IGIHE

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  • Kenya Denies Plans to Criminalise Jigger Infestation

    {{Sources from Kenya claim the government intends to criminalise Jigger Infestation , however, the countrys Ministry of Health has condemned such plans by any county government.}}

    Chief Public Health Officer, Dr Kepha Ombacho also said the ministry would carry out a base line survey in the country to determine the cause of jiggers in areas previously not affected.

    He said poverty was the major cause of jigger infestation, but added personal hygiene was a sure way of fighting the vermin.

    Murang’a County Deputy Governor Gakure Monyo came under attack after he said dire actions would be taken against those found with jiggers once a law is in place.

    While disputing that jiggers were as a result of a curse or poverty in the county, Mr Monyo said the major cause of the vermin was lack of sanitation.

    “We will ensure that laws against jiggers are put in place and passed in the County Assembly soon and anybody found with jiggers will be forced to remove them,” he said.
    Dr Ombacho said currently, about 12,000 people had been ravaged by the vermin in the country.

    Over 200 school children were given shoes during an anti-jigger campaign .

    “We are in the process of conducting the second scientific household survey to document the new and alarming transmission to areas not previously considered jigger endemic areas like Busia and Nyanza counties,” said Dr Ombacho.

  • Troubled Madagascar Jails Presidential Candidate

    {{A Madagascar court has jailed a presidential candidate ahead of a troubled lead up to elections tentatively set for August and hoped to restore constitutional rule.}}

    Mr Laza Razafiarison, a former World Bank analyst, was arrested by the police in Antananarivo on Tuesday morning,

    He appeared in court Wednesday on a charge of holding an unauthorised rally in the capital, which police broke up with tear gas.

    The court ordered his detention at the Antanimora prison for public disorder, alongside seven others.

    Other presidential candidates have been banned from visiting him.

    Mr Razafiarison, an underdog, is one of the 41 candidates hoping to become the next leader of the island’s 22 million people.

    He has called for the immediate departure of President Andry Rajoelina, saying this would unlock the country’s prevailing political crisis.

    The candidate also called for immediate elections, accusing the president of deliberately extending the crisis, sparked by a military-backed coup in 2009.

    “I’m not fighting for a post in the transitional government, I’m advocating to save Madagascar. That’s my mission,” Mr Razafiarison told media

  • Jaguar Bus Kills Teenager in Matimba

    {{A teenager has been knocked dead by a speeding Jaguar Bus (Reg. UAN 968P) travelling to Uganda along the Kagitumba Highway.}}

    Eye witnesses said the speeding bus failed to negotiate a sharp bend at Kanyonza area in Matimba sector.

    A passenger onboard told IGIHE that the accident happened at 8:00AM saying it was overspeeding and as it negotiated a sharp bend at Kanyonza center, it knocked dead a pedestrian.

    However, the bus was not damaged in the process.

    Another bus was sent from Jaguar offices in Kigali to ferry the stranded passengers to Uganda.

    The accident victim has been identified as Jonas Kubwayo aged 17.

    The Executive Secretary of Matimba sector, Ruboneka Siliveri told IGIHE that the bus driver has been detained at Matimba Police station to pave way for investigations.

  • Togo Votes in Long-Delayed Elections

    {{People in Togo are going to the polls in long-delayed parliamentary elections.

    The vote is seen as an indication of what will happen in the presidential elections next year.}}

    Experts say it could expose weaknesses in the grip of the Gnassingbe family. which has ruled the West African country for more than four decades.

    Opposition groups have held mass protests over the government’s last-minute changes to the electoral code.

    They say constituency boundaries were manipulated to benefit the ruling party.

    Angry demonstrations caused the parliamentary vote to be postponed from October 2012.

    {{Fires}}

    The polls have been rescheduled twice since then, as mediators struggled to bring government and opposition into agreement.

    President Faure Gnassingbe took power in 2005 following the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled Togo for 38 years. He was re-elected in 2010, though there was deadly street violence in the run-up to the poll and complaints of vote rigging.

    Veteran opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio has joined Mr Gnassingbe in a government of national unity and says Togo is now in a “democratic system”.

    He is the son of Togo’s first President, Sylvanus Olympio, who was assassinated in 1963, four years before Mr Eyadema seized power.

    Two opposition blocs, the Rainbow Coalition and the Let’s Save Togo Movement, are running against President Gnassingbe’s Unir (Unite) party.

    A total of 1,174 candidates are standing in Thursday’s elections, with 159 women among them.

    Tensions in the run up to the elections have been raised by a number of mysterious fires. The opposition has accused the government of using the fires as a pretext to arrest its activists.

    Togo is among the world’s poorest countries. Its last parliamentary elections in 2007 were deemed by international observers to be relatively fair.

    BBC

  • Chiwoniso Maraire: Zimbabwe singer dies, 37

    {{One of Zimbabwe’s best known singers, Chiwoniso Maraire, has died aged 37, her manager says.}}

    Chiwoniso’s album Ancient Voices made her a star of the World Music scene in the 1990s.

    She played the mbira, or thumb piano, which only men were traditionally supposed to play in Zimbabwe.

    She died of suspected pneumonia, just a year after the death of her ex-husband, Andy Brown, also a prominent musician. The pair leave two children.

    Chiwoniso was the daughter of renowned Zimbabwean mbira player Dumisani Maraire, who taught at the University of Zimbabwe.

    The BBC’s Brian Hungwe in the capital, Harare, says Zimbabweans are shocked at the news of her death.

    She not only broke a taboo by playing the mbira, she also successfully fused the traditional sound with modern instruments.

    She was born in the US in 1976, before moving back to Zimbabwe at the age of seven.

    “She has been in hospital for the past 10 days suffering from chest pains,” her manager, Cosmas Zamangwe, told Zimbabwe’s state-owned Herald newspaper.

    “We are however still to ascertain the disease she was suffering from but we suspect it is pneumonia.”

    BBC

  • Pope Francis Attacks Drug Legalisation

    {{Pope Francis has criticised drug legalisation plans in Latin America during the inauguration of a clinic for drug addicts in Rio de Janeiro.}}

    The roots of drug abuse should be tackled, he said on the third day of his visit to Brazil.

    Uruguay is close to allowing the legal sale of marijuana, with other countries pondering similar liberalisation.

    Earlier, the Argentine-born pontiff celebrated the first Mass of his trip, at the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida.

    He warned tens of thousands of faithful against the “passing idols” of money, power and pleasure.

    After the visit to Aparecida, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, the pope flew back to Rio de Janeiro.

    At the inauguration of a drug rehabilitation clinic at the Sao Francisco hospital, he hugged former addicts and heard their stories.

    {wirestory}

  • Russia: Detentions Intensify Fears Over Gay Rights

    {{After four Dutch citizens were detained in Murmansk last weekend for “homosexual propaganda” amid repeated calls by activists for a boycott of the upcoming Olympic Games, concerns are mounting over the impact Russia’s recently passed “gay propaganda” law may have on this winter’s games in Sochi — for tourists, athletes and for Russia’s reputation abroad.}}

    The strongest call for a boycott in recent days came from prominent U.S. playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein, who in an op-ed for The New York Times on Monday compared Russia to Nazi Germany.

    If the international community does not put pressure on Russia over the law, he said, the consequences could be the same as the Holocaust.

    The law, which stipulates fines of 4,000 rubles to one million rubles ($124 to $31,000) for promoting homosexuality among minors, was signed by President Vladimir Putin in late June, and it has been provoking a wave of criticism from Western politicians and international human rights groups ever since then.

    Fierstein’s comments were republished and quoted by various Western media sources, as well as by many gay rights activists in response to the news on Tuesday that four Dutch tourists had been detained for shooting a documentary on gay rights in Russia.

    After a hearing was adjourned on Monday, the Federal Migration Service banned the four Dutch tourists from coming to Russia for three years, saying they violated the law by participating in the Youth Human Rights Camp in the Murmansk region, where they interviewed a 17-year-old boy about homosexual relationships.

    That was the first time the law was applied to foreigners, leading to fears that tourists in Russia could be detained for actions they may not consider to be “gay propaganda” in their own country.

    Fierstein warned that anybody police suspected of being gay could be detained.

    “Just six months before Russia hosts the 2014 Winter Games, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing police officers to arrest tourists and foreign nationals they suspect of being homosexual, lesbian or ‘pro-gay’ and detain them for up to 14 days. … The law could mean that any Olympic athlete, trainer, reporter, family member or fan who is gay — or suspected of being gay, or just accused of being gay — can go to jail,” he wrote.

    Judging by the wording of the law, however, Fierstein’s fears may be unwarranted, as homosexual propaganda is described as “spreading information aimed at shaping non-traditional sexual behavior, promoting the attractiveness of nontraditional relations, distorting understanding of social equivalency of traditional and nontraditional sexual behavior, imposing information about nontraditional sexual relations, provoking interest in such relations.”

    Although the law uses rather vague wording, it makes clear that homosexual propaganda is defined as a deliberate spreading of information, meaning if a gay tourist comes to Russia and does not plan to spread information in support of the gay lifestyle, the law restricting homosexual propaganda would not apply.

    Human rights activists say it is unclear how much leeway authorities have in applying the law, however, and that any leeway is too much.

    Several Western countries have warned gay travelers to be cautious if traveling to Russia.

    The U.S. State Department has issued a warning saying there was widespread discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in Russia and that gay individuals might be subject to harassment, threats, or violence.

    A Canadian travel agency also warned gay tourists about the possible dangers of traveling to Russia.

    “For Canadians — where same-sex marriage is legal — it is unfathomable that Russia’s laws permit the government to arrest and detain gay, or pro-gay, foreigners for up to 14 days before they would then be expelled from the country,” the Canadian Travel and Escape agency said in an article published on its website.

    The agency asked what many others are thinking: “And how are these new laws going to impact tourism and the world’s spotlight on the upcoming 2014 Winter Games in Sochi? Will LGBT visitors — or anyone who embraces the gay community — want to visit the games?”

    The Canadian Foreign Ministry also issued a statement, saying that homosexuals and their supporters can be targets of violence, perhaps a reference to the killing of a 23-year-old gay man in the southern city of Volgograd in May — a killing that investigators say was prompted by the man coming out to his friends as gay.

    The Australian Olympic Committee told athletes that Australian officials could not guarantee gay athletes traveling to Sochi protection from persecution or arrest, though the IOC charter would act as a safeguard for athletes, The Australian reported Wednesday.

    Boris O. Dittrich, Advocacy Director of the LGBT Rights Program run by Human Rights Watch, wrote a letter to the International Olympic Committee in June, asking the committee to put pressure on Russia so that it would withdraw the anti-gay legislation, since the law was “incompatible with the Olympic Charter’s promotion of human dignity.”

    The International Olympic Committee issued a statement in response in which it said it would ensure that “the Games take place without discrimination against athletes, officials, spectators or the media.”

    But according to Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, such calls for an Olympic boycott have the larger goal of fueling international scrutiny.

    “These calls are being made to draw the attention of the leaders of Western states [to the issue], not the athletes,” Shevtsova said.

    “In such a way, world leaders are being encouraged to ignore the Sochi Olympics just like they ignored the UEFA Euro 2012 in Ukraine to show their dissatisfaction with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko’s conviction.”

    Shevtsova said that the anti-gay legislation was just one development damaging Russia’s reputation abroad and that other issues include the conviction of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the law requiring NGOs that receive foreign funding and engage in political activity to register as “foreign agents.”

    As for whether or not a boycott was actually feasible, however, Shevtsova was skeptical, saying it was unlikely that Western leaders would ignore the Sochi Games, since Russia plays an important role in international institutions, including the U.N. Security Council.

    Igor Reichlin, head of Reichlin & Partners, a company specializing in reputation management, said that even if there were a boycott, it probably would not have its intended effect.

    “The calls to boycott may influence some people’s decision not to come to the Olympics, and even if some countries decided to boycott, it wouldn’t be a great tragedy, because from time to time some countries boycott the Games in other countries as well,” Reichlin said.

    As for gay tourists hoping to attend the games, Reichlin said the main thing was that they be informed of the gay propaganda law.

    “Gays definitely don’t correspond to the values and norms set by Russian authorities, but that doesn’t mean that when they come to Russia they must comply with Russian values, they should just be informed [by their governments] that within Russia’s political system they may be outlawed,” he said.

    Both analysts agreed that it was impossible for Russia to change the attitude of Western states in the months leading up to the Olympics, regardless of the PR strategies used, because the question of Russia’s image really boils down to political differences.

    In what was perhaps a strange coincidence, however, the Russian government issued a statement on Wednesday saying that the budget funds allocated to promote Russia’s image abroad would be increased significantly in the near future.

    But the image makeover Russia needs may require much more than budget allocations, analysts say.

    “In order to change Russia’s image, Navalny must be acquitted, the Russian government must apologize for its crackdown on NGOs and democracy must be established in this country,” Shevtsova said.

    The Moscow Times

  • China to Invest $277 Billion to Curb Air Pollution

    {{China plans to invest 1.7 trillion yuan ($277 billion) to combat air pollution over the next five years, state media said on Thursday, underscoring the new government’s concerns about addressing a key source of social discontent.}}

    The money is to be spent primarily in regions that have heavy air pollution and high levels of PM 2.5, the state-run China Daily newspaper quoted Wang Jinnan, vice-president of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning as saying. Wang helped draft the plan.

    Tiny floating particles, measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, are especially hazardous because they can settle in the lungs and cause respiratory problems and other illnesses.

    The new plan specifically targets northern China, particularly Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, where air pollution is especially serious, the newspaper said.

    The government plans to reduce air emissions by 25 percent by 2017 compared with 2012 levels in those areas, according to the report.

    “The thick smog and haze that covered large areas of the country in January has focused public attention on this issue,” Zhao Hualin, a senior official at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told the newspaper.

    China’s State Council, its cabinet, approved the plan in June, Zhao said.

    The newspaper said it was China’s “most comprehensive and toughest plan to control and in some regions reduce air pollution by the year 2017”.

    The government plans to issue two more plans to address water pollution and improvements to the rural environment over the next five years, the report said.

    In December 2012, China said it would spend 350 billion yuan ($56 billion) by 2015 to curb air pollution in major cities. The newspaper quoted Chai Fahe, vice-president of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, as saying that China’s leaders realized, after releasing the plan in 2012, that a tougher approach against air pollution was needed.

    Smog over northern cities in January generated widespread public anger as did the discovery of the rotting corpses of thousands of pigs in March in a river that supplies Shanghai’s water.

    Social unrest over environmental complaints is becoming common across China, to the government’s alarm. Authorities have tried to assuage anger with measures that included empowering courts to mete out the death penalty in serious pollution cases.

    But results have been mixed. Enforcement has been a problem at the local level, where governments often rely on tax receipts from polluting industries under their jurisdiction.

    {wirestory}

  • Hezbollah says EU Invites Israel Attack on Lebanon

    {{Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday the European Union had given Israel justification to attack Lebanon by blacklisting the armed wing of his group, and would bear responsibility for any Israeli military action.}}

    The bloc agreed earlier this week to list what it described as the military wing of the Lebanon-based militant group as a terrorist organization, in response to a deadly bus bombing in Bulgaria last year and Hezbollah’s role in Syria’s civil war.

    “These countries must know … that they have given legal cover to Israel for any aggression against Lebanon. Why? Because Israel can then say ‘We are waging war on terrorism’,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

    “These countries have made themselves a full partner in responsibility for any Israeli aggression against Lebanon,” he said in the speech delivered by video link from an undisclosed location.

    Nasrallah has been living in hiding, for fear of assassination, since his Shi’ite Muslim group fought an inconclusive month-long war with Israel in 2006, triggered by Hezbollah’s cross-border attack on an Israeli frontier patrol.

    He said the EU move would have no practical effect on Hezbollah itself, laughing off the impact of any travel ban and dismissing any attempt to freeze Hezbollah funds.

    Hezbollah, he said, had no money in banks – “neither as a party nor as individuals” – and no trade interests, investments or companies in Lebanon or abroad that could be affected by such measures.

    “The aim of this decision is to subdue us, force us to retreat … to fear. But I say to you that through this decision you will achieve only failure and disappointment,” he said.

    “Anyone who thinks that a resistance group that confronted the strongest army in the region for 33 days … would submit to a stupid decision is delusional and ignorant.”

    Hezbollah denies any involvement in last July’s attack in Bulgaria, in which five Israelis and their driver died, and says the European Union surrendered to U.S. and Israeli pressure. The Bulgarian interior minister said last week Sofia had no doubt the group was behind the attack.

    In support of its bid to impose sanctions, Britain also cited a four-year jail sentence handed down by a Cypriot court in March to a Hezbollah member accused of plotting to attack Israeli interests on the island.

    Hezbollah has a dozen members of parliament and two ministers in Lebanon’s caretaker cabinet, as well as thousands of armed fighters. But it says it is a unified movement and makes no distinction between military or political wings.

    EU diplomats have not specified which elements of Hezbollah would be targeted by the decision, nor whether Nasrallah himself is considered part of Hezbollah’s military or political operations.

    {agencies}

  • 77 Dead in Spain Train Crash

    {{A train derailed outside the ancient northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday evening, killing at least 77 people and injuring up to 131 in one of Europe’s worst rail disasters.}}

    Bodies covered in blankets lay next to the overturned carriages as smoke billowed from the wreckage. Firefighters clambered over the twisted metal trying to get survivors out of the windows, while ambulances and fire engines surrounded the scene.

    The government said it was working on the assumption the derailment, which occurred on the eve of the city’s main religious festival, was an accident.

    Sabotage or attack was unlikely to be involved, an official source said, though the devastation will have stirred memories of a train bombing in Madrid in 2004, carried out by Islamist extremists, that killed 191 people.

    The source said speeding may be the cause of the derailment.

    The Santiago de Compostela train operated by state rail company Renfe with 247 people on board derailed as the city prepared for the festival of Saint James, when thousands of Christian pilgrims from across the world pack the streets.

    The city’s tourism board said all festivities, including the traditional High Mass at the centuries-old cathedral, were cancelled as the city went into mourning following the crash.

    “It was going so quickly. … It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the wagons piled up one on top of the other,” passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station.

    “A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning. … I was in the second wagon and there was fire. … I saw corpses,” he added.

    Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, will visit the site on Thursday morning, his spokeswoman said.

    “In the face of a tragedy such as just happened in Santiago de Compostela on the eve of its big day, I can only express my deepest sympathy as a Spaniard and a Galician,” Rajoy said in a statement.

    reuters