Ethiopia ratifies nuclear test ban treaty

Ethiopia has ratified an international United Nations treaty that bans explosive testing of nuclear weapons, bringing the total number of ratifications to 135, an official statement said Saturday.
The impoverished country became the 33rd African nation to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) on Tuesday, the Vienna-based preparatory commission for the nuclear treaty organisation said in a statement received here.
Ethiopia hosts two International Monitoring System (IMS) facilities - an auxiliary seismic station at Furi and a radionuclide station at Filtu - which are part of a global network of 337 IMS monitoring facilities that are being established under CTBT terms to verify compliance with the terms of the treaty, it added.
The two facilities in Ethiopia transmit data via satellite to the International Data Centre (IDC) in Vienna, where the data are used to detect, locate and characterise events. Final data is made available to the state signatories for final analysis, the statement said.