announcement on Twitter, Garcetti said that priority would still be given to front-line workers and anyone experiencing symptoms, including cough, fever or shortness of breath. But the move, which makes Los Angeles the first major city in the country to offer such widespread testing, allows individuals without symptoms to be tested. Health experts have repeatedly said that mass testing is necessary to determine how many people have contracted the virus — and in particular, those who may not have experienced symptoms — and then begin to reopen the economy. Testing is by appointment only and can be arranged at one of the city’s 35 sites. Read more »
Researchers Double U.S. COVID-19 Death Forecast
By Reuters
A newly revised coronavirus mortality model predicts nearly 135,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by early August, almost double previous projections, as social-distancing measures for quelling the pandemic are increasingly relaxed, researchers said on Monday. The ominous new forecast from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) reflect “rising mobility in most U.S. states” with an easing of business closures and stay-at-home orders expected in 31 states by May 11, the institute said. Read more »
Global coronavirus death toll surpasses 200,000, as world leaders commit to finding vaccine
By NBC News
The global coronavirus death toll surpassed 200,000 on Saturday, according to John Hopkins University data. The grim total was reached a day after presidents and prime ministers agreed to work together to develop new vaccines, tests and treatments at a virtual meeting with both the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody. As the U.S. coronavirus death tollpassed 51,000 people, according to an NBC News tally, President Donald Trump took no questions at his White House briefing on Friday, after widespread mockery for floating the idea that light, heat and disinfectants could be used to treat coronavirus patients.”
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has announced the first clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine. The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the regulatory authority which helps develop and authorizes vaccines in Germany, has given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of BNT162b1, a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was developed by cancer researcher and immunologist Ugur Sahin and his team at pharmaceutical company BioNTech, and is based on their prior research into cancer immunology. Sahin previously taught at the University of Mainz before becoming the CEO of BioNTech. In a joint conference call on Wednesday with researchers from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Sahin said BNT162b1 constitutes a so-called RNA vaccine. He explained that innocuous genetic information of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is transferred into human cells with the help of lipid nanoparticles, a non-viral gene delivery system. The cells then transform this genetic information into a protein, which should stimulate the body’s immune reaction to the novel coronavrius.
Webinar on COVID-19 and Mental Health: Interview with Dr. Seble Frehywot
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Dr. Seble Frehywot, an Associate Professor of Global Health & Health Policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her colleague Dr. Yianna Vovides from Georgetown University will host an online forum next week on April 30th focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on mental health. Dr. Seble — who is also the Director of Global Health Equity On-Line Learning at George Washington University – told Tadias that the virtual conference titled “People’s Webinar: Addressing COVID-19 By Addressing Mental Health” is open to the public and available for viewing worldwide. Read more »
Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes
By The Washington Post
Doctors sound alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead. Some didn’t even know they were infected. Read more »
CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating
By The Washington Post
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean…We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said. Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said. The first wave of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has already killed more than 42,000 people across the country. It has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed gaping shortages in test kits, ventilators and protective equipment for health-care workers.
Americans at World Health Organization transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration
By The Washington Post
More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials. A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States. Read more »
In Ethiopia, Dire Dawa Emerges as Newest Coronavirus Hot Spot
By Africa News
The case count as of April 20 had reached 111 according to health minister Lia Tadesse’s update for today. Ethiopia crossed the 100 mark over the weekend. All three cases recorded over the last 24-hours were recorded in the chartered city of Dire Dawa with patients between the ages of 11 – 18. Two of them had travel history from Djibouti. Till date, Ethiopia has 90 patients in treatment centers. The death toll is still at three with 16 recoveries. A patient is in intensive care. Read more »
COVID-19: Interview with Dr. Tsion Firew, an Ethiopian Doctor on the Frontline in NYC
Dr. Tsion Firew is Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University. She is also Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. (Courtesy photo)
By Liben Eabisa
In New York City, which has now become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, working as a medical professional means literally going to a “war zone,” says physician Tsion Firew, a Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University, who has just recovered from COVID-19 and returned to work a few days ago. Indeed the statistics coming out of New York are simply shocking with the state recording a sharp increase in death toll this months surpassing 10,000 and growing. According to The New York Times: “The numbers brought into clearer focus the staggering toll the virus has already taken on the largest city in the United States, where deserted streets are haunted by the near-constant howl of ambulance sirens. Far more people have died in New York City, on a per-capita basis, than in Italy — the hardest-hit country in Europe.” At the heart of the solution both in the U.S. and around the world is more testing and adhering to social distancing rules until such time as a proper treatment and vaccine is discovered, says Dr. Tsion, who is also a Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. Dr. Tsion adds that at this moment “we all as humanity have one enemy: the virus. And what’s going to win the fight is solidarity.” Listen to the interview »
Ethiopia Opens Aid Transport Hub to Fight Covid-19
By AFP
Ethiopia and the United Nations on Tuesday opened a humanitarian transport hub at Addis Ababa airport to move supplies and aid workers across Africa to fight coronavirus. The arrangement, which relies on cargo services provided by Ethiopian Airlines, could also partially offset heavy losses Africa’s largest carrier is sustaining because of the pandemic. An initial shipment of 3 000 cubic metres of supplies – most of it personal protective equipment for health workers – will be distributed within the next week, said Steven Were Omamo, Ethiopia country director for the World Food Programme (WFP). “This is a really important platform in the response to Covid-19, because what it does is it allows us to move with speed and efficiency to respond to the needs as they are unfolding,” Omamo said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Addis gateway is one of eight global humanitarian hubs set up to facilitate movement of aid to fight Covid-19, according to WFP.
Covid-19: Ethiopia to buy life insurance for health workers
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
The Ethiopian government is due to buy life insurance for health professionals in direct contact with Covid-19 patients. Health minister Lia Tadesse said on Tuesday that the government last week reached an agreement with the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation but did not disclose the value of the cover. The two sides are expected to sign an agreement this week to effect the insurance grant. According to the ministry, the life insurance grant is aimed at encouraging health experts who are the most vulnerable to the deadly coronavirus. Members of the Rapid Response Team will also benefit.
U.N. says Saudi deportations of Ethiopian migrants risks spreading coronavirus
By Reuters
The United Nations said on Monday that deportations of illegal migrant workers by Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia risked spreading the coronavirus and it urged Riyadh to suspend the practice for the time being.
Ethiopia’s capital launches door-to-door Covid-19 screening
Getty Images
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa is due to begin a door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening across the city, Addis Ababa city administration has announced. City deputy Mayor, Takele Uma, on Saturday told local journalists that the mass screening and testing programme will be started Monday (April 13) first in districts which are identified as potentially most vulnerable to the spread of the highly infectious coronavirus. The aggressive city-wide screening measure intends to identify Covid-19 infected patients and thereby to arrest a potential virus spread within communities. He said, the mass screening will eventually be carried out in all 117 districts, locally known as woredas, of the city, which is home to an estimated 7 million inhabitants. According to the Mayor, the door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening will be conducted by more than 1,200 retired health professionals, who responded to government’s call on the retired to join the national fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus has hit 100,000, according to the running tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. The sad milestone comes as Christians around the globe mark a Good Friday unlike any other — in front of computer screens instead of in church pews. Meanwhile, some countries are tiptoeing toward reopening segments of their battered economies. Public health officials are warning people against violating the social distancing rules over Easter and allowing the virus to flare up again. Authorities are using roadblocks and other means to discourage travel.
Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team: Interview with Mike Endale
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
A network of technology professionals from the Ethiopian Diaspora — known as the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team – has been assisting the Ethiopian Ministry of Health since the nation’s first Coronavirus case was confirmed on March 13th. The COVID-19 Response Team has since grown into an army of more than a thousand volunteers. Mike Endale, a software developer based in Washington, D.C., is the main person behind the launch of this project. Read more »
Ethiopia eyes replicating China’s successes in applying traditional medicine to contain COVID-19
By CGTN Africa
The Ethiopian government on Thursday expressed its keen interest to replicate China’s positive experience in terms of effectively applying traditional Chinese medicine to successfully contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the East African country.
This came after high-level officials from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MoIT) as well as the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH) held a video conference with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners and researchers on ways of applying the TCM therapy towards controlling the spread of coronavirus pandemic in the country, the MoIT disclosed in a statement issued on Thursday.
“China, in particular, has agreed to provide to Ethiopia the two types of Chinese traditional medicines that the country applied to successfully treat the first two stages of the novel coronavirus,” a statement from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology read.
WHO Director Slams ‘Racist’ Comments About COVID-19 Vaccine Testing
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has angrily condemned recent comments made by scientists suggesting that a vaccine for COVID-19 should be tested in Africa as “racist” and a hangover from the “colonial mentality”. (Photo: WHO)
By BBC
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has condemned as “racist” the comments by two French doctors who suggested a vaccine for the coronavirus could be tested in Africa.
“Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine,” said Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The doctors’ remarks during a TV debate sparked outrage, and they were accused of treating Africans like “human guinea pigs”.
One of them later issued an apology.
When asked about the doctors’ suggestion during the WHO’s coronavirus briefing, Dr Tedros became visibly angry, calling it a hangover from the “colonial mentality”.
“It was a disgrace, appalling, to hear during the 21st Century, to hear from scientists, that kind of remark. We condemn this in the strongest terms possible, and we assure you that this will not happen,” he said.
Ethiopia declares state of emergency to curb spread of COVID-19
By Reuters
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in the country to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, his office said on Twitter. “Considering the gravity of the #COVID19, the government of Ethiopia has enacted a State of Emergency,” Abiy’s office said.
Ethiopia virus cases hit 52, 9-month-old baby infected
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia on Tuesday reported eight new Covid-19 cases, the highest number recorded so far in one day since the country confirmed its first virus case on March 12. Among the new patients that tested positive for the virus were a 9-month-old infant and his mother who had travelled to Dubai recently. “During the past 24 hours, we have done laboratory tests for a total of 264 people and eight out of them have been diagnosed with coronavirus, raising the total confirmed number of Covid-19 patients in Ethiopia to 52,” said Health Minister Dr Lia Tadese. According to the Minister, seven of the newly confirmed patients had travel histories to various countries. They have been under forced-quarantine in different designated hotels in the capital, Addis Ababa. “Five of the new patients including the 9-month-old baby and the mother came from Dubai while the two others came from Thailand and the United Kingdom,” she said
The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate
By The Washington Post
As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the United States, it appears to be infecting and killing black Americans at a disproportionately high rate, according to a Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country. The emerging stark racial disparity led the surgeon general Tuesday to acknowledge in personal terms the increased risk for African Americans amid growing demands that public-health officials release more data on the race of those who are sick, hospitalized and dying of a contagion that has killed more than 12,000 people in the United States. A Post analysis of what data is available and census demographics shows that counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.
In China, Wuhan’s lockdown officially ends after 11 weeks
After 11 weeks — or 76 days — Wuhan’s lockdown is officially over. On Wednesday, Chinese authorities allowed residents to travel in and out of the besieged city where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported in December. Many remnants of the months-long lockdown, however, remain. Wuhan’s 11 million residents will be able to leave only after receiving official authorization that they are healthy and haven’t recently been in contact with a coronavirus patient. To do so, the Chinese government is making use of its mandatory smartphone application that, along with other government surveillance, tracks the movement and health status of every person.
U.S. hospitals facing ‘severe shortages’ of equipment and staff, watchdog says
By The Washington Post
As the official U.S. death toll approached 10,000, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams warned that this will be “the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives.”
Ethio-American Tech Company PhantomALERT Offers Free App to Track & Map COVID-19 Outbreak
By Tadias Staff
PhantomALERT, a Washington D.C.-based technology company announced, that it’s offering a free application service to track, report and map COVID-19 outbreak hotspots in real time. In a recent letter to the DC government as well as the Ethiopian Embassy in the U.S. the Ethiopian-American owned business, which was launched in 2007, explained that over the past few days, they have redesigned their application to be “a dedicated coronavirus mapping, reporting and tracking application.” The letter to the Ethiopian Embassy, shared with Tadias, noted that PhantomALERT’s technology “will enable the Ethiopian government (and all other countries across the world) to locate symptomatic patients, provide medical assistance and alert communities of hotspots for the purpose of slowing down the spread of the Coronavirus.”
By Dr. Lia Tadesse (Minister, Ministry of Health, Ethiopia)
It is with great sadness that I announce the second death of a patient from #COVID19 in Ethiopia. The patient was admitted on April 2nd and was under strict medical follow up in the Intensive Care Unit. My sincere condolences to the family and loved ones.
The Next Coronavirus Test Will Tell You If You Are Now Immune. And It’s Fast.
People line up in their cars at the COVID-19 testing area at Roseland Community Hospital on April 3, 2020, in Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
By Chicago Tribune
A new, different type of coronavirus test is coming that will help significantly in the fight to quell the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and scientists say. The first so-called serology test, which detects antibodies to the virus rather than the virus itself, was given emergency approval Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And several more are nearly ready, said Dr. Elizabeth McNally, director of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Center for Genetic Medicine.
‘Your Safety is Our Priority’: How Ethiopian Airlines is Navigating the Global Virus Crisis
By Tadias Staff
Lately Ethiopian Airlines has been busy delivering much-needed medical supplies across Africa and emerging at the forefront of the continent’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic even as it has suspended most of its international passenger flights.
Ethiopia races to bolster ventilator stockpile for coronavirus fight
By AFP
Ethiopia’s government — like others in Africa — is confronting a stark ventilator shortage that could hobble its COVID-19 response. In a country of more than 100 million people, just 54 ventilators — out of around 450 total — had been set aside for COVID-19 patients as of this week, said Yakob Seman, director general of medical services at the health ministry.
New York City mayor calls for national enlistment of health-care workers
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. (AP photo)
By The Washington Post
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday called for a national enlistment of health-care workers organized by the U.S. military.
Speaking on CNN’s New Day, he lamented that there has been no effort to mobilize doctors and nurses across the country and bring them to “the front” — first New York City and then other areas that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
“If there’s not action by the president and the military literally in a matter of days to put in motion this vast mobilization,” de Blasio said, “then you’re going to see first hundreds and later thousands of Americans die who did not need to die.”
He said he expects his city to be stretched for medical personnel starting Sunday, which he called “D-Day.” Many workers are out sick with the disease, he added, while others are “just stretched to the limit.”
The mayor said he has told national leaders that they need to get on “wartime footing.”
“The nation is in a peacetime stance while were actually in the middle of a war,” de Blasio said. “And if they don’t do something different in the next few days, they’re going to lose the window.”
Over 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March as economy collapsed
By The Washington Post
More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a new record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The past two weeks have seen more people file for unemployed claims than during the first six months of the Great Recession, a sign of how rapid, deep and painful the economic shutdown has been on many American families who are struggling to pay rent and health insurance costs in the midst of a pandemic. Job losses have skyrocketed as restaurants, hotel, gyms, and travel have shut down across the nation, but layoffs are also rising in manufacturing, warehousing and transportation, a sign of how widespread the pain of the coronavirus recession is. In March alone, 10.4 million Americans lost their jobs and applied for government aid, according to the latest Labor Department data, which includes claims filed through March 28. Many economists say the real number of people out work is likely even higher, since a lot of newly unemployed Americans haven’t been able to fill out a claim yet.
U.N. Chief Calls Pandemic Biggest Global Challenge Since World War II
By The Washington Post
The coronavirus outbreak sickening hundreds of thousands around the world and devastating the global economy is creating a challenge for the world not seen since World War II, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said late Tuesday. Speaking in a virtual news conference, Guterres said the world needs to show more solidarity and cooperation in fighting not only the medical aspects of the crisis but the economic fallout. The International Monetary Fund is predicting an economic recession worse than in 2008.
US death toll eclipses China’s as reinforcements head to NYC
By The Associated Press
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China’s official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
Getting Through COVID 19: ECMAA Shares Timely Resources With Ethiopian Community
By Tadias Staff
The Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Association (ECMAA) in the New York tri-state area has shared timely resources including COVID-19 safety information as well as national sources of financial support for families and small business owners.
The highly anticipated 2020 national election in Ethiopia has been canceled for now due to the coronavirus outbreak. The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that it has shelved its plans to hold the upcoming nationwide parliamentary polls on August 29th after an internal evaluation of the possible negative effect of the virus pandemic on its official activities.
Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia on lockdown as coronavirus cases grow
By The Washington Post
Maryland, Virginia and the District issued “stay-at-home” orders on Monday, joining a growing list of states and cities mandating broad, enforceable restrictions on where residents can go in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
U.S. Approves Malaria Drug to Treat Coronavirus Patients
By The Washington Post
The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval to a Trump administration plan to distribute millions of doses of anti-malarial drugs to hospitals across the country, saying it is worth the risk of trying unproven treatments to slow the progression of the disease in seriously ill coronavirus patients.
A top U.S. infectious disease scientist said U.S. deaths could reach 200,000, but called it a moving target. New York’s fatalities neared 1,000, more than a third of the U.S. total.
Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed spoke with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, over the weekend regarding the Coronavirus response in Ethiopia and Africa in general.
Virus infections top 600,000 globally with long fight ahead
By The Associated Press
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide topped 600,000 on Saturday as new cases stacked up quickly in Europe and the United States and officials dug in for a long fight against the pandemic. The latest landmark came only two days after the world passed half a million infections, according to a tally by John Hopkins University, showing that much work remains to be done to slow the spread of the virus. It showed more than 607,000 cases and over 28,000 deaths. While the U.S. now leads the world in reported infections — with more than 104,000 cases — five countries exceed its roughly 1,700 deaths: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France.
Gouged prices, middlemen and medical supply chaos: Why governors are so upset with Trump
By The Washington Post
Masks that used to cost pennies now cost several dollars. Companies outside the traditional supply chain offer wildly varying levels of price and quality. Health authorities say they have few other choices to meet their needs in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ battle.
Worshippers in Ethiopia Defy Ban on Large Gatherings Despite Coronavirus
By VOA
ADDIS ABABA – Health experts in Ethiopia are raising concern, as some religious leaders continue to host large gatherings despite government orders not to do so in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this week, Ethiopia’s government ordered security forces to enforce a ban on large gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Ethiopia has seen only 12 cases and no deaths from the virus, and authorities would like to keep it that way. But enforcing the orders has proven difficult as religious groups continue to meet and, according to religious leaders, fail to treat the risks seriously.
It began as a mysterious disease with frightening potential. Now, just two months after America’s first confirmed case, the country is grappling with a lethal reality: The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States, a toll that is increasing at an alarming rate.
A record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits as the coronavirus slams economy
By The Washington Post
A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and more shut down in a nationwide effort to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April.
Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once.
“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures. The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.
Ethiopia: Parents fear for missing students as universities close over Covid-19
Photo via amnesty.org
As universities across Ethiopia close to avert spread of the COVID-19 virus, Amnesty International is calling on the Ethiopian authorities to disclose measures they have taken to rescue 17 Amhara students from Dembi Dolo University in Western Oromia, who were abducted by unidentified people in November 2019 and have been missing since.
The anguish of the students’ families is exacerbated by a phone and internet shutdown implemented in January across the western Oromia region further hampering their efforts to get information about their missing loved ones.
“The sense of fear and uncertainty spreading across Ethiopia because of COVID-19 is exacerbating the anguish of these students’ families, who are desperate for information on the whereabouts of their loved ones four months after they were abducted,” said Seif Magango, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa.
“The Ethiopian authorities’ move to close universities in order to protect the lives of university students is commendable, but they must also take similarly concrete actions to locate and rescue the 17 missing students so that they too are reunited with their families.”
UPDATE: New York City is now reporting 26,697 COVID-19 cases and 450 deaths.
BY ABC7 NY
Temporary hospital space in New York City will begin opening on Monday and more supplies are on the way as an already overwhelmed medical community anticipates even more coronavirus patients in the coming days. Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted 20 trucks were on the road delivering protective equipment to hospitals, including surgical masks, N95 masks, and hundreds more ventilators.
*Right now* there are 20 trucks on the road delivering protective equipment to New York City hospitals. They’re carrying:
• 1 million surgical masks • 200,000 N95 masks • 50,000 face shields • 40,000 isolation gowns • 10,000 boxes of gloves pic.twitter.com/x77egOwCYE
L.A. mayor says residents may have to shelter at home for two months or more
By Business Insider
Los Angeles residents will be confined to their homes until May at the earliest, Mayor Eric Garcetti told Insider on Wednesday.
“I think this is at least two months,” he said. “And be prepared for longer.”
In an interview with Insider, Garcetti pushed back against “premature optimism” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying leaders who suggest we are on the verge of business as usual are putting lives at risk.
“I can’t say that strongly enough,” the mayor said. Optimism, he said, has to be grounded in data. And right now the data is not good.
“Giving people false hope will crush their spirits and will kill more people,” Garcetti said, adding it would change their actions by instilling a sense of normality at the most abnormal time in a generation.
Ethiopia pardons more than 4,000 prisoners to help prevent coronavirus spread
By CNN
Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde has granted pardon to more than 4,000 prisoners in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Sahle-Work Zewde announced the order in a tweet on Wednesday and said it would help prevent overcrowding in prisons.
The directive only covers those given a maximum sentence of three years for minor crimes and those who were about to be released from jail, she said.
There are 12 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ethiopia, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
Authorities in the nation have put in place a raft of measures, including the closure of all borders except to those bringing in essential goods to contain the virus. The government has directed security officials to monitor and enforce a ban on large gatherings and overcrowded public transport to ensure social distancing.
— U.S. House passes $2 trillion coronavirus emergency spending bill
Watch: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York breaks down massive coronavirus aid package (MSNBC Video)
By The Washington Post
The House of Representatives voted Friday [March 27th] to approve a massive $2 trillion stimulus bill that policy makers hope will blunt the economic destruction of the coronavirus pandemic, sending the legislation to President Trump for enactment. The legislation passed in dramatic fashion, approved on an overwhelming voice vote by lawmakers who’d been forced to return to Washington by a GOP colleague who had insisted on a quorum being present. Some lawmakers came from New York and other places where residents are supposed to be sheltering at home.
In Ethiopia, Abiy seeks $150b for African virus response
By AFP
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday urged G20 leaders to help Africa cope with the coronavirus crisis by facilitating debt relief and providing $150 billion in emergency funding.
The pandemic “poses an existential threat to the economies of African countries,” Abiy’s office said in a statement, adding that Ethiopia was “working closely with other African countries” in preparing the aid request.
The heavy debt burdens of many African countries leave them ill-equipped to respond to pandemic-related economic shocks, as the cost of servicing debt exceeds many countries’ health budgets, the statement said.
Worried Ethiopians Want Partial Internet Shutdown Ended (AP)
Ethiopians have their temperature checked for symptoms of the new coronavirus, at the Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Wednesday, March 18, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough and the vast majority recover in 2-6 weeks but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health issues, the virus that causes COVID-19 can result in more severe illness, including pneumonia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Rights groups and citizens are calling on Ethiopia’s government to lift the internet shutdown in parts of the country that is leaving millions of people without important updates on the coronavirus.
The months-long shutdown of internet and phone lines in Western Oromia and parts of the Benishangul Gumuz region is occurring during military operations against rebel forces.
“Residents of these areas are getting very limited information about the coronavirus,” Jawar Mohammed, an activist-turned-politician, told The Associated Press.
Ethiopia reported its first coronavirus case on March 13 and now has a dozen. Officials have been releasing updates mostly online. Land borders have closed and national carrier Ethiopian Airlines has stopped flying to some 30 destinations around the world.
In Global Fight vs. Virus, Over 1.5 Billion Told: Stay Home
A flier urging customers to remain home hangs at a turnstile as an MTA employee sanitizes surfaces at a subway station with bleach solutions due to COVID-19 concerns, Friday, March 20, 2020, in New York. (AP)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — With masks, ventilators and political goodwill in desperately short supply, more than one-fifth of the world’s population was ordered or urged to stay in their homes Monday at the start of what could be a pivotal week in the battle to contain the coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe.
Partisan divisions stalled efforts to pass a colossal aid package in Congress, and stocks fell again on Wall Street even after the Federal Reserve said it will lend to small and large businesses and local governments to help them through the crisis.
Warning that the outbreak is accelerating, the head of the World Health Organization called on countries to take strong, coordinated action.
“We are not helpless bystanders,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, noting that it took 67 days to reach 100,000 cases worldwide but just four days to go from 200,000 to 300,000. “We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
China’s Coronavirus Donation to Africa Arrives in Ethiopia (Reuters)
An Ethiopian Airlines worker transports a consignment of medical donation from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation to Africa for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing, upon arrival at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, March 22, 2020. (REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri)
The first batch of protective and medical equipment donated by Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma was flown into the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, as coronavirus cases in Africa rose above 1,100.
The virus has spread more slowly in Africa than in Asia or Europe but has a foothold in 41 African nations and two territories. So far it has claimed 37 lives across the continent of 1.3 billion people.
The shipment is a much-needed boost to African healthcare systems that were already stretched before the coronavirus crisis, but nations will still need to ration supplies at a time of global scarcity.
Only patients showing symptoms will be tested, the regional Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Sunday.
“The flight carried 5.4 million face masks, kits for 1.08 million detection tests, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 sets of protective face shields,” Ma’s foundation said in a statement.
“The faster we move, the earlier we can help.”
The shipment had a sign attached with the slogan, “when people are determined they can overcome anything”.
Columbia Journalism Review spoke with Tsedale Lemma, the Addis Standard’s editor in chief and founder, about the Ethiopian press, international coverage of the nation, and Abiy Ahmed. The interview has been edited for clarity and length. (CJR)
Columbia Journalism Review
The landscape for journalists has shifted a lot in recent years—from heavy censorship to liberalization under Ahmed to a reversion. How is Addis Standard navigating that shifting terrain?
Previously our struggle was what we call a “vertical struggle” against a repressive state. But since Ahmed came, that struggle has changed in dynamics. Now it is not only with the government, which is folding on its own promises, but also interest groups. Political parties, civil societies, even religious organizations and private individuals have been empowered. Those interest groups want to influence the media too. So the struggle now is both horizontal and vertical.
What do you make of journalists being arrested again and communications blackouts being imposed?
So little has changed. The government continues to own and operate so many powerful media outlets. They get unfiltered access from the government. The independent media continues to struggle to assert our own editorial independence and get equal access to information. We have to rely on how the government media packages the narrative. We just take it from them, and we have so little room to scrutinize, to investigate.
In 2019, Ahmed was praised on the international stage after winning the Nobel Prize. What did that coverage miss?
There was a lot of hysteria, a lot of enthusiasm and happiness around the Peace Prize. That is how the international media functions. There is little room for historical reading of political events in the country and little room to actually look at where the local media—those who have relatively been or are independent, such as Addis Standard—are.
For example, the peace agreement with Eritrea. We’ve been publishing strong-worded editorials that point out this peace deal wasn’t really what the world wanted to see in it. But the world wants to see what the world wants to see.
Recently, you’ve been featured by Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and the BBC, among other international outlets. Is global news coverage now embracing the voices of local Ethiopian journalists more?
The international media is confronted with a reality that we have been trying to highlight for a while. They’re reporting on the prime minister based on his words and based on his actions now. I think there is this moment of reckoning. People are seeing through him for what he’s doing. The period of infatuation seems to have come to a screeching halt.
And the government, not being used to it, are a bit upset. That’s why you see it creating its own fact-checking social media sites, trying to wrestle the narrative back.
Assemblyman Alexander Assefa during the fifth day of the 32nd Special Session of the Legislature in Carson City, Nevada on Aug. 4, 2020. (Photo: The Nevada Independent)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 12th, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — Below is the full text of Nevada Assemblyman Alexander Assefa’s resignation letter.
Alexander, who was the first Ethiopian-American elected to a statewide office in the U.S., resigned this week amid questions about his residency and finances.
Assemblyman Alexander Assefa’s Resignation Letter Full Text
The Honorable Steve Sisolak
Governor, State of Nevada
State Capitol Building
101 N. Carson Street
Carson City, NV 89701
Dear Governor Sisolak:
It is with deep regret that I tender this resignation as Assemblyman for District 42. Serving as the
representative for this District, which served as my home for many years, where my mother continues to reside, where my business is located, and which I considered my home, has truly been an honor.
I ran to represent this District out of a sincere belief that not only was it my place of residence, but that I was in a unique position to understand and address the needs of the constituents of the district, particularly the large Ethiopian community which resides there. Unfortunately, after careful review of the residency requirements detailed in NRS 281.050, I now know I was mistaken. With great regret, and because I believe that lawmakers are bound to uphold the law and act with honesty and integrity, I must admit my mistake and resign my office. I will, of course, make myself available to assist with the transition of this office to my successor.
I made myself abundantly available to the community and did my absolute best to help. On a daily basis, members of this community reached out to me or came to see me in person on issues ranging from domestic violence, mental health, homelessness and jobs. I created a venue where people could seek help and information. I helped immigrant parents who cried in my office challenged by children with substance abuse issues or family disputes due to cultural differences. If I couldn’t offer immediate help, I steered them in the right direction.
For the past nine months during the COVID pandemic I have worked to provide my constituents with resources to help them through this difficult time — organizing food banks and assisting with applications for unemployment assistance and funding through the CARES act. My resignation will in no way affect my commitment to this community and, in fact, will allow me to devote more time to helping my neighbors survive the challenges presented by the pandemic. I will therefore be donating all money which remains in my campaign fund to non-profit organizations that serve the community.
Please convey my regret to my colleagues in the Assembly. I wish them, and you, all the best in the upcoming legislative session.
According to the resignation letter sent by Alexander Assefa, he is resigning over a question about his residency. In the letter, Assefa says that when he ran to represent District 42, he believed it was his place of residence. He goes on to say that after he reviewed the requirements detailed in NRS 281.050, he now knows he was mistaken. (Photo: Courtesy ALEX ASSEFA)
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Alex Assefa, who was the first Ethiopian-American elected to public office in the United States and represented District 42 in Las Vegas, has resigned.
Gov. Sisolak’s office sent the following statement to local media on Tuesday morning:
The Governor’s Office is in receipt of Assemblyman Assefa’s resignation letter. The Governor’s Office will process and submit a declaration of vacancy to the Clark County Commission which will appoint a successor to Assembly District 42, per statute.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that they recently completed an investigation into the assemblyman and the case is now ready for prosecution.
According to the department, Assefa faces several charges including; residency requirement for a candidate (1 count), unlawful for a candidate to make a false statement (2 counts), perjury (6 counts), burglary (2 counts), offer a false instrument for filing or record (8 counts), theft (4 counts) and false statement to procure a marriage license (1 count).
Asefa, who is a Democrat, assumed the office on Nov. 7, 2018. He won re-election in November 2020. His term was set to end on Nov. 9 2022.
Assefa was born in Ethiopia and immigrated to the United States in 2000.
According to the resignation letter sent by Assefa, he is resigning over a question about his residency.
In the letter, Assefa says that when he ran to represent District 42, he believed it was his place of residence. He goes on to say that after he reviewed the requirements detailed in NRS 281.050, he now knows he was mistaken.
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada lawmaker resigned amid an investigation involving the use of campaign contributions that prompted law enforcement to raid his home in May.
Las Vegas Assemblyman Alex Assefa tendered his resignation to Gov. Steve Sisolak on Monday in a letter that did not mention the investigation but addressed questions about whether his primary residence was in the Spring Valley district he represents.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in October that police in May had raided a North Las Vegas home owned by Assefa’s wife, Zenash Mebratu, and a Spring Valley condominium he listed as his residence in campaign filings.
Nevada law requires legislators live in the districts they represent. In his resignation letter, which was first reported by the Review-Journal, Assefa maintains that he initially misunderstood the law but later determined his residencfy violated it after deeper review.
“With great regret, and because I believe that lawmakers are bound to uphold the law and act with honesty and integrity, I must admit my mistake and resign my office,” he wrote in the letter, noting that he ran because of his ties to Spring Valley’s large Ethiopian community.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment and charges have not been filed. Assefa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Assefa reported raising more than $120,000 in contributions as of September 2020 and spending more than $60,000. Campaign finance filings show he reported contributions from and expenses paid to KIB Transport LLC, a freight and trucking company he lists as an income source. He expensed advertising to the company in 2018 and reported the company contributed $9,000 in office space and labor to his campaign in 2020. The office space was one of two that Assefa reported as donated during the pandemic.
He won reelection in November by 45 percentage points in his Clark County district, where Democrats enjoy a 20 percentage point voter registration advantage over Republicans, and had been assigned positions on the Assembly’s Government Affairs, Growth & Infrastructure and Natural Resources committees.
Assefa is the fourth Democratic state lawmaker to resign since 2017. Senate Majority Leader Kelvin Atkinson resigned in 2019 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges for using campaign contributions to open a Las Vegas nightclub and pay off credit card debt. The Legislature subsequently passed a bill to require more detailed reporting of campaign spending and prohibit candidates from using contributions to pay salaries to themselves.
“The Assembly Democratic Caucus thanks Assemblyman Assefa for his service, and we look forward to welcoming a new member to our caucus very soon. With so many crucial decisions about Nevada’s future at stake in this upcoming legislative session, we remain focused on the important tasks of protecting Nevada’s public health and economic well-being,” Assembly Democratic Caucus Executive Director Chelsey Wininger said in a statement.
The Clark County Commission is expected to replace Assefa and state Sen. Yvanna Cancela, who resigned to take a position in the Biden administration, before the Legislature reconvenes in February. Nevada law requires the commission replace lawmakers who resign before the end of their terms with members of the same party who reside in the district.
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Las Vegas Assemblyman Alexander Assefa resigns from state legislature
Las Vegas Assemblyman Alexander Assefa resigns from state legislature (Courtesy: Nevada Legislature)
The Associated Press
January 12th 2021
CARSON CITY, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada lawmaker resigned amid an investigation involving the use of campaign contributions that prompted law enforcement to raid his home in May.
Las Vegas Assemblyman Alex Assefa tendered his resignation to Gov. Steve Sisolak on Monday in a letter that did not mention the investigation but addressed questions about whether his primary residence was in the Spring Valley district he represents.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in October that police in May had raided a North Las Vegas home owned by Assefa’s wife, Zenash Mebratu, and a Spring Valley condominium he listed as his residence in campaign filings.
Nevada law requires legislators live in the districts they represent. In his resignation letter, which was first reported by the Review-Journal, Assefa maintains that he initially misunderstood the law but later determined his residency violated it after deeper review.
“With great regret, and because I believe that lawmakers are bound to uphold the law and act with honesty and integrity, I must admit my mistake and resign my office,” he wrote in the letter, noting that he ran because of his ties to Spring Valley’s large Ethiopian community.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment and charges have not been filed. Assefa did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Assefa is the fourth Democratic state lawmaker to resign since 2017. Senate Majority Leader Kelvin Atkinson resigned in 2019 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges for using campaign contributions to open a Las Vegas nightclub and pay off credit card debt. The Legislature subsequently passed a bill to require more detailed reporting of campaign spending and prohibit candidates from using contributions to pay salaries to themselves.
“The Assembly Democratic Caucus thanks Assemblyman Assefa for his service, and we look forward to welcoming a new member to our caucus very soon. With so many crucial decisions about Nevada’s future at stake in this upcoming legislative session, we remain focused on the important tasks of protecting Nevada’s public health and economic well-being,” Assembly Democratic Caucus Executive Director Chelsey Wininger said in a statement.
The art show, which is also available to view online at Addis Fine Art's website during the pandemic, features Tizta's oil paintings portraying "scenes of affection, intimacy, and closeness.” (Photo: Addis Fine Art)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 15th, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — If you’re in Addis Ababa you can catch a timely and aptly titled art exhibition by Ethiopian painter Tizta Berhanu called ህብር (Hēbēr) at Addis Fine Art gallery in the capital.
“Hēbēr, meaning unity and togetherness, showcases new works by the artist and marks the opening of the gallery’s second exhibition space in the Noah Centrum building, Addis Ababa,” the announcement states, noting that the display is also the artist’s debut solo exhibition at their space.
The art show is also currently available to view online at Addis Fine Art’s website, and features Tizta’s oil paintings portraying “scenes of affection, intimacy, and closeness.. From moments of melancholy to elation, Tizta’s bold use of colors provides each painting with its own distinctive emotional tone; her luminescent red paintings, for instance, conjure images of love and passion, while the oceanic blue works convey a sense of despondency.”
From top: Tizta Berhanu, Siblings, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 140 x 140 cm; Tizta Berhanu Reassurance, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 140 x 140 cm; Tizta Berhanu, Discontent, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 150 x 180 cm; Tizta Berhanu Stability, 2020 Oil on canvas, 140 x 140 cm. (Addis Fine Art)
According to the press release:
Trained as a figurative painter at the Alle School of Fine Art and Design in Addis Ababa, Tizta uses oil paintings to interrogate every facet of human emotions. From moments of melancholy to elation, the full litany of our emotional life is on display. The protagonists in Tizta’s canvases can be found seeking comfort in the bosom of a sympathetic listener or brooding, flanked by apparently concerned loved ones. The artist captures outpourings of vulnerability, love, excitement and sadness, and immortalises them in powerful images.
The scenes depicting affection, intimacy and closeness are hallmarks of Tizta’s work, which take on a particular poignancy in our new context of social distancing, increasing polarization and conflicts between communities. The paintings in this show evoke a certain nostalgia for the times when expressing our emotions physically and supporting each other with care was the norm – and remind us of the importance of such acts.
Former foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin was among three prominent TPLF officials who were killed after refusing to surrender, government says. Seyoum was Ethiopia’s foreign minister from 1991 until 2010. The two others killed were former Federal Affairs Minister Abay Tsehaye and ex-parliamentary chief whip Asmelash Woldeselassie. (Photo: Seyoum Mesfin was Ethiopia’s foreign minister for nearly two decades/Tiksa Negeri/Reuters)
Sebhat Nega (left), a founding member of the TPLF, was among those who were captured last week. AA reports: “Sebhat is considered a magnate within the TPLF and is known for having built a multibillion-dollar business empire in Ethiopia over the 27 years the group was in power. On Thursday, the army said nine other key TPLF officials had been captured, while four others were neutralized in the ongoing law enforcement operation.” (Photo via Twitter)
As VOA reports due to the politically and ethnically polarized nature of the Ethiopian media environment in the Diaspora coupled with the current information blackout, for those of us who live outside the country “the search for verified, accurate news on the conflict” is an ever growing challenge. As a result “Ethiopians from the country’s roughly 3 million diaspora [find] themselves looking to other, often unreliable sources of information found on social media.” VOA adds: “For the [Diaspora] population, the media void struck right at the moment they most wanted news of what was happening in their home country.” (Photo: Reuters)
“The UN on Saturday (December 12, 2020) apologized to Ethiopia for a widely reported incident where its staffers breached security checkpoints in the Tigray region,” reports Addis Getachew for Anadolu Agency. “The UN Resident Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Sozy apologized for the behavior of the UN staffers, the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency reported citing a statement by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Peace.” (AA)
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Saturday, November 28th that military operations in Tigray have been completed, shortly after he announced federal troops had seized full control of Mekelle. (AP Photo)
Refugees who fled the conflict in Tigray arrive on the banks of the Tekeze River on the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. (AP Photo)
Refugees from Ethiopia wait to register at the UNCHR center in Sudan on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020. Tens of thousands of people have fled a conflict in Ethiopia for Sudan, sometimes so quickly they had to leave family behind. There is not enough to feed them in the remote area of southern Sudan that they rushed to. (AP)
Refugees who fled the conflict in Ethiopia wait to get cooked rice served by Sudanese local volunteers in eastern Sudan, Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. (AP Photo)
People read newspapers and magazines reporting on the current military confrontation in the country on a street in Addis Ababa, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. (AP Photo)
Ethiopian Orthodox Christians light candles and pray for peace during a church service at the Medhane Alem Cathedral in the Bole Medhanealem area of Addis Ababa, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020 (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
For Ethiopia’s Diaspora, Seeking News Amid Communication Blackout is a Challenge
VOA News
By Salem Solomon
December 18, 2020
WASHINGTON – When violence erupted in Ethiopia’s Tigray region between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) last month, those living in the global diaspora scrambled for information.
The Ethiopian army went into Tigray on Nov. 4, after the government accused local forces of attacking a military base there. TPLF leaders called the federal government’s response a war against the people of Tigray.
The search for verified, accurate news on the conflict was hampered by authorities preventing many international media organizations from accessing the conflict zone and disruptions to phone and internet connections that resulted in an information blackout. And Ethiopians from the country’s roughly 3 million diaspora found themselves looking to other, often unreliable sources of information found on social media.
For the country’s migrant population, the media void struck right at the moment they most wanted news of what was happening in their home country.
Most rely on messaging apps including Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber which provide a “lifeline” connecting the diaspora to people at home, Tewodros Workneh, an assistant professor of global communication at Kent State University in Ohio, said.
“It’s incredibly difficult if you live in this country [in the diaspora] or in other parts of the world when there is a media blackout in the conflict region right now. It’s really frustrating for diaspora communities,” Tewodros added.
In the information vacuum, people look to other, often unreliable sources of information.
“When you cannot hear from your relatives and your friends and family members, what you rely on are third parties,” said Tewodros, who studies media development, including in Ethiopia. “And often times this vacuum is filled by different political interest groups on social media platforms who have no knowledge about what’s going on.”
Misinformation spread widely during the conflict. Images were shared on social media platforms of old airplane crashes alongside claims they had been downed Ethiopian fighter jets. An image showing a 2015 factory explosion in China was passed off as being from a missile strike by Tigrayan forces against neighboring Eritrea.
Ethiopia has a range of media outlets run from outside the country. But oftentimes these satellite television networks are politically or ethnically aligned, journalists and scholars said.
Befeqadu Hailu, executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy based in the capital, Addis Ababa, said that outlets abroad can play an important role but that bias sometimes influences the way they report on events.
“They have a positive contribution especially in times of repression by the government here [in Ethiopia]. They can be the voice of the silenced here,” Befeqadu said. But, he added, they can sometimes “aggravate” the conversation because of their allegiances, or through using sources or information that are less reliable.
“I think that the diaspora media is usually more divided than the media organizations that are here,” Befeqadu said. “The diaspora is more divided along ethnic lines, along ideological and political ideological lines, and they show their allegiance without fear.”
Reeyot Alemu, a journalist for the U.S.-based Ethiopian news website Ethio 360 Media, which reports primarily in Amharic, says some journalists do their due diligence and refrain from becoming swayed along ethnic or political lines.
“There are gaps created as a result of working from abroad but responsible journalists always verify information using all the means available,” Reeyot told VOA in Amharic. “But there is still a big gap when it comes to applying journalism principles not only caused by physical distance, but also taking sides.
The challenges of reporting from overseas have been exacerbated during the information blackout.
The government denied responsibility for the latest internet cuts. A tweet by the Ethiopia State of Emergency Fact Check, which says it provides the latest information on the state of emergency, shared a video on Twitter that it says shows unidentified individuals breaking into the northern region’s office of Ethio-Telecom, the country’s sole internet provider and then “intentionally” disconnecting the network.
Internet blocks during times of conflict or unrest in Ethiopia aren’t new. Data from NetBlocks, which tracks cybersecurity and internet governance, shows other regions in the country were cut off during protests or violence following major events such as the killing of prominent Oromo artist Hachalu Hundessa in June. In that case, internet service was cut off for 23 days, the nonprofit organization said.
The government said at the time that social media were being used to exacerbate protests, during which at least 86 people were killed.
Befeqadu, of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, said journalists find themselves in a precarious position whenever there is conflict. “Since the military confrontation between the federal government and the Tigray region started, about seven journalists are detained and now in jail,” he said. “So, it is always tough when the government is under scrutiny. To be a reporter or a media affiliate in Ethiopia comes always with a risk.”
Reeyot, who covers her home country from more than 11,000 kilometers away in the United States, said the struggles are felt from afar.
“It is not just working from abroad, but the lack of access and internet blackout makes it difficult to follow the current situation, even for someone inside the country. Closing all access is problematic,” Reeyot said.
Reeyot knows firsthand the risks for journalists in Ethiopia. She served just over four years of a 14-year sentence for terrorism because of her critical reporting for the independent weekly Feteh, before her release in 2015.
In addition to these challenges, journalists working in the diaspora endure regular threats and accusations of bias. Reeyot says the harassment and intimidation comes from all sides but can be strong from the government.
Ethiopia had shown signs of reversing its poor press freedom record when Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. The country was hailed for releasing journalists and political dissidents and the new prime minister last year spoke of the need to open up the media space, while cautioning against the spread of hate speech and fake news.
But during points of conflict or unrest, including the Tigray fighting, Ethiopia has reverted to blocking access to information, detaining critical journalists or pressuring media who report critically on the government or appear more favorable to opposition, media rights groups say.
On Dec. 12, the deputy director general of the Information Network Security Agency, Kefyalew Tefera, accused the U.S.-based Oromia Media Network and Ethio 360 Media of collaborating with the TPLF.
Reeyot, who was imprisoned when the TPLF was in power, said that the accusation appears to be “simply because the media is deemed not to have a favorable view of the government.”
Accusations of supporting or working for the TPLF have led to an increase in the number of journalists jailed in Ethiopia since the fighting. Figures released by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists showed seven journalists jailed in Ethiopia on Dec. 1—nearly all of whom were arrested in November for coverage of the TPLF.
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What’s Happening in Ethiopia Is a Tragedy By Tsedale Lemma
Tsedale Lemma is the editor in chief of the Addis Standard.
NYT
Nov. 11, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The announcement last week that the government was about to launch a military operation into one of the country’s regions came, to put it lightly, as a shock.
Not only was it very far from the emollient statecraft that won Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize last year, it also seemed to shatter the purpose of his premiership. When he rose to power in 2018, Mr. Abiy promised to guide Ethiopia into a new era of peace, prosperity and national reconciliation.
But on Nov. 4, he dispatched the Army to Tigray, one of the country’s 10 semiautonomous regions and home to roughly 6 percent of the population, accusing its leaders — with whom he has increasingly sparred — of attacking a government defense post and attempting to steal military equipment.
And in the days since, Mr. Abiy imposed a six-month state of emergency on the Tigray region, declared its legislature void and approved a provisional replacement. As fighting raged, the internet and telephone networks have been shut down. Hundreds are reported to be dead.
This is a tragedy. Ethiopia stands on the cusp of civil war, bringing devastation to both the country and the wider region. While the situation is volatile and uncertain, this much is clear: Mr. Abiy’s political project, to bring together the nation in a process of democratization, is over. And much of the blame must be laid at his door.
After years of persistent anti-government protests, economic troubles and widespread unrest, Mr. Abiy took over a country on the brink of collapse. At least one million people were internally displaced in 2017, according to the United Nations, as the country was shaken by protests from Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups, who together make up nearly two-thirds of the population. Presenting himself as a reformer, the avalanche of changes promised by Mr. Abiy, who took over in April 2018, seemed to avert the worst of the country’s problems.
But Mr. Abiy overreached. His first cardinal mistake was to sideline the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, for decades the most powerful political force in the country, in the peace he brokered between Ethiopia and Eritrea. By pushing the Tigrayan leadership aside as he sealed his signature achievement, Mr. Abiy made clear the limits to his talk of unity.
That was a taste of what was to come. Last year, Mr. Abiy moved to dismantle the old political order. Going beyond his original remit, he proposed reconfiguring the coalition that had ruled the country for 27 years — the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front, or E.P.R.D.F., which itself comprised a gamut of regional parties — into a new, single party.
The T.P.L.F., which founded and dominated the coalition, was not keen on the change — but Mr. Abiy went ahead with it regardless, creating a rift with the Tigrayans and undermining the country’s delicate political settlement. Far from minimizing the fallout, Mr. Abiy exacerbated it, removing all ministers from the T.P.L.F. from his cabinet.
By the time the new party was announced, in November 2019, the damage was done. The T.P.L.F., angered by the whittling away of its power and concerned that the country’s federal system was under threat, had not joined. They weren’t alone in their disquiet. In Mr. Abiy’s own region, Oromia, many were skeptical of the new order, while southern Ethiopia splintered into disorder, as multiple administrative zones demanded self-rule. After coming to power on the promise of unity, Mr. Abiy had alienated and frustrated key components of his coalition. Suddenly, he looked vulnerable.
The coronavirus changed the calculus. The all-important national election, scheduled for August, was postponed; the focus became how to mitigate the damage wrought by the pandemic. But the political problems didn’t go away.
Ethiopian Orthodox Christians light candles and pray for peace during a church service at the Medhane Alem Cathedral in the Bole Medhanealem area of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Updated: November 5th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia’s army said Thursday the country has been forced into an “unexpected and aimless war” with its well-armed Tigray region, while Tigray asserted that fighter jets had bombed areas around its capital — a marked escalation with little sign of the two sides willing to talk to calm the crisis.
Ethiopia’s army deputy chief said military forces are being sent to the fighting in Tigray from other parts of the country. “The army will not go anywhere,” Birhanu Jula told reporters, amid fears that the conflict would spill into other regions of Africa’s second-most populous nation. “The war will end there.”
For his part, the Tigray region’s president, Debretsion Gebremichael, told reporters that “we are in position to defend ourselves from enemies that waged war on the Tigray region. … We are ready to be martyrs.”
Ethiopia’s government has not commented on the bombing allegation, read out Thursday evening on the Tigray regional broadcaster.
The strong words came a day after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the nation the military will carry out further operations this week in response to an alleged deadly attack on a military base by the regional government.
Observers warn that a civil war in Ethiopia involving Tigray could destabilize the already turbulent Horn of Africa. The prime minister, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his sweeping political reforms, now faces his greatest challenge in holding together a country of some 110 million people with multiple ethnic and other grievances.
Communications remained cut off in the northern Tigray region after services disappeared at just around the time Abiy’s office first announced the attack and military action early Wednesday. The lack of contact has challenged efforts to verify the Ethiopian federal government’s account of events.
The Tigray capital, Mekele, appeared calm on Thursday morning but skirmishes took place elsewhere, a source told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media about it.
Ethiopia’s army deputy chief asserted that members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front are “fleeing and joining the army; those injured are receiving medical treatment.” The army was trying to avoid civilian casualties, he said.
The Tigray leader asserted that the Ethiopian army’s northern command is siding with the Tigray people, and he confirmed that fighting is also taking place in an area bordering the Amhara region, far from where the original clash was reported. “They are surrounding us with their forces,” he said.
Verifying either side’s claims remained a challenge.
“Certainly there is fighting, but I don’t think anyone can credibly assert who attacked who first,” former U.S. diplomat Payton Knopf, a senior advisor with the United States Institute of Peace, told the AP on Wednesday night. He wondered why the well-armed Tigray region’s forces would start by raiding a command post: “They’re not lacking for weaponry.”
Aid organizations and human rights groups are pleading for communications links to be restored and warning of a humanitarian disaster if hundreds of thousands of people flee fighting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ethiopian Orthodox Christians light candles and pray for peace during a church service at the Medhane Alem Cathedral in the Bole Medhanealem area of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. The head of Ethiopia’s new state of emergency committee, Redwan Hussein, has said the federal government’s conflict is with a “small clique of TPLF circles that are keen to destabilize Ethiopia,” and the government must do everything possible to “liberate the Tigrayan people.” (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene
Ethiopia has imposed a six-month state of emergency on the Tigray region, which played a dominant role in the country’s government and military before Abiy took office in 2018. Since then the region, feeling marginalized, has split from the ruling coalition and defied Abiy by holding a regional election in September that the federal government called illegal.
Tigray borders Eritrea, which fought a bloody border war with Ethiopia before the countries made peace in 2018, shortly after Abiy took power. The Tigray regional government has accused Eritrea of teaming up with Ethiopia’s federal government in this week’s offensive. Eritrea’s information minister did not respond to a request for comment.
TPLF officials have said airspace over the region is closed, and accused the federal government of deploying troops to “cow the people of Tigray into submission by force.”
The TPLF also invited other members of the security forces across Ethiopia to join it in “opposing the colonel Abiy’s regime.”
The head of Ethiopia’s new state of emergency committee, Redwan Hussein, has said the federal government’s conflict is with a “small clique of TPLF circles that are keen to destabilize Ethiopia,” and the government must do everything possible to “liberate the Tigrayan people.”
“Given the strength of Tigray’s security forces, the conflict could well be protracted,” the International Crisis Group said in a statement Thursday. “Tigray has a large paramilitary force and a well-drilled local militia, thought to number perhaps 250,000 troops combined.”
It appears unlikely that Ethiopian forces would quickly oust the TPLF leadership, the group said, and even then loyalists could mount “sustained resistance.” The statement called for “immediate, concerted mediation – local, regional and international.”
The TPLF over the weekend told the AP it’s not interested in negotiating with the federal government. It was not clear if that stance had changed in light of the new events.
It also was not clear who might step in to mediate.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement overnight seemed to support the federal government’s account of events, saying the U.S. was “deeply concerned by reports that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front carried out attacks on Ethiopian National Defense Force bases in Ethiopia’s Tigray region on November 3. We are saddened by the tragic loss of life and urge immediate action to restore the peace and de-escalate tensions.”
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War Looms in Ethiopia As PM Orders Military Against TPLF
The statement by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office, and the reported attack by the well-armed Tigray People’s Liberation Front, immediately raised concerns that one of Africa’s most populous and powerful countries could plunge back into war. That would send a shock wave through the Horn of Africa and beyond. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Updated: November 4th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia’s prime minister on Wednesday ordered the military to confront one of the country’s regional governments after he said it carried out a deadly attack on a military base overnight, citing months of “provocation and incitement” and declaring that “the last red line has been crossed.”
The statement by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office, and the reported attack by the well-armed Tigray People’s Liberation Front, immediately raised concerns that one of Africa’s most populous and powerful countries could plunge back into war. That would send a shock wave through the Horn of Africa and beyond.
Addressing the nation on TV, Abiy announced “several martyrs” in the attack in Mekele, the northern Tigray region’s capital, and Dansha town. The prime minister said “the end is near” for the regional force, which is based in Ethiopia’s most sensitive region, neighboring Eritrea. The two countries made peace in 2018 after a long border war.
The TPLF had been the dominant part of Ethiopia’s governing coalition before Abiy took office in 2018 and announced sweeping political reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Those reforms, however, have opened space for old ethnic and other grievances. The TPLF, feeling marginalized, left the coalition last year. It remains a strong military force, observers say.
There was no immediate word from the TPLF, and all internet and phone lines were cut in the Tigray region following the announcement. Tigray TV reported that airspace has been closed over the region.
Ethiopia was already stressed by a dispute with Egypt over a massive Ethiopian dam project that has drawn rare attention by President Donald Trump to Africa, and by a multi-layer crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic, deadly ethnic violence and a locust outbreak.
Now the greatest test of Abiy’s rule has has come.
Tigray officials have objected to the postponement of Ethiopia’s national election, once set for August, because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the extension of Abiy’s time in office.
On Sunday, a senior TPLF official, Getachew Reda, told The Associated Press his side will not accept a negotiation with the federal government.
“What we need now is a national dialogue, not a negotiation,” he said. The TPLF says the release of detained former officials is one precondition to opening talks.
In September, people in Tigray voted in a local election, defying the federal government and increasing political tensions. Last month the federal government moved to send funding for the region to local administrations instead of the regional government, angering TPLF officials.
“This war is the worst possible outcome of the tensions that have been brewing,” William Davison, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Ethiopia, said Wednesday, urging a ceasefire. “Given Tigray’s relatively strong security position, the conflict may well be protracted and disastrous.”
Abiy’s statement asserted that the TPLF attacked a military base in Tigray early Wednesday and attempted to take artillery and other equipment. The statement accused the TPLF of arming and organizing irregular militias.
After months of “extreme patience” by the federal government, “a war however cannot be prevented only on the goodwill and decision of one side,” the prime minister’s statement said. “The last red line has been crossed with this morning’s attacks and the federal government is therefore forced into a military confrontation” to save the country.
Observers have worried for months about the growing tensions and their implications for the long-turbulent Horn of Africa region, where Abiy cast himself as a peacemaker shortly after taking office.
A report by the United States Institute of Peace said the fragmentation of Ethiopia “would be the largest state collapse in modern history, likely leading to mass interethnic and interreligious conflict … and a humanitarian and security crisis at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East on a scale that would overshadow the existing conflicts in South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.”
The international community needs to rally around the idea of national dialogue in Ethiopia, the International Crisis Group warned a week ago.
“The alternative, given the country’s multiple and bitter divides, is a potential march to war that would be catastrophic for Africa’s second most populous country and would send shock waves, and refugees, into other Horn of Africa countries as well as across the Mediterranean,” the group wrote.
The man behind Ethiopia’s first online restaurant delivery service changing how people dine
Feleg Tsegaye was born to exiled Ethiopian parents in the United States. When he was 24 years old, he moved to Ethiopia to start the country’s first-ever online restaurant delivery service. Prior to leaving the U.S, he worked at the US Federal Reserve Bank.
In 2015, he launched Deliver Addis, an online restaurant delivery service in Ethiopia which allows customers to place orders from their favorite restaurants and also discover new ones. For Tsegaye, it was his own way of not only creating jobs in his country of origin but to change the way Ethiopians dine.
“What really prompted me to pursue this was the fact that we were creating a completely new industry that did not exist in Ethiopia,” Tsegaye told How We Made It In Africa. “It’s about getting customers what they want in the convenience of their homes and offices. It’s also about generating business for small and medium enterprises – like restaurants that cannot afford space or a good location – and creating jobs for young people as back-office staff or drivers.”
Across Africa, businesses being operated solely online are fast gaining popularity on the continent. This has been largely due to the spread of internet connectivity across the continent. While in some countries internet usage is low, it is high in other states.
Playing a pioneering role in Ethiopia’s e-commerce sector didn’t come easy for Tsegaye. At the time, internet penetration was low and was largely a platform not known to many in the country. Nonetheless, he persisted and now controls a big share of the market.
He was also confronted with other challenges such as the absence of addresses, power outages and inadequate internet connection.
“Our first internet shutdown was when I was on a flight to the US,” he recalled. In 2016, Ethiopia declared a state of emergency due to political instability, resulting in the shutdown of internet connectivity in the country.
“As an e-commerce business, that’s pretty much the worst possible thing that can happen – and I wasn’t even there when it happened,” he said. Although the business was unprepared for the internet shutdown, Tsegaye took advantage of the situation to do some intensive servicing and maintenance of his delivery bikes.
While at it, he took steps to keep the business afloat by designing offline processes for ordering – by phone, or SMS, when available. This saw order volumes go up. In June 2020, he secured funding from the Impact Angel Network to increase its capacity and efficiency to bring on new products and services and expand market share.
Following growing demand due to COVID-19, he expanded his services to include an online marketplace that enables Ethiopian consumers to shop for groceries and other essential goods online.
The number of coronavirus cases in Ethiopia has reached 128,616 as of January 11th , 2021. Meanwhile, the country is launching a six-month campaign focusing on prevention of COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Ministry of Health the campaign which kicks off this week "aims to prevent transmission in educational institutions, service institutions, bus stations, market places, religious institutions and public spaces." (Photo: UNICEF Ethiopia)
COVID-19: Ethiopia Launches Prevention Campaign as Cases Reach 128,616
Survey identifies troubling effect of pandemic on where women give birth in Ethiopia
In urban areas, delivery rates in lower-level health facilities increased and hospital deliveries decreased after social distancing restrictions were put in place
By Johns Hopkins Magazine
A new study from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and researchers at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia has found that as of June, the proportion of women in urban areas—where COVID-19 rates were highest—who delivered in lower-level health facilities significantly increased while deliveries in hospitals declined. A pregnant woman’s place of delivery is a key maternal health service component that has a direct impact on pregnancy and newborn outcomes, and researchers have been monitoring how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting women’s delivery patterns. The analysis was conducted using data from the Performance Monitoring for Action Ethiopia survey, led by Linnea Zimmerman, assistant professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Bloomberg School, and Solomon Shiferaw and Assefa Seme at Addis Ababa University. The project is managed by Johns Hopkins global health affiliate Jhpiego and the Gates Institute. Results from the analysis also showed that at the national level, there was no difference in the proportion of women who delivered in a hospital and home delivery rates remained unchanged. Looking within urban areas, women who delivered during May and June, after COVID-19 restrictions started, were significantly less likely to deliver in a hospital relative to women who delivered prior to the pandemic.
In Ethiopia, as of January 11th, 2021, there have been 128,616 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Read more »
Assessing Ethiopian women’s vulnerability to the COVID-19 pandemic
By World Bank
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has devastating health and economic impacts globally and has disproportionately affected vulnerable groups. As highlighted in a blog published at the onset of the pandemic, the coronavirus is not gender-blind and pre-existing gender gaps may intensify during and after the pandemic due to worsening human capital, economic, and women’s agency outcomes.
What can high-frequency phone survey data tell us about the gendered effects of the pandemic in Ethiopia?
How Ethiopia prepared its health workforce for the COVID-19 response
Photo via the World Health Organization
By The World Health Organization
In a busy intensive care unit in Eka Kotebe General Hospital, Addis Ababa, Dr Samuel Getnet, 28, a newly-recruited young and energetic physician anxiously monitors the mechanical ventilators, an indispensable form of life support for COVID-19 patients with respiratory distress.
“I never thought my professional journey would bring me to the place where I’m today—at the center of COVID-19 pandemic management team—treating and caring for the most severely ill patients who critically need my support and care. Despite the challenges and risks, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve my people at this critical time,” he said.
Dr Getnet is a general practitioner who came on board as part of the surge capacity planning for human resources announced by the Ethiopian Ministry of Health in February 2020. Before starting his duty in the intensive care unit, he received in-person training from the World Health Organization (WHO), with practical sessions taking place in the hospital. The topics he covered include case management, use of personal protective equipment (PPE), infection prevention and control (IPC), and the application and use of mechanical ventilation. He also benefited from online WHO resources such as Open WHO.org.
‘Relieved’: US health workers start getting COVID-19 vaccine
Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, is inoculated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by Dr. Michelle Chester, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in the Queens borough of New York. (AP Photo)
By The Associated Press
The biggest vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off Monday as health workers rolled up their sleeves for shots to protect them from COVID-19 and start beating back the pandemic — a day of optimism even as the nation’s death toll closed in on 300,000.
“I feel hopeful today. Relieved,” critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay said after getting a shot in the arm at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York.
With a countdown of “3-2-1,” workers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center gave the first injections to applause.
And in New Orleans, Steven Lee, an intensive care unit pharmacist at Ochsner Medical Center, summed up the moment as he got his own vaccination: “We can finally prevent the disease as opposed to treating it.”
Other hospitals around the country, from Rhode Island to Texas, unloaded precious frozen vials of vaccine made by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech, with staggered deliveries set throughout the day and Tuesday. A few other countries have authorized the vaccine, including Britain, which started vaccinating people last week, and Canada, which began doing so on Monday.
For health care workers, who along with nursing home residents will be first in line for vaccination, hope is tempered by grief and the sheer exhaustion of months spent battling a coronavirus that still is surging in the U.S. and around the world.
IN PICTURES: On the Frontline Against Covid-19 in Ethiopia – A Photo Essay
Frontline workers at the Eka Kotebe hospital. (Photo by Yonas Tadesse)
By Yonas Tadesse
The first case of Covid-19 in Ethiopia was reported on 13 March, when a team of first responders took in a 48-year-old Japanese man. Having never seen anything like his condition, they did not know what to prepare for, and thus started their new normal of battling the coronavirus in Ethiopia.
Doctors, nurses, janitors, security guards and drivers donned hats they had never dreamed of wearing as they worked to develop systems and techniques to minimise the damage from the virus – often at the cost of their health, their home lives, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
FACTBOX- Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 67.72 million, death toll at 1,548,575
By Reuters
More than 67.72 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 1,548,575 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.
Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 1 million, a Reuters tally showed on Thursday, as the disease began to spread rapidly through a continent whose relative isolation has so far spared it the worst of the pandemic. The continent recorded 1,003,056 cases, of which 21,983 have died and 676,395 recovered. South Africa – which is the world’s fifth worst-hit nation and makes up more than half of sub-Saharan Africa’s case load – has recorded 538,184 cases since its first case on March 5, the health ministry said on Thursday. Low levels of testing in several countries, apart from South Africa, mean Africa’s infection rates are likely to be higher than reported, experts say. Read more »
COVID19 Contact Tracing is a race. But few U.S. states say how fast they’re running
Someone — let’s call her Person A — catches the coronavirus. It’s a Monday. She goes about life, unaware her body is incubating a killer. By perhaps Thursday, she’s contagious. Only that weekend does she come down with a fever and get tested. What happens next is critical. Public health workers have a small window of time to track down everyone Person A had close contact with over the past few days. Because by the coming Monday or Tuesday, some of those people — though they don’t yet have symptoms — could also be spreading the virus. Welcome to the sprint known as contact tracing, the process of reaching potentially exposed people as fast as possible and persuading them to quarantine. The race is key to controlling the pandemic ahead of a vaccine, experts say. But most places across the United States aren’t making public how fast or well they’re running it, leaving Americans in the dark about how their governments are mitigating the risk. An exception is the District of Columbia, which recently added metrics on contact tracing to its online dashboard. A few weeks ago, the District was still too overwhelmed to try to ask all of those who tested positive about their contacts. Now, after building a staff of several hundred contact tracers, D.C. officials say they’re making that attempt within 24 hours of a positive test report in about 98 percent of cases. For months, every U.S. state has posted daily numbers on coronavirus testing — along with charts of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. So far, only one state, Oregon, posts similar data about contact tracing. Officials in New York say they plan to begin publishing such metrics in the coming weeks.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States surpassed 2.5 million on Sunday morning as a devastating new wave of infections continued to bear down throughout the country’s South and West. Florida, Texas and Arizona are fast emerging as the country’s latest epicenters after reporting record numbers of new infections for weeks in a row. Positivity rates and hospitalizations have also spiked. Global cases of covid-19 exceeded 10 million, according to a count maintained by Johns Hopkins University, a measure of the power and spread of a pandemic that has caused vast human suffering, devastated the world’s economy and still threatens vulnerable populations in rich and poor nations alike.
Read more »
WHO warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’ as coronavirus accelerates; Americas now hardest hit
By The Washington Post
The World Health Organization warned Friday that “the world is in a new and dangerous phase” as the global pandemic accelerates. The world recorded about 150,000 new cases on Thursday, the largest rise yet in a single day, according to the WHO. Nearly half of these infections were in the Americas, as new cases continue to surge in the United States, Brazil and across Latin America. More than 8.5 million coronavirus cases and at least 454,000 deaths have been reported worldwide. As confirmed cases and hospitalizations climb in the U.S., new mask requirements are prompting faceoffs between officials who seek to require face coverings and those, particularly conservatives, who oppose such measures. Several studies this month support wearing masks to curb coronavirus transmission, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend their use as a protective measure. Read more »
World Bank Provides Additional Support to Help Ethiopia Mitigate Economic Impacts of COVID-19
JUNE 18, 2020
The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved $250 million ($125 million grant and $125 million credit) in supplemental financing for the ongoing Second Ethiopia Growth and Competitiveness Programmatic Development Policy Financing. This funding is geared towards helping Ethiopia to revitalize the economy by broadening the role of the private sector and attaining a more sustainable development path.
“The COVID 19 pandemic is expected to severely impact Ethiopia’s economy. The austerity of the required containment measures, along with disruptions to air travel and the collapse in international demand for goods exported by Ethiopia are already taking a toll on the economy,” said Carolyn Turk, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea. “Additionally, an estimated 1.8 million jobs are at risk, and the incomes and livelihoods of several million informal workers, self-employed individuals and farmers are expected to be affected.”
The supplemental financing will help to mitigate the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on the Government’s reform agenda. Specifically, the program is intended to help address some of the unanticipated financing needs the Government of Ethiopia is facing due to the COVID-19 crisis. Additional financing needs are estimated to be approximately $1.5 billion, as revenue collection is expected to weaken, and additional expenditure is needed to mitigate the public health and economic impacts of the crisis.
Once the coronavirus epicenter in the U.S., New York City begins to reopen
After three months of a coronavirus crisis followed by protests and unrest, New York City is trying to turn a page when a limited range of industries reopen Monday, June 8, 2020. (AP Photo)
100 days after the first coronavirus case was confirmed there, the city that was once the epicenter of America’s coronavirus pandemic began to reopen. The number of cases in New York has plunged, but health officials fear that a week of protests on the streets could bring a new wave.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) estimated that between 200,000 to 400,000 workers returned to work throughout the city’s five boroughs.
“All New Yorkers should be proud you got us to this day,” de Blasio said at a news conference at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a manufacturing hub.
US Deaths From Coronavirus Surpass 100,000 Milestone
By The Associated Press
The U.S. surpassed a jarring milestone Wednesday in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 deaths. That number is the best estimate and most assuredly an undercount. But it represents the stark reality that more Americans have died from the virus than from the Vietnam and Korea wars combined. “It’s a striking reminder of how dangerous this virus can be,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington. The true death toll from the virus, which emerged in China late last year and was first reported in the U.S. in January, is widely believed to be significantly higher, with experts saying many victims died of COVID-19 without ever being tested for it. Read more »
Ethiopia Coronavirus Cases Reach 5,846
By Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health
Report #111 የኢትዮጵያ የኮሮና ቫይረስ ሁኔታ መግለጫ. Status update on #COVID19Ethiopia. Total confirmed cases [as of June 29th, 2020]: 5,846 Read more »
New York Times Memorializes Coronavirus Victims as U.S. Death Toll Nears 100,000
America is fast approaching a grim milestone in the coronavirus outbreak — each figure here represents one of the nearly 100,000 lives lost so far. Read more »
Spotlight: Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System Tebita Adds Services Addressing COVID19
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Twelve year ago when Kibret Abebe quit his job as a nurse anesthetist at Black Lion Hospital and sold his house to launch Tebita Ambulance — Ethiopia’s First Private Ambulance System — his friends and family were understandably concerned about his decisions. But today Tebita operates over 20 advanced life support ambulances with approval from the Ministry of Health and stands as the country’s premier Emergency Medical Service (EMS). Tebita has since partnered with East Africa Emergency Services, an Ethiopian and American joint venture that Kibret also owns, with the aim “to establish the first trauma center and air ambulance system in Ethiopia.” This past month Tebita announced their launch of new services in Addis Abeba to address the COVID-19 pandemic and are encouraging Ethiopians residing in the U.S. to utilize Tebita for regular home check-ins on elderly family members as well as vulnerable individuals with pre-existing conditions. The following is an audio of the interview with Kibret Abebe and Laura Davis of Tebita Ambulance and East Africa Emergency Services: Read more »
WHO reports most coronavirus cases in a day as cases approach five million
By Reuters
GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization expressed concern on Wednesday about the rising number of new coronavirus cases in poor countries, even as many rich nations have begun emerging from lockdown. The global health body said 106,000 new cases of infections of the novel coronavirus had been recorded in the past 24 hours, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference. “We are very concerned about rising cases in low and middle income countries.” Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, said: “We will soon reach the tragic milestone of 5 million cases.” Read more »
WHO head says vaccines, medicines must be fairly shared to beat COVID-19
By Reuters
Scientists and researchers are working at “breakneck” speed to find solutions for COVID-19 but the pandemic can only be beaten with equitable distribution of medicines and vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday. “Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.
Doctors face new urgency to solve children and coronavirus puzzle
By Axios
Solving the mystery of how the coronavirus impacts children has gained sudden steam, as doctors try to determine if there’s a link between COVID-19 and kids with a severe inflammatory illness, and researchers try to pin down their contagiousness before schools reopen. New York hospitals have reported 73 suspected cases with two possible deaths from the inflammatory illness as of Friday evening. Read more »
COVID-19 and Its Impact on African Economies: Q&A with Prof. Lemma Senbet
Prof. Lemma Senbet. (Photo: @AERCAFRICA/Twitter)
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Last week Professor Lemma Senbet, an Ethiopian-American financial economist and the William E. Mayer Chair Professor at University of Maryland, moderated a timely webinar titled ‘COVID-19 and African Economies: Global Implications and Actions.’ The well-attended online conference — hosted by the Center for Financial Policy at University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business on Friday, April 24th — featured guest speakers from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as the World Bank who addressed “the global implications of the COVID-19 economic impact on developing and low-income countries, with Africa as an anchor.” In the following Q&A with Tadias Prof. Lemma, who is also the immediate former Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium based in Nairobi, Kenya, explains the worldwide economic fallout of the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the African continent, including Ethiopia. Read more »
US unemployment surges to a Depression-era level of 14.7%
By The Associated Press
The coronavirus crisis has sent U.S. unemployment surging to 14.7%, a level last seen when the country was in the throes of the Depression and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assuring Americans that the only thing to fear was fear itself…The breathtaking collapse is certain to intensify the push-pull across the U.S. over how and when to ease stay-at-home restrictions. And it robs President Donald Trump of the ability to point to a strong economy as he runs for reelection. “The jobs report from hell is here,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, “one never seen before and unlikely to be seen again barring another pandemic or meteor hitting the Earth.” Read more »
Hospitalizations continue to decline in New York, Cuomo says
By CBS News
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the number of people newly diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID-19 has continued to decrease. “Overall the numbers are coming down,” he said. But he said 335 people died from the virus yesterday. “That’s 335 families,” Cuomo said. “You see this number is basically reducing, but not at a tremendous rate. The only thing that’s tremendous is the number of New Yorkers who’ve still passed away.” Read more »
Los Angeles offers free testing to all county residents
By The Washington Post
All residents of Los Angeles County can access free coronavirus testing at city-run sites, Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said on Wednesday. Previously, the city had only offered testing to residents with symptoms as well as essential workers and people who lived or worked in nursing homes and other kinds of institutional facilities. In an announcement on Twitter, Garcetti said that priority would still be given to front-line workers and anyone experiencing symptoms, including cough, fever or shortness of breath. But the move, which makes Los Angeles the first major city in the country to offer such widespread testing, allows individuals without symptoms to be tested. Health experts have repeatedly said that mass testing is necessary to determine how many people have contracted the virus — and in particular, those who may not have experienced symptoms — and then begin to reopen the economy. Testing is by appointment only and can be arranged at one of the city’s 35 sites. Read more »
Researchers Double U.S. COVID-19 Death Forecast
By Reuters
A newly revised coronavirus mortality model predicts nearly 135,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by early August, almost double previous projections, as social-distancing measures for quelling the pandemic are increasingly relaxed, researchers said on Monday. The ominous new forecast from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) reflect “rising mobility in most U.S. states” with an easing of business closures and stay-at-home orders expected in 31 states by May 11, the institute said. Read more »
Global coronavirus death toll surpasses 200,000, as world leaders commit to finding vaccine
By NBC News
The global coronavirus death toll surpassed 200,000 on Saturday, according to John Hopkins University data. The grim total was reached a day after presidents and prime ministers agreed to work together to develop new vaccines, tests and treatments at a virtual meeting with both the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We will only halt COVID-19 through solidarity,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Countries, health partners, manufacturers, and the private sector must act together and ensure that the fruits of science and research can benefit everybody. As the U.S. coronavirus death tollpassed 51,000 people, according to an NBC News tally, President Donald Trump took no questions at his White House briefing on Friday, after widespread mockery for floating the idea that light, heat and disinfectants could be used to treat coronavirus patients.”
German Health Minister Jens Spahn has announced the first clinical trials of a coronavirus vaccine. The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), the regulatory authority which helps develop and authorizes vaccines in Germany, has given the go-ahead for the first clinical trial of BNT162b1, a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was developed by cancer researcher and immunologist Ugur Sahin and his team at pharmaceutical company BioNTech, and is based on their prior research into cancer immunology. Sahin previously taught at the University of Mainz before becoming the CEO of BioNTech. In a joint conference call on Wednesday with researchers from the Paul Ehrlich Institute, Sahin said BNT162b1 constitutes a so-called RNA vaccine. He explained that innocuous genetic information of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is transferred into human cells with the help of lipid nanoparticles, a non-viral gene delivery system. The cells then transform this genetic information into a protein, which should stimulate the body’s immune reaction to the novel coronavrius.
Webinar on COVID-19 and Mental Health: Interview with Dr. Seble Frehywot
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
Dr. Seble Frehywot, an Associate Professor of Global Health & Health Policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and her colleague Dr. Yianna Vovides from Georgetown University will host an online forum next week on April 30th focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on mental health. Dr. Seble — who is also the Director of Global Health Equity On-Line Learning at George Washington University – told Tadias that the virtual conference titled “People’s Webinar: Addressing COVID-19 By Addressing Mental Health” is open to the public and available for viewing worldwide. Read more »
Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes
By The Washington Post
Doctors sound alarm about patients in their 30s and 40s left debilitated or dead. Some didn’t even know they were infected. Read more »
CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating
By The Washington Post
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season. “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean…We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said. Having two simultaneous respiratory outbreaks would put unimaginable strain on the health-care system, he said. The first wave of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has already killed more than 42,000 people across the country. It has overwhelmed hospitals and revealed gaping shortages in test kits, ventilators and protective equipment for health-care workers.
Americans at World Health Organization transmitted real-time information about coronavirus to Trump administration
By The Washington Post
More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials. A number of CDC staff members are regularly detailed to work at the WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s assertion that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States. Read more »
In Ethiopia, Dire Dawa Emerges as Newest Coronavirus Hot Spot
By Africa News
The case count as of April 20 had reached 111 according to health minister Lia Tadesse’s update for today. Ethiopia crossed the 100 mark over the weekend. All three cases recorded over the last 24-hours were recorded in the chartered city of Dire Dawa with patients between the ages of 11 – 18. Two of them had travel history from Djibouti. Till date, Ethiopia has 90 patients in treatment centers. The death toll is still at three with 16 recoveries. A patient is in intensive care. Read more »
COVID-19: Interview with Dr. Tsion Firew, an Ethiopian Doctor on the Frontline in NYC
Dr. Tsion Firew is Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University. She is also Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. (Courtesy photo)
By Liben Eabisa
In New York City, which has now become the global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, working as a medical professional means literally going to a “war zone,” says physician Tsion Firew, a Doctor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Professor at Columbia University, who has just recovered from COVID-19 and returned to work a few days ago. Indeed the statistics coming out of New York are simply shocking with the state recording a sharp increase in death toll this months surpassing 10,000 and growing. According to The New York Times: “The numbers brought into clearer focus the staggering toll the virus has already taken on the largest city in the United States, where deserted streets are haunted by the near-constant howl of ambulance sirens. Far more people have died in New York City, on a per-capita basis, than in Italy — the hardest-hit country in Europe.” At the heart of the solution both in the U.S. and around the world is more testing and adhering to social distancing rules until such time as a proper treatment and vaccine is discovered, says Dr. Tsion, who is also a Special Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. Dr. Tsion adds that at this moment “we all as humanity have one enemy: the virus. And what’s going to win the fight is solidarity.” Listen to the interview »
Ethiopia Opens Aid Transport Hub to Fight Covid-19
By AFP
Ethiopia and the United Nations on Tuesday opened a humanitarian transport hub at Addis Ababa airport to move supplies and aid workers across Africa to fight coronavirus. The arrangement, which relies on cargo services provided by Ethiopian Airlines, could also partially offset heavy losses Africa’s largest carrier is sustaining because of the pandemic. An initial shipment of 3 000 cubic metres of supplies – most of it personal protective equipment for health workers – will be distributed within the next week, said Steven Were Omamo, Ethiopia country director for the World Food Programme (WFP). “This is a really important platform in the response to Covid-19, because what it does is it allows us to move with speed and efficiency to respond to the needs as they are unfolding,” Omamo said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Addis gateway is one of eight global humanitarian hubs set up to facilitate movement of aid to fight Covid-19, according to WFP.
Covid-19: Ethiopia to buy life insurance for health workers
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
The Ethiopian government is due to buy life insurance for health professionals in direct contact with Covid-19 patients. Health minister Lia Tadesse said on Tuesday that the government last week reached an agreement with the Ethiopian Insurance Corporation but did not disclose the value of the cover. The two sides are expected to sign an agreement this week to effect the insurance grant. According to the ministry, the life insurance grant is aimed at encouraging health experts who are the most vulnerable to the deadly coronavirus. Members of the Rapid Response Team will also benefit.
U.N. says Saudi deportations of Ethiopian migrants risks spreading coronavirus
By Reuters
The United Nations said on Monday that deportations of illegal migrant workers by Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia risked spreading the coronavirus and it urged Riyadh to suspend the practice for the time being.
Ethiopia’s capital launches door-to-door Covid-19 screening
Getty Images
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa is due to begin a door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening across the city, Addis Ababa city administration has announced. City deputy Mayor, Takele Uma, on Saturday told local journalists that the mass screening and testing programme will be started Monday (April 13) first in districts which are identified as potentially most vulnerable to the spread of the highly infectious coronavirus. The aggressive city-wide screening measure intends to identify Covid-19 infected patients and thereby to arrest a potential virus spread within communities. He said, the mass screening will eventually be carried out in all 117 districts, locally known as woredas, of the city, which is home to an estimated 7 million inhabitants. According to the Mayor, the door-to-door mass Covid-19 screening will be conducted by more than 1,200 retired health professionals, who responded to government’s call on the retired to join the national fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus has hit 100,000, according to the running tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. The sad milestone comes as Christians around the globe mark a Good Friday unlike any other — in front of computer screens instead of in church pews. Meanwhile, some countries are tiptoeing toward reopening segments of their battered economies. Public health officials are warning people against violating the social distancing rules over Easter and allowing the virus to flare up again. Authorities are using roadblocks and other means to discourage travel.
Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team: Interview with Mike Endale
By Liben Eabisa | TADIAS
A network of technology professionals from the Ethiopian Diaspora — known as the Ethiopia COVID-19 Response Team – has been assisting the Ethiopian Ministry of Health since the nation’s first Coronavirus case was confirmed on March 13th. The COVID-19 Response Team has since grown into an army of more than a thousand volunteers. Mike Endale, a software developer based in Washington, D.C., is the main person behind the launch of this project. Read more »
Ethiopia eyes replicating China’s successes in applying traditional medicine to contain COVID-19
By CGTN Africa
The Ethiopian government on Thursday expressed its keen interest to replicate China’s positive experience in terms of effectively applying traditional Chinese medicine to successfully contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the East African country.
This came after high-level officials from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology (MoIT) as well as the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH) held a video conference with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners and researchers on ways of applying the TCM therapy towards controlling the spread of coronavirus pandemic in the country, the MoIT disclosed in a statement issued on Thursday.
“China, in particular, has agreed to provide to Ethiopia the two types of Chinese traditional medicines that the country applied to successfully treat the first two stages of the novel coronavirus,” a statement from the Ethiopian Ministry of Innovation and Technology read.
WHO Director Slams ‘Racist’ Comments About COVID-19 Vaccine Testing
The Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has angrily condemned recent comments made by scientists suggesting that a vaccine for COVID-19 should be tested in Africa as “racist” and a hangover from the “colonial mentality”. (Photo: WHO)
By BBC
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has condemned as “racist” the comments by two French doctors who suggested a vaccine for the coronavirus could be tested in Africa.
“Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine,” said Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The doctors’ remarks during a TV debate sparked outrage, and they were accused of treating Africans like “human guinea pigs”.
One of them later issued an apology.
When asked about the doctors’ suggestion during the WHO’s coronavirus briefing, Dr Tedros became visibly angry, calling it a hangover from the “colonial mentality”.
“It was a disgrace, appalling, to hear during the 21st Century, to hear from scientists, that kind of remark. We condemn this in the strongest terms possible, and we assure you that this will not happen,” he said.
Ethiopia declares state of emergency to curb spread of COVID-19
By Reuters
Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, on Wednesday declared a state of emergency in the country to help curb the spread of the new coronavirus, his office said on Twitter. “Considering the gravity of the #COVID19, the government of Ethiopia has enacted a State of Emergency,” Abiy’s office said.
Ethiopia virus cases hit 52, 9-month-old baby infected
By TESFA-ALEM TEKLE | AFP
Ethiopia on Tuesday reported eight new Covid-19 cases, the highest number recorded so far in one day since the country confirmed its first virus case on March 12. Among the new patients that tested positive for the virus were a 9-month-old infant and his mother who had travelled to Dubai recently. “During the past 24 hours, we have done laboratory tests for a total of 264 people and eight out of them have been diagnosed with coronavirus, raising the total confirmed number of Covid-19 patients in Ethiopia to 52,” said Health Minister Dr Lia Tadese. According to the Minister, seven of the newly confirmed patients had travel histories to various countries. They have been under forced-quarantine in different designated hotels in the capital, Addis Ababa. “Five of the new patients including the 9-month-old baby and the mother came from Dubai while the two others came from Thailand and the United Kingdom,” she said
The coronavirus is infecting and killing black Americans at an alarmingly high rate
By The Washington Post
As the novel coronavirus sweeps across the United States, it appears to be infecting and killing black Americans at a disproportionately high rate, according to a Washington Post analysis of early data from jurisdictions across the country. The emerging stark racial disparity led the surgeon general Tuesday to acknowledge in personal terms the increased risk for African Americans amid growing demands that public-health officials release more data on the race of those who are sick, hospitalized and dying of a contagion that has killed more than 12,000 people in the United States. A Post analysis of what data is available and census demographics shows that counties that are majority-black have three times the rate of infections and almost six times the rate of deaths as counties where white residents are in the majority.
In China, Wuhan’s lockdown officially ends after 11 weeks
After 11 weeks — or 76 days — Wuhan’s lockdown is officially over. On Wednesday, Chinese authorities allowed residents to travel in and out of the besieged city where the coronavirus outbreak was first reported in December. Many remnants of the months-long lockdown, however, remain. Wuhan’s 11 million residents will be able to leave only after receiving official authorization that they are healthy and haven’t recently been in contact with a coronavirus patient. To do so, the Chinese government is making use of its mandatory smartphone application that, along with other government surveillance, tracks the movement and health status of every person.
U.S. hospitals facing ‘severe shortages’ of equipment and staff, watchdog says
By The Washington Post
As the official U.S. death toll approached 10,000, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams warned that this will be “the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives.”
Ethio-American Tech Company PhantomALERT Offers Free App to Track & Map COVID-19 Outbreak
By Tadias Staff
PhantomALERT, a Washington D.C.-based technology company announced, that it’s offering a free application service to track, report and map COVID-19 outbreak hotspots in real time. In a recent letter to the DC government as well as the Ethiopian Embassy in the U.S. the Ethiopian-American owned business, which was launched in 2007, explained that over the past few days, they have redesigned their application to be “a dedicated coronavirus mapping, reporting and tracking application.” The letter to the Ethiopian Embassy, shared with Tadias, noted that PhantomALERT’s technology “will enable the Ethiopian government (and all other countries across the world) to locate symptomatic patients, provide medical assistance and alert communities of hotspots for the purpose of slowing down the spread of the Coronavirus.”
By Dr. Lia Tadesse (Minister, Ministry of Health, Ethiopia)
It is with great sadness that I announce the second death of a patient from #COVID19 in Ethiopia. The patient was admitted on April 2nd and was under strict medical follow up in the Intensive Care Unit. My sincere condolences to the family and loved ones.
The Next Coronavirus Test Will Tell You If You Are Now Immune. And It’s Fast.
People line up in their cars at the COVID-19 testing area at Roseland Community Hospital on April 3, 2020, in Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
By Chicago Tribune
A new, different type of coronavirus test is coming that will help significantly in the fight to quell the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors and scientists say. The first so-called serology test, which detects antibodies to the virus rather than the virus itself, was given emergency approval Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And several more are nearly ready, said Dr. Elizabeth McNally, director of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Center for Genetic Medicine.
‘Your Safety is Our Priority’: How Ethiopian Airlines is Navigating the Global Virus Crisis
By Tadias Staff
Lately Ethiopian Airlines has been busy delivering much-needed medical supplies across Africa and emerging at the forefront of the continent’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic even as it has suspended most of its international passenger flights.
Ethiopia races to bolster ventilator stockpile for coronavirus fight
By AFP
Ethiopia’s government — like others in Africa — is confronting a stark ventilator shortage that could hobble its COVID-19 response. In a country of more than 100 million people, just 54 ventilators — out of around 450 total — had been set aside for COVID-19 patients as of this week, said Yakob Seman, director general of medical services at the health ministry.
New York City mayor calls for national enlistment of health-care workers
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. (AP photo)
By The Washington Post
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday called for a national enlistment of health-care workers organized by the U.S. military.
Speaking on CNN’s New Day, he lamented that there has been no effort to mobilize doctors and nurses across the country and bring them to “the front” — first New York City and then other areas that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
“If there’s not action by the president and the military literally in a matter of days to put in motion this vast mobilization,” de Blasio said, “then you’re going to see first hundreds and later thousands of Americans die who did not need to die.”
He said he expects his city to be stretched for medical personnel starting Sunday, which he called “D-Day.” Many workers are out sick with the disease, he added, while others are “just stretched to the limit.”
The mayor said he has told national leaders that they need to get on “wartime footing.”
“The nation is in a peacetime stance while were actually in the middle of a war,” de Blasio said. “And if they don’t do something different in the next few days, they’re going to lose the window.”
Over 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March as economy collapsed
By The Washington Post
More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a new record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The past two weeks have seen more people file for unemployed claims than during the first six months of the Great Recession, a sign of how rapid, deep and painful the economic shutdown has been on many American families who are struggling to pay rent and health insurance costs in the midst of a pandemic. Job losses have skyrocketed as restaurants, hotel, gyms, and travel have shut down across the nation, but layoffs are also rising in manufacturing, warehousing and transportation, a sign of how widespread the pain of the coronavirus recession is. In March alone, 10.4 million Americans lost their jobs and applied for government aid, according to the latest Labor Department data, which includes claims filed through March 28. Many economists say the real number of people out work is likely even higher, since a lot of newly unemployed Americans haven’t been able to fill out a claim yet.
U.N. Chief Calls Pandemic Biggest Global Challenge Since World War II
By The Washington Post
The coronavirus outbreak sickening hundreds of thousands around the world and devastating the global economy is creating a challenge for the world not seen since World War II, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said late Tuesday. Speaking in a virtual news conference, Guterres said the world needs to show more solidarity and cooperation in fighting not only the medical aspects of the crisis but the economic fallout. The International Monetary Fund is predicting an economic recession worse than in 2008.
US death toll eclipses China’s as reinforcements head to NYC
By The Associated Press
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China’s official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
Getting Through COVID 19: ECMAA Shares Timely Resources With Ethiopian Community
By Tadias Staff
The Ethiopian Community Mutual Assistance Association (ECMAA) in the New York tri-state area has shared timely resources including COVID-19 safety information as well as national sources of financial support for families and small business owners.
The highly anticipated 2020 national election in Ethiopia has been canceled for now due to the coronavirus outbreak. The National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that it has shelved its plans to hold the upcoming nationwide parliamentary polls on August 29th after an internal evaluation of the possible negative effect of the virus pandemic on its official activities.
Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia on lockdown as coronavirus cases grow
By The Washington Post
Maryland, Virginia and the District issued “stay-at-home” orders on Monday, joining a growing list of states and cities mandating broad, enforceable restrictions on where residents can go in an effort to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.
U.S. Approves Malaria Drug to Treat Coronavirus Patients
By The Washington Post
The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency approval to a Trump administration plan to distribute millions of doses of anti-malarial drugs to hospitals across the country, saying it is worth the risk of trying unproven treatments to slow the progression of the disease in seriously ill coronavirus patients.
A top U.S. infectious disease scientist said U.S. deaths could reach 200,000, but called it a moving target. New York’s fatalities neared 1,000, more than a third of the U.S. total.
Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed spoke with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, over the weekend regarding the Coronavirus response in Ethiopia and Africa in general.
Virus infections top 600,000 globally with long fight ahead
By The Associated Press
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide topped 600,000 on Saturday as new cases stacked up quickly in Europe and the United States and officials dug in for a long fight against the pandemic. The latest landmark came only two days after the world passed half a million infections, according to a tally by John Hopkins University, showing that much work remains to be done to slow the spread of the virus. It showed more than 607,000 cases and over 28,000 deaths. While the U.S. now leads the world in reported infections — with more than 104,000 cases — five countries exceed its roughly 1,700 deaths: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France.
Gouged prices, middlemen and medical supply chaos: Why governors are so upset with Trump
By The Washington Post
Masks that used to cost pennies now cost several dollars. Companies outside the traditional supply chain offer wildly varying levels of price and quality. Health authorities say they have few other choices to meet their needs in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ battle.
Worshippers in Ethiopia Defy Ban on Large Gatherings Despite Coronavirus
By VOA
ADDIS ABABA – Health experts in Ethiopia are raising concern, as some religious leaders continue to host large gatherings despite government orders not to do so in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Earlier this week, Ethiopia’s government ordered security forces to enforce a ban on large gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19. Ethiopia has seen only 12 cases and no deaths from the virus, and authorities would like to keep it that way. But enforcing the orders has proven difficult as religious groups continue to meet and, according to religious leaders, fail to treat the risks seriously.
It began as a mysterious disease with frightening potential. Now, just two months after America’s first confirmed case, the country is grappling with a lethal reality: The novel coronavirus has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States, a toll that is increasing at an alarming rate.
A record 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits as the coronavirus slams economy
By The Washington Post
A record 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, as restaurants, hotels, barber shops, gyms and more shut down in a nationwide effort to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April.
Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once.
“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures. The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.
Ethiopia: Parents fear for missing students as universities close over Covid-19
Photo via amnesty.org
As universities across Ethiopia close to avert spread of the COVID-19 virus, Amnesty International is calling on the Ethiopian authorities to disclose measures they have taken to rescue 17 Amhara students from Dembi Dolo University in Western Oromia, who were abducted by unidentified people in November 2019 and have been missing since.
The anguish of the students’ families is exacerbated by a phone and internet shutdown implemented in January across the western Oromia region further hampering their efforts to get information about their missing loved ones.
“The sense of fear and uncertainty spreading across Ethiopia because of COVID-19 is exacerbating the anguish of these students’ families, who are desperate for information on the whereabouts of their loved ones four months after they were abducted,” said Seif Magango, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa.
“The Ethiopian authorities’ move to close universities in order to protect the lives of university students is commendable, but they must also take similarly concrete actions to locate and rescue the 17 missing students so that they too are reunited with their families.”
UPDATE: New York City is now reporting 26,697 COVID-19 cases and 450 deaths.
BY ABC7 NY
Temporary hospital space in New York City will begin opening on Monday and more supplies are on the way as an already overwhelmed medical community anticipates even more coronavirus patients in the coming days. Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted 20 trucks were on the road delivering protective equipment to hospitals, including surgical masks, N95 masks, and hundreds more ventilators.
*Right now* there are 20 trucks on the road delivering protective equipment to New York City hospitals. They’re carrying:
• 1 million surgical masks • 200,000 N95 masks • 50,000 face shields • 40,000 isolation gowns • 10,000 boxes of gloves pic.twitter.com/x77egOwCYE
L.A. mayor says residents may have to shelter at home for two months or more
By Business Insider
Los Angeles residents will be confined to their homes until May at the earliest, Mayor Eric Garcetti told Insider on Wednesday.
“I think this is at least two months,” he said. “And be prepared for longer.”
In an interview with Insider, Garcetti pushed back against “premature optimism” in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying leaders who suggest we are on the verge of business as usual are putting lives at risk.
“I can’t say that strongly enough,” the mayor said. Optimism, he said, has to be grounded in data. And right now the data is not good.
“Giving people false hope will crush their spirits and will kill more people,” Garcetti said, adding it would change their actions by instilling a sense of normality at the most abnormal time in a generation.
Ethiopia pardons more than 4,000 prisoners to help prevent coronavirus spread
By CNN
Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde has granted pardon to more than 4,000 prisoners in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Sahle-Work Zewde announced the order in a tweet on Wednesday and said it would help prevent overcrowding in prisons.
The directive only covers those given a maximum sentence of three years for minor crimes and those who were about to be released from jail, she said.
There are 12 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ethiopia, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
Authorities in the nation have put in place a raft of measures, including the closure of all borders except to those bringing in essential goods to contain the virus. The government has directed security officials to monitor and enforce a ban on large gatherings and overcrowded public transport to ensure social distancing.
— U.S. House passes $2 trillion coronavirus emergency spending bill
Watch: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York breaks down massive coronavirus aid package (MSNBC Video)
By The Washington Post
The House of Representatives voted Friday [March 27th] to approve a massive $2 trillion stimulus bill that policy makers hope will blunt the economic destruction of the coronavirus pandemic, sending the legislation to President Trump for enactment. The legislation passed in dramatic fashion, approved on an overwhelming voice vote by lawmakers who’d been forced to return to Washington by a GOP colleague who had insisted on a quorum being present. Some lawmakers came from New York and other places where residents are supposed to be sheltering at home.
In Ethiopia, Abiy seeks $150b for African virus response
By AFP
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday urged G20 leaders to help Africa cope with the coronavirus crisis by facilitating debt relief and providing $150 billion in emergency funding.
The pandemic “poses an existential threat to the economies of African countries,” Abiy’s office said in a statement, adding that Ethiopia was “working closely with other African countries” in preparing the aid request.
The heavy debt burdens of many African countries leave them ill-equipped to respond to pandemic-related economic shocks, as the cost of servicing debt exceeds many countries’ health budgets, the statement said.
Worried Ethiopians Want Partial Internet Shutdown Ended (AP)
Ethiopians have their temperature checked for symptoms of the new coronavirus, at the Zewditu Memorial Hospital in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Wednesday, March 18, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms such as fever and cough and the vast majority recover in 2-6 weeks but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health issues, the virus that causes COVID-19 can result in more severe illness, including pneumonia. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Rights groups and citizens are calling on Ethiopia’s government to lift the internet shutdown in parts of the country that is leaving millions of people without important updates on the coronavirus.
The months-long shutdown of internet and phone lines in Western Oromia and parts of the Benishangul Gumuz region is occurring during military operations against rebel forces.
“Residents of these areas are getting very limited information about the coronavirus,” Jawar Mohammed, an activist-turned-politician, told The Associated Press.
Ethiopia reported its first coronavirus case on March 13 and now has a dozen. Officials have been releasing updates mostly online. Land borders have closed and national carrier Ethiopian Airlines has stopped flying to some 30 destinations around the world.
In Global Fight vs. Virus, Over 1.5 Billion Told: Stay Home
A flier urging customers to remain home hangs at a turnstile as an MTA employee sanitizes surfaces at a subway station with bleach solutions due to COVID-19 concerns, Friday, March 20, 2020, in New York. (AP)
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — With masks, ventilators and political goodwill in desperately short supply, more than one-fifth of the world’s population was ordered or urged to stay in their homes Monday at the start of what could be a pivotal week in the battle to contain the coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe.
Partisan divisions stalled efforts to pass a colossal aid package in Congress, and stocks fell again on Wall Street even after the Federal Reserve said it will lend to small and large businesses and local governments to help them through the crisis.
Warning that the outbreak is accelerating, the head of the World Health Organization called on countries to take strong, coordinated action.
“We are not helpless bystanders,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, noting that it took 67 days to reach 100,000 cases worldwide but just four days to go from 200,000 to 300,000. “We can change the trajectory of this pandemic.”
China’s Coronavirus Donation to Africa Arrives in Ethiopia (Reuters)
An Ethiopian Airlines worker transports a consignment of medical donation from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and Alibaba Foundation to Africa for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing, upon arrival at the Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, March 22, 2020. (REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri)
The first batch of protective and medical equipment donated by Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma was flown into the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday, as coronavirus cases in Africa rose above 1,100.
The virus has spread more slowly in Africa than in Asia or Europe but has a foothold in 41 African nations and two territories. So far it has claimed 37 lives across the continent of 1.3 billion people.
The shipment is a much-needed boost to African healthcare systems that were already stretched before the coronavirus crisis, but nations will still need to ration supplies at a time of global scarcity.
Only patients showing symptoms will be tested, the regional Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Sunday.
“The flight carried 5.4 million face masks, kits for 1.08 million detection tests, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 sets of protective face shields,” Ma’s foundation said in a statement.
“The faster we move, the earlier we can help.”
The shipment had a sign attached with the slogan, “when people are determined they can overcome anything”.
Yohannes Abraham has been named Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary of the White House National Security Council in the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. (Photos: Harvard and Transition website)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 10th, 2021
New York (TADIAS) — The Transition Office of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris continue to release a diverse list of appointments “that looks like America” to serve in their incoming administration. The latest hires include Ethiopian American Yohannes Abraham, who has been named Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary of the White House National Security Council.
As the press release highlighted:
Yohannes Abraham currently serves as the Executive Director of the Biden-Harris Transition, overseeing preparation for the implementation of Biden-Harris policy, personnel, and management priorities. He is also on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he lectures on management. During the Obama-Biden administration, Abraham served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the National Economic Council. He also worked as Chief of Staff of the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, where his team partnered with cities, states, and other key stakeholders to manage crises and support domestic and national security policy priorities. Abraham has also served on the leadership team of the Vanguard Group’s global investment unit and as a Senior Advisor at the Obama Foundation. A native of Springfield, Virginia, Abraham holds a BA from Yale College and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.
In a statement President-elect Joe Biden said: “The National Security Council plays a critical role in keeping our nation safe and secure. These crisis-tested, deeply experienced public servants will work tirelessly to protect the American people and restore America’s leadership in the world. They will ensure that the needs of working Americans are front and center in our national security policymaking, and our country will be better for it.”
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris added: “This outstanding team of dedicated public servants will be ready to hit the ground running on day one to address the transnational challenges facing the American people — from climate to cyber. They reflect the very best of our nation and they have the knowledge and experience to help build our nation back better for all Americans.”
And incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said: “I am proud to announce that these incredibly accomplished individuals will be joining the National Security Council. They will bring a wide range of perspectives to tackling the defining challenges of our time, and I thank them for their willingness to serve their country.”
Below are the biographies of the NSC appointees named in alphabetical order as provided in the press release of the Biden-Harris Transition team:
Yohannes Abraham, Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary
Yohannes Abraham currently serves as the Executive Director of the Biden-Harris Transition, overseeing preparation for the implementation of Biden-Harris policy, personnel, and management priorities. He is also on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he lectures on management. During the Obama-Biden administration, Abraham served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the National Economic Council. He also worked as Chief of Staff of the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, where his team partnered with cities, states, and other key stakeholders to manage crises and support domestic and national security policy priorities. Abraham has also served on the leadership team of the Vanguard Group’s global investment unit and as a Senior Advisor at the Obama Foundation. A native of Springfield, Virginia, Abraham holds a BA from Yale College and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.
Sasha Baker, Senior Director for Strategic Planning
Sasha Baker was most recently national security advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren and served as a Deputy Policy Director for her presidential campaign. Previously, she served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. Baker was a career budget analyst at the Office of Management and Budget, joining as a Presidential Management Fellow and serving in homeland and national security roles and as a Special Assistant to the OMB Director. She began her government career as a research assistant for the House Armed Services Committee. Originally from New Jersey, Baker is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Ariana Berengaut, Senior Advisor to the National Security Advisor
Ariana Berengaut currently serves on the NSC Agency Review Team with the Biden-Harris Transition and held the COVID-19 policy portfolio as a volunteer on the Biden-Harris Campaign. She previously was a founding director at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. She served in the Obama Administration as speechwriter and counselor to then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and, prior to that, as chief speechwriter and senior advisor to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. She started her career as a researcher at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and worked on the 2008 Obama campaign. Born in Washington, D.C., she attended Brandeis University and the University of Oxford, completing her graduate fieldwork in southeastern Uganda.
Tanya Bradsher, Senior Director for Partnerships and Global Engagement
Tanya Bradsher is the National Security Agency lead on the Biden-Harris Transition Team. Prior to her role on transition, she served as Chief of Staff for Congressman Don Beyer. Bradsher served as the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama-Biden administration, led Veteran and Military Family outreach in the Office of Public Engagement, and served as the Assistant Press Secretary on the National Security Council. Bradsher is an Iraq war veteran who served 20 years in the United States Army and retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Bradsher was born in Virginia, is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The George Washington University. She lives in Virginia with her husband and three daughters.
Rebecca Brocato, Senior Director for Legislative Affairs
Rebecca Brocato was Director of Strategy and Government Affairs at National Security Action. During the Obama-Biden Administration, she served in the White House as Director for Legislative Affairs on the National Security Council and as House Legislative Affairs Liaison. She worked previously on Middle East policy at the State Department and as an aide to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). Brocato began her career as a researcher focused on West and Central Africa. A Baltimore native, she is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford.
Elizabeth Cameron, Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense
Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron is the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Vice President for Global Biological Policy and Programs and a volunteer with the Biden-Harris transition team. She previously served on the White House National Security Council staff, where she stood up the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense and helped launch the Global Health Security Agenda. She also served at the Department of Defense as an Office Director and Senior Advisor and at the Department of State where she focused on global threat reduction programs. She was a policy director with the American Cancer Society and an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in the health policy office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Cameron holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the Human Genetics and Molecular Biology Program at the Johns Hopkins University and is a graduate of the University of Virginia and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Raised in Maryland, she lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband.
Tarun Chhabra, Senior Director for Technology and National Security
Tarun Chhabra is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. He was previously a Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. During the Obama-Biden Administration, Chhabra served on the National Security Council staff as Director for Strategic Planning and Director for Human Rights and National Security Issues, and at the Pentagon as a speechwriter to the Secretary of Defense. Born in Tennessee and raised in Louisiana, Chhabra is a first-generation American and a graduate of Stanford University, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School.
Caitlin Durkovich, Senior Director for Resilience and Response
Caitlin Durkovich serves on the Department Homeland of Security (DHS) Agency Review Team for the Biden-Harris Transition. She is a Director at Toffler Associates and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Caitlin served as Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection and as Chief of Staff for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (the predecessor to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) at DHS during the Obama-Biden Administration. Caitlin was also a member of the Mission Assurance/Business Continuity Team at Booz Allen Hamilton. She helped launch the Internet Security Alliance in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, and iDefense, an early cyber threat intelligence service. Born in New Mexico, Caitlin is a graduate of Duke University.
Jon Finer, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor
Jon Finer serves as Deputy Head of Foreign and National Security Policy on the Biden-Harris Transition team. He previously served in the Obama White House and State Department, including as Middle East Advisor and Foreign Policy Speechwriter to then-Vice President Biden and as Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning for Secretary of State John Kerry. Finer began his career as a journalist in Asia and covered several conflicts, including the Iraq War, as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Since leaving government, he has held positions in academia, at think tanks, and in the private sector. He has an A.B. from Harvard; a M.Phil from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Finer was born and raised in Vermont, where his parents still live, and has three younger siblings.
Juan Gonzalez, Senior Director for Western Hemisphere
Juan Sebastian Gonzalez serves on the Biden-Harris Transition Appointments Team as a Deputy for National Security Agencies. He was previously a Senior Fellow at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Gonzalez served in the Obama-Biden Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and in the White House as Special Advisor to Vice President Biden and National Security Council Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs. In 2017, Gonzalez was appointed by Senator Chuck Schumer to serve as a Commissioner on the bipartisan Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission, and represented the Biden campaign on the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force on Immigration. Born in Colombia and raised in New York, Gonzalez is a graduate of Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and son.
Sumona Guha, Senior Director for South Asia
Sumona Guha was co-chair of the South Asia foreign policy working group on the Biden-Harris campaign, and serves on the transition’s State Department Agency Review Team. Guha is Senior Vice President at Albright Stonebridge Group. Previously, she served in the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer and later, on the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff where she focused on South Asia. During the Obama-Biden Administration, she was Special Advisor for national security affairs to Vice President Biden. Guha is a graduate of Johns Hopkins and Georgetown University. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and three children.
Ryan Harper, Deputy Chief of Staff and Deputy Executive Secretary
Ryan Harper currently serves as the Director of Planning and Staff Secretary for the Biden-Harris Transition. He previously served in a number of foreign policy and national security positions during the Obama-Biden Administration at USAID and the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. He has also held positions at the White House Office of Presidential Personnel and the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to the transition, Harper was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Co., where he worked with public sector defense, development, and intelligence organizations. Originally from Massachusetts, he is a graduate of Stanford Law School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the College of the Holy Cross. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife.
Peter Harrell, Senior Director for International Economics and Competitiveness
Peter Evans Harrell is a member of the Biden-Harris Transition working on the State Department Agency Review Team and on international economic and trade policy. Since 2015, he has served as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and as a lawyer in private practice. He has also taught international trade law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. From 2009 to 2014, he served in the Obama-Biden Administration on the State Department Policy Planning Staff and as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. Earlier in his career, Harrell worked as a journalist and as a staffer on the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign. Harrell was born in Baltimore and raised in Atlanta, where he currently resides with his wife, two children, and cat. He is a graduate of Princeton University and the Yale Law School.
Emily Horne, Senior Director for Press and NSC Spokesperson
Emily Horne serves as a volunteer on the Biden-Harris Transition Team leading communications for several national security Cabinet nominees. She joins the Biden-Harris Administration from the Brookings Institution, where she was Vice President of Communications. Horne was previously a civil servant at the State Department, where she began as an intern and served in a number of public affairs roles including Assistant Press Secretary and Director of Strategic Communications at the National Security Council, Communications Director for the Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, and Spokesperson for South and Central Asian Affairs. She also served as head of global policy communications at Twitter. Originally from Michigan, Horne holds a B.A. and M.A. from The George Washington University. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and their two sons.
Shanthi Kalathil, Coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights
Shanthi Kalathil is currently senior director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy, where her work focuses on emerging challenges to democracy. Previously in her career, she served as a senior democracy fellow at the US Agency for International Development, an associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Hong Kong-based reporter for the Asian Wall Street Journal, and an advisor to international affairs organizations. Kalathil is the co-author of Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003). Originally from California, Kalathil is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Senior Director for Russia and Central Asia
Andrea Kendall-Taylor is the Russia policy lead for the Biden-Harris Transition. She previously served as a senior intelligence officer both as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Kendall-Taylor was also Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Originally from San Diego, Kendall-Taylor is a graduate of Princeton University and received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and three children.
Ella Lipin, Senior Advisor to the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor
Ella Lipin serves on the Biden-Harris Transition’s national security and foreign policy team. Prior to joining the Transition, she was national security and foreign policy advisor to Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Lipin served as Egypt Country Director in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and in the speechwriting office of the Secretary of Defense. Raised in Oregon, Lipin is a graduate of Duke University and received an MPA from Princeton University.
Brett H. McGurk, Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa
Brett H. McGurk is currently the Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute. He has held senior national security posts across the last three administrations, most recently as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS (2015-2018). He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs at the State Department (2012-2015), Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East Affairs on the National Security Council (2007-2009), and Director for Iraq on the National Security Council (2005-2007). McGurk graduated from the University of Connecticut and Columbia University School of Law, after which he served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Melanie Nakagawa, Senior Director for Climate and Energy
Melanie Nakagawa serves on the Biden-Harris Transition focused on climate change and energy. In the Obama-Biden Administration Nakagawa was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Transformation at the U.S. State Department and served as a strategic advisor on climate change to the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the Policy Planning Staff. Most recently, she was Director of Climate Strategy at Princeville Capital, leading their climate and sustainability investment strategy to back technology-enabled companies delivering transformative solutions to climate change. Earlier in her career she was the Senior Energy and Environment Counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She provides her expertise on the Board of the Advanced Energy Economy Institute, REVERB Advisory Board, and as a Loomis Council Member. Born in New Jersey, Nakagawa earned a J.D. and M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s Washington College of Law and School of International Service, and an A.B. from Brown University.
Carlyn Reichel, Senior Director for Speechwriting and Strategic Initiatives
Carlyn Reichel is a member of the National Security Council Agency Review Team on the Biden Transition. On the Biden-Harris Campaign, she served as both Director of Speechwriting and Foreign Policy Director. Prior to the campaign, Reichel was the founding Communications Director for the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Reichel joined the Department of State during the Obama-Biden Administration as a Presidential Management Fellow and went on to work as a speechwriter for foreign policy and national security officials at the State Department, the NSC, and the Office of the Vice President. Reichel grew up in Georgia, graduated from Stanford University, and earned her Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Dr. Amanda Sloat, Senior Director for Europe
Dr. Amanda Sloat is currently serving on the policy team for the Biden-Harris Transition Team. Prior to this role, she was a Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She was also a non-resident fellow in the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at Harvard Kennedy School. During the Obama-Biden Administration, Sloat served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southern Europe and Eastern Mediterranean Affairs at the State Department. She also served as senior advisor to the White House’s Middle East coordinator and as senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. She previously worked as senior professional staff with responsibility for Europe policy on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. Before her government service, Sloat was a senior program officer with the National Democratic Institute and a postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She has written widely on European politics, including a book (Scotland in Europe: A Study of Multi-Level Governance). Originally from Michigan, Sloat is a graduate of James Madison College at Michigan State University and holds a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said Sudan on Sunday rejected a proposal by South African to meet separately with AU experts, insisting on expanding the role of the experts first. (Photo: Demeke Mekonnen, Minister of Foreign Affairs/@mfaethiopia)
The Associated Press
Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia say talks on disputed dam deadlocked
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia failed to achieve a breakthrough in the African Union-led talks to revolve their years-long dispute over the controversial dam that Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile, the three countries announced on Sunday.
Foreign and irrigation ministers of the three nations met online for the second time in a week in efforts to find an agreed approach to resume their talks focused on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam.
Sunday’s meeting, held over videoconference, failed to find common ground to more forward, “because of differences over how to resume the talks and procedural aspects related to the negotiating process,” Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.
Cairo and Addis Ababa rejected the Sudanese proposal, Egypt’s foreign ministry said.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry also said Sudan on Sunday rejected a proposal by South African to meet separately with AU experts, insisting on expanding the role of the experts first.
Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas said his government insists on maximizing the role of AU experts to have them facilitate the negotiations and bridge the gaps between the three countries, according to Sudan’s state-run SUNA news agency.
In November, Sudan boycotted talks called by South African, the current chairman of the African Union, and argued that the negotiating approach to resolve the dispute proved unfruitful.
Key questions in the negotiations remain on how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs and how the three countries would settle any future disputes. Egypt and Sudan call for a legally binding agreement on the dam’s filling and operation, while Ethiopia insists on guidelines.
Ethiopia is building the dam on the Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile in Sudan to become the Nile River, and about 85% of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia. Officials hope the dam, now more than three-quarters complete, will reach full power-generating capacity in 2023, helping pull millions of its people out of poverty.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country with over 100 million people, called the dam an existential threat and worries that it would reduce its share of Nile waters. The country relies almost entirely on the Nile to supply water for agriculture and its people.
Sudan, in the middle between Ethiopia and Egypt, warries that the dam would affect its own dams, though it stands to benefit from access to possible cheap electricity.
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US Treasury Chief Mnuchin Meets Egypt’s Leader, Discusses Ethiopia’s Dam?
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
Egypt’s leader meets US treasury chief ahead of Sudan visit
Updated: January 6th, 2021
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s president met Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in Cairo, ahead of Mnuchin’s first visit to Sudan since the end of Khartoum’s pariah status.
The office of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said in a statement the president and Mnuchin discussed mutual and regional issues, including the latest developments in talks with Sudan and Ethiopia over a disputed dam that Ethiopia is building over the Blue Nile River.
The statement said el-Sissi appreciated U.S. efforts in the dam talks last year that resulted in a U.S.-crafted draft deal to resolve the yearslong dispute over the massive project.
The three Nile Valley countries met Sunday in the latest push by South Africa, the current chairman of the African Union, which is mediating a deal between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
Experts from the three nations and the AU were to meet Monday, but Sudan boycotted the meeting and insisted on a greater role for AU experts in the negotiations.
Egypt initialed the draft deal, crafted by the United States in February, but Ethiopia did not attend the signing ceremony and accused President Donald Trump’s administration of siding with Egypt. Sudan attended the meeting but did not sign.
The U.S. has suspended some aid to Ethiopia over the “lack of progress” in the talks and U.S. “concern about Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to begin to fill the dam before an agreement and all necessary dam safety measures were in place.”
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions between the three nations.
Mnuchin was scheduled to travel to Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Wednesday to meet with the country’s leaders, according to Sudan’s state-run SUNA news agency.
It would be the first visit by a senior U.S. official since Washington last month approved the removal of Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
SUNA’s report said Mnuchin would discuss with Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the ruling sovereign council, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok possible U.S. economic aid debt relief. It did not give further details.
Mnuchin said last month he would work with Congress and the transitional government in Khartoum to advance Sudan’s efforts to secure debt relief in 2021.
Sudan is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising led the military to overthrow longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
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Related:
Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan resume talks over disputed dam
The Associated Press
January 3, 2021
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan resumed their years-long negotiations Sunday over the controversial dam Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile, officials said.
The resumption came six weeks after Khartoum boycotted talks in November, urging the African Union to play a greater role in reaching a deal over the disputed Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam.
The negotiations have centered on the filling and operation of the giant dam. Key questions remain about how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs and how the three countries will resolve any future disputes. Ethiopia has rejected binding arbitration at the final stage of the project.
The foreign and irrigation ministers of the three Nile Valley countries met online Sunday, said Ahmed Hafez, the spokesman of Egypt’s Foreign Ministry. Sudan also confirmed the meeting.
Ethiopia’s Water and Energy Minister Seleshi Bekele said earlier the meeting was called by South Africa, the current head of the African Union, and that U.S. observers and AU experts would attend.
Sudan’s Irrigation Ministry said the three counties would hold separate talks with the AU experts and observers before a three-party meeting on Jan. 10.
In November, Sudan did not attend a round of talks called by South Africa, arguing that the current approach to reaching a tripartite agreement on the filling and operation of Ethiopia’s dam had not yielded results.
Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas said at the time that the AU should do more to “facilitate the negotiation and bridge the gap between the three parties.”
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions between the three nations.
Egypt has called it an existential threat and worries that it will reduce the country’s share of Nile waters.
The Arab’s world most populous country relies almost entirely on the Nile to supply water for agriculture and its more than 100 million people. About 85% of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia says the $4.6 billion dam will be an engine of development that will pull millions of people out of poverty. Sudan, in the middle, worries about the effects on its own dams, although it stands to benefit from access to cheap electricity.
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Ethiopia to Trump: We Will Not Give In To ‘Aggression’ In Dam Dispute (UPDATE)
The $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a source of national pride in Ethiopia. Without naming Trump or the United States, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office issued a blunt statement on Saturday saying Ethiopia would “not cave in to aggressions of any kind.” (Photo: Maxar Technologies via AP)
NBC News
Updated: October 24th, 2020
Ethiopia denounces Trump remark that Egypt could ‘blow up’ Nile dam
Ethiopia on Saturday denounced “belligerent threats” over the huge hydropower dam it has nearly completed on the Blue Nile river, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump said Egypt could “blow up” the project.
Trump made the comment while announcing that Sudan, which sits downstream from the dam, would start to normalize ties with Israel on Friday.
“They will end up blowing up the dam,” Trump said, referring to Egypt. “And I said it and I say it loud and clear, they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.”
The $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a source of national pride in Ethiopia, aimed at pulling millions of people out of poverty, but it has entangled neighboring east African nations Egypt and Sudan, which also rely on the river.
Without naming Trump or the United States, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office issued a blunt statement on Saturday, which said the east African nation would “not cave in to aggressions of any kind.”
“These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law,” the statement said.
It added: “As a developing nation, Ethiopia may be confronted with poverty but are rich with history, patriotic citizens whose commitment to defend their country’s sovereignty is unparalleled and an ambition and a well-articulated plan for prosperity.”
Former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn tweeted on Saturday: “The man doesn’t have a clue on what he is talking about,” calling Trump’s remarks “reckless” and “irresponsible.”
Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Gedu Andargachew later summoned U.S. Ambassador to Addis Ababa Mike Raynor to seek clarifications on the comments.
“The incitement of war between Ethiopia and Egypt from a sitting U.S. president neither reflects the longstanding partnership and strategic alliance between Ethiopia and the United States nor is acceptable in international law governing interstate relations,” Gedu’s ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Trump told the State Department to suspend millions of dollars in aid to Ethiopia because of the dispute over the dam. A move that angered Ethiopians.
“They will never see that money unless they adhere to that agreement,” Trump said Friday.
Ethiopia says the colossal dam project could help it become a major power exporter and develop its economy. Egypt depends on the Nile to supply its farmers and population of 100 million with fresh water while Sudan contends with frequent droughts.
The country celebrated the first filling of the dam in August, to the dismay of Egypt.
There was no comment from the Egyptian government on Trump’s latest remarks.
Egypt has repeatedly said it wants to settle the dam dispute through diplomatic channels, but has also said it would use “all available means” to defend the interests of its people.
The Blue Nile joins the White Nile in Sudan to become the Nile, and about 85 percent of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia. Officials in Ethiopia hope the dam, now more than three-quarters complete, will reach full power-generating capacity by 2023.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Ethiopia says it will not cave to ‘aggression’ in dam dispute
“Occasional statements of belligerent threats to have Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound,” Abiy’s office said. “These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law.” (Reuters)
Reuters
Updated: October 24th, 2020
Ethiopia says it will not cave to ‘aggression’ in dam dispute
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopia said on Saturday that threats of any kind towards resolving a dispute with its neighbours over the filling and operation of a massive hydropower dam were “misguided, unproductive and clear violations of international law”.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office made no mention of any person or any country in a statement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is at the centre of a dispute over Nile water supplies.
But his comment came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with the Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in which they called for an amicable solution between Ethiopia and Egypt.
In the call, held in front of reporters at the White House, Trump said he had also told Egypt the same thing, saying it was a dangerous situation and that Cairo could end up “blowing up that dam.”
Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt have been locked in a bitter dispute over the filling and operation of the GERD, which remains unresolved although the reservoir behind the dam began filling in July.
“Occasional statements of belligerent threats to have Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound,” Abiy’s office said. “These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law.”
The first phase of filling the dam completed in August, Abiy’s office said.
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Related:
Ethiopia blasts Trump remark that Egypt will ‘blow up’ dam (AP)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Updated: October 24th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia on Saturday denounced “belligerent threats” over the huge dam it has nearly completed on the Blue Nile River, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said downstream Egypt will “blow up” the project it has called an existential threat.
Ethiopia’s foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to seek clarification, saying “the incitement of war between Ethiopia and Egypt from a sitting U.S. president neither reflects the longstanding partnership and strategic alliance between Ethiopia and the United States nor is acceptable in international law governing interstate relations,” a statement said.
Without naming Trump or the U.S., Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office issued a separate critical statement amid an outcry in Ethiopia over Trump’s latest threat over the dam. The $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a source of national pride, aimed at pulling millions of people from poverty.
“The man doesn’t have a clue on what he is talking about,” Former Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn tweeted, calling Trump’s remark reckless and irresponsible.
Trump made the comment while announcing that Sudan would start to normalize ties with Israel. Downstream Sudan is a party to the talks with Ethiopia and Egypt over the disputed dam. “They (Egypt) will end up blowing up the dam,” Trump said. “And I said it and I say it loud and clear … they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.”
The U.S. president earlier this year told the State Department to suspend millions of dollars in aid to Ethiopia because of the dam dispute, angering Ethiopians who had accused the U.S. of being biased during its earlier efforts to broker a deal on the project among Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia walked away from those talks.
“They will never see that money unless they adhere to that agreement,” Trump said Friday.
“Occasional statements of belligerent threats to have Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound,” the statement by the Ethiopian prime minister’s office said. “These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law.”
It added: “Ethiopia will not cave in to aggressions of any kind.”
There was no comment from the Egyptian government on Trump’s remarks, but pro-government media covered them extensively. Egypt has repeatedly said it wants to settle the dispute through diplomatic means, but it has said it would use “all available means” to defend the interests of its people.
Ethiopia celebrated the first filling of the dam in August, citing heavy rains, to the dismay of Egypt. Ethiopia later banned flights over the dam amid concerns over possible military action by Egypt.
Now, with Trump’s new remarks, some Ethiopians are urging Ethiopian Americans to help vote him out of office in next month’s election.
Worried by the prospect of further friction between two of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries, European Union representative Josep Borrell said in a statement that “now is the time for action and not for increasing tensions,” adding that a deal on the dam is within reach.
The statement by Abiy’s office said the talks with Egypt and Sudan have shown significant progress since the African Union has stepped in to oversee them. Trump’s statement could undermine that process, said Abel Abate Demissie, an associate fellow at Chatham House, adding that it proves the U.S. wasn’t an honest broker from the start.
Ethiopia says the colossal dam could help it become a major power exporter. Egypt depends on the Nile to supply its farmers and a booming population of 100 million with fresh water.
Negotiators have said key questions remain about how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs and how the countries will resolve any future disputes. Ethiopia rejects binding arbitration at the final stage.
A military strike on the dam would be disastrous, one water expert warned. The dam already has more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water in its reservoir,” Abebe Yirga told The Associated Press. “It will affect thousands of people along the way if this huge amount of water gushes out of the dam.”
The Blue Nile joins the White Nile in Sudan to become the Nile, and about 85% of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia. Officials hope the dam, now more than three-quarters complete, will reach full power-generating capacity in 2023.
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Watch: Failing Donald Trump’s Crazy Comments About GERD
Trump told reporters in the White House today (October 23rd, 2020) that Egypt will “end up blowing up” the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. He added: “And I said it and I say it loud and clear — they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.” We sure hope Egypt is not stupid enough to follow the advise of the failing U.S. President, but you can watch his crazy comments below. (Getty images)
BREAKING! Donald Trump`s Shocking Remarks About Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
AFP
Trump suggests Egypt may ‘blow up’ Ethiopia dam
Updated: October 23rd, 2020
Washington (AFP)
US President Donald Trump on Friday voiced anger at Ethiopia over its construction of a huge dam on the Nile River and appeared to suggest that Egypt may destroy it.
Trump made the remarks as he announced a breakthrough normalization deal between US ally Israel and Sudan, which like Egypt fears that Ethiopia will use up scarce water resources.
“It’s a very dangerous situation because Egypt is not going to be able to live that way,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office with leaders of Sudan and Israel on speakerphone.
“They’ll end up blowing up the dam. And I said it and I say it loud and clear — they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something,” Trump said.
“They should have stopped it long before it started,” Trump said, regretting that Egypt was in domestic tumult when the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project began in 2011.
Trump — a close ally of Egypt’s general turned president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — had agreed to Cairo’s pleas to mediate over the dam, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin leading talks.
The State Department in September said it was cutting off aid to Ethiopia due to its decision to begin filling the dam despite not reaching an agreement with the downstream nations.
“I had a deal done for them and then unfortunately Ethiopia broke the deal, which they should not have done. That was a big mistake,” Trump said.
“They will never see that money unless they adhere to that agreement,” he said.
Ethiopia says that the $4 billion project is indispensible for its electrification and development needs and has voiced hope of beginning operations in early 2021.
Egypt depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water.
Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok, asked by Trump on speakerphone about the dam, voiced appreciation for US diplomacy and said his government wanted an “amicable solution soon” among the three countries.
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Ethiopia Says GERD Dam Will Begin Generating Power in Next 12 Months
Water flows through Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam as it undergoes construction work on the river Nile in Guba Woreda. (Reuters)
Reuters
Updated: October 5th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s giant new hydropower dam on the Blue Nile will begin generating power in the next 12 months, the country’s president said on Monday.
“This year will be a year where the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will start generating power with the two turbines,” Sahle-Work Zewde said in a speech to parliament.
Ethiopia is locked in a dispute with Egypt and Sudan over its $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo has said could threaten its main supply of water.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia has banned all flights over its giant new hydropower dam on the Blue Nile for security reasons, the head of its civil aviation authority said on Monday, as the president pledged the dam would begin generating power in the next 12 months.
The move could worsen Ethiopia’s dispute with Egypt and Sudan over its $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo has said could threaten its main supply of water.
“All flights have been banned to secure the dam,” the director-general of the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, Wesenyeleh Hunegnaw, told Reuters by phone. He declined to give more details on the reasons.
Later on Monday in a speech to parliament, Ethiopia’s president Sahle-Work Zewde said: “This year will be a year where the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will start generating power with the two turbines.”
She also said that work was underway to enable a second filling of the dam within the next 12 months.
In July, Ethiopia said it had achieved its first year of filling the dam thanks to rainfall in the area.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the United Nations last month that the country has “no intention” of harming Sudan and Egypt with the dam, days after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reiterated his concerns over the project.
Last week, air force chief Major General Yilma Merdasa told local media that Ethiopia was fully prepared to defend the dam from any attack.
Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan failed to strike a deal on the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam before Ethiopia began filling the reservoir behind the dam in July.
The dam is at the centre of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.
The structure is about 15 km (9 miles) from the Ethiopian border with Sudan on the Blue Nile – a tributary of the Nile river, which gives Egypt’s 100 million people about 90% of their fresh water.
The United States decided last month to cut $100 million in aid to Ethiopia amid the dispute over the dam. A U.S. State Department official who did not want to be identified told Reuters at the time that the decision to pause some funding to Ethiopia was triggered by concern over Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to start filling the dam before an agreement.
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Related:
UPDATE: Ethiopia-Egypt War Over GERD Has Already Started. It’s in Cyberspace
Workers move iron girders from a crane at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. (Getty Images)
Foreign Policy
SEPTEMBER 22, 2020, 6:41 AM
The conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has already started. It’s just happening in cyberspace.
It took only a few weeks to plan the cyberattack—and a few more to abandon the world of ethical hacking for the less noble sort. But they would do anything for the Nile, the four young Egyptians agreed.
With that, the group calling themselves the Cyber_Horus Group in late June hacked more than a dozen Ethiopian government sites, replacing each page with their own creation: an image of a skeleton pharaoh, clutching a scythe in one hand and a scimitar in the other. “If the river’s level drops, let all the Pharaoh’s soldiers hurry,” warned a message underneath. “Prepare the Ethiopian people for the wrath of the Pharaohs.”
“There is more power than weapons,” one of the hackers, who asked not to be identified by name, told Foreign Policy. Also, it was a pretty easy job, the hacker added.
A few weeks later and thousands of miles away, a 21-year-old Ethiopian named Liz applied red lipstick and donned a black T-shirt and jeans. She positioned her phone on her desk and started her own kind of online influence campaign: a TikTok video. She danced to a popular Egyptian song underneath the message, “Distracting the Egyptians while we fill the dam.”
“There’s no other country that can stop us,” said Liz, who has more than 70,000 followers on the app and whose taunting video was met with praise and threats. “It’s our right.”
Rarely have young people been so passionate about an infrastructure project. But the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will be Africa’s largest, is more than just a piece of infrastructure. It has become a nationalistic rallying cry for both Ethiopia and Egypt—two countries scrambling to define their nationhood after years of domestic upheaval. Many Ethiopians and Egyptians are getting involved in the only way they can—online—and fomenting the first African cyberconflict of its kind, one with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.
Trump Administration Confirms Cutting Aid to Ethiopia Over GERD (UPDATE)
(Getty Images)
The Associated Press
Updated: September 2nd, 2020
It was an unusual example of Trump’s direct intervention on an issue in Africa, a continent he hasn’t visited as president and rarely mentions publicly.
On the guidance of President Trump, the State Department said Wednesday that the United States was suspending some aid to Ethiopia over the “lack of progress” in the country’s talks with Egypt and Sudan over a disputed dam project it is completing on the Nile River.
It was an unusual example of Mr. Trump’s direct intervention on an issue in Africa, a continent he hasn’t visited as president and rarely mentions publicly. The dam dispute centers on two of Africa’s most populous and powerful nations, Ethiopia and Egypt, and some have feared it could lead to military conflict.
A State Department spokesperson told The Associated Press the decision to “temporarily pause” some aid to a key regional security ally “reflects our concern about Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to begin to fill the dam before an agreement and all necessary dam safety measures were in place.”
It is not clear how many millions of dollars in aid are being affected, or for how long. The decision was taken by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “based on guidance from the president,” the spokesperson said.
There was no immediate comment from Ethiopia’s government. Ethiopia’s ambassador to the United States, Fitsum Arega, this week tweeted that his country was determined to complete the dam, saying that “we will pull Ethiopia out of darkness.”
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions with Egypt, which has called it an existential threat and worries that it will reduce the country’s share of Nile waters. Ethiopia says the $4.6 billion dam will be an engine of development that will pull millions of people out of poverty. Sudan, in the middle, worries about the effects on its own dams though it stands to benefit from access to cheap electricity.
Years of talks among the countries have failed to come to an agreement. Key remaining issues include how to handle releases of water from the dam during multiyear droughts and how to resolve future disputes.
The United States earlier this year tried to mediate the discussions, but Ethiopia walked away amid accusations that Washington was siding with Egypt. Now the three countries are reporting any progress to the African Union, which is leading negotiations.
Ethiopia had said it would fill the dam with or without a deal with Egypt and Sudan. The dam’s 74 billion-cubic-meter reservoir saw its first filling in July, which Ethiopia’s government celebrated and attributed to heavy rains, while a startled Egypt and Sudan hurriedly sought clarification and expressed skepticism.
A former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, David Shinn, had warned against an aid cut, writing that “playing political hardball with Ethiopia will not only fail to obtain Washington’s desired result but will probably ensure that the Ethiopian diaspora in the United States rallies against Trump.”
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Related:
Cutting Aid to Ethiopia Haunts Trump in Election
David Shinn, a former US envoy to Ethiopia said playing political hardball with Ethiopia will not only fail to obtain the desired result but will probably ensure that the Ethiopian diaspora in the US will rally against Trump and spoil his chances in the close contest. “There are sizeable Ethiopian-American communities in key states such as Georgia, Texas, and Virginia,” he said. (Image: Tulsa World)
AA
Addis Getachew | ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Updated: September 2nd, 2020
Ethiopian-Americans against US cutting $130M aid to Ethiopia to enforce Egypt friendly agreement on sharing Nile waters
The US has now formally stepped in, to support Egypt and punish Ethiopia over the river water sharing dispute between the two African countries.
Last week, the Trump administration announced blocking a $130 million aid that had been earmarked to support Ethiopia’s defense and anti-terrorism efforts.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed the cut in aid, ostensibly to build pressure on Ethiopia, a rugged landlocked country in the Horn of Africa.
While it is not clear to what extent the US decision will affect Ethiopia, but it has united everyone in the country and the diaspora.
“We have officially requested the US administration that they give us an explanation,” said Ethiopia’s Ambassador to Washington Fitsum Arega, while taking to Twitter.
David Shinn, a former US envoy to Ethiopia said playing political hardball with Ethiopia will not only fail to obtain the desired result but will probably ensure that the Ethiopian diaspora in the US will rally against Trump and spoil his chances in the close contest. “There are sizeable Ethiopian-American communities in key states such as Georgia, Texas, and Virginia,” he said.
Ethiopian government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had earlier rejected an agreement brokered by the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in February related to the filling and operation of the $5billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Ethiopia said the US proposal was heavily tilted towards Egypt.
Relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa have strained over recent times, over the filling and operation of the dam that has come upon the Blue Nile, one of the tributaries of the River Nile.
Since June, the African Union has been mediating now to evolve a win-win formula between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt.
The AU has entrusted its Bureau of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government including South Africa, Kenya, Mali, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to prevent any escalation between these countries. The European Union, the World Bank, and the US continue as observers in the group.
Mike Pompeo is the Worst U.S. Secretary of State in History
Mike Pompeo’s handing of the Trump administration’s foreign policy “has led to some of the worst diplomatic damage the United States has suffered in decades — especially in relations with its closest allies,” writes The Washington Post’s Deputy editorial page editor and columnist Jackson Diehl. (Photo: The Washington Post)
The Washington Post
Updated: August 30, 2020
As secretary of state, Mike Pompeo has presided over the collapse of negotiations with North Korea, the failure of a pressure campaign against Iran and an abortive attempt to oust Venezuela’s authoritarian regime. On his watch, China has carried out genocide in its Xinjiang region and the suppression of Hong Kong’s freedoms without resistance from Washington until it was too late.
Pompeo has failed to fill dozens of senior positions at the State Department, and hundreds of career diplomats have left or been driven out in political purges. Morale is at a historic low: In staff surveys, there has been a 34 percent increase between 2016 and 2019 in those who say the State Department’s senior leaders “did not maintain high levels of honesty and integrity.” Maybe that’s because Pompeo himself has defied legal mandates from Congress, skirted a law restricting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, tasked staffers with carrying out errands for himself and his wife, and fired the inspector general who was investigating his violations.
Last week, Pompeo crossed yet another ethical line by speaking before the Republican National Convention, thereby disregarding the State Department’s explicit legal guidance against such appearances. The speech he delivered was weak and littered with false or simply ludicrous claims, such as that the recent diplomatic accord between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is “a deal that our grandchildren will read about in their history books.” Maybe if they major in Middle Eastern affairs.
With his ambitions likely fixed on a presidential candidacy in 2024, Pompeo is undoubtedly hoping most of the diplomatic disasters will ultimately be blamed on President Trump, especially if Trump loses the November election. But the former Kansas congressman should not get off so easy. Yes, it’s Trump’s foreign policy. But Pompeo’s steering of it has led to some of the worst diplomatic damage the United States has suffered in decades — especially in relations with its closest allies.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has approved plans to halt some U.S. aid to Ethiopia, Foreign Policy reported on Friday.
The halt in aid comes as the U.S. mediates a dispute over a dam on the Nile River that’s pitted Ethiopia against Egypt and Sudan, according to Foreign Policy. The decision could impact up to $130 million of assistance to programs including security, counter-terrorism and anti-human trafficking.
“There’s still progress being made, we still see a viable path forward here,” a U.S. official told the magazine. “The U.S. role is to do everything it can to help facilitate an agreement between the three countries that balance their interests. At the end of the day it has to be an agreement that works for these three countries.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Ethiopia and Egypt are at a standstill in negotiations over how the dam on a tributary of the Nile will be managed.
Egypt and Sudan, which depend on the Nile for much of their fresh water, are opposed to any development they say will impact the flow downstream, including the 6,000-megawatt power plant Ethiopia hopes to develop at the dam.
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Is the Trump Administration Using Aid to Bully Ethiopia Over Nile Dam?
It’s too bad that the U.S. has decided to take the wrong side in a local African dispute regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. As the following FP article reports the Trump administration is cutting off “some foreign assistance” to Ethiopia over GERD. The scheme may be intended to tip the scale in Egypt’s favor, but if history is any indication this kind of foreign intimidation does not work in Ethiopia. It’s also worth mentioning that the dam, a $4.5 billion hydroelectric project, is being fully funded by the Ethiopian people. (Getty Images)
U.S. Halts Some Foreign Assistance Funding to Ethiopia Over Dam Dispute with Egypt, Sudan, Some U.S. officials fear the move will harm Washington’s relationship with Addis Ababa.
Updated: AUGUST 27, 2020
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has approved a plan to halt U.S. foreign assistance to Ethiopia as the Trump administration attempts to mediate a dispute with Egypt and Sudan over the East African country’s construction of a massive dam on the Nile River.
The decision, made this week, could affect up to nearly $130 million in U.S. foreign assistance to Ethiopia and fuel new tensions in the relationship between Washington and Addis Ababa as it carries out plans to fill the dam, according to U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter. Officials cautioned that the details of the cuts are not yet set in stone and the finalized number could amount to less than $130 million.
Programs that are on the chopping block include security assistance, counterterrorism and military education and training, anti-human trafficking programs, and broader development assistance funding, officials and congressional aides said. The cuts would not impact U.S. funding for emergency humanitarian relief, food assistance, or health programs aimed at addressing COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS, officials said.
The move is meant to address the standoff between Ethiopia and other countries that rely on the Nile River downstream that have opposed the construction of the massive dam project, called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt sees the dam’s construction as a core security issue given the country’s heavy reliance on the river for fresh water and agriculture, and in the past Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has hinted his country could use military force to halt the dam’s construction.
Some Ethiopian officials have said they believe the Trump administration is taking Egypt’s side in the dispute. President Donald Trump has shown a fondness for Sisi, reportedly calling him his “favorite dictator” during a G-7 summit last year. Officials familiar with negotiations said the Trump administration has not approved parallel cuts in foreign assistance to Egypt.
Administration officials have repeatedly assured all sides that Washington is an impartial mediator in the negotiations, which mark one of the few diplomatic initiatives in Africa that the president has played a personal and active role in. These officials pointed out that Egypt has accused the United States of taking Ethiopia’s side in the dispute as well.
“There’s still progress being made, we still see a viable path forward here,” said one U.S. official. “The U.S. role is to do everything it can to help facilitate an agreement between the three countries that balance their interests. At the end of the day it has to be an agreement that works for these three countries.”
But the move is likely to face sharp pushback on Capitol Hill, according to Congressional aides familiar with the matter. State Department officials briefed Congressional staff on the decision on Thursday, the aides said, and during the briefing insisted that the U.S.-Ethiopia relationship would remain strong despite a cutback in aid because the United States can have tough conversations “with friends.”
“This is a really fucking illogical way to show a ‘friend’ you really care,” one Congressional aide told Foreign Policy in response.
Agitu Gudeta was killed on December 29th. The goat-herder and cheesemaker who became a symbol of integration in Italy was 42. (Photo: Alamy)
The Economist
In all the world there was nothing as beautiful as a goat. As she sat among them on the steep wooded slopes of the Valle di Felice, watching them tussle and shimmy in the tall weeds, Agitu Gudeta rejoiced in their long shoulders and strong legs, their compactness and the grace of their horns, curving back like swords. When they came close, for they loved crowding round, she fondled their ears and kissed their noses, stroked their fine hair and basked in the sight of their faces gazing down on her against the clear Italian sky.
These were not just any goats, but Pezzata Mochena, the ancient piebald race of the high Alpine region near the Austrian border. They came in all goat-colours, but mostly streaked and patched with black or warm red-brown. In 2010, when she bought 15, they were almost extinct; within a decade she had 180, and knew the names and characters of every one of them. So she would chide Cinnamon, as she gently cleaned her udder, for sitting in muck again, and rebuke Kay for trying to climb into her car, and as she led them all out to pasture she would shush them like a congregation of children, blithely twirling her stick in her slim black hands.
UPDATE: Tributes Paid to Agitu Gudeta: The Ethiopian Farm Owner Killed in Italy
Agitu Ideo Gudeta, who was killed on Wednesday, used abandoned land to start a goat farming project employing migrants and refugees in Italy. She started with just 15 goats, increasing the herd to 180 in just a few years. She produced organic milk and cheese using environmentally friendly methods. Agitu was attacked and killed, allegedly by a former employee, on her farm in Trentino. (Photo: Reuters)
Tributes paid to Ethiopian refugee farmer who championed integration in Italy
Tributes have been paid to a 42-year-old Ethiopian refugee and farmer who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home.
Agitu Ideo Gudeta was attacked and killed, allegedly by a former employee, on her farm in Trentino on Wednesday.
Gudeta had left Addis Ababa in 2010 after angering the authorities by taking part in protests against “land grabbing”. Once in Italy, she tenaciously followed and realised her ambition to move to the mountains and start her own farm. Taking advantage of permits that give farmers access to abandoned public land in depopulated areas, she reclaimed 11 hectares (27 acres) around an old barn in the Mòcheni valley, where she founded her La Capra Felice (The Happy Goat) enterprise.
Gudeta started with a herd of 15 goats, quickly rising to 180 in a few years, producing organic milk and cheese using environmentally friendly methods and hiring migrants and refugees.
“I created my space and made myself known, there was no resistance to me,” she told Reuters news agency that year.
“Agitu brought to Italy the dream she was unable to realise in Ethiopia, in part because of land grabbing,” Gabriella Ghermandi, singer, performer, novelist and friend of Gudeta, told the Guardian. “Her farm was successful because she applied what she had learned from her grandparents in the countryside.
“In Italy, many people have described her enterprise as a model of integration. But Agitu’s dream was to create an environmentally sustainable farm that was more than just a business; for her it also symbolised struggle against class divisions and the conviction that living in harmony with nature was possible. And above all she carried out her work with love. She had given a name to each one of her goats.”
In a climate where hostility toward migrants was increasing, led by far-right political leaders, her success story was reported by numerous media outlets as an example of how integration can benefit communities.
“The most rewarding satisfaction is when people tell me how much they love my cheeses because they’re good and taste different,” she said in an interview with Internazionale in 2017. “It compensates for all the hard work and the prejudices I’ve had to overcome as a woman and an immigrant.”
Two years ago she received death threats and was the target of racist attacks, which she reported to police, recounting them on her social media posts.
But police said a man who has confessed to the rape and murder of the farmer was an ex-employee who, they said, allegedly acted for “economic reasons”.
The UN refugee agency said it was “pained” by Gudeta’s death, and that her entrepreneurial spirit “demonstrated how refugees can contribute to the societies that host them”.
“Despite her tragic end, the UNHCR hopes that Agitu Ideo Gudeta will be remembered and celebrated as a model of success and integration and inspire refugees that struggle to rebuild their lives,” the agency said.
“We spoke on the phone last week’’, said Ghermandi. “We spent two hours speaking about Ethiopia. We had plans to get together in the spring. Agitu considered Italy her home. She used to say that she had suffered too much in Ethiopia. Now Agitu is gone, but her work mustn’t die. We will soon begin a fundraising campaign to follow her plan for expanding the business so that her dream will live on.”
Gudeta would have turned 43 on New Year’s Day.
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The Tragedy of Agitu Gudeta: An Ethiopian Immigrant Killed on Her Farm in Italy
Agitu Ideo Gudeta, 42, an Ethiopian migrant who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home, has been killed on her farm where she raised goats for her cheese business, police said on Wednesday. Agitu had made her home in the mountains of Trentino’s Valle dei Mocheni, making goat’s cheese and beauty products in her farm (The Happy Goat), which was built on previously abandoned land. (Reuters)
Reuters
Ethiopian migrant who became symbol of integration in Italy killed on her goat farm
ROME (Reuters) – An Ethiopian migrant who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home, has been killed on her farm where she raised goats for her cheese business, police said on Wednesday.
A Ghanaian employee on her farm in the northern Italian region of Trentino has admitted to killing Agitu Ideo Gudeta, 42, with a hammer and raping her, Italian news agency Ansa reported. The report could not immediately be confirmed.
Gudeta had made her home in the mountains of Trentino’s Valle dei Mocheni, making goat’s cheese and beauty products in her farm La Capra Felice (The Happy Goat), which was built on previously abandoned land.
Her story was reported by numerous international media, including Reuters , as an example of a migrant success story in Italy at a time of rising hostility towards immigrants, fueled by the right-wing League party.
Gudeta escaped from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in 2010 after her participation in protests against ‘land-grabbing’ angered local authorities. Activists accused the authorities of setting aside large swathes of farmland for foreign investors.
On reaching Italy she was able to use common land in the northern mountains to build her new enterprise, taking advantage of permits that give farmers access to public land to prevent local territory from being reclaimed by wild nature.
Starting off with 15 goats, she had 180 by 2018 when she became a well-known figure.
“I created my space and made myself known, there was no resistance to me,” she told Reuters in a story that year.
Sebhat Nega (left), a founding member of the TPLF, was among those who were captured this week. AA reports: "Sebhat is considered a magnate within the TPLF and is known for having built a multibillion-dollar business empire in Ethiopia over the 27 years the group was in power. On Thursday, the army said nine other key TPLF officials had been captured, while four others were neutralized in the ongoing law enforcement operation." (Photo via Twitter)
As VOA reports due to the politically and ethnically polarized nature of the Ethiopian media environment in the Diaspora coupled with the current information blackout, for those of us who live outside the country “the search for verified, accurate news on the conflict” is an ever growing challenge. As a result “Ethiopians from the country’s roughly 3 million diaspora [find] themselves looking to other, often unreliable sources of information found on social media.” VOA adds: “For the [Diaspora] population, the media void struck right at the moment they most wanted news of what was happening in their home country.” (Photo: Reuters)
“The UN on Saturday (December 12, 2020) apologized to Ethiopia for a widely reported incident where its staffers breached security checkpoints in the Tigray region,” reports Addis Getachew for Anadolu Agency. “The UN Resident Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Sozy apologized for the behavior of the UN staffers, the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency reported citing a statement by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Peace.” (AA)
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Saturday, November 28th that military operations in Tigray have been completed, shortly after he announced federal troops had seized full control of Mekelle. (AP Photo)
Refugees who fled the conflict in Tigray arrive on the banks of the Tekeze River on the Sudan-Ethiopia border, in Hamdayet, eastern Sudan, Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. (AP Photo)
Refugees from Ethiopia wait to register at the UNCHR center in Sudan on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2020. Tens of thousands of people have fled a conflict in Ethiopia for Sudan, sometimes so quickly they had to leave family behind. There is not enough to feed them in the remote area of southern Sudan that they rushed to. (AP)
Refugees who fled the conflict in Ethiopia wait to get cooked rice served by Sudanese local volunteers in eastern Sudan, Monday, Nov. 23, 2020. (AP Photo)
People read newspapers and magazines reporting on the current military confrontation in the country on a street in Addis Ababa, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020. (AP Photo)
Ethiopian Orthodox Christians light candles and pray for peace during a church service at the Medhane Alem Cathedral in the Bole Medhanealem area of Addis Ababa, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020 (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
For Ethiopia’s Diaspora, Seeking News Amid Communication Blackout is a Challenge
VOA News
By Salem Solomon
December 18, 2020
WASHINGTON – When violence erupted in Ethiopia’s Tigray region between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) last month, those living in the global diaspora scrambled for information.
The Ethiopian army went into Tigray on Nov. 4, after the government accused local forces of attacking a military base there. TPLF leaders called the federal government’s response a war against the people of Tigray.
The search for verified, accurate news on the conflict was hampered by authorities preventing many international media organizations from accessing the conflict zone and disruptions to phone and internet connections that resulted in an information blackout. And Ethiopians from the country’s roughly 3 million diaspora found themselves looking to other, often unreliable sources of information found on social media.
For the country’s migrant population, the media void struck right at the moment they most wanted news of what was happening in their home country.
Most rely on messaging apps including Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber which provide a “lifeline” connecting the diaspora to people at home, Tewodros Workneh, an assistant professor of global communication at Kent State University in Ohio, said.
“It’s incredibly difficult if you live in this country [in the diaspora] or in other parts of the world when there is a media blackout in the conflict region right now. It’s really frustrating for diaspora communities,” Tewodros added.
In the information vacuum, people look to other, often unreliable sources of information.
“When you cannot hear from your relatives and your friends and family members, what you rely on are third parties,” said Tewodros, who studies media development, including in Ethiopia. “And often times this vacuum is filled by different political interest groups on social media platforms who have no knowledge about what’s going on.”
Misinformation spread widely during the conflict. Images were shared on social media platforms of old airplane crashes alongside claims they had been downed Ethiopian fighter jets. An image showing a 2015 factory explosion in China was passed off as being from a missile strike by Tigrayan forces against neighboring Eritrea.
Ethiopia has a range of media outlets run from outside the country. But oftentimes these satellite television networks are politically or ethnically aligned, journalists and scholars said.
Befeqadu Hailu, executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy based in the capital, Addis Ababa, said that outlets abroad can play an important role but that bias sometimes influences the way they report on events.
“They have a positive contribution especially in times of repression by the government here [in Ethiopia]. They can be the voice of the silenced here,” Befeqadu said. But, he added, they can sometimes “aggravate” the conversation because of their allegiances, or through using sources or information that are less reliable.
“I think that the diaspora media is usually more divided than the media organizations that are here,” Befeqadu said. “The diaspora is more divided along ethnic lines, along ideological and political ideological lines, and they show their allegiance without fear.”
Reeyot Alemu, a journalist for the U.S.-based Ethiopian news website Ethio 360 Media, which reports primarily in Amharic, says some journalists do their due diligence and refrain from becoming swayed along ethnic or political lines.
“There are gaps created as a result of working from abroad but responsible journalists always verify information using all the means available,” Reeyot told VOA in Amharic. “But there is still a big gap when it comes to applying journalism principles not only caused by physical distance, but also taking sides.
The challenges of reporting from overseas have been exacerbated during the information blackout.
The government denied responsibility for the latest internet cuts. A tweet by the Ethiopia State of Emergency Fact Check, which says it provides the latest information on the state of emergency, shared a video on Twitter that it says shows unidentified individuals breaking into the northern region’s office of Ethio-Telecom, the country’s sole internet provider and then “intentionally” disconnecting the network.
Internet blocks during times of conflict or unrest in Ethiopia aren’t new. Data from NetBlocks, which tracks cybersecurity and internet governance, shows other regions in the country were cut off during protests or violence following major events such as the killing of prominent Oromo artist Hachalu Hundessa in June. In that case, internet service was cut off for 23 days, the nonprofit organization said.
The government said at the time that social media were being used to exacerbate protests, during which at least 86 people were killed.
Befeqadu, of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, said journalists find themselves in a precarious position whenever there is conflict. “Since the military confrontation between the federal government and the Tigray region started, about seven journalists are detained and now in jail,” he said. “So, it is always tough when the government is under scrutiny. To be a reporter or a media affiliate in Ethiopia comes always with a risk.”
Reeyot, who covers her home country from more than 11,000 kilometers away in the United States, said the struggles are felt from afar.
“It is not just working from abroad, but the lack of access and internet blackout makes it difficult to follow the current situation, even for someone inside the country. Closing all access is problematic,” Reeyot said.
Reeyot knows firsthand the risks for journalists in Ethiopia. She served just over four years of a 14-year sentence for terrorism because of her critical reporting for the independent weekly Feteh, before her release in 2015.
In addition to these challenges, journalists working in the diaspora endure regular threats and accusations of bias. Reeyot says the harassment and intimidation comes from all sides but can be strong from the government.
Ethiopia had shown signs of reversing its poor press freedom record when Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. The country was hailed for releasing journalists and political dissidents and the new prime minister last year spoke of the need to open up the media space, while cautioning against the spread of hate speech and fake news.
But during points of conflict or unrest, including the Tigray fighting, Ethiopia has reverted to blocking access to information, detaining critical journalists or pressuring media who report critically on the government or appear more favorable to opposition, media rights groups say.
On Dec. 12, the deputy director general of the Information Network Security Agency, Kefyalew Tefera, accused the U.S.-based Oromia Media Network and Ethio 360 Media of collaborating with the TPLF.
Reeyot, who was imprisoned when the TPLF was in power, said that the accusation appears to be “simply because the media is deemed not to have a favorable view of the government.”
Accusations of supporting or working for the TPLF have led to an increase in the number of journalists jailed in Ethiopia since the fighting. Figures released by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists showed seven journalists jailed in Ethiopia on Dec. 1—nearly all of whom were arrested in November for coverage of the TPLF.
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What’s Happening in Ethiopia Is a Tragedy By Tsedale Lemma
Tsedale Lemma is the editor in chief of the Addis Standard.
NYT
Nov. 11, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The announcement last week that the government was about to launch a military operation into one of the country’s regions came, to put it lightly, as a shock.
Not only was it very far from the emollient statecraft that won Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize last year, it also seemed to shatter the purpose of his premiership. When he rose to power in 2018, Mr. Abiy promised to guide Ethiopia into a new era of peace, prosperity and national reconciliation.
But on Nov. 4, he dispatched the Army to Tigray, one of the country’s 10 semiautonomous regions and home to roughly 6 percent of the population, accusing its leaders — with whom he has increasingly sparred — of attacking a government defense post and attempting to steal military equipment.
And in the days since, Mr. Abiy imposed a six-month state of emergency on the Tigray region, declared its legislature void and approved a provisional replacement. As fighting raged, the internet and telephone networks have been shut down. Hundreds are reported to be dead.
This is a tragedy. Ethiopia stands on the cusp of civil war, bringing devastation to both the country and the wider region. While the situation is volatile and uncertain, this much is clear: Mr. Abiy’s political project, to bring together the nation in a process of democratization, is over. And much of the blame must be laid at his door.
After years of persistent anti-government protests, economic troubles and widespread unrest, Mr. Abiy took over a country on the brink of collapse. At least one million people were internally displaced in 2017, according to the United Nations, as the country was shaken by protests from Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups, who together make up nearly two-thirds of the population. Presenting himself as a reformer, the avalanche of changes promised by Mr. Abiy, who took over in April 2018, seemed to avert the worst of the country’s problems.
But Mr. Abiy overreached. His first cardinal mistake was to sideline the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, for decades the most powerful political force in the country, in the peace he brokered between Ethiopia and Eritrea. By pushing the Tigrayan leadership aside as he sealed his signature achievement, Mr. Abiy made clear the limits to his talk of unity.
That was a taste of what was to come. Last year, Mr. Abiy moved to dismantle the old political order. Going beyond his original remit, he proposed reconfiguring the coalition that had ruled the country for 27 years — the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front, or E.P.R.D.F., which itself comprised a gamut of regional parties — into a new, single party.
The T.P.L.F., which founded and dominated the coalition, was not keen on the change — but Mr. Abiy went ahead with it regardless, creating a rift with the Tigrayans and undermining the country’s delicate political settlement. Far from minimizing the fallout, Mr. Abiy exacerbated it, removing all ministers from the T.P.L.F. from his cabinet.
By the time the new party was announced, in November 2019, the damage was done. The T.P.L.F., angered by the whittling away of its power and concerned that the country’s federal system was under threat, had not joined. They weren’t alone in their disquiet. In Mr. Abiy’s own region, Oromia, many were skeptical of the new order, while southern Ethiopia splintered into disorder, as multiple administrative zones demanded self-rule. After coming to power on the promise of unity, Mr. Abiy had alienated and frustrated key components of his coalition. Suddenly, he looked vulnerable.
The coronavirus changed the calculus. The all-important national election, scheduled for August, was postponed; the focus became how to mitigate the damage wrought by the pandemic. But the political problems didn’t go away.
Ethiopian Orthodox Christians light candles and pray for peace during a church service at the Medhane Alem Cathedral in the Bole Medhanealem area of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Updated: November 5th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia’s army said Thursday the country has been forced into an “unexpected and aimless war” with its well-armed Tigray region, while Tigray asserted that fighter jets had bombed areas around its capital — a marked escalation with little sign of the two sides willing to talk to calm the crisis.
Ethiopia’s army deputy chief said military forces are being sent to the fighting in Tigray from other parts of the country. “The army will not go anywhere,” Birhanu Jula told reporters, amid fears that the conflict would spill into other regions of Africa’s second-most populous nation. “The war will end there.”
For his part, the Tigray region’s president, Debretsion Gebremichael, told reporters that “we are in position to defend ourselves from enemies that waged war on the Tigray region. … We are ready to be martyrs.”
Ethiopia’s government has not commented on the bombing allegation, read out Thursday evening on the Tigray regional broadcaster.
The strong words came a day after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the nation the military will carry out further operations this week in response to an alleged deadly attack on a military base by the regional government.
Observers warn that a civil war in Ethiopia involving Tigray could destabilize the already turbulent Horn of Africa. The prime minister, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his sweeping political reforms, now faces his greatest challenge in holding together a country of some 110 million people with multiple ethnic and other grievances.
Communications remained cut off in the northern Tigray region after services disappeared at just around the time Abiy’s office first announced the attack and military action early Wednesday. The lack of contact has challenged efforts to verify the Ethiopian federal government’s account of events.
The Tigray capital, Mekele, appeared calm on Thursday morning but skirmishes took place elsewhere, a source told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media about it.
Ethiopia’s army deputy chief asserted that members of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front are “fleeing and joining the army; those injured are receiving medical treatment.” The army was trying to avoid civilian casualties, he said.
The Tigray leader asserted that the Ethiopian army’s northern command is siding with the Tigray people, and he confirmed that fighting is also taking place in an area bordering the Amhara region, far from where the original clash was reported. “They are surrounding us with their forces,” he said.
Verifying either side’s claims remained a challenge.
“Certainly there is fighting, but I don’t think anyone can credibly assert who attacked who first,” former U.S. diplomat Payton Knopf, a senior advisor with the United States Institute of Peace, told the AP on Wednesday night. He wondered why the well-armed Tigray region’s forces would start by raiding a command post: “They’re not lacking for weaponry.”
Aid organizations and human rights groups are pleading for communications links to be restored and warning of a humanitarian disaster if hundreds of thousands of people flee fighting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ethiopian Orthodox Christians light candles and pray for peace during a church service at the Medhane Alem Cathedral in the Bole Medhanealem area of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020. The head of Ethiopia’s new state of emergency committee, Redwan Hussein, has said the federal government’s conflict is with a “small clique of TPLF circles that are keen to destabilize Ethiopia,” and the government must do everything possible to “liberate the Tigrayan people.” (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)
AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene
Ethiopia has imposed a six-month state of emergency on the Tigray region, which played a dominant role in the country’s government and military before Abiy took office in 2018. Since then the region, feeling marginalized, has split from the ruling coalition and defied Abiy by holding a regional election in September that the federal government called illegal.
Tigray borders Eritrea, which fought a bloody border war with Ethiopia before the countries made peace in 2018, shortly after Abiy took power. The Tigray regional government has accused Eritrea of teaming up with Ethiopia’s federal government in this week’s offensive. Eritrea’s information minister did not respond to a request for comment.
TPLF officials have said airspace over the region is closed, and accused the federal government of deploying troops to “cow the people of Tigray into submission by force.”
The TPLF also invited other members of the security forces across Ethiopia to join it in “opposing the colonel Abiy’s regime.”
The head of Ethiopia’s new state of emergency committee, Redwan Hussein, has said the federal government’s conflict is with a “small clique of TPLF circles that are keen to destabilize Ethiopia,” and the government must do everything possible to “liberate the Tigrayan people.”
“Given the strength of Tigray’s security forces, the conflict could well be protracted,” the International Crisis Group said in a statement Thursday. “Tigray has a large paramilitary force and a well-drilled local militia, thought to number perhaps 250,000 troops combined.”
It appears unlikely that Ethiopian forces would quickly oust the TPLF leadership, the group said, and even then loyalists could mount “sustained resistance.” The statement called for “immediate, concerted mediation – local, regional and international.”
The TPLF over the weekend told the AP it’s not interested in negotiating with the federal government. It was not clear if that stance had changed in light of the new events.
It also was not clear who might step in to mediate.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement overnight seemed to support the federal government’s account of events, saying the U.S. was “deeply concerned by reports that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front carried out attacks on Ethiopian National Defense Force bases in Ethiopia’s Tigray region on November 3. We are saddened by the tragic loss of life and urge immediate action to restore the peace and de-escalate tensions.”
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War Looms in Ethiopia As PM Orders Military Against TPLF
The statement by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office, and the reported attack by the well-armed Tigray People’s Liberation Front, immediately raised concerns that one of Africa’s most populous and powerful countries could plunge back into war. That would send a shock wave through the Horn of Africa and beyond. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Updated: November 4th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia’s prime minister on Wednesday ordered the military to confront one of the country’s regional governments after he said it carried out a deadly attack on a military base overnight, citing months of “provocation and incitement” and declaring that “the last red line has been crossed.”
The statement by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office, and the reported attack by the well-armed Tigray People’s Liberation Front, immediately raised concerns that one of Africa’s most populous and powerful countries could plunge back into war. That would send a shock wave through the Horn of Africa and beyond.
Addressing the nation on TV, Abiy announced “several martyrs” in the attack in Mekele, the northern Tigray region’s capital, and Dansha town. The prime minister said “the end is near” for the regional force, which is based in Ethiopia’s most sensitive region, neighboring Eritrea. The two countries made peace in 2018 after a long border war.
The TPLF had been the dominant part of Ethiopia’s governing coalition before Abiy took office in 2018 and announced sweeping political reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Those reforms, however, have opened space for old ethnic and other grievances. The TPLF, feeling marginalized, left the coalition last year. It remains a strong military force, observers say.
There was no immediate word from the TPLF, and all internet and phone lines were cut in the Tigray region following the announcement. Tigray TV reported that airspace has been closed over the region.
Ethiopia was already stressed by a dispute with Egypt over a massive Ethiopian dam project that has drawn rare attention by President Donald Trump to Africa, and by a multi-layer crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic, deadly ethnic violence and a locust outbreak.
Now the greatest test of Abiy’s rule has has come.
Tigray officials have objected to the postponement of Ethiopia’s national election, once set for August, because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the extension of Abiy’s time in office.
On Sunday, a senior TPLF official, Getachew Reda, told The Associated Press his side will not accept a negotiation with the federal government.
“What we need now is a national dialogue, not a negotiation,” he said. The TPLF says the release of detained former officials is one precondition to opening talks.
In September, people in Tigray voted in a local election, defying the federal government and increasing political tensions. Last month the federal government moved to send funding for the region to local administrations instead of the regional government, angering TPLF officials.
“This war is the worst possible outcome of the tensions that have been brewing,” William Davison, International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Ethiopia, said Wednesday, urging a ceasefire. “Given Tigray’s relatively strong security position, the conflict may well be protracted and disastrous.”
Abiy’s statement asserted that the TPLF attacked a military base in Tigray early Wednesday and attempted to take artillery and other equipment. The statement accused the TPLF of arming and organizing irregular militias.
After months of “extreme patience” by the federal government, “a war however cannot be prevented only on the goodwill and decision of one side,” the prime minister’s statement said. “The last red line has been crossed with this morning’s attacks and the federal government is therefore forced into a military confrontation” to save the country.
Observers have worried for months about the growing tensions and their implications for the long-turbulent Horn of Africa region, where Abiy cast himself as a peacemaker shortly after taking office.
A report by the United States Institute of Peace said the fragmentation of Ethiopia “would be the largest state collapse in modern history, likely leading to mass interethnic and interreligious conflict … and a humanitarian and security crisis at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East on a scale that would overshadow the existing conflicts in South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.”
The international community needs to rally around the idea of national dialogue in Ethiopia, the International Crisis Group warned a week ago.
“The alternative, given the country’s multiple and bitter divides, is a potential march to war that would be catastrophic for Africa’s second most populous country and would send shock waves, and refugees, into other Horn of Africa countries as well as across the Mediterranean,” the group wrote.
Hana Getachew, founder of the Brooklyn-based Bolé Road Textiles that sells home linens, fabric, pillows, and more, all hand-woven in Ethiopia. (Photo via Refinery29)
For Hana Getachew, the Ethiopian-American founder of Bolé Road Textiles, a love of textiles can be traced back to childhood, stemming from one garment in particular: her mother’s dress for the Mels, an Ethiopian tradition that takes place during a wedding ceremony. She remembers it in excruciating detail — from the olive green shade and the waist-cinching A-line silhouette, right down to the gilded threadwork and golden daisies.
“We’d always take it out and play with it. We were obsessed with it,” Getachew says. There were others, too, that she loved: dresses from friends and family, brought when they visited from Ethiopia. “In Ethiopia, weavers would come up with non-traditional syncopated patterns, with elements of symmetry and diamond designs. That has stayed with me, and I put a lot of it into my work today.”
Getachew speaks about her career as two different lives: her life as an interior designer (before she launched Bolé Road), and her life after. It’s the latter — as the mastermind behind the home decor brand inspired by her own connections to family and the African diaspora — that has granted her the liberty to experiment and express herself genuinely through a world enriched in color, shapes, textures, and patterns.
“I knew I was a good interior designer, but I felt like anyone could do it. It wasn’t unique to me; I wanted to find something that is essential to my soul,” she says about working at an architecture firm for almost 11 years, decorating commercial interiors and offices. “One day, my coworker told me her friend quit her full-time job to work on her pillow business. And I was like, Yes, that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Bolé Road Textiles
Bolé Road Textiles
The concept for Bolé Road lived in her mind for almost eight years before she found the courage to execute it. In 2008, the same year Getachew’s ideas were growing, everyone around her was losing their jobs, which led many of them to dream-chase and become entrepreneurs. “The maker movement,” she proclaims. “I’m very risk-averse, which is not a good trait as an entrepreneur. That’s why I didn’t leap into this, but when I saw a whole movement happening, I thought maybe I could do this too.”
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Getachew left her career in interior design in 2014, but spent years prior to that preparing for the transition. She took free business classes at NYC Small Business Services and scouted artisans through word of mouth, the internet, and asking around in Ethiopia. A year later, she officially launched her brand on the same day as the Brooklyn Designs annual show. (The best piece of advice she received: “Just start, don’t overthink it.”)
“It was an amazing event, and it was an incredible way to launch, rather than hit publish on a website and wait,” she says, likening the experience to a graduation, being surrounded by family, friends, and former coworkers. “Those kinds of events are really great for understanding how people respond to [your product] and getting your first round of feedback.”
Everything about Bolé Road revolves around intention, identity, and gratitude to the heritage and community that supported Getachew most, from the colors and patterns inspired by Ethiopian landscapes to the name of the company.
While most Americans have never seen anything like what happened at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, the scene was sadly familiar for some immigrants and refugees. “What just happened today in the Capitol, just kind of reminds me of what our parents went through... in the 70s,” said Endale Getahun, who immigrated from Ethiopia to the U.S. in the early 1980s, when he was 10 years old [and now] runs an immigrant and refugee-focused community radio station in Aurora, Colorado. (ABC News)
Channel 13, ABC News Now
AURORA, Colo. — Immigrants who came to America fleeing political upheaval and violence in their home countries saw political violence on American soil Wednesday.
For many, it was shocking.
“What just happened today in the Capitol, just kind of reminds me of what our parents went through… in the 70s,” said Endale Getahun, who immigrated from Ethiopia to the U.S. in the early 1980s, when he was 10 years old.
Getahun describes that as a time of political upheaval and conflict in his home country. Conflict continues today, with recent violence between the country’s government and the region of Tigray.
Like so many other immigrants, Getahun’s family came to America looking for peace and stability. Watching images of chaos on Wednesday was unsettling.
“I think it’s very shocking, to happen in this world, in a democratic country, which welcomes everyone to be safe from chaos – not just from Ethiopia but all over the world. The United States is a symbol of democracy, freedom, a dream to achieve,” he said.
Getahun runs an immigrant and refugee-focused community radio station in Aurora, KETO FM. He said Wednesday, the conversation covered the U.S. Capitol takeover.
Getahun can offer an immigrant’s perspective on those developments.
“The other side of the world has experienced this kind of chaotic government takeover and the U.S. was the one that comes back and helps those countries,” he said. “So I think this is a very testing moment for all of us, including the American citizens as well.”
Getahun said it’s up to U.S. leaders, specifically President Donald Trump, to calm the country and ensure people are safe.
World Watches US Chaos with Shock, Dismay and Some Mockery
The Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — As the world watched American institutions shaken to the core by an angry mob, officials and ordinary citizens wondered: How fragile is democracy, and how much stress could their own political systems withstand?
“If it can happen in the U.S., it can happen anywhere,” said Gunjan Chhibber, a 39-year-old who works for an American tech company in India, the world’s largest democracy. She stayed up all night, watching and worrying at her home in Delhi as the chaos unfolded many time zones away.
In Germany, whose modern system of governance was nurtured by successive American administrations, Chancellor Angela Merkel was unusually blunt Thursday, drawing a direct line from President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede his election defeat to the atmosphere that made the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters possible.
“A fundamental rule of democracy is that, after elections, there are winners and losers. Both have to play their role with decency and responsibility so that democracy itself remains the winner,” Merkel said.
Eva Sakschewska, a German who followed the news closely, said the events in Washington were almost inconceivable.
“You can only fear how far this can go when populists come to power and do such things,” she said. “You know that in the U.S., democracy has a long history and that it comes to something like that – yes one is afraid.”
Even the United Nations offered up the kind of statement usually reserved for fragile democracies, expressing sadness and calling on unidentified political leaders to foster respect for “democratic processes and the rule of law.”
In Iraq, where the violent U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to years of sectarian conflict and a deeply flawed democracy, many watched and marveled at the scenes unfolding in Congress.
Iraqis have suffered for years under power-sharing arrangements among competing elites divided along sectarian lines. Backroom deals are common to avoid political paralysis, and democratic ideals have been tainted by an entrenched system of patronage through which state jobs are doled out in exchange for support. Political parties also have affiliated militias that wield significant power on the street. From afar, the violence in Washington had a contemptible familiarity.
“Iraq calls on the U.S. regime to respect the principles of democracy, or it will intervene militarily to bring down the dictator,” said Mustafa Habib, a well-known Iraqi analyst and researcher, in a tweet that mocked Washington’s actions abroad.
Venezuela, which is under U.S. sanctions, said the events showed that the U.S. “is suffering what it has generated in other countries with its politics of aggression.”
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has survived U.S.-backed opposition efforts to oust him despite accusations of human rights abuses, civil unrest and a humanitarian crisis that has forced millions to flee the oil-rich country.
“We exported so much democracy that we don’t have any left,” American-Palestinian scholar Yousef Monayyer wrote on Twitter, the social network favored by Trump until he was locked out of it late Wednesday.
His comment joined the growing strain of sarcasm bordering on schadenfreude from those who have long resented the perceived American tendency to chastise other countries for less-than-perfect adherence to democratic ideals.
This time, however, it was an attempt by Americans to stop a peaceful transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden after a democratic election in a country that many around the world have looked at as a model for democratic governance.
In China, which has had constant friction with Washington over trade, as well as military and political issues, people were scathing in their criticism of Trump and his supporters, citing both the coronavirus pandemic and the mob action.
Communist-ruled China has long accused the U.S. of hypocrisy in its efforts to promote democracy and advocate for human rights overseas.
The Communist Youth League ran a photo montage of the Capitol violence on its Twitter-like Weibo microblog with the caption: “On the sixth, the U.S. Congress, a most beautiful site to behold.” That appeared to mock House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her June 2019 comments in praise of sometimes- violent anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
“The U.S. is not as safe as China, right? I think Trump is a self-righteous and selfish person,” said financial adviser Yang Ming.
Iran, which faces routine U.S. criticism over violations of human rights and democratic values, jumped on the chaos as proof of American hypocrisy.
The semiofficial Fars news agency called the United States a “fragmented democracy,” while Iran’s pro-government Twitter accounts gloated, circulating photos of the mobs with hashtags that included #DownfalloftheUS.
The events tarnished the American insistence that it is a bastion of democracy for countries that have only in recent decades, in some cases, given up autocratic or military-controlled forms of government.
“The beauty of democracy?” with a shrug emoji was the reaction tweeted by Bashir Ahmad, a personal assistant to the president of Nigeria, which has seen several coups since independence — including one led decades ago by President Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected to office in 2015.
Some legislatures in Asia — South Korea and Taiwan, for instance — have at times been marred by brawls and screaming matches, but democracies throughout the region are normally staid versions of European and American lawmaking models.
“This is shocking. I hope this will serve as chance for the Americans to review their democracy,” said Na HyunPil at the Korean House for International Solidarity, a Seoul-based NGO. “Trump is entirely responsible for this incident. After his four-year rule, the Americans find it difficult to tell other countries that their country is a good model for democracy.”
Several countries, both U.S. allies and antagonists, issued travel warnings to their citizens, although with coronavirus infections soaring in the United States, arrivals from abroad are down to a trickle.
Ally after ally expressed shock, followed by affirmations that U.S. democratic institutions would withstand the turmoil.
“All my life, America has stood for some very important things: an idea of freedom and an idea of democracy,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “Insofar as he encouraged people to storm the Capitol, and insofar as the president has consistently cast doubt on the outcome of a free and fair election, I believe that was completely wrong.”
But some, like European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, warned that the attempt to halt a peaceful transition in what many consider the world’s oldest democracy showed that no place is immune and that backsliding is reversed only with difficulty.
“Democracy is never self-evident. It has to be worked on each and every day. It has to be won anew every day. And that applies to all democracies,” she told German news outlets. And that’s why we know that it starts as a very small thing.”
For others, less friendly, it was portrayed as a last gasp and one that belonged solely to Americans themselves.
“American democracy is obviously limping on both feet,” said Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament. “I say this without a shadow of gloating. America no longer charts a course and therefore has lost all rights to set it — and even more so to impose it on others.”
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‘Moment of Shame’: Former US Presidents Condemn The Violent Mob Spectacle in DC
Obama, Bush, Clinton, Carter all condemn the Trump supporter riots. (Photos: AP and Getty Images)
Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter on Wednesday each condemned the mob of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol — and lawmakers who sought to delegitimize the presidential election results beforehand.
“It is a sickening and heartbreaking sight,” Bush said in a statement. “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic – not our democratic republic.”
Obama said the insurrection, in which at least one person died, will be remembered as “a moment of great dishonor and shame” and that his successor, President Donald Trump, is culpable. He also faulted the Republican Party and the right-wing media ecosystem for the role they played in casting doubt on the integrity of recent elections.
“Their fantasy narrative has spiraled further and further from reality, and it builds upon years of sown resentments,” Obama said in a statement. “Now we’re seeing the consequences, whipped up into a violent crescendo.”
Bush similarly said the rioters who breached the building and remained there for hours were “inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes.”
“I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement,” the 43rd president said.
Clinton said the seizure of parts of the Capitol was the disastrous result of “poison politics” and the proliferation of misinformation. But he said it did not shake his fundamental belief in the decency of the American people.
“If that’s who we really are, we must reject today’s violence, turn the page, and move forward together—honoring our Constitution, remaining committed to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Clinton said.
Bush also urged people upset about the recent elections to stand down for the sake of American democracy.
“Our country is more important than the politics of the moment,” Bush said. “Let the officials elected by the people fulfill their duties and represent our voices in peace and safety.”
Carter denounced the day’s events as a “national tragedy” and “not who we are as a nation.” In a statement released by the Carter Center, the former president said he and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter were troubled by the violence and hoped for Americans to come together to resolve the conflict.
Carter’s statement notably did not assign blame for the Capitol riots.
“Having observed elections worldwide, I know that we the people can unite to walk back from this precipice to peacefully uphold the laws of our nation, and we must,” the statement said. “We join our fellow citizens in praying for a peaceful resolution so our nation can heal and complete the transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.”
The mass of rioters began to breach the Capitol earlier Wednesday, disrupting the vote certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump and further delaying what was already expected to become a days-long affair after Republican members of Congress challenged Biden’s win in several states. The building was cleared by the evening and Congress has returned to continue its duties.
However, Bush and Carter did not mention Trump — who has promoted false claims of rampant election fraud and embraced anti-democratic attempts stay in power — or anyone else by name in their dispatch. Bush, the most recent Republican president prior to Trump, has largely been careful not to publicly criticize the party’s present standard-bearer.
Obama and Clinton, both Democrats, were far more explicit in faulting Trump for his role in instigating the unrest.
“The match was lit by Donald Trump and his most ardent enablers, including many in Congress, to overturn the results of an election he lost,” Obama said. “The election was free, the count was fair, the result is final. We must complete the peaceful transfer of power our Constitution mandates.”
Trump has continued to speak favorably of the rioters, calling them “very special” and “great patriots” in several tweets that have since been removed by Twitter.
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” Trump wrote on Twitter in one such message. “Remember this day forever!”
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Trump supporters storm U.S. Capitol, with one woman killed and tear gas fired
The Washington Post
As President Trump told a sprawling crowd outside the White House that they should never accept defeat, hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in what amounted to an attempted coup that they hoped would overturn the election he lost. In the chaos, law enforcement officials said, one woman was shot and killed by police.
The violent scene — much of it incited by the president’s incendiary language — was like no other in modern American history, bringing to a sudden halt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
With poles bearing blue Trump flags, a mob that would eventually grow into the thousands bashed through Capitol doors and windows, forcing their way past police officers unprepared for the onslaught. Lawmakers were evacuated shortly before an armed standoff at the House chamber’s entrance. The woman who was shot was rushed to an ambulance, police said, and later died. Canisters of tear gas were fired across the Rotunda’s white marble floor, and on the steps outside the building, rioters flew Confederate flags.
The Senate stopped its proceedings, and the House doors were closed. In a notification, U.S. Capitol Police said no one would be allowed to come or go from the building as they struggled to regain control. “Stay away from exterior windows, doors. If outside, seek cover,” police warned.
All 1,100 members of the D.C. National Guard were activated, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) imposed a citywide curfew. From 6 p.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday, Bowser said, no one other than essential personnel would be allowed outdoors in the city.
The mob had arrived hours earlier, charging past the metal barricades on the property’s outer edge. Hundreds, then thousands followed them. Some scaled the Capitol’s walls to reach entrances; others climbed over one another.
On the building’s east side, police initially pushed the pro-Trump demonstrators back but soon gave up and fell back to the foot of the main steps. Within a half-hour, fights broke out again, and police retreated to the top of the stairs as screaming Trump supporters surged closer. After police perimeters were breached, the elated crowd began to sing the national anthem.
For an hour, they banged on the doors, chanting, “Let us in! Let us in!” Police inside fired pepper balls and smoke bombs into the crowd but failed to turn them away. After each volley, the rioters, who were mostly White men, would cluster around the doors again, yelling, arguing, pledging revolution.
Sometime after 2:10 p.m., a man used a clear plastic riot shield to break through the windows on a first floor to the south side of the building, then hopped in with a few others. Once inside, police suspect, rioters opened doors to let in more of their compatriots.
A police officer yelled from a higher stairway at the intruders, ordering them to stop, but when they didn’t, the officer fired at a man coming at him, two law enforcement officials said. Amid shouts and people rushing to get away from the sound of gunfire, rioters saw a woman in their group collapse. Police believe she was unarmed, a law enforcement official said, but the officer who shot her did not know that. Capitol Police had already been warned by D.C. police that many in the crowds were secretly carrying weapons.
“They shot a girl!” someone yelled as a group of Trump supporters ran out of the southeast entrance.
A team of paramedics with a gurney soon arrived and a Capitol Police officer stepped aside to let them pass. “White female, shot in the shoulder,” the officer said as they hurried past. They emerged minutes later.
On the gurney was a woman in jeans, gazing vacantly to one side, her torso and face covered in blood. As the gurney was loaded into the back of the ambulance, pro-Trump rioters swarmed around it, screaming, “Murderers!”
Capitol Police officers with long guns pushed them back, and the ambulance drove off.
Inside, where the lawmakers had donned gas masks kept under their chairs, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) could only think of his family as he and other lawmakers hid from the mob. Reeling from the loss of his 25-year-old son last week, Raskin had taken one of his daughters and his son-in-law to the Capitol to watch the debates unfold over certification of Biden’s election, he said, “because we wanted to be together.” Raskin was helping lead Democrats’ arguments against Republican objectors.
“I thought I could show them the peaceful transfer of power in the United States of America,” Raskin told C-SPAN earlier. “What was really going through my mind was their safety because they were not with me in the chamber, and I just wanted us all to get back together.”
Ethiopian officials deliver the Black Box for Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 to the headquarters of France's BEA air accident investigation agency in Le Bourget, France on March 14, 2019. As NPR reports the families of the passengers who died in the crash will be compensated from a fund of $500 million. (Reuters photo)
Boeing To Pay $2.5 Billion Over 737 Max Fraud, Faces No Other Charges
Boeing will pay more than $2.5 billion to settle criminal charges that it repeatedly concealed and lied about the 737 Max’s engineering problems that led to two catastrophic crashes claiming hundreds of lives.
The company admitted to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States as part of the deferred prosecution agreement announced on Thursday and will face no further charges from the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Boeing’s employees chose the path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception,” Acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, wrote in a statement.
Boeing, which is the country’s second-biggest defense contractor behind Lockheed Martin, will pay the DOJ a criminal penalty of $243.6 million.
The families and legal beneficiaries of the 346 passenger victims who died in the Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in Ethiopia five months later will be paid from a fund of $500 million. If split equally among them, that amounts to a little over $1.4 million for each family.
The vast majority of the settlement is allocated for airline companies that had purchased the faulty 737 Max aircraft and were subsequently forced to ground the planes following the crashes. Together they will receive $1.77 billion in compensation for their financial losses, according to the DOJ.
“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers,” Burns added in the statement.
In both cases, the crashes were caused by changes to the jet’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System that forced the nose of the 737 Max toward the ground and left pilots unable to control the planes.
In a note to employees, Boeing President and Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun said, “I firmly believe that entering into this resolution is the right thing for us to do—a step that appropriately acknowledges how we fell short of our values and expectations.”
He added: “This resolution is a serious reminder to all of us of how critical our obligation of transparency to regulators is, and the consequences that our company can face if any one of us falls short of those expectations.”
Internal Boeing documents revealed during a U.S.House panel’s inquiry showed that engineers notified the company of the MCAS “egregious” problems as early as 2016.
President-elect Joe Biden campaigns in Atlanta, Monday, Jan. 4, 2021, for Senate candidates Raphael Warnock, right, and Jon Ossoff, left. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
Warnock, Ossoff win in Georgia, handing Dems Senate control
ATLANTA (AP) — Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats — and with them, the U.S. Senate majority — as final votes were counted Wednesday, serving President Donald Trump a stunning defeat in his turbulent final days in office while dramatically improving the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s progressive agenda.
Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Democratic challengers who represented the diversity of their party’s evolving coalition, defeated Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler two months after Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992.
Warnock, who served as pastor for the same Atlanta church where civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, becomes the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate. And Ossoff becomes the state’s first Jewish senator and, at 33 years old, the Senate’s youngest member.
This week’s elections were expected to mark the formal finale to the tempestuous 2020 election season, although the Democrats’ resounding success was overshadowed by chaos and violence in Washington, where angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
Wednesday’s unprecedented siege drew fierce criticism of Trump’s leadership from within his own party, and combined with the bad day in Georgia, marked one of the darkest days of his divisive presidency.
Still, the Democrats’ twin victories in Georgia represented a striking shift in the state’s politics as the swelling number of diverse, college-educated voters flex their power in the heart of the Deep South. They also cemented the transformation of Georgia, once a solidly Republican state, into one of the nation’s premier battlegrounds for the foreseeable future.
In an emotional address early Wednesday, Warnock vowed to work for all Georgians whether they voted for him or not, citing his personal experience with the American dream. His mother, he said, used to pick “somebody else’s cotton” as a teenager.
“The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” he said. “Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”
Loeffler, who remains a senator until the results of Tuesday’s election are finalized, returned to Washington on Wednesday morning to join a small group of senators planning to challenge Congress’ vote to certify Biden’s victory. She didn’t get a chance to vocalize her objection before the violent protesters stormed the Capitol.
Georgia’s other runoff election pitted Perdue, a 71-year-old former business executive who held his Senate seat until his term expired Sunday, against Ossoff, a former congressional aide and journalist.
“This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state — for all the people of this state,” Ossoff said in a speech broadcast on social media Wednesday morning. “Whether you were for me, or against me, I’ll be for you in the U.S. Senate. I will serve all the people of the state.”
Trump’s false claims of voter fraud cast a dark shadow over the runoff elections, which were held only because no candidate hit the 50% threshold in the general election. He raised the prospect of voter fraud as votes were being cast and likened the Republicans who run Georgia’s election system to “chickens with their heads cut off” during a Wednesday rally in Washington.
Gabriel Sterling, a top official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office and a Republican, said there was “no evidence of any irregularities.”
“The biggest thing we’ve seen is from the president’s fertile mind of finding fraud where none exists,” he said.
Both contests tested whether the political coalition that fueled Biden’s November victory was an anti-Trump anomaly or part of a new electoral landscape. To win in Tuesday’s elections — and in the future — Democrats needed strong African American support.
AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 3,700 voters in Tuesday’s contests, found that Black voters made up roughly 30% of the electorate, and almost all of them — 94% — backed Ossoff and Warnock. The Democrats also relied on the backing of younger voters, people earning less than $50,000 annually and newcomers to the state.
The Republican coalition backing Loeffler and Perdue was the mirror opposite: white, older, wealthier and longtime Georgia residents.
The coalition closely resembles the one that narrowly handed Georgia’s Electoral College votes to Biden in November, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in almost three decades.
Trump’s claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election, while meritless, resonated with Republican voters in Georgia. About 7 in 10 agreed with his false assertion that Biden was not the legitimately elected president, AP VoteCast found.
Election officials across the country, including the Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, as well as Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed that there was no widespread fraud in the November election. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, where three Trump-nominated justices preside.
Publicly and privately, some Republicans acknowledged that Trump’s monthslong push to undermine the integrity of the nation’s electoral system may have contributed to the GOP’s losses in Georgia.
“It turns out that telling the voters that the election was rigged is not a great way to turn out your voters,” said Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican and a frequent Trump critic.
Even with Trump’s claims, voters in both parties were drawn to the polls because of the high stakes. AP VoteCast found that 6 in 10 Georgia voters say Senate party control was the most important factor in their vote.
Turnout exceeded both sides’ expectations. Ultimately, more people cast ballots in the runoffs than voted in Georgia’s 2016 presidential election.
Former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, issued a statement praising the election of Georgia’s first African American senator and his ability to improve divisions in Washington.
“Georgia’s first Black senator will make the (Senate) chamber more reflective of our country as a whole and open the door for a Congress that can forego gridlock for gridlock’s sake to focus instead on the many crises facing our nation,” Obama said.
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Related:
Bethlehem Fleming: Meet the Activist Working to Turn the U.S. Senate Blue
Ethiopian American activist Bethlehem Fleming is organizing a critical constituency [in Georgia] in the races that will decide the Senate. “Bethlehem is a hero in this get-out-the-vote effort because she is looking for a needle in a haystack, those few thousand Ethiopian and Eritrean voters among 500,000 or so voters,” says Jana Miles, a DeKalb County Democratic Party committee member. “She is a remarkable story.” (Getty Images)
OZY
Ethiopian native Bethlehem Fleming is identifying and trying to turn out thousands of voters from her homeland in Georgia’s pivotal Senate runoff elections.
Bethlehem Fleming, a native of Ethiopia, has carried around for almost three years President Donald Trump’s vulgar denouncement of African nations as “shithole countries.” It enraged her, but not as much as the president’s scornful sequel from the Oval Office on Oct. 23, when Trump said Egypt might just have to bomb Ethiopia’s $4.6 billion Blue Nile Dam to settle a water dispute.
“I think that galvanized Ethiopians in this country to vote for Joe Biden,” says Fleming, 45, a hospital administrator who lives in DeKalb County, Georgia. “Trump says these things about other countries he has no idea about and makes people mad, and they use their vote against him.”
Fleming, who has been an American citizen since 2008, settled her score with Trump on Nov. 3. Now she wants a more authoritative rebuke of his presidency. Fleming is aiming the grievance vote at his proxies, Republican candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, in the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5. Her community could be crucial to deciding which party controls the Senate, as Democrats would take control if they win both races.
Fleming will spend the next six weeks trying to make one-on-one contact with 4,000 Ethiopians and Eritreans in DeKalb County, which includes parts of Atlanta, and plead for them to vote for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the runoff. Fleming’s work is a specialized version of former gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams’ high-profile efforts to register and turn out voters of color throughout the state in recent years. These efforts are part of the turnout game required in these pivotal runoffs, which will be decided by which side can lure a bigger proportion of its November voters back to the polls.
Ted Terry, who is on the executive committee of the Georgia Democratic Party, estimates there are 30,000 to 40,000 registered voters who emigrated from Africa, in a state Biden won by just 13,000 votes.
Fleming has a daunting task over the next six weeks because the Georgia voter registration application, which is how most voter data is generated, has a box to check that simply says “Black.”
Immigrants from Africa who are registered to vote may have black skin, but they identify as Ethiopians, Kenyans, Sudanese, Somalians and many other nationalities. That makes it hard for Fleming to connect with people from her country.
The task is finding all those Ethiopian Americans, as well as voters from neighboring Eritrea. Fleming is working with Mike Endale, a Washington-based software developer of Ethiopian descent, who has created a software program to cull the names “most likely Ethiopian” from the half-million voters on the voter rolls in DeKalb. There are efforts underway in neighboring Fulton and Gwinnett counties to do the same.
“Bethlehem is a hero in this get-out-the-vote effort because she is looking for a needle in a haystack, those few thousand Ethiopian and Eritrean voters among 500,000 or so voters,” says Jana Miles, a DeKalb County Democratic Party committee member. “She is a remarkable story.”
Once she finds Ethiopians, Fleming’s cultural cachet — she can speak in her native Amharic when she calls — can stir them to vote, not just because of Trump’s put-downs, but on policy issues as well.
“I can’t see their faces, but I can sense their faces light up by how they start talking to me,” she says. “We make a connection and they are excited, and then we start talking about issues like health care and immigration and how Senate Democrats can help them. A lot of immigrants depend on health care.”
Fleming has also created election flyers with Ethiopia’s bright colors of red, yellow and green, and native script on one side and English on the other. The flyers are handed out at GOTV events, or pasted to poles in immigrant communities. Fleming appeared regularly on the radio during the general election to encourage her fellow naturalized citizens to get out and vote, and she’s stepped up her efforts considerably for the runoff.
Ethiopian American Oballa Oballa who was elected as a city Council member in Austin, Minnesota this past November has been sworn into office. (Photo: Oballa Oballa speaking at the Austin city Council Chambers in Minnesota on Monday, January 4th, 2021 after being sworn in as council member/by Bethel Gessesse/Mshale)
Oballa Oballa sworn in as Austin City Council member
AUSTIN, Minn. – Ethiopian-born Oballa Oballa was sworn in Monday to take his seat as the new Austin City Council member representing First Ward. The city staggered the swearing in of new council members and the mayor throughout the day to adhere to coronavirus pandemic social distancing guidelines with Oballa taking his oath of office shortly after 2PM.
Oballa, who was elected in November, is the first person of color elected to the Austin City Council. The city, a 15-minute drive from the Iowa-Minnesota border is named after Austin R. Nichols, the city’s first European settler.
Following the oath of office – administered by City Administrative Services Director Tom Dankert – Oballa outlined his priorities for his next four years on the council.
City Administrative Services Director Tom Dankert administers the oath of office to Oballa Oballa on Monday, January 4th, 2021. (Photo by Bethel Gessesse)
“Less than 5 years ago, I was in a refugee camp hoping and praying that I would have the opportunity at a better life. A year ago, I became a US citizen. And now, I stand before you as a council member,” Oballa said.
“We got more work to do… For our city to thrive we have to work hard and build more housing, affordable daycare, bring more jobs, and keep people of Austin in Austin,” Oballa stated, sharing a glimpse of the platform that helped him win in November.
The state’s Democratic Party dispatched its director of civic engagement Ian Oundo to witness the historic occasion.
“As a party it shows that in addition to the work we are doing in the Twin Cities, we continue to work to expand our base in rural Minnesota,” Oundo said in an interview with Mshale after the brief ceremony. “We have to understand that the face of our community is changing all over the state of Minnesota and all those voices have to be represented.
Not even the mask that city administrator Craig Clark was wearing could hide the joy he was feeling, calling the day “historic” as he spoke with Mshale. According to Clark, the moment was not an accident.
“There is excitement out there that a new era is upon us, it is a culmination of a lot of work from a lot of people to be purposeful about being inclusive and this is a manifestation of that,” said Clark.
Due to the pandemic, only a few people could be allowed into the council chambers to witness the occasion but they made it clear they understood the significance of the moment.
Oballa’s Aunt, Adalg Ojullu, was ecstatic. She drove almost 200 miles from the neighboring state of South Dakota to witness his nephew taking the oath of office.
“His picture will remain in this building forever, I am so proud of him and the people of Austin that elected him,” said Ojullu.
Echoing her sentiments were two Austin community leaders, Ojoye Akane and Santino Deng. Both said Oballa’s election will help them in their on-going efforts to encourage more civic engagement from the African immigrant community.
Mike Dean is the executive director of LEADMN, a statewide community college association where Oballa honed some of his leadership skills.
Dean spoke to Mshale after the swearing in and said: “If you look out there and you see the pictures of the former city council members, they are all white, so this represents a sea change within the City of Austin and greater Minnesota, it’s amazing what Oballa has done here.”
Watch: Oballa Oballa Swearing-in Ceremony in Austin, Minnesota
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Oballa Oballa: Ethiopian Refugee Wins City Council Election in Austin, Minnesota
Soon after moving to Austin, Minnesota, Oballa Oballa [whose family fled Gambella, Ethiopia, in 2003] walked into the mayor’s office and asked if there was anything he could do for the city. He just became Austin’s first Black city council member. (Photo: Courtesy of Oballa Oballa)
Sahan Journal
November 7th, 2020
Oballa Oballa, a refugee from Ethiopia, wins historic city council election in Austin; becomes city’s first Black elected official.
Oballa Oballa, a former refugee from Ethiopia who became a naturalized citizen less than one year ago, made history this election by winning a city council seat in the southeast Minnesota city of Austin.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Oballa, 27, held a 14 percent lead over candidate Helen Jahr and declared victory. Oballa, who had been campaigning for the seat since the beginning of the year, said he is the first person of color to win elected office in Austin.
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Oballa described a dramatic personal history. His family fled Gambella, Ethiopia, in 2003, following what he describes as a genocidal attack on his community. They spent the next 10 years living in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp. In 2013, the family moved to the U.S., and by 2015, Oballa had settled in Austin.
Oballa is just one example of how immigrant communities are shaping Minnesota politics well beyond the Twin Cities, and are now starting to win seats for public office. Oballa said his record of civic engagement earned him voters’ support.
“This makes me feel great, it makes me feel really happy and proud,” he said. “My work, I think, will still give hope to refugees who think the American dream is dead.”
He added, “Just seven years ago, [I] was living in a refugee camp and now am officially elected. I think that will give them hope that one day, when they come to America here, they will accomplish whatever they put their mind to.”
Egypt’s leader meets US treasury chief ahead of Sudan visit
Updated: January 6th, 2021
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s president met Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in Cairo, ahead of Mnuchin’s first visit to Sudan since the end of Khartoum’s pariah status.
The office of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said in a statement the president and Mnuchin discussed mutual and regional issues, including the latest developments in talks with Sudan and Ethiopia over a disputed dam that Ethiopia is building over the Blue Nile River.
The statement said el-Sissi appreciated U.S. efforts in the dam talks last year that resulted in a U.S.-crafted draft deal to resolve the yearslong dispute over the massive project.
The three Nile Valley countries met Sunday in the latest push by South Africa, the current chairman of the African Union, which is mediating a deal between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
Experts from the three nations and the AU were to meet Monday, but Sudan boycotted the meeting and insisted on a greater role for AU experts in the negotiations.
Egypt initialed the draft deal, crafted by the United States in February, but Ethiopia did not attend the signing ceremony and accused President Donald Trump’s administration of siding with Egypt. Sudan attended the meeting but did not sign.
The U.S. has suspended some aid to Ethiopia over the “lack of progress” in the talks and U.S. “concern about Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to begin to fill the dam before an agreement and all necessary dam safety measures were in place.”
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions between the three nations.
Mnuchin was scheduled to travel to Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Wednesday to meet with the country’s leaders, according to Sudan’s state-run SUNA news agency.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. (AP photo)
It would be the first visit by a senior U.S. official since Washington last month approved the removal of Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
SUNA’s report said Mnuchin would discuss with Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the ruling sovereign council, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok possible U.S. economic aid debt relief. It did not give further details.
Mnuchin said last month he would work with Congress and the transitional government in Khartoum to advance Sudan’s efforts to secure debt relief in 2021.
Sudan is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising led the military to overthrow longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.
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Related:
Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan resume talks over disputed dam
The Associated Press
January 3, 2021
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan resumed their years-long negotiations Sunday over the controversial dam Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile, officials said.
The resumption came six weeks after Khartoum boycotted talks in November, urging the African Union to play a greater role in reaching a deal over the disputed Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam.
The negotiations have centered on the filling and operation of the giant dam. Key questions remain about how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs and how the three countries will resolve any future disputes. Ethiopia has rejected binding arbitration at the final stage of the project.
The foreign and irrigation ministers of the three Nile Valley countries met online Sunday, said Ahmed Hafez, the spokesman of Egypt’s Foreign Ministry. Sudan also confirmed the meeting.
Ethiopia’s Water and Energy Minister Seleshi Bekele said earlier the meeting was called by South Africa, the current head of the African Union, and that U.S. observers and AU experts would attend.
Sudan’s Irrigation Ministry said the three counties would hold separate talks with the AU experts and observers before a three-party meeting on Jan. 10.
In November, Sudan did not attend a round of talks called by South Africa, arguing that the current approach to reaching a tripartite agreement on the filling and operation of Ethiopia’s dam had not yielded results.
Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas said at the time that the AU should do more to “facilitate the negotiation and bridge the gap between the three parties.”
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions between the three nations.
Egypt has called it an existential threat and worries that it will reduce the country’s share of Nile waters.
The Arab’s world most populous country relies almost entirely on the Nile to supply water for agriculture and its more than 100 million people. About 85% of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia says the $4.6 billion dam will be an engine of development that will pull millions of people out of poverty. Sudan, in the middle, worries about the effects on its own dams, although it stands to benefit from access to cheap electricity.
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Ethiopia to Trump: We Will Not Give In To ‘Aggression’ In Dam Dispute (UPDATE)
The $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a source of national pride in Ethiopia. Without naming Trump or the United States, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office issued a blunt statement on Saturday saying Ethiopia would “not cave in to aggressions of any kind.” (Photo: Maxar Technologies via AP)
NBC News
Updated: October 24th, 2020
Ethiopia denounces Trump remark that Egypt could ‘blow up’ Nile dam
Ethiopia on Saturday denounced “belligerent threats” over the huge hydropower dam it has nearly completed on the Blue Nile river, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump said Egypt could “blow up” the project.
Trump made the comment while announcing that Sudan, which sits downstream from the dam, would start to normalize ties with Israel on Friday.
“They will end up blowing up the dam,” Trump said, referring to Egypt. “And I said it and I say it loud and clear, they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.”
The $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a source of national pride in Ethiopia, aimed at pulling millions of people out of poverty, but it has entangled neighboring east African nations Egypt and Sudan, which also rely on the river.
Without naming Trump or the United States, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office issued a blunt statement on Saturday, which said the east African nation would “not cave in to aggressions of any kind.”
“These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law,” the statement said.
It added: “As a developing nation, Ethiopia may be confronted with poverty but are rich with history, patriotic citizens whose commitment to defend their country’s sovereignty is unparalleled and an ambition and a well-articulated plan for prosperity.”
Former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn tweeted on Saturday: “The man doesn’t have a clue on what he is talking about,” calling Trump’s remarks “reckless” and “irresponsible.”
Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Minister Gedu Andargachew later summoned U.S. Ambassador to Addis Ababa Mike Raynor to seek clarifications on the comments.
“The incitement of war between Ethiopia and Egypt from a sitting U.S. president neither reflects the longstanding partnership and strategic alliance between Ethiopia and the United States nor is acceptable in international law governing interstate relations,” Gedu’s ministry said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Trump told the State Department to suspend millions of dollars in aid to Ethiopia because of the dispute over the dam. A move that angered Ethiopians.
“They will never see that money unless they adhere to that agreement,” Trump said Friday.
Ethiopia says the colossal dam project could help it become a major power exporter and develop its economy. Egypt depends on the Nile to supply its farmers and population of 100 million with fresh water while Sudan contends with frequent droughts.
The country celebrated the first filling of the dam in August, to the dismay of Egypt.
There was no comment from the Egyptian government on Trump’s latest remarks.
Egypt has repeatedly said it wants to settle the dam dispute through diplomatic channels, but has also said it would use “all available means” to defend the interests of its people.
The Blue Nile joins the White Nile in Sudan to become the Nile, and about 85 percent of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia. Officials in Ethiopia hope the dam, now more than three-quarters complete, will reach full power-generating capacity by 2023.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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Ethiopia says it will not cave to ‘aggression’ in dam dispute
“Occasional statements of belligerent threats to have Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound,” Abiy’s office said. “These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law.” (Reuters)
Reuters
Updated: October 24th, 2020
Ethiopia says it will not cave to ‘aggression’ in dam dispute
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Ethiopia said on Saturday that threats of any kind towards resolving a dispute with its neighbours over the filling and operation of a massive hydropower dam were “misguided, unproductive and clear violations of international law”.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office made no mention of any person or any country in a statement on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is at the centre of a dispute over Nile water supplies.
But his comment came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with the Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in which they called for an amicable solution between Ethiopia and Egypt.
In the call, held in front of reporters at the White House, Trump said he had also told Egypt the same thing, saying it was a dangerous situation and that Cairo could end up “blowing up that dam.”
Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt have been locked in a bitter dispute over the filling and operation of the GERD, which remains unresolved although the reservoir behind the dam began filling in July.
“Occasional statements of belligerent threats to have Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound,” Abiy’s office said. “These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law.”
The first phase of filling the dam completed in August, Abiy’s office said.
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Related:
Ethiopia blasts Trump remark that Egypt will ‘blow up’ dam (AP)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Updated: October 24th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia on Saturday denounced “belligerent threats” over the huge dam it has nearly completed on the Blue Nile River, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump said downstream Egypt will “blow up” the project it has called an existential threat.
Ethiopia’s foreign minister summoned the U.S. ambassador to seek clarification, saying “the incitement of war between Ethiopia and Egypt from a sitting U.S. president neither reflects the longstanding partnership and strategic alliance between Ethiopia and the United States nor is acceptable in international law governing interstate relations,” a statement said.
Without naming Trump or the U.S., Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office issued a separate critical statement amid an outcry in Ethiopia over Trump’s latest threat over the dam. The $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a source of national pride, aimed at pulling millions of people from poverty.
“The man doesn’t have a clue on what he is talking about,” Former Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn tweeted, calling Trump’s remark reckless and irresponsible.
Trump made the comment while announcing that Sudan would start to normalize ties with Israel. Downstream Sudan is a party to the talks with Ethiopia and Egypt over the disputed dam. “They (Egypt) will end up blowing up the dam,” Trump said. “And I said it and I say it loud and clear … they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.”
The U.S. president earlier this year told the State Department to suspend millions of dollars in aid to Ethiopia because of the dam dispute, angering Ethiopians who had accused the U.S. of being biased during its earlier efforts to broker a deal on the project among Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia walked away from those talks.
“They will never see that money unless they adhere to that agreement,” Trump said Friday.
“Occasional statements of belligerent threats to have Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound,” the statement by the Ethiopian prime minister’s office said. “These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive, and clear violations of international law.”
It added: “Ethiopia will not cave in to aggressions of any kind.”
There was no comment from the Egyptian government on Trump’s remarks, but pro-government media covered them extensively. Egypt has repeatedly said it wants to settle the dispute through diplomatic means, but it has said it would use “all available means” to defend the interests of its people.
Ethiopia celebrated the first filling of the dam in August, citing heavy rains, to the dismay of Egypt. Ethiopia later banned flights over the dam amid concerns over possible military action by Egypt.
Now, with Trump’s new remarks, some Ethiopians are urging Ethiopian Americans to help vote him out of office in next month’s election.
Worried by the prospect of further friction between two of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries, European Union representative Josep Borrell said in a statement that “now is the time for action and not for increasing tensions,” adding that a deal on the dam is within reach.
The statement by Abiy’s office said the talks with Egypt and Sudan have shown significant progress since the African Union has stepped in to oversee them. Trump’s statement could undermine that process, said Abel Abate Demissie, an associate fellow at Chatham House, adding that it proves the U.S. wasn’t an honest broker from the start.
Ethiopia says the colossal dam could help it become a major power exporter. Egypt depends on the Nile to supply its farmers and a booming population of 100 million with fresh water.
Negotiators have said key questions remain about how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs and how the countries will resolve any future disputes. Ethiopia rejects binding arbitration at the final stage.
A military strike on the dam would be disastrous, one water expert warned. The dam already has more than 4.9 billion cubic meters of water in its reservoir,” Abebe Yirga told The Associated Press. “It will affect thousands of people along the way if this huge amount of water gushes out of the dam.”
The Blue Nile joins the White Nile in Sudan to become the Nile, and about 85% of the river’s flow originates from Ethiopia. Officials hope the dam, now more than three-quarters complete, will reach full power-generating capacity in 2023.
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Watch: Failing Donald Trump’s Crazy Comments About GERD
Trump told reporters in the White House today (October 23rd, 2020) that Egypt will “end up blowing up” the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. He added: “And I said it and I say it loud and clear — they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.” We sure hope Egypt is not stupid enough to follow the advise of the failing U.S. President, but you can watch his crazy comments below. (Getty images)
BREAKING! Donald Trump`s Shocking Remarks About Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
AFP
Trump suggests Egypt may ‘blow up’ Ethiopia dam
Updated: October 23rd, 2020
Washington (AFP)
US President Donald Trump on Friday voiced anger at Ethiopia over its construction of a huge dam on the Nile River and appeared to suggest that Egypt may destroy it.
Trump made the remarks as he announced a breakthrough normalization deal between US ally Israel and Sudan, which like Egypt fears that Ethiopia will use up scarce water resources.
“It’s a very dangerous situation because Egypt is not going to be able to live that way,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office with leaders of Sudan and Israel on speakerphone.
“They’ll end up blowing up the dam. And I said it and I say it loud and clear — they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something,” Trump said.
“They should have stopped it long before it started,” Trump said, regretting that Egypt was in domestic tumult when the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project began in 2011.
Trump — a close ally of Egypt’s general turned president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi — had agreed to Cairo’s pleas to mediate over the dam, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin leading talks.
The State Department in September said it was cutting off aid to Ethiopia due to its decision to begin filling the dam despite not reaching an agreement with the downstream nations.
“I had a deal done for them and then unfortunately Ethiopia broke the deal, which they should not have done. That was a big mistake,” Trump said.
“They will never see that money unless they adhere to that agreement,” he said.
Ethiopia says that the $4 billion project is indispensible for its electrification and development needs and has voiced hope of beginning operations in early 2021.
Egypt depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water.
Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok, asked by Trump on speakerphone about the dam, voiced appreciation for US diplomacy and said his government wanted an “amicable solution soon” among the three countries.
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Ethiopia Says GERD Dam Will Begin Generating Power in Next 12 Months
Water flows through Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam as it undergoes construction work on the river Nile in Guba Woreda. (Reuters)
Reuters
Updated: October 5th, 2020
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia’s giant new hydropower dam on the Blue Nile will begin generating power in the next 12 months, the country’s president said on Monday.
“This year will be a year where the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will start generating power with the two turbines,” Sahle-Work Zewde said in a speech to parliament.
Ethiopia is locked in a dispute with Egypt and Sudan over its $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo has said could threaten its main supply of water.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia has banned all flights over its giant new hydropower dam on the Blue Nile for security reasons, the head of its civil aviation authority said on Monday, as the president pledged the dam would begin generating power in the next 12 months.
The move could worsen Ethiopia’s dispute with Egypt and Sudan over its $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo has said could threaten its main supply of water.
“All flights have been banned to secure the dam,” the director-general of the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, Wesenyeleh Hunegnaw, told Reuters by phone. He declined to give more details on the reasons.
Later on Monday in a speech to parliament, Ethiopia’s president Sahle-Work Zewde said: “This year will be a year where the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will start generating power with the two turbines.”
She also said that work was underway to enable a second filling of the dam within the next 12 months.
In July, Ethiopia said it had achieved its first year of filling the dam thanks to rainfall in the area.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the United Nations last month that the country has “no intention” of harming Sudan and Egypt with the dam, days after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reiterated his concerns over the project.
Last week, air force chief Major General Yilma Merdasa told local media that Ethiopia was fully prepared to defend the dam from any attack.
Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan failed to strike a deal on the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam before Ethiopia began filling the reservoir behind the dam in July.
The dam is at the centre of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.
The structure is about 15 km (9 miles) from the Ethiopian border with Sudan on the Blue Nile – a tributary of the Nile river, which gives Egypt’s 100 million people about 90% of their fresh water.
The United States decided last month to cut $100 million in aid to Ethiopia amid the dispute over the dam. A U.S. State Department official who did not want to be identified told Reuters at the time that the decision to pause some funding to Ethiopia was triggered by concern over Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to start filling the dam before an agreement.
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Related:
UPDATE: Ethiopia-Egypt War Over GERD Has Already Started. It’s in Cyberspace
Workers move iron girders from a crane at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. (Getty Images)
Foreign Policy
SEPTEMBER 22, 2020, 6:41 AM
The conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has already started. It’s just happening in cyberspace.
It took only a few weeks to plan the cyberattack—and a few more to abandon the world of ethical hacking for the less noble sort. But they would do anything for the Nile, the four young Egyptians agreed.
With that, the group calling themselves the Cyber_Horus Group in late June hacked more than a dozen Ethiopian government sites, replacing each page with their own creation: an image of a skeleton pharaoh, clutching a scythe in one hand and a scimitar in the other. “If the river’s level drops, let all the Pharaoh’s soldiers hurry,” warned a message underneath. “Prepare the Ethiopian people for the wrath of the Pharaohs.”
“There is more power than weapons,” one of the hackers, who asked not to be identified by name, told Foreign Policy. Also, it was a pretty easy job, the hacker added.
A few weeks later and thousands of miles away, a 21-year-old Ethiopian named Liz applied red lipstick and donned a black T-shirt and jeans. She positioned her phone on her desk and started her own kind of online influence campaign: a TikTok video. She danced to a popular Egyptian song underneath the message, “Distracting the Egyptians while we fill the dam.”
“There’s no other country that can stop us,” said Liz, who has more than 70,000 followers on the app and whose taunting video was met with praise and threats. “It’s our right.”
Rarely have young people been so passionate about an infrastructure project. But the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which will be Africa’s largest, is more than just a piece of infrastructure. It has become a nationalistic rallying cry for both Ethiopia and Egypt—two countries scrambling to define their nationhood after years of domestic upheaval. Many Ethiopians and Egyptians are getting involved in the only way they can—online—and fomenting the first African cyberconflict of its kind, one with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.
Trump Administration Confirms Cutting Aid to Ethiopia Over GERD (UPDATE)
(Getty Images)
The Associated Press
Updated: September 2nd, 2020
It was an unusual example of Trump’s direct intervention on an issue in Africa, a continent he hasn’t visited as president and rarely mentions publicly.
On the guidance of President Trump, the State Department said Wednesday that the United States was suspending some aid to Ethiopia over the “lack of progress” in the country’s talks with Egypt and Sudan over a disputed dam project it is completing on the Nile River.
It was an unusual example of Mr. Trump’s direct intervention on an issue in Africa, a continent he hasn’t visited as president and rarely mentions publicly. The dam dispute centers on two of Africa’s most populous and powerful nations, Ethiopia and Egypt, and some have feared it could lead to military conflict.
A State Department spokesperson told The Associated Press the decision to “temporarily pause” some aid to a key regional security ally “reflects our concern about Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to begin to fill the dam before an agreement and all necessary dam safety measures were in place.”
It is not clear how many millions of dollars in aid are being affected, or for how long. The decision was taken by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “based on guidance from the president,” the spokesperson said.
There was no immediate comment from Ethiopia’s government. Ethiopia’s ambassador to the United States, Fitsum Arega, this week tweeted that his country was determined to complete the dam, saying that “we will pull Ethiopia out of darkness.”
Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions with Egypt, which has called it an existential threat and worries that it will reduce the country’s share of Nile waters. Ethiopia says the $4.6 billion dam will be an engine of development that will pull millions of people out of poverty. Sudan, in the middle, worries about the effects on its own dams though it stands to benefit from access to cheap electricity.
Years of talks among the countries have failed to come to an agreement. Key remaining issues include how to handle releases of water from the dam during multiyear droughts and how to resolve future disputes.
The United States earlier this year tried to mediate the discussions, but Ethiopia walked away amid accusations that Washington was siding with Egypt. Now the three countries are reporting any progress to the African Union, which is leading negotiations.
Ethiopia had said it would fill the dam with or without a deal with Egypt and Sudan. The dam’s 74 billion-cubic-meter reservoir saw its first filling in July, which Ethiopia’s government celebrated and attributed to heavy rains, while a startled Egypt and Sudan hurriedly sought clarification and expressed skepticism.
A former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, David Shinn, had warned against an aid cut, writing that “playing political hardball with Ethiopia will not only fail to obtain Washington’s desired result but will probably ensure that the Ethiopian diaspora in the United States rallies against Trump.”
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Related:
Cutting Aid to Ethiopia Haunts Trump in Election
David Shinn, a former US envoy to Ethiopia said playing political hardball with Ethiopia will not only fail to obtain the desired result but will probably ensure that the Ethiopian diaspora in the US will rally against Trump and spoil his chances in the close contest. “There are sizeable Ethiopian-American communities in key states such as Georgia, Texas, and Virginia,” he said. (Image: Tulsa World)
AA
Addis Getachew | ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Updated: September 2nd, 2020
Ethiopian-Americans against US cutting $130M aid to Ethiopia to enforce Egypt friendly agreement on sharing Nile waters
The US has now formally stepped in, to support Egypt and punish Ethiopia over the river water sharing dispute between the two African countries.
Last week, the Trump administration announced blocking a $130 million aid that had been earmarked to support Ethiopia’s defense and anti-terrorism efforts.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed the cut in aid, ostensibly to build pressure on Ethiopia, a rugged landlocked country in the Horn of Africa.
While it is not clear to what extent the US decision will affect Ethiopia, but it has united everyone in the country and the diaspora.
“We have officially requested the US administration that they give us an explanation,” said Ethiopia’s Ambassador to Washington Fitsum Arega, while taking to Twitter.
David Shinn, a former US envoy to Ethiopia said playing political hardball with Ethiopia will not only fail to obtain the desired result but will probably ensure that the Ethiopian diaspora in the US will rally against Trump and spoil his chances in the close contest. “There are sizeable Ethiopian-American communities in key states such as Georgia, Texas, and Virginia,” he said.
Ethiopian government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had earlier rejected an agreement brokered by the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in February related to the filling and operation of the $5billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Ethiopia said the US proposal was heavily tilted towards Egypt.
Relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa have strained over recent times, over the filling and operation of the dam that has come upon the Blue Nile, one of the tributaries of the River Nile.
Since June, the African Union has been mediating now to evolve a win-win formula between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt.
The AU has entrusted its Bureau of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government including South Africa, Kenya, Mali, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to prevent any escalation between these countries. The European Union, the World Bank, and the US continue as observers in the group.
Mike Pompeo is the Worst U.S. Secretary of State in History
Mike Pompeo’s handing of the Trump administration’s foreign policy “has led to some of the worst diplomatic damage the United States has suffered in decades — especially in relations with its closest allies,” writes The Washington Post’s Deputy editorial page editor and columnist Jackson Diehl. (Photo: The Washington Post)
The Washington Post
Updated: August 30, 2020
As secretary of state, Mike Pompeo has presided over the collapse of negotiations with North Korea, the failure of a pressure campaign against Iran and an abortive attempt to oust Venezuela’s authoritarian regime. On his watch, China has carried out genocide in its Xinjiang region and the suppression of Hong Kong’s freedoms without resistance from Washington until it was too late.
Pompeo has failed to fill dozens of senior positions at the State Department, and hundreds of career diplomats have left or been driven out in political purges. Morale is at a historic low: In staff surveys, there has been a 34 percent increase between 2016 and 2019 in those who say the State Department’s senior leaders “did not maintain high levels of honesty and integrity.” Maybe that’s because Pompeo himself has defied legal mandates from Congress, skirted a law restricting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, tasked staffers with carrying out errands for himself and his wife, and fired the inspector general who was investigating his violations.
Last week, Pompeo crossed yet another ethical line by speaking before the Republican National Convention, thereby disregarding the State Department’s explicit legal guidance against such appearances. The speech he delivered was weak and littered with false or simply ludicrous claims, such as that the recent diplomatic accord between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is “a deal that our grandchildren will read about in their history books.” Maybe if they major in Middle Eastern affairs.
With his ambitions likely fixed on a presidential candidacy in 2024, Pompeo is undoubtedly hoping most of the diplomatic disasters will ultimately be blamed on President Trump, especially if Trump loses the November election. But the former Kansas congressman should not get off so easy. Yes, it’s Trump’s foreign policy. But Pompeo’s steering of it has led to some of the worst diplomatic damage the United States has suffered in decades — especially in relations with its closest allies.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has approved plans to halt some U.S. aid to Ethiopia, Foreign Policy reported on Friday.
The halt in aid comes as the U.S. mediates a dispute over a dam on the Nile River that’s pitted Ethiopia against Egypt and Sudan, according to Foreign Policy. The decision could impact up to $130 million of assistance to programs including security, counter-terrorism and anti-human trafficking.
“There’s still progress being made, we still see a viable path forward here,” a U.S. official told the magazine. “The U.S. role is to do everything it can to help facilitate an agreement between the three countries that balance their interests. At the end of the day it has to be an agreement that works for these three countries.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Ethiopia and Egypt are at a standstill in negotiations over how the dam on a tributary of the Nile will be managed.
Egypt and Sudan, which depend on the Nile for much of their fresh water, are opposed to any development they say will impact the flow downstream, including the 6,000-megawatt power plant Ethiopia hopes to develop at the dam.
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Is the Trump Administration Using Aid to Bully Ethiopia Over Nile Dam?
It’s too bad that the U.S. has decided to take the wrong side in a local African dispute regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. As the following FP article reports the Trump administration is cutting off “some foreign assistance” to Ethiopia over GERD. The scheme may be intended to tip the scale in Egypt’s favor, but if history is any indication this kind of foreign intimidation does not work in Ethiopia. It’s also worth mentioning that the dam, a $4.5 billion hydroelectric project, is being fully funded by the Ethiopian people. (Getty Images)
U.S. Halts Some Foreign Assistance Funding to Ethiopia Over Dam Dispute with Egypt, Sudan, Some U.S. officials fear the move will harm Washington’s relationship with Addis Ababa.
Updated: AUGUST 27, 2020
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has approved a plan to halt U.S. foreign assistance to Ethiopia as the Trump administration attempts to mediate a dispute with Egypt and Sudan over the East African country’s construction of a massive dam on the Nile River.
The decision, made this week, could affect up to nearly $130 million in U.S. foreign assistance to Ethiopia and fuel new tensions in the relationship between Washington and Addis Ababa as it carries out plans to fill the dam, according to U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter. Officials cautioned that the details of the cuts are not yet set in stone and the finalized number could amount to less than $130 million.
Programs that are on the chopping block include security assistance, counterterrorism and military education and training, anti-human trafficking programs, and broader development assistance funding, officials and congressional aides said. The cuts would not impact U.S. funding for emergency humanitarian relief, food assistance, or health programs aimed at addressing COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS, officials said.
The move is meant to address the standoff between Ethiopia and other countries that rely on the Nile River downstream that have opposed the construction of the massive dam project, called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt sees the dam’s construction as a core security issue given the country’s heavy reliance on the river for fresh water and agriculture, and in the past Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has hinted his country could use military force to halt the dam’s construction.
Some Ethiopian officials have said they believe the Trump administration is taking Egypt’s side in the dispute. President Donald Trump has shown a fondness for Sisi, reportedly calling him his “favorite dictator” during a G-7 summit last year. Officials familiar with negotiations said the Trump administration has not approved parallel cuts in foreign assistance to Egypt.
Administration officials have repeatedly assured all sides that Washington is an impartial mediator in the negotiations, which mark one of the few diplomatic initiatives in Africa that the president has played a personal and active role in. These officials pointed out that Egypt has accused the United States of taking Ethiopia’s side in the dispute as well.
“There’s still progress being made, we still see a viable path forward here,” said one U.S. official. “The U.S. role is to do everything it can to help facilitate an agreement between the three countries that balance their interests. At the end of the day it has to be an agreement that works for these three countries.”
But the move is likely to face sharp pushback on Capitol Hill, according to Congressional aides familiar with the matter. State Department officials briefed Congressional staff on the decision on Thursday, the aides said, and during the briefing insisted that the U.S.-Ethiopia relationship would remain strong despite a cutback in aid because the United States can have tough conversations “with friends.”
“This is a really fucking illogical way to show a ‘friend’ you really care,” one Congressional aide told Foreign Policy in response.
Ethio-Canadian singer, songwriter, and record producer Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known professionally as The Weeknd, shares that his “natural singing voice was inspired" and "shaped by Ethiopian Music”. In a recent interview with the music and culture magazine TMRW discussing his upcoming album, the artist added: "The older I got, I was exposed to more music, and my voice became a chameleon going into different characters." (The Weeknd/ Instagram)
Koimoi
Singer The Weeknd says his next album will be inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and Covid-19 pandemic.
In an interview with TMRW, the singer, whose After Hours tour was postponed due to the pandemic, shared what to expect in his new album, reports billboard.com.
“I have been more inspired and creative during the pandemic than I might normally be while on the road…The pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the tensions of the election have mostly created a sense of gratitude for what I have and closeness with the people near me,” The Weeknd said.
“I was laser focused back then and I’m laser focused right now. This has been the story of my 20s. I feel like I spent the last 10 years creating a sound and most of my career, I’ve either been running away from it or duplicating it. After Hours was the perfect piece of art for me to show my tenure in the industry, said The Weeknd.
Talking about his musical journey, The Weeknd said: “My natural singing voice was inspired and shaped by Ethiopian music. The older I got, I was exposed to more music, and my voice became a chameleon going into different characters with each album. By following my own path and breaking industry norms, it seems to be influencing others.”
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Take a sneak peek at tmrw x the Weeknd: a special edition 100-page zine all about the Canadian superstar.
Since the Weeknd’s emergence into the ever-changing world of R&B he has pioneered his own sound, defying the restrictions of genre by fusing pop, hip hop and the sultriness of R&B together. (TMRW)
In 2012, the Scarborough-raised singer Abel Tesfaye, famously known as the Weeknd, released Trilogy. Quickly this debut LP became a platinum-selling record with critics identifying him as being a pivotal artist who changed the landscape of R&B. Fast forward to 2020 – a tumultuous year for music and the rest of the world – and the Weeknd has delivered the globally renowned After Hours featuring arguably the biggest song of the year ‘Blinding Lights’.
Over the 10 years of creating, the Canadian icon has barely sat still: whether heading off on mega world tours or releasing forty records in under a decade, the Weeknd has transformed himself and the music industry with his unique sound, aesthetic and performances.
Whenever I try to describe the Weeknd’s sound, the first adjective that comes to mind is ‘cinematic’, whether it is Starboy being the perfect score to a sci-fi heist film or his debut album Trilogy being layered over a fast-paced action romance. The Weeknd has definitely mastered the sound and art of orchestrated suspense. The artist’s vocal range was notably inspired by the music of his heritage and cultural roots, heavily influenced by his immigrant parents coming to Canada from Ethiopia.
“My natural singing voice was inspired and shaped by Ethiopian music. The older I got, I was exposed to more music, and my voice became a chameleon going into different characters with each album. By following my own path and breaking industry norms, it seems to be influencing others.”
On the eve of his first mixtape’s tenth anniversary, tmrw has joined forces with the Weeknd on a limited edition zine. Here he opens up to us about how it feels to be a meteoric star, what it means to be creative during a pandemic, and pulls back the curtain on the origin of his distinctive, honey-sweet vocal style. Featuring 100+ pages of interview, images, quotes and more on premium paper, this is not to be missed so get a copy for yourself here now and have a sneak preview below…
Agitu Ideo Gudeta, who was killed on Wednesday, used abandoned land to start a goat farming project employing migrants and refugees in Italy. She started with just 15 goats, increasing the herd to 180 in just a few years. She produced organic milk and cheese using environmentally friendly methods. Agitu was attacked and killed, allegedly by a former employee, on her farm in Trentino. (Photo: Reuters)
Tributes paid to Ethiopian refugee farmer who championed integration in Italy
Tributes have been paid to a 42-year-old Ethiopian refugee and farmer who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home.
Agitu Ideo Gudeta was attacked and killed, allegedly by a former employee, on her farm in Trentino on Wednesday.
Gudeta had left Addis Ababa in 2010 after angering the authorities by taking part in protests against “land grabbing”. Once in Italy, she tenaciously followed and realised her ambition to move to the mountains and start her own farm. Taking advantage of permits that give farmers access to abandoned public land in depopulated areas, she reclaimed 11 hectares (27 acres) around an old barn in the Mòcheni valley, where she founded her La Capra Felice (The Happy Goat) enterprise.
Gudeta started with a herd of 15 goats, quickly rising to 180 in a few years, producing organic milk and cheese using environmentally friendly methods and hiring migrants and refugees.
“I created my space and made myself known, there was no resistance to me,” she told Reuters news agency that year.
“Agitu brought to Italy the dream she was unable to realise in Ethiopia, in part because of land grabbing,” Gabriella Ghermandi, singer, performer, novelist and friend of Gudeta, told the Guardian. “Her farm was successful because she applied what she had learned from her grandparents in the countryside.
“In Italy, many people have described her enterprise as a model of integration. But Agitu’s dream was to create an environmentally sustainable farm that was more than just a business; for her it also symbolised struggle against class divisions and the conviction that living in harmony with nature was possible. And above all she carried out her work with love. She had given a name to each one of her goats.”
In a climate where hostility toward migrants was increasing, led by far-right political leaders, her success story was reported by numerous media outlets as an example of how integration can benefit communities.
“The most rewarding satisfaction is when people tell me how much they love my cheeses because they’re good and taste different,” she said in an interview with Internazionale in 2017. “It compensates for all the hard work and the prejudices I’ve had to overcome as a woman and an immigrant.”
Two years ago she received death threats and was the target of racist attacks, which she reported to police, recounting them on her social media posts.
But police said a man who has confessed to the rape and murder of the farmer was an ex-employee who, they said, allegedly acted for “economic reasons”.
The UN refugee agency said it was “pained” by Gudeta’s death, and that her entrepreneurial spirit “demonstrated how refugees can contribute to the societies that host them”.
“Despite her tragic end, the UNHCR hopes that Agitu Ideo Gudeta will be remembered and celebrated as a model of success and integration and inspire refugees that struggle to rebuild their lives,” the agency said.
“We spoke on the phone last week’’, said Ghermandi. “We spent two hours speaking about Ethiopia. We had plans to get together in the spring. Agitu considered Italy her home. She used to say that she had suffered too much in Ethiopia. Now Agitu is gone, but her work mustn’t die. We will soon begin a fundraising campaign to follow her plan for expanding the business so that her dream will live on.”
Gudeta would have turned 43 on New Year’s Day.
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The Tragedy of Agitu Gudeta: An Ethiopian Immigrant Killed on Her Farm in Italy
Agitu Ideo Gudeta, 42, an Ethiopian migrant who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home, has been killed on her farm where she raised goats for her cheese business, police said on Wednesday. Agitu had made her home in the mountains of Trentino’s Valle dei Mocheni, making goat’s cheese and beauty products in her farm (The Happy Goat), which was built on previously abandoned land. (Reuters)
Reuters
Ethiopian migrant who became symbol of integration in Italy killed on her goat farm
ROME (Reuters) – An Ethiopian migrant who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home, has been killed on her farm where she raised goats for her cheese business, police said on Wednesday.
A Ghanaian employee on her farm in the northern Italian region of Trentino has admitted to killing Agitu Ideo Gudeta, 42, with a hammer and raping her, Italian news agency Ansa reported. The report could not immediately be confirmed.
Gudeta had made her home in the mountains of Trentino’s Valle dei Mocheni, making goat’s cheese and beauty products in her farm La Capra Felice (The Happy Goat), which was built on previously abandoned land.
Her story was reported by numerous international media, including Reuters , as an example of a migrant success story in Italy at a time of rising hostility towards immigrants, fueled by the right-wing League party.
Gudeta escaped from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in 2010 after her participation in protests against ‘land-grabbing’ angered local authorities. Activists accused the authorities of setting aside large swathes of farmland for foreign investors.
On reaching Italy she was able to use common land in the northern mountains to build her new enterprise, taking advantage of permits that give farmers access to public land to prevent local territory from being reclaimed by wild nature.
Starting off with 15 goats, she had 180 by 2018 when she became a well-known figure.
“I created my space and made myself known, there was no resistance to me,” she told Reuters in a story that year.
New York (TADIAS) — The Hill Center Galleries in Washington D.C. is currently showcasing a sensational exhibit titled ‘The Jazz Experience’ curated by visual artist Sofia Kifle in collaboration with her brother, Gediyon Kifle, who is a photographer. For Sofia, her latest exhibit fuses together her two lifelong passions – music and art.
Having arrived in America in the early 1980s to pursue a college degree, and encouraged by her mother to major in business, Sofia enrolled at Mary Baldwin University in Virginia. Sofia recalled struggling through her first two years in her technical studies until she chose to enroll in a theatre course, which re-ignited her interest in the creative arts.
“Growing up in Ethiopia I had been inspired by my uncle, Fasil Dawit, who is an artist. I was always keen on learning more from him. But with family members who stressed the importance of getting a practical education, I initially put aside my creative interests,” Sofia shares. Once she started focusing on her theatre studies and also taking elective courses in studio art Sofia became more certain that she wanted to work as a visual artist, and subsequently earning an MFA at Howard University while studying with the late Ethiopian artist Eskinder Bogosian after completing her undergraduate studies as a double-major in Theatre and Arts Management.
Sofia’s first exhibition in the 90s featured Jazz as an African American art form with her works including paintings inspired by Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” and Miles Davis’ “So What” musical compositions.
“I’m not a musician,” says Sofia, “I’m a listener. And I try to come close to the music whether it’s jazz or classical.”
So how does it feel now to come full circle and have a joint jazz-based art exhibit with her brother?
“I really admire Gediyon as a photographer. He has the emotional eye in photography and passion for jazz” she responds. “I started with a jazz exhibit and now re-focusing on my love of jazz. It’s a blessing to be able to delve so deeply into a culture other than my own and also be able to share how to ‘see’ the music and not just hear it.”
Emphasizing that she conducts extensive research on concepts prior to painting about it, Sofia also notes that her endeavors are not about “repeating the message of the composers” but rather “understanding the human connection and emotion.” That’s precisely the experience she has curated in her current exhibition, which she worked on through the whole of 2019 after reflecting solely on rhythm and movement in the year prior. She then compiled her jazz paintings alongside photographs taken by Gediyon Kifle over a broader period of time.
While Sofia has also immersed herself in developing an extensive series of artworks such as the 2014 Visual Narrative 100 — consisting of the artist completing one painting a day for a hundred days with the last piece of work in the series called ‘2017 Suspended Movement 100’ presented as a blank, untouched canvas — she has also worked on and presented art for a global human rights dialogue. The non-profit Vital Voices, focusing on women’s economic and political empowerment is one of several examples with Mimi Wolford, the Founder/Curator of the MBARI Institute for Contemporary African Art in Washington, DC, assisting in exhibited Sofia’s work in Cape Town, South Africa. Sofia’s paintings have been exhibited at various institutions including the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Westfield State College, as well as via programs such as Art in Embassies and the D.C. Commission of the Arts. Sofia has also participated in the Artists for Fistula initiative where donated artwork helped raise community-based funds to build fistula hospitals in Ethiopia. In addition, her paintings are part of the Art of Ethiopia Catalogue.
Paintings by Sofia Kifle. (Courtesy of the artist)
For Sofia painting consists of “infinite possibilities to create beauty” and in addition to music she considers dance, literature, and poetry as well as her hobby of reading in the field of behavioral sciences as muses for her work as a visual artist. Although she is inspired by a diverse range of poets, writers and artists including Gebrekristos Desta, Federico Garcia Lorca, Fernando Pessoa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, and Haruki Murakami – who have all helped her in understanding human behavior – she shares that she never wanted to follow or repeat what somebody was doing. “I never even want to repeat myself,” she shares.
Her message is clear: “You have to have some kind of passion for yourself. Life can be repetitive – you wake up, eat, work and come home — but also remember that everything is constantly changing.” She adds: “Everybody thinks everything is permanent, but it’s not. We are creating movement and moments, and for me, music calls me in deeply to sense that feelings are not just sentiments but emotional understanding as well as knowledge. At the same time competition with myself on the canvas really helps me grow.”
Sofia’s next art series will continue her passion for studying jazz and delve into John Coltraine’s “Alabama” composition.
The Jazz Experience exhibit at The Hill Center Galleries in Washington D.C. ends on February 1st. Go see it before it closes. Go “see” the music!
‘The Music’ is her last painting series for 2019
Watch: The Jazz Experience show by Gediyon and Sofia Kifle
— Tseday Alehegn is Co-Founder & Editor of Tadias.
Ethio-jazz musician Hailu Mergia has a new album on the way.
Titled Yene Mircha, which translates to “my choice” in Amheric, the six-track album is due for release on March 27 via Awesome Tapes from Africa.
The reissue label made its name for reissuing obscure albums from Ghana and the wider region of Africa. Yene Mircha is one of several original releases by the label, expanding their repertoire from the usual reissues.
This is Hailu Mergia’s second brand-new studio album on Awesome Tapes from Africa.
Hailu Mergia is a well-known figure from the label. His 1977 album Tche Belew — recorded with backing band The Walias — was rescued from obscurity by Awesome Tapes in 2014.
The label’s reissue campaign granted Mergia an important place in the narrative of Ethio-jazz and popular Ethiopian music. Previously, the multi-instrumentalist migrated to the United States in the 1980s and stopped performing not long after.
A growing interest in his music allowed Mergia to tour worldwide and record new music aside from his day job as a taxi driver in Washington D.C..
At 74 years old, Mergia appears to be creatively renewed than ever. He’s expanding his sound on Yene Mircha with the help of guest musicians, aside from his newly-established trio with drummer Kenneth Joseph and bassist Alemseged Kebede.
The album is now available for pre-order on vinyl here, and you can preview the album with ‘Abichu Nege Nege’ below.
Tracklist
1. ሰሜንና እና ደቡብ
Semen Ena Debub
North & South
(Hailu Mergia)
2. የኔ ምርጫ
Yene Mircha
My Choice
(Hailu Mergia)
3. ባይኔ ላይ ይሄዳል
Bayine Lay Yihedal
He Walks In My Vision
(Asnakech Worku)
4. አቢቹ ነጋ ነጋ
Abichu Nega Nega
How Are You, Abichu
(trad., arr. Hailu Mergia)
5. የኔ አበባ
Yene Abeba
My Flower
(Hailu Mergia)
6. ሼመንደፈር
Shemendefer
Chemin de Fer Railway
(Teddy Afro)
Image: Ezra Wube, "Project Junction," 2020, stop motion animation. Courtesy of the artist.
Press Release
THE AFRICA CENTER PRESENTS PROJECT JUNCTION, A NEWLY COMMISSIONED INSTALLATION BY EZRA WUBE
January 30 — August 23, 2020
Public Opening: Thursday, January 30 at 7:30 PM
● Wube’s mixed media, site-specific installation explores the origins and cultural significance of ingredients in African cuisines, inspired by research conducted in Teranga and in Harlem’s African restaurants within walking distance of The Africa Center.
● Stop motion animations, line drawings, and objects integrated into the installation reflect Wube’s discoveries about historical and cultural associations, global dispersion, and reference how African communities across America construct symbolic environments to emulate collective experiences of diaspora and home.
New York, January 22, 2020 — The Africa Center is pleased to present Project Junction, a newly commissioned installation by Brooklyn-based artist Ezra Wube. In this mixed media, site-specific project, Wube explores food as an expression of collective identity in its ever-evolving state. The installation incorporates animation, painting, prints and objects.
Wube’s creative process involved visiting Teranga at The Africa Center, as well as other African restaurants within walking distance of the Center including Cross Culture Kitchen, Le Baobab Gouygui, La Savane, Safari, and Zoma. Wube researched ingredients of dishes on the restaurant menus and took note of the décor and ambience of each location.
Wube’s stop motion animations use the ingredients of each dish to reflect his discoveries about their native origins, symbolism, historical and cultural associations, related folklore and beliefs. The line drawings unfurling throughout the space hint at these figurative connections, while tracing stories of the ingredients’ historical cultivation and global dispersion. The objects displayed within the installation recreate those found on the walls of the local restaurants, and reference how African cultures and communities across America construct symbolic universes to reflect on their experiences of diaspora and home.
The installation is accompanied by a futuristic takeout menu that viewers are invited to take with them. The menu is based on Wube’s conversations with restaurant proprietors about dishes they imagine will continue to exist in the year 3020 A.D.
For Wube, culinary tradition is a lens for exploring transformations in the relationship between Africa and America through the everyday lives of people and their food. Wube says: “Through these layers of connected time and space—the past, the present and the future, the local with the global—I aim to highlight the global assemblage and continuous rejustification of African identities.”
Uzodinma Iweala, CEO of The Africa Center, says: “The intersection between visual culture and food is a rich and underexplored area, particularly as it relates to African cuisines and culinary culture. We were thrilled when Ezra accepted this commission to delve into these themes through an immersive installation. Wube’s work invites us to trace the journeys of distinctively African ingredients and the local restaurants that serve them, transporting us through layers of time and space, into our contemporary dining experience and our imaginations.”
Wube began working in the space on January 13, 2020 and will create the installation over a period of approximately three weeks, until the opening on Thursday, January 30. The public is invited to watch the artist at work. For more information, visit www.theafricacenter.org.
Image: Ezra Wube, “Project Junction,” 2020, stop motion animation. Courtesy of the artist.
Image: Ezra Wube, “Project Junction,” 2020, stop motion animation. Courtesy of the artist.
Image: Ezra Wube, “Project Junction,” 2020, stop motion animation. Courtesy of the artist.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Ethiopia) is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work references the notion of past and present, the constant changing of place, and the dialogical tensions between “here” and “there”. His exhibitions include the 21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Brazil; The 2nd edition of the Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans, France; “Gwangju Biennale”, Gwangju, South Korea; Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; “Dak’Art Biennale”, Dakar, Senegal and Times Square Arts Midnight Moment, NY. His residencies and awards include Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Work Space, LMCC Residency Program, New York, NY; Open Sessions Program, The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Rema Hort Mann Foundation; the Triangle Arts Association Residency, Brooklyn, NY and The Substation Artist Residency Program, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Since 2015 Ezra organizes Addis Video Art Festival, a platform for innovative international video art in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. http://ezrawube.net/
ABOUT THE AFRICA CENTER
The Africa Center is transforming the world’s understanding of Africa, its Diaspora and the role of people of African descent in the world. Serving as the hub for the exchange of ideas around culture, business and policy, and in the spirit of collaboration and engagement with individuals and institutions who share the Center’s values, The Africa Center inspires enthusiasm, advances thought and action around Africa’s global influence and impact on our collective futures. The Africa Center’s physical presence on Fifth Avenue at the intersection of Harlem and the Museum Mile embodies the dynamism and diversity of Africa and its Diaspora in the heart of New York City. Learn more by visiting www.theafricacenter.org.
— If You Go:
Ezra Wube’s New Exhibition ‘Project Junction’ at The Africa Center in NYC
Thursday, January 30, 2020
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
The Africa Center
1280 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10029 Ezra Wube: Project Junction is organized by Evelyn Owen, Associate Curator, and Henone Girma, Programs Coordinator. This exhibition is made possible with support generously provided by The Africa Center’s Board of Trustees.
More info at www.theafricacenter.org
Tibor Nagy, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, speaking at the inauguration of the Mekelle American Corner (MAC) in Mekelle during his recent trip to Ethiopia. (Photo: U.S. Embassy Ethiopia)
Press Release
U.S. Embassy Ethiopia
Addis Ababa – U.S. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Tibor Nagy has concluded a successful visit to Ethiopia which involved the inauguration of the Mekelle American Corner (MAC), a modern space for learning, discovery and collaboration aimed at developing and empowering Ethiopian youth and emerging leaders. MAC is located at the newly opened Science Museum Building, Adi Haki Campus and houses a digital library with a collection of journals, American publications and thousands of books, a bank of computing devices from iPads to laptops, and a makerspace equipped with the latest science and technology kits that promote hands-on creativity and innovation.
In his remarks at the MAC opening event, Assistant Secretary Tibor Nagy said, “This American Corner will be a place for the free exchange of ideas, where all can discover new talents and develop them, and where connections with the United States and the rest of the world are as close as a click on a computer screen.”
The Assistant Secretary was joined by Mekelle University President Professor Kindeya Gebrehiwot and U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia Michael Raynor in opening the new American Corner in Mekelle.
The U.S. Embassy invested over 2,170,000 Birr in the MAC, the sixth space of its kind in Ethiopia with five others in Bahir Dar, Dire Dawa, Jimma and two in Addis Ababa at the U.S. Embassy and the Ethiopian National Archives and Library Agency (NALA). The MAC symbolizes the deepening U.S.-Ethiopian relationship and the U.S. commitment to investing in the capacity of Ethiopian people through education and training. The MAC will be open to the public Mondays to Fridays from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturdays 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Assistant Secretary Nagy also met with U.S. exchange alumni and American Ambassador’s Distinguished Scholars in Mekelle to discuss how these programs have shaped their interests and work in Ethiopia. Alumni participants included those who participated in the Young African Leaders Initiative, the International Visitor Leadership Program, the Community Solutions Program, and the Study of the U.S. Institutes program. During the meeting, Assistant Secretary Nagy expressed the United States’ support of these alumni and the Ethiopian government’s ongoing efforts to capitalize on the potential of its people, particularly its youth.
In addition, Assistant Secretary Nagy met with key university partners and officials from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE). During the meeting, Assistant Secretary Nagy and the officials discussed challenges facing Ethiopian higher education institutions and opportunities for increased university partnerships and research collaboration between the United States and Ethiopia. The Assistant Secretary expressed his appreciation for the long history of partnership with Ethiopia on education, a relationship going back nearly 70 years. He also discussed the University Partnerships Initiative, a program that aims to expand partnerships between U.S. and African universities to strengthen Africa’s educational institutions and enhance their role as instruments of national development.
Below is an AP report on the growing social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls demanding answers and better government transparency regarding the abducted University Students in Ethiopia. (Image: change.org)
The Associated Press
By ELIAS MESERET
Growing Outcry in Ethiopia Over Abducted University Students
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopians are expressing anger and frustration over several university students, most of them female, who remain missing after their kidnapping two months ago.
A growing social media campaign echoes the #BringBackOurGirls activism in Nigeria over the mass kidnapping there of scores of schoolgirls in 2014. Ethiopians are pressuring the government for answers in the abduction in the Oromia region.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has been praised for appointing women to prominent positions “but with regard to the abducted girls, in its silence, it is violating a tremendous number of their human rights,” Yared Hailemariam, director of the Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia, said in a statement Monday. “Ethiopian authorities have failed to protect the victims of the abduction and to take necessary measures to bring them back.”
It is not clear how many of the students remain captive. The prime minister’s press secretary, Nigussu Tilahun, disclosed on Jan. 11 that 21 students from Dembi Dollo University were released while six remained captive.
But family members say they haven’t heard from their loved ones.
“The last time I heard from my daughter was a month ago. She said youths from the local area took them to the forest. I don’t know what happened to her since,” Yeneneh Adugna, who lives in Central Gondar in the Amhara region, told The Associated Press. “We are living in an anguish every day. We are crying every day. We want to know whether they are alive or dead. No one is giving us any information.”
The Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia says 18 university students, 14 of them female, were seized while returning home from university.
No one has claimed responsibility for the abduction, but Oromia regional officials have blamed the armed Oromo Liberation Army, which is clashing with government forces in the Western Oromia region. The armed group has denied the accusation and said the government itself was to blame for the kidnapping.
New York (TADIAS) — Ezra Wube’s Show titled Project Junction is set to open at The Africa Center in New York City this week.
“In this newly commissioned mixed media installation, Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Ethiopia) constructs a site-specific project that explores food as an expression of collective identity in its ever evolving state,” The Africa Center announced. “The installation incorporates animation, painting, prints, and objects.”
Ezra’s new show at The Africa Center — opening on January 30th and remaining on display through August 23rd, 2020 — is a continuation of the New York-based artist’s recent and well-received site-specific multi-media digital works in the city including his stop-motion animation produced for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that was displayed last Spring at the Fulton Center. The display had also inspired an interactive arts workshop held in June 2019 at the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan.
Reflecting on his upcoming exhibition at the Africa Center Ezra says: “Through these layers of connected time and space — the past, the present and the future, the local with the global — I aim to highlight the global assemblage and continuous re-justification of African identities.”
The Africa Center adds:
Wube’s creative process involved visiting Teranga at The Africa Center, as well as other African restaurants within walking distance of the Center including Cross Culture Kitchen, Le Baobab Gouygui, La Savane, Safari, and Zoma. He researched the ingredients of the dishes on their menus, and took note of the décor and ambience of each location.
Wube’s stop motion animations use the ingredients of each dish to reflect his discoveries about their native origins, symbolism, historical and cultural associations, related folklore and beliefs. The line drawings unfurling throughout the space hint at these figurative connections, while tracing stories of the ingredients’ historical cultivation and global dispersion. The objects displayed within the installation recreate those found on the walls of the local restaurants, and reference how African cultures and communities in America construct symbolic universes to reflect on their experiences of diaspora and home. The installation is accompanied by a futuristic takeout menu that viewers are invited to take with them.
The menu is based on Wube’s conversations with the restaurant proprietors about dishes that they imagine will continue to exist in the year 3020 A.D.
Ezra commenced work on the Project Junction installation at The Africa Center in January 2020 and its completion will be celebrated with an opening reception on Thursday, January 30th. Visitors are welcome to visit The Africa Center during regular opening hours to view the artist at work on the installation.
About the Artist courtesy of The Africa Center:
Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Ethiopia) is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work references the notion of past and present, the constant changing of place, and the dialogical tensions between “here”and “there”. His exhibitions include the 21st Contemporary Art Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Brazil; The 2nd edition of the Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans, France; “Gwangju Biennale”, Gwangju, South Korea; Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; “Dak’Art Biennale”, Dakar, Senegal and Times Square Arts Midnight Moment, NY. His residencies and awards include Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Work Space, LMCC Residency Program, New York, NY; Open Sessions Program, The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Rema Hort Mann Foundation; the Triangle Arts Association Residency, Brooklyn, NY and The Substation Artist Residency Program, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Since 2015 Ezra organizes Addis Video Art Festival, a platform for innovative international video art in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Ezra Wube: Project Junction is organized by Evelyn Owen, Associate Curator, and Henone Girma, Programs Coordinator. This exhibition is made possible with support generously provided by The Africa Center’s Board of Trustees.
— If You Go:
Ezra Wube’s New Exhibition ‘Project Junction’ at The Africa Center in NYC
Thursday, January 30, 2020
7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
The Africa Center
1280 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10029 Ezra Wube: Project Junction is organized by Evelyn Owen, Associate Curator, and Henone Girma, Programs Coordinator. This exhibition is made possible with support generously provided by The Africa Center’s Board of Trustees.
More info at www.theafricacenter.org
Ethiopian-American Tecle Gebremichael, who is the first refugee from Africa to run for local office in Boise, Idaho, speaks to students at Boise State University, where he studies political science, about his campaign platform for city council. (Photo: IRC)
International Rescue Committee
Refugees in America: Meet Tecle: Boise’s first refugee from Africa to run for local office
Tecle Gebremichael was surprised to find a handwritten letter in his mailbox. No one really sends handwritten notes anymore, he thought. It read:
“Dear Mr. Gebremichael, Following last week’s mayoral and city council forums, I wanted to write and commend you for your candidacy, for your decision to offer yourself as a candidate and for the exceptionally articulate way you are addressing public issues in Boise. I think you have raised the caliber of public discussion in this city. As such, you have already emerged as a winner. I am still aspiring to be a good American citizen. You have already achieved it.”
Tecle was left speechless, holding back his tears. Last year in November, he became the first Ethiopian refugee to run for city council in Boise, Idaho. His experience as a refugee coming to the United States inspired him to run for local office and bring a fresh perspective as an immigrant and new American.
“When I first came to America, I promised myself that I will do everything I can to give back to the country and community that welcomed me,” he says. “I want to show that when refugees come here, we try to integrate and contribute however we can…”
“I feel people are losing the respect of others, but I believe we respect stories,” says Tecle. “When they hear the story of a young person who spent eight years in a refugee camp, who came to the U.S at age 21 with only seven years of schooling, trying to do these things, it’s just inspiring for many. That’s the American story.”
Tecle’s family were farmers in northern Ethiopia. He was seven years old when the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea broke out in the late nineties. One night, Tecle was jolted awake by his mother.
“We need to leave,” she told him as she left a small pile of clothes for him to pack.
As soon as he heard the deafening gunshots outside, he knew why. “You realize it’s between life and death,” he recalls, describing that night. “You don’t really think about anything but just running away.”
It was dark, Tecle recalls, but the sky lit up with artillery fire. As he ran, Tecle realized his parents were not with him.
Former president Barack Obama unveils his portrait by Kehinde Wiley at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in February 2018. (The Washington Post)
The Washington Post
The wildly popular Obama portraits are going on a year-long tour to museums across the country
The incredibly popular Obamas will be leaving Washington next year for a five-city tour.
Their portraits, that is. The paintings of former president Barack Obama — by Kehinde Wiley — and first lady Michelle Obama — by Amy Sherald — have attracted record crowds to the National Portrait Gallery. Starting in June 2021, the portraits will travel to five cities, giving new audiences a chance to experience them.
“We’re a history museum and an art museum, and they are really great representations of both. This tour is an opportunity for audiences in different parts of the country to witness how portraiture can engage people,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, the museum that commissioned the works. “You can use these portraits as a portal to all sorts of conversations.”
The tour will begin at the Art Institute of Chicago (June 18-Aug. 15, 2021) before moving to the Brooklyn Museum (Aug. 27-Oct. 24, 2021), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Nov. 5-Jan. 2, 2022), the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (Jan. 14-March 13, 2022) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (March 25-May 30, 2022).
The cities were selected by the gallery for personal and geographical reasons. The Obamas have deep connections to Chicago, for example, and the works will be there when the former president celebrates his 60th birthday. Sherald grew up in Georgia, and Wiley was born in Los Angeles, so those stops made sense, Sajet said. Wiley’s studio is based in Brooklyn, and its museum has several of his works in its collection.
Thursday’s tour announcement coincides with the publication of “The Obama Portraits,” an illustrated book from the Smithsonian Institution and the Princeton University Press that celebrates the portraits and their influence. Wiley and Sherald are the first African American artists to be selected for the gallery’s portraits of a president or first lady, and their paintings have drawn millions to the gallery since their splashy unveiling in February 2018.
Apposit partners (L-R) Adam Abate, Simon Solomon, Eric Chijioke, Gideon Abate. Apposit CEO Adam Abate moved back to Ethiopia 17 years ago for an assignment in the country’s Ministry of Finance, after studying at Brown University and working in fintech in New York. (TechCrunch)
TechCrunch
Nigerian digital payments startup Paga has acquired Apposit, a software development company based in Ethiopia, for an undisclosed amount.
That’s just part of Paga’s news. The Lagos based startup will also launch its payment products in Mexico this year and in Ethiopia imminently, CEO Tayo Oviosu told TechCrunch
The moves come a little over a year after Paga raised a $10 million Series B round and Oviosu announced the company’s intent to expand globally, while speaking at Disrupt San Francisco.
Paga will leverage Apposit — which is U.S. incorporated but operates in Addis Ababa — to support that expansion into East Africa and Latin America.
Repat founders
Behind the acquisition is a story threaded with serendipity, return, and collaboration.
Both Paga and Apposit were founded by repatriate entrepreneurs. Oviosu did his MBA at Stanford University and worked at Cisco Systems before returning to Nigeria.
Apposit CEO Adam Abate moved back to Ethiopia 17 years ago for an assignment in the country’s Ministry of Finance, after studying at Brown University and working in fintech in New York.
“I put together a team…to build…public financial management systems for the country. And during the process…brought in my best friend Eric Chijioke…to be a technical engineer,” said Abate.
The two teamed up with Simon Solomon in 2007 to co-found Apposit, with a focus on building large-scale enterprise software for Africa.
A year later, Oviosu met Chijioke when he crashed at his house while visiting Ethiopia for a wedding. It just so happened Chijioke’s brother was his roommate at Stanford.
That meeting began an extended conversation between the two on digital-finance innovation in Africa and eventually led to a Paga partnership with Apposit in 2010.
Apposit dedicated an engineering team to build Paga’s payment platform, Eric Chijioke became Paga’s CTO (while maintaining his Apposit role) and Apposit backed Paga.
“We aligned ourselves as African entrepreneurs…which then developed into a close relationship where we became…investors in Paga and strategically aligned,” said Abate.
African roots, global ambitions
Fast forward a decade, and the two companies have come pretty far. Apposit has grown its business into a team of 63 engineers and technicians and has racked up a list of client partnerships. The company helped digitize the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange and has contracted on IT and software solutions with banks non-profits and brick and mortar companies.
For a decade, Apposit has also supported Paga’s payment product development.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is presented by the Chair of the Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen, left, during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo City Hall, Norway, Tuesday Dec. 10, 2019. (NTB Scanpix via AP)
CNN
Reverting to his usual level of dishonesty, Trump made 81 false claims last week
Washington (CNN) — President Donald Trump made just 15 false claims two weeks ago, a holiday week during which he uttered few public remarks.
He gave fact checkers only a brief respite. Back to Washington and back to doing interviews and campaign rallies, Trump made 81 false claims last week. That is tied for the fifth-highest total in the 27 weeks we have counted at CNN.
It was an eclectic batch of dishonesty. Among other things, Trump took unearned credit for both the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace agreement and for the drop in the US cancer death rate, absurdly claimed that NATO “had no money” before his presidency, wrongly denied that his golf excursions cost taxpayers any money, and repeated his usual varied inaccuracies about impeachment, immigration and the nuclear agreement with Iran.
Trump made 27 of the false claims at his campaign rally in Toledo, Ohio. He made 16 more in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham. He made six in his speech on National Environmental Policy Act regulations, plus 10 in his exchange with reporters after the speech.
Trump’s total of 81 false claims last week was above his average of about 61 per week. Trump is now up to 1,636 false claims since July 8, an average of about nine per day.
The most revealing false claim: Ethiopia and the Nobel Peace Prize
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize in large part for Ahmed’s successful effort to make a peace deal with neighboring Eritrea.
Trump is an incorrigible acclaim-seeker who has been open about his desire for a Nobel. At his January 9 rally, he claimed that he was a more deserving recipient than Ahmed — not for some other initiative of his own but because, he suggested, he was the one who actually made Ethiopia’s big deal. “I made a deal. I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country,” he complained.
This left Ethiopians baffled. Experts on Ethiopia say there is no sign Trump played an important role in the deal.
Ethiopia Pushes Privatization to Give Its Economy a Sugar Rush
For decades, Irba Jana has scraped out a modest living from sugar cane, selling his harvest to mills run by Ethiopia’s state-owned sugar monopoly. But lately he’s been working as a security guard to supplement his income, as two of the three nearby processing facilities have closed because of a lack of upkeep and investment. “Sugar cane just isn’t profitable anymore,” says Irba, a grizzled, 50-year-old father of eight. “It may be time to start farming something else.”
Recently, though, he got news that could augur a return to better times: The government is planning to privatize Ethiopian Sugar Corp.’s assets, including a factory complex near Irba’s home on a high plateau a two-hour drive southeast of Addis Ababa. And a local investor aims to let farmers buy shares in the mills, with promises of investment in additional projects such as candy and ethanol factories. A voice at the factory would benefit farmers, says Beyene Bikila, a fellow grower and union member. “We know how to produce,” he says, “and we should get paid properly.”
Privatization of the sugar industry is part of a sweeping liberalization backed by Abiy Ahmed, the 43-year-old prime minister who in October won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end a two-decade conflict with neighboring Eritrea. Ethiopia is among Africa’s most dynamic economies, averaging annual growth of almost 10% for the past decade. Yet the country remains one of the most state-controlled on the continent, a legacy of the Marxist-Leninist Derg regime that ruled from the 1974 coup that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie until a return to democracy in 1991. “The private sector is not playing its natural role,” says Eyob Tekalign, a former diplomat and private equity executive hired by Abiy as state minister for finance. “Our growth had shortcomings in terms of quality, job creation, inclusivity, and benefiting the poor.”
The government aims to raise at least $7.5 billion from selling assets from the sugar industry, the phone system, railroads, and other infrastructure. Ethiopia needs foreign exchange: Exports have dwindled, and external debt has grown 26% since 2016, to $27 billion—more than a quarter of the country’s likely 2020 gross domestic product of roughly $100 billion. In December, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank pledged more than $5 billion to help narrow the budget deficit and support Abiy’s reform agenda. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also pledged cash, and China has pushed back the repayment of loans by a decade, to 2030.
Death toll up to 10 in Ethiopia platform collapse; 250 hurt
ADDIS ABABA (AP) — Regional officials in Ethiopia on Tuesday confirmed 10 deaths and 250 people injured after a wooden platform collapsed during a religious event the day before.
Thousands of people attended the colorful Epiphany celebration known as Timkat in the northern city of Gondar.
“Ten people have lost their lives,” the Ethiopian Press Agency quoted the city’s police chief, Ayalew Teklu, as saying. “Thirteen people have sustained serious injuries, including four members of the security services.”
Ashenafi Tazebew with Gondar University Hospital said more than 250 people had received medical care. Some 80 people remained at the hospital, Ashenafi said.
The collapse occurred inside the Emperor Fasilides Bath in the city where several thousand Ethiopians and tourists attended the celebration commemorating the baptism of Jesus.
The Ethiopian News Agency reported that more than 15,000 foreigners attended the event in Gondar.
UNESCO late last year added Ethiopia’s Epiphany festivities to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which attracted more attendees.
The step comes after several high-profile cases in which the Jewishness of Ethiopian Jews was challenged by rabbinic authorities. (Photo: Children attend Jewish studies class while awaiting immigration to Israel, in Gondar./REUTERS)
The Chief Rabbinate has accepted the position of the revered, late ultra-Orthodox leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef that the Beta Israel Jewish community from Ethiopia is Jewish.
The Council of the Chief Rabbinate, the body’s executive arm, approved a policy to fully accept the Beta Israel as Jewish last November, but the decision has only been disclosed now.
The Chief Rabbinate has not issued a formal statement on the issue, although a spokesman for the body confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that the decision has been officially approved.
Beta Israel (House of Israel) is the Ge’ez term for the Jewish community of Ethiopia, which is believed to date back to between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. It was isolated from the rest of the Jewish world for most of that period.
Yosef, who is considered to have been one of the preeminent arbiters of Jewish law of his generation, ruled in 1973 that the Beta Israel were Jewish and should be allowed to immigrate to Israel. But the Chief Rabbinate has refrained from fully recognizing them as such until now.
In the 1980s, when the Beta Israel began immigrating from Ethiopia to Israel, the Chief Rabbinate adopted a position that it believed the community was Jewish but required them to undergo pro forma conversion so that all rabbinic authorities would accept their Jewishness. This was, however, deeply insulting to the community, which has always insisted that they were fully Jewish, pointing to the decision of Yosef from the 1970s.
Yosef reiterated his view that they were fully Jewish. A solution was found whereby Netanya Chief Rabbi David Shloush, a student of Yosef who also maintains that the Beta Israel are fully Jewish, agreed to register anyone from the community for marriage, which would then be accepted by the central Chief Rabbinate. Marriage registration within the Chief Rabbinate is the most practical application of Jewish-status recognition.
Left: Kelkile Gezahegn celebrates his win in the 48th running of the Houston Marathon. Right: Askale Merachi breaks the tape to win the women's race. (Photo: Houston Chronicle)
Houston Chronicle
If it’s a Sunday morning in January and Houston’s streets are swarming with runners, it’s a safe bet Ethiopians will be leading the pack, then leaving town with brand-new cowboy hats. They went 2-for-2 this year for the 10th time in the last dozen years.
Kelkile Gezahegn reclaimed the men’s crown in the Chevron Houston Marathon on behalf of his East African homeland — which took a one-year hiatus from winning — with his 2:08:36, breaking away from his only challenger, countryman Bonsa Dida. Askale Merachi extended what’s now a 14-year run of Ethiopian dominance among the women with a 2:03:39, only 15 seconds shy of the course record.
The 23-year-old Gezahegn is the eighth different male champion from the East African nation since 2009, while Merachi, a decade older at 33, is the 10th different Ethiopian female to prevail since 2007.
Both made their respective Houston debuts memorable, winning $45,000 and those prized Stetsons. Note that Merachi admitted, speaking through a translator, that with all due respect to our proud Texas heritage, “the 45K was the most important goal.”
She did add that the hat was “very lovely.”
Such is the depth of talent in Ethiopia, however, that neither Gezahegn nor Merachi is assured of making their Olympic team for the Tokyo Games this summer. Gezahegn, who ran a personal-best 2:05:56 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2018, said “it’s up to my manager” as to whether he’s even in the conversation. Yet despite his youth, he has eight career marathon victories, winning at least once in each of the past three seasons with triumphs in Frankfurt, Germany, and Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Gezahegn followed Kenya’s Albert Korir atop the podium (another Kenyan, Dominic Ondoro, won in 2017) but didn’t come close to threatening Tariku Jufar’s course record 2:06:51, set in 2012.
Although also largely unknown to local crowds lining the streets from downtown to the Galleria area, Merachi showed herself to be the favorite early and, despite fading a little late as a cold, blustery wind picked up — everyone’s pace slowed markedly because of it — was able to easily block countrywoman Biryukayit Degefa’s bid to become the first runner, male or female, to collect a fourth championship.
However, by placing second with a 2:24:47 that was faster than two of her winning times, Degefa secured a podium finish for an unprecedented sixth consecutive year — after a fourth-place showing in 2014. She’s one of three Ethiopian women to win at least twice. It was Dire Tune who began Ethiopia’s reign with a back-to-back in 2007 and 2008.
“I finished like I started,” Merachi said. “My goal is always a single one: just winning.”
She admitted she was aware of what Degefa was hoping to accomplish — two Kenyan men, David Cheruiyot (2005-06, 2008) and Stephen Ndungu (1998-2000), are the only other three-time champions in Houston since the inaugural marathon in 1972 — but said, “I just did my part.”
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the United States marking what would have been the civil rights leader's 91st birthday celebration. (Photo: The MLK Memorial in Washington by Gediyon Kifle/Tadias archive)
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Forget the notion of MLK Jr. as ‘Dreamer,’ say activists.
The legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is often celebrated by conjuring his words spoken at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. His “I Have a Dream” speech has come to be remembered as inspired, rousing, and optimistic about race relations in America.
“With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood,” he said on that August day in Washington, D.C.
Increasingly, though, black Americans are calling for new ways to analyze and celebrate his legacy — more accurately.
“America has been comfortable with Dr. King the dreamer as opposed to Dr. King who articulates the American nightmare,” said the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler, pastor of the historic Mother Bethel AME Church.
The man who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, at age 39, denounced racism, materialism, militarism. He predicted social ills would never be solved without fixing entrenched inequity. And he called out U.S. economic policy.
In fact, many activists who are asking today for reparations to repair the damages black Americans have suffered — a subject that last year rose to the level of presidential candidate debates — borrow rhetoric from King’s combative speeches…
In the next campaign on Washington, King said, “We’re coming to get our check.”
By 1967, King came to confess in an interview with NBC News correspondent Sander Vanocur: “That dream I had that day has, at many points, turned into a nightmare.”
Yet, said Solomon Jones, a host for Philadelphia radio station WURD and a columnist for the Inquirer, America has come to sanitize King’s ideas to prevent them from growing into a larger movement…
Philadelphia lawyer and activist Michael Coard, co-founder of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, said, “Anyone who reduces him to the 1963 ‘I Have a Dream’ speech knows very little about him.”
As Ethiopian Americans we're intimately following two important elections this year: the upcoming parliamentary polls in Ethiopia and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Below is an update from politico.com highlighting former vice president Joe Biden's campaign. (AP photo)
Politico
‘Clever’: Biden plays the Obama card
Barack Obama hasn’t endorsed his former vice president, Joe Biden. But you wouldn’t know that from watching Biden’s newest campaign ad.
“We all know that on its own, his work does not capture the full measure of Joe Biden,” Obama says in the ad, piano music lightly rippling in the background as black and white images of the former vice president flash on the screen, before calling Biden “a resilient and loyal and humble servant.”
“The best part is,” Obama says in closing, “he’s nowhere close to finished.”
The ad, stitched together from Obama’s speech presenting Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom before they left office together in January 2017, is part of Biden’s closing argument in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. It’s a way to convince Democratic voters that they should put him in the Oval Office because Obama — the most popular figure in the party — put him a heartbeat away from it.
“This a very effective ad … it is a clever way of signifying Obama’s feelings about Biden, implying an endorsement the president has not made,” said David Axelrod, a top Obama adviser.
“His testimonial from the Medal of Freedom speech goes to what are perhaps the most salient and appealing qualities of Biden: character, empathy, decency,” Axelrod continued. “Barack Obama is a highly esteemed figure in the Democratic Party and perhaps nowhere more than Iowa, which really embraced him and launched him to the presidency.”
New York (TADIAS) — Ruth Negga was dubbed “a star for our time” by Vogue Magazine following her acclaimed performance three years ago in the groundbreaking civil rights movie Loving, which highlighted the historic 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.
The Ethiopian-Irish actress is once again receiving a new round of much-deserved accolades for her mesmerizing current performance as the main character in Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare’s most popular plays and significant contributions to the field of theatre and literature. In a review of her role The Guardian had declared: “Ruth Negga plays the Prince with priceless precision.” And the Irish version of The Times of London enthused: “Her decision to take on such a task has resulted in a stunning gift for Irish theatregoers.”
As The New York Times notes: “What stage actor wouldn’t jump at the chance to play Hamlet?” The Times added: “Over the years, the greatest actresses of every age have tackled the role, from Sarah Siddons in the 18th century to Charlotte Cushman in the 19th; in 1900, the legendary Sarah Bernhardt became the first actor, of any gender, to play Hamlet on film.”
Initially Ruth was hesitant to play Hamlet. “Her first impulse was to say thanks, but no,” says Robert Ito of The New York Times. “Too tough, too daunting, “too much,” she told NYT. “Nothing helps you play Hamlet.”
Next month Ruth will make her NYC stage debut at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse, where Hamlet is scheduled for its American premiere on February 1st and set for a five-week run through March 8th, 2020.
Born in Addis Ababa in 1982 and raised in the Ethiopian capital until the age of four before moving with her family to Limerick, Ireland, Ruth Negga obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Acting Studies from Trinity College in Dublin and has been residing in London for the past decade. As an actress Negga was part of the AMC drama series Preacher prior to her lead role in the feature film Loving. She is currently filming in Los Angeles in the upcoming new Hollywood movie Passing.
—
If You Go:
St. Ann’s Warehouse presents HAMLET By William Shakespeare
Directed by Yaël Farber, Featuring Ruth Negga
AMERICAN PREMIERE
FEB 1 – MAR 8, 2020
Tickets start at $35
Run Time: 3 Hours and 15 Minutes, One Intermission Tickets On Sale NOW
The three-time Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele will take on the world record holder Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya at the 2020 London Marathon in April. (Photo: Kenenisa Bekele won the Berlin marathon last September in the second fastest offical time in history/Getty Images)
The Guardian
Kenenisa Bekele to face Eliud Kipchoge in London Marathon for the ages
Kenenisa Bekele has agreed to race Eliud Kipchoge in a London Marathon for the ages in April – and said he is not surprised Mo Farah is swerving the race in favour of returning to the track.
Bekele, a three-time Olympic gold medallist who has won 17 world titles over cross-country, track and road, roared with laughter when asked what he thought of Farah’s decision to leave the marathon and then added: “I am not surprised. Of course if you see Mo Farah’s races in marathons, he’s struggling – it’s not easy to get good results over a marathon. You need experience. It’s a different course, a different racing mentality.
“But it is really hard for all of us. You need to learn how to run it and also the training is different. I think it’s harder, not only for Mo, but for all of us – even I struggled.”
However the Ethiopian, who ran the second fastest marathon time in history in Berlin in September, two seconds shy of Kipchoge’s official world record of 2hr 01min 39sec, said Farah is still good enough to win a medal in the 10,000m at the Tokyo Olympics.
“I’m sure we’ll see Mo doing better things on the track. If he focuses and concentrates like before I’m sure he will be in the medals in the 10,000. I’ve no doubt about that.”
Bekele still holds the 5,000m and 10,000m world records, which were set in 2004 and 2005 respectively, and insisted he was capable of claiming Kipchoge’s marathon best even at the age of 37.
“My training is going well and I feel well,” he said.“Before last year I was struggling with injury. Everyone knows I’m a strong athlete from 15 years on the track. When we came to the marathon I’ve struggled maybe to achieve good results but of course this is because of injury, not a lack of training or my personality. I was a bit behind but my health came back and now I’m doing a lot better in the marathon.”
Bekele also admitted the sight of his great Kenyan rival running a sub-two-hour marathon in Vienna in October, albeit in an event that was not recognised by World Athletics, has spurred him on.
Owner Ayele Solomon describes his wines to guests during a tasting at Bee D'Vine Honey Wine Company's tasting bar in the Ferry Building in San Francisco, California, Thursday, January 9th, 2020. (Photo: Michael Short / Special to The Chronicle)
The San Francisco Chronicle
Ayele Solomon grew up drinking homemade t’ej in Ethiopia. He incorporates some of that tradition in his California honey-wine production, but brings a more scientific approach.
Wine made with honey, often called mead, could be the world’s oldest fermented beverage, with evidence suggesting it was consumed 7,000 years ago. Today, however, honey wine is a difficult sell, eclipsed by grape wines, craft beers and, lately, hard seltzer.
Many drinkers mistakenly assume that all mead is invariably sweet. They’ve been disappointed with mediocre versions they’ve tasted at Renaissance fairs. But makers of honey wine believe that sales would be much easier if they could just persuade potential buyers to take a sip. That isn’t easy, given that production sites are few and not as gussied up and romantic as winery tasting rooms. And only occasionally does a restaurant wine list include a section devoted to mead.
Ayele Solomon recognizes those drawbacks, so he has done something unusual for Northern California’s small but persistently hopeful community of honey-wine producers — in December, he opened a free-standing tasting bar in a prime San Francisco setting, the Ferry Building.
There, he daily pours samples of his four honey wines, one each dry and sweet, one each still and sparkling, inspired by the honey-wine tradition of his native Ethiopia, all under the brand Bee D’Vine.
Honey wine is a more universal way to describe the beverage and to indicate its stylistic sweep, he says. It also is the term used in Ethiopia, where it traditionally is known as t’ej…
From Ethiopia, he and his family migrated to Kenya and then to the United States, settling in the Bay Area in the mid-1980s. After earning a degree in environmental economics at UC Berkeley, he returned to Africa. There, his work as a conservationist — fostering economic opportunities for indigenous residents of the mountainous rain forest of Kafa in southwestern Ethiopia — reintroduced him to honey wine.
Ethiopia Plans to Build Africa’s Largest Airport at $5 Billion
Ethiopia plans to start building Africa’s largest airport at $5 billion within six months and continue the ascendancy of its national carrier, the most profitable on the continent.
The new airport, 70 kilometers (43.5 miles) from the existing Bole International Airport in the capital Addis Ababa, will be able to handle as many as 100 million passengers yearly, Ethiopian Airlines Chief Executive Officer Tewolde GebreMariam told the state news agency. That would catapult Ethiopia into a global league, with capacity greater than London Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, and Dubai International, currently the world’s No. 1 for international flights.
Ethiopian Airlines reported a 25% increase in profits to $260 million in 2018-19 as it carried more passengers and cargo, according to a report on the carrier’s website. Revenue of almost $4 billion, 18% higher than previously, could continue to climb as the airline nears its goal of 22 million passengers by 2025.
While Bole airport has just been expanded with additional capacity, it will be overwhelmed in three to four years if the airline grows as projected, GebreMariam told the Ethiopian News Agency.
The plans are part of a 15-year expansion strategy of Ethiopia’s aviation industry, that has also seen it either sign up joint ventures or start subsidiaries in other African countries including Malawi, Chad, Zambia and Mozambique. The carrier is also in talks to start airlines in Ghana and Nigeria.
Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam is seen as it undergoes construction work on the river Nile in Guba Woreda, Benishangul Gumuz Region, Ethiopia September 26, 2019. (Photo: REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri)
VOA
Despite Trump’s Urging, Egypt, Ethiopia Still Deadlocked on Nile Dam
WASHINGTON – The latest talks hosted by the U.S. Treasury produced some progress but failed to achieve a comprehensive agreement on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Egypt and Ethiopia are still deadlocked over the dam, despite urging from U.S. President Donald Trump that parties reach a “mutually beneficial agreement.”
The parties had agreed in November to a deadline of January 15, 2020, for reaching an accord on the dam. Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan are scheduled to reconvene in Washington on January 28-29 to finalize an agreement.
A joint statement released by U.S. Treasury noted the “progress achieved” and the joint “commitment to reach a comprehensive, cooperative, adaptive, sustainable and mutually beneficial agreement on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.”
Ethiopia and Egypt have been negotiating for years, but one sticking point remains the rate at which Ethiopia will draw water out of the Nile to fill the dam’s reservoir. Cairo fears Ethiopia’s plans to rapidly fill the reservoir could threaten Egypt’s source of fresh water.
Reservoir filling in stages
The parties have agreed that the filling of the dam will be “executed in stages” during the wet season, in a manner that will take into account “the potential impact of the filling on downstream reservoirs,” according to the statement.
The parties have agreed to an initial filling stage of the GERD that will provide for the rapid achievement of a level of 595 meters above sea level and the early generation of electricity, while providing appropriate mitigation measures for Egypt and Sudan in case of severe droughts during this stage.
The parties have not appeared to agree on how these provisions will be implemented. However, observers note that there is political will to continue talks.
“This is progress,” said Aaron Salzberg, director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina and former director of the State Department agency that deals with international transboundary water issues.
“The countries are staying at the table and a vision for the cooperative and adaptive management of GERD — based on hydrology and downstream impacts — is coming together,” Salzberg added.
Prior to negotiations this week, a group of Egyptian academics and civil society circulated a petition calling for the United Nations, African Union and Pan African Parliament to exert pressure on Ethiopia and “avert potential conflict in the region” over the dam.
Ethiopia continues to insist that it is not going beyond a tripartite negotiation on this issue, with U.S. and the World Bank participating only as observers during the three Washington meetings.
“We came out of respect, but we will not accept negotiation. That is our stance,” Seleshi Bekele, Ethiopia’s minister of water, irrigation and electricity, told VOA last week.
On Sunday, Ethiopia requested that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa help resolve the long-running dispute.
Still, the joint statement appears to represent a lowering in tensions. In October, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed warned that if the need arose to go to war over the dam, his country could ready millions of people.
White House meeting
On Tuesday, Trump met with the foreign and water resources ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan at the White House to discuss progress on dam talks and reaffirm “United States support for a cooperative, sustainable and mutually beneficial agreement among the parties.”
The meeting was not on the president’s public schedule and was not announced until hours later. A White House meeting with the parties in November was also not announced on the president’s schedule.
Trump took interest in the dam in September, after Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi asked him to mediate the conflict. He appointed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to be the point of contact in the matter.
The U.S. State Department has engaged with parties of the dam project since 2011 and repeatedly urged tripartite negotiations to resolve the matter.
Salem Solomon and Habtamu Seyoum contributed to this report.
Haile Selassie, the exiled emperor of Ethiopia, is shown around the garden at princes gate, London, on June 4, 1936. (AP photo)
VOA
BATH, ENGLAND – Traveling to the British town of Bath has become a pilgrimage of sorts for people of Ethiopian heritage. When Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie had to go into exile, he landed in Bath. The town, about 145 kilometers west of London, hosted the emperor from 1936 to 1940.
When the Italians under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Haile Selassie, was forced to temporarily go in exile in Britain. He lived in Bath at Fairfield House, which also hosted his family, closest confidants and entourage.
Ezra Tsegay is part of the Ethiopian diaspora community and organizes Ethiopian-related events several times a year at Fairfield House.
“We feel privileged that we are continuing a historical tradition,” Ezra said. “And I think it’s a good thing that the emperor’s name is remembered and the place is in use. And we feel very attached to the place emotionally.”
The emperor renovated the two-story house after he bought the property. Rooms are still decorated with impressive carpets and Ethiopian art, as well as photos of Haile Selassie. The property sits on nearly one hectare of land.
An estimated 90,000 people of Ethiopian heritage live in Britain. Most are based in London. One of them — Abiyou Desta — was visiting the former residence of the Ethiopian emperor for the first time.
Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie at the White House in Washington on Oct. 25, 1970. (AP Photo)
“To be honest, as someone of Ethiopian heritage, I’m really feeling very proud about the place and about the king, what he was doing, Abiyou said. “The displays all over the walls from the first floor to the top floor are very informative. It tells you a lot of information about him, how he used to administer his country from here.”
The 25-room house is now a listed building, meaning changes cannot be made without prior approval. What once used to be the empresses’ office is now an office used by Fairfield project coordinators such as Pauline Swaby Wallace. She explains why the emperor gave Fairfield House to the city of Bath in 1958.
“He had come with money, he came with resources, but in time those resources had run out, so the people of Bath were kind enough to, you know, accept him in their community,” Pauline said. “Although they were told by our government that, you know, just leave him let him just live quietly at Fairfield House. So he was invited to events, and he invited people here. So I think the kindness that was shown to him, he showed it back by giving this gift.”
Besides the Ethiopian community, Rastafarians use the house as they revere Haile Selassie as God. But the house is mostly used as a day care center for the elderly.
After the Italians were driven out, Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia, and ruled the country until he was deposed in 1974. He died in 1975.
Plans to hold the vote for parliament and regional councils in May had been postponed as neither authorities nor parties would be ready, electoral board head Birtukan Mideksa told a meeting of political parties and civil society groups. (Reuters)
Reuters
Ethiopia sets tentative August date for elections
By Dawit Endeshaw
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia proposes to hold its national vote on Aug. 16, the electoral board said on Wednesday, the first poll under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who has eased political restrictions and taken steps to open the economy since taking office in 2018.
Ethiopia’s 100 million people are seeing unprecedented political change, but Abiy’s reforms have also uncorked ethnic rivalries that have spilled into violence.
Plans to hold the vote for parliament and regional councils in May had been postponed as neither authorities nor parties would be ready, electoral board head Birtukan Mideksa told a meeting of political parties and civil society groups.
The new Aug. 16 date is tentative, she told Reuters. Results would be due between Aug. 17-26.
One opposition political party said Aug. 16 was unsuitable because it is a fasting day for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and falls during the rainy season.
“There are concerns that need to be resolved and addressed specifically on the schedule,” Desalegn Chane, president of the opposition National Movement of Amhara, told Reuters.
Ethiopia has held regular parliamentary elections since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) took power in 1991 but, with one exception, none were competitive.
The EPRDF appointed Abiy, 43, in 2018 after three years of anti-government protests. Among the achievements of his first year in office was peace with longtime foe and neighbor Eritrea, for which Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His promised reforms include a credible multi-party poll in 2020.
In November, the ruling coalition approved a merger of three of its four ethnic-based parties into a single national party as part of Abiy’s efforts to unite the country.
Abiy has freed journalists and activists, lifted bans on political parties, appointed former dissidents to high-level posts and prosecuted officials for rights abuses.
But violence in the regions has forced 2.4 million people out of their homes, according to the United Nations, and delayed both a national census and local elections. Opposition politicians have repeatedly warned that election delays could fuel unrest and dent the democratic credentials of Abiy.
William Davison, Ethiopia analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank, said the opposition could pose a real challenge to the ruling party.
“An overall majority for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s party is by no means guaranteed, especially if the opposition is allowed to freely campaign,” Davison said.
Several African countries, including Ethiopia, are holding consequential elections in the coming few months. But so far here in the Diaspora the discussion has been limited to the usual rancor and empty rhetoric on social media and other platforms. Below is a more informative recent article by the United Nations Africa Renewal magazine highlighting the upcoming election season across the continent. (AP photo)
Voters across the continent will be heading to the ballot box this year to choose their leaders in presidential, parliamentary and local elections starting with the Comoros in January and ending with Ghana in December.
Comorians will be electing a new 33-member national assembly following presidential elections in 2019 while Ghanaians will select their parliamentarians and president on 7 December.
In Chad and Mauritius, electoral commissions have yet to decide on exact dates, but absent unexpected delays, the polls should go ahead as legally mandated. In Seychelles, the electoral body will decide in August when the presidential election will be held later in the year.
Overall, the polls are expected to be peaceful and free. Yet, for different reasons, some countries like Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali and Somalia are ones to watch.
In Ethiopia, elections of members of the House of People’s Representatives and of regional State Councils will be held in a new political environment ushered in by the youthful Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s reforms. Having won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for ending a two-decade conflict with neighbouring Eritrea, observers will be eager to learn to what extent Mr Abiy’s changes are taking hold and how much domestic support he has earned since the award was announced.
Polls in Somalia will be the first in 50 years. Voters will elect the president and their representatives through direct ballots – the last universal suffrage polls having been held in 1969. Previous presidential elections held in 2009, 2012 and 2017 involved a system of thousands of clan delegates voting for parliamentary representatives, who in turn elected the president. Election preparations are currently underway, including the drafting of electoral laws, though security remains a concern throughout the country.
Togolese will go to the polls in April to cast their ballots for president with the possibility of a run-off should no candidate garner more than 50% of the votes. The polls will be the first to be held since presidential term limits were restored in 2019.
Since Ghana’s transition to multi-party democracy in 1992 elections have generally been peaceful, and their results generally considered fair. This trend is expected to continue, amid the government’s recent claims to have nipped in the bud attempts at a coup by a group of civilians, and former and current military personnel.
In Burkina Faso, Burundi and Tanzania, voters will be called to choose their presidents first, then their national assemblymen and women later in the year. Burundians will elect a new president, as the incumbent is retiring.
In Burkina Faso and Mali, recurring violence in some areas, some of it deadly, is likely to affect the polls. Over the last few months, terrorist activity has increasingly targeted civilians and security forces, including peacekeepers in Mali. Given the circumstances organising nationwide elections will be a challenge.
In Côte d’Ivoire things are not straightforward either. The country has remained stable since the hotly contested 2010 presidential poll that helped mark the end of a decade of armed conflict. Now Ivoirians look towards October polls, but the political coalition has progressively frayed, and old political fault lines have resurfaced.
Guineans are scheduled to choose a new assembly and president come October too. Parliamentary elections were postponed earlier this year given political tensions over plans to call a referendum on lifting constitutional term limits. Large demonstrations against the plan have been witnessed across the country, including in the capital Conakry. The heightening tension is likely to affect the upcoming polls.
Ethiopian-American Artist Meklit Hadero (photo credit: Nina Westervelt for the New York Times)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 15th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — Ethiopian American singer and songwriter Meklit Hadero was one of the artists invited to perform at the 2020 Globalfest concert in New York City.
This past weekend, on Sunday January 12th, New York City’s annual Globalfest returned for its 17th edition at the legendary Manhattan nightclub Copacabana and the San Francisco-based artist Meklit Hadero was among the eclectic lineup of international performances.
“This year’s Globalfest was the most manic and clamorous of them all, a lineup of musicians demanding attention with speed, rhythm, passion, humor, costumes, dance moves and the determination to hold on to particular cultural heritages in a connected world,” writes Jon Pareles of The New York Times. ” With 12 acts in five hours on the three stages of the Copacabana in Manhattan, this year’s event brought musicians from Korea, Brazil, Turkey, Hungary, Algeria, Senegal and the Louisiana bayou, and elsewhere. Some were expatriates, mingling sounds from their birthplaces with influences from their newer homes; others sought to thrust a local heritage into a 21st-century context. Few shied away from making a ruckus.”
NYT adds: “The lineup included well-known performers: Yungchen Lhamo, a Tibetan singer whose meditative songs and Buddhist sentiments were Globalfest’s brief moment of serenity on a boisterous night. Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas, who hooted and clattered through bayou rockers and two-steps. And Cheikh Lo from Senegal, who crooned smoothly while propelling his band with complex, skittering African funk drumbeats. Here are eight other performances that stood out.”
Meklit
Meklit, a songwriter who was born in Ethiopia but grew up in the United States, sang in English but reached back to modal Ethiopian funk for her songs. Her band included the snappy rhythms of a tupan, a large drum used in the Balkans and Turkey; her lyrics promise cosmic unity, insisting, “Everything that we are was made in a supernova.”
China is expected to help Ethiopia build a continental satellite data receiver station, a news report by China state media Xinhua quotes Dr Solomon Belay, Director General of Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI), as saying.
Belay told Xinhua that Beijing and Addis Ababa are on a path to agreeing on a long-term partnership ranging from training programs for Ethiopian space engineers to assisting Ethiopia with launching space satellites and setting up a continental satellite data receiver station.
Beijing and Addis Ababa are still at the discussion table with regards to the continental satellite receiver station. However, Belay revealed that the plan is to realize the project in the next three years.
Belay added that the continental satellite data receiving station will be ideally placed to disseminate information to various African countries since Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa is home to the African Union (AU) Headquarter.
China’s growing influence in Africa is witnessing a new facet as Beijing expands its diplomatic relations in Africa not only on Earth but also in space. Sino-African space cooperation is growing rapidly as with other Chinese advances on the continent.
Last December, China helped Ethiopia launch its first satellite into space by providing USD 6 million grant, trained 21 Ethiopian engineers on the project and helped blast the satellite into orbit.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is presented by the Chair of the Nobel Committee Berit Reiss-Andersen, left, during the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo City Hall, Norway, Tuesday Dec. 10, 2019. (NTB Scanpix via AP)
BBC
Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed responds to Trump’s Nobel Prize complaint
US President Donald Trump should take his complaint about being overlooked for the Nobel Peace Prize to the award organisers, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the 2019 winner, has said.
Mr Abiy said he was not aware of the criteria used to select him.
He was credited for his move to make peace with neighbouring Eritrea.
Mr Trump said last week that he had “saved a country” from a big war, a possible reference to his work on another dispute involving Ethiopia.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bitter border war from 1998-2000, which killed tens of thousands of people.
Although a ceasefire was signed in 2000, the neighbours technically remained at war until July 2018, when Mr Abiy and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki signed a peace deal.
New York (TADIAS) — While gearing up to celebrate their 15th annual Women of Power Summit the African-American-owned multimedia company, Black Enterprise, recognized the late fashion designer Amsale Aberra as a prior BE Legacy Award winner. Sharing 15 memorable moments from prior Women of Power Summits, which honors the achievements of phenomenal American women, Amsale was featured as a fashion designer and entrepreneur alongside a list of women including Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris.
Black Enterprise noted that Amsale Aberra was honored with its Women of Power Legacy award in 2012.
The media company announced that its 15th Anniversary of Women of Power Summit is set to take place in Las Vegas March 5-8th, 2020 and added: “In the 15th year of the summit, we are proud to pay homage to over 60 powerful women who have shaped and changed the world.”
Amsale, who passed away in 2018, was one of the leading bridal fashion designers in America. She was born and raised in Ethiopia and immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. She is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York and subsequently launched her couture bridal brand in 1986. Ten years later, she opened her flagship salon on Madison Avenue here in NYC in 1996. Amsale was a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), a Trustee and alum of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and served on the international advisory board of the Ethiopian Children’s Fund.
— Related:
Watch: Tadias Magazine’s Interview With Bridal-Fashion Designer Amsale Aberra
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, left, with Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed gestures as they pose for a photo prior to their talks at the Union Building in Pretoria, South Africa, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2020. (AP)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Ethiopia’s prime minister has asked South Africa’s president to intervene in his country’s dispute with Egypt over a massive dam project on the Nile River, set to be Africa’s largest hydraulic dam.
During a visit to South Africa on Sunday, Abiy Ahmed said President Cyril Ramaphosa as the incoming chair of the African Union could play an important role in ensuring a peaceful resolution is found.
Talks last week among Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan failed to reach agreement on technical issues including the filling of the $4.6 billion Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is around 70% complete.
Egypt has said filling the dam’s reservoir too quickly could significantly reduce the amount of Nile water available to its people and agriculture. Ethiopia says the dam is needed for development in one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies.
Last week Ethiopia said Egypt asked to extend the time it takes to fill the dam from 12 years to 21 years. Ethiopia called that “not acceptable” and plans to start filling the dam in July at the start of the rainy season.
Egypt later said Ethiopia’s government failed to prove it would take all necessary precautions to ensure that the dam will not affect Egypt’s water supply, especially in times of drought.
Water and energy ministers of Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan are expected to meet again Monday in Washington to report on their progress. The U.S. and World Bank are observers to the talks after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi last year pleaded to the U.S. and the international community to mediate a solution.
“Ethiopia always believes in a win-win approach with Egypt and Sudan. Our kind request is that Ramaphosa … as he is a good friend of Ethiopia and Egypt, also as the incoming African Union chair, he can make a discussion between both parties for us to solve the issue peacefully,” Abiy said Sunday.
He called it crucial that a peaceful solution be found and said he is sure Ramaphosa will “play a significant role” in negotiations.
The South African leader confirmed that he had already raised the matter with the Egyptian president.
“The Nile river is important to both countries and there must be a way in which both their interests can be addressed. There must be a way in which a solution can be found,” Ramaphosa said.
Ethiopia and South Africa signed several trade agreements in health, tourism and telecommunications during Abiy’s visit.
Ramaphosa also gave assurances to the Ethiopian prime minister that his country would protect Ethiopians living in South Africa from the xenophobic attacks that break out in South Africa. Last year, foreign businesses were targeted by locals in Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria.
Ethiopians have the "utmost admiration" for those who fought against apartheid, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said while addressing ANC's 108th annual anniversary celebrations in South Africa on Saturday, January 11th 2020. (Photo: PM Abiy Ahmed and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa/ANA)
African News Agency
Ethiopia has utmost admiration for SA liberation heroes, says prime minister Abiy Ahmed
Abiy Ahmed – the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner – was speaking at the African National Congress’s (ANC) 108th annual anniversary celebrations in Kimberley, the largest city in the Northern Cape.
“Ethiopians have always treated and looked with utmost admiration upon the great heroism of South African men and women in their successful struggle to end apartheid,” he told thousands of ANC supporters at the Tafel Lager Stadium in the city.
The ANC of today was the result of the unbroken chain of proud men and women who served their nation with honour, who fought the system of oppression, and suffered so that dignity and freedom might be known.
“South Africa will continue to be a more equitable”
He added that he salutes freedom fighters such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, Ahmed Kathrada, and “many others who dedicated their lives to the struggle for a better South Africa and a better world”.
“We also salute the current leaders, and President Cyril Ramaphosa, for keeping strong the democratic and progressive vision that Madiba produced. I have no doubt that under the leadership of the ANC, South Africa will continue to be a more equitable, wealthier, healthier, and more tolerant and hopeful nation that inspires the rest of Africa,” he said.
Regardless of differing political orientations at home and abroad, all successive Ethiopian governments had firmly supported the “just cause” of the people of South Africa for freedom and equality, said Abiy.
Ethiopia remembers Mandela
He recalled Mandela travelling to Ethiopia for three months in 1962 to undergo military training, using an Ethiopian passport in the name of David Motsamayi.
“In his autobiography, Madiba speaks fondly about Ethiopia as a country that inspired him to continue his struggle against apartheid.”
Mandela was remembered in Ethiopia for his enduring values of peace and reconciliation, and the dedication to his long walk to freedom, justice, and moral leadership Abiy said.
He added that Ethiopians continued to be inspired by Madiba’s service to humanity., and said:
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressing the audience. Photo: ANA/Danie van der Lith
“His immense contribution and exemplary leadership fostered the promotion of peace, tolerance, inclusivity, and forgiveness, which was close to the hearts of Ethiopians.” – Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed
Mandela relinquishing the South African presidency after one term in office was “so rare” in Africa that it served as an example to the current crop of the continent’s leaders.
Abiy said his own party would continue to work closely with the ANC in the interests of Pan-Africanism to the benefit of the people in both countries, and through “our joint continental leadership to the benefit of Africa and beyond”.
He wished Ramaphosa success as he moved the ANC “into the next stage”.
A Vendor sales a newspaper with a picture of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on it's cover in Addis Ababa, December 10, 2019. (REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri)
The Council on Foreign Relations
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ambitious reform plans for Ethiopia will be tested in the year ahead. Since taking the helm of government in April 2018, Abiy has been a whirlwind of activity, opening up political space and economic possibilities in his country. But Ethiopia’s complexity, and the way the lessons of its history have been framed, present real challenges to Abiy’s audacious overhaul and his stated goals of bringing more unity to the state, more dynamism and opportunity to its economy, and more justice to its people.
Abiy has stressed the importance of unity to Ethiopian politics. His new Prosperity Party represents a fundamental change from the ethnic federalist model that has dictated how politics have been organized in recent decades and has been regularly presented as the solution to the restiveness that plagued the country in earlier eras. In practice, this change not only threatens the interests of those who benefited from the old system; it changes the nature of the Ethiopian national project. In turbulent times it may well be a tougher sell than ethno-nationalism, which can be stoked at will by the prime minister’s opponents.
Delivering on his economic promises will be critical to maintaining support, but this too is not an easy task. Opening up to more foreign investment and more competition makes sense, but it comes with risks and painful transitions. It may not be possible to maintain growth at the projected, optimistic levels in the year ahead, and while international support is on the table, it will take even more significant and clearheaded support from abroad to ease the way toward sustainable prosperity.
Finally there is the issue of security. For now, dismantling the machinery of repression has meant weakening the state’s ability to maintain order. While the internal displacement crisis of 2019 has abated in large measure, the perils of disorder loom over plans for some 50 million Ethiopians to cast their ballots in May’s general elections. Abiy is encouraging Ethiopians to revise their idea of what the state represents, but he has to ensure that providing security is a bedrock, dependable element of his work in progress.
New York (TADIAS) — Politics aside, Donald Trump — who last month became only the third president in American history to be impeached – seems to be continuing his endless rant against Obama, and this time it also looks like he may be mad at Ethiopia’s PM for robbing him of the chance to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize winning Columnist and Associate Editor of The Washington Post, had asked in a poignant article this week: “Seriously? Does Obama take up that much space inside Trump’s head?” Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Eugene then proceeded to remind us that:
the vehicle Trump used to transform himself from a harmless New York character into a malevolent political force was birtherism — the absurd, fictional and racist claim that the nation’s first African American president was not actually born in the United States. I have met Trump supporters who still believe in this thoroughly debunked fairy tale. Obama’s election and reelection made a powerful statement about the nation and its growing diversity. Trump, however, portrayed that statement as a threat. Whether he genuinely felt a sense of racial panic or just pretended to do so is irrelevant. That’s how he played it, and he rode Obama-hatred to the White House.
But even more bemusing is that Trump, who has long coveted in matching Obama with the prestigious Nobel Prize, whined that the 2019 award has gone to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
“I’m going to tell you about the Nobel Peace Prize,” Trump told a rally in Toledo, Ohio last night. “I’ll tell you about that. I made a deal, I saved a country, and I just heard that the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. I said, ‘what, did I have something do with it?’ Yeah, but you know, that’s the way it is. As long as we know, that’s all that matters.”
Well, we are more than certain that PM Abiy will be the first to credit the youth protesters across Ethiopia who’ve paid with their lives for political reform in the country not any foreign leader or nation. Still, we all appreciate America’s continued engagement with Ethiopia and its support to assist the people’s desire to build a more peaceful, inclusive and democratic society, and maintaining the more-than-a-century-old relationship that began in 1903, making Ethiopia the first diplomatic partner of the United States on the African continent.
In the end, Trump is not mad at Ethiopia. As Peter Weber of The Week Magazine noted he is simply envious of his predecessor: “The last U.S. president to win a Nobel Peace Prize was Barack Obama.”
Sarah Pratcher (right) signs the memorial with her friend Mary Bledsoe outside the closed convenience store on July 8, 2014, where store clerk Abdulrauf Kadir, an Ethiopian refugee was shot and killed. "He was a good person," said Pratcher. (Photo St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
By The Associated Press
ST. LOUIS — A man has been convicted in the shooting death of an Ethiopian refugee who was working at a convenience store to earn enough money to bring his wife and children from a refugee camp to St. Louis.
Antonio Muldrew, 41, of St. Louis, was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder and five other charges in the July 2014 death of convenience store clerk Abdulrauf Kadir. He faces a life sentence.
Muldrew shot Kadir three times in the chest and abdomen before going behind the counter himself to make change and sales for patrons as Kadir bled, the Missouri attorney general’s office said in a news release. Muldrew then grabbed cash and lottery tickets from the register and counter and fatally shot Kadir in the head twice when he sought help from customers.
Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who prosecuted the case, said Muldrew told police, “He was going to die anyway. I wanted to make sure he was dead. He said he had two kids but I didn’t care,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Muldrew didn’t testify this week. His public defender, Sharon Turlington, did not dispute that Muldrew killed Kadir but argued the evidence supported a second-degree murder conviction. She told the jury he was a regular customer of the store and was desperate to get money for his pregnant girlfriend.
Kadir had immigrated to the United States from Kenya after fleeing his home country of Ethiopia in the midst of a civil war. Schmitt said in the release that his life was “unnecessarily and brutally cut short.”
— Related:
St. Louis man found guilty in 2014 deadly robbery of Ethiopian refugee
Abdulrauf Kadir, third from the right, was fatally shot in 2014 in St. Louis. He was an Ethiopian refugee working to bring his wife, Kuzeyma, daughter Samira and son, Omar, to the United States. Photo and names provided by the Missouri Attorney General’s office.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — A jury has found a St. Louis man guilty of gunning down an Ethiopian refugee who was working to bring his wife and two young children here from Africa.
After deliberating for about 90 minutes Wednesday, jurors found Antonio Muldrew, 41, guilty of first-degree murder, robbery, assault and three counts of armed criminal action in the July 6, 2014, killing of Abdulrauf Kadir.
Muldrew fatally shot Kadir, 32, a convenience store clerk, about 3:25 p.m. and robbed the store of cash and lottery tickets.
Kadir had lived in St. Louis only eight months when he was shot to death while working as a clerk at his cousin’s corner market at 3404 Chippewa Street. At the time of his death, Kadir was working two jobs in St. Louis to send money to his wife and two young children waiting to come to St. Louis from a refugee camp in Kenya.
Surveillance video of the shooting showed Muldrew standing in the store for several minutes, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cellphone before shooting Kadir three times in the chest with a .25-caliber pistol.
Muldrew then looted the cash register and pretended to be the store’s clerk for other customers as Kadir lay bleeding on the floor. Kadir begged for his life, told Muldrew about his wife and two children and said he could take everything he wanted, including a 9 mm pistol behind the counter. Muldrew did so and shot Kadir twice in the head, killing him.
Muldrew then walked back to his apartment a couple of blocks south on Louisiana Avenue and hid the guns, cash and lottery tickets. Police arrested him a short time later when he returned to the shooting scene.
Muldrew initially denied involvement but later confessed, telling police, “He was going to die anyway. I wanted to make sure he was dead. He said he had two kids but I didn’t care.”
Evidence at trial included the cigarette butt Muldrew left in the store, which had his DNA on it, the two pistols and lottery tickets seized at his apartment, and Muldrew’s clothing and shoes with Kadir’s blood on it.
Muldrew did not testify this week. Muldrew’s public defender, Sharon Turlington, did not dispute that Muldrew killed Kadir but argued the evidence supported a conviction of second-degree murder. She told the jury he was a regular customer of the store and was desperate to get money for his pregnant girlfriend.
Prosecutors announced in 2015 that they would seek the death penalty but withdrew that option after several mental evaluations found Muldrew “intellectually disabled” but competent to stand trial. His public defender told the court Muldrew has an IQ between 65 and 70.
Muldrew’s sister, Aurtisha Volrie, 39, of Los Angeles, said in an interview that her brother, who she said suffers from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, belongs in a mental hospital, not prison. She believes the criminal justice system failed him by not forcing him to continue prescribed medication after he was paroled from a Missouri prison in 2013, and by finding him mentally competent for trial.
“He’s not the monster they’re proclaiming him to be,” Volrie said, adding that their oldest brother was fatally shot in Los Angeles in 1992. “I hurt for Kadir’s family because I know what it’s like to lose a loved one to gun violence.
“The system just robbed me of my brother,” she continued.
Muldrew had fathered 13 children, Volrie said. His youngest was born weeks after his arrest for Kadir’s death.
The case was prosecuted by Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office instead of Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner because of a conflict of interest with a former top assistant.
When Muldrew is sentenced Feb. 21 by Circuit Judge Michael Mullen, Muldrew will receive the mandatory sentence of life without parole.
“Growth is expected to slow due to tighter fiscal and monetary policy stances aimed at containing inflation,” the World Bank said in a report released Wednesday in Washington. The annual inflation rate in [Ethiopia] was 19.5% in December. (Photographer: Yannick Tylle/Corbis Documentary)
The World Bank cut its forecast for Ethiopia’s economic growth in the 2020 fiscal year to 6.3%, well below the government’s projection.
The National Bank of Ethiopia has forecast that gross domestic product growth would accelerate to 10.8% for the fiscal year ending in July, up from a 9% pace in fiscal 2019 as the government implements a blueprint expected to boost investment.
Economic reforms by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government have renewed interest from investors and attracted billions of dollars in financial support. However, the country is struggling with foreign currency shortages, shrinking exports and the highest inflation in half a decade.
“Growth is expected to slow due to tighter fiscal and monetary policy stances aimed at containing inflation,” the World Bank said in a report released Wednesday in Washington. The annual inflation rate in the Horn of Africa nation was 19.5% in December.
The lender reduced its fiscal 2020 growth forecast for Ethiopia by 1.9 percentage points from the prior estimate in June. Growth could increase slightly to 6.4% in fiscal 2021 and 7.1% in 2022, according to the World Bank.
“I discovered how extremely diverse the community is, whether it’s Persian Armenian or Turkish Armenian,” the New York-based Samuelsson tells L.A. Weekly. “It has so many geographically different entry points and says a lot about the strength of the community and their commitment to holding on to these traditions. (Photo: Marcus Samuelson and Chef Ara Zada prepare an Armenian feast/ Wonho Frank Lee)
LA Weekly
L.A.’S LITTLE ARMENIA KICKS OFF SEASON 2 OF NO PASSPORT REQUIRED WITH MARCUS SAMUELSSON JANUARY 20 ON PBS
No Passport Required with Marcus Samuelsson, which explores the food and communities of America’s immigrant neighborhoods, kicks off season 2 on PBS January 20 with the premiere episode featuring L.A.’s Armenian community and cuisine.
The Ethiopian-born chef raised in Sweden journeys from East Hollywood to Glendale, visiting Phoenicia Restaurant, Mideast Tacos, Papillon International Bakery, Sahag’s Basturma among others meeting Armenians from Russia, Lebanon, Syria, Ethiopia and Egypt. From lule kabob to ghapama (pumpkin stuffed with apricots, rice and Aleppo peppers,) Samuelsson explores the rich Armenian history passed down from generations in L.A.’s foothills in the series co-produced with Eater.
“I discovered how extremely diverse the community is, whether it’s Persian Armenian or Turkish Armenian,” the New York-based Samuelsson tells L.A. Weekly. “It has so many geographically different entry points – which also means bringing a lot of different traditions together and says a lot about the strength of the community and their commitment to holding on to these traditions. I had some of the most delicious food and best conversations and saw how deeply proud these people are to be both Angelenos and Armenian.”
The premiere highlights the combination of younger chefs born in Los Angeles, blending new ingredients and techniques with traditional Armenian rituals passed down to them by their grandparents.
From the Life and Acts of St. Takla Haymanot. 18th century (Photo: Public Domain)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: January 7th, 2020
New York (TADIAS) — In a timely article titled “These are the monks who still preserve ancient texts around the world,” America Magazine highlighted the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) undertaking and what happens to cultural heritage during war and turmoil.
According to cambridge.org, EMML “is a joint project of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML) (formerly Monastic Manuscript Microfilm Library) of St. John’s Abbey and University, Collegeville, Minnesota, U.S.A.” It was “established at the urging of His Holiness Abuna Tewoflos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, who was much concerned about the dangers of irreparable damage and loss to the manuscript treasures of his Church. The purpose of the project is twofold: To preserve on microfilm the precious treasures of manuscripts and to make those source materials available for study by scholars both within and outside Ethiopia. Efforts are also being directed toward obtaining copies of Ethiopian manuscripts outside of Ethiopia.”
The recent piece in America Magazine, written by Columba Stewart — the Executive Director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minnesota — focuses on the conservation efforts geared towards ancient texts, which initially started as a project to microfilm European Latin manuscripts in the 1960s.
“It was two decades after the devastation of the Second World War, three years after the Cuban missile crisis and during a very chilly phase of the Cold War,” Stewart writes. “We feared that the European Benedictine heritage would be vaporized if there were a World War III. Monte Cassino in Italy, the mother abbey of the Benedictines, had been totally destroyed in 1944. A nuclear war would be far more devastating.”
In Stewart’s highlight of the microfilming efforts conducted in Ethiopia he noted the following:
Along the way there came a serendipitous event that changed the course of the project. An American scholar of biblical texts approached us with the idea of microfilming manuscripts in the monasteries and churches of Ethiopia. This great African nation is the home of an ancient Christian community that had never undergone the narrowing of the biblical canon—the official list of writings constituting the Christian Bible—that occurred in other parts of the early Christian world. Consequently, Ethiopian Christians preserved a broad array of writings later excluded from the Bible of the Byzantine and Roman traditions. Microfilming began in 1971, with the work done by Ethiopians, the technical support from us and funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other foundations.
The cameras kept going, working throughout the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 1990s. In the end, 9,000 manuscripts were microfilmed under often-harrowing circumstances.
The situation in Ethiopia worsened when a violent revolution deposed the emperor and installed a communist government hostile to the church. What had begun as a kind of archeological expedition to discover ancient texts became a rescue project to preserve manuscripts in a nation convulsed by political upheaval and then a civil war. The cameras kept going, working throughout the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 1990s. In the end, 9,000 manuscripts were microfilmed under often-harrowing circumstances.
The Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library also demonstrates what happens to manuscripts in times of turmoil. A few years back, a professor from Howard University approached one of our experts for help identifying an Ethiopian manuscript recently donated to the university. She showed him photographs of the manuscript, and he recognized it as one of the thousands microfilmed in our project. After it was photographed in 1976, the manuscript had been taken out of Ethiopia and found its way into a private collection in the United States.
Unlike most stories of this kind, this one had a happy ending: Howard University repatriated the manuscript to the monastery in Ethiopia from which it had been taken. Sadly more typical is the case of another, even more valuable, Ethiopian manuscript microfilmed in the 1970s. That one is now in a well-known private collection. In its online catalog, the provenance given for the manuscript is simply the name of the dealer from whom it was purchased.
By the time those manuscripts were taken out of Ethiopia, the colonial era was over. International protocols and national laws regulated the export of cultural heritage. Neither of these manuscripts should have adorned a private collection or enriched a dealer. This story illustrates two of the greatest threats to cultural heritage: the desperation that leads people to sell off their own heritage in order to feed their families and the profiteering by those who exploit that misfortune.
Economic reforms by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government have renewed interest from investors and attracted billions of dollars in financial support from lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. (Photo: Reuters)
Ethiopia forecasts economic growth will accelerate to 10.8% for the fiscal year ending in July underpinned by its reforms, from 9% in the previous year, according to the National Bank of Ethiopia.
“The proper implementation of the recently launched Home Grown Economic Reform Program is expected to contribute toward developing a modern, vibrant, competitive and sound financial system,” according to the NBE annual report.
Economic reforms by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government have renewed interest from investors and attracted billions of dollars in financial support from lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Abiy, last year’s Nobel laureate, has opened up Ethiopia’s once tightly controlled political and economic space since taking power in April 2018. Africa’s second-most populous nation is liberalizing state-owned telecommunications, sugar and energy companies.
Ethiopia’s current-account deficit narrowed to $4.5 billion in 2018-19 from $5.3 billion a year earlier, the central bank said. Exports were $2.77 billion, compared to $15.1 billion of imports in the same period.
In the 1800s, French explorer Jules Borelli published a photo diary capturing his journey to Ethiopia including this portrait of a young woman (1885-1888) among images of people from the Amhara, Oromo and Sidama ethnic groups. (Photo by Jules Borelli. Credit: Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac / RMN Grand Palais)
CNN
The stories behind 10 of the world’s earliest known photographs
As early cameras began spreading out from Europe in the middle of the 19th century, photography became an increasingly powerful medium for obtaining and disseminating information about the wider world.
People and places that had previously only been captured through art or in written accounts could suddenly be depicted with unprecedented accuracy. With this new medium, local administrators and commercial photography studios, in cities from Hong Kong to Calcutta, helped build a richer visual history of life in the 1800s.
A recent exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi brought together 250 of the earliest known photographs from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Americas, the oldest of which dates back to 1842. CNN asked the show’s curator, Christine Barthe, to pick 10 images from the museum’s collection and explain what they reveal about the places — and times — they were taken in.
Portrait of a young woman, Ethiopia (1885-1888)
A photographic portrait by French explorer Jules Borelli. Credit: Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac / RMN Grand Palais
French explorer Jules Borelli produced detailed illustrated diaries of his travels in Ethiopia, where he often photographed people from the Amhara, Oromo and Sidama ethnic groups.
This albumen image stood out to Barthe because of the young woman’s “mysterious smile.” Unlike the more formal or ethnographic portraits of the era, the subject appears relaxed, changing the mood of the image.
“We can see some kind of relationship between the the photographer and the person being photographed,” said Barthe. “(Her smile suggests) that there is some kind of complicity with the photographer, or something funny happening, though we don’t know if it’s ironic or something else.”
Prince Alämayyähu and yasiin bey (American, born 1973), 2015 THE THIRD LINE
Forbes
Experiencing Yasiin Bey: Negus
I went into yasiin bey: Negus with only the vaguest understanding of the exhibit, which opened in November at the Brooklyn Museum and runs through January 26th. I knew that I had to reserve a ticket in advance and arrive on time, and that I wouldn’t be able to use my phone, for anything, once inside the gallery.
I also knew it was the only way to hear bey’s latest record, Negus, which comprises eight new tracks and original music by the celebrated Ethiopian pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a 96-year-old nun. I knew nothing of the visual art in the exhibit, which includes works by bey as well as Ala Ebtekar, Julie Mehretu and José Parlá, or how the listening portion would work.
Out of respect for the artist’s desire to keep the experience real-time, and the music exclusive to the exhibit itself — Negus has not been released in any format, either digital or analog — I thought I’d share only a few observations.
Upon entering the exhibit I was given a pair of headphones in exchange for locking my cellphone inside a small case that I was allowed to keep with me. Soon, gentle piano music filled my personal aural space, and I entered a foyer to the main gallery. On the wall were didactic texts about yasiin bey, the other artists in the exhibit and the word “negus,” which I learned comes from the ancient Semitic Ethiopian language Ge` ez, and means “king” or “ruler.”
For bey, the term applies to all those who have led “noble” lives, but he cites a few in particular: Alämayyähu Tewodros, an Ethiopian prince who committed suicide in 1879, at age 18, after his father was killed and he was sent to be raised in Britain, where he was among very few Ethiopians in the country at that time; Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who died of cervical cancer at age 31 and whose biopsies would provide the basis for major advances in cancer research in the mid-20th Century; and the rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle, who was shot to death outside his Marathon Clothing store in South Los Angeles earlier this year.
The parliament building in Addis Ababa. (Reuters photo)
By Reuters
Ethiopia Relaxes Curbs on Political Gatherings With New Anti-Terror Law
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia’s parliament on Thursday passed an anti-terrorism law that relaxed restrictions on political gatherings, broadening reforms introduced under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
The legislation repealed the 2009 anti-terrorism law that said staging gatherings that could cause “serious interference or disruption of any public services” was an act of terrorism.
The new legislation states: “If the disruption of public services was caused by a legally recognized protest, meetings or job strikes, the act will not be taken as a terrorist act.”
Since coming to power in 2018, Abiy has implemented a series of reforms that have reshaped public life in Ethiopia.
He made peace with Eritrea, freed political prisoners, and is opening up the economy to foreign investment by loosening state control.
The country is due to hold a general election this year, which will test the popularity of Abiy’s reforms.
Under the new law, Ethiopians who suffer abuses at the hands of law enforcement can receive compensation of up to 50,000 Ethiopian Birr ($1,500).
For anyone convicted of terrorism, though, the new law maintains sentences of death or jail terms of 15 years to life.
Although Abiy’s reforms have drawn plaudits and won him a Nobel prize, a freer environment has stirred violence in some areas as previously repressed ethnic groups assert their newly found freedom and demand a bigger share of the nation’s resources.
Angelina Jolie, Zahara [who was born in Ethiopia] and Shiloh in a meeting with the President of Ethiopia Sahle-Work Zewde. (OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT)
People
Angelina Jolie is returning to a place close to her heart.
The actress, 44, visited Ethiopia with four of her kids — Shiloh, 13, and Zahara, 14, who was born in the African country, as well as 11-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. The family will stay in the region for New Year’s Eve.
While there, Jolie brought Shiloh and Zahara to meet with Sahle-Work Zewde, the president of Ethiopia and the first woman to hold the office. It was a special treat for Zahara, who turns 15 on Jan. 8.
Their talks covered education, sanitary pad solutions to help girls continue their schooling (girls often stay home from class while menstruating due to lack of supplies), and Ethiopian culture and history. The group also discussed Jolie’s ongoing efforts to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis.
The actress and activist has funded efforts for over a decade through the Zahara Program, named after her daughter. The Jolie Pitt Foundation partnered with the Global Health Committee and the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health in 2009 to create an initiative to treat drug-resistant TB.
Their work has led to continuing success in treating people with TB in the region.
Confetti falls at midnight on the Times Square New Year's Eve celebration, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo)
The Associated Press
Cheers, tears, prayers for 2020: A new decade is ushered in
Revelers around the globe are bidding farewell to a decade that will be remembered for the rise of social media, the Arab Spring, the #MeToo movement and, of course, President Donald Trump. A look at how the world is ushering in 2020:
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NEW YORK
Fireworks burst and confetti fell as throngs of revelers cheered the start of 2020 in New York City’s Times Square.
In one of the globe’s most-watched New Year’s Eve spectacles, the crowd counted down the last seconds of 2019 as a luminescent crystal ball descended down a pole.
About 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms) of confetti showered the sea of attendees, many of whom were also briefly rained on earlier in the evening as they waited in security pens for performances by stars including rap-pop star Post Malone, K-pop group BTS, country singer Sam Hunt and singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette.
The crowds packed into the heart of Manhattan mouthed lyrics and waved yellow and purple balloons in a frenzy as midnight approached.
“It was a dream, I wanted to do it so this year a lot of people helped me to get here so I’m here, and I’m thankful for that,” said Mariemma Mejias, 48, who flew to New York for the festivities from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The fun was evident, but some important global issues were driven home as well.
Spotlighting efforts to combat climate change, high school science teachers and students pressed the button that begins the famous 60-second ball drop and countdown to the new year.
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RIO DE JANEIRO
About 3 million people welcomed 2020 at Brazil’s iconic Copacabana beach as almost 34,000 pounds (15,420 kilograms) of colorful fireworks went off for 14 minutes after midnight.
Rio de Janeiro holds one of the biggest New Year parties in the world, with music, drinks and religious rituals on the shores. Many dress in white in a traditional sign of their hope for peace. About 2,000 policemen are working to ensure party-goers are safe. Authorities say only minor incidents have been reported so far.
Many locals and tourists are expected to stick around Copacabana until Wednesday’s sunrise for their first dip of the year in the ocean, expecting to wash away their troubles from 2019. Summer in Rio often brings high temperatures early on.
The party in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s metropolis, took about 2 million people to Paulista Avenue, the city’s main road. Nearly all the 6,000 pounds (2,720 kilograms) of fireworks used there were silent so pets did not get too bothered by the noise.
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PARIS
A joyful crowd of Parisians and tourists walked, biked and used scooters to reach the Champs-Elysees for the new year celebrations, in a city with almost no public transport amid massive strikes.
Revelers converged at the famous avenue to watch a light show at the Arc de Triomphe, followed by a fireworks display at midnight. Paris police set up a security perimeter around the Champs-Elysees area with a ban on alcohol and traffic restrictions.
All metro lines in the French capital were closed except for two automatic lines, and only a few night buses were running, as Tuesday marked the 27th consecutive day of transport strikes against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to overhaul the French pension system.
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ROME
Pope Francis delighted tourists and Romans in St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday night when he took a stroll to admire the Nativity scene. Shouts of “Pope! Pope!” and “Happy New Year!” resounded as families rushed to catch a glimpse of him or thrust out their infant in hopes he would pat their heads or pinch their cheeks.
One woman grabbed the pope’s hand and pulled him toward her to shake it. Francis, 83, exclaimed and then struck the woman’s hand twice to free his hand.
At a New Year’s Eve Vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis urged people to practice more solidarity and to “build bridges, not walls.” Since becoming pontiff in 2013, Francis has preached openness — a reform-minded agenda that has irritated a small but vocal group of ultra-conservatives in the church.
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HONG KONG
Revelers as well as pro-democracy protesters flocked to sites across Hong Kong to usher in 2020.
The semi-autonomous Chinese city has toned down New Year’s celebrations amid the monthslong demonstrations. The protests have repeatedly sparked pitched battles with police and have taken their toll on Hong Kong’s nightlife and travel industries.
A fireworks display that traditionally lights up famed Victoria Harbor was canceled amid safety concerns, while some roads were closed and barriers set up in the Lan Kwai Fong nightlife district to control crowds.
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RUSSIA
Russians began the world’s longest continuous New Year’s Eve with fireworks and a message from President Vladimir Putin urging them to work together in the coming year.
Putin made the call in a short speech broadcast on television just before the stroke of midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones. The recorded message was followed by an image of the Kremlin Clock and the sound of its chimes. State TV showed footage of extensive festive fireworks in cities of the Far East.
But one holiday tradition was missing in Moscow this year — a picturesque layer of snow. The Russian capital has had an unusually warm December and temperatures in central Moscow as midnight approached were just above freezing.
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AUSTRALIA
More than a million people descended on a hazy Sydney Harbour and surrounding areas to ring in the new year despite the ongoing wildfire crisis ravaging New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state.
The 9 p.m. fireworks over Sydney’s iconic landmarks was briefly delayed due to strong winds, but revelers clearly enjoyed themselves in a desperately needed tonic for the state.
New South Wales has born the brunt of the wildfire damage, which has razed more than 1,000 homes nationwide and killed 12 people in the past few months.
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NEW ZEALAND
New Zealand’s major cities greeted the new year with fireworks as the nation appeared happy to be done with a year of challenges, both natural and man-made.
On March 15, a lone gunman identified killed 51 people and wounded dozens at two mosques in the South Island city of Christchurch. In December, an eruption of volcanic White Island off the east coast of the North Island killed at least 19 tourists and tour guides.
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SAMOA
Fireworks erupted at midnight from Mount Vaea, overlooking the capital, Apia. The end of the year celebration was a time of sadness and remembrance.
A measles epidemic in late 2019 claimed 81 lives, mostly children under 5.
More than 5,600 measles cases were recorded in the nation of just under 200,000. With the epidemic now contained, the Samoa Observer newspaper named as its Person of the Year health workers who fought the outbreak.
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LONDON
Londoners watched a spectacular fireworks display from the banks of the River Thames that was launched from the London Eye and barges near Parliament.
The familiar chimes of London’s Big Ben clock tower rung in the new year, even though they have been silent for most of 2019 because of extensive restoration work.
To the north, the multi-day Hogmanay New Year’s celebrations in Edinburgh began Monday night with a torchlight parade through the streets of the Scottish capital.
Security was tight in both cities and elsewhere in Britain following a recent extremist attack on London Bridge that claimed two lives. Police arrested five men on suspicion of terrorism offenses Monday but said the arrests were not related to the London Bridge attack or to celebrations.
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SOUTH AFRICA
Thousands of revelers gathered at Cape Town’s Waterfront area to ring in the new year with music, dancing and fireworks in front of the city’s iconic Table Mountain.
In past years, residents of Johannesburg’s poor Hillbrow neighborhood would celebrate the New Year by tossing furniture, appliances and even refrigerators from the balconies of high-rise apartment buildings. Police have issued stern warnings, and it appears the dangerous tradition has declined.
In a somber statement, President Cyril Ramaphosa said “while our economy created jobs, these have not been nearly enough to stop the rise in unemployment or the deepening of poverty.”
South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka was deported from Uganda, where she was to perform at a New Year’s Eve event. Ugandan police cited visa issues, but Ugandan media reported it was because she had voiced support for Ugandan pop star Bobi Wine, the most potent opposition challenger to President Yoweri Museveni.
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UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
For nearly 10 minutes, fireworks lit the sky over Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, as hundreds of thousands gathered downtown to watch the spectacular display.
The New Year’s Eve display at the 828-meter-tall (2,716-foot-tall) skyscraper was just one of seven different fireworks shows across the emirate. Tourists, especially from Europe and Russia, flocked to the sunny beaches of Dubai at this time of year to escape the cold, dark winter.
To keep the massive crowds safe, police created walkways around the Burj Khalifa tower for male-only groups to separate them from families and women.
Dubai this year will be hosting Expo 2020, a world fair that brings the most cutting-edge and futuristic technologies.
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JAPAN
People flocked to temples and shrines in Japan, offering incense with their prayers to celebrate the passing of a year and the the first New Year’s of the Reiwa era.
Under Japan’s old-style calendar, linked to emperors’ rules, Reiwa started in May, after Emperor Akihito stepped down and his son Naruhito became emperor. Although Reiwa is entering its second year with 2020, Jan. 1 still marks Reiwa’s first New Year’s, the most important holiday in Japan.
Stalls at Zojoji Temple in Tokyo sold sweet rice wine, fried noodles and candied apples, as well as little amulets in the shape of mice, the zodiac animal for 2020. Since the Year of the Mouse starts off the Asian zodiac, it’s associated with starting anew.
Tokyo will host the 2020 Summer Olympics, an event that is creating much anticipation for the entire nation.
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INDONESIA
Tens of thousands of revelers in Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta were soaked by torrential rains as they waited for New Year’s Eve fireworks while others in the country were wary of an active volcano.
Festive events along coastal areas near the Sunda Strait were dampened by a possible larger eruption of Anak Krakatau, an island volcano that erupted last year just ahead of Christmas Day, triggering a tsunami that killed more than 430 people.
The country’s volcanology agency has warned locals and tourists to stay 2 kilometers (1.3 miles) from the volcano’s crater following an eruption Tuesday that blasted ash and debris up to 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) into the air.
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SOUTH KOREA
Thousands of South Koreans filled cold downtown streets in Seoul ahead of a traditional bell-tolling ceremony near City Hall to send off an exhausting 2019 highlighted by political scandals, decaying job markets and crumbling diplomacy with North Korea.
Dignitaries ringing the old Bosingak bell at midnight included South Korean Major League Baseball pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu and Pengsoo, a giant penguin character with a gruff voice and blunt personality that emerged as one of the country’s biggest TV stars in 2019.
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GERMANY
Hundreds of thousands of revelers were expected to ring in the New Year in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
Several German cities including Munich and Hamburg have banned private fireworks amid concerns about the danger and environmental impacts from the increasingly powerful fireworks. A recent poll by the Forsa research institute found 59% of Germans would support a ban on private fireworks in city centers, while 37% were opposed.
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LAS VEGAS
Tourism officials expected more than 300,000 revelers for fireworks fired at midnight from atop seven casinos on the resort-lined Las Vegas Strip. Thousands more were expected for live music and an LED light and sound show at the downtown Fremont Street Experience pedestrian mall.
“I tell people to expect one of the better fireworks they’re ever going to see,” said Michael Austin, a country music singer from Nashville, Tennessee, who was booked to perform in Las Vegas. “Swarms of people getting along, bringing in the new year.”
Juan and Isabel Tinajero, making their first family visit to Las Vegas, said they hoped 2020 brings less stress than 2019.
“I expect a great show,” Juan Tinajero said as Isabel pushed a stroller along the Las Vegas Strip sidewalk. “It’s Vegas, right?”
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HONOLULU
Revelers packed beaches from Waikiki to the Big Island as Hawaii residents and visitors prepared to ring in the new decade.
A strong winter swell brought heavy waves to north- and west-facing shores of the islands Monday, nearly triggering the iconic Waimea Bay big wave contest named after Hawaiian surfing legend Eddie Aikau.
The waves weren’t quite big enough for the green light on the North Shore Oahu surfing competition, but waters across the archipelago saw above-average sets of rollers that some surfers took full advantage of.
On Oahu, people packed the streets of Waikiki, where a fireworks display would welcome 2020. But across the island at Ko Olina and Turtle Bay resorts, people gathered to the sounds of bumping music as tiki torches burned along walkways.
Comedian Bill Maher was spotted leaving one hotel as he prepared for his annual comedy show in Honolulu.
Fireworks displays both big and small were expected across the islands as the sanctioned shows competed with the less legal versions of the explosive festivities in neighborhoods on every island.
At Ko Olina Resort on Oahu’s west side, people watched sun dip below the horizon of the Pacific as the sky turned shades of orange and red before a deep blue sky took over. A traditional Hawaii luau was set for later in the evening, with fire and hula dancers set to entertain the crowds.
The German automaker said: "As one of the fastest growing economies and with the second highest population in the continent, Ethiopia is an ideal country to advance our Sub-Saharan Africa development strategy. Additionally, Volkswagen intends on tapping into existing expertise and strategic resources in Ethiopia to establish a thriving automotive components industry." (Photo: The 2020 Volkswagen Passat/VW)
Volkswagen has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Ethiopia which should lead to local vehicle assembly using some locally made components.
Over the last decade, GDP growth in Ethiopia was above 8% – one of the highest worldwide, the automaker noted.
“Ethiopia is a priority and focus country for Germany under the G20 ‘Compact with Africa’ initiative,” the automaker said in a statement.
Volkswagen will focus on establishment of a vehicle assembly facility, localisation of automotive components, introduction of mobility concepts such as app-based car sharing and ride hailing as well as the opening of a training centre. It will also work closely with the Ethiopian higher education and training institutions for skills development and capacity building of local talent.
VW said: “As one of the fastest growing economies and with the second highest population in the continent, Ethiopia is an ideal country to advance our Sub-Saharan Africa development strategy. Additionally, Volkswagen intends on tapping into existing expertise and strategic resources in Ethiopia to establish a thriving automotive components industry.”
Ethiopia becomes the third country in Sub-Saharan Africa to sign a MoU with Volkswagen. It follows Ghana and Nigeria who both signed MoUs in August 2018. In Ghana, Volkswagen will establish a vehicle assembly facility and conduct a feasibility study for an integrated mobility solutions concept. In Nigeria, Volkswagen implemented a phased approach of vehicle assembly with long term view of establishing Nigeria as an automotive hub in West Africa.
Volkswagen has been manufacturing vehicles in South Africa since 1951. In Africa, Volkswagen also has vehicle assembly operations in Algeria, Kenya and Rwanda.
“Although the African automotive market is comparatively small today, the region has a bright outlook to develop into an automotive growth market of the future,” VW added.
In 1943 Ethiopian Jews approached Emperor Haile Selassie asking him to give refuge to Jews fleeing Nazism in Europe, the Jerusalem Post reports. The same year "1,500 Greek refugees, among them Greek Jews, had arrived in Ethiopia." (The Jerusalem Post)
August 1943, at the height of the Holocaust, Ethiopian Jewish leaders approached the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia with a daring proposal. They asked him to help Jews in Europe flee to Ethiopia and assist Jewish refugees by hosting them in Ethiopian Jewish villages.
Three months after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and two months after all four of the Auschwitz crematoria were functioning, The Palestine Post, as today’s Jerusalem Post was then called, published an article detailing Jewish immigration to Ethiopia. “Possibilities of Jewish immigration into Abyssinia were discussed by the Ethiopian Minister in London with Mr. Harry Goodman and Dr. Springer of Agudath Israel,” the August 8, 1943 article says. “A leading member of the Falasha (black Jewish) community expressed the desire to assist European Jewry and to welcome them in Falasha towns.” Falasha was the term used to describe Jews in Ethiopia at the time.
Discussions were ongoing in Addis Ababa where the emperor, who had returned to Ethiopia in May 1941 after it was liberated from Italy with British help, was showing support for the plan. 1,500 Greek refugees, among them Greek Jews, had arrived in Ethiopia in 1943, the article says.
Selassie had stayed at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1936 and was familiar with the Jewish minority in his country. He also worked closely with Orde Wingate, the British officer who was a passionate Zionist and who led the Gideon Force, which defeated the Italian fascist army in Ethiopia. Ethiopian leaders and the Ethiopian Jewish community were therefore familiar with the local Jewish community and the plight of Jews worldwide at the time.
While Ethiopian Jews suffered under the Italian occupation, by 1943 they were able to reach out to the emperor to suggest hosting Jews fleeing Europe. By that time it was too late for many of the Jews of Europe ensnared in the Nazi noose.
As Ethiopia prepares to convene the 29th World Economic Forum on Africa for a second time next year, here is a timely CNBC article by the CEO of General Atlantic Bill Ford highlighting what everyone will be talking about at the Forum's 2020 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which will be held in advance of the Ethiopia conference and may set the agenda for the Africa version of the gathering. (Photo: PM Abiy Ahmed at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, January 23rd/ Office of the Prime Minister @PMEthiopia)
CNBC
Here’s what everyone will be talking about at Davos in 2020 and beyond
Understanding the state of our world and how we can shape that agenda is the primary purpose of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland.
The theme for this year’s gathering is Globalization 4.0 – how we’re handling the changes wrought on the world by the increasing interconnectedness of cultures and economies.
We must also reckon with the future. Digitization, Big Data, and the migration of IT services to the cloud are driving change now but we’re also starting to see the opportunities that will lead to Globalization 5.0.
These are the themes we believe will dominate the Davos gatherings of the future:
Ethiopian-born Saudi businessman Mohammed Al Amoudi has been released from detention in Saudi Arabia. (Photo: Mohammed Al Amoudi by photographer Hans Berggren)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 27th, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — Ethiopian-born businessman Mohammed Al Amoudi, who has been in Saudi custody for more than a year, has been freed from detention. “Yes, Al Amoudi has been released and is on his way home to Jeddah. His flight was at 9 or 10 a.m. Saudi time. He called his family; his family told me,” Mesfin Regassa, a friend and close associate of the businessman, told Bloomberg.
According to Reuters “Two Saudi sources confirmed that Al Amoudi had been released on Sunday, nearly 15 months after he was detained with scores of princes, ministers and businessmen in the state-run anti-corruption campaign.”
The news was first reported by Ethiopian TV, which quoted the CEO of Al Amoudi’s MIDROC Group Arega Yirdaw as its source.
On social media PM Abiy Ahmed’s office expressed its best wishes to the billionaire business tycoon noting that Dr. Abiy had brought up Al Amoudi’s case with the authorities in Saudi Arabia during his official travel there last May. “One of the issues included the release of Mohammed Al Amoudi,” the office of the Prime Minister said on Twitter. “Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in his Millenium Hall address later in May 2018 further assured of his return. We wish Mohammed Al Amoudi a safe return to Ethiopia.”
Foreign Policy Magazine's list of 100 global thinkers of 2019 include Ethiopia's dynamic prime minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed. (Illustration by FP)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 27th, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — What do Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, former U.S. President Barack Obama and the newly elected U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City have in common besides being some of the most inspiring leaders of our time? They are all part of Foreign Policy magazine’s 10th annual special edition of global thinkers.
In announcing the list this month the magazine said: “A decade ago, in launching the series, FP’s then-editors wrote: In a year of worldwide economic crisis and dangerous wars, of radical innovation and newfound realpolitik, street revolution and blunt rhetoric, we could think of no better way to make sense of it than through the big ideas of those who shape our understanding of the world…So this year we decided that there was no better way to explicate our current, wildly complex moment — and peer into the year ahead — than to focus once more on the thinkers and doers who had a profound impact on the planet in the last 12 months. The idea is not to honor do-gooders (though we feature plenty of them) but to shine a spotlight on some of the most influential people in the world—for better or worse.”
Per Foreign Policy Magazines Highlight:
Illustrations by Foreign Policy
Abiy Ahmed
PRIME MINISTER OF ETHIOPIA
“In less than a year in office, Abiy Ahmed has already made history in Ethiopia by forging peace with its neighbor Eritrea. The move reunited families and reopened long-dormant trade networks. Now Abiy is focused on healing Ethiopia’s own divisions, and his status as the country’s first leader from the restive Oromia region has given many of his constituents hope that he’ll succeed.”
Barack Obama
FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
“Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House showed what an intellectual can and cannot achieve in the world’s most powerful office. His much-maligned but deeply deliberative approach to decision-making helped steer the global economy through its worst crisis since the Great Depression. His renewed emphasis on diplomacy secured a nuclear agreement with Iran, a global compact on climate change, and a fresh arms reduction treaty with Russia. To be sure, Obama’s presidency had many flaws — most notably its failure to adequately address the Syrian civil war. But the importance of Obama’s accomplishments, and of the eloquence and dignity with which he went about his day-to-day work, grows more evident every time his successor holds a press conference or types a tweet.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK
AP photo
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez channeled the rage triggered by Donald Trump’s presidency into something that was once almost unthinkable in the United States: victory by a 29-year-old Latina democrat over a white male Democratic Party machine politician. Now the youngest woman to ever serve in the U.S. Congress, she stands at the forefront of a newly resurgent progressive movement, whose candidates are winning elections on pledges of universal health care, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal justice reform.”
Ethiopian Airlines has announced that it's restructuring its entire U.S. network shifting its Los Angeles gateway to Houston and increasing frequency to Washington D.C. and Chicago. (Photo: Ethiopian Airlines)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 27th, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — This coming summer the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, will replace the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in California as Ethiopian Airlines new destination in the United States. The airline said in a press release that the change is part of the company’s plan to restructure its entire American network in order to offer passengers “the best possible connectivity and shortest routes” between the U.S. and Africa.
The upcoming Houston flights, which will be served by Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, will operate three times per week to Addis Ababa via West Africa. “The new Houston flights will be the only connection between Houston and Africa and will facilitate the travel of the huge African community in the Houston area, as well as oil and other companies doing business in the continent,” the announcement said.
The press release also highlights that flights out of Washington D.C. will be increased from current daily to ten weekly flights. “The new additional three flights will pass thru Abidjan with service continuing on to Addis Ababa,” the airline said. “The current three weekly flights to Chicago will be increased to five weekly flights. From the planned daily flights from the New York area to Addis Ababa, four will be served via Lomé from Newark and three will be via Abidjan from JFK Airport.”
U.S. federal agents have arrested another longtime associate of President Donald Trump for lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering in connection with the Russia investigation. Roger Stone (pictured above) was arrested in a pre-dawn raid at his Florida home on Friday. (AP photo)
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump, was arrested in the special counsel’s Russia investigation in a pre-dawn raid at his Florida home on Friday and was charged with lying to Congress and obstructing the probe.
The seven-count indictment against Stone, a self-proclaimed “dirty trickster,” is the first criminal case in months from special counsel Robert Mueller.
It provides the most detail to date about how Trump campaign associates in the summer of 2016 were actively seeking to politically benefit from the release of hacked material damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It alleges that unnamed senior Trump campaign officials contacted Stone to ask when stolen emails relating to Clinton might be disclosed.
The indictment does not charge Stone with conspiring with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that published the emails, or with the Russian officers Mueller says hacked them. Instead, it accuses him of witness tampering, obstruction and false statements about his interactions related to WikiLeaks’ release. Some of those false statements were made to the House intelligence committee, according to the indictment.
CNN aired video of the raid at Stone’s Fort Lauderdale home, showing FBI agents in body armor using large weapons and night-vision equipment, running up to the home and banging repeatedly on the door.
“FBI open the door!” one shouts. “FBI, warrant!” Stone could then be seen in the doorway in his sleepwear before he was led away. He is expected to appear in court later Friday.
Stone is the sixth Trump aide charged in Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and the 34th person overall. The investigation has laid bare multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russia during the campaign and transition period and efforts by several to conceal those communications.
Well-known for his political antics and hard ball tactics, Stone has reveled in being a Washington wheeler-dealer dating back to the Nixon administration. He has also pushed several conspiracy theories and was an early and vocal supporter of Trump’s candidacy.
The case against Stone comes weeks after Trump’s former national security adviser was castigated by a judge in open court and just hours before Paul Manafort, his ex-campaign chairman , was due in court on allegations that he had lied to Mueller’s prosecutors.
Stone was one of Trump’s earliest political advisers, encouraging both his presidential runs. He briefly served on Trump’s 2016 campaign, but was pushed out amid infighting with then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Stone continued communicating with Trump on occasion and stayed plugged into the circle of advisers — both formal and informal — who worked with and around Trump.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s press secretary, told CNN Friday the charges brought against Stone “don’t have anything to do with the president.”
According to the indictment, many of those conversations involved WikiLeaks. The indictment lays out in detail Stone’s conversations about stolen Democratic emails posted by the group in the weeks before Trump, a Republican, beat Clinton. Mueller’s office has said those emails, belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, were hacked by Russian intelligence officers.
The document says that by June and July 2016, Stone had told senior Trump campaign officials that he had information indicating that WikiLeaks had obtained documents that could be damaging to Clinton’s campaign.
After the July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks release of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, the indictment says a senior Trump campaign “was directed” to contact Stone about additional releases and “what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had “regarding the Clinton campaign.” The indictment does not name the official or say who directed the outreach to Stone.
Another Trump campaign official cited in the indictment is Steve Bannon, who later became Trump’s chief strategist in the White House. Bannon, referred to as a “high-ranking Trump Campaign official,” exchanged emails with Stone in October 2016 about WikiLeaks’ plans for releasing hacked material. The indictment quotes from those emails, which had previously been made public by news outlets.
While the indictment provides some new insight into the Trump campaign, it deals largely with what prosecutors say were Stone’s false statements about his conversations with conservative writer and conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, and New York radio host, Randy Credico. Corsi is referred to as Person 1 in the indictment, and Credico as Person 2.
The indictment accuses Stone of carrying out a “prolonged effort” to keep Credico from contradicting his testimony before the House intelligence committee. During that effort, prosecutors note that Stone repeatedly told Credico to “do a ‘Frank Pentangeli,’” a reference to a character in “The Godfather: Part II” who lies before a congressional committee.
Stone is also accused of threatening Credico. The indictment cites several messages, some of which have already been public, that Stone sent to Credico last year. On April 9, Stone called Credico a “rat” and a “stoolie” and accused him of backstabbing his friends. Stone also threatened to “take that dog away from you,” a reference to Credico’s dog, Bianca.
“I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die (expletive),” Stone also wrote to Credico.
The indictment had been expected. Stone has said for months he was prepared to be charged, though he has denied any wrongdoing. A grand jury for months had heard from witnesses connected to Stone. And the intelligence committee last year voted to release a transcript of Stone’s testimony to Mueller as a precursor to an indictment.
Attorney Grant Smith, who represents Stone, did not return a phone message seeking comment Friday.
Stone has publicly denigrated the Mueller investigation and echoed the president’s descriptions of it as a witch hunt. But he has long attracted investigators’ attention, especially in light of a 2016 tweet that appeared to presage knowledge that emails stolen from Podesta would soon be released. Stone has said he had no inside information about the contents of the emails in WikiLeaks’ possession or the timing of when they’d be released.
Stone has said he learned from Credico that WikiLeaks had the emails and planned to disclose them. Stone has also spoken openly about his contacts with Corsi.
Credico hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing. Last year, Mueller’s prosecutors offered a plea agreement to Corsi that would have required him to admit that he intentionally lied to investigators about a discussion with Stone about WikiLeaks. But he rejected the offer and denied that he lied.
In a tweet Friday, Podesta wrote that it was now “Roger’s time in the barrel.” That was a play on Stone’s own words. Stone had tweeted cryptically before the Podesta emails were disclosed that it would soon be Podesta’s “time in the barrel.”
This article has been updated to reflect that PM Abiy's office has clarified its initial announcement noting that Ethiopia will host next year's World Economic Forum on Africa, not the 2020 WEF, which is always held in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: PM Abiy Ahmed at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, January 23rd/ Office of the Prime Minister @PMEthiopia)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Updated: January 24th, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — The 2020 World Economic Forum on Africa, which brings together thousands of public and private sector leaders from around the globe, will be held in Ethiopia. The office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made the announcement this past Wednesday following Abiy’s visit to Davos, Switzerland where he met with German Engineer and Economist Klaus Martin Schwab who founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 as an international institution for public-private cooperation.
“The PM & Prof Schwab discussed the importance of a collaborative approach among government, private sector, civil societies in addressing key global challenges,” PM Abiy Ahmed’s office shared via Twitter, adding that “they agreed that Ethiopia will host WEF in 2020.”
According to the WEF website, “The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.”
The event next year will mark the second time that the international forum is being held in Ethiopia. The country hosted the regional version of the gathering in 2012. The 2019 World Economic Forum on Africa will be held in Cape Town, South Africa in September.
— Related:
Watch: At World Economic Forum PM Abiy Outlines New Investment Opportunities in Ethiopia:
Addis Fine Art Gallery prepares for new show, Addis Calling III, scheduled to open on January 29th, 2019 in Addis Ababa featuring up-and-coming artists Tizta Berhanu, Yohannes Tesfaye and Frew Kebede. (Photo: Addis Fine Art/Instagram)
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: January 23rd, 2019
New York (TADIAS) — Addis Fine Art Gallery, which focuses on contemporary fine art collections from Ethiopia and the Diaspora, will host its third annual group exhibition next week titled “Addis Calling” featuring emerging local artists.
The gallery announced that this year they are presenting works by Frew Kebede, Tizta Berhanu and Yohannes Tesfaye. The show is set to open on January 29th and will be on display thorough March 23rd, 2019.
Below are preview images and descriptions of each artist courtesy of Addis Fine Art Gallery:
Yohannes Tesfaye (1978) focuses on two and three-dimensional paintings in acrylic, oil on canvas, wood, fiberglass and a variety of mixed media. His paintings reference African traditions and culture. Using contemporary materials and techniques, his current work examines the practice of ritual tribal scarification in a twenty-first century artistic and historical context.
Tizta Berhanu’s (1991) main inspiration is human emotion in all its facets, portraying her subjects expressing love, hate, sadness, loneliness etc. Trying to capture the true emotion underneath the surface of their skins. Her paintings are often ambiguous, almost unrecognizable, painted with broad confident brush strokes in deep intense colours. Blues, purples and deep-sea greens, dominate the canvasses creating an almost uncomfortable atmosphere wherein the viewer comes voyeuristically close to the emotions of the portrayed.
Frew Kebede (1982) is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums but his current focus is painting. As a musician, Jazz music plays an important part in his life and is one of his main inspirations. In his paintings, he is exploring the visual aspects of jazz music, transforming notes and rhythm into paint and brushstrokes creating colourful, vibrant canvasses, engaging the viewer into seeing things from different perspectives.
— If You Go:
Addis Calling III Exhibition
January 29th – March 23rd, 2019
Addis Fine Art gallery
(3rd Floor, Red Building Behind Mafi City Mall)
Bole Medhane Alem
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: +251 913 426553 www.addisfineart.com
Priests, scientists, and local communities are partnering to save the less than five percent of forests that remain in northern Ethiopia. (Photo: The Debre Mihret Arbiatu Ensesa church, which looks from above like a bright pinwheel, is surrounded by trees. But the hot, dry fields are only a few steps away/National Geographic)
When Alemayehu Wassie Eshete was a boy, he went to church each Sunday. He would make his way along the dry, dusty roads between the wheat fields in his home province in northern Ethiopia. At the end of the trip was the prize: a literal step into another world.
The churches of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church—the dominant religious group in Ethiopia, with nearly 50 million members—were almost always nestled in patches of vibrant, shady forest. Forests, the church’s religious belief goes, were like the clothes surrounding the church at the center—as much a part of the religious space as the church building itself. Wassie would step out of the hot sun and into a beautiful, cool world filled with chattering birds and fragrant plants, a small hotspot of both biodiversity and spirituality.
“From an ecological perspective, it’s like going from hell to heaven,” he says. “You go from dry, hot fields into the beautiful forest. Anyone would see that as beautiful, but for me, the forest is more than that. It’s also a spiritual place where nature is perfect, and you pray to God.”
But when Wassie grew up and started studying biology and science, he realized that the forests he loved were few and far between. In school, he was learning about how important forests were for the ecological health of different parts of the world, and he asked himself: Where are our forests, here in northern Ethiopia? Why are there so few patches left?
Over the past century, nearly all of the native forests in the South Gonder province have disappeared, cleared to make way for wheat fields and grazing land—agricultural endeavors that support the region’s rapidly growing population. Many of the church forests, though, remain, protected by their religious stewards and the communities around them. They are tiny fragments of a lost past, and the center of hope for conservation and future restoration.
Today is MLK Day and one of our favorite U.S. senators, Kamala Harris of California, has just announced that she is running for President in 2020. The Associated Press notes that Senator Harris launched her presidential bid as the nation observes what would have been the 90th birthday of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The timing was a clear signal that the senator sees herself as another leader in that fight. She would be the first woman to hold the presidency and the second African-American if she succeeds. (AP photo)
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris, a first-term senator and former California attorney general known for her rigorous questioning of President Donald Trump’s nominees, entered the Democratic presidential race on Monday. Vowing to “bring our voices together,” Harris would be the first woman to hold the presidency and the second African-American if she succeeds.
Harris, who grew up in Oakland, California, and is a daughter of parents from Jamaica and India, is one of the earliest high-profile Democrats to join what is expected to be a crowded field. She made her long anticipated announcement on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“I am running for president of the United States,” she said. “And I’m very excited about it.”
The 54-year old portrayed herself as a fighter for justice, decency and equality in a video distributed by her campaign as she announced her bid. “They’re the values we as Americans cherish, and they’re all on the line now,” Harris says in the video . “The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values.”
On ABC, she cited her years as a prosecutor in asserting: “My entire career has been focused on keeping people safe. It is probably one of the things that motivates me more than anything else.”
Harris launched her presidential as the nation observes what would have been the 90th birthday of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The timing was a clear signal that the California senator— who has joked that she had a “stroller’s-eye view” of the civil rights movement because her parents wheeled her and her sister Maya to protests — sees herself as another leader in that fight.
She abandoned the formality of launching an exploratory committee, instead going all in on a presidential bid.
She plans a formal campaign launch in Oakland on Jan. 27. The campaign will be based in Baltimore, with a second office in Oakland.
Harris joins what is expected to be a wide-open race for the Democratic presidential nomination. There’s no apparent front-runner at this early stage and Harris will face off against several Senate colleagues.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have both launched exploratory committees. Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota are also looking at the race.
If Booker enters the race, he and Harris could face a fierce competition for support from black voters.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who unsuccessfully sought the 2016 Democratic nomination, is also considering a campaign. Several other Democrats have already declared their intentions, including former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and former Obama administration housing chief Julian Castro.
Harris launches her campaign fresh off of a tour to promote her latest memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” which was widely seen as a stage-setter for a presidential bid.
She is already planning her first trip to an early primary state as a declared candidate. On Friday, Harris will travel to South Carolina to attend the Pink Ice Gala in Columbia, which is hosted by a South Carolina chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which Harris pledged as an undergraduate student at Howard University. The sorority, founded more than 100 years ago, is a stronghold in the African-American community.
South Carolina, where black voters make up a large share of the Democratic electorate, is likely to figure heavily into Harris’s prospects. And early voting in Harris’s home state of California will overlap with the traditional early nominating contests, which could give Harris a boost.
Harris’s campaign team is already taking shape and includes several veterans of Democratic politics.
Juan Rodriguez, who ran Harris’s 2016 Senate campaign, will manage her presidential bid. Her sister, Maya Harris, a former top adviser to Hillary Clinton, will be the campaign chair. The veteran campaign finance lawyer Marc Elias will serve as the Harris campaign’s general counsel, and Angelique Cannon, who worked for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, will serve as national finance director. David Huynh, who was Clinton’s director of delegate operations in 2016, will serve as a senior adviser. Lily Adams, a Clinton campaign alum who has worked as Harris’s spokeswoman, will be communications director.
Her staff says she plans to reject the assistance of a super PAC, as well as corporate PAC money. She’s invested heavily in cultivating a digital, small-dollar donor network before her presidential bid.
Before her 2016 victory in the Senate race, Harris made her career in law enforcement. She served as the district attorney in San Francisco before she was elected to serve as attorney general.
Harris is likely to face questions about her law enforcement record, particularly after the Black Lives Matter movement and activists across the country pushed for a criminal justice overhaul. Harris’s prosecutorial record has recently come under new scrutiny after a blistering opinion piece in The New York Times criticized her repeated claim that she was a “progressive prosecutor,” focused on changing a broken criminal justice system from within.
Harris addressed her law enforcement background in her book. She argued it was a “false choice” to decide between supporting the police and advocating for greater scrutiny of law enforcement.
She “knew that there was an important role on the inside, sitting at the table where the decisions were being made,” she wrote. “When activists came marching and banging on the doors, I wanted to be on the other side to let them in.”
Harris supported legislation that passed the Senate last year that overhauled the criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to sentencing rules.
Harris is framing her campaign through her courtroom experience. The theme of her nascent campaign is “Kamala Harris, for the people,” the same words she spoke as a prosecutor, trying a case in the courtroom.
"Taptap Send is an app that lets people send money back home quickly and at very low prices," says Helen Amelga, the company's US-Ethiopia Launcher. (Courtesy photo)
