By Patrick Lindsay
Think of it putting something back into the earth.
Most of the time we take from it.
Help redress the balance.
Plant a new life. Nurture it.
Take pleasure in watching it grow.
After you plant one, you’ll want to plant more.
Nurture them.
Encourage others to do the same.
“Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her”
William Wordsworth
Newsweek has ranked 100 countries of the world (out of 195) and has determined that Finland is the world’s “best” country. I’m not fond of the title but they ranked countries on education, health, quality of life, economic dynamism, and political environment. Thus, according to Newsweek, the ten best countries in the world are…
1. Finland
2. Sweden
3. Switzerland
4. Australia
5. Luxembourg
6. Norway
7. Canada
8. Netherlands
9. Japan
10. Denmark
Ethiopia is ranked 94th.
Ethiopian Airlines has been honored as among the World’s Top 25 Airlines, when measured by Net Profit, in a report published by Air Transport World (ATW) magazine. According to the latest data available for Ethiopia’s flag carrier, the airliner made a net profit of $127.7 million, making it Africa’s most profitable airline and 16th most profitable in the world.
The World’s most profitable airline is Dubai based, Emirates, which made a whopping $963.5 million in net profit. Based on operating revenue, the world’s largest airline is Lufthansa Group with total revenue of more than $31 Billion followed by Air France KLM and Delta Airlines.
Delta is the World’s largest airline by the number of passengers transported, followed by Southwest and American Airlines.
Ethiopian airlines transported nearly 3 million passengers, an increase of 6.3% from prior fiscal year. Its profit for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009 was a 165% increase over the prior year’s figure.
Ethiopian airlines operates 26 jet aircraft (including a freighter fleet of two 747Fs, two MD-11Fs and two 757-200Fs) and nine turboprops. It will take delivery of the first of five Boeing 777-200LRs it has on order in the second half of this year. It also will receive three new Boeing 737-800s by year end. Delivery of the first of 10 Boeing 787s on order is scheduled for July 2011. It also ordered 12 A350s last summer, set to begin delivering in 2016.
Ethiopian operates an extensive network, including 14 weekly flights to both China and India. Ethiopian CEO Girma Wake expects passenger traffic to grow at the rate of 20% annually.
Source: ANL
By Edris Kisambira
Even though ICANN has not yet issued the license that will allow for the creation of the .Africa domain name registry, there seems to be a lot of interest at the pan-African level.
Even though ICANN has not yet issued the license that will allow for the creation of the .Africa domain name registry, there seems to be a lot of interest at the pan-African level.
“If I can grade the level of interest on a scale of zero to five, I would say it is at five,” said Sophia Bekele, founder and executive director of DotConnectAfrica (DCA), the nonprofit umbrella organization for the .Africa domain initiative.
Bekele was in Kampala, the Uganda capital, to attend the East Africa Internet Governance Forum, which ended Friday.
“I have seen interest at the pan-African level, and a lot of companies that have pan-African operations like mobile-phone operator Zain, continental banks and even multinationals with African operations are excited about it,” Bekele said.
Bekele said that aside from the policy bodies like the African Union and the African Development Bank (ADB), prospective users of the .Africa name include pan-African companies like MTN, ECOBank, United Bank for Africa and foreign companies doing business in Africa like Microsoft, Goggle and Coca-Cola.
The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board in February next year is set to expand the generic top-level domain space from four — “.com,” “.org,” “.net” and “.biz” — to 21.
Bekele, a policy adviser to ICANN between 2005 and 2007, said the idea for an .Africa domain came up at the time she advised ICANN on existing top-level domains like .com and .org, and geographical names like .EU and .Asia.
“I asked why not .Africa? I initially went to the existing African grouping and African persons serving on the board, and I was told it was a very difficult task getting the African governments to agree,” she said.
Bekele said she has spent the past two years working with the African Union’s (AU) infrastructure commission to get the endorsements required for the application to ICANN.
In November last year, the Council of African Internet Communication Technology ministers meeting in South Africa adopted a resolution to “establish Dot Africa as a continental top-level domain for use by organizations, businesses and individuals with guidance from African Internet agencies.”
In February this year, the AU heads of state meeting in Addis Ababa endorsed the DotAfrica initiative.
The DCA proposal has been endorsed by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), which coordinates African ministries of economic affairs.
DotConnectAfrica, if it receives a license, will operate the .Africa top-level domain registry with help from sponsor organizations and business people. Money generated will go directly to an African organization to build capacity in Africa, Bekele said.
The .Africa initiative will also work with the country code top-level domains of Africa. Most ccTLDs are run by technical people who could use help on the business and marketing side of operations.
Bekele said she will engage in a continental marketing campaign, working with pan-African institutions to encourage development of content to popularize the .Africa name.
The push for the .Africa domain has not been smooth sailing for the DCA, however.
“So far the challenges we have faced are from existing African groupings that had resisted our applications to do the .Africa name,” Bekele said.
The DCA is often mistakenly seen as representing U.S. interests and being led by the private sector, Bekele noted.
Appealing for support at the conference in Kampala, Bekele said, “A continental project is complex and requires many stakeholders to make it a success, so we call upon everyone to join us and make it happen, instead of detracting from the process.”
Source: Computer World
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By Damian Zane BBC, Addis Ababa
It is 1000 on Sunday morning, and a small crowd is waiting by the side of one of the main roads into Addis Ababa, the last leg of Hirut Gedlu’s journey. She is a little late and people begin to wonder where she is, but then she is spotted speeding down the hill. I care, do you? Slogan on Hirut Gedlu’s bicycle Wearing a red, green and yellow striped bandana on her head and riding on a battered mountain bike, this ex-soldier in her 30s appears like a modern-day messiah. She has just finished a 2,500 kilometre journey across her country, on her bike, which took her to 280 places where she preached her anti-Aids message. She stops, finally, at the end of her two and a half month journey, and beams as bunches of roses are thrust into to her hands. And then she speaks. She tells the crowd, which is growing by the minute, where she has been and everyone is clearly impressed with the journey she has made. Changing lives And this must have been the impact that she had in the places she visited. Not a four-wheel drive or a fancy poster in sight, just a woman on a bike. But did people really listen? A modern-day messiah? “Very much so. They were listening with such concentration that I believe I’ve changed their lives, particularly the students, and also in the markets,” Hirut Gedlu says. “I went there so that I could get hold of the farmers and others who come from far away to buy things in the market, so they could hear the message too. “To the students I say how poor we are. We are so poor we can’t afford to lose our youth. “So I teach them to abstain from sex, hold on to their exercise books and be serious about their lessons. Faithful “The married ones in the market place, I tell them to be loyal to their partners. “And I really do believe Aids will be eradicated from Ethiopia.” Many found Ms Gedlu’s mission inspiring With three million adults and a quarter of a million children living with HIV in Ethiopia, eradication may be a long way off. The government and various NGOs have all got their programmes here, and while the efforts of just one person are not going to change the behaviour of millions of people, Hirut Gedlu’s attitude was inspiring. Written on the side of her bike was the slogan “I care, do you?”.
A challenge to everyone.
Source BBC news
More than 1,000 students from 50 classes have been involved in helping those who suffer from HIV/AIDS by Tonia Bock, Ph.D. : Photo by geopaul/istockphoto
The HIV/AIDS crisis is not over.
While AIDS has killed more than 25 million people worldwide, there are still more than 33 million people living with the HIV/AIDS virus.
Locally, 6,220 Minnesotans were living with the virus at the end of 2008, with another 368 confirmed new cases reported in 2009 (the highest annual number in 17 years).
Though such statistics are important for describing the seriousness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, they also can create feelings of distress, fear and even hopelessness. Fortunately, an HIV/AIDS project at the University of St. Thomas has statistics that tell a different story. It’s a story of hope and community – our St. Thomas community – that began to see, care and respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In the last six years, more than 1,000 students in 50 St. Thomas classes have contributed to community organizations that provide services to individuals living with HIV/AIDS. And, through a service-learning initiative, the students take up the cause while gaining knowledge relevant to their courses.
In the summer of 2003, Dr. Kimberly Vrudny, professor of theology, participated in a service-learning workshop at St. Thomas, where she worked to incorporate a service component into her Theology of Beauty course. Concerned about the silence in the community surrounding HIV/AIDS, she developed a partnership with Open Arms of Minnesota, an organization that prepares and delivers meals to people living with HIV/AIDS, ALS, MS or breast cancer in the Twin Cities area. Read more at http://www.stthomas.edu/magazine/2010/Spring/hope.html
About the Author: Tonia Bock is an assistant professor of psychology and the 2009-10 project director for HIV/AIDS initiatives at St. Thomas.
Source: St Thomas Magazine
THE NUMBERS: Child mortality in Botswana -
1960175 per thousand
1990:50 per thousand
200081 per thousand
200831 per thousand
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Botswana’s figures illustrate the AIDS pandemic in miniature. World Bank data show the country’s child mortality dropping steadily from 175 children per thousand in 1960 to 50 per thousand; then a drastic increase during the 1990s as the AIDS epidemic hits. Since then international commitments to AIDS education, testing and treatment have begun to show results. Botswana’s improving childhood mortality rates are a particularly hopeful example of this trend: Vrtually all expectant mothers now receive counseling and testing, and when necessary anti-retroviral prophylaxis, and childhood mortality rates now appear to be well below the levels achieved before the epidemic.
Global trends are similar, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. Improving education, testing, wider access to anti-retroviral drugs for patients — about 450,000 HIV-positive people worldwide were on anti-retroviral therapy in 2001, by 2005 the figure was about 1.3 million, and now it is 5.2 million — and a special focus on care for during pregnancy, have caused transmission to newborns and therefore mortality rates to drop. The UNAIDS global estimates for new infections during childhood, complete through 2008, suggest the following:
Worldwide: The global estimate for new childhood HIV infections dropped from about 520,000 per year in 2003 to 430,000 in 2008, and may now be near 400,000.
Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa remains the center of the AIDS pandemic, with about 22 million of the world’s estimated 33.4 million HIV-positive people and almost 90 percent of new childhood infections. Africa is also where childhood HIV infection rates have dropped most sharply, from a peak of 460,000 per year early in the last decade to about 390,000 in 2008.
Elsewhere: In rich countries, childhood infection is very rare, estimated at below 500 per year in North America, Europe and wealthy Asia. In developing regions the trends appear positive in Asia and the Caribbean: UNAIDS’ estimate suggests that childhood HIV infections are down from 33,000 to 21,000 in Asia and from 2,800 to 2,300 in the Caribbean. The estimates have risen, though, in three other regions: from 6,200 to 6,900 a year in Latin America; 3,000 to 3,700 in Eastern and Central Europe; and from 3,800 to 4,600 in the Middle East.
Not fast, incomplete, uneven — but perhaps the data now suggest grounds for hope.
Source: Trade fact
By Getachew Teklu
I don’t know how you feel about it, but I really hate the idea of paying fees to use an ATM to get my own money from my bank. In fact, I have never paid any because faithfully using only my own bank’s ATM machines. However, on August 4, 2010 using US. Bank ATM machine to get $20.00 and charged $3.00 ATM Fee. My own bank Wells Fargo charge me another $2.50 to get my own money. The total cost to get $20.00 is $5.50. Last year ATM users paid fees that poured an estimated over $5 billion into financial institution coffers.
ATM are a cash cow for banks, and the fees are rising. The cost of using another bank’s ATM machine is now $3.00 per transaction, up from $1.00 just five years ago. You pay two fees when you stray from your own institution’s ATM. The first hit, charged by your own bank, is called the foreign, or “off-us,” fee; it currently averages $2.00 per transaction. (At big banks, the average is $2.50 to $3.00.) About 30 to 70 cents of this fee is known as the interchange fee and goes to the bank whose ATM you used as compensation for handling the transaction. Even if your bank does not charge you when you use another institution’s ATM, it pays this fee. The second fee, a surcharge imposed on you by the other bank for using its ATM, is now $2.00 ($3.00 for big banks like US Bank) These fees show up right on your ATM receipt. My advice to you minimizes the pain whenever possible; use your own bank’s or credit union’s ATM to avoid fees. Also try some of these tactics: Switch to a bank or credit union that doesn’t impose ATM surcharges. Generally, the larger the bank, the higher the fees. There is no stimulus package for consumer to recover ATM fees that is imposed by large banks like US Bank. No body can protect us from bank rip off at the moment.
(TsehaiNY) – Tonight on Top Chef, the popular culinary competition reality show, contestants will be challenged on preparing Ethiopian cuisine. The show will air on Bravo, an NBC/Universal Network.
Ethiopian-Top Chef Masters 2 winner-Marcus Samuelson will judge tonight’s competition.
In the elimination round chefs will have to create a dish based on one of the foreign embassies in Washington, D.C. Established chef ambassadors and dignitaries representing foreign embassies in Washington, D.C. will be present to lend a hand during elimination round.
Source: Tsehany.com
By James Kwak
Ezra Klein makes an important point about our nation’s health care problem: it’s not just a government deficit problem. The underlying problem is that health care costs are not only growing faster than prices (inflation), but also faster than GDP (economic growth), and as a result the amount of stuff we as a nation will be able to afford, other than health care, will start to go down at some point in the future. (Picture originally from Joseph Newhouse in Health Affairs.)
This means that proposals to solve the long-term budget deficit problem by cutting Medicare benefits are not solutions: they simply shift the problem from the government to individuals–which means they shift the problem from us as taxpayers to us as old people or us as family members of old people.* If, for example, we increase the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, the government saves money, but only because people who are 65 and 66 lose money–or, alternatively, all of us lose money because their employers now have to pay more for health care. To read more visit:http://baselinescenario.com/2010/08/04/health-care-non-solutions/?
Source: Baseline Scenario
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