Free Republic

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned conflict in Ethiopia has now spread beyond the Tigray region and "a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes". As many as 210 people have been killed in attacks in Ethiopia's Oromia region, a human rights group has said. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said it had received reports that some 150 people were killed on 18 August by alleged members of the Oromo Liberation Army in the East Wollega area of Oromia. A further 60 people were killed a day later in retaliatory attacks, according to the statement issued by the government-appointed body,...

The head of the World Health Organization has called for a two-month moratorium on administering COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus proposed the move as a means of reducing global vaccine inequality and preventing the emergence of new coronavirus variants. Dr Tedros said that he was "really disappointed" with the scope of vaccine donations worldwide. Many countries are struggling to provide first and second doses to more than just a fraction of their populations, while wealthier nations maintain growing vaccine stockpiles. Dr Tedros called on countries offering third vaccine doses "to share what can be used for...

President Trump speaks out on the killing of Ashli Babbitt at the US Capitol on January 6th and Australia's capital city joins the increasing list of lockdown zones Down Under but first... A COVID outbreak at an immigration detention facility ib Tacoma Washington... Israel's coronavirus cabinet ramping up new restrictions... Fear of the "Delta Variant" causing some returning Australian Olympic team members to be subject to a 28-day quarantine... Tightened up restrictions in the French Caribbean island territory of Guadeloupe... The US government winning with the British High Court getting to make its appeal seeking Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's extradition...

"Don't let the fearmongers win..." That's part of the message on Twitter today from Republican US Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul noting a death rate of .08 percent for the "Delta Variant" of COVID-19 among the unvaccinated... Yesterday Republican US Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin involved in a news conference with families of those injured by COVID-19 vaccines... Maddie de Garay suffering from abdominal, nerve and muscle pain and a host of other issues including loss of feeling from the waist down. Maddie hospitalized three times for a total of two months. She is now confined to a wheelchair....

The political developments in Israel today but first... A tripling of injuries among 12 to 17 olds being vaccinated for COVID-19 in the US. That's part of the latest data from the CDC on vaccine side effects through Friday May 21st. There are not 3,449 total adverse events for 12 to 17 year olds... A vaccination site at a middle school in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho targeting children in the 12 to 17-year old age group staffed by National Guard personnel and guarded by police... A manhunt in France for an ex-soldier described as heavily armed. He opened fire on police...

The hypocrisy of the Left in the US is boundless. The likes of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) epitomize it. This New York Congresswoman has shamelessly called Israel an “apartheid state.” She didn’t call the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza, which is “Judenrein,” (any Jew found in Gaza would be murdered) or Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, who do not allow Jews to live in its territories, apartheid states. They actually deserve that title. Conversely, Israel is an open democracy with a free press, the rule-of-law, and where human and civil rights are observed. Israel brought Black African Jews from Ethiopia, to...

Joe Biden delivered a commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut on Wednesday. After blasting the cadets for not clapping like seals, Joe Biden cited mass murderer Mao Tse Tung to inspire the young men. Mao Tse Tung, a Communist dictator, murdered up to 70 to 80 million Chinese last century, according to most accounts. Biden bragged about promoting women to leadership roles in the US military when he dropped his favorite quote from Mao ‘women hold up half the sky.’

On May 14, the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) declared at its award ceremony that the 2021 silver winner of The Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book, Nonfiction, of the Benjamin Franklin Award went to Minghui Publishing for its book Minghui Report: The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China.

Pro-China WHO boss Tedros is key figure in Tigray Peoples Liberation Front. “Scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra, a town in the South West Zone of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,” Amnesty International is confirming. The human rights organization verified “photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.” Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s director for east and southern Africa, “confirmed the massacre of a very large number of civilians, who appear to have been day laborers in no way involved in the...

Leaked letter and individual interviews suggest there may have been more than 78 who lost their lives. Scores of priests have been massacred in the Tigray area of Ethiopia, according to a letter purportedly sent by Church officials there. The Telegraph claims to have a copy of the letter, which was sent to the Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and leaked to the British newspaper. The letter says that “priests, deacons, choristers, and monks” have been “massacred” over the last five months. “Half a dozen survivors confirmed the news to this newspaper and said that both Ethiopian national army...

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is leading a campaign to plant 6 billion trees across the country this year. It forms part of his ‘’Green Legacy’’ project to promote eco-tourism and combat the effects of climate change. The initiative highlights his focus on the environment ahead of the elections. At the launch in a meeting hall filled with freshly watered seedlings Tuesday, Abiy encouraged Ethiopians to plant billions of trees.

The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in his first public comments on the war in the country's Tigray region is sharply criticizing Ethiopia's actions, saying he believes it's genocide: "They want to destroy the people of Tigray." In a video shot last month on a mobile phone and carried out of Ethiopia, the elderly Patriarch Abune Mathias addresses the church's scores of millions of followers and the international community, saying his previous attempts to speak out were blocked. He is ethnic Tigrayan. The video comes as the conflict in Tigray marks six months. Thousands of people have been killed...

After the failure of talks on a mechanism to resume negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was announced Tuesday, a number of Egyptian experts and former ministers gave insight on the issue. Water Bomb Former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Nasr Allam said in a TV interview that filling the dam's reservoir without a legal binding agreement may incur a famine in Egypt and Sudan. That is because the capacity of the dam is 74 billion cubic meters, which is almost equivalent to the annual water shares of Egypt (55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan (18...

Mike Hellgren (@HellgrenWJZ) Tweeted: Police just released a photo of the alleged gunman in yesterday’s Frederick shooting. He was a 38yo Navy medic. @wjz https://t.co/bfGhxCoZxs Investigators Identify Sailors Shot By Navy Medic Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet Near Fort Detrick, Investigation Continues Into Motive Author: Mike Hellgren April 7, 2021 at 11:25 pm

Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Saturday broke their silence on the cause of a fire that tore through a detention centre for migrants earlier this month, killing at least 45 people, mostly Ethiopian migrants. The rebels acknowledged that guards fired three teargas canisters into a crowded hangar in the capital, Sana’a, trying to end a protest by the migrants. A statement by the rebel-run Interior Ministry said at least 11 men from the security forces were detained over the incident, along with a number of senior officials who would be tried before court. About 900 migrants, most of them from Ethiopia,...

More than 500 rape cases have been reported to five clinics in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the United Nations said on Thursday, warning that the actual numbers were likely to be much higher due to stigma and a lack of health services. “Women say they have been raped by armed actors, they also told stories of gang rape, rape in front of family members and men being forced to rape their own family members under the threat of violence,” Wafaa Said, deputy U.N. aid coordinator in Ethiopia, said in a briefing to U.N. member states in New York. She said at...

Accounts of atrocities by Ethiopian forces against residents of the country’s northwestern region of Tigray were detailed in reports by The Associated Press and by Amnesty International. Ethiopia’s central government and regional officials in Tigray both believe that each other’s governments are illegitimate after the pandemic disrupted elections. Those responsible for abuses in Tigray must be held accountable, Blinken added, calling for an independent, international investigation into the reports of human rights violations. Alarm is growing over the fate of the Tigray region’s 6 million people as fighting is reportedly as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and...

On this date in 1937, Ethiopian prince Desta Damtew — the son-in-law of Emperor Haile Selassie — was captured by the Italian troops occupying his country, and summarily executed. An aristocrat who married Selassie’s eldest daughter, the Ras* Desta Damtew (English Wikipedia entry | Italian) became governor of the southern Sidamo Province upon his father-in-law’s ascent to the Ethiopian throne in 1930. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, it committed a disproportionate quantity of its forces to the northern reaches of its target. Consequently, resistance was stronger in the south — and Ras Desta was one of its chiefs. In...

They were slaughtered trying to stop real-life raiders of the lost ark — an artifact so powerful and holy they were forbidden from ever seeing it. The harrowing mass-murder of at least 800 people at an Ethiopian church in Tigray highlighted the apparent whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant, one of the biggest mysteries in religion and the stuff of movie legend. The ark — a large, gold-covered wooden chest said to hold Moses’ Ten Commandments — was held at the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem for centuries, but vanished after Jerusalem was sacked in 586 or 587 BC,...

At least 800 people were reportedly killed in Ethiopia as worshippers and soldiers risked their lives to protect what Christians there say is the sacred Ark of the Covenant from local militia. Ethiopian Christians claim the Ark - the wooden chest built to hold the Ten Commandments of Moses - is being kept safe in a chapel in the holy northern city of Axum in the Tigray region. The battle between Ethiopian soldiers and rebel fighters happened in the fall, The Sunday Times reported, but it is only being reported now. “When people heard the shooting they ran to the...