{Rwanda Development Board (RDB) in collaboration with Rwandan Society of Authors (RSAU) have announced that people have been restricted to use artists’ songs for personal interests without payments , a decision to go into effect by July 2017. }
The decision will also be extended to other artistic works to protect intellectual property and enhance owners’ progress like other businesses.
The CEO of RDB, Clare Akamanzi has said that artistes’ work has to be considered as his/her property and valued.
“We want artists generate income from released copyrighted content. We want to extend areas of intellectual property in the country where radios, hotels using artists’ music have to pay royalty fees. It will enhance the progress of the producer while generating income for the country,” she said.
She however explained that the amount such initiative will bring in the country’s GDP is not established noting that it contributed 10% to GDP of some countries like the United States.
Hotels, bars, nightclubs, radio stations, TV stations, transport agencies will have to pay fees in order to play copyrighted local music. Super markets among others using music for commercial purposes have to sign payment agreements with the Rwanda Society of Authors (RSAU) by July.
The CEO of RSAU, Bwiza Nadine said the cost is cheap as the minimum payment can be Rwf 200 per annum depending on how the artistic creation is used.
She explained that foreign countries playing Rwanda’s music will also pay.
“Other countries playing Rwanda’s songs will pay because we have agreements with some of them including Kenya and Nigeria. We will also do the same for their songs played in Rwanda,” she said.
The decision is based on the law N° 31/2009 of 26/10/2009 protecting intellectual property and follows recent allegations of Rwanda’s female artist Kayirebwa Cecile who accused RBA and Contact FM of uing her songs for private interests not benefiting the owner.
{UNHCR representative in Rwanda, Azam Saber has told IGIHE that the matter of refuge fund reduction is worrying, promising to find a solution. }
“We have the matter of inadequate funds but we are working hard to convince donors to keep pouring in funds in Rwanda because it is used effectively,” he said.
Saber explained that they ensure good management of food donations in Rwanda despite their scarcity promising the support won’t be reduced.
“You have to spread this message that food is security and part of basic health needs. It would be hard to protect refugees without food; it would pose a serious health threat and theft of food among themselves,” he said.
Refugees funds remain insufficient despite the rise of the number of people in need of emergent support as only USD 984 million is available amidst needed USD 4.4 billion by July 2017.
To cope with the crisis it has been decided to reduce refugees’ fund by a half in some countries including Rwanda.
UNHCR explains that USD 102.4 million is needed to support refugees in Rwanda but only USD 13.5 million was availed by 4th April 2017.
Syria and Iraq are experiencing chaos leaving citizens unable to work for survival. The crisis adds to refugees hosted in various countries including Rwanda which accommodates over 164,000 from various countries including Burundi, DRC, Afghanistan, Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Haiti, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda.
Each refugee in Rwanda is supposed to receive a monthly support of Rwf 6300.
According to the United Nations Refuge Agency (UNHCR), a total of 20 million people from countries including Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen are faced with hunger.
War, terrorism, political chaos and climate change are among causes boosting the number of refugees and starving people across the world.
{Belgian giant carrier, Brussels Airlines, has blessed enthusiast travelers with yet another comfort flight from the capital of Europe to Mumbai, India’s economic metropolis. }
The maiden Flight SN601 took off from Brussels Airport on March 30, 2017, inaugurating Brussels Airlines’ first connection to India with five flights weekly.
The new route is already proving to be successful among Brussels Airlines customers. Brussels Airlines’ new scheduled flight is indeed good news for the tens of thousands of people who travel between India and Belgium each year and is vital for several economic industries (pharma, diamond, maritime industry, etc). From now on, they can fly directly again between Brussels and India. Also on the airfreight side, demand is high.
With its very first service to India, Brussels Airlines is not only targeting direct passengers, but also travelers who want to fly via Brussels to other destinations in the Brussels Airlines network. The flight schedule allows for smooth connections from and to destinations in Europe, Africa and North America. In India, Brussels Airlines cooperates with Star Alliance partner Air India to ensure connections via Mumbai to several other destinations in India.
{{ Service adapted for Indian passengers}}
For the new service, Brussels Airlines added an additional Airbus A330 to its fleet, bringing the long haul fleet to a total of 10 aircraft. The launch of the route has also led to additional employment. In total, more than 200 direct jobs have been created including for pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, cargo, sales and support services.
In the last weeks, the Brussels Airlines staff followed special workshops to better understand the Indian culture. In order to service its Indian guests in their local languages, the airline hired and trained 17 Indian cabin crew members.
The new flight is added to the carrier’s over 90 other premium European and African destinations and New York JFK, Washington D.C. and Toronto. In partnership with its international partners, Brussels Airlines also offers long-haul codeshare flights to the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Thailand.
{The Minister of Health, Dr Diane Gashumba has requested health practitioners to be exemplary in the process of executing their duties, unlike colleagues who participated in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. }
The message was echoed yesterday as MINISANTE paid tribute to its 37 employees killed during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
The commemoration was attended by MINISANTE staff, employees from institutions under its responsibility and partners.
“It is shameful to have a doctor or a nurse participating in genocide, killing people yet his/ her duties are sustaining health. Some of these health practitioners involved in genocide were university lecturers and are being tried in courts,” she said.
He asked nurses to uphold moral values and respect for patients and humanity.
“We require employees of the Ministry of Health to be keen on their job, patients and preserve achievements,” she said.
37 genocide victims have been identified as employees of MINISANTE and its agencies that were killed during the pogrom.
The executive secretary of Ibuka, Ahishakiye Naphatal has requested doctors to transform history because some colleagues tarnished the image of their profession.
The commemoration was preceded by a visit to Rebero Memorial where MINISANTE staff laid wreaths in honor of genocide victims.
{The type of pillowcase you use can have an effect on how quickly your face ages. This is according to skincare expert Laura Lynch.}
According to Daily Mail, Lynch revealed sleeping on cotton pillowcases could be adding years to your looks.
Lying face-down into your pillow or on the side could also cause ageing.
Lynch suggests opting for silk pillowcases.
“Cotton doesn’t allow for the skin to slide so it catches the skin, pulling it into a position and it doesn’t really allow the skin to bounce back to its natural form,” Lynch said as quoted on Daily Mail.
“Silk is a natural fibre, it’s hypoallergenic, it allows for the skin to breathe and it allows the skin to slide over the surface.
“So it doesn’t pull at the skin and therefore prevents these wrinkles from occurring.”
Lynch also warned against sleeping face-down into the pillow or on the side as it causes ageing.
“If you’re creasing your face constantly against your pillow, you could also be causing a permanent wrinkle,” Lynch added.
“If you’re a side sleeper or a tummy sleeper, you can definitely find that those positions would cause creases or lines to form on your skin.
“Even though they may disappear couple of hours after you wake up in the morning, overtime, they can cause the development of lines and wrinkles.”
{Salk scientists and collaborators have shed light on a long-standing question about what leads to variation in stem cells by comparing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from identical twins. Even iPSCs made from the cells of twins, they found, have important differences, suggesting that not all variation between iPSC lines is rooted in genetics, since the twins have identical genes.}
Because they can differentiate into almost any cell type in the body, stem cells have the potential to be used to create healthy cells to treat a number of diseases. But stem cells come in two varieties: embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which are isolated from embryos, and iPSCs, which are created in the lab from adult cells that are reprogrammed using mixtures of signaling molecules and are a promising tool for understanding disease and developing new treatments.
Although iPSCs resemble ESCs in most ways, scientists have found that iPSCs often have variations in their epigenetics — methyl marks on the DNA that dictate when genes are expressed. These epigenetic markers aren’t the same between iPSCs and ESCs, or even between different lines of iPSCs. In the past, it’s been hard to determine what drives these differences.
“When we reprogram cells, we see small differences when we compare them to stem cells that come from an embryo. We wanted to understand what types of differences are always there, what is causing them, and what they mean,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and co-senior author, with Kelly Frazer of the University of California, San Diego, on the new paper, which was published in Cell Stem Cell in April 2017. A better understanding of these differences will help researchers refine stem-cell based treatments for disease.
Izpisua Belmonte and Frazer, along with co-first authors of the paper Athanasia Panopoulos, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Salk and now at the University of Notre Dame, and Erin Smith of UCSD, turned to twins to help sort it out.
Although identical twins have the same genes as each other, their epigenomes — the collection of methyl marks studding their DNA — are different by the time they reach adulthood due in part to environmental factors. Reprogramming the skin cells of adult identical twins to their embryonic state eliminated most of these differences, the researchers found when they studied cells from three sets of twins. However, there were still key epigenetic differences between twins in terms of how the iPSCs compared to ESCs.
When the team looked more in depth at the spots of the genome where this variation between methyl marks tended to show up in twins, they found that they often fell near binding sites for a regulatory protein called MYC.
“In the past, researchers had found lots of sites with variations in methylation status, but it was hard to figure out which of those sites had variation due to genetics,” says Panopoulos. “Here, we could focus more specifically on the sites we know have nothing to do with genetics.” That new focus, she says, is what allowed them to home in on the MYC binding sites.
The MYC protein — which is one of the molecules used to reprogram iPSCs from adult cells — likely plays a role in dictating which sites in the genome are randomly methylated during the reprogramming process, the researchers hypothesized.
“The twins enabled us to ask questions we couldn’t ask before,” says Panopoulos. “You’re able to see what happens when you reprogram cells with identical genomes but divergent epigenomes, and figure out what is happening because of genetics, and what is happening due to other mechanisms.”
The findings help scientists better understand the processes involved in reprogramming cells and the differences between iPSCs and ESCs, which has implications on future studies aiming to understand the specific causes and consequences of these changes, and the way iPSCs are being used for research and therapeutics.
{A High Court in Rwanda on Thursday sentenced a man to life in prison for leading and coordinating attacks on Tutsis during the 1994 genocide against Tutsi.}
In the genocide, over one million innocent Tutsis were killed in just 100 days.
Bernard Munyagishari, who headed a government-allied militia known as the Interahamwe in Rwanda’s west, was convicted of crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Lawyers for Munyagishari said they would appeal.
Timothée Kanyegeri, one of the three judges who convicted him, said Munyagishari had trained the militia in how to distinguish the Hutu from Tutsis.
He also “told them that to kill as (for a) snake, you have to hit hard the head, otherwise it will sneak away”, the judge said.
Kanyegeri said Munyagishari had transported members of the militia in buses as they went to kill the Tutsis in Rwanda’s former prefecture of Gisenyi and had personally helped to distribute guns, machetes, axes and clubs used in the killings.
Munyagishari was arrested in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011. His case was transferred to Rwanda in 2013 from Arusha, Tanzania, where the now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was based.
Munyagishari is being held in Kigali’s central prison and was absent during Thursday’s sentencing. (Reuters/NAN)
The fact that the children are living with their parents in prison does not turn them into prisoners but they stay there just because a child aged below three years has rights to live with their mother as long the conditions allow.
Since 2011, children who accompanied their parents and those born in Muhanga Prison have acquired childcare centre from which they are raised in normal conditions and prepared to be reintegrated into families having good health and manners at the same level as children out there in the community.
With the help of Rwanda Correctional Services (RCS), IGIHE’s Emmanuel Kanamugire was able to enter the Muhanga Prison where he found 52 children belonging to female inmates. The children are enjoying their legal rights of staying with their mothers
Children at three years and below are taken to the childcare centre every morning, handed to their caregivers who do their cleanliness, give them food and drinks and teach them some basic life skills that are also offered at nursery schools in the country.
Ms. Eugenie Musayidire who, in partnership with different sponsors, opened the childcare centre in Muhanga Prison, and currently monitoring the children’s life on a daily basis, says that she decided to help the inmates’ children acquire the same care as what other children are acquiring in their families.
“Children living in their families are cared for on a daily basis as usual but these ones living with their mothers in prison would not have caregivers without this initiative. We are caring for their lives. We pick them in the morning and spend daytime with them, teaching them good manners. We provide them with meals, teachers, playthings and more. After taking their lunch, they take a nap, serve them with milk or porridge when they wake up and we take them back to their mothers in the evening,” she says.
Despite the care rendered to these children, they still face challenges that include lack of life skills outside prisons like the language used in the society because they have no interactions with people outside the prison. For instance, it is hard to get these children into a car because cars are strange to them and they also confuse cows’ colours with clothes’ whereby some say that a cow is putting on a dress.
As a response to this problem of lacking exposure to society’s life, RCS has committed to taking these children for regular tours around the country for them to understand the life outside prisons.
RCS’s Spokesperson Mr. Hillary Sengabo, says “We have set up adequate conditions for those children’s proper development. They spend daytime outside the prison and go back to sleep in their mothers’ chest at night. We take them outside of prisons to learn about the conditions there and we are doing our best to provide them with the necessary needs.”
He says that when a child grows up to three years, is separated from an inmate mother and joins the family at home.
RCS first examines the ability of the child’s receiving family to provide adequate life conditions and the transfer must be approved by the child’s mother who stays in prison.
The government cares for children who cannot find families to receive them at three years of age.
Mothers of these children appreciate the education and care that their children are receiving and they have hope that their children will be marked by good manners when they are reintegrated into families.
”Our children are well catered for during daytime. They receive food, drinks and education and they come back to us in the evening telling us what they have acquired at the centre. We believe that they will be having good manners as they go back home,” says one of the inmate mothers in Muhanga Prison.
{{Child’s rights in prison}}
Mr. Francois Bisengimana, the Director of Adoption, Protection and Promotion of Child Rights at the National Commission for Children (NCC), says that a child living with her mother in prison has rights as any other child living at home.
NCC reveals that every prison accommodating children is supported with at least Rwf1 million annually according to the number of children therein and the funds help prisons in childcare.
Minister for Gender and Family Promotion, Ms. Esperance Nyirasafari urges families and individuals to foster children who are regularly sent from prisons.
“As we usually reintegrate children from orphanages into families, we keep asking families to receive these innocent children regardless of biological connection but anyone with a loving heart and ability can adopt a child,” she says.
There are five women prisons in Rwanda namely prison of Kigali, Ngoma in the Eastern Province, Nyamagabe in the Southern Province, , Musanze in the Northern Province and Muhanga which alone has a childcare centre.
Muhanga prison’s administration says that figures of inmates’ children who have been reintegrated into families are unavailable because of the fire which gutted the prison’s files in 2014.
{IBUKA, an umbrella of organization of survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has requested concerned parties to revise the law relating to genocide ideology and recommend heavier punishments to the offenders. According to existing laws, a genocide ideology convict is subjected to a sentence ranging from five to nine years.}
The president of IBUKA, Prof. Dusingizemungu Jean Pierre made the request yesterday during the commemoration of genocide against Tutsi in Nyange.
“We feel that the current punishment of genocide ideology is inadequate. It seems that convicts don’t draw a lesson because the punished emerge again among people violating genocide survivors. This calls for heavier punishments,” he said.
The senate preside Bernad Makuza requested government , private investors and religious institutions to work together for positive social interests other than unity meant to destroy as it happened in the country’s history especially in Nyange.
Newly retrieved remains of 242 victims following the 1994 genocide against Tutsi were accorded decent burial during the commemoration yesterday.
Nyange memorial is home to 2,478 genocide victims of whom the majority were killed as they fled to the church of Nyange parish where father Athanase Seromba ordered their killing and demolishing the church.
Father Seromba was handed a life sentence by TPIR .He is detained in Benin.
{The late Sayinzoga Jean, former chairman Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Commission has been commended for his deeds and bravery when he was alive and serving. His deeds were appreciated last evening in a tribute to his achievements held at his home in Intashyo village, Bibare cell of Kimironko sector in Gasabo district,Kigali. }
The celebration was attended by relatives, friends and top government officials including Prime Minister, Anastase Murekezi, the Minister of Local Government, Francis Kaboneka and the Minister of Justice Johnston Busingye among others.
The representative of the bereaved family, Mathias Abimana described Sayinzoga as a parent and brave who could dare anything for the family and the country.
“ He was brave, parent, adviser, leader in family and the country,” he said.
Mathias said he won’t forget words of Sayinzoga who always encouraged them to strive for greatness and success.
Jeanne Mukantwari, sister to Sayinzoga, said his brother would strive to fend for the family and recalled how he stopped studies in junior seminary to help her grow younger orphaned sisters.
