NAIROBI, 6 April 2010 (IRIN) - Authorities in Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland have begun repatriating hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, officials told IRIN.

"These are people who decided they wanted to return but could not afford to do so," said Mohamud Jama Muse, director of the Migration Response Centre (MRC) in Bosasso, Puntland's capital.

He said thousands of Ethiopians and Somalis were in Bosasso, with the intention of crossing into Yemen or to find work.

"We have so far repatriated 490 Ethiopian migrants," said Maher Ahmed, senior operations and programme manager with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Ahmed said that 12 flights had been chartered and IOM was providing airport assistance in Bosasso and Ethiopia.

We all know that Birtukan is in Kaliti Jail now, Birtukan decided to join a political party to bring about a fast change in the country, including superiority of the rule of law, and a full respect and implementation of the constitution which proved first hand not in place while serving as a judge.

She joined the Rainbow Ethiopia: Movement for Democracy and Social Justice party and later Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) after a coalition of four parties.

On December 28 2008, Birtukan was re-arrested and imprisoned to serve a life sentence, after the pardon granted to her in 2007 was revoked. Birtukan Medeksa was among more than 100 people jailed for offences after controversial polls in 2005. A dispute over the terms caused her re-arrest.

Miss Ethiopia 2010 beauty pageant is going to be held in different cities of Ethiopia at Hawzen (Gheralta lodge), April 19-22 , Awassa ( Haile resort) April 22-25 , Bahirdar (Kuriftu resort) April 26-28 and the final will be held on May 8 in Addis Ababa at Millennium hall.

In the 2010 beauty pageant two contestants from the nine regions and the two from Dire dawa and four contestants from Addis Ababa would make up the 24 contestants will compete to be crowned Miss Ethiopia 2010 and also win other prizes during the competition.

Organized by Ethiopia village in collaboration with the Addis Ababa culture and tourism bureau, the ministry of women’s affair and Ethiopian youth federation, this beauty contest aims to bring change on the grassroots level and also to change the negative image of Ethiopia portrayed in the media.

As the organizers explain what makes this year’s pageant different is all the regions will be sending their representatives and registrations have already started. in the first competition, which will be held in Hawzen in the Tigray region Miss Ethiopia talent and Miss Ethiopia congeniality will be chosen. In Awassa Miss Ethiopia athletics and Miss cultural heritage will be selected and in Bahir dar Miss Ethiopia beach beauty and Miss Ethiopia model. The six winners from the three competitions at the three venues will then compete with 18 other hopefuls at the final competition that will be held at the Millenium Hall in Addis Ababa.

Various development works has been carried out in Mojana District of North Showa zone in the Amhara Regional State at the cost of over 33m Birr during this Ethiopian Budget year.

Ayalew Tegabu said that the development work that includes construction of road, education centers High schools, water facilities and more.

The construction of 95KM roads already been completed already. The chief Mr. Ayalew T. said it is planning to construct and conduct more activities.

Amhara Regional State District executes over 33m Birr development projects

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Following different criticisms and debates against the new code of conduct which the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) designed for journalists, the government has announced that discussions will be held with professional stakeholders to revise the code.

According to Shimeles Kemal of the Government Communication office due to different criticisms the code has been receiving from different stakeholders the government is considering revising the code after discussing with professionals and journalists.

The new Code of Conduct which was distributed to journalists a week before puts a number of restrictions on journalists while they cover the election and make them accountable if they happen to violate any of it.

According to the new Code, journalists are required to have an accreditation from the Board in order to cover the election and to be accredited, each journalists need to sign an agreement with the board confirming his/her acceptance of the code and will not do anything the code restricts.

The code also restricts journalists from not taking recorders, photo or video cameras into polling stations and interview voters on who they give their vote for.

In this film festival from March 26-April 4 around 50 films, which reflects on the human condition and the earth will be screened.

On the opening day Friday, March 26’ Mona’ and ‘Bury the spear’ directed by Alula Pankhrust and Ivo Strecker will be screened, it questions the inevitability of war and how peace can be created by depicting the 1993 peace making efforts of the Abore, Borana, Konso, Tsmai, Hamar and Dasanach to end decades of ethnic war in the southern Ethiopian Rift Valley.

As the organizers explained the venue is a place for Filmmakers especially African filmmakers who didn’t’t get a chance to screen their films and to show issues that are forgotten. This year around 200 films excluding the local films were submitted to the festival where the organizers selected 50 films as Rahwa Kiros coordinator of the film festival explains: “it’s been a challenge to choose from one another as all the films are really good”.

“We consider the theme what could reflect the planet earth. For example a woman who gets her food and feed her children from garbage but is determined to teach her children thinking about their future so you can see her reflection towards education. Our films are top we had to go through all the films it’s because we had to choose that we chose these films”, states Rahwa Kiros

Mickael Bethe Selassie lives and works in Paris since 1974. The artist is known for its sculptures and reliefs in paper-mache and acrylic paintings with glowing colors. His work is in collections of international museums.

The first exhibition Mickael in Ethiopia was organized by the Alliance Ethio-Francaise in 1993. In 2006 and 2007, the artist has been invited by the AEF has run two workshops in Addis Ababa.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Eight-year-old boys, when they are not in school, should be outdoors with their friends, playing ball, finding treasure in what grown-ups throw away, shouting in glee because that's what little boys do.

But not 8-year-old Zemen Toshome. For more than six years, Zemen has lived at Tikur Anbesa (Black Lion) Hospital in Addis Ababa. He goes outside only briefly on the hospital grounds. He can't shout because of his medical condition.

Zemen has laryngeal papillomatosis, a disease in which tumors grow inside the larynx, vocal cords, or respiratory tract. The disease occurs when the human papillomavirus (HPV) is transferred from a mother to her child at birth. The tumors can grow quickly and cause difficulty in breathing, which if not corrected can lead to death.

In the United States, treatment for Zemen might mean periodic visits to a hospital to have the tumors surgically removed. But Zemen doesn't live in the United States.

The Ministry of Mines and Energy said it is striving to help investors engaged in plantation of Jatropha plant which will serve as energy source find market.

Public Relations and Communication Process Owner with the ministry Bacha Faji told ENA on Monday that there are 68 investors engaged in cultivating Jatropha plants.

Currently, some 15 investors are developing Jatropha plants in South Ethiopia Peoples, Oromia, Tigray, Benishangul-Gumuz and Somali states.

As part of the ministry’s effort for market link, Flora Eco Power, a private company has been exporting oil produced from Jatropha since 2001 EC, he said.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2010) — A description of a 95-million-year-old amber deposit -- the first major discovery of its kind from the African continent -- is adding new fungus, insects, spiders, nematodes, and even bacteria to an ecosystem that had been shared by dinosaurs. In addition, the amber deposit may provide fresh insights into the rise and diversification of flowering plants during the Cretaceous. The new paper, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reconstructs an ancient tropical forest uncovered in present-day Ethiopia and is the work of an international team of 20 scientists.

"Until now, we had discovered virtually no Cretaceous amber sites from the southern hemisphere's Gondwanan supercontinent," says author Paul Nascimbene of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. "Significant Cretaceous amber deposits had been found primarily in North America and Eurasia."


"The first angiosperms, or flowering plants, appeared and diversified in the Cretaceous," says first author Alexander Schmidt of the University of Göttingen in Germany. "Their rise to dominance drastically changed terrestrial ecosystems, and the Ethiopian amber deposit sheds light on this time of change."

A section of the documentary makes a string of allegations about singer-turned-campaigner.

They include the suggestion money raised from the 1985 Live Aid concerts to tackle famine in Ethiopia was mis-spent, leading to deaths, and criticism that the successor concerts two decades later, Live 8, overshadowed a mass movement of campaigners in the Make Poverty History coalition.

Chris Atkins’ hilarious but shocking True Stories documentary about the celebrity-obsessed media romps through the real reasons behind our addiction to fame, and pulls the rug out from the media corporations and moguls that deal it out.

Atkins sells fake celebrity stories to the tabloids, which they publish without any checks, and secretly films red-top journalists discussing the purchase of celebrities’ cosmetic surgery medical records.

Deliberately targeting the sacred cows of the media industry, the film features jaw-dropping secret camera footage of Max Clifford boasting about the lengths to which he will go to protect his clients.

Kenya Airways and Ethiopian Airlines are set to intensify their battle for the lucrative East and West African skies, opening new destinations and increasing frequencies in a fresh attempt to wrestle passengers from dominant European and Middle East carriers — and from each other.

KQ plans to open new routes to traditional Ethiopian destinations of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso and Luanda in Angola in addition to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Juba in Southern Sudan.

Both carriers have a similar strategy of ferrying passengers from West and Central Africa into their respective hubs — Nairobi for KQ and Addis Ababa for Ethiopian Airlines — from where they connect mostly to Southern Africa, the Middle East, India and the Far East.

On October 25 last year, Ethiopian Airlines hacked into the KQ network, simultaneously mounting new flights to the two lucrative KQ destinations of Mombasa and Monrovia (Liberia).

Ethiopian Airlines is now flying daily to Mombasa and three times a week to Monrovia; the Monrovia flight also covers Conakry in Guinea.

The Ethio-Djibouti Railway is 781km long; it had sustained damages during the Ethio-Somalia war and by floods. Consta was recruited to renovate a 114km segment of the rail that has been most affected at a cost of 50 million Euro (902.5 million Br), which has been provided by the EU.

Consta is anticipating the lifting of the ban on it and to resume construction of the Ethio-Djibouti Railway before the end of this month.

A decision has now been reached for Consta Joint Venture (JV), the Italian firm, to continue work on the railway after a meeting at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED) involving Ethiopian and Djibouti officials, officials of the EU, the project financier as well as officials of the Ethio-Djibouti Railway Enterprise. Consta had been ordered to suspend the construction on the railway because of the poor standard of the work reported by the project consultant.

Consta is expected to make a presentation on April 26, 2010, about the work that is to be done, the extra time and the budget needed for the project. It will go to work after the extra time and budget requests have been approved for it. A final decision is expected then.