IGIHE

Author: IGIHE

  • Iraq: Dozens killed in wave of suicide car bomb attacks

    {Suicide bombers kill more than 50 people in separate attacks in Baghdad and Basra, police say.}

    More than 50 people have been killed in a string of suicide car bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, and the southern province of Basra, police have told Al Jazeera.

    At least 33 people were killed on Friday in two separate blasts at checkpoints on a highway near oilfields in Basra, according to police.

    The first explosion took place at the Rumeila checkpoint, and the second around one kilometre away at another checkpoint called al-Sadra.

    Iraq’s South Oil Company said there was no disruption to operations but oil police were put on maximum alert in response to the attack, officials told the Reuters news agency.

    Baghdad attacks

    Separately, two more attacks late on Friday killed at least 19 people, including security forces, and wounded 25 others in southern Baghdad.

    Police sources said a suicide car bomber detonated explosives at the entrance of a checkpoint, just as another attacker blew himself up near a police station located about a 100 metres away.

    The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group claimed responsibility for the Baghdad attacks.

    ISIL is under assault in both Iraq – in the country’s second city of Mosul – and in neighbouring Syria.

    The armed group took vast swaths of Iraqi territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014.

    Iraqi government forces backed by a US-led international coalition have since retaken many cities, including Tikrit and Fallujah.

    But as ISIL has lost ground in Iraq, it has also retained the ability to stage regular attacks in areas it does not control.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Libya death toll ‘rises to 140’ at Brak El-Shati airbase

    {Reports suggest as many as 140 people, including civilians, may have died in an attack on an airbase in Libya.}

    It was originally thought 60 people died when a government-allied militia tried to take over the Brak al-Shati base on Thursday.

    The UN-backed government’s defence minister and the commander of the militia have both been suspended pending an investigation.

    The prime minister’s office has denied ordering the attack.

    A militia spokesman said they had “liberated the base and destroyed all the forces inside”.

    The town’s mayor said some aircraft had been set ablaze.

    Most of the dead were soldiers of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), an alliance in the east of the country which does not recognise the government in the capital, Tripoli. That force has been in control of the airbase since December.

    Its spokesman gave the new death toll of 140.

    “The soldiers were returning from a military parade. They weren’t armed. Most of them were executed,” he said.

    The UN’s envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, said he was “outraged” by reports of summary executions.

    The attack breached an informal truce between the rival forces that was reached earlier this month when the LNA’s commander, General Khalifa Haftar, met the UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.

    The Tripoli government has set up an investigative committee to present its findings to the prime minister within 15 days.

    Many of those killed were from the Libyan National Army, seen in action in this file photo

    Source:BBC

  • 70 prisoners flee in second DR Congo jail break

    {Dozens of prisoners escaped from a jail in Democratic Republic of Congo early Friday, less than 48 hours after rebels attacked Kinshasa’s main prison, freeing their leader and 50 others.}

    “Among the 74 prisoners housed in the dilapidated prison in Kasangulu, 68 escaped,” local lawmaker Jean-Claude Vuemba told AFP, saying the breakout occurred at around 1:00 am.

    The town lies about 40 kilometres southwest of the capital Kinshasa in the Kongo Central province.

    Ten of the escaped prisoners were quickly “recaptured,” said Vuemba who criticised the inmates’ living conditions as deplorable.

    A local human rights activist who visited the prison on Friday said she had seen only four people there, two of them women.

    It was not immediately clear how the prisoners escaped, with police saying investigators had been dispatched from Kinshasa.

    The incident occurred just two days after rebels from an outlawed political-religious group attacked Kinshasa’s central prison.

    The pre-dawn attack was carried out by followers of Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK), a secessionist rebel group that rejects Kinshasa’s authority and wants to set up a parallel state in the west of the country.

    Government sources said at least eight people died during exchanges of gunfire in the assault to free Ne Muanda Nsemi, an MP who is the spiritual leader of the BDK — a group based in Kongo Central.

    Nsemi was arrested in early March following a violent two-week siege of his home. The government has blamed his followers for a string of violent attacks since the start of the year.

    By Wednesday evening, more than 4,000 of the 8,000 prisoners held in Makala prison were still missing, while 86 escapees had been returned, prisoner sources said.

    There was no immediate suggestion the two jail breaks were related.

    Source:AFP

  • Why Uhuru reached out to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin

    {President Uhuru Kenyatta is completing five years in office by reaching out to two of the world’s most influential countries in the East, just as he did at the beginning of his term.}

    On his tour of Beijing this week for the Belt and Road Forum, the President also met with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the first face-to-face meeting between these two leaders.

    The meeting, in an exclusive room at the Lanqi Lake Convention Centre on the northern outskirts of Chinese capital happened on the sidelines of the Roundtable Summit of the forum, where 28 leaders from across the world had been invited to Beijing to talk about trade connectivity.

    Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed said this signalled the start of what could be renewed engagements with Russia, an influential country in the United Nations. “We attended a meeting where there were these other countries participating and the issues that we raised drew lots of interest from some of these countries.”

    {{Going East }}

    “They (Kenyatta and Putin) had a discussion and I had a discussion with my counterpart (Sergei Lavrov). I invited Mr Lavrov to come to Kenya and he said he is going to look at it and give a response very soon,” said Ms Mohamed in a briefing to journalists.

    China and Russia were the earliest countries President Kenyatta visited in his first year in office. At the time, State House said it was “seeking new markets” especially after a series of travel advisories by the West which has traditionally been Kenya’s largest source of tourists.

    With China, Kenya has made pledges worth more than $5 billion in various projects. In the last ten years, China has signed agreements directly amounting to Sh47 billion worth of projects such as the Standard Gauge Railway, roads, power plants, ports and housing contracts.

    {{G7 Summit }}

    The situation has changed since 2013, most of the advisories have been lifted and the President no longer carries the burden of the International Criminal Court which foreign relations experts thought had influenced his choice of the East.

    In fact next week, President Kenyatta is due to attend the annual summit of the Group of Seven (G7) in Rome, Italy on the invitation of the group.

    The G7 represents the world’s industrialised democracies US, Canada, France, UK, Germany, Italy and Japan and meets annually to discuss economic governance, security, and energy policies.

    But it appears Kenya’s drive to reach out to Russia is still unfettered. Ms Mohamed wouldn’t divulge the agenda of the leaders’ discussions promising to brief journalists later on the matter. But President Kenyatta has often said his foreign policy is inspired by economic diplomacy.

    {{Underutilised }}

    Though they have enjoyed diplomatic relations since Kenya’s independence, Nairobi and Moscow’s relations remain underutilised, according to Russian Senate Speaker Valentina Matviyenko who visited Nairobi in October 2015.

    In 2016, Russia exports to Kenya were worth $130.36 million, a drop of about 19 per cent from 2015 figures; mainly steel, rubber, chemicals, solar panels, and small quantities of consumer goods, according to the Federal Customs Service of Russia. Kenya, on the other hand, exported

    goods worth $137.5 million mainly tea, coffee and flowers. Russia is the only country among the five Permanent Members of the UN which Kenya enjoys a favourable trade deficit.

    When the Russian Senate Speaker visited Nairobi, President Kenyatta lamented that trade between these two countries remains low because they use third parties. While top firms in big economies compete for projects in Kenya, Russian companies have often failed to win any contract of do not bid at all.

    With the first contact this week, argues CS Mohamed, “opens up lots of doors.”

    Only time will tell.

    President Uhuru Kenyatta during a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 15, 2017.

    Source:Daily Nation

  • First human antibodies to work against all ebolaviruses

    {After analyzing the blood of a survivor of the 2013-16 Ebola outbreak, a team of scientists from academia, industry and the government has discovered the first natural human antibodies that can neutralize and protect animals against all three major disease-causing ebolaviruses. The findings, published online in the journal Cell, could lead to the first broadly effective ebolavirus therapies and vaccines.}

    Ebolaviruses infections are usually severe, and often fatal. There are no vaccines or treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating these viruses. Some two dozen ebolavirus outbreaks have occurred since 1976, when the first outbreak was documented in villages along the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). The largest outbreak in history — the 2013-16 Western African epidemic — caused more than 11,000 deaths and infected more than 29,000 people.

    Monoclonal antibodies, which bind to and neutralize specific pathogens and toxins, have emerged as one of the most promising treatments for Ebola patients. A critical problem, however, is that most antibody therapies target just one specific ebolavirus. For example, the most advanced therapy — ZMappTM, a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies — is specific for Ebola virus (formerly known as “Ebola Zaire”), but doesn’t work against two related ebolaviruses (Sudan virus and Bundibugyo virus) that have also caused major outbreaks.

    “Since it’s impossible to predict which of these agents will cause the next epidemic, it would be ideal to develop a single therapy that could treat or prevent infection caused by any known ebolavirus,” says study co-leader Zachary A. Bornholdt, Ph.D., director of antibody discovery at Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Inc. “Our discovery and characterization of broadly neutralizing human antibodies is an important step toward that goal,” adds study co-leader, Kartik Chandran, Ph.D. , professor of microbiology & immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

    The study was also co-led by John M. Dye, Ph.D., chief of viral immunology at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

    In earlier research, Dr. Bornholdt and Laura M. Walker, Ph.D., a senior scientist at Adimab, LLC, isolated 349 distinct monoclonal antibodies from a survivor of the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic. In the current study, the multi-institutional research team found that two of those 349 antibodies, known as ADI-15878 and ADI-15742, potently neutralized infection by all five known ebolaviruses in tissue culture. Both antibodies were able to protect animals (mice and ferrets) that had been exposed to a lethal dose of the three major agents: Ebola virus, Bundibugyo virus and Sudan virus.

    Follow-up studies showed that the two antibodies isolated from the Ebola patient work by interfering with a critical step in the process by which ebolaviruses infect cells and then multiply inside them. The two antibodies encounter the virus while it’s still in the bloodstream, and bind to glycoproteins (proteins to which carbohydrate chains are attached) that project from its surface. The virus, with its hitchhiking antibodies still bound to it, then attaches to a cell and enters the lysosome — a membrane-bound structure within the cell that is filled with enzymes for digesting foreign and cellular components. The virus must then fuse with the lysosome membrane to escape into the host cell’s cytoplasm, where it can multiply. However, the antibodies prevent the virus from breaking out of its lysosomal “prison,” thus stopping infection in its tracks.

    “Knowing precisely where the antibodies attach to the glycoprotein molecules and when and how they act to neutralize ebolaviruses, we can begin to craft broadly effective immunotherapies,” says Dr. Dye. “That knowledge has already allowed us to create a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that we are testing in larger animal models for possible use in treating infected patients,” adds Dr. Bornholdt.

    The researchers also pinpointed the human genes that are the likely source of the immune cells that produce the two antibodies. These and other findings could help speed the development of vaccines to prevent ebolavirus infection. “We’d like to synthesize vaccine immunogens [proteins that trigger antibody production] that can elicit the same types of broadly protective antibodies in people,” says Dr. Chandran.

    These findings could lead to the first broadly effective ebolavirus therapies and vaccines, say researchers.

    Source:Science Daily

  • UN peacekeeping course ends at Gishari

    {The second intake of the United Nations Police Officers Course (UNPOC2) ended yesterday at the Peacekeeping Training Centre in Gishari as the region continues to build skills in peacekeeping.}

    Forty-five police officers from seven African countries took part in the two-week course conducted under the auspice of the Eastern Africa Standby Force (EASF). The countries are Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Somali, Uganda and Comoros.

    The United Nations Police Officers Course is a result of the multilateral cooperation among regional countries.

    The Commandant of Police Training School (PTS), Commissioner of Police (CP) Vianney Nshimiyimana, while presiding over the closing of the course, urged participants put the acquired skills to use whenever they are called on duty.

    He said the course is designed to ensure the region is safe from conflicts adding that “police officers are there to contain conflicts before they escalate into disasters”

    “Rwanda is always open to building peace, a policy that is informed by the darkest past of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis,” CP Nshimiyimana said.

    “Any efforts to train officers earmarked for peacekeeping training are received with open hands from Rwanda National Police,” he added.

    He thanked the Eastern Africa Standby Force Coordination Mechanism (EASFCOM) for choosing Rwanda to facilitate the training and the Norwegian government for financing the course.

    Kari Marie Kjellstad from Norway and special advisor to EASF, said that the training improved the capacity to support peacekeeping activities.

    Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dinah Kyasimire, the head of the Police component at EASF said that EASF targets to train 720 individual police officers from the region.

    Police Constable (PC) Rose Wangeci Munyiri from Kenya, who spoke on behalf of trainees, noted that the course left them with enormous skills in peace building and achieving security in the region

    “We shall not only be efficient and effective peace support officers but also professional officers in our respective countries” Munyiri said

    The course covered a wide range of subjects such as UN⁄AU peace operations, human rights protection, women, peace and security, code of conduct, cultural awareness, stress management, safety awareness, gender and sexual exploitation, hostage survival skills, safety precautions.

    CP Vianney Nshimiyimana, the commandant of PTS giving a certificate of attendence to one of the course participants.
    CP Vianney Nshimiyimana giving a certificate to a participant from Rwanda.

    Source:Police

  • RDF officers and men donate 415 blood units

    {In the framework of the ongoing Army Week, RDF officers and men at Rwanda Military Academy-Gako have donated 415 blood units to the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC).}

    Alexia Mukamazimpaka, the head of blood donors’ mobilisation service at National Centre for Blood Transfusion (NCBT) commended Rwanda Defence Force for being role model and exemplary, especially in this activity, as well as in any emerging activity, aimed at fostering the well-being of Rwandans.

    “RDF members who have donated and actually continue to donate blood have helped RBC to meet the blood demand; and I take this opportunity to call upon all Rwandans to learn from their generosity”, Mukamazimpaka said.

    Other Army Week Activities, which include infrastructure development, agricultural and environmental protection activities and provision of free medical services to Rwandans are also in good progress.

    Information from Army Week medical teams revealed that more than 35,000 people have received free health care services from the RDF medical personnel and partners in Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Gynecology, Dental, ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat), internal medicine, urology, Voluntary Male Circumcision and HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing.

    The Army week 2017 to address human security issues was officially launched on 4th May 2017.

    Source:Minadef

  • Police fights banana weevil in Ngoma

    {As part of the activities to mark the 17th anniversary of Rwanda National Police, Police in Ngoma District, yesterday, conducted a special Umuganda to fight banana weaver in the affected plantations in Murama Sector.}

    Police was joined by hundreds of residents to deracinate about 1.5 hectares of the affected banana plantation as part of the effort to prevent the disease from spreading to other plantations, as well as planting new uninfected ones.

    While addressing the residents in Gitaraga Cell shortly after the community exercise, Inspector of Police (IP) Theophile Ndayisaba urged them to always join efforts in security and development programmes.

    “When you are together, sharing and implementing ideas, everything becomes possible and easy. This is the philosophy in our country in all aspects of security and development, and it has proved effective,” IP Ndayisaba said.

    He identified community policing as a lively example of the importance of partnership saying that crimes have been prevented the proactive approach and suspects arrested.

    IP Ndayisaba also urged the residents to actively fight drug trafficking and abuse, one of the crimes that are still common in Ngoma District and Murama in particular.

    The common drugs in the area include illicit brew that is locally made and cannabis when in most cases the area is used as a transit route from Tanzania through Kirehe District to Kigali.

    Source:Police

  • Microsoft to deliver Microsoft Cloud from data-centres

    {Microsoft has revealed plans to deliver the complete, intelligent Microsoft Cloud for the first time from datacentres located in Africa. This new investment is a major milestone in the company’s mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more, and a recognition of the enormous opportunity for digital transformation in Africa. }

    Expanding on existing investments, Microsoft will deliver cloud services, including Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365, from datacentres located in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa with initial availability anticipated in 2018.

    The new cloud regions will offer enterprise-grade reliability and performance combined with data residency to help enable the tremendous opportunity for economic growth, and increase access to cloud and internet services for organisations and people across the African continent.

    “We’re excited by the growing demand for cloud services in Africa and their ability to be a catalyst for new economic opportunities,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and Enterprise Group, Microsoft Corp. “With cloud services ranging from intelligent collaboration to predictive analytics, the Microsoft Cloud delivered from Africa will enable developers to build new and innovative apps, customers to transform their businesses, and governments to better serve the needs of their citizens.”

    Expanding Access & Opportunity:Currently many companies in Africa rely on cloud services delivered from outside of the continent. Microsoft’s new investment will provide highly available, scalable, and secure cloud services across Africa with the option of data residency in South Africa. With the introduction of these new cloud regions, Microsoft has now announced 40 regions around the world – more than any major cloud provider. The combination of Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure with the new regions in Africa will connect businesses with opportunity across the globe, help accelerate new investments, and improve access to cloud and internet services for people and organisations from Cairo to Cape Town.

    “We greatly value Microsoft’s commitment to invest in cloud services delivered from Africa. Standard Bank already relies on cloud technology to provide our customers with a seamless experience,” says Brenda Niehaus, group CIO at Standard Bank. “To achieve success as a business, we need to keep pace with market developments as well as customer needs, and Office 365 empowers us to make a culture shift towards becoming a more dynamic organisation, whilst Azure enables us to deliver our apps and services to our customers in Africa. We’re looking forward to achieving even more with the cloud services available here on the continent.”

    Investing in African Innovation:This announcement expands on ongoing investments in Africa, where organizations are using currently available cloud and mobile services as a platform for innovation in health care, agriculture, education, and entrepreneurship. Microsoft has been working to support local start-ups and NGOs, unleashing innovation that has the potential to solve some of the biggest problems facing humanity, such as the scarcity of water and food, and economic and environmental sustainability. One start-up, M-KOPA Solar, provides affordable pay-as-you-go solar energy to over 500,000 homes using mobile and cloud technology. AGIN has built an app connecting 140,000 smallholder farmers to key services, enabling them to share data and facilitating $1.3 million per month in finance, insurance and other services.

    Across Africa, Microsoft has brought 728,000 small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) online to help them transform and modernise their businesses, and over 500,000 are now utilising Microsoft cloud services, with 17,000 using the 4Afrika hub to promote and grow their businesses. The Microsoft Cloud is also helping Africans build job skills, with 775,000 trained on subjects ranging from digital literacy to software development. We anticipate the Microsoft Cloud from Africa will fuel extensive new opportunities for our 17,000 regional partners and customers alike.

    “This development broadens the options available to us in our modernisation journey of Government ICT infrastructure and services. It allows us to take advantage of new opportunities to develop innovative government solutions at manageable costs, as well as drive overall improvements in operations management, while improving transparency and accountability,” says Dr. Setumo Mohapi, CEO at SITA.

    The Microsoft Trusted Cloud: Microsoft has deep expertise protecting data, championing privacy, and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements. With Microsoft’s Trusted Cloud principles of security, privacy, compliance, transparency, and the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry, Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure supports over a billion customers and 20 million businesses around the globe.

    “By establishing hyperscale cloud datacentre capacity in South Africa, Microsoft is directly addressing customers’ concerns, and demonstrating commitment to the delivery of cloud services within the country and the region as a whole,” says Jon Tullett, senior research manager, IDC MEA. “The presence of local facilities will be greatly encouraging to South African customers, particularly those in regulated industries such as financial services and the public sector where data sovereignty concerns are paramount. This is a strongly positive development for the cloud industry in Africa, and particularly Microsoft’s ecosystem of partners, ISVs and customers.”

    {{About Microsoft}}

    Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) is the leading platform and productivity company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world, and its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

  • Parliament elects EALA legislators

    {Fatuma Ndangiza has emerged among the newly elected legislators to represent Rwanda in the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) following elections held at Rwanda Parliamentary buildings. The voting team was composed of 93 parliamentarians and senators. }

    Elected legislators include members who have not yet completed their term like Martin Ngoga and Oda Gasinzigwa who joined EALA last year. Rwigema Pierre Celestin has been re-elected.

    Candidates elected to join EALA for the first time include Bahati Alex representing disabled people and Uwumukiza Françoise who has been leading National Women’s Council.

    Barimuyabo Jean Claude 27 has been elected youth representative, Francine Rutazana elected as representative of Liberal Party while Kalinda François Xavier was reelected to represent Social Democratic Party.

    Elected legislators representing Rwanda Patriotic Front include,Odda Gasinzigwa,Fatuma Ndangiza, Rwigema Pierre Celestin and Ngoga Martin.

    Fatuma Ndangiza is among candidates elected to join EALA for the first time.