Continental Rift Captured Near Red Sea

Yemen Observer -- Moses has no hand in it this time. Scientists are witnessing a recent tear in the Earth’s continental crust near the Red Sea, the largest single rip seen since satellite monitoring began. The Red Sea is seen splitting in a way that could create a new ocean basin and redraw the map of Africa and Arabia.

Satellite imagery captured the huge split that appeared last year along a fault in the Afar desert in Ethiopia, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates meet, and which found the strongest indication yet of how the plates are splitting to create a new sea.

The scientists from the University of Leeds, one of the largest universities in the UK, say millions of years from now, the pulling apart of the Arabian and Nubian tectonic plates will let waters to rush into and widen the Red Sea. The Leeds scientists have also been able to get an unprecedented picture of the workings of stretching plates, the rock crust moving across Earth’s surface at up to 12 centimeters per year. While the exact course of this continental drift is hard to predict, the movement of the fault promises eventually to widen the Red Sea between Africa and the Arabian peninsula and extend it southwards, cutting a marine inlet inland.

Tim Wright of the University of Leeds and his international team of colleagues gathered ground and space-based observations of a widening fraction in the Afar Desert of Ethiopia. Between September and October of last year, a 60-kilometer-long stretch of rock spread by as much as eight meters. Magma from adjacent volcanoes filled in the bottom part of the rift, creating new continental crust and a dyke of roughly 2.5 cubic kilometers--twice as much material as erupted from Mount St. Helens--more than two kilometers below the surface. Geologists from the UK believe that they are witnessing a tectonic process similar to the one that formed the Atlantic Ocean, as adjacent plates push apart over millions of years to change the shape of the continents.

For several million years a similar process has been slowly separating the African and Arabian plates, forming the Red Sea in the north and the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. Yemeni geologists could not be reached to comment on the phenomenon.

The scientists, led by Cindy Ebinger, of Royal Holloway, and Tim Wright, of Oxford, established that as the rift was torn it was filled by magma bubbling up from chambers lying underneath two volcanoes at its northern end. This magma will eventually harden and, when submerged, will form a new ocean floor.

The Non-Violent Professor Mesfin Woldemariam Lives

ethio-Zagol -- The great teacher of non-violent resistance , Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, is still a great moral leader in prison. Prison sources say despite his suffering and sometimes poor health Professor Mesfin's spirit is incredible. He teaches fellow prisoners, political and non-political, the wisdom of Ghandi and the honour of suffering for freedom. He is cheerful and appearing to get younger everytime. Sources say that he seems to cherish his suffering for love and freedom as the past great leaders of non-violent movement in other parts of the world. His stature and teaching is also rekindling hope in all political prisoners. Professor Mesfin thinks ethical principles are not worth much if they only remain intellectual doodads. In August last year, He was quoted as saying that his prayer was to die and not to kill. The great man is living his prayers.

Video: All About ETHIOPIA

For Many Black Christians, Embracing Orthodoxy is Like Coming Home

Jackson Sun -- After a lifetime in traditional black churches, Robert Aaron Mitchell discovered the sights, smells, sounds and ancient traditions of the Orthodox church.

"I discovered Orthodoxy while I was on the Internet one day back in 2001, and I was so drawn to it that I had to go attend a liturgy," Mitchell says. "I had no frame of reference for these traditions, but suddenly, I felt like this void was filling in my life. I felt like I was finally coming home."

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Mitchell, 48, a project manager for AT&T in Detroit, is among a small but growing number of black Americans, many of them professionals, who are joining Orthodox churches. That's the branch of Christianity that split with Rome about 1,000 years ago and is known for colorful icons and the ethnic traditions it preserves in religious customs.
The attraction, Mitchell says, lies in discovering that for thousands of years, Africans played a vital role in the Orthodox world.

The Rev. Moses Berry, an Orthodox priest and pastor of Theotokos "Unexpected Joy" Orthodox Mission, Ash Grove, Mo., began his career as a Protestant preacher, a family tradition reaching back into the 1800s. Then, in 1983, he visited an Orthodox church in Atlanta and was so moved that he retrained to become a priest in the Orthodox Church in America. He also helped to organize the coalition of clergy, scholars and lay leaders coming to Detroit.

"Reconnecting with the Orthodox tradition connects us with the earliest Christian traditions," Berry says. "It means that, when our ancestors were brought here as slaves, they didn't arrive here with just a collection of tribal religions. They didn't all discover Christianity here. In fact, many Africans already were part of the ancient Christian church."

That was especially true for Africans with roots in the eastern part of the continent, Laike-Mariam Misikir, 50, says. An automotive engineer from Ann Arbor, Mich., Misikir is from a family of Orthodox priests that extends back many centuries in Ethiopia. In Detroit, Misikir serves as a subdeacon, assisting priests during liturgies.

"Unlike many of the African Americans who have come to Orthodoxy, I was born into the faith in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia," Misikir says. "The traditions are so deep, so beautiful.

"I can remember as a small child, attending all-night liturgies with my grandparents. I would be down there near their feet, listening to the chanting and African drums, watching everything going on around me. It was like being transported into heaven."

Mitchell nodded as Misikir described the scene.

"The Orthodox church fills your senses," Mitchell says. "You smell the incense, see the icons and the candles burning, and there's movement, too. People are crossing themselves. There are processions sometimes. So much is happening all around you in the church."

Misikir says, "It's a little difficult to explain all of this to most Americans. At first, when I tell people I'm Orthodox, often they don't understand me and think I'm Jewish."