Unicef has highlighted growing concerns about adoption practices in Ethiopia, a country with which Ireland is considering an agreement to adopt children.

Five people were killed when foreign tourists, including Austrian, Belgian, German, Hungarian and Italian nationals, were attacked by gunmen in Ethiopia.

ETHIOPIA is forcing tens of thousands of people off their land so it can lease it to foreign investors, leaving former landowners destitute and in some cases starving, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday.

A COURT in Ethiopia yesterday sentenced two Swedish journalists to 11 years in prison on charges of supporting terrorism after the two illegally entered the country with an ethnic Somali rebel group in a case that has been criticised by media rights groups.

THE EU is appointing a special representative for the Horn of Africa, focusing firstly on Somalia, the country plagued by famine and war.

FADUMA Sakow Abdullahi and her five children tried to escape starvation in Somalia by journeying to a Kenyan refugee camp.

TWO Irish Aid partner countries have been spending large sums of money recently, but unfortunately not on the welfare of their peoples.

CLAIMS that aid money sent to Ethiopia was spent on weapons are “palpable nonsense”, Band Aid founder Bob Geldof said yesterday.

The Government has pledged more than €1.3m in emergency funding to help alleviate the food crisis in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government arrested 35 people suspected of a coup attempt allegedly backed by an Ethiopian economist now teaching at a US university, a government spokesman said.

THE Irish Government can play a critical role in easing the pain of thousands of Somali people — if it can only find the courage. Because of its close association with the Ethiopian government, the Government is ideally placed to exert pressure on the Addis Ababa authorities to persuade them to withdraw their armed forces.

THE newly appointed Irish ambassador to Ethiopia has warned that the coming weeks will be critical in determining how the drought-hit country copes with its food shortage.

THE European Commission and the international community must allocate further food resources to help the people of Ethiopia. It is accepted by the government there that 4.6 million people are at acute risk due to food shortages.

THE combination of severe drought and rising food prices that has left hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia threatened with starvation must provoke a real sense of déjà vu for people in the west.

The generosity of Irish donors could prevent a chronic food shortage from taking the lives of thousands of hungry people, an aid agency claimed today.

THE Government must use its influence with the Ethiopian authorities to allow food aid to flow to the people of the Ogaden.

After 3.2 million years in East Africa, one of the world’s most famous sets of fossils was quietly flown out of Ethiopia overnight for a tour of the United States that some experts say is a dangerous gamble with an irreplaceable relic.

Rebels stormed a Chinese-run oil field at dawn in eastern Ethiopia today, killing 74 workers and destroying the facility, the guerrilla group and government officials said.

THE Ethiopian government acknowledged detaining 41 suspected international terrorists from 17 countries and said foreign investigators were given permission to question them, according to an official statement published yesterday.

Ethiopia today accused bitter rival Eritrea of orchestrating the kidnapping of five Europeans and eight Ethiopians, describing it as an act of terrorism.

Five freed British Embassy hostages are to be reunited with family and loved ones after being kidnapped in Ethiopia and held captive for 13 days by an armed rebel group, officials said today.

Britain was sending a 10-man crisis team to Ethiopia today after at least a dozen Western tourists were kidnapped in remote north-eastern Ethiopia, a barren expanse of volcanoes and ancient salt mines where bandits and rebels operate.

THE Ethiopian Government and Starbucks have become embroiled in a spat over whether the coffee names Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harar belong to the African nation.

The Ethiopian government and Starbucks have become embroiled in a spat over whether the coffee names Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harar belong to the African nation.

THE Government is gravely concerned at the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said yesterday.

The Government is gravely concerned at the humanitarian situation in Darfur, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said today.

SOMALIA’S powerful Islamists yesterday said they would not attend peace talks with the interim government until Ethiopian troops left their soil.

Ethiopian troops in armoured vehicles rolled into the central Somali town of Baidoa today and set up a camp near the home of the interim president, residents said, less than a day after Islamic militants reached the outskirts of the base of a UN-backed, but largely powerless government.

Irish development aid to Ethiopia should not be cut off because of unfounded allegations of corruption, it was claimed tonight.

Irish development aid may be propping up a corrupt government regime in Ethiopia, it was claimed today.

Britain has suspended a planned £20m (€30.1m) increase in aid to Ethiopia because of political unrest, International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said in Addis Ababa.

The director of the charity organisation Goal, John O'Shea, has called on the Irish Government to demand an immediate explanation from Ethiopia after its police shot dead 26 demonstrators in Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

AS many as 300,000 Ethiopian children will die from malnutrition this year if donors do not come forward with food aid and funds, a UN official said yesterday.

there no end to the suffering that the people of Ethiopia must endure?

IRELAND is to grant Ethiopia 14.4 million to improve its healthcare provisions following the signature of an agreement between the two nations, the official media reported on yesterday.

Tens of thousands of Ethiopian children have died from acute malnutrition compounded by a severe drought, a top United Nations official said today.

Food shortages in drought-stricken Ethiopia are worse than feared with millions at risk of starvation, Bob Geldof said today.

As the UN environmental summit got under way today, Zimbabwean and Ethiopian groups held the first in a series of planned protests.