IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • Uganda:Bird flu outbreak under control minister says

    {The government has been able to put the recent avian flu outbreak under control, State Minister for Agriculture, Vincent Ssempijja has said.}

    “I would like to reiterate that bird flu outbreak has been controlled and together with stakeholders, the government is ensuring trade in poultry and poultry products will resume,” Ssempiija said. He added that no migratory bird deaths have been reported in the last three weeks. Ssempijja made the remarks while addressing journalists’ in Entebbe after a meeting with his South Sudanese counterpart Hon. James Duku who is the neighbouring country’s minister of livestock and fisheries.

    Sempijja further said that the country’s poultry industry (breeders, commercial layer and broiler producers) is safe, with the farmers practicing bio safety measures. He also stated that their location is a safe distance from the outbreak and as such they are not affected by the outbreak which is still only confirmed in the migratory birds.

    He further dismissed any allegations of human contraction of the virus: “The serotype of the virus which was observed three weeks ago was the avian influenza Type A- Serotype H5N8 which is highly pathogenic in birds and not humans, thus no humans were affected so the population is informed that there will be no vaccination against bird flu.”

    South Sudan becomes the second country after Kenya to send a taskforce to Uganda in it’s effort to curb the avian flu outbreak which has seen some neighbouring countries close off their borders to Uganda’s poultry products.

    While addressing the media, Minister Duku after a tour of some of the affected areas and commercial poultry farms and markets commended the Ugandan team for the preventive measures that they had put in place.

    “After we got news of the bird flu outbreak in Uganda we were very alarmed that we would be affected next, so we came here for a fact-finding mission because we must take a decision basing on facts but yesterday I was taken to Bukakata landing site and other poultry commercial areas; the measures they put in place were very assuring,” he said.

    Duku further assured the Ugandan business community of continued trade between the two neighbours. “We had never closed off the border to Ugandan products, not even poultry and with the findings and recommendations that I have got from both the technical team and minister that I will go back home with, I don’t think there will be any reason to close off our mutual borders,” he said.

    South Sudan's Minister for livestock and fisheries James Duku (L) and he's Ugandan Counterpart Hon. Vincent Ssempijja (R) addressing media after their meeting in Entebbe.

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • Mkapa: Burundi talks to resume soon

    {Retired President, Benjamin William Mkapa, in his capacity as a facilitator in the “Burundi mediation truce” has announced the beginning of a formal dialogue after completion of the earlier consultative talks.}

    A statement from Mkapa’s office indicates that the scheduled session is going to run between the 16th and 18th February 2017, at the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC) here.

    The convening of the session will come after rigorous consultations that the facilitator had made with various stakeholders within and outside the country, where he had identified eight-point as an agenda raised by all the partners.

    It was further learnt that they had been agreed upon to be the main sticking points, which he had also reported in the Summit in September 2016. The eight-point agenda, which will form the thrust of the dialogue and subsequent negations, in no particular order of importance, includes security and commitment to end all forms of violence in the landlocked country.

    Others are listed as commitment to the Rule of Law and an end to impunity and status of the implementation of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement.

    The list further included strengthening of democratic culture and opening up of political space as well as social and humanitarian issues. It also highlighted implementation of the EAC Summit Decision of July 6th, 2015 on the Formation of the Government of National Unity, impact of the crisis on the Economy and the relationship between Burundi and its neighbours as well as other international partners.

    The statement further hinted that in the initial phase of the coming dialogue, which is by and large a political process, the retired President will invite some of the Political Parties and important political actors to whom he will introduce the unpacked Eight-point agenda to determine areas of convergence and divergence.

    Other stakeholders like the civil society organisations, religious groups, as well as women and youth will be invited in later sessions for the similar purpose.

    It is the expectation of the Facilitator that, in this initial dialogue, inputs from participants will draw up an outline of the would-be agreement to be “continuously refined,” until when they will be fully agreed upon by all the stakeholder and be signed as the final agreement hopefully in June, 2017 as he envisions.

    Source:Daily News

  • Magufuli fumes at huge, questionable construction costs

    {President John Magufuli yesterday suspended acting Secretary of the Planning Commission, Treasury, Frolence Mwanri over questionable payment approval for the second phase of Julius Nyerere International Airport’s (JNIA) Terminal III construction. Ms Mwanri was suspended after Dr Magufuli made an impromptu tour of the construction site and ordered the relevant state organs to investigate the project.}

    The president was vividly irked by the amount spent in the second phase construction, saying the amount does not match the value of the building. He queried, “Why did you, government experts, accept such huge costs, is this building real worthy 560bn/-?”

    He directed the Minister for Works, Transport and Communications Prof Makame Mbarawa to form a team of local engineers who are well versed with the government focus, saying he wanted a big percentage of money paid out to the project to remain in the country.

    “I will be the main consultant of this project…I have directed the minister to provide me with daily reports on the projects but I also want him to form the team of patriotic engineers who know what we want to do, so that more money remain in the country,” he explained.

    President Magufuli assured members of the public that the works at the ongoing construction at Terminal III of JNIA will resume today. “I decided to visit the site without telling anyone.

    If I had informed them they would have lied to me that work is going on. I know that there are Tanzanians working here and that is very good because I promised to generate employment opportunities,” he told the cheering workers.

    Dr Magufuli stressed that he had issued directive to the contractor and consultant to resume work this morning, adding that he has also directed the minister of works to provide him with daily updates of the project. He explained that the project Contractors and Consultants had claims that the government will settle soon.

    “There were also some fake claims but those I will deal with myself. But you must report back to work tomorrow morning (today) and they have promised me that work will resume as usual,” he stressed.

    The on-going construction of Terminal III at the JNIA, which is expected to facilitate 3.5 million annual passengers, includes construction of parking lots, access roads, platforms and a taxiway. The new terminal is designed for the anticipated growth of international air traffic, leaving the existing international Terminal two to cater for domestic flights. Meanwhile, President Magufuli yesterday received credentials from six envoys who will be representing their countries in Dar es Salaam.

    The envoys and their countries in brackets are Mr Mohamed Ben Mansour Al Malek (United Arab Emirates), Mr Abdelilah Benryane (Morocco), Mr Benson Keith Chali (Zambia), Mr Lucas Domingo Hernandez Polledo (Cuba), Mousa Farhang (Iran) and Mr Gervais Abayeho (Burundi).

    He told Ambassador Al Malek that Saudi Arabia had been cooperating with Tanzania in various projects of infrastructure and asked him to convey his message to King of Saudi Arabia.

    Dr Magufuli also expressed his happiness following Cuba’s decision to build pharmaceutical industries in the country, with a view of reducing drug imports. Moroccan Ambassador Benryane told the President that his country had embarked on a process to implement the promise by Moroccan King Mohammed VI to construct a modern stadium in Dodoma.

    Source:Daily News

  • Police officers discuss partnership with media

    {Police officers operating in the City of Kigali held a one-day workshop, yesterday, on Police-Media working relations.}

    This was part of initiatives geared at strengthening the existing partnership between the Rwanda National Police (RNP) and the media fraternity.

    Held at Kigali Metropolitan Police headquarters in Remera, the workshop was presided over by the Regional Police Commander-Central, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Rogers Rutikanga and the Rwanda National Police(RNP) spokesperson, ACP Theos Badege.

    The Executive Secretary of Rwanda Media Commission (RMC), Emmanuel Mugisha also attended to share views from media practitioners.

    ACP Badege pointed to the importance of the partnership noting that the media is essential in ensuring that Rwandans are informed on different matters of national development including sharing information that supports the police in crime prevention efforts as part of the community policing drive.

    “Police and media are partners and share the same obligation to professionally implement and enforce the access to information law,” ACP Badege said.

    He further emphasised that the RNP is eager to engage in dialogue forums with the media in order to enhance professionalism in a way that doesn’t jeopardize the duties that are of utmost importance to both parties.

    On his part, Mugisha said that the working relations between the media and police has tremendously improved due to the existing RNP structures that ensure that journalists get information and thanked the RNP for creating such platforms.

    Police officers and RMC also discussed on various cases where journalists and the police have conflicted, and exchanged ideas how both sides can work together in a way that doesn’t effect the duties of the others.

    Mugisha observed that accredited journalists, who should be given access to information in that capacity, are only those holding press cards and assured the police that he will do his part to sensitize journalists to always carry with them these cards so that they may get the facilitation they need to do their work.

    Source:Police

  • Extreme fires will increasingly be part of our global landscape, researchers predict

    {Increasingly dangerous fire weather is forecast for Australia and the Mediterranean as the global footprint of extreme fires expands, according to the latest research.}

    University of Tasmania Professor of Environmental Change Biology David Bowman led an international collaboration — including researchers from the University of Idaho and South Dakota State University — to compile a global satellite database of the intensity of 23 million landscape fires used to identify 478 of the most extreme wildfire events.

    “Extreme fire events are a global and natural phenomenon, particularly in forested areas that have pronounced dry seasons,” Professor Bowman said.

    “With the exception of land clearance, the research found that extremely intense fires are associated with anomalous weather — such as droughts, winds, or in desert regions, following particularly wet seasons.

    “Of the top 478 events, we identified 144 economically and socially disastrous extreme fire events that were concentrated in regions where humans have built into flammable forested landscapes, such as areas surrounding cities in southern Australia and western North America.”

    Using climate change model projections to investigate the likely consequences of climate change, the research found more extreme fires are predicted in the future for Australia’s east coast, including Brisbane, and the whole of the Mediterranean region — Portugal, Spain, France, Greece and Turkey.

    “The projections suggest an increase in the days conducive to extreme wildfire events by 20 to 50 per cent in these disaster-prone landscapes, with sharper increases in the subtropical Southern Hemisphere, and the European Mediterranean Basin,” Professor Bowman said.

    The research has been published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

    The research is released on the day the State remembers the impact of the 1967 bushfires in the city of Hobart and across the South, which claimed the lives of 62 people, left 900 injured and more than 7,000 homeless.

    An international collaboration has compiled a global satellite database of the intensity of 23 million landscape fires between 2002 and 2013.

    Source:Science Daily

  • 44 medical practitioners trained on fire fighting techniques

    Rwanda National Police (RNP) yesterday commenced a three-day fire fighting Training of Trainer (ToT) exercise for forty-four medical practitioners operating in Northern, Western and Central Regions.

    The training was officiated by the Commanding Officer of the RNP Fire and Rescue Brigade, ACP Jean Baptiste Seminega along with Dr Theophile Dushime, the director general of clinical and public health services at the Ministry of Health.

    The trainees that are from District Hospitals and health centers are to be equipped with techniques and knowledge on how to respond in case of a fire outbreak and will as well have a responsibility to engage and educate their colleagues on how to avoid fire outbreaks, as well as how to properly respond to fire threats.

    “Hospitals and healthy centers are some of the most critical public places that need to be protected. As RNP we have a mandate to share knowledge and skills with the public in order to ensure that very Rwandan plays a role in ensuring safety from disasters like fire outbreak,” said Seminega.

    He pointed out that the training comes as response to requests from different hospital directors who wanted to have their staff equipped with firefighting skills.

    “Although we have not had a fire outbreak at any hospital in Rwanda, we believe we must put much focus on preventive measures, this is why we are rolling out trainings to people working in public places,” added Seminega.

    Trainees are expected to acquire both theoretical and practical lesson on fire fighting and expected to do a study tour in one of the hospital in Kigali.

    In his address to trainees, Dushime reminded them that; “This training is very important considering that hospitals are places where people frequent every day, we can’t afford to put our patients at a risk of a fire outbreak. Also we have machines of all kinds which need to be protected from any fire outbreaks.”

    He advised them to ensure that the skills they acquire are shared with their colleagues at work and neighbours.

    Similarly, Police last month reached out to 50 Rwanda Correctional Service (RCS) staff and equipped them with similar skills in firefighting.

    Source:Police

  • Key friendships vital for effective human social networks

    {Close friendships facilitate the exchange of information and culture, making social networks more effective for cultural transmission, according to new UCL research that used wireless tracking technology to map social interactions in remote hunter-gatherer populations.}

    The research demonstrates how increased network efficiency is achieved through investment in a few strong links between non-kin friends connecting unrelated families, as well as showing that strong friendships are more important than family ties in predicting levels of shared knowledge among individuals.

    The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, was funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

    Hunter-gatherers offer the closest existing examples of human lifestyles and social organisation in the past, offering vital insights into human evolutionary history. To map the social networks of populations of Agta and BaYaka hunter-gatherers in Congo and the Philippines, researchers from the Hunter-Gatherer Resilience Project in UCL Anthropology used devices called mote — a wireless sensing technology worn as an armband that can record the interactions a person has in one day.

    The motes recorded all one-to-one interactions at two minute intervals for 15 hours a day over a week in six Agta camps in the Philippines (200 individuals, 7, 210 interactions) and three BaYaka camps in the Congo (132 individuals, 3,397 interactions).

    With this data, they were able to construct and examine social networks for both groups in unprecedented detail.

    Many unique human traits such as high cognition, cumulative culture and hyper-cooperation have evolved due to the social organisation patterns unique to humans.

    First author of the study, Dr Andrea Migliano (UCL Anthropology), commented: “Making friends and having a friendship network is an important human adaptation, one that has helped us develop cumulative culture.

    “What we see in these hunter-gatherer camps is that people have very strong relationships with their friends — and those relationships are as strong as those with family. These friends connect the different households, facilitating the exchange of information and culture. And it is those connections that make a network efficient.”

    The analyses show that randomization of interactions among either close kin or extended family did not affect the efficiency of hunter-gatherer networks. In contrast, randomization of friends (non-kin relationships) greatly reduced efficiency.

    The researchers also found evidence that friendships began very early in childhood in both populations.

    Dr Migliano added: “In contemporary society, we have the technology to expand these social networks, increasing flow of information over much larger numbers of people. This allows humans to co-operate and work together to build wonderful things. Our work illustrates how friendship is one of the secrets to humans’ success as a species.”

    This research demonstrates how increased network efficiency is achieved through investment in a few strong links between non-kin friends connecting unrelated families, as well as showing that strong friendships are more important than family ties in predicting levels of shared knowledge among individuals.

    Source:Science Daily

  • Police urges parents to oversee transport of their children

    {The Rwanda National Police (RNP) department of Traffic and Road Safety has asked owners of travel agencies, teachers and parents to work together to ensure the safety of the children to and from school.}

    The call comes after it emerged that some school vans do not have all the requirements including insurance, vehicle mechanical inspection certificates while drivers violate road safety standards and transport more than the standard number of insured people.

    Chief Inspector of Police (CIP) Emmanuel Kabanda, the traffic police and road safety spokesperson said that parents should be at the forefront by checking if their children are being transported in the most appropriate way possible.

    “We stopped a school bus along Vunga-Musanze road, recently, carrying almost double the required number, an act that all parties should work together to prevent to ensure safe movement of the students either in the van. Vehicles are ensured depending on the number they carry, which should be strictly observed,” CIP Kabanda said.

    He also noted that some parents send their younger children unaccompanied on the road to wait for the vehicle that take them to school, which also puts them at risk of being knocked by either car, motorcycles or even bicycles.

    “It is equally the right of parents and guardians to know the driver taking their children, the status of vehicle and even the state and character of the driver.”

  • 7 tips to live a more exciting life even as an adult

    {When you get to adulthood, it becomes so difficult to live an exciting life. With your thoughts focused on money, business, career, family, progress and taking that next step forward, it becomes increasingly difficult to live an exciting life; your life becomes constricted and dull, and every day just seems to be the same.}

    { {{No matter how busy you are, you shouldn’t just let life fly by you.

    Make your life more interesting with these tips:}} }

    {{1. Start your day well }}

    Make that conscious effort to start your day on the right foot. Sleep early and wake up early, and prepare your mind for the day; prepare to be happy no matter what. Happiness starts with the mind, and you’ll live a more interesting life if your mind is geared towards being happy.

    {{2. Change your routine }}

    If you do the same thing every weekend, it’ll become too boring after a while. Change your routine and do something different; diversify your activities every weekend, and you wouldn’t only feel more excited about it, your life will also be more exciting.

    {{3. Take rests and take care of your body}}

    Your life cannot be exciting when your body is stressed out. Learn to take rests, eat right and exercise daily. When your body is in the right shape, living an exciting life wouldn’t be too difficult.

    {{4. Perform random acts of kindness }}

    You don’t have to wait for a reason to do something kind for someone. Look for someone in need and reach out to that person. Research has found that doing something unexpectedly for someone can lead to a higher level of happiness.

    {{5. Create special moments with your friends and family}}

    Don’t just wait for special moments to happen — create it. Plan a dinner and invite people that matter to you, celebrate your birthdays with the special people in your life, organise barbecue time with your folks, and just choose to be happy.

    {{6. Make a decision to always be happy }}

    Happiness is a choice; you don’t wait for it to come, you make a decision to be happy. Make a decision to always be happy, no matter what, and your life will be more exciting.

    {{7. Be adventurous }}

    Don’t stick to what you know; try out new areas, visit new places, and enjoy the thrill of doing something new. Your life will be more exciting when you do this.

    Have you been living a dull and unpleasant life? It’s time to spice things up and make your life more exciting.

    Source:Elcrema

  • Chimpanzee feet allow scientists a new grasp on human foot evolution

    {An investigation into the evolution of human walking by looking at how chimpanzees walk on two legs is the subject of a new research paper published in the March 2017 issue of Journal of Human Evolution.}

    The human foot is distinguished from the feet of all other primates by the presence of a longitudinal arch, which spans numerous joints and bones of the midfoot region and is thought to stiffen the foot. This structure is thought to be a critical adaptation for bipedal locomotion, or walking on two legs, in part because this arch is absent from the feet of humans’ closest living relatives, the African apes.

    In contrast, African apes have long been thought to have highly mobile foot joints for climbing tree trunks and grasping branches, although few detailed quantitative studies have been carried out to confirm these beliefs.

    But now, Nathan Thompson, Ph.D., assistant professor of Anatomy at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM), is one of the researchers questioning some long-held ideas about the function and evolution of the human foot by investigating how chimpanzees use their feet when walking on two legs. The research team, including members Nicholas Holowka, Ph.D. (Harvard University); Brigitte Demes, Ph.D. (Stony Brook University School of Medicine); and Matthew O’Neill, Ph.D. (University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix), conducted the research and collected data while all were at Stony Brook University (2013-2015).

    Most researchers studying human evolution assume a stark dichotomy between human and chimpanzee feet. One is a rigid lever that makes walking long distances easy and efficient. The other one is a grasping device, much more mobile and less effective at walking on two legs. Fossil feet of early human ancestors are nearly always compared with chimpanzee feet, making knowledge of their foot biomechanics crucial for understanding how the human foot evolved. However, prior to this research, no one has been able to actually investigate whether differences existed between humans and chimpanzees in how the foot works during walking on two legs.

    To find out, this research team used high-speed motion capture to measure three-dimensional foot motion in chimpanzees and humans walking at similar speeds. They then compared ranges of midfoot motion between species.

    Contrary to expectations, the researchers found that human feet are more — not less — mobile than chimpanzees walking on two limbs.

    “This finding upended our assumptions about how the feet of both humans and chimpanzees work. Based on simple visual observation, we’ve long known that human feet are stiffer than those of chimpanzees and other apes when the heel is first lifted off the ground in a walking step. What surprised us was that the human midfoot region flexes dramatically at the end of a step as the foot’s arch springs back into place following its compression during weight-bearing. This flexion motion is greater than the entire range of motion in the chimpanzee midfoot joints during a walking step, leading us to conclude that high midfoot joint mobility is actually advantageous for human walking. We never would have discovered this without being able to study chimpanzees with advanced motion capture technology,” said Holowka, with Harvard’s department of Human Evolutionary Biology.

    Ultimately, according to the findings, the fact that the traditional dichotomy between humans and chimpanzees has been disproven means that researchers may have to rethink what can be learned from the fossil feet of humans’ earliest ancestors. “The presence of human-like midfoot joint morphology in fossil hominins can no longer be taken as indicating foot rigidity, but it may tell us about the evolution of human-like enhanced push off mechanics,” said NYITCOM’s Thompson.

    Based on these findings, the researchers encourage future studies to consider the ways in which human foot morphology reflects longitudinal arch function throughout the full duration of stance phase, especially at the beginning and end of a step.

    Thompson added, “One of the things that is really remarkable about this project is that it shows us how much we have still to learn about our closest relatives. It seems like the more we learn about how chimpanzees move, the more we have to rethink some of the assumptions that paleoanthropologists have held on to for decades.”

    The researchers painted markers on the feet of both humans and chimpanzees in order to figure out how different bones and joints within the foot move in 3-D.

    Source:Science Daily