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ethiopia

Two East African nations have made some groundbreaking history that's sending positive diplomacy vibes around the world.

Ethiopia and Eritrea ended a 20-year war, marking a new era for the region — and the world — in diplomacy and peace.

A local police station in Badme, a formerly disputed town near the border of Ethiopia and Eritrea, was painted with the design of the Ethiopian flag. Photo by Maheder Haileselassie Tadese/AFP/Getty Images.


Setting an example for numerous countries in the West and East that are struggling to rebuild their own diplomatic relationships, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki were seen embracing and grinning as they signed an unprecedented declaration to end the war during a summit in Asmara, Eritrea's capital. In a Twitter post that documented the event, Eritrean Minister of Information Yemane Meskel said "a new era of peace and friendship has been ushered."

In 1993, Eritrea voted for independence from Ethiopia. As with many formerly colonized nations that are newly independent, Eritrea struggled with economic growth, going deeper into a hole of economic disaster and social inequity. Ethiopia, which has been landlocked since Eritrea's independence, has been strategically interested in a critical Eritrean port called Assab.

This tension between the two nations led to a brutal border war that broke out in the late 1990s and claimed the lives of roughly 80,000 people. After years of attempts at peace deals — including the Algiers Agreement — and deteriorating relationships, any sort of reconciliation seemed unlikely. That is, until Abiy visited Eritrea on July 8.

Abiy became the first Ethiopian leader to set foot in Eritrea in the current century.

Peace talks took place in Ethiopia in late June. Photo by Yonas Tadesse/AFP/Getty Images.

He was warmly welcomed at the airport by Afwerki and other senior Eritrean officials, showing the power of unity between African nations and a wonderful example of what ongoing peace talks can do.

Abiy, a former soldier who fought in the war, agreed to uphold Ethiopia's end of the peace deal that serves to end the border conflict. His swift actions surprised even those who had been studying the conflict for years.

"I did not expect the speed and the enthusiasm," Goitom Gebreluel, who researches Ethiopia's foreign policy at the University of Cambridge in England, told The New York Times. "I believe that this had been decided a while back and the leadership changes within EPRDF [Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front] facilitated it."

It's clear that this peace agreement took years of planning, negotiating, and peace talks, but the swift and unprecedented finale makes it clear:

It's possible for developing nations with years of animosity toward one another to reach peace for the good of their people.

And other nations around the world can learn from this. When leaders prioritize the health and welfare of their people — as Abiy and Afwerki did — peace becomes the obvious and easier solution.

Take note, global leaders. Ethiopia and Eritrea and leading the way on showing what good government looks like.

Robel Kiros Habte, a swimmer from Ethiopia, will not be taking home a medal in Rio de Janeiro this summer ... to put it kindly.

The 24-year-old finished 59th out of 59 competitors in the 100-meter freestyle heats this week at the Olympics. He was the only swimmer to finish above one minute, clocking in 17 seconds slower (which is probably something like five months in swimmer time) than Australian swimmer Kyle Chalmers, whose time took the winning spot.

Clearly, it wasn't Habte's best race.


To make matters worse, the internet seized on something that made Habte stand out amongst the line of Michael Phelps-esque physiques standing poolside.

Habte doesn't flaunt the sort of chiseled, six-pack builds people expect to see when swimming competitions come on.

Photo by Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters.

As you might imagine, many of the reactions weren't too ... nice.

"How in the world did this Ethiopian swimmer ... qualify for the Olympics? Overweight & embarrassingly slow," one person wrote on Twitter. Another mocked him as "the greatest chubby swimmer in the Olympics."

It didn't take long for the nickname "Robel the Whale" to start cropping up across the web.

Heartbreakingly, the online bullying took a toll on Habte.

"It has been difficult," he admitted of the online hate to The Daily Mail, explaining he's taking a break from social media to tune it out.

"I don't know how I feel, but many things. Some of the things people have said or written are not nice. I am a nice person, I would not say these things about others."

Never mind the fact Habte was recently sidelined from his Olympic training for months due to a car accident injury — no athlete (or anyone, for that matter) deserves to be ridiculed for the way they look.

Fortunately, many folks spotted the fat-shaming hate floating around the web. And they were not here for it.

Seemingly overnight, Habte's very own fanbase began blossoming, coming to his defense:

As far back as the people in the stands who watched him compete? They had his back, too.

Habte was invited to compete at the games through world aquatics sports group FINA as a means to include more athletes from under-represented countries, Reuters reported.

So, no — no one really expected him to be bringing home a medal. But his last place finish did raise some eyebrows about how he qualified in the first place.

Here's the thing, though: Despite some crying foul over the fact Habte's father is the head of Ethiopia's swimming federation, the athlete's finishing time is actually pretty incredible stacked up against the fastest swimmers to ever come out of his home country.

On the world stage, Habte may have seemed to move at a glacial pace, but in a country renowned for having some of the fastest athletes on land, Habte is a standout.  

Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images.

As Slate's Elliot Hannon argued, he deserved to be there.

At the end of the day, Habte is simply following his dreams.

"I wanted to do something different for my country, that’s why I chose swimming," he told Reuters. "Everybody, every day you wake up in Ethiopia, you run. Not swimming. But I didn’t want to run, I wanted to be a swimmer."

"It didn’t matter where I finished."

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images.

"I am so happy because it is my first competition in the Olympics," he said. "So thanks for God."

Don't listen to the haters, Robel Habte. Just keep swimming.

At this point, I feel like we've been electing the next president for 17 years. I know I'm not the only one.

Between the 24/7 news cycle, the constant speculation, the "Bachelor"-style dwindling of like 903 candidates down to two ... it's been a real drag.


Never thought I'd consider these the "good old days." Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images.

Our democratic process is long, exhausting, and often discouraging. Especially when the only comic relief we have ends up at the front of the ticket, and we're left wondering if the whole thing is either broken or possibly working way too well.

If you're feeling like I am — worn down and beaten up — you might need a reminder as to why the process of democracy, as tiring as the actual election cycle can be to live through, is a pretty great thing for the world.

So here it is:

Did you know that from 1983 to 1985, Ethiopia suffered one of the worst famines in their country's history?

The African nation was hit with a cyclical drought, which gave way to widespread hunger due to its dependence on rain-fed agriculture. The famine hit hard and spread fast, ultimately killing over 400,000 people.

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

But some have argued that the drought alone wasn't what led to such widespread mortality rates. It was political unrest.

Ethiopia's autocratic leadership at best ignored the problem and at worst tried to impose customs duties on the aid shipments trying to help ease the symptoms of the drought.

Alex de Waal, author of "Evil Days: 30 Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia," argued that the majority of deaths in Ethiopia's famine "can be attributed to human rights abuses that caused the famine to come earlier, strike harder, and extend further than would otherwise have been the case."

Now, Ethiopia is getting ready to face another drought. But this time, things aren't looking nearly as bad. Why?

De Waal described a nation much better equipped to handle the dry spell after a recent visit to Ethiopia in The New York Times:

"As I traveled through northern and central provinces, I saw imported wheat being brought to the smallest and most remote villages, thanks to a new Chinese-built railroad and a fleet of newly imported trucks. Water was delivered to places where wells had run dry. Malnourished children were being treated in properly staffed clinics."

What's changed since the drought in the 1980s? To put it simply, Ethiopia's authoritarian leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam, is no longer in power. He was overthrown in 1991, marking the end of a decadeslong civil war.

Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images.

"The Mengistu regime collapsed in 1991," says de Waal. "Under the [new] government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a former guerrilla turned advocate of rapid economic growth, Ethiopia enjoyed internal peace for the first time in a generation."

That internal peace is what has allowed Ethiopia to lessen the effect of the drought on its citizens this time around because the country is able to import things like wheat and water and medical care to remote villages.


Current Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. Photo by Stan Honda-Pool/Getty Images.

The situation in Ethiopia certainly isn't perfect, and with the recent election of Hailemariam Desalegn with 100% of seats in parliament, some have argued that Ethiopia isn't quite a democracy yet. Even President Barack Obama got some flak for calling it one. This also isn't to say that people in Ethiopia aren't going hungry anymore. Millions there are still chronically malnourished.

However, Ethiopia's political situation is demonstrably better now than it was in the '80s. The civil war has ended, and in 1995, a constitution was put in place — both things that will help them avoid another devastatingly high death toll as the result of a famine.

Beyond Ethiopia, the number of democracies worldwide has actually gone up in the past few decades. Way up.

According to Our World in Data, "The majority of the world’s countries are now governed by democratic regimes," which they define as "systems with citizen political participation, constraints on the power of the executive, and a guarantee of civil liberties."

Chart by Max Roser/Our World in Data.

As the number of democracies has increased, rates of world hunger have gone down. Way down.

The International Food Policy Research Institute reported in its Global Hunger Index that just eight countries in 2015 had hunger levels that were considered "alarming." Compared with 1990, when 25 countries had "alarming" hunger levels and 17 more were deemed "extremely alarming," you can see just how much progress has been made.

The connection between prevailing democracy and declining rates hunger has been made by many, including Nobel-Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and our old friend de Waal, who wrote:

"After countries have passed a certain threshold of prosperity and development, peace, political liberalization and greater government accountability are the best safeguards against famine. There is no record of people dying of famine in a democracy."

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

So feel free to keep rolling your eyes at the lawless circus we're calling the 2016 presidential race. But while you do, remember just how powerful democracy can be.

It can give a voice to the voiceless. It can provide peace in place of unrest, it can help bring food to the hungry, and it can help curb the devastation when tragedy and natural disasters strike.

The world isn't perfect. America definitely isn't perfect. Democracy isn't perfect either.

Democracy doesn't come easy. It's hard work to elect the right people and get the right plans in place and the right voices heard, and it too often feels like a long and thankless fight. But democracy is a privilege — one that shouldn't be taken for granted. That fight is worth it because when democracy works, even when it works imperfectly, it really works.

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15 photos that prove Earth is far stranger than any science fiction.

Did you know that when scientists wanted to test the Mars rover, they went to Chile? It turns out there are a lot of places on Earth that are totally out of this world.

True
Earth Day

1. The Atacama Desert in South America is so dry, NASA has used it to test Mars rovers.

It even has a reddish surface. Image from ESO/Wikimedia Commons.


2. The Red Beach of Panjin in China looks like it's covered in the red weed that gave Mars its red color in H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds."

Image from Kashif Pathan/Flickr..

3. Jakku? Tatooine? Nope, this isn't a planet from "Star Wars." It's an ancient Chinese watchtower along the Silk Road.

Image from The Real Bear/Wikimedia Commons.

4. These Waitomo glowworm caves in New Zealand look like they could be a wormhole to another dimension.

DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE? Image from 2il org/Flickr.

5. And the Naica Mine in Mexico looks like a wormhole to another dimension made entirely out of GIANT DIAMONDS.

There is a person at the bottom of this picture for scale, and that scale is bonkers.

Yes, that's a person at the bottom. Image from Alexander Van Driessche/Wikimedia Commons.

6. These ice-blue pools in Pamukkale, Turkey, look more like the icy surface of Hoth from "Star Wars" or Delta Vega from "Star Trek."

Image from Pvasiliadis/Wikimedia Commons.

7. Speaking of ice blue, I'm pretty sure caves aren't supposed to come in this color on Earth. Get with the program, Marble Caves of Chile Chico in Patagonia!

Marble Caves of Chile Chico, Patagonia. Image from Javier Vieras/Flickr.

8. Alaska, what did I just say?

Ice caves under Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska. Image from Andrew E. Russell/Flickr.

9. Don't think I don't see you too, Lake Retba in Senegal! I know your pinkish hue comes from salt production, but that's no excuse for this weirdness!

Image from iStock.

10. The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is normally a stark, white salt flat, but when it rains, it looks like where you might end up if you entered a black hole.

The Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. Image from Chechevere/Wikimedia Commons.

11. Captain Kirk and a shimmering alien entity would look right at home having a conversation at Ethiopia's Dallol volcano, where sulfur and iron deposits create otherworldly colors.

Image from Hervé Sthioul/Wikimedia Commons.

12. The island of Socotra is a place where even plants look like aliens...

A forest on the island of Socotra. Image from Valerian Guillot/Flickr.

13. ...including this flower-haired land-slug!

(Also known as a bottle tree, but I like my name for it better).

Image from iStock.

14. Alien tentacles?! Nope, these are snow-covered trees in Riisitunturi National Park, Finland.

Image from Tero Laakso/Flickr.

15. Lastly, this might look like Mars, with the red sand and little space-house, but it's actually the Mars Society's training ground in Utah, right here in the U.S. of A.

The Mars Society's training ground in Utah. Image from Bandgirl807/Wikimedia Commons.

Sometimes, all we need is a change in perspective to remind ourselves how weird and spectacular the Earth is.

Though we usually are surrounded by normal stuff, you don't have to go too far to see just how strange the Earth — and the planets and solar systems around us — can be.

Now get your solution of high-temperature water and caffeine, pet your favorite tame mammal companion goodbye, get in your metal vehicle powered by the remains of ancient plants, listen to pleasant and high-pitched air vibrations encoded by powerful electromagnetic waves, and get ready to orbit that giant glowing ball of plasma we call "sun."

It's a great day to be alive.