ዓባይ በረሃ ገደል ውስጥ በገባው ስካይ ባስ 43 ሰዎች አለቁ

በትናንትናው ዕለት ከአዲስ አበባ 46 ተሳፋሪዎችን ይዞ ወደ ጐንደር በመጓዝ ላይ በነበረው የሰሌዳ ቁጥር 40411 በሆነው ስካይ ባስ፣ ዓባይ በረሃ ሕዳሴ ድልድይ መዳረሻ ሲደርስ መስመሩን ስቶ ገደል በመግባቱ፣ 43 ሰዎች መሞታቸውን በስፍራው የተገኘው የሪፖርተር ዘጋቢ ለማወቅ ችሏል፡፡

አውቶቡሱ ከሾፌሩ፣ ከረዳቱና ከአንዲት አስተናጋጅ ውጭ 46 ተሳፋሪዎች ይዞ በመጓዝ ላይ እያለ ምክንያቱ ባልታወቀበት ሁኔታ ወደ ሕዳሴ ድልድይ መቃረቡን የሚያመለክቱ አንፀባራቂ ምልክቶችን ጥሶ በግምት ከ80 ሜትር በላይ ጥልቀት ያለው ገደል ውስጥ ገብቷል፡፡

አውቶቡሱ ገደል መግባቱን ተከትሎ በተሰማው የፍንዳታ ድምፅ ምክንያት የሕዳሴውን ድልድይ የሚጠብቁ ታጣቂዎች ፈጥነው ቢደርሱም፣ ተሽከርካሪው በእሳት በመያያዙ በሕይወት የተረፉትን ለመርዳት መቸገራቸውን ለሪፖርተር አስረድተዋል፡፡

አደጋው ከደረሰ በኋላ በአካባቢው ያሉ ነዋሪዎችና ከጐንደርና ከባህርዳር ወደ አዲስ አበባ እንዲሁም ከአዲስ አበባ ወደ ጐንደርና ባህር ዳር በመጓዝ ላይ ያሉ መንገደኞች ሁሉ ባደረጉት መረባረብ፣ በእሳት የተቃጠሉና በአደጋው ከፍተኛ ጉዳት የደረሰባቸውን ሰባት ሰዎች ለማውጣት መቻላቸውን ለማወቅ ተችሏል፡፡

ከአደጋው ከተረፉት ስድስት ተጓዦች መካከል አንደኛው ከአውስትራሊያ መጥቶ የጥምቀትን በዓል ለማክበር ወደ ጐንደር እየተጓዘ እንደነበር፣ “ወንድሜን ጥሩልኝ ስልክ ደውሉልኝ” ብሎ በመናገር ላይ እያለ ሕይወቱ ማለፉን ዘጋቢው ማየቱን ተናግሯል፡፡ አውቶቡሱ ውስጡ ሙሉ በሙሉ በእሳት በመያያዙ አደጋው የደረሰባቸውና ሕይወታቸው ያለፈው ተጓዦች አስከሬንም ሳይቃጠል እንዳልቀረ ተገምቷል፡፡

ከባድ አደጋ የደረሰባቸውና በሕይወት የተረፉት አንዲት ሴትና አምስት ወንዶች፣ በአካባቢው በተገኙ የቀይ መስቀል ሠራተኞች የመጀመርያ ዕርዳታ ከተደረገላቸው በኋላ ወደ ሕክምና ቦታ መወሰዳቸው ታውቋል፡፡ በግምት ከጠዋቱ አራት ሰዓት አካባቢ የተከሰተው አደጋ እስከ ቀኑ ስድስት ሰዓት ድረስ እንደቆየ ታውቋል፡፡

አዲስ አበባ ከተማ ውስጥ የሚገኘውን የስካይ ባስ አክሲዮን ማኅበር ኃላፊዎችን አነጋግረናቸው፣ በደረሰው አደጋ እጅግ በጣም መደንገጣቸውንና ስለ አደጋው የሚያጣራ የቴክኒክ ቡድን ወደ ስፍራው መላካቸውን ተናግረዋል፡፡

አውቶቡሱ አንድ ጊዜ ተጉዞ ሲመለስ ሙሉ ምርመራ እንደሚደረግለት፣ መስተዋቶቹ አደጋ እንኳን ቢከሰት በቀላሉ የሚሰበሩ፣ አላስፈላጊ የሆነ ነገር ቢገጥም በሚል ደግሞ በእያንዳንዱ ተሳፋሪ መስታወት አቅራቢያ መስተዋት መስበሪያ መዶሻ እንደሚሰቀል ኃላፊዎቹ ተናግረው፣ አደጋው በምን ሁኔታና ምክንያት እንደደረሰ መናገር የሚችሉት የቴክኒክ ቡድኑ ለሚመለከተው አካል ካሳወቀ በኋላ መሆኑን አስታውቀዋል፡፡

ስካይ ባስ ከሦስት ዓመታት በፊት ከሦስት ሺሕ በላይ በሆኑ ባለአክሲዮኖች የተቋቋመ የግል ማኅበር ነው፡፡ አሁን ከተገለበጠው አውቶቡስ ጋር 14 አውቶቡሶች ሲኖሩት ከሁለቱ በስተቀር 12ቱ መፀዳጃ ቤት፣ የአየር መቅዘፊያ ባግና የተለያዩ መስተንግዶዎች አሏቸው፡፡ ሁለቱ አውቶቡሶችም መኝታ ክፍሎች አሏቸው፡፡ እያንዳንዳቸው አውቶቡሶች በ3.5 ሚሊዮን ብር የተገዙ ሲሆን፣ በቀጥታ ከፋብሪካው ተገዝተው የመጡ መሆናቸውን ኃላፊዎቹ ገልጸዋል፡፡  

http://www.ethiopianreporter.com

አፋር ውስጥ አምስት የውጭ ቱሪስቶች ተገደሉ

•    በሽፍቶች የተወሰዱ አሉ ተብሏል

በአፋር ክልል በበረሃይሌ ወረዳ ኤርታኤሌ አካባቢ በጉብኝት ላይ ከነበሩ ስምንት የውጭ ቱሪስቶች መካከል፣ አምስቱ ባለፈው ሰኞ ሌሊት መገደላቸውን ምንጮች ለሪፖርተር ገለጹ፡፡ በጉብኝት ላይ በነበሩት ስምንት የውጭ አገር ጐብኝዎች፣ አስጐብኝዎችና ታጣቂዎች ላይ ተኩስ የከፈቱት የኤርትራ ታጣቂ ሽፍቶች ሳይሆኑ እንዳልቀሩ ምንጮቹ ገልጸው፣ በተደረገው የተኩስ ልውውጥ ከውጭ ዜጐች መካከል አምስቱ ሲገደሉ፣ ሁለቱ ቆስለው ሲተርፉ አንዷ ግን ምንም ሳይደርስባት መትረፏን ምንጮቹ አረጋግጠዋል፡፡

ሽፍቶቹ አስጐብኝውንና ለቱሪስቶቹ ጥበቃ የሚያደርጉ ታጣቂዎችን (ቁጥራቸው አልታወቀም) ይዘዋቸው ሳይሄዱ እንዳልቀሩም ምንጮቹ ጠቁመዋል፡፡

ሕይወታቸው ያለፉትን አምስት የውጭ አገር ዜጐች አስከሬንና ሕይወታቸው የተረፈውን በአፍዴራ በኩል ትናንት ሌሊቱን ወደ አዲስ አበባ ለማምጣት፣ ሔሊኮፕተሮች ወደ ሥፍራው መሄዳቸውን ምንጮቹ አስታውቀዋል፡፡

በአካባቢው በአሁኑ ጊዜ የመከላከያና የፌዴራል ፖሊስ ሠራዊት አባላት በመግባታቸው፣ ጥበቃውም ሆነ የአካባቢው ሰላም አስተማማኝ መሆኑን ምንጮቹ አረጋግጠዋል፡፡

http://www.ethiopianreporter.com

Ethiopia Airlines rejects Lebanon report into air crash

 Ethiopian Airlines officials have bluntly rejected the findings of a Lebanese investigation into an air crash off Lebanon in January 2010.

The Lebanese report blames pilot error for the crash of flight ET409, in which 90 people died, sources say.

But Ethiopian Airlines officials say the plane exploded, which they say points to sabotage, a lightning strike or shooting down.

The Lebanese report was due to be released on Tuesday.

The Addis Ababa-bound flight crashed minutes after take-off from Beirut in stormy weather on 25 January 2010, with no survivors.

Lebanese Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi told AFP news agency it was "clear" that "there were errors on the part of the pilot and co-pilot who are entirely responsible for the plane crash".

According to AFP, the Lebanese report says the pilot and co-pilot had been working non-stop for 51 days and were exhausted.

Mr Aridi said the plane was sound and transcripts of the exchanges between the crew and air traffic control on takeoff had not indicated any problem.

'Biased and incomplete'

Other officials say the report accuses the pilot of ignoring instructions from the control tower. Similar claims were made by Lebanese officials at the time of the crash.

But Ethiopian Airlines has vigorously denied the Lebanese findings in a statement, in which it insisted the crew was rested in accordance with regulation and the pilot had made appropriate efforts to control the aircraft.

"ATC [air traffic control] officers and other airlines' pilots have witnessed a ball of fire on the aircraft in the air," Desta Zeru, vice-president of flight operations for Ethiopian Airlines, said in the statement.

"The aircraft disintegrated in the air due to explosion, which could have been caused by a shoot-down, sabotage or lightning strike," he said.

The Lebanese report is "biased, lacking evidence, incomplete and did not present the full account of the accident", the statement quoted the airline's CEO Tewolde Gebremariam as saying.
http://www.bbc.co.uk

Pilot error probable cause of Ethiopian Airlines 737 crash

Pilot error was the overriding cause of the January 2010 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 off the coast of Lebanon, according to the final report into the accident.

The aircraft, operating as flight ET409, departed Beirut's Rafic Hariri airport at 00:41 UTC on 25 January 2010 but crashed into the Mediterranean Sea around 5nm south-west of the airport after a flight lasting just 4min 15s, killing all 90 people on board.

In the conclusions, the report, produced by the Lebanese Civil Aviation Authority, said that the probable causes of the accident were the "flight crew's mismanagement of the aircraft's speed, altitude, headings and attitude through inconsistent flight control inputs resulting in loss of control".

The night departure and course changes to avoid weather, combined with the captain's relative inexperience as pilot-in-command on the type, may have led to the captain "reaching a situation of loss of situational awareness similar to a subtle incapacitation and the [first officer's] failure to recognise it or to intervene accordingly".

During the brief flight, the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder captured two "prolonged" stick shaker alarms of 27s and 26s as the aircraft entered stall situations, 11 aural "bank angle" warnings and a final overspeed warning towards the end of the 737's descent.

The aircraft had a maximum angle of attack of 32e_SDgr, maximum bank angle of 118e_SDgr left and maximum recorded speed of 407.5kt, said the report.

No mechanical defects were found on the 2002 airframe (ET-ANB) and the two CFM International CFM56-7BE engines performed normally, it said.

It suggests that the pairing of the pilots may have been a contributory factor. The captain had only secured his release to fly solo on the type 51 days prior to the accident, in which time he had accumulated 188h.

While the inquiry report said he had over 3,700h as pilot-in-command, it said nearly 2,500h were on "different light and spray aircraft".

The first officer, however, had a total of 673h, of which 350h were as first officer on 737-700 and -800s.

Although the pairing was within the airline's recommendation, which states that "a captain who has less than 300 hours and first officer who has less than 100 hours on type should not be scheduled together", the report added: "That level of experience, although within the required approved standard, did not constitute a comfortable margin that would allow the crew to have enough confidence in the operation of the aircraft under demanding conditions, especially when we consider that the captain's experience on the 737-700/800 was acquired in the 51 days preceding the accident."

The first officer also demonstrated a lack of assertiveness to intervene when faced with the captain's "strange flying behaviour", it said.

Ethiopian Airlines should revise its cockpit relationship management policies, it said, to stress the leadership and assertiveness required of a first officer. Crew pairings should also be reconsidered, it added.

However, Ethiopian Airlines has angrily dismissed the report as "biased, lacking evidence, incomplete and [failing to] present the full account of the accident". It remains convinced that the aircraft disintegrated in mid-air due to an explosion.

In a statement, Captain Desta Zeru, vice-president flight operations at Ethiopian Airlines, said the flight data and cockpit voice recorders show that the pilot was making "appropriate inputs in an effort to control the aircraft".

http://www.flightglobal.com

Dutch khat ban smacks of racism

The Dutch government recently announced that it will ban the use of khat, a narcotic leaf widely chewed in the Horn of Africa and Yemen.

I've written about khat before. I've spent four months in Ethiopia, especially Harar, a city in the eastern part of the country where chewing khat (pronounced "chat" in the local languages) is part of many people's daily lives. It's a mild drug that makes most people more relaxed, mildly euphoric, and talkative. It also helps concentration and is popular among university students.

Of course there are side effects. Short-term effects include sleeplessness, constipation, and for some people a listlessness that keeps them from achieving their potential. Long-term use can lead to mental instability and heart trouble. I met one western researcher in Harar who had been there two years. He'd stopped using khat after the first few months because he was afraid of the long-term effects. If I lived in Harar that long I'd stop chewing khat for that very reason.

So the Dutch government seems to have a good reason to ban khat. Or does it? This is a country where marijuana, hash, herbal ecstasy, and psychedelic truffles are all legal. And if we're talking about long-term health effects, we need to throw in alcohol and tobacco too.

So what's different about khat? It's almost exclusively used by the Dutch Somali community, numbering about 25,000 people. According to the BBC, "a Dutch government report cited noise, litter and the perceived public threat posed by men who chew khat as some of the reasons for outlawing the drug."

Drunks aren't noisy? Cigarette smokers never litter? The last reason is the most telling: "the perceived public threat posed by men who chew khat." In other words, black men. In Europe, khat is a black drug, little understood and rarely used by the white population. This ignorance and the fear it generates are the real reasons khat is being banned.

While there are some valid health and social reasons for banning this narcotic plant, they also apply to the narcotic plants white people like to use. But we can't expect white people in The Netherlands to give up those, can we?
http://www.gadling.com

Ethiopian coffee bonanza lifts world output hopes

World coffee output over the last two seasons has beaten previous expectations by nearly 5m bags thanks to far-higher-than-expected production by Ethiopia, the birthplace of the bean, which has overtaken Colombia.

Global coffee output in 2010-11 was 134.2m bags, more than 1m bags higher than previously expected, the International Coffee Organization said.

For the current 2011-12 season, the production estimate was lifted by 3.8m bags to 132.4m bags.

The revisions reflected a massive upgrade, totalling nearly 6m bags, in output in Ethiopia, in whose Kaffa province the bean is believed to have originated.

The 9.8m bags that Ethiopia production is now believed to have reached in 2011-12 would rank the country "as the world's third-largest producer after Brazil and Vietnam", the ICO said.

In recent seasons, Colombia and Indonesia, have been battling it out for third rank, but with both unveiling a series of sub-par crops thanks largely to excessive rainfall blamed on the La Nina weather pattern.

Investment programme

The ICO gave no reason for its massive Ethiopian upgrades.

However, the rise in production, now seen doubling in three seasons, come amid a government drive to more than double coffee output in the five years to 2015 – a campaign which has received a tailwind from high bean prices which have encouraged investment in the sector.

Indeed, the production record contrasts with a commonly-held belief that Africa is likely to prove unable to fulfil its large potential in coffee, held back by political and climatological volatility.

Ethiopia is Africa's largest coffee producer, while the bean itself is of huge importance to Ethiopia, which has more than 1m families dependent on the crop, which accounts for more than one-quarter of gross national product (GNP) and accounts for some 40% of exports.

Price move

The upgrade to the estimate for Ethiopian output offset small downgrades to production forecasts for Central America, which suffered heavy rains late last year.

Nonetheless, robusta coffee edged 1.3% higher to $1,854 a tonne in London on Monday, for the best-traded March contract.

New York commodity markets, where arabica coffee is traded, were closed for a public holiday.

Ethiopia grows overwhelmingly arabica coffee.

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Director Yonie Solomon + Actress Helen Gedlu Talk ‘An Ethiopian Love’

Cultural pride is and will always be on trend, but even more it’s what’s right. Removing the typical Hollywood standards, such as an over-the-top urban character or ghetto baby mamas, Yonie Solomon decided to construct an indie, classic love story, An Ethiopian Love, that salutes his heritage and has a universal relativity. Starring as the lead character, Desta, Yonie plays alongside rising on-screen talent Helen Gedlu, Augisha Tesfasilase, Sara Gebremedhin, Jonathan Woldaub and Syed Bukhari. From the trailer alone, this romantic comedy seems loaded with good-hearted humor, relationship drama and depth. While building great content on the back of guerilla marketing, rehearsals and the like was no easy task, Solomon was determined to send a message. Sure, the Ethiopian community will be able to directly identify with the film, but all first generation persons or immigrants of this country will see themselves in this feature that tips its hat to self-identity.

 The cast is set to kickoff a screening tour in late April or early May, hitting major cities in the U.S. and several college campuses. Naturally, the international audience will get a chance to view it as well. VV tapped Solomon and Gedlu–both first generation Ethiopian Americans–for an exclusive chat about pride, the film’s exploration of love and how they incorporated style to get the message across. -Niki McGloster

What are the top common misconceptions about Ethiopia?

Helen: What they show on TV, kind of making it seem like everyone in Africa is just poor and starving. That’s [only] part of it. They just make us look horrible on TV. It’s frustrating because it’s like, wow, it’s not like that everywhere. I don’t know why they do it.

Yonie: That’s a huge one, in terms of being Ethiopian and living in America. It was crazy because that was one of the reasons why I wanted to do the movie. There’s a central theme surrounding African immigrants, and that is that they come from this savage country, where ever they’re from, be it Ethiopia or West Africa or where ever, and that Africa, as a whole continent, has nothing to offer. It’s crazy because I didn’t go there until I was 12 [years old], so I was exposed to the same things growing up in society. I shared those same views, whether they were subconscious or conscious, even with my parents in my ear saying [Ethiopia] is beautiful. So that’s the biggest one, by far. You mention Ethiopia, and it’s synonymous with starvation and political conflict. Not to say there isn’t trouble there, but if you look at the numbers, it’s like 80 million people in Ethiopia at this point, four million suffering from famine. It’s not something I’m trying to neglect putting out this type of movie, but what I’m trying to do is primarily empower Ethiopians, as well as abroad, in addition to kind of show a different side of Ethiopia to the world.