IGIHE

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  • Many dead in Sudan floods

    {{Floods in Sudan have killed at least 15 people in the past two weeks and left almost 100,000 more homeless, officials said.}}

    More than 20,000 houses have been destroyed or badly damaged after heavy rains pounded suburbs of the capital Khartoum.

    Thousands of people have also been displaced in a north Ugandan border town of Elegu after floods washed away their homes. Uganda shares a border with South Sudan, which is Sudan’s neighbour to the south.

    The floods struck after a nearby river overflowed its banks following hours of torrential rains.

    Elegu is a vibrant border town with businesses from local bars to lodges, and markets with cross-border trade between Uganda and South Sudan.

    Moses Okello, who owned rental houses in the town, said they had been destroyed with nothing to salvage.

    “There is no way now. We are stuck. We have nowhere to start,” he said.

    Sarah Ninsiima, another victim whose bar and lodges got submerged, said she had no roof over her head and wondered what she would do next.

    “That day I wanted to go to another place, we were told this place usually floods during rainy season. I heard people screaming that the floods were coming, only to realize the water was knee high and it was on the beds,” said Ninsiima.

    The floods have heightened fears of a cholera outbreak as locals say all the pit latrines were washed away and people have to use bushes as toilets.

    The Ugandan Red Cross has so far delivered a few essentials like blankets and food, but many people remain homeless.

    Weather experts say more rains are expected until October.

    agencies

  • China arrests activist on subversion charge

    China has arrested an activist on a charge of subversion, his brother and a rights group said on Sunday, the second such arrest in less than two months and the latest sign that the authorities are hardening their stance toward dissent.

    Yang Lin, 45, a critic of China’s one-party system who lives in the southern province of Guangdong, was arrested on a charge of “inciting subversion of state power”, his brother, Yang Mingzhu, said by telephone.

    In China, an inciting subversion charge is commonly levelled against critics of one-party rule. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail, though lengthier sentences have been handed down.

    Yang Mingzhu said he had received a notice of his brother’s arrest, dated July 19, but it gave few details.

    The U.S.-based group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Yang Lin, had spent a year in a labor camp, and he was also a signatory of “Charter 08” – a manifesto organized by jailed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo – which calls for political reform.

    “He would not hesitate in throwing himself wholeheartedly in helping disadvantaged citizens fight for their rights and in activities promoting constitutional democracy,” the advocacy group said on its website on Sunday.

    Chinese liberals and intellectuals had hoped the new government that took over this year, under President Xi Jinping, would be more tolerant of calls for reform but authorities have seemed to indicate they will not tolerate any challenge to their rule.

    In recent months, authorities have detained at least 16 anti-corruption activists involved in demonstrations calling for government officials to disclose their assets.

    The Futian District Detention Centre, where the brother said Yang Lin was being held, declined to comment.

    A formal arrest usually leads to a trial. Activists who are detained are sometimes released before they are formally arrested.

    In June, authorities formally arrested a man for inciting subversion after he applied for permission to demonstrate on June 4, the 24th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

    wirestory

  • Deaths Reported in Latest Sinai air Raid

    {{Egypt’s military says it is continuing an operation against armed groups in the Sinai believed to have been plotting attacks on security forces and other targets.}}

    Security sources told media on Sunday that at least seven people were killed overnight, and six arrested in a raid.

    The raid follows an airstrike by the Egyptian military on Friday, which saw at least four people killed.

    The assault on Saturday happened when Apache helicopters hit areas south of Sheikh Zuwaid in north Sinai, according to Egyptian state media.

    A witness told local media that armed fighters responded by firing towards the helicopters.

    The armed group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, had earlier said Israeli drones were behind the attack a day earlier that killed four of their fighters. It accused the Egyptian army of co-ordinating the attack with the Israelis.

    Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, says that his country will not let ‘rumors and speculation’ harm the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

    A funeral was held for the fighters on Saturday, with the bodies of the four driven through several border towns in Sinai.

    Dozens of men on pick-up trucks flying their black flag paraded through the towns, in an act of defiance to the army, witnesses said.

    “Our heroes became martyrs during their jihadi duties against the Jews in a rocket attack on occupied lands,” Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis said on its website.

    Aljazeera

  • 2 Arrested in Kigali with Stolen Electronics

    {{Police in the City of Kigali has recovered various sorts of electronics stolen in different parts of the city and arrested two people in connection with the act.}}

    Those apprehended are identified as Jean de Dieu Bizumuremyi and Murwanashyaka. They were caught red-handed on August 7 in Muhima sector, Nyarugenge district with eleven mobile handsets, one home theatre, a laptop, a computer monitor and two SPUs.

    Police in Nyarugenge said attained names of other people said to be working with the duo to break into houses and cars, where some of these electronics are stolen.

    The District Police Commander, Chief Supt. Dismas Rutaganira said despite such arrests, theft related crimes are on the decrease.

    “Most of the gangs have been dismantled and some arrested. We are moving closer to others that could still be involved, not only in theft but also in other crimes like drug abuse,” he said.

    RNP

  • Malians Prefer Former PM as Favorite for President

    {{Mali’s former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was the favorite to win a presidential election on Sunday that Malians hope will restore stability in a country torn apart by last year’s coup and Islamist insurgency.}}

    The winner of the run-off ballot will oversee more than $4 billion in foreign aid promised to rebuild the West African nation, after France sent thousands of troops in January to break the grip of al Qaeda-linked rebels over its desert north.

    He must also tackle deep-rooted corruption and forge a lasting peace with northern Tuaregs after decades of sporadic uprisings, issues that combined to trigger the ousting of former President Amadou Toumani Toure in a March 2012 coup and allowed Islamists to seize the northern two-thirds of Mali.

    Braving a heavy downpour, dozens of voters lined up in front of the Mamadou Guindo school in the riverside capital Bamako’s Badalabougou district to wait for the polling station to open.

    “It’s my duty to vote,” said 25-year-old student Moussa Sidibe, the first to cast a ballot when voting began at 8 a.m. (0800 GMT).

    “I am hoping that the new president will make the problems of education, youth employment and healthcare a priority,” he said.

    Voting is taking place at some 21,000 polling stations across the landlocked nation from the forested south, home to some 90 percent of Mali’s 16 million people, to the northern cities of Timbuktu and Gao, where Islamists imposed sharia law.

    Keita is the frontrunner after winning nearly 40 percent of the July 28 first-round vote with pledges to impose order and restore the honor of the once-proud nation, which had been regarded as a bulwark of stability in a turbulent region.

    Twenty-two of the 25 losing first-round candidates have since thrown their weight behind Keita, 68, known as IBK, a man who earned a reputation for firmness in crushing student protests and strikes when he was prime minister in the 1990s.

    His rival Soumaila Cisse, 63, a technocrat from northern Mali who headed the West African monetary union (UEMOA), took 19 percent of the first-round vote with pledges to improve education, create jobs and reform the army.

    Despite being Africa’s No. 3 gold producer, Mali – twice the size of France – is one of the world’s poorest and least developed nations.

    “I will vote for IBK,” said Tidjane Sylla, 28, a trader in the main market in Bamako, which is a stronghold of support for Keita. “He is a man of his word. When he says no, it means no.”

    {agencies}

  • U.S. says Iraq Ramadan attackers are ‘enemies of Islam’

    {{The United States has condemned the latest bombings in Baghdad which killed dozens of people, saying attackers who targeted civilians during celebrations marking the end of Ramadan were “enemies of Islam”.}}

    Car bombs ripped through markets, shopping streets and parks late on Saturday as Iraqis were out celebrating Eid, the end of the Muslim fasting month, killing 57 and wounding more than 150.

    Eighteen months since the last U.S. troops withdrew, Sunni Islamist militants have been regaining momentum in their insurgency against Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government.

    The civil war in neighboring Syria has aggravated sectarian tensions further and Iraq’s Interior Ministry has said it is facing an “open war”.

    “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attacks today in Baghdad,” the State Department said in a statement.

    “The terrorists who committed these acts are enemies of Islam and a shared enemy of the United States, Iraq, and the international community,” it said.

    It said the United States would work closely with the Iraqi government to confront al Qaeda and discuss this during a visit of Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari next week to Washington.

    This has been one of the deadliest Ramadan months in years, with bomb attacks killing scores of people. The latest bombings were similar to attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday in which 50 died.

    More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in July, the highest monthly death toll since 2008, according to the United Nations.

    Elsewhere in Iraq on Saturday, similar explosions hit bustling streets and a mosque. The attacks targeted mainly Shi’ite districts and the renewed violence has raised fears Iraq could relapse into the severe sectarian bloodshed of 2006-2007.

    “This carnage reflects the inhuman character of its perpetrators,” United Nations envoy to Iraq Gyorgy Busztin said in a statement.

    “All honest Iraqis should unite to put an end to this murderous violence that aims to push the country into sectarian strife,” he said.

    The State Department said Saturday’s attacks bore the signs of al Qaeda’s Iraqi (AQI) branch. It reiterated a $10 million reward for information leading to the killing or capture of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the AQI leader.

    Last month al Qaeda claimed responsibility for simultaneous raids on two Iraqi prisons and said more than 500 inmates had escaped in the operation, one of its most brazen in Iraq.

    The reward for Baghdadi is second only to information leading to Ayman al-Zawahri, the chief of al Qaeda’s network, the State Department said.

    {reuters}

  • Bibi and Kagame: Conversations with Leaders Whose People Faced Genocide

    {{Having sat with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda in the same week, there is an immediate symmetry one sees between both men. They have the weight of the world upon them. }}

    These are not mere politicians who ran for office but fighting men who, in the case of Netanyahu, served in Israel’s elite anti-terror unit and, in Kagame’s case, served as commander in chief of the RPF liberating force that stopped the 1994 genocide.

    Both leaders are consciously aware that they head nations who recently experienced mass slaughter on an unprecedented scale. Both are fearful that it can happen again. Both are determined, however much criticism is heaped upon them, to prevent their nations from a repeat experience of mass extermination.

    In the case of Netanyahu the words “Iran” are forever on his lips. Bibi is keenly aware that six million Jews died in the Holocaust and that there are currently six million Jews living in Israel. The creation of the Jewish state was supposed to be a bulwark against another Holocaust.

    But the literal fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of ‘the ingathering of exiles’ has also made it easier to annihilate the Jews as they now congregate in one small land. A single nuclear flash could accomplish in seconds what it took Hitler years to accomplish. Netanyahu wants to impress this point upon each of his visitors.

    The mullahs of Iran, who slaughtered their own people in the streets in the failed freedom demonstrations of the summer of 2009, saber-rattle every day that they will exterminate Israel and even Iran’s new president just referred to Israel as a scab that must be removed. And they are building the bombs to do it.

    Kagame is intent on the world knowing that the Hutu militias who slaughtered nearly one million Rwandans in 1994 are at his doorstep in Eastern Congo. The FDLR, with whom he is being pushed to negotiate, are the literal and ideological descendants of the genocidaires.

    A soft-spoken and profoundly gentle man, Kagame seems frustrated that the world does not understand his country’s unique security needs. He has the build of Abraham Lincoln, tall and lithe. He leans forward in his chair and says movingly, “It makes me mad. When I think that about what was done to my people and how Rwanda is misunderstood for protecting itself.

    But I can’t afford to be mad. I have too many responsibilities to my people, too many things my country depend on me for.” He makes reference to the anger harbored by all the survivors who watched mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and children hacked to death before their eyes. “For their sake, I can’t afford to be angry.”

    In my meeting with Dr. Oz, who was my guest in Israel, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Israeli leader employed a great deal of humor and had the doctor and our respective families, who joined us after an hour’s conversation, laughing out loud.

    But it was a different kind of humor than what I recall when he was our guest on multiple occasions in Oxford in his thirties and forties.

    Back then he was deputy foreign minister and was responsible for being Israel’s principal spokesman to the world. Today he has to make sure that another Holocaust does not happen on his watch. The enormity of the responsibility is unfathomable and I found it expressed in his every gesture.

    Kagame faces a different set of circumstances. After leading the forces that ended the genocide by capturing the country in just three months in 1994, he inherited the most broken nation on earth. He had to build every institution from the ground up.

    The country bares his personal imprimatur in nearly every way. A personal stickler for cleanliness, he has made Rwanda the cleanest country on earth. Litter here is virtually non-existent.

    A self-made man, he eschews foreign aid and wants Rwanda to ultimately be weaned off foreign assistance. He created the Rwandan Development Board where companies can be registered in just six hours, cutting through what would normally be a month of government regulation and red tape.

    And at heart a military man considered to be one of the great military strategists alive today, he has insisted that Rwanda have one of the strongest armies in Africa so that no one can slaughter his people again.

    Like any public figure, both men care about their reputations and their country’s reputations and both men are profoundly aware of their many critics. Bibi, with his Adonis good looks and sparkling oratorical skills, knows what it’s like to be adulated and knows now what it’s like to be hated.

    He is portrayed as intransigent and stubborn. But he’ll risk the opprobrium of The New York Times editorial board if that’s what it takes to keep his people alive.

    As the only living man to have stopped a genocide Kagame also knows adulation. He has been given countless honorary degrees and many of the world’s most prestigious awards. But he has been pummeled in some quarters of late about refusing to let up the fight against the FDLR genocide brigade.

    The world sees them by now as small and weak compared to Rwanda’s impressive army. But one can perhaps best sum up Kagame’s approach with the immortal words expressed by baseball legend Yogi Berra: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

    Kagame and I discuss why some who understand the nightmare Rwanda went through have now become critics, telling the President to come out of the trenches and stop fighting a war that he has already won. I tell him because our world is accustomed to excusing, rather than hating evil.

    They’re humiliated, we hear, they’re displaced. If you just talk to them – as Israel is so often pressured – you can find common ground. Appeal to the good in them. They’re still some innocence in them. We look to end the grievances of terrorist organizations rather than accepting that some have gone irreversibly over to the dark side.

    The truth, of course, is that mass murderers are no longer human. They have erased the image of God from their countenance.

    Kagame recently met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem where he was attending the 90th birthday celebrations for Israeli President Shimon Peres and Rwanda will be opening an embassy in Israel imminently.

    The announcement was made in a press conference I held with Rwanda’s outstanding foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo last October (one of the Kagame’s unique characteristics is to recognize the talent of exceptional women and promote them to high positions in his government).

    The destinies of the Jewish and Rwandan people are connected not just in their having both experienced two of the most horrible mass crimes in human history but in their respective leaders commitment to ensure that “Never Again” never happens again.

    {JerusalemPost}

  • Rwanda Examining DRC’s Request for M23 rebels

    {{Rwandan is examining extradition requests for four former senior M23 rebels wanted by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said on Thursday.}}

    “The ministry of Justice is examining the requests,” she said.

    On July 25, Kinshasa issued three arrest orders for four former M23 rebels who fled to Rwanda in mid- March following a split in the group.

    The extradition request targets Jean-Marie Runiga, M23’s former political chief, Colonel Baudouin Ngaruye, who according to Kinshasa is a self-proclaimed M23 brigadier general, and two other senior rebels Lieutenant-colonel Eric Badege and Colonel Innocent Zimurinda.

    The M23 is composed mainly of former Congolese Tutsi rebels who were integrated into the DRC army in late 2009 but then mutinied in 2012.

    The group has been active in DR Congo’s troubled eastern province of North Kivu for a year and a half.

    In February, the group split into two different factions, one loyal to a commander, Sultani Makenga, and the other loyal to political leader Runiga.

    This split resulted in fierce fighting that sent some 700 men from Runiga’s faction crossing into Rwanda to seek refuge.

    {agencies}

  • Ki-Moon, S.Sudan’s Kiir Discuss New Cabinet

    {{United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon on Tuesday phoned South Sudan president, Gen. Salva Kiir to discuss the latter’s recently formed cabinet.}}

    Kiir put in place a lean cabinet, comprising only 33 ministers from 58, a week after he dissolved his entire government.

    The UN chief, in a telephone message, reportedly informed the South Sudan leader how he closely monitored the situation in the young nation, saying he was pleased about the calm that prevailed.

    The world body, its secretary general pledged, will closely work with the new nation’s government, including the new cabinet, most of whose members were approved by parliament this week.

    Ki-Moon, however, expressed concerns about the situation in the country largest state of Jonglei, and called on the president’s government, including the national army (SPLA), to ensure protection of civilians.

    He specifically reminded the South Sudan leader regarding an earlier commitment he made to ensure accountability for any abuses committed by the SPLA.

    Meanwhile, the UN chief lauded the government of Sudan’s decision to postpone the deadline of shutting down the oil flow from South Sudan until 21 August.

    He further assured the South Sudan leader, during their telephone conversation, of his support for the latter’s efforts to bring economic, social prosperity and political stability to the two-year old country.

    {Sudantribune}

  • Kenya to Build New 2.5million Capacity Terminal

    {{The Kenyan government is set to build a new temporary terminal with a capacity of 2.5 million passengers.}}

    President Uhuru Kenyatta who visited the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on Friday evening said the new terminal will be ready in coming weeks.

    “We also intend to do a full refurbishment of Terminals 1, 2 and 3 once our new temporary terminal is ready,” he revealed.

    The president said that Terminal 4 that is currently under construction will come on stream earlier than the projected March 4 2014.

    “Passengers are coming in and going out, as it ought to be. They are not as comfortable as we’d like them to be, but we are working on that,” he said.

    To enhance passenger comfort, the President offered the use of the Presidential pavilion to boost operations of the airport.

    He said that Airport capacity is up to about 70 per cent while safety and security have significantly been enhanced.

    The President spoke JKIA after inspecting progress made towards returning the airport to normal operations.

    The airport resumed operations to all traffic at midnight Thursday.

    He said the cost of loss experienced during the incident has not been quantified.
    The government has also overhauled national disaster services, creating one coordinating agency to take charge during such incidences.

    “We have received massive support, including financial, security equipment and others, from lending institutions and friendly governments to get this important regional hub back to full operations, and we are grateful to them,” he said.