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/ 26 December 2005
A continental rifting process that normally takes millions of years to form has developed over a span of seven weeks in the Afar region of north-eastern Ethiopia. It was a close study, using radar interferometry, of an earth rupture developing into a rare axial rift zone — a future possible ocean basin.
For decades, Ethiopia has been plagued by cyclical drought and chronic hunger with children worst hit. Preventable diseases and malnutrition on average kill up to half a million Ethiopian children a year, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.