Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

Uganda mortgages oil to China to get Standard Gauge Railway

{After denying countless times that they cannot borrow against future oil revenues, the government at long last has admitted staking the country’s oil as a “guarantee” for receiving the first batch of loan from China’s EXIM Bank for the much hyped Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project.}

Details available to Sunday Monitor indicate that Attorney General William Byaruhanga gave a no objection to ministry of Finance, the principal signatory to the loans, arguing that “nothing prohibits the government from using oil revenues directly as guarantee for the payment of loan for the SGR project.”

Mr Byaruhanga, in a correspondence dated September 29, 2016, to the Finance ministry and also copied to President Museveni and Solicitor General Francis Atoke, further indicated that “accordingly, it shall be prudent to ensure that under the loan agreement the commencement of the payment period is explicitly tied to the commencement of production –in order to mitigate the risk of the government being found in default in the event that production does not start within the projected period.”

No objection response
The no-objection legal opinion was in response to a correspondence dated September 5 from Finance minister Matia Kasaija seeking advice on how to proceed on getting money from EXIM Bank to jump-start construction of the first phase of the SGR project running from Malaba to Kampala (273km) pegged to a cost of $2.8b (Shs8 trillion).

The Attorney General, citing legal provisions that authorise government to raise loans from any source, however reiterated, as advised earlier by the former ministry of Energy Permanent Secretary Kabagambe Kaliisa in a correspondence dated September 26, that availability of oil revenues shall be dependent on the commencement of oil production.

Commencement of oil production, Mr Kaliisa in his correspondence also advised, shall be dependent on the completion of the crude oil export pipeline and the Greenfield oil refinery.

“The completion schedule for the pipeline and refinery projects is/shall be largely outside the control of government (and in the hands of the international oil companies and other private players.”

The entire SGR project is estimated to cost $12.8b (Shs45 trillion), according to a report released this week by Parliament’s Committee on Physical Infrastructure. The multi-billion dollar railway line was agreed to in 2011 by regional leaders dubbed as a Coalition of the Willing, who included President Museveni, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and South Sudan’s Salva Kiir.

Although conceived under the East African Community, but with Tanzania excluded at the time, the plan was to have the railway run from Mombasa port to Kigali via Kampala with a connecting line to Juba.

Preparations for construction of the first (eastern) route running from Malaba to Kampala, whose tender for construction was awarded to China Harbour Engineering Corporation (CHEC) in 2014 after a questionable protracted procurement, is ongoing with acquiring the proposed right of way.

Plans and studies, are ongoing as well on the western route from Kampala to Ntungamo District at the border with Rwanda and the northern route from Tororo to Packwach en route to South Sudan.

The SGR coordinator, Mr Kasingye Kyamugambi, however, told this newspaper yesterday that it is premature to reach conclusion that the entire project will cost $12.8b as the parliamentary committee put it.

“That was a planning figure that we had to give to government so that various preparations can be made,” Mr Kyamugambi argued. “But before feasibility and engineering studies on both the western and northern routes are completed and their reports assessed, one cannot come out and rush with figures like that; the cost could be actually much lower.”

The SGR is just one of the ambitious infrastructural projects the government is pursuing with “cheap” or “soft” funding (loans) from EXIM Bank so far to a tune of Shs7.5 trillion, according to Finance ministry records.

According to the Public Finance Management Act, money in the fund will be invested in accordance with the petroleum revenue investment policy issued by the Finance minister after consultation with the Secretary to the Treasury, and on the advice of the Investment Advisory Committee. The members of the Investment Advisory Committee shall be appointed by the minister after approved by Parliament.

February 6, 2017
Kenya:Ruto camps in Mombasa, says war on drugs intensified

{The government will not relent in its efforts to eradicate drug and drug use in the coastal region, Deputy President William Ruto said on Sunday.}

Speaking after attending mass at the Holy Ghost Cathedral Catholic Church, Mr Ruto expressed concern over high number of youths succumbing to drug addiction.

“You should pray for those indulging in this illegal business to change their way of lives and stop destroying our young people here (Mombasa),” he added.

Acknowledging that the government was facing challenges in fighting the drug menace, Mr Ruto asked Christians to join hands in the fight against the vice to save the youths.

The DP’s statements follow the extradition of four suspected drug barons to the United States to face trafficking charges.

Joint investigations between Kenyan police and Drug Enforcement Administration led to the arrest of Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, Gulam Hussein, Vijaygiri Anandgiri Goswami and Baktash Akasha Abdalla.

{{PRAY FOR IEBC}}

At the same time, he urged Christians to offer ‘special prayers’ to Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) officials to conduct free, fair and credible polls on August 8.

“All of us as Kenyans require the space and chance to exercise our constitutional rights to vote for whoever we want without being coerced or intimidated through unorthodox means to vote otherwise,” he said.

The DP noted that security had improved in the coastal region which had come under terror attacks due to intensified surveillance by security forces within and without the borders.

“We must pay homage to our security forces for ensuring peace and tranquility prevail not only in Mombasa and its environs but the entire country and within our borders,” he said.

According to him, even after this year’s elections and its outcome, Kenyans would still remain peaceful.

{{DOCTORS’ STRIKE}}

In his sermon, the presiding Priest John Correa challenged the government to resolve the doctors’ strike impasse saying most Kenyans were suffering due to lack of health services.

“Whether we are leaders, politicians, government and priests we should work in solidarity to break the impasse and bring back healthcare services to public hospitals,” he pleaded.

He also urged Catholic faithful to donate foodstuff to help residents suffering in drought and famine hit counties across the country.

February 6, 2017
Tanzanian woman held in Delhi over 11bn/- ‘fine quality’ cocaine haul

{A Tanzania woman identified as Pamela David Kiritta (41) is among two people who were nabbed last Friday in India with four kilogrammes of ‘fine quality Colombian cocaine,’ with a street value of US 500,000 dollars (about 11bn/-), ac-cording to media reports from New Delhi.}

Ms Kiritta was arrested by India’s Narcot-ics Control Bureau (NCB) alongside a Zambian national Thelma Mkandawire (38) at a hotel in Mahipalpur.

The anti-narcotics bureau says the seizure is the third haul in the past month.

Contacted for details yesterday, Tanzania’s Head of Interpol, Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police (SACP) Gustavus Babile, said he was unaware of the arrest but pledged to make a follow-up on the matter.

Reports indicates that NCB officials fficials are still searching for a South African national to whom the women were sup-posed to deliver the consignment.

The Zambian woman is said to have flown to Delhi from Abu Dhabi on a Euro-pean Airline flight.

A cavity in the bottom of her travel bag held the cocaine, which were packed in a plastic bag.

“After the woman reached the Indira Gandhi International Airport the NCB team had her under surveillance,” disclosed Madho Singh, Zonal Director for NCB.

He added: “Our team fol-lowed her when she left the airport and reached at hotel in Mahipalpur.

Sometime later, another woman reached the hotel to receive the consignment. Our team stepped in and inter-cepted them both.”

Officials in India said Ms Kiritta told her interrogators that she was staying at an apartment in Vasant Kunj since January, this year and was working on behalf of a man from South Africa.

February 6, 2017
Bank to support youth projects, says Burundi Vice-President

{The Burundian government intends to set up an investment bank for the youth, the First Burundi Vice-President told journalists.}

In an attempt to promote development and to avert Burundi’s looming youth crisis, President Nkurunziza has announced plans to set up an investment bank that will provide loans to young people.

Burundi’s First Vice-President, Gaston Sindimwo told journalists on 3 February that that bank will soon open its doors. It is part of the Government’s policy to promote youth development. “A team of experts are studying its establishment,” he says. Sindimwo also noted that Burundi’s youth have been used to promote violence in the past.

He called on young people to form youth associations in order to work together. “The bank will provide loans only to development projects of youth associations,” he said.

The bank executives will analyze the projects presented by youth associations in order to finance them according to their credibility.

“This bank will allow young people to carry out their development projects. This is good news for us young people, “says Eric Hakizimana, a member of the youth association Action for Peace and Development. However, he doubts about the criteria that will be considered to grant loans to those youth associations

According to the Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies of Burundi, ISTEEBU, young people aged between 18 and 35 represent 52% of Burundi’s population.

Burundi is facing a huge youth unemployment problem. 52.5% of young people are unemployed, according to the survey conducted by two local NGOs, ADISCO and REJA, in November 2016.

Source:Iwacu

February 6, 2017
Two drug dealers arrested with 50kgs of cannabis in Ruhango

{At least two suspected drug dealers have been taken into custody in Ruhango District.}

Bosco Ntakirutimana, 32, and Jean Buregeya, 27, were arrested on the wee hours of Saturday morning in Ruhango town with about 50 kilogrammes of cannabis, police in Ruhango said.

The acting District Police Commander of Ruhango, Chief Inspector of Police (CIP) Jean Bosco Ndayisabye, said that the narcotic drugs were recovered from the house of Ntakirutimana following a tip-off from the residents.

“At about 5am on Saturday, a resident, out of suspicion, called us after seeing people unloading a luggage from the vehicle. Police officers were deployed immediately, but the vehicle had already left at the time of their arrival. They proceeded and search the house of Ntakirutimana, where they recovered sacks of cannabis. Ntakirutimana was immediately taken into custody together with Buregeya, who was also found at the scene,” CIP Ndayisabye said.

The suspects are currently detained at Ruhango Police Station as further investigations into their criminal dealings continue.

“Ruhango lies in the transit route for drug dealers, and for that matter, were are always on alert to respond decisively on any information we get from the people or our counterparts from other districts. However, there are some individuals who sell cannabis within the district, but due to the existing partnership with the people, we are also able to identify, apprehend them and their case files forwarded to prosecution for trial,” he noted.

Last month, Police in Ruhango also arrested another drug dealer identified as Haruna, with about 30kgs of cannabis. Haruna was recently convicted by the court in Ruhango and sentenced to four years in prison.

Article 594 of the Rwandan penal code, partly states that, any person who, unlawfully, makes, transforms, imports, or sells narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances within the country, shall be liable to a term of imprisonment of three to five years and a fine of Rwf500,000 to Rwf5 million.

Source:Police

February 6, 2017
8 quick pieces of advice your parents ought to have told you about having a peaceful marriage

{Traditionally, before a man or a woman decides to get married, the father ought to give his son some words of advice before he takes that next big step, and the mother ought to do likewise to her daughter before she gets married.}

The advice a parent gives to the child before they venture into marriage can go a long way in preparing that person mentally and emotionally for marriage, and that can go a long way in making a marriage peaceful.

With marriage breaking up easily these days, and divorce happening too frequently, these are some of those pieces of advice many parents forget to tell their children before marriage.

{{1. When one partner is angry,the other should be calm }}

This is probably the biggest piece of advice you can get about having a peaceful marriage. When one partner is angry, the other ought to be calmer. When you and your partner are angry at the same time, then problems that will kill the peace of the home will definitely come up.

{{2. Don’t take everything seriously }}

Not everything your partner says or do should be taken seriously. Try not to be always serious; you choke your marriage when you do this. Loosen up a little, learn to take a joke and be more cheerful.

{{3. Every day should be a new day }}

Every day should be treated as a new day; the troubles, misunderstanding and aggression of the previous day shouldn’t enter the next day. Every day is a new day and should be treated so.

{{4. Arguments shouldn’t be a battle }}

Arguments with your partner shouldn’t be treated as a battle; it’s not a win or lose situation, and shouldn’t be treated so. There’s wisdom in learning to back down sometimes.

{{5. Letting go sometimes show maturity }}

You’ll save your marriage a lot of stress if you can learn to let go. The inability to let go is what kills the peace in most marriages.

{{6. Settle your differences on time }}

Learn to settle your differences early enough, so that love can have enough room to grow.

7. Don’t always wait for your partner to take the first step in reconciliation. A lot of partners make this terrible mistake, and it hurts the peace of many marriages. When there’s a problem between you and your partner, it ought to be fixed — not left alone. Taking the first step to reconciliation clearly shows how mentally ready you are for marriage.

8. Watch what you say to your partner, especially when you are angry. Words can bore large holes in your partner’s heart and you wouldn’t know.

Many parents no longer give their children sound marital advice anymore; but if you want to experience peace in your marriage, then you should have these tips at your finger tips.

Source:Elcrema

February 6, 2017
12, 000 pieces of plastic bags seized in Gicumbi

{Police in Gicumbi District have seized about 60 cartons (12, 000 pieces) of banned non-biodegradable plastic bags.}

The polythene bags were seized in a police operation in Rukomo trading centre in Herezo Cell of Kageyo Sector, on Saturday.

Gicumbi District Police Commander, Chief Supt. Dan Ndayambaje said that the plastic bags were seized from a trader, who was headed to Kigali by public transport means.

“We received a call from our partner in crime prevention in Rukomo trading centre about a person, who was waiting for a vehicle and headed to Kigali with a luggage he suspected to be illegal. As the police patrol deployed to authenticate the information and take appropriate action approached the scene, the suspect fled leaving the luggage behind, which has since been seized as exhibit as we search for the culprit,” Chief Supt. Ndayambaje said.

“Although plastic bags are not a big issue in Gicumbi, the area is prone to smugglers because of its strategic location, especially through porous borders. Besides special operations, the fight against the sell and use of plastic bags is also part of usual police operations against all sorts of illegal activities including drug dealers,” he added.

“Fighting sell and use of plastic bags is a national policy that we implement jointly with other charged institutions like Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) and even the people, who are the source of information.”

The seizure comes at the time when Rwanda National Police (RNP) and REMA are intensively conducting operations and awareness against sell and use of plastic bags across the country, since December last year.

According to the law, any individual who sells the banned bags faces a penalty of between Rwf10, 000 and Rwf300,000 while buyers are fined between Rwf5,000 and Rwf100,000.

Late December, last year, the joint operation impounded at least 435,000 pieces (2, 175 cartons) of plastic bags from 212 people, majority traders, across the country, who were slapped a fine of Rwf4.5 million in total.

The non-biodegradable polythene bags have been outlawed in the country since 2008.

Most plastic bags are said to be sold or used in remote shops, bakeries, and butcheries.

According to the law, factories found using banned plastic bags are fined between Rwf100, 000 and Rwf500, 000 and jail term of between 2 and six months, or one of these penalties.

February 6, 2017
4 ways you are killing your motivation in life

{Staying motivated will keep the hunger in you, to work hard to achieve your goals and dreams. When you are motivated, you have that extra zeal to push for your aim, but the same cannot be said when your motivation has been dented.}

Unfortunately, people hurt their own motivation and kill their drive to reach certain heights.

This is how you to do that?

{{1. You doubt yourself }}

Success starts with you; it starts with you believing in yourself, and you believing that you can achieve it. When you have doubts in yourself and you don’t believe you can do it, then your motivation will gradually diminish till there’s nothing left.

{{2. You let things distract you }}

If you want to maintain your motivation, you should be able to ward off distractions. Distractions come in many forms, and if you don’t keep it away, you’ll easily lose focus.

{{3. You keep procrastinating }}

When you keep postponing the things you ought to do now, you make it more difficult for you to even do them at a future date, and it wouldn’t take long for your motivation to be lost thereafter.

{{4. You see challenges as the final stop }}

Challenges will definitely come, some things will definitely look difficult to overcome, but the way you see these challenges can go a long way in determining how successful or unsuccessful the relationship could be.

Motivation can easily die off, if you let it to, and these are some of the ways you hurt your motivation.

Source:Elcrema

February 6, 2017
Practice makes perfect, and ‘overlearning’ locks it in

{Want to learn something and then quickly make that mastery stick? A new Brown University study in which people learned visual perception tasks suggests that you should keep practicing for a little while even after you think you can’t get any better. Such “overlearning” locked in performance gains, according to the Nature Neuroscience paper that describes the effect and its underlying neurophysiology.}

Everybody from actors learning lines, to musicians learning new songs, to teachers trying to impart key facts to students has observed that learning has to “sink in” in the brain. Prior studies and also the new one, for example, show that when people learn a new task and then learn a similar one soon afterward, the second instance of learning often interferes with and undermines the mastery achieved on the first one.

The new study shows that overlearning prevents against such interference, cementing learning so well and quickly, in fact, that the opposite kind of interference happens instead. For a time, overlearning the first task prevents effective learning of the second task — as if learning becomes locked down for the sake of preserving master of the first task. The underlying mechanism, the researchers discovered, appears to be a temporary shift in the balance of two neurotransmitters that control neural flexibility, or “plasticity,” in the part of the brain where the learning occurred.

“These results suggest that just a short period of overlearning drastically changes a post-training plastic and unstable [learning state] to a hyperstabilized state that is resilient against, and even disrupts, new learning,” wrote the team led by corresponding author Takeo Watanabe, the Fred M. Seed Professor of Cognitive Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown.

{{Different ways to learn}}

The findings arose from several experiments in which Watanabe, lead author Kazuhisa Shibata and their co-authors asked a total of 183 volunteers to engage in the task of learning to detect which one of the two successively presented images had a patterned orientation and which depicted just unstructured noise. After eight rounds, or “blocks,” of training, which lasted about 20 minutes total, the initial 60 volunteers seemed to master the task.

With that established, the researchers then formed two new groups of volunteers. After a pre-test before any training, a first group practiced the task for eight blocks, waited 30 minutes, and then trained for eight blocks on a new similar task. The next day they were tested on both tasks to assess what they learned. The other group did the same thing, except that they overlearned the first task for 16 blocks of training.

On the next day’s tests, the first group performed quite poorly on the first task compared to the pre-test but showed substantial progress on the second task. Meanwhile the overlearning group showed strong performance on the first task, but no significant improvement on the second. Regular learning subjects were vulnerable to interference by the second task (as expected) but overlearners were not.

In the second experiment, again with new volunteers, the researchers lengthened the break between task training from 30 minutes to 3.5 hours. This time on the next day’s tests, each group — those who overlearned and those who didn’t — showed similar performance patterns in that they both demonstrated significant improvement on both tasks. Given enough time between learning tasks, people successfully learned both and neither kind of interference was evident.

What was going on? The researchers sought answers in a third experiment by using the technology of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to track the balance of two neurotransmitters in volunteers as they learned. Focusing on the “early visual” region in each subject’s brain, the researchers tracked the ratio of glutamate, which promotes plasticity, and GABA, which inhibits it. One group of volunteers trained on a task for eight blocks while the other group trained on it for 16. Meanwhile they all underwent MRS scans before training, 30 minutes after, and 3.5 hours after, and took the usual pre-training and post-training performance tests.

The overlearners and the regular learners revealed a perfectly opposite pattern in how the ratio of their neurotransmitter levels changed. They all started from the same baseline, but for regular learners, the ratio of glutamate to GABA increased markedly 30 minutes after training, before declining almost back to the baseline by 3.5 hours. Meanwhile, the overlearners showed sharp decline in the ratio of glutamate to GABA 30 minutes after training before it rose nearly back to baseline by 3.5 hours.

In other words, at the stage when regular learners were at the peak of plasticity (leaving their first training vulnerable to interference from a second training), overlearners were hunkered down with inhibition (protecting the first training, but closing the door on the second). After 3.5 hours everyone was pretty much back to normal.

In a final experiment, the researchers showed that the amount of decline in the glutamate to GABA ratio in each volunteer was proportional to the degree to which their first training interfered with their second training, suggesting that the link between the neurotransmitter ratio and the effects of overlearning were no coincidence.

{{Timing is everything}}

Though the study focused on a visual learning task, Watanabe said he is confident the effect will likely translate to other kinds of learning, such as motor tasks, where phenomena such as interference work similarly.

If further studies confirm that overlearning’s effects indeed carry over to learning in general, then such findings would suggest some advice optimizing the timing of training:

To cement training quickly, overlearning should help, but beware it might interfere with similar learning it that follow immediately.

Without overlearning, don’t try to learn something similar in rapid succession because there is a risk that the second bout of learning will undermine the first.

If you have enough time, you can learn two tasks without interference by leaving a few hours between the two trainings.

“If you want to learn something very important, maybe overlearning is a good way,” Watanabe said. “If you do overlearning, you may be able to increase the chance that what you learn will not be gone.”

February 5, 2017
Vegetation resilient to salvage logging after severe wildfire

{Nearly a decade after being logged, vegetation in forested areas severely burned by California’s Cone Fire in 2002 was relatively similar to areas untouched by logging equipment. The findings of a U.S. Forest Service study shed light on how vegetation responds to severe wildfire and whether further disturbances from logging affect regrowth.}

The study, “Response of understory vegetation to salvage logging following a high-severity wildfire,” reports a modest difference between logged and unlogged areas for some shrubs, but researchers with the agency’s Pacific Southwest Research Station conclude the diversity of plant species and their abundance, as a whole, differed little between logged and unlogged sites. Salvage logging refers to the practice of harvesting fire-killed trees (“salvage”) to extract economic value from them before the wood decays.

The differences observed within the shrub communities could stem from the plants’ reproduction cycle and timing of the logging operations.

“The three native shrub species that declined in abundance with logging (prostrate ceanothus, snowbrush ceanothus and greenleaf manzanita) have seeds triggered to germinate by heat or char from fire,” said Eric Knapp, a research ecologist with the Forest Service and study co-author. Logging occurred more than a year after the fire, which would have coincided with the seedling stage of the new shrubs, making them vulnerable to surface disturbances.

“It is possible that the effect on shrubs might have been avoided if logging had been done soon after the fire, prior to seeds germinating,” Knapp said.

{{Additional findings include:}}

Researchers did not find a difference in the abundance of native versus weedy non-native plants between logged and unlogged sites. A common concern in post-fire logging is that logging equipment may serve as a source or transport for unwanted plant species.

Researchers observed plant species which weren’t dependent on fire-stimulated germination to be less affected by post-fire logging. Many of these species emerge from deeply buried roots or bulbs, leading researchers to believe they were better protected from ground disturbances caused by logging machinery.

Researchers did observe, however, substantial changes in the plant community during the course of the six-year study. For example, the amount of weedy non-native plants across all research sites increased, suggesting that the plant community responded more strongly to environmental changes caused by high-intensity wildfire than disturbances from logging.

The relatively flat ground and rocky soil of the research sites within the Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest in California’s Lassen National Forest, where the Cone Fire burned, may have reduced negative effects associated with ground disturbance, leading researchers to caution applying their findings to areas where soil disturbance from logging is greater. However, the results do coincide with a growing body of evidence from other post-fire logging studies.

“Longer-term research is finding that understory vegetation might not be as substantially impacted by post-fire logging as originally feared,” said Martin Ritchie, Forest Service research forester and study co-author, “especially when care is taken to minimize soil impacts.”

Knowing that salvage logging doesn’t appear to significantly impact vegetation regrowth could allow researchers and land managers to instead focus attention on other aspects of post-fire logging that could benefit from further research.

“If future studies continue to not find strong longer-term salvage harvest effects on forest understory vegetation,” Knapp said, “the debates about pros and cons of post-fire management could then narrow to topics such as snag habitat and woody fuel levels that are unequivocally impacted by salvage harvest.”

February 5, 2017