The Week in Review

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Also:
- Weekend News and Updates
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BREAKING NEWS
-Haile Gebrselassie wins New York City Half Marathon in 59:24 to keep unbeaten record

-Still perfect, Gebrselassie wins NYC Half Marathon


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The Week in review

TOP STORIES FROM THE PAST WEEK

• U.N. elections consultant testifies for Daniel and Netsanet, says they "acted within law"
• Daniel and Netsanet's case will not wrap up before the millennium
• Four more Ethiopian journalists sentenced
• Obscure Dealings: the Ogaden
• Ethiopian rebel group (ONLF) says troops kill aid workers
• Letter from Senator Feingold to Condoleezza Rice on the Ogaden
• UN: Food Security Situation in Oromiya Worrying
• The Elders (Shimagilewoch) start negotiations to free OLF detainees
• Questions shower Ethiopian ex-leader Negaso Gidada
• Israel's Interior Minister says aliya from Ethiopia should stop
• Ethiopians slam comments of Israel's Interior Minister
• Civilians die in Mogadishu battle
• Exodus from Somali capital Mogadishu triples
• Ethiopia pledges to contribute troops to Darfur
• ‘Rahab S’nt Qen Yifejal?’ Reflections of a Well-Fed Visitor
• A New Battle in U.S. Congress: Lobbyists v Human Rights

Weekend News and Updates

-Mr. Obang Metho Addresses The Oromo Community in Minnesota and Asks the Question: Why Can’t We Unite?





-Addis Abeba: 'Mortar-Like' Explosion Kills One, Injures Three in Merkato
-Ogaden: New humanitarian crisis developing in the Horn of Africa
-Eritrea dismisses extension of UN border mission
-Somali gunmen slay district official
-Hussein Aided voted off Somalia parliament
-Cecafa seeks new sponsors





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SSI: Daniel and Netsanet's case may not wrap up before the millennium

Check back with ETP for more news throughout the day

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Also:
- Today's Top HEADLINES
- INTERNATIONAL news
- Picture of the day
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After listening to 29 witnesses of Daniel Bekele and Nesanet Demisse, who are the two civic association defendants under the same file of Engineer Hailu Shawel and the others, the Ethiopian Federal High Court adjourned the trial to October 8, 2007 to hear their defense and prosecutor’s closing statements.

Reminding the release of most of the defendants who have been charged with the same crime with them, Daniel and Nesanet tried to push the court to conclude their case before the start of the Ethiopian new year on September 11, 2007. However, the prosecutor argued saying he needed more time to look through the testimonies and prepare his closing speech and the court need to close for its annual holidays.

The two civic defendants had dropped 131 of their witnesses out of 160 saying their testimonies were similar to those who had already testified in the court.

Among the witnesses were top leaders of CUD including Engineer Hailu Shawel, Dr. Birhanu Nega, Birtukan Midekesa, and Dr. Yakob H/Mariam who testified saying both Daniel and Netsanet had never been members of CUD party.

The famous writer, Mamo Wedineh, the renowned historian Bahiru Zewde, lecturer at Addis Ababa University and consultant of civic associations, Dr. Konjit Fekade were also among the witnesses Daniel and Nesanet had brought in for their defense.

CUD - Lunch at Ras Amba Hotel

(SubSaharan informer) - The Coalition for Unity and Democracy party (CUD) members represented in the parliament expressed their further commitment to continue their struggle together with the released leaders of their party while expressing their delight in their release over a luncheon party organized for those leaders who were released from jail after 20 months in detention.

(Picture - Temesgen Zewde (L) and Dr. Hailu Araya (R) )

Elected members of CUD, who joined parliament after the council members of their party were put in jail, organized a lunch party at Ras Amba Hotel to congratulate the released leaders and express their happiness on their release formally.

“For the past 20 months,” said Temesgen Zewde, provisional chairman of CUD party, “we have been reporting in the parliament every week for the release of our party leaders and we are happy to reach the moment where we see them together with us.”

“It isn’t only the leaders who have been released,” Temesgen continued, “but CUD members in the parliament are also free now, as the people had perceived us for being traitors. We are now free of such accusations.”

On the occasion, Birtukan Midekessa thanked the party members in the parliament for organizing the event and affirmed that CUD's struggle will continue. Together with Birtukan, Hailu Araya, Engineer Gizachew Shiferaw, Debebe Eshetu, Muluneh Eyoel, Dr. Yakob H/Mariam were at the event.

Today's Top HEADLINES

-The Elders (Shimagilewoch) start negotiations to free OLF detainees (Amharic)
-Explosion kills one and injures three in Addis Ababa
-Red Cross hopes to return to Ethiopian region
-EU gives Ethiopia 5 million euros in new humanitarian aid
-Exodus from Somali capital triples
-Big favourites and strong challengers to contest NYC Half-Marathon

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

-Libya sales deal fuels French row
-Obama, Clinton in new flap, over nuclear weapons
-India, US unveil landmark nuclear deal
-Afghan Doctors Hope to Visit Ailing South Korean Hostages
-South Korea tells Taliban it has limited influence
-Devastating floods hit South Asia
-Homecoming for Iraqi soccer team
-But Mom! The other 61-year-olds get an allowance!

Picture of the day

(The mosque of Negash is said to be the first one built in Ethiopia by the followers of Prophet Mohammed who came with the First Hijra. The photo shows a modern building on that place)
-The first hijra: Migration to Abyssinia(International Board of Islamic Research and Resources)
-[VIDEO] The Message – first Muslims flee to Abyssinia (Scene from the 1977 movie by Director Moustapha Akkad starring Anthony Quinn)




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Women & Children are 14 Times More Likely to Die During a Disaster, yet Gender Perspective Missing in Climate Change Discussions

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 2 (IPS) - When the United Nations concluded a two-day debate Wednesday on the potential devastation from climate change, it covered a lot of territory: deforestation, desertification, greenhouse gases, renewable energy sources, biofuels and sustainable development.

But one thing the debate lacked, June Zeitlin executive director of the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO) told IPS, was a gender perspective.

"Women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men are during a disaster," she said.

In the 2004 Asian Tsunami, 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women. And in the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were women.

"Similarly in industrialised countries, more women than men died during the 2003 European heat wave," Zeitlin told a panel discussion Tuesday, in advance of a first-ever thematic General Assembly debate devoted exclusively to climate change.

She also said that following the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women who were the poorest population in some of the affected states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi faced the greatest obstacles to survival.

She argued that women make up the majority of the world's poor, and in particular the world's rural poor, and are largely responsible for securing food, water and energy for cooking and heating.

"These statistics beg the question: Why? And what can we learn from this to fashion more effective solutions to the climate change crisis," Zeitlin said.
[...]
Zeitlin of the Women's Environment and Development Organisation said women have always been leaders in community revitalisation and natural resource management.

"Yet women are so often barred from the public sphere and thus absent from local, national and international decision-making related to natural disasters and adaptation."

There are plenty of examples where women's participation has been critical to community survival.

In Honduras, she said, La Masica was the only community to register no deaths in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998 due to an early warning system operated by women in the community. (Full article at IPS News)

Women and children bear the highest degree of effect from disasters caused by climate change. Not coincidentally, they also have the least ability to effect decision-making power in the greater public sphere.

Proposal: in a true democracy a person would have input into a decision in the proportion to which that decision affects her or him. In the case of pregnancy and abortion, women, not men, should have veto power. Those who live in a neighbourhood should have power over what kind of development that neighbourhood will undergo, more so than the developer whose only interest in the neigbourhood is to build, make money, and skedaddle. People who are dying because of pollution in their town should have say in where factories can be located and how industry conducts itself in their town.
It's pretty simple, really.