Ethiopian Family of dead maid accepts blood money

Four men, who were sentenced to death for rape and murder, were bailed
Sharjah: Four men facing the death penalty for raping, killing and dismembering an Ethiopian maid five years ago have been bailed after blood money was paid to the victim’s family.

The Sharjah Appeals Court dropped the death penalty, according to a ruling announced on Monday by presiding Judge Abdullah Yousif Al Shamisi,

The court reversed the death penalty and reduced the prison sentence to three years each.

The Emirati men, who have now spent more than five years in jail, are now out on bail, according to their lawyer

Salem Obaid Bin Sahoo, the men’s lawyer, told Gulf News that the ruling announced on Monday follows payment of Dh100,000 by the convicted men.

Hailu Gebre Yohannes (Gemoraw): A Short Biography

Hailu Gebre Yohannes (better known as Gemoraw Nede Biltasor or simply Gemoraw) was born in 1935, in Addis Ababa, in a traditional Ethiopian home, at the very spot where the Organization of African Unity (OAU) building stands today. As a small boy, Hailu was given church education by his father Merigeta Gebre Yohannes, who had the ambition to see his son, young Hailu, become a priest. Some of the unique happenings include the following. In the Theological School, the vast majority of the teachers were following the Old Testament. But as a teenager Hailu opted to study modern education instructed in English at Menelik High school while at the same time offering church service, as a Deacon, at the Holy Trinity Church at Arat Kilo. It was at that time that Hailu began gaining fluency in Geez and Amharic and eventually became sharp and solid in them to the extent that he could write dictum filled with polemic interpretations; and even converse secretive matters in Geez with priests and literate monks.

Upon completion of his learning at Menelik High School, Hailu joined the Trinity Collage of Theology at the Addis Ababa University where his search for and query about the mysticism of life, nature and the natural milieu began to gain momentum. To quench his youth dreams about life, Hailu focused his curiosity on and attempted to examine about creation and the inter-links lying between humanity and her ever-existing surroundings. He pondered more about life and death as well as life after death. Eventually, just instinctively and intuitively, Hailu got seriously immersed into the philosophy of life and death. Indeed, and very truly indeed, the major question that stroked his mind was - Why is life so much full of the art of making life itself and that of causing the horror of death? Thus, to Hailu, life is surrounded by lots of potential causes for an actual death. Likewise, death is surrounded by lots of creatures, each carrying a momentary life, which will be dispossessed by it at any time. Principally, death gives the resurrection of life and life gives the rebirth of death. Thus, one lives momentarily to die and one dies in due time and space to give more room for the predecessors' future life. In short, Hailu realized that all the time somewhere, somehow, while someone’s life goes away at that very moment, somehow, somewhere, the making of life goes on. In Hailu’s own words: "life goes and life goes on".

Ethiopian poet Hailu Gebreyohannes (Gemoraw) Passed away

Ethiopia’s hope lies in its wonderful people-Forbes

Mark Twain had once, on coming back to New York, made this famous observation: “It’s not quite what it used to be and it appears decidedly better than when I was here last.” In true Twain honesty, he had wondered whether his going away had something to do with this progress as well.

I went to Addis Ababa last week after a gap of two years. I got reminded of Twain for understandable reasons. The airport was still an unholy mess. Large, rustic, disorganised and derelict. Yet, it was attempting to become the future aviation hub of the region and Africa. And Ethiopian Airlines does fancy itself. Its branding makes people believe in its service and promises. A bit like the rest of the country really. It is, after all, Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country in numbers after Nigeria.

A history rich in culture and having a fairly unique status in Africa of never having been officially a colony does have its perks. By a sheer bit of diplomatic guile, it is also the host to the African Union HQ and hence, a natural destination for all African diplomatic efforts.

Ethiopian opens fire at police patrol

An Ethiopian man almost killed two police patrol officers during a car chase. The chase started after officers got suspicious of the attacker's car.

The officers continued to chase the vehicle, which did not have any license plate, until it made the driver, a Yemeni man, pull over.

The driver confessed that he was trying to smuggle the passengers, all undocumented workers, outside Riyadh and it was he who ordered the Ethiopian man to open fire at the police officers.

The driver and workers were arrested and a machine gun as well as ammunition and a large amount of money were seized.

© Copyright 2014 The Saudi Gazette

'Nightmare' for Ethiopian pastoralists as foreign investors buy up land

Suri boys with water gourds herd cattle along a road in Tulgit, Omo valley, Ethiopia. Photograph: Danita Delimont/Alamy

Thinktank accuses Ethiopian government of stirring ethnic tensions as Suri displaced to make way for large plantations
Ethiopia’s policy of leasing millions of hectares of land to foreign investors is encouraging human rights violations, ruining livelihoods and disturbing a delicate political balance between ethnic groups, a thinktank report has found.

The US-based Oakland Institute says that while the east African country is now lauded as an economic success story, the report, Engineering Ethnic Conflict, “highlights the unreported nightmare experienced by Ethiopia’s traditionally pastoralist communities”.

Human ancestor Lucy celebrates 40th anniversary

Next month paleoanthropologists will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the discovery of bones of a primitive human forerunner now known as Lucy.

Donald Johanson is always looking at the ground.
“I find more quarters by parking meters than anybody I know,” he says.
As he was looking at the ground four decades ago, in a region called Hadar, named for a dry riverbed in Ethiopia, he saw something a lot more exciting than a quarter. It was a fossil bone.
“I found a little piece of elbow,” he said last week in Columbus, Ohio, while addressing a conference of science writers. “And I knew from studies of osteology and comparative anatomy that this had to be from a human ancestor.”
By two weeks later, Johanson and his colleagues had collected enough bones to reconstruct about 40 percent of a skeleton. Those bones belonged to a primitive human forerunner now known as Lucy.
Next month paleoanthropologists will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Johanson’s discovery of the elbow bone on November 24, 1974. In the intervening four decades, many more fossils along with other clues have been discovered, rewriting the story of the human race. The evolution of earlier humanlike species and eventually modern humans has grown from the outline of a play with a small cast to an elaborate production with more characters than an Agatha Christie mystery, many remaining enigmatic with relationships still unclear.