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Hello, we're welcome to behind the news. My name is Dick Henwood.

A departure, the usual two topics, but split among three guests.

And Newman will tell us about the horrible war in Ethiopia, which the outside world has been paying little attention to.

And then Andres Arouse, and Brian Meer will talk about a South American common currency scheme launched by Brazil's President Lula,

which the outside world has paid some attention to, but badly.

First, Ethiopia. And Newman is a journalist who writes mostly about end of life issues in the US.

In something of a departure, she has appeased in the February issue of Harper's magazine about the miserably bloody war in Ethiopia,

which has been going on for the last couple of years, largely out of view of the outside world.

It's the latest chapter in decades of bloody factual and ethnic conflict in that country.

In this latest round, which began in November 2020, and may have ended, or at least paused late last year,

at least half a million civilians have died and five million have been displaced.

I say may have ended because, as we'll hear from Anne, fighting continues, and there are many loose ends.

Some background, Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974.

From then through 1987, the country was ruled by the Durg, a brutally authoritarian group.

They were overthrown after a 15-year war by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, TPLF, which ruled through 2018 when it was overthrown.

The country is now led by Abiy Ahmed, who assembled a coalition of the country's two largest ethnic groups, the Oromo and Amara.

The Amara account for about a quarter of Ethiopia's population, and dominated the country's politics for centuries,

appeared that ended along with Haile Selassie.

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