Ethiopia Establishes Anti-Ebola Committee

The Public Health Institute has announced that Ethiopia has set up a National Committee to put in place a plan to prevent and contain any possible outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which is currently spreading in West Africa.

A spokesperson for the Institute, Abel Yeshaneh, said the National Committee would draw up guidelines to prevent and contain Ebola and these guidelines would be made official shortly. According to information from the Institute, the Committee members will be from the Ministry of Health, Ethiopian Airlines and other stake holders.

Ethiopian Airlines, which operates an extensive flight network connecting West African countries to other parts of the world, has already announced it has put in place "precautions in connection with the outbreak of the disease in some parts of West Africa."

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Seychelles and Ethiopia plan to increase cooperation in trade, tourism and regional security -

(Seychelles News Agency) - Seychelles’ President James Michel and the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn have endorsed the creation of a joint commission between their two countries following talks which centred on the possibility of strengthening cooperation in various fields between the two African nations.

In a press statement issued yesterday evening, state House said trade, tourism and regional security were amongst issues discussed by Michel and Desalegn, who met in the margins of the US-Africa Summit, in Washington.

According to the statement, Michel noted that Seychelles and Ethiopia enjoyed excellent relations adding that they would work towards developing collaboration at different levels.

"I believe that the time has come for us to strengthen our relations both bilaterally and at the level of the African Union. There is so much we can do together," said Michel.


Seychelles and Ethiopia plan to increase cooperation in trade, tourism and regional security
Victoria, Seychelles and Washington, USA | August 7, 2014, Thursday @ 10:55 in National » DIPLOMACY | By: Sharon Uranie | Views: 364
Seychelles and Ethiopia plan to increase cooperation in trade, tourism and regional security

The Seychelles and Ethiopian delegations at the meeting in Washington in the margins of the US-Africa summit (Mervyn Marie, Seychelles News Agency)


(Seychelles News Agency) - Seychelles’ President James Michel and the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn have endorsed the creation of a joint commission between their two countries following talks which centred on the possibility of strengthening cooperation in various fields between the two African nations.

In a press statement issued yesterday evening, state House said trade, tourism and regional security were amongst issues discussed by Michel and Desalegn, who met in the margins of the US-Africa Summit, in Washington.

According to the statement, Michel noted that Seychelles and Ethiopia enjoyed excellent relations adding that they would work towards developing collaboration at different levels.

"I believe that the time has come for us to strengthen our relations both bilaterally and at the level of the African Union. There is so much we can do together," said Michel.

The Seychelles delegation at the meeting headed by President James Michel also comprised of the Seychelles Foreign Minister Jean-Paul Adam, the Seychelles Ambassador to the US, Marie-Louise Potter and the Secretary General of the Office of the President, Lise Bastienne. (Mervyn Marie, Seychelles News Agency) Photo License: CC-BY

The Seychellois head of state also highlighted the return of Ethiopian Airlines to Seychelles soon, which he said would help boost economic cooperation namely trade and tourism between the two African nations.

News of Ethiopian Airlines’ plans to resume flights to Seychelles surfaced mid-March this year not long after its last flight to the Indian Ocean archipelago.

The Ethiopian carrier had been operating three weekly flights to the island nation since the first quarter of 2012 before it stopped on March 01, 2014.

Ethiopian Airlines is now expected to resume direct flights between Addis Ababa and Seychelles as of October 01, 2014.

With fish being one of the main pillars of the Seychelles economy, the possibility of the island nation exporting fish to Ethiopia and working on capacity building in the fisheries sector was also discussed.

"Seychelles' fisheries products can be exported to Ethiopia and at the same time Seychelles can import vegetables and other products from Ethiopia. This would be a win-win situation....,” said Michel.

For his part, the Ethiopian Prime Minister said that that his country would welcome investors from Seychelles for mutual benefit.
- See more at: http://www.seychellesnewsagency.com/articles/1119/Seychelles+and+Ethiopia+plan+to+increase+cooperation+in+trade,+tourism+and+regional+security#sthash.lTAKkL4R.dpuf

Tiborn Nagy, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, "Ethiopia's improvement should allay its critics"

አምባሳደረ ቲቦን ናጊ  የቀድሞው  የአሜሬካ አምባሳደር በኢትዮጵያ
Regarding the Houston Chronicle editorial about Ethiopia, "Do Better" (Page B7, July 29), while one can take a snapshot of Ethiopia's current political, economic and social circumstances and find areas for serious criticism, it would be much fairer to view where Ethiopia is today in relation to where it has come from, and especially to where it is headed.
I served as a U.S. diplomat twice in Ethiopia, as a member of the U.S. embassy staff in the mid-1980s during the awful days of the Marxist dictatorship at the height of the "Great Famine," and again as ambassador from 1999-2002.
I have also returned to the country a number of times since then to help facilitate educational exchanges between U.S. and Ethiopian universities. In my experience, for most Americans, "Ethiopia" still conjures up images more reminiscent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse than today's reality.



Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in Africa, made up of mostly dynamic young people experiencing unparalleled economic growth and incredible infrastructure development, with a realistic shot of becoming a middle-income country by 2025.
Along with economic development has come significant and rapid social progress in longevity, women's education and HIV/AIDS reduction - and incredible growth in university education, with Ethiopia going from three to 38 national universities in just over a decade.
Historically, Ethiopia is an ancient nation - and the only sub-Saharan one to have developed through history and geography rather than by having colonizers drawing lines on a map that, in most cases, made little sense.
Its current political system dates to just 1991, when rebel groups forcibly overthrew the Marxist dictatorship and installed a hybrid political system, which is still evolving. Considering the immense existential threats the regime faced upon taking power, it is understandable that it didn't immediately transform from the barbarous regime it displaced to an ideal Scandinavian democracy.
However, it has evolved and continues to do so, with each succeeding iteration more politically progressive (and I don't mean this in U.S. political terms) than the last.
Has Ethiopia arrived at a point where the government in place is willing to have itself voted out of office? That is a question that only the government can answer. But subsequent elections will show whether the government will promote an environment that enables a serious opposition to exist, while the opposition will also have to be serious, instead of fractious, petty, selfish and generally irrelevant.
As the Chronicle editorial pointed out, Ethiopia has serious human rights problems.
As a historical comparison - this is not in any way justification - young nations often do. The U.S. won its independence from Britain in 1783, and in 1798 President John Adams signed into law the odious "Alien and Sedition Acts," which any "civilized" nation would loudly criticize today.
Luckily, the U.S. tendency since then has been toward democratic liberalization.
An important point: So is Ethiopia's. Unlike much of the rest of Africa (not to mention the Middle East), where the trend is stagnant or in reverse, Ethiopia's environment keeps getting better.
I can state from my experience in dealing with Ethiopia: Outsiders who want to influence that evolution positively need to do so discreetly. There are some countries where public criticism works well; there are a few where it is counterproductive. And Ethiopia is definitely in the second category.
The international community needs to decide whether it wants to publicly flog Ethiopia or to effect positive political change. Pursuing the former will only cause Ethiopia to dig in its heels, empower those within the regime who resist change and likely result in stiffer sentences for the incarcertated journalists who plight was the supject of the editorial. If the goal is encouraging liberalization, then discussion out of the limelight will be much more produtive.
U.S. politicians are accountable to their constitutents - and the Ethiopian diaspora is a vocal and well-organized constituency. Having been a member of the Hungarian exile community, this is something I have personal experience with. Those of us who escaped the blood Soviet suppression of the 1956 uprising were vociferously anti-Communist and politically active agains the Hungarian regime until the crumbling of the Soviet Union.
incar In addition to having incredible energy, exile communities also tend to be highly emotional and can idealize the system that existed before the event that caused their exile. I know realize that we Hungarians dis this and failed to acknowledge any progress the post-1956 regime made with "Goulash Communism."
I would simply urge the Ethiopian community to carefull evaluate events in Ethiopia - the positive as well as the negative - and work toward effecting progress on all fronts. Political and economic liberalization should happen together.

Tiborn Nagy, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, lives in Lubbock.
ምንጪ

አሜሪካ ድግስ የተጠሩና ያልተጠሩ የአፍሪካ መሪዎች

ያልተጠሩ

1. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, 
2. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan 
3.  Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea. 

  Jeffrey Smith and Todd Moss point out in an op-ed for Al Jazeera America,
የተጠሩ

What is Polity IV

The Polity IV Project continues the Polity research tradition of coding authority characteristics of states in the world system for purposes of comparative, quantitative analysis. An improved and enhanced Polity 5 version in the series is currently in development.

The Polity IV dataset covers all major, independent states in the global system over the period 1800-2013 (i.e., states with a total population of 500,000 or more in the most recent year; currently 167 countries). With the support of the Political Instability Task Force, the Polity IV Project has been transformed into a living data collection effort, meaning that it constantly monitors regime changes in all major countries and provides annual assessments of regime authority characteristics, changes and data updates.

The Polity conceptual scheme is unique in that it examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority in governing institutions, rather than discreet and mutually exclusive forms of governance. This perspective envisions a spectrum of governing authority that spans from fully institutionalized autocracies through mixed, or incoherent, authority regimes (termed "anocracies") to fully institutionalized democracies.

The "Polity Score" captures this regime authority spectrum on a 21-pont scale ranging from -10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy). The Polity scores can also be converted into regime categories in a suggested three part categorization of "autocracies" (-10 to -6), "anocracies" (-5 to +5 and three special values: -66, -77 and -88), and "democracies" (+6 to +10). More

የሰውነታችን የሙቀት መጠን/Research Mapping Human Emotions Shows Strong Mind Body Connection

ይገርማል። ተቃጠልሁ ይላል የአገሬ ሰው በንዴት ሲቃጠል፣ ሌላው ደግሞ የሚቀና ሰው ሲመለከተው በቅናት ተንገበገቡ ይላል። በጣም የደበረው ሰው ሲታይ ደግሞ ምነው በረዶ ሆንህ? ሲባል በደስታ የሚፈለቀለቀለውን ደግሞ ፊቱ ያበራል ስንለው፣ በቆንጆ ኮረዳ ልቡ ሙክክ ያለውን ጎረምሳ ደግሞ ልቡ ቀለጠ እንላለን።  ሳናውቀው ግን ሳይንቲስቶች ሆነናል ማለት ነው። አዎ የሰውነታችን የሙቀት መጠን እንደዬ ሁኔታው አንዴ ከፍ አንዴ ዝቅ ይላል። ለሁሉም ከዚህ በታች ያለውን ተመልከቱ::

Photo: Bodily topography of basic (Upper) and nonbasic (Lower) emotions associated with words. The body maps show regions whose activation increased (warm colors) or decreased (cool colors) when feeling each emotion. (P < 0.05 FDR corrected; t > 1.94). The color bar indicates the t-statistic range.

Love makes us warm all over, and now scientists are creating body maps to prove it.

A team of scientists in Finland has used a topographical self-reported method to reveal the effects that different emotional states have on bodily sensations. After five experiments and over 700 participants from Finland, Sweden and Taiwan, who reported where on their bodies they felt different emotions, the scientists discovered surprising consistencies. Their research findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

Most basic emotions were associated with sensations of elevated activity in the upper chest area, likely corresponding to changes in breathing and heart rate (1). Similarly, sensations in the head area were shared across all emotions, reflecting probably both physiological changes in the facial area (i.e., facial musculature activation, skin temperature, lacrimation) as well as the felt changes in the contents of mind triggered by the emotional events. Sensations in the upper limbs were most prominent in approach-oriented emotions, anger and happiness, whereas sensations of decreased limb activity were a defining feature of sadness. Sensations in the digestive system and around the throat region were mainly found in disgust. In contrast with all of the other emotions, happiness was associated with enhanced sensations all over the body.

Research on behavioral and physiological responses to emotions could help in understanding mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.

“Emotions coordinate our behavior and physiological states during survival-salient events and pleasurable interactions. Even though we are often consciously aware of our current emotional state, such as anger or happiness, the mechanisms giving rise to these subjective sensations have remained unresolved. Here we used a topographical self-report tool to reveal that different emotional states are associated with topographically distinct and culturally universal bodily sensations; these sensations could underlie our conscious emotional experiences. Monitoring the topography of emotion-triggered bodily sensations brings forth a unique tool for emotion research and could even provide a biomarker for emotional disorders.”

This research is another great example of the mind and body connection. Our brain sends signals to the body as we deal with certain situations, causing certain physiological changes without any thought on our part. These bodily sensations in turn could be helping the mind to consciously recognize what emotions we are having. This type of research could help explain why making an effort to smile more or sitting straight instead of slouching can alter our brain, improve our mood, and change our general disposition.

“People look at emotions as something in relation to other people,” Antonio Damasio, who is a professor at the University of Southern California, says. “But emotions also have to do with how we deal with the environment — threats and opportunities.” For those, Damasio says, you need your body as well as your mind. (source: NPR)

Ethiopian protesters steal the show at U.S.-Africa Summit (ABC News)