The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) has announced the foreclosure of another flower farm.Site Agro Plc has been closed because of a failure to pay back a DBE loan.

According to the notice posted in the Amharic state-owned daily, Addis Zemen, the estimated value of Site Agro Plc was 3.7 million birr. The farm is located in West Showa Zone, Ajere Woreda, around Addis Alem town, on an area of 13.13 hectares, which is cultivated with various types of flower.
Previously the state-owned bank foreclosed five other flower farms due to failures to keep up with payments. Three of them are in the process of being transferred to other owners by negotiation because an auction did not attract buyers.

Although too late for Site Agro Plc and the others, recently steps have been taken to try and ease the situation for the troubled flower firms. The government suggested a rescheduling of land lease and loan terms and an agreement has recently been reached.

MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA (WPLF) — A suspect was arrested Saturday in connection with the stabbings of two women in South Beach.

Leigh-Ann Martinez, 21, was having a girls' night out with Belkin Gutierrez, 20, and three other friends. The women finished dinner at TGI Friday's at Fifth and Ocean just after 9 p.m. and headed for their car.

Martinez said a man followed them for five blocks until they reached First Street, where he attacked them.

An arrest report identified the man as 24-year-old Kidane Mengesha. The report said Mengesha grabbed Martinez and hit her in the face. Investigators said Martinez hit Mengesha back, and a fight broke out. Gutierrez tried to help her friend by hitting Mengesha, who then pulled out a knife, according to the arrest report.

Police said Mengesha stabbed Gutierrez five times, in the head, torso and arm, and stabbed Martinez once in the leg. According to the report, two men intervened, hitting Mengesha, and he ran away.

WASHINGTON DC — Season 7 winner of AMERICAN IDOL, David Cook arrived in Ethiopia as a guest of the United Nations Foundation to learn about the challenges adolescent girls face in many parts of the world. While in Ethiopia, Cook will visit the United Nations’ Biruh Tesfa (Bright Future) Project to see firsthand how the UN Foundation is supporting the work of the UN to educate and empower girls. Footage of Cook’s trip to Ethiopia will be featured during IDOL GIVES BACK, the Emmy-winning television event and musical celebration developed by AMERICAN IDOL creator Simon Fuller, on Wednesday, April 21 (8:00-10:00 PM ET live/PT tape-delayed) on FOX.

“Once again, we are proud to join with the IDOL GIVES BACK Foundation, FOX, and AMERICAN IDOL to help raise awareness about the work of the United Nations,” said Kathy Calvin, CEO of the United Nations Foundation. “One of our top priorities is to advocate for women and girls around the world. Too many girls growing up in developing countries are not able to attend school or have access to healthcare services. The UN needs our support to advance the well-being of women and girls around the globe. Supporting girls around the world is one of the smartest ways to help build a better future for us all.”

During the trip, David Cook, an American singer-songwriter from Blue Springs, Missouri, will meet with youth mentors and students in the Mercato slum area of Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar, to learn how large numbers of girls are traveling to ‘Biruh Tesfa’ everyday to gain an education and break the cycle of poverty.

Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) said that it is alarmed and concerned about the medical state of its party leader Birtukan Mideksa who is in prison. It called for the examination of Birtukan by an independent medical team.

In a statement released yesterday, UDJ said that it was seriously concerned about the health of its leader after learning of her continuing decline from her mother, who is the only person allowed to visit her inside prison aside from her daughter.

UDJ said that the government was transgressing Article 21 of the constitution by refusing Birtukan visitation right from her private doctor, relatives and spiritual counselor in a manner that is unheard of before.

In its statement, UDJ said Birtukan’s health is deteriorating and asked the government to allow an independent medical team to examine her in the presence of the Red Cross and the result be made public.

Addis Ababa, March 30, 2010 (Addis Ababa) - The Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed arrived late Tuesday at Addis Ababa.

Up on his arrival at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport the president warmly welcomed by Culture and Tourism Minister Ambassador Mohammed Dirir.

The president said he will discuss with the Ethiopia government officials on the current situation in Somalia.

He said currently peace and stability is prevailing in Somalia.

He urged the Ethiopian government to continue its support to maintain the prevailing peace and stability in his country.

Ethiopian Airlines officials are closely following a report that a captured terrorism suspect has told of a bomb aboard a plane that crashed off the coast of Lebanon in January. Investigators have not determined the cause more than two months after the crash.

A report on a U.S. Internet Web site says British intelligence agents have reopened their investigation into the mysterious crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet January 25. The Boeing 737 plunged into the Mediterranean Sea minutes after takeoff from Beirut airport, killing all 90 people aboard.

News reports initially quoted witnesses as saying the plane had broken up in the air and fallen into the sea in a ball of flames. But Lebanese officials immediately ruled out terrorism, and suggested pilot error was to blame.

The "G2 Bulletin" Web site, which calls itself an independent online intelligence newsletter reports an operative of the group al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula told interrogators the aircraft was destroyed by a suicide bomber trained in Yemen.

The operative is said to be among more than 100 terrorism suspects recently arrested in Saudi Arabia. He is reported to have told his captors the Beirut bomber trained in the same camp as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to set off a bomb in his underwear on a plane landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The Italian firm building Africa's biggest hydropower dam in Ethiopia on Tuesday denied allegations that the dam would deprive 200,000 self-sufficient people of a living and make them dependent on aid.

The ethnic rights group Survival International said last week that the dam would disrupt fishing and farming and displace more than 200,000 people, among them the Kwegu and Hamar tribes.

"The project will not cause drought: the dam will not block the flow of water to the river indefinitely, but merely redistribute it during the course of the year," Salini Costruttori said in a statement.

"Activities connected to the local fishing trade will not be destroyed. Agriculture will be able to benefit from a constant supply of water through the year."

The Gibe 111 dam, costing 1.4 billion euros and expected to generate 1,800 megawatts, is one of five Ethiopia is building in a drive to beat power shortages and export electricity. It will almost double current Ethiopian capacity of just under 2,000 MW.

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- The European Union will send a team of observers to monitor Ethiopia’s May 23 national elections, amid complaints by opposition parties that the vote won’t be free and fair, a European lawmaker said.

Ana Maria Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament who led the EU’s monitoring mission to Ethiopia during elections in 2005, said Andris Piebalgs, the European Commissioner for Development, announced the decision to African and European parliamentarians meeting in Tenerife yesterday.

Gomes warned that the EU mission risked becoming a “farce” when Birtukan Mideksa, one of the country’s main opposition leaders, is in jail under a life sentence.
“There are no conditions for genuine democratic elections,” in Ethiopia, Gomes said in a phone interview from Tenerife. “I have many fears that this can be instrumentalized to legitimize the ruling party staying in power.”

Security forces loyal to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi killed 193 people in the aftermath of the disputed 2005 election, while thousands more were jailed, including Birtukan and other opposition leaders. Birtukan was released under a 2007 pardon agreement, before being jailed again in 2008 after saying she signed the pardon as part of a political deal.

Addis Ababa, March 30, 2010 (Addis Ababa) - Ethiopia and Egypt signed here Tuesday cooperation agreements and Memorandum of Understanding in various sectors at the conclusion of the third Ethio-Egyptian Joint Ministerial meeting. The meeting was concluded by issuing 15 points communiqué.

The two governments reaffirmed that they would work closely to further enhance the existing relations.

Speaking on the occasion Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin said the two countries signed cooperation agreements in the areas of agriculture, trade, health, transit live animals and beef meat, economic development,information science,technology, education, air service, media and communications among others.

He said economic relations of the two countries have gained momentum and the joint commission encourages efforts of the two countries.Seyuom said the trade volume exchange of the two countries has been growing by 20 percent.He said the ever increased trade partnership projects with Egyptian investors is significantly boosting the economic relations of the two sisterly nations.

Addis Ababa, March 30, 2010 (Addis Ababa) - The Ethiopian airline has conducted the first Bombardier Q400 Next Generation aircraft flight test here Tuesday.

The Ethiopian said three Bombardier Q400 Next Generation aircrafts of the eight it order for Canadian plane maker Bombardier Inc. will arrive in next month. It was noted that the remaining aircrafts will arrive until Oct. 2010.Domestic Operations Director of Ethiopian Abebe Angessa said Bombardier Q400 would enable Ethiopian to deliver effective service to domestic flight customers.

Bombardier Q400 aircraft, which has a capacity to carry 78 passengers, fast, fuel effective and reliable aircraft.Abebe said Bombardier Q400 aircrafts will replace Fokker aircrafts and to expand its services to neighboring countries. Ethiopian flight manager Beza Assefa on her part said Bombardier Q400 aircrafts are serving around the world with relatively less maintenance cost.

Addis Ababa, March 29, 2010 (Addis Ababa) - The Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Party (Forum) launched election campaign ahead of the forthcoming national elections in three areas here in the capital on Sunday.
Forum has launched the election campaign in kebele 08 of Arada Sub-city, Yekatit 12 Preparatory School and kebele 12 recreation club located in Woreda 23.

The leaders of the Forum responded to questions raised by the audience.

The questions include what would be the guarantee that Forum should not be get split like CUD.

Is that not the problem that Forum is a group of parties with diametrically opposing political views was also among the questions raised during the campaign?

WASHINGTON — Among the courses Haile Gerima teaches at Howard University is one called “Film and Social Change.” But for Mr. Gerima, an Ethiopian director and screenwriter who has lived here since the 1970s in what he calls self-exile, that subject is not just an academic concern: it is also what motivates him to make films with African and African-American themes.

“Teza,” which opens Friday at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in Manhattan and means “Morning Dew” in the director’s native Amharic, may be Mr. Gerima’s most autobiographical movie yet. It traces the anguished course of an idealistic young intellectual named Anberber from his origins in a small village through his years as a medical student in Europe; his return to Ethiopia, where he ends up a casualty of the Marxist military revolution that overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974; and his exile to West Germany, where he becomes a victim of racism.

“I am from a generation that genuinely wanted a better society and to do something for poor and oppressed people, but which got blinded and lost and turned against its own humanity to become the opposite of what we wanted to be,” Mr. Gerima, 64, said in an interview at Sankofa, a Pan-African bookstore, cultural center and cafe that is across from the Howard campus and also houses his film company’s production offices. “For me, this film is really about displacement, which is a theme that really resonates within me.”

The management of the state owned Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) has now officially been handed over to a foreign firm, 102 years after Emperor Menelik decided that such a vital communications network ought to be managed by a native.

The transfer of management from one of the founders of Ethiopia’s telecom industry, Michel Chefneux, who had run the embryonic telecommunications network for a decade beginning 1897, to Lij Beyene Yimar, in 1907, is considered as one of the crucial milestones in the history of the Corporation.

Last week, managers at the state owned telecom monopoly signed a deal with senior officers of France Telecom, thereby putting the management of ETC in the hands of a European firm, reliable sources disclosed.

The deal was signed on Wednesday, March 24, 2010, with a business team of about 10, led by Stéphane Richard, the newly appointed boss of France Telecom, according to these sources.

France Telecom, a.k.a the Orange Company, will manage ETC on behalf of the Ethiopian government for up to three years. The European company had been in a bid against South African and Indian firms to win the contract.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - U.S. funded-broadcaster Voice of America said on Monday that Ethiopia may have blocked its website in a move which may lead to further U.S. criticism of its closest ally in the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia holds national elections on May 23 and international press freedom advocacy groups say the government is intimidating and harassing journalists ahead of the vote. The government denies that.

"We have received reports that VOA's website is unavailable inside Ethiopia, and we are investigating the causes," VOA Director Danforth Austin said in a statement.

Government spokesmen were not immediately available to comment.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi this month accused VOA's radio service in Ethiopia's dominant Amharic language of broadcasting "destabilising propaganda" and said his government was testing its ability to jam it.

“If Meles holds on power in the parliamentary elections due this May, the world should expect the stability that he has brought to take deeper root” , European Parliament Foreign Affairs Spokesman.

Though, Ethiopia amidst of unstable region, is standing out to manage fast economic growth and play key role in ensuring peace and stability in the region , Charles Tannock, foreign affairs spokesman in the European Parliament.

Tannock, who is among European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) , in his comment written on news.scotsman.com on Monday he said two decades ago, Ethiopia, was a Cold War battlefield.

On the ideological map of the world, Ethiopian was Soviet territory, a land of famine, dictatorship and civil war, he said.

However, after toppling down Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in 1991, Ethiopia began to transform itself, he said.