EasterNile

  South Sudan diplomats in Ethiopia, including the world’s youngest country’s head of mission in Addis Ababa, have been expelled by the Ethiopian government, hours after the Ethiopian ambassador to South Sudan, Fisseha Shawl, left Juba in an abrupt decision, two South Sudan embassy staffs told Sudans Post this evening. “We have been given 72 hours to leave. That that decision was delivered to us in a letter this morning by the Ethiopian security body and they told us that they don’t want us here ‘until further notice,'” one South Sudan embassy source said from Addis Ababa. The latest development in Ethiopia-South Sudan relations comes after the Ethiopian ambassador to South Sudan left the capital Juba on Saturday in an abrupt decision to protest reported presence of leader of Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Debretsion Gebremichael, in Juba. “We are hearing that the ambassador of Ethiopia to South Sudan has left the country. We don’t know why, but there is rumo

  Only about  11 percent  of the people living in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates are actually Emirati nationals: The vast majority of people who call  Dubai , Abu Dhabi, or one of the other five emirates home are from elsewhere. We're guessing the influx of expats has a lot to do with job opportunities and wage increases: Young professionals under the age of 35 in the UAE receive a 50 percent increase in income on average. The country also earns high marks for its fast rate of promotions within any given job field, and it ranks first for the amount of disposable income. (More money to go towards exploring Africa and eastern Europe, we say.)

  Sudan needs $150 million in aid to cope with the flood of Ethiopian refugees crossing its border from conflict-stricken Tigray, the UN refugee agency chief said Saturday during a visit to a camp. The Tigray conflict broke out on November 4 between Ethiopia's federal forces and leaders of the region's ruling party. Sudan has since hosted more than 43,000 Ethiopian refugees fleeing from the intense fighting into one of its most impoverished regions. "Sudan needs $150 million for six months to provide these refugees water, shelter and health services," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi at Um Raquba camp, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the border. Grandi called on "donors to provide Sudan with these resources as soon as they can". Between 500 and 600 refugees are still crossing the border each day. Sudan has sought to provide help to accommodate the mass refugee influx as it struggles with its own deep econo

  Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Saturday that the army had entered the capital of Tigray in an offensive against the region’s dissident leaders, state television reported. “We’ve been able to enter Mekelle city without innocent civilians being targets,” Mr Abiy was quoted as saying by Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation. The city of half a million braced for an all-out offensive by government forces against its dissident leaders. Mr Abiy, who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, announced on November 4 he had ordered military operations against Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Thousands of people have been killed in more than three weeks of fierce fighting and tens of thousands have streamed over the border into Sudan. Displacement within Tigray is thought to be widespread. Mr Abiy announced on Thursday he had ordered a “final” offensive and Ethiopia’s military said it had encircled Mekelle. A communications power cut in T

  The Ethiopia State of Emergency fact-checker on Wednesday accused BBC’s Monitoring service of spreading disinformation for attributing bellicose statements to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed it said he never uttered. The State of Emergency Fact Check Twitter account shared a now-deleted tweet by BBC Monitoring which quotes Ahmed as saying that the military operations in the restive Tigray region will go on regardless of civilian casualties. ​The BBC Monitoring service analyzes media trends worldwide and provides daily rundowns of regional news coverage on a subscriber basis. As a subsidiary of the BBC World Service, it is backed by the UK’s Foreign Office and is separate from the license fee-based public broadcaster in the UK. Fighting erupted in northern Ethiopia earlier this month  when the central government accused the Tigray region’s political forces of conducting an attack on a military base in the region. The brewing standoff came to a head after the region’s authoritie

  Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is warning the international community to allow the conflict in his nation to play out. The statement came as the 72-hour surrender deadline set by Abiy for the people of Tigray was only hours away. "While we consider the concerns and advice of our friends, we reject any interference in our internal affairs," Abiy said in a Wednesday statement posted to Twitter. "We therefore respectfully urge the international community to refrain from any unwelcome and unlawful acts of interference and respect the fundamental principles of non-intervention under international law." On Sunday at 11:39 a.m. EST, Abiy issued a  72-hour surrender deadline  to forces in Tigray. Ethiopia claims it has surrounded the capital of the region. The prime minister has warned civilians in the capital that there will be "no mercy" if they do not "save themselves" and leave the area. Tens of thousands of Tigrayans have fled th

  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ethiopia are to consider possibilities of cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a statement sent to Addis Standard from the UAE embassy in Addis Abeba. This came at a meeting held between Mr. Talal Al-Azeezi, Head of the Political, Economic, and Media Affairs Section at the UAE Embassy in Ethiopia, and Eng. Worku Gachena, Director General of the Artificial Intelligence Center of Ethiopia (AIC). Mr. Talal congratulated the Director General on inauguration of the AIC, noting it can play a prominent role in AI research and development in Ethiopia and for technological advancement of various fields including; agriculture, health, finance and transport, which are very important for Ethiopia's economy. Mr. Talal said that the UAE is among the first countries in the world that prioritize AI in its development policies, as it adopted its (Strategy for Artificial Intelligence 2031). It is also the first country i

  In line with its deep rooted commitment to extend a helping hand to support the needy people around the world, especially the refugees, and its efforts to mitigate their suffering by all means possible, the United Arab Emirates announced allocating AED18.4 million (US$5.0 million) in support of the recently arrived Ethiopian Refugees in Sudan. H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler’s Representative in Al Dhafra region and Chairman of the Emirates Red Crescent, ERC, pointed out that as per the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the support of his brother His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and the continuous follow up of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, the United Arab Emirates attaches great importance to the refugees issue around the world. Emphasising that the UAE’s

  As the conflict between  Ethiopia’s  federal government and the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) continues to escalate, calls for mediation have come from around the world. The question of who could mediate, however, has yet to be answered. The conflict requires an intermediary that is perceived to be honest and credible by both sides, but this rules out far more international actors than it rules in. Almost all governments in the neighbouring region, for instance, are regarded suspiciously by at least one of the warring parties. Egypt sees Ethiopia as a rival and is locked in a dispute with the federal government over the Nile waters. Sudan has been pushed to the side with Egypt and has not yet rebuilt trust after years of confrontation with Ethiopia under the ousted Omar al-Bashir. Somalia’s relationship with Ethiopia is laden with animosity after years of cross-border clashes and Ethiopian intervention in Somalia. Kenya is regarded as an economic rival and its government ha

  The news of Covid-19 vaccines being over 90 per cent effective has left the world relieved and hoping for the best outcome. Pfizer Inc said on Wednesday that final results from the late-stage trial of its Covid-19 vaccine show it was 95 per cent effective, adding it had the required two-months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days. Moderna Inc also announced that its experimental vaccine was 94.5 per cent effective in preventing Covid-19 based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial, becoming the second U.S. company in a week to report results that far exceed expectations. Kenyans received the news with mixed reactions with many people being optimistic. But the Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe was apprehensive of the vaccine saying that he was not sure about them. Kagwe called for caution days after he expressed reservations about the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine. “As Kenya, we will not be used as guinea pigs to test va

  Nairobi County Assembly has ordered its more than 150 staff to immediately begin working from home as positive cases of Covid-19 at the assembly continues to surge. Further, all physical meetings at the assembly's precincts have been banned with immediate effect with both plenary and committee sittings to be held virtually. Speaker Benson Mutura, in his communication to the House, directed that only essential staff will be allowed access to the assembly. However, both MCAs and employees will from Friday be required to have a negative Covid-19 certificate as a prerequisite to be allowed such access. "As you are aware our beloved country is facing a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the recent statistics from the Ministry of Health, the second wave of the pandemic is proving to be lethal. As an assembly, we have also not been spared and both our staff and members have been affected," said Mr Mutura. "Consequently, no physical meet

  Ethiopia’s army chief on Thursday accused World Health Organisation boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – the country’s highest-profile Tigrayan abroad – of lobbying to send arms and support to leaders in the dissident region. Gen Birhanu Jula told reporters on Wednesday that the WHO director-general had urged unnamed neighbours to “oppose the war and for [the Tigray People’s Liberation Front] to get arms.” Gen Jula offered no evidence for his claims and there was no immediate response from WHO headquarters. Ethiopian forces are moving forward and closing in on the capital of Tigray, the government said on Thursday, after fighting for two-weeks against the province’s rulers and it’s armed wing. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed unleashed a military campaign against the northern region on November 4 with the declared aim of unseating its ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which he accuses of defying his government and seeking to destabilise it. A statement from Mr. Abiy’s

  Ethiopia is on the knife’s edge of a brutal civil war that is threatening to draw in regional powers.  The Ethiopian army is launching air strikes on arms and fuel depots in Tigray as heavy fighting between the region's forces and the military continues. The Abiy government says federal forces have taken control in the west of Tigray as the region's leaders threaten to fight until the very end without any sign of surrendering.  Hundreds of people have reportedly been be killed. Both Reuters and Amnesty International have detailed a massacre of civilians in the town of Mai Khadra.  Fighting the Ethiopian army is the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), once a Marxist-leaning armed liberation movement that is now a political party with an armed wing. They hail from Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia, bordered to the west by Sudan and Eritrea to the north, and home mostly to the Tigrayan people, who make up six percent of the national population of ove

Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray province faces famine, researchers warned today, with a plague of locusts descending on the northern region as officials called for urgent humanitarian aid. The region has been plunged into turmoil as government forces continue a devastating military offensive, displacing more than 100,000 civilians and causing hundreds of deaths. United Nations humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock confirmed that his office had set aside $20 million (£14.8m) to fight hunger in Ethiopia to in the face of “civil unrest, growing insecurity, locust infestations” and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. About one million of Tigray’s people, out of a total population of six million, are already reliant on humanitarian assistance, as are millions more near its borders. Now the region’s worst locust outbreak for decades has raised the spectre of famine. Researchers warned that the insects had “destroyed vast areas of cropped land and numerous swarms remain active in

  Violence is escalating in Ethiopia, where a leader once lauded internationally for his reform agenda and for forging peace with neighboring Eritrea now faces the specter of civil war. This month, long-simmering tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government in Addis Ababa and leaders from the country’s northern Tigray region have spilled into the open. Tigrayan forces and the national military have clashed, and Amnesty International  recorded evidence  of an alleged massacre of civilians. Hundreds of people have been reported dead. Tens of thousands have fled as refugees to neighboring Sudan. The United Nations human rights office has  warned the situation  “risks spiraling out of control.” What set off the conflict? In early November, Abiy said that Tigrayans had attacked a national military base. He responded by sending troops to the region, which is governed by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) — a political party that once held major influence acros

  Two explosions have rocked major cities in  Ethiopia  amid growing fears that country could be on the brink of a wider civil war. Rockets were fired at airports in Bahir Dar and Gonda from the restive northern state of Tigray,. It comes after mounting tensions between the government in Addis Ababa and the Tigray People's Liberation Front – which runs the federal state – boiled over into military clashes. Federal troops have spent the last 10 days fighting with well-armed local forces there. So violent have clashes been that more than 14,500 civilians living in Tigray have already fled into neighbouring Sudan, while Amnesty International has reported mass civilian killings in the town of Mai Kadra. But the new rocket attacks – launched late on Friday – have raised new fears within both the  United Nations  and  African Union  that the fighting could spread to other parts of what is Africa's second-most populous country and destabilise the whole Horn of Afri

  The Egyptian Embassy in Addis Ababa  continues to communicate  with the Ethiopian side to secure the release of a number of Egyptian citizens who were recently  detained  at Bole International Airport as they planned to return to Kuwait. In an Oct. 30 statement, Egypt’s Ministry of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs  warned its citizens  wishing to resume their work in any country, namely Kuwait, to be cautious about dealing with tourism companies and to travel only after ensuring the completion of all pertinent procedures, including the purchase of a flight ticket and obtention of a valid visa. Egyptian expatriates were also advised to check with the transit state in case of a two-week layover before heading to Kuwait.  At the request of the Egyptian Embassy in Addis Ababa, the Ministry of immigration called upon citizens returning to Kuwait via Ethiopia to  delay their travels  until the embassy completes the procedures of the release of the 52 Egyptians that were  deta

  UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan held a phone call on Wednesday with his German counterpart Heiko Maas to discuss issues of common interest between their countries.  The ministers spoke about the recent developments in Ethiopia, and the importance of bolstering security on Ethiopian lands.  The Emirati side stressed the importance of the UAE-Ethiopia ties, pointing to the country's support for Addis Ababa and its keenness on the security and stability of Ethiopia. It added that the UAE is keen to consult with friendly countries, like Germany, in order to advance the efforts exerted to stabilize Ethiopia and achieve prosperity for its people.

  Last week at Latifa Hospital for Women and Children, a tiny little fetus, a brave mother and a team of highly specialized doctors created history when they performed the first-ever intrauterine fetal surgery for a spinal cord defect in the Arab region. The extremely delicate six-hour surgery was performed on a 25-week-old fetus that was diagnosed to have myelomeningocele, a type of spina bifida (spinal cord defect). The fetus weighed only 700 grams. As the surgery was performed at this stage and not after the baby was born (which is typically still the standard medical procedure) the fetus’ defect was corrected, giving the baby a chance for improving cognitive function, lower limb function and deformities. Spina bifida is a neural tube defect that occurs during the first month of pregnancy when the spinal cord does not develop or close properly. In its most severe form, the defect leaves a section of the spinal cord and nerves exposed in a sac on the patient’s back. S