News — ethiopia

Men from this minority ethnic group, which is predominantly found in southern Ethiopia, compete to become the fattest at an annual ceremony called Ka’el. Before the ceremony, which is usually held on New Year’s Day, the male contestants spend six months drinking a mixture of fresh blood and milk in a bid to fatten up in the shortest time possible. Before the ceremony, which is usually held on New Year’s Day, the male contestants spend six months drinking a mixture of fresh blood and milk in a bid to fatten up in the shortest time possible.

Although the winner does not get any prize he is considered a hero for the rest of his life. As bizarre as it may appear, this practice remains one of the tribe’s most popular and treasured traditions. Because of the “fat man” contest, many young men from the Bodi tribe now view being fat as beautiful and a source of honor. Women and girls in this tribe also consider a man with a large waistline attractive and strong, which pushes a lot of unmarried men to want to pile up some pounds. Although they are slowly adopting farming as an alternative source of livelihood by growing sorghum and maize, the Bodis are one of the few tribes in Ethiopia that have refused to drop their traditional practices for the modern way of life.

A 12-year-old Colorado boy, who was left in critical condition after reportedly partaking in a TikTok challenge that dared participants to choke themselves until they lost consciousness, has passed away, his family announced.

According to ABC News, the deceased, identified as Joshua Haileyesus, passed away last Saturday. This was 19 days after he was medically intubated and placed on life support.

A GoFundMe that was initially set up to help raise funds for the Ethiopian American’s medical expenses in the aftermath of the incident said he was found unresponsive on a bathroom floor by his twin brother on March 22. His brother attempted resuscitating him until help came from neighbors and medical officials.

He was later declared brain dead while on admission at the hospital and doctors told his family he wouldn’t make it. “Told me the bad news that he’s not going to survive, he’s not going to make it,” Haileyesus Zeryihun, Joshua’s father, told WXIX in an interview on March 30. “I was begging them on the floor, pleading to see if they can give me some time, not to give up on him. If I just give up on him, I feel like I’m just walking away from my son.”

His family told the news outlet Joshua probably choked himself with a shoelace in an attempt to partake in the challenge and ascertain how long he could hold his breath. Days before the tragic incident, Joshua’s father also said the deceased boy had boasted to his twin brother he could hold his breath for a minute.

“Unbeknownst to his parents, Joshua had been playing this dangerous game completely unaware of the risks involved,” the GoFundMe account stated. The family said they shared their tragic story with the hopes of spreading awareness about such deadly and dangerous games on social media. They said they also want to prevent other parents from experiencing the pain they’re currently going through.

“I’m paying the price right now. I’m living the life, and I hate for other parents to go through this,” Zeryihun said.

Meanwhile, TikTok released a statement last month commiserating with Joshua’s family, ABC News reported. The video-sharing social networking service also said it does not promote such dangerous challenges or content on its platform.

“At TikTok, we have no higher priority than protecting the safety of our community, and content that promotes or glorifies dangerous behavior is strictly prohibited and promptly removed to prevent it from becoming a trend on our platform,” the statement said.

There are currently no search results for the #blackoutchallenge on the social media platform.

Soldiers in the Ethiopian National Defense Force have arrested Sebhat Nega and eight other current and former high-ranking officials Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the ongoing clash with the regional militant group.

Fana Broadcasting Corporate, a private news outlet seen as supportive of the ruling Progress Party (PP), described Nega as “the mastermind behind the destructive strategy of the TPLF junta”. He was said to be hiding in a “ravine” when he was found on Friday, January 8.

Nega is presently in his 80s. His sister, Kidusan Nega, a former Speaker of the Tigray regional state council was also arrested.

The other arrested TPLF members included former allies of departed Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, himself a member of the TPLF during the time he was alive. One of them, Abadi Zemo, was a former Ethiopian Ambassador to Sudan and a member of the TPLF junta political wing.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has described this stage of the clash with the TPLF as the “last phase“.

Ethiopia’s communications since the altercations began on November 4 appear to recognize that the country is fighting both a war of guns and identity. The TPLF has been Tigray’s regional government since the last decade of the 20th century and it is seen as the political organization encapsulating Tigrayan identity.

The region of Tigray, a vast hilly and arid area, is named after the Tigrinya-speaking Tigray people, Ethiopia’s fourth-largest ethnic group who are less than 10% of the country’s people.

In spite of the relatively small number of Tigrayans in the country, the TPLF has shaped post-Cold War Ethiopia more than any other political organization in the country.

In 1991, the militant group-cum political party led a coalition of militias and movements to overthrow the communist People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. After that, the group was part of governing coalitions, and at a point produced a prime minister in the late Meles Zenawi.

Due to disagreements with Ahmed‘s Progress Party in 2019, the TPLF left his governing coalition.

Feleg Tsegaye was born to exiled Ethiopian parents in the United States. When he was 24 years old, he moved to Ethiopia to start the country’s first-ever online restaurant delivery service. Prior to leaving the U.S, he worked at the US Federal Reserve Bank.

In 2015, he launched Deliver Addis, an online restaurant delivery service in Ethiopia which allows customers to place orders from their favorite restaurants and also discover new ones. For Tsegaye, it was his own way of not only creating jobs in his country of origin but to change the way Ethiopians dine.

“What really prompted me to pursue this was the fact that we were creating a completely new industry that did not exist in Ethiopia,” Tsegaye told How We Made It In Africa. “It’s about getting customers what they want in the convenience of their homes and offices. It’s also about generating business for small and medium enterprises – like restaurants that cannot afford space or a good location – and creating jobs for young people as back-office staff or drivers.”

Across Africa, businesses being operated solely online are fast gaining popularity on the continent. This has been largely due to the spread of internet connectivity across the continent. While in some countries internet usage is low, it is high in other states.

Playing a pioneering role in Ethiopia’s e-commerce sector didn’t come easy for Tsegaye. At the time, internet penetration was low and was largely a platform not known to many in the country. Nonetheless, he persisted and now controls a big share of the market.

He was also confronted with other challenges such as the absence of addresses, power outages and inadequate internet connection.

“Our first internet shutdown was when I was on a flight to the US,” he recalled. In 2016, Ethiopia declared a state of emergency due to political instability, resulting in the shutdown of internet connectivity in the country.

“As an e-commerce business, that’s pretty much the worst possible thing that can happen – and I wasn’t even there when it happened,” he said. Although the business was unprepared for the internet shutdown, Tsegaye took advantage of the situation to do some intensive servicing and maintenance of his delivery bikes.

While at it, he took steps to keep the business afloat by designing offline processes for ordering – by phone, or SMS, when available. This saw order volumes go up. In June 2020, he secured funding from the Impact Angel Network to increase its capacity and efficiency to bring on new products and services and expand market share.

Following growing demand due to COVID-19, he expanded his services to include an online marketplace that enables Ethiopian consumers to shop for groceries and other essential goods online.

A Ghanaian worker on the goat farm owned by Ethiopian immigrant Agitu Ideo Gudeta in the northern Italian region of Trentino has been arrested after confessing to raping and killing his 42-year-old employer, according to reports from Italy.

Gudeta was reportedly killed by hammer blows to her head. The name of the employee from Ghana has also not been publicized.

She had made her home in that part of the country on an abandoned piece of land where she reared goats on the La Capra Felice (The Happy Goat) farm. From the produce of the animals, Gudeta made cheese and beauty products.

Gudeta fled her native Ethiopia in 2010 after her protests against land grab incited the wrath of authorities. The protesters had accused the local government in Addis Ababa of divesting large swathes of land to foreign investors and to the detriment of locals.

By 2018, she had become a well-known commercial farmer in Trentino. She told Reuters in 2018 that she had started with goats shortly after arriving in the country and then had 180 goats. The products she made were popular with the locals and her business was successful, even allowing her to employ farmhands.

She often became a reference point for international news coverage in light of anti-immigrant clamoring by far-right parties and activists. Gudeta’s success was supposed to challenge public opinion of immigrants from Africa in the midst of growing hostilities against that group.

Trentino police say investigations into her death are ongoing.

The Deputy General Director of Ethiopia Space Science and Technology Institute (ESSTI), Yishrun Alemayehu, confirmed the Horn of Africa nation successfully launched its second Chinese-backed satellite into space on Tuesday, Xinhua News Agency confirmed.

Named ET-Smart-RSS, the satellite, which was blasted into orbit from the China Wenchang spacecraft launch site, is equipped with highly advanced resolutions and has the capabilities to capture much clearer pictures, Alemayehu said.

“Preliminary design was conducted in Ethiopia, while detailed and technical works were undertaken in collaboration with Chinese experts in China through zooming and other platforms,” he told state-owned newspaper, the Ethiopian Herald. “The 8.9 kilograms nano satellite is a great achievement of Ethiopia in a number of ways. The institute will keep on working to further strengthen the effort in technology transfer and human development.”

Alemayehu also said the government of China paid about $1.5 million in manufacturing costs. The Horn of Africa nation successfully launched its first-ever satellite – the ETRSS-1 – into space in December 2019 in what the country’s space exploration chief said he hoped marked a new dawn in space technology opportunities in the country at the time.

The 72-kg multi-spectral satellite, which was also designed by both Chinese and Ethiopian engineers and is reportedly 700km from the earth, uses a remote sensing microsatellite to monitor weather patterns resources and to forecast the weather for the purposes of better agricultural planning, drought early warning, mining activities and forestry management, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Speaking to Reuters after the first launch, the head of the Ethiopian Space Science and Technology Institute, Solomon Belay, said he believes the satellite spells new opportunities for the East African powerhouse.

“Space is food, space is job creation, a tool for technology… sovereignty, to reduce poverty, everything for Ethiopian to achieve universal and sustainable development,” Belay said.

The Chinese government also sponsored about $6 million of the over $7 million project. Ethiopia plans to launch 15 satellites between the next 10-15 years.

The African Union has encouraged more African countries to look into the opportunities space technology provides for environmental and economic benefits.

A Kenyan family of a victim of the 2019 Ethiopian Airline crash has been paid $3 million by U.S. planemaker Boeing. This is the first Kenyan family out of 32 families from the country to receive a payout after losing their relatives in the deadly crash, according to local media.

“We sought and asked for the largest amount possible to be paid as compensation to the families we represent,” Manuel von Ribbeck from Ribbeck Law Chartered, a U.S. law firm that represented the family, stated after the settlement. “It is important to note however that no amount of money in the world will bring our clients’ beloved family members back.

This is the first settlement in a case by Ribbeck Law Chartered which sued Boeing on behalf of some families who lost their loved ones in the crash. A total of 157 people, including 32 Kenyans, died when the Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashed in March 2019 in the town of Bishoftu, Ethiopia. That accident came on the back of a similar Lion Air jet crash in Indonesia in October 2018 that killed 189 people.

Aviation regulators around the world subsequently grounded Boeing’s 737 MAX planes. This September, an investigative report said the plane manufacturer and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were responsible for “repeated and serious failures.” Boeing’s 737 MAX was however cleared by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly again last month.

Boeing, which has lost more than than $20 billion following the crisis, is also facing a series of lawsuits from families of victims. U.S. law firm Ribbeck Law Chartered filed suits against the aircraft maker in a US Federal Court in Chicago following the two fatal crashes. According to Bloomberg, it would cost Boeing at least $1 billion to settle claims. Von Ribbeck has said the plane manufacturer “should not be greatly affected by it”.

“Most of the payments will be made by their insurance and reinsurance companies and as stated by Wall Street firms, Boeing can afford that cost: Boeing has posted record revenues of $101 billion last year and $10.6 billion in profits,” he said.

In July 2019, Boeing promised to give $100 million to help families affected by the deadly crashes of the company’s 737 MAX planes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The company said in a statement that the funds will not go directly to the families but will be given to local governments and non-profit organizations to help families with education and living expenses and to improve economic development in affected communities.

The government in Addis Ababa has sent out the clearest warning yet to regional forces of the beleaguered Tigray government to lay down their weapons or face Ethiopia‘s army in the regional capital Mekelle when a 72-hour ultimatum expires.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed issued a statement announcing what he called the commencement of the “final and third phases” in the altercation with Tigray. Ethiopians forces have previously launched attacks on strategic Tigrayan positions in the north over the last few weeks.

“Realizing that we are now in the last stages of the law enforcement action, we call upon them (the Tigrayan forces) to take advantage of this last opportunity and surrender peacefully to the government in 72 hours,” the statement said.

Abiy also called on civilians in the region to stand with national forces against a “few greedy individuals that are seeking impunity”. Ethiopia believes Tigray’s government is hoping to bolster its side of the story by leading national defense forces into committing collateral damage to lives, property as well as historical and cultural sites.

Tigray is eponymously named after the ethnic group who call the northern regional state their home. The Tigray ethnic group constitutes only about 5% of the country’s population but it is thought to probably the richest. Tigray is represented by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which used to be led by former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

The TPLF backed out of a governing coalition headed by the current prime minister over disagreements with Ahmed. These disagreements have since devolved into violent tensions.

Lawmakers in the country’s parliament have also proposed deliberating on a motion that seeks to characterize the TPLF as a terrorist organization.

The north of the country holds the bulk of Ethiopia’s military installations, a situation that resulted from the 1998 war with northern neighbor Eritrea. This has generated widespread fears that a full-on confrontation between the government and Tigrayan forces would only spark a civil war.

Ethiopia’s security is already fragile with different ethnic groups in other parts of the country clamoring for everything from inclusion in the national government to secession.

The Ethiopian army warned Sunday of an imminent attack on Mekelle, capital of rebellious Tigray state and seat of the local government that the federal government is seeking to dislodge, calling on civilians to flee while there is still time.

"The next decisive battle is to surround Mekelle with tanks," army spokesman Dejene Tsegaye told government media, threatening to lay siege to the town, stronghold of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) that rules the region.

The spokesman told the city's half a million inhabitants to "save yourselves".

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the start of army operations on November 4 against the TPLF, accusing them of seeking to destabilize the federal government and of attacking two Ethiopian military bases in the region.

Tigray authorities have admitted to attacking a federal army base, calling it 'preemptive action'.

On Saturday, the government claimed that the army was advancing towards Mekelle and had taken control of several towns, including Aksum and Adigrat, some 117 km north of the regional capital.

"Military forces have taken control of the town of Edaga Hamus, which is on the road from Adigrat to Mekelle," and is located 100 km from Mekele, a government agency, Ethiopia State of Emergency Fact Check, said Sunday.

"The forces are currently advancing towards the last objective of the operation, the town of Mekelle," she added.

Neither side's claims are independently verifiable, as Tigray is virtually cut off from the world due to a communications blackout.

The TPLF said Saturday that civilians were killed in an "intense bombing" of Adigrat by the Ethiopian army. The government claims that the military operation does not target civilians.

No accurate account of the fighting, which has resulted in at least hundreds of deaths since November 4, is available from independent sources.

But more than 36,000 Ethiopians have already reached Sudan, according to the Sudanese Refugee Commission.

After dominating Ethiopia's 15-year armed struggle against the militaristic Marxist Derg regime, which was overthrown in 1991, the TPLF controlled the country's political and security apparatus with an iron fist for nearly three decades, before being gradually pushed aside by Abiy when he became prime minister in 2018.

Boeing’s 737 MAX has been cleared by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly again, 20 months after the fleet was grounded following the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, which left 157 people dead. That accident came on the back of a similar Lion Air jet crash in Indonesia in October 2018 that killed 189 people.

“We will never forget the lives lost in the two tragic accidents that led to the decision to suspend operations,” Boeing CEO David Calhoun said in a statement released Wednesday. “These events and the lessons we have learned as a result have reshaped our company and further focused our attention on our core values of safety, quality and integrity.”

A problem with an automated flight software known as MCAS, which caused the planes to nosedive moments after take-off, was reported to be partly to blame for the disasters. Boeing in July last year announced that it was working with regulators to roll out a software upgrade.

This September, an investigative report from the House of Representatives said the plane manufacturer and the FAA were responsible for “repeated and serious failures.” It said the crashes “were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA — the pernicious result of regulatory capture on the part of the FAA with respect to its responsibilities to perform robust oversight of Boeing and to ensure the safety of the flying public.”

Boeing responded to the report’s release, saying that it is “dedicated to doing the work” necessary. Sky News reports that the MCAS, which is said to be responsible for both crashes, was the main point for design changes that were demanded by the FAA. This led to extensive testing both on the ground and in the air, it said.

“FAA Administrator Steve Dickson today signed an order that paves the way for the Boeing 737 MAX to return to commercial service,” the FAA said in the statement released on Wednesday. It added that before the planes can fly, several steps such as approving pilot training program revisions and maintenance works on the grounded planes would be undertaken.

Currently, the U.S. is the first to take the decision to return to the skies. Aviation officials in Europe are yet to make a decision. American Airlines will start a single Max passenger flight from December 29 to January 4 between Miami and New York while United Airlines and Southwest are planning to begin flying the Max early next year, NBC News reported.

Boeing, which has lost more than than $20 billion following the crisis, is also facing a series of lawsuits from families of victims. It also has to work on building its reputation amid an industry that has been hit by the pandemic.

Ethiopia may be on the brink of “a civil war”, according to experts who have spoken on the decision of the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, to order a military attack in response to hostile forces who attacked an army base in the north of the country on Wednesday.

The semi-autonomous northern state of Tigray, administered by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), is a tensed part of the country where the ruling party insists Addis Ababa has no compelling authority. The north of the country also holds the bulk of Ethiopia’s military installation, a situation that resulted from the 1998 war with northern neighbor Eritrea.

Speaking on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmed said TPLF had”crossed the red line” with the federal army “that has been protecting the people of Tigray for more than twenty years”. Ahmed also said Tigray now regards the Ethiopian army as “a foreign army”.

A statement from the Office of the Prime Minister also said the federal government had “maintained a policy of extreme patience and caution” in the face of “months of continued provocation and incite for violence by TPLF”. But now, the federal government is on the offensive, launching attacks on TPLF in certain areas.

These attacks are expected to continue on Thursday.

The BBC also reports electricity, telephone and internet services in Tigray have been cut. Ethiopia’s parliament has also proposed deliberating on a motion that seeks to characterize the TPLF as a terrorist organization.

But a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham, Nic Cheeseman, warned that “Ethiopia could come apart at the seams” if the government engages the TPLF in open conflict. A few other ethnic groups in the country are currently pushing to secede from Africa’s second-most populous country.

Cheeseman added that what has emerged in the country “looks a lot like the start of civil war in Ethiopia”.

The Tigray ethnic group constitutes only about 5% of the country’s population but is probably the richest. Tigray is represented by TPLF, which used to be led by former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

The TPLF backed out of a governing coalition headed by the current prime minister over disagreements with Ahmed. These disagreements have since devolved into violent tensions.