IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • ACP Rutaganira challenges Kayonza residents to lead in fight against illicit drugs

    {The Eastern Region Police Commander (RPC), Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dismas Rutaganira met with hundreds of residents of Kabare Sector in Kayonza District and urged them to take a lead in fighting drug trafficking.}

    He said that “ownership” is a great tool in identifying, reporting and arresting drug dealers.

    The RPC was speaking on April 5, shortly after he led over 100 police officers in an agricultural exercise to spray plantations against leaf diseases and fungicides.

    The event was also attended by the mayor of Kayonza, Jean Claude Murenzi.

    ACP Rutaganira advised residents to avoid drugs saying that, “It is a trap against success… there is no happiness but consequences.”

    The RPC advised youth in the area that; “don’t forget you are the future leaders of this country. If you reject drugs and help report the traffickers, you are contributing to building a safer country.”

    He said hat much as efforts were put in place to fight drug trafficking, there is still need for relentless and concerted the efforts to break chains of supply and ultimately prevent consumption.

    He outlined effects of drug consumption saying, “such substances can have enormous health effects, such as brain damage, besides behavioural problems.”

    “These are consequences to the consumer but the effects can go as far as affecting families, communities and the country. This is why we should collectively fight the consumption of these substances,” said ACP Rutaganira.

    Though police recorded success in working with local communities towards curbing drug abuse and trafficking, police have also initiated operations to crackdown such criminal activities that have yielded results.

    Source:Police

  • You spy with your little eye, dogs can adopt the perspective of humans

    {Humans are able to interpret the behaviour of others by attributing mental states to them (and to themselves). By adopting the perspectives of other persons, they can assume their emotions, needs and intentions and react accordingly. In the animal kingdom, the ability to attribute mental states (Theory of Mind) is a highly contentious issue. Cognitive biologists from the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna could prove with a new test procedure that dogs are not only able to identify whether a human has an eye on a food source and, therefore, knows where the food has been hidden. They can also apply this knowledge in order to correctly interpret cues by humans and find food they cannot see themselves. This perspective taking ability is an important component of social intelligence. It helps dogs to cope with the human environment. The results have been published in the journal Animal Cognition.}

    The so-called Theory of Mind describes the ability in humans to understand mental states in conspecifics such as emotions, intentions, knowledge, beliefs and desires. This ability develops in humans within the first four or five years of life while it is usually denied in animals. Indications that animals can understand mental states or even states of knowledge of others have only been found in apes and corvids so far. Dogs have been tested several times, but the results were poor and contradictory.

    With a new experimental approach, cognitive biologists from the Messerli Research Institute could now provide solid evidence for dogs being able to adopt our perspective. By adopting the position of a human and following their gaze, dogs understand what the human could see and, consequently, know. This ability to ascribe knowledge is only a component of a full-blown Theory of Mind, but an important one.

    Identifying the right informant

    The so-called Guesser-Knower paradigm is a standard test in research into the attribution of knowledge to others. This experiment involves two persons: a “Knower” who hides food, invisibly for the dog, in one of several food containers or knows where somebody else has hided it, and a “Guesser.” The Guesser has either not been in the room or covered her eyes during the hiding of the food. A non-transparent wall blocks the animals’ view of the food being hidden. After that, the two humans become informants by pointing to different food containers.

    The Knower always points to the baited container and the Guesser to another one. All containers smell of food. “To get the food, the dogs have to understand who knows the hiding place (Knower) and who does not and can, therefore, only guess (Guesser). They must identify the informant they can rely on if they have to decide for one food container,” said principal investigator Ludwig Huber. In approximately 70 per cent of the cases the dogs chose the container indicated by the Knower – and thus were able to successfully accomplish the test. This result was independent of the position of the food container, the person acting as the Knower and where the Guesser was looking.

    Dogs can adopt human perspectives

    The only aim of this test series, however, was to independently confirm a study carried out in New Zealand. Clear evidence of dogs being able to adopt our perspective and take advantage of it was provided in a new test developed by the team, the so-called “Guesser looking away” test.

    In this new experiment, a third person in the middle hides the food. This person does not give cues later on. The potential informants were kneeing left and right of this hider and looked to the same side and slightly down. Thus, one of the two persons looked towards the baiter, the other person looked away. “This means that the tested dogs, in order to get the food, had to judge who is the Knower by adopting the informants’ perspectives and following their gazes,” explained Huber. Even in this test, which is very difficult for the animals, approximately 70 per cent of the trials had been mastered.

    Adopting the human perspective leads to invisible food

    Being able to adopt the perspective of a human does, however, not require the ability to understand intentions or wishes. “But the study showed that dogs can find out what humans or conspecifics can or cannot see,” explained Huber. “By adopting the positions of humans and following their gazes geometrically, they find out what humans see and, therefore, know – and consequently whom they can trust or not.”

    In similar experiments, chimpanzees and few bird species such as scrub jays and ravens were able to understand the state of knowledge and also the intentions of conspecifics and modify their own behaviour accordingly. For dogs, there have only been specualtions and vague indications so far. But dogs understand our behaviour very well, for example our degree of attention. They can learn from directly visible cues such as gestures or gazes. Thus, they are able to find food even if their view of it has been blocked. “The ability to interpret our behaviour and anticipate our intentions, which has obviously developed through a combination of domestication and individual experience, seems to have supported the ability to adopt our perspective,” said Huber. “It still remains unclear which cognitive mechanisms contribute to this ability. But it helps dogs to find their way in our world very well.”

    Source:Science Daily

  • Atmosphere detected around an Earth-like planet

    {Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around the super-Earth planet GJ 1132b. This marks the first detection of an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself, and thus is a significant step on the path towards the detection of life outside our Solar System. The team that made the discovery, led by Keele University’s Dr John Southworth, used the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope in Chile to take images of the planet’s host star GJ 1132. They were able to measure the slight decrease in brightness as the planet and its atmosphere absorbed some of the starlight while transiting (passing in front of) the host star.}

    Dr John Southworth explains, “While this is not the detection of life on another planet, it’s an important step in the right direction: the detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time that an atmosphere has been detected around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself.”

    {{Is there life out there?}}

    Astronomers’ current strategy for finding life on another planet is to detect the chemical composition of that planet’s atmosphere, on the look-out for chemical imbalances which could be caused by living organisms. In the case of our own Earth, the presence of large amounts of oxygen is a tell-tale sign of life.

    Until these findings by Dr Southworth’s team, the only previous detections of exoplanet atmospheres all involved gas giants reminiscent of a high-temperature Jupiter.

    Dr Southworth says that whilst we’re still a long way from detecting life on exoplanets, this discovery is the first step:

    “With this research, we have taken the first tentative step into studying the atmospheres of smaller, Earth-like, planets. We simulated a range of possible atmospheres for this planet, finding that those rich in water and/or methane would explain the observations of GJ 1132b. The planet is significantly hotter and a bit larger than Earth, so one possibility is that it is a “water world” with an atmosphere of hot steam.”

    {{Studying atmospheres}}

    The planet in question, GJ 1132b, orbits the very low-mass star GJ 1132 in the Southern constellation Vela, at a distance of 39 light-years from Earth. The system was studied by a team led by John Southworth (Keele University, UK) and Luigi Mancini (currently at the University of Rome Tor Vergata), and including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA, Germany) and the University of Cambridge.

    The team used the GROND imager at the 2.2 m ESO/MPG telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile to observe the planet simultaneously at seven different wavelength bands spanning the optical and near-infrared. As GJ 1132b is a transiting planet, it passes directly between Earth and its host star every 1.6 days, blocking a small fraction of the star’s light. From the amount of light lost, astronomers can deduce the planet’s size — in this case only 1.4 times that of Earth.

    Crucially, the new observations showed the planet to be larger in one of the seven wavelength bands. This suggests the presence of an atmosphere that is opaque to this specific light (making the planet appear larger), but transparent to all the others.

    The discovery of this atmosphere is encouraging. Very low-mass stars are extremely common (much more so that Sun-like stars), and are known to host lots of small planets. But they also show a lot of magnetic activity, causing high levels of X-rays and ultraviolet light to be produced which might completely evaporate the planets’ atmospheres. However, the properties of GJ 1132b show that an atmosphere can endure this for billion of years without being destroyed. Given the huge number of very low-mass stars and planets, this could mean that the conditions suitable for life are common in the Universe.

    This discovery makes GJ 1132b one of the highest-priority targets for further study by the current top facilities, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and ESO’s Very Large Telescope, as well as the James Webb Space Telescope which is slated for launch in 2018.

    Artist's impression of super-Earth planet GJ 1132b.

    Source:Science Daily

  • ETA ‘gives’ France authorities list of weapons caches

    {Basque group hands over arms after waging a deadly independence campaign for more than 50 years.}

    The armed Basque separatist group ETA has formally given authorities in France information about the location of its arm stashes, according to an independent verification panel.

    ETA says its initiative will bring the final curtain down on a decades-long armed campaign to gain independence for the Basque country straddling the Spanish-French border.

    “This information [about the arms caches] was immediately conveyed to the relevant French authorities, who will now secure and collect ETA’s arsenal,” the International Verification Commission (IVC), which is in charge of verifying the disarming process but is not recognised by either France or Spain, said in a statement on Saturday.

    The panel said it “believes that this step constitutes the disarmament of ETA”.

    The commission’s spokesman, Ram Manikkalingam, a former adviser on the Sri Lanka peace process, told reporters in the French city of Bayonne that the panel had received the list of caches via “the artisans of peace” – a French civil society group headed by an environmentalist, Txetx Etcheverry.

    French police are on standby to take possession of the weapons, officials told AFP news agency.

    Inactive for more than five years, ETA had said it would hand over its arms, a historic step following a decaes-long violent campaign that claimed more than 800 lives, mostly in Spain.

    Disarmament is the second-to-last step demanded by France and Spain, which want ETA to formally disband. The organisation has not said whether it would do that.

    “Disarming, of course isn’t the same as disbanding, and we are told ETA members have gone away for a period of reflection to decide where they go from here,” Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from Bilbao, said.

    “One thing is for certain though: an armed group without arms doesn’t have much point’.

    {{‘Nothing in return’}}

    In Spain’s capital, Madrid, the government on Saturday dismissed ETA’s disarmament as a unilateral affair and warned that the group – which it denounces as a “terrorist” organisation – could expect “nothing” in return.

    “It will not reap any political advantage or profit,” said Inigo Mendez de Vigo, Spain’s culture minister and its government spokesman.

    “May it disarm, may it dissolve, may it ask forgiveness and help to clear up the crimes which have not been resolved,” he said.

    A government source told the Reuters news agency that Madrid did not believe the group would hand over all its arms, while Spain’s state prosecutor has asked the High Court to examine those surrendered for murder weapons used in unresolved cases.

    Anger among Basques at political and cultural repression during the Spanish dictatorship of General Francisco Franco led to the founding of ETA – which in Basque stands for “Basque Country and Freedom” – in 1959.

    Following Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s, the Basque region gained more autonomy and the group’s continued bombings and assassinations caused public support to wane.

    One year after its last deadly attack, the killing of a French police officer near Paris in March 2010, ETA announced it was renouncing violence.

    {{‘Death and pain’}}

    Journalist Gorka Landaburu, who had written articles critical of ETA and in return got a bomb in the mail which left him blind in one eye and took a thumb off, said he believed the entire armed struggle was a waste of time.

    “It’s easy to apologise – I’m not asking them to punish themselves in public. But they need to think hard about what they actually gained in 50 years,” he told Al Jazeera.

    “Nothing. They just caused death and pain, even on their own side.”

    The group chose not to disarm in 2011 when it called its truce, but has been severely weakened in the past decade after hundreds of its members were arrested in joint Spanish and French operations and weapons were seized.

    In a symbolic gesture in 2014, ETA released a video showing masked members giving up a limited weapons cache to verifiers.

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Myanmar ferry capsizes; 20 dead, over a dozen missing

    {Some 60 passengers on the ferry were returning from a wedding when it collided with another boat in the Irrawaddy Delta.}

    At least 20 people were killed when a boat carrying scores of wedding guests capsized in Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta, officials said, with more feared drowned as rescue workers renewed their search in daylight.

    Most of the dead were women, according officials, who said the boat sank on Friday evening when it collided with a river barge in Pathein, a port city west of the commercial capital Yangon.

    “Altogether 16 women and four men were killed in the boat accident,” regional MP Aung Thu Htwe told AFP on Saturday morning.

    “We estimate nine people are still missing,” he said, adding that some 30 people had been rescued alive the night before.

    The boat was believed to be carrying between 60 and 80 people when it sank, according to state media and a local police officer.

    “They were crossing to the other side of the river after attending a wedding in Pathein. Most of them were relatives from the same village,” said the police officer, who requested anonymity.

    Both boats were unlit when they collided in the middle of the river, he added.

    Local authorities and red cross workers resumed the search operation this morning, the police officer said.

    “We will do search and rescue for the whole day,” he told AFP.

    Fatal boat accidents are common in Myanmar, where many people living along its flood-prone rivers rely on often overcrowded ferries for transport.

    In October, 73 people, including many teachers and students, died when their packed vessel capsized in central Myanmar on the Chindwin River.

    Earlier that year in April at least 21 people, including nine children, died after their boat sank off the coast of Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine.

    Around 60 people died the year before, in March 2015, when their ferry went down in the same treacherous waters off the Rakhine coast.

    Photos in local media showed rescuers working in the darkness on Saturday night to lay the bodies of the dead onshore

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • US lawmakers call on Trump to spell out Syria strategy

    {Democrats join Republicans in backing military action, but many demand the president spell out a broader strategy.}

    Members of the US Congress from both parties have backed President Donald Trump’s cruise missile strikes on Syria, but demanded he develop a strategy for dealing with the broader conflict and consult with Congress on any further action.

    In the biggest foreign policy decision of his presidency, Trump ordered the firing of cruise missiles at a Syrian air base that US officials said was the launching point for a deadly chemical weapons attack against Syrian civilians this week.

    “The strike was well planned, well executed. It was certainly more than a pinprick, and sends a message … that using chemical weapons again is not something [Syrian president Bashar al-Assad] can do with impunity,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a news conference.

    McConnell said Vice President Mike Pence had called him to explain the rationale for the strikes. It was one of a series of calls by administration officials to members of Congress beginning shortly before the strikes and extending until after midnight on Thursday evening.

    The US said 58 of the 59 cruise missiles fired at the Shayrat airfield hit their targets, dealing heavy damage to the base.

    “I am hopeful these strikes will convince the Assad regime that such actions should never be repeated,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.

    But many said the president must present a plan to Congress outlining his Syria strategy for the future, including how his plan of safe zones inside Syria will help victims of the conflict.

    Republican Senator John Cornyn told reporters that the administration has not defined its main target in Syria – whether it is Assad’s government or the Islamic State in of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

    “We … need a strategy to figure out what is our goals in Syria,” he said. “Is our goal just to defeat [ISIL] or is our goal to change the regime, and if there is policy to change the regime what comes next?”

    Most lawmakers insisted Trump should seek Congress’ approval for any additional military action.

    “Congress must live up to its constitutional responsibility to debate an Authorisation of the Use of Military Force against a sovereign nation,” Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter asking Speaker Paul Ryan to call the House of Representatives back to Washington to debate a formal authorisation to use military force.

    The House is not due to return until late April.

    Republican Senator Rand Paul, a member of the foreign relations committee, called the Syria strikes illegal.

    Under the US constitution, declarations of war require congressional approval.

    “We’ve had no chance to weigh or weigh in on whether we should do it or not,” Paul told reporters.

    The 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, Senator Tim Kaine, also said Trump’s failure to seek congressional approval in advance violates US law.

    “There clearly wasn’t enough consultation and the constitution is very clear about this, you can’t go to war without a vote of Congress,” he said.

    Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, another foreign relations committee member, said that if Congress does not assert itself now, it risked losing its constitutional right to declare war.

    “I think it’s devastating to the future role of Congress in foreign affairs. If we don’t authorise this action, I don’t see why any president would ever come to Congress,” Murphy said.

    Partisan debate over how to deal with Syria has been bitter. In 2013, then-president Barack Obama ran into stiff resistance from many Republicans, including McConnell, when he proposed military action to retaliate for a chemical attack that crossed Obama’s red line.

    Many Democrats, some of whom had paid a political penalty for backing Republican President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, also opposed intervention.

    Obama’s abrupt decision not to fire missiles and instead work with Russia to remove Assad’s chemical weapons infuriated many Republicans who had backed the Democratic president’s proposal.

    The conflict in Syria has now dragged on for six years, devastating the country, destabilising the region and leaving millions homeless.

    Senator Tim Kaine said Trump's failure to seek congressional approval violates US law

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Henrique Capriles banned from public office

    {Henrique Capriles rejects ruling that would prevent him from challenging President Nicolas Maduro in 2018 polls.}

    Venezuelan authorities have banned top opposition leader Henrique Capriles from running for office for 15 years, the latest move in an increasingly tense power struggle in the crisis-hit country.

    Capriles read from excerpts of the comptroller general’s order at a rally on Friday night in which he urged supporters to take to the streets, beginning with a previously scheduled demonstration on Saturday, to defend their political rights and demand the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.

    “When the dictatorship squeals it’s a sign we’re advancing,” he said in a speech surrounded by other leading opposition figures, many of whom themselves have been targeted. “The only one who is disqualified here is you, Nicolas Maduro.”

    The 44-year-old Capriles has been the most prominent leader of Venezuela’s opposition over the past decade, twice coming close to winning the presidency.

    He is currently governor of Miranda state, which surrounds Caracas.

    The ban deals a blow to the opposition after stepped-up protests this week and accusations that Maduro is tightening his grip on power and cracking down on dissent.

    Leaders in the ruling socialist party have accused Capriles in recent days of trying to provoke a bloodbath through his leadership of protests, many of which have ended in tear gas and rubber bullets.

    Violence erupted for a third straight day on Thursday, leaving one demonstrator dead.

    The ruling said the sanction was due to “administrative irregularities” by Capriles in his post as governor.

    Authorities have been investigating Capriles since the beginning of the year for what they say are a half dozen administrative irregularities, including taking suspicious donations from abroad.

    The move effectively bans Capriles from running against Maduro in a general election due next year.

    It is part of a broader government crackdown that began with a decision last week by the Supreme Court to gut the opposition-controlled congress of its last vestiges of power.

    The decision was later reversed amid widespread international condemnation.

    The comptroller’s office notification to Capriles said he had 15 working days to appeal the decision at that office or 180 days to ask for its annulment at the Supreme Court. Both are pro-government and unlikely to overturn the decision.

    Capriles lost narrowly in the 2013 election that brought Maduro to the presidency after the death of Maduro’s mentor Hugo Chavez.

    The collapse in prices for Venezuela’s crucial oil exports has sapped the country’s revenues, prompting shortages of food, medicine and basic goods along with a surge in violent crime.

    The opposition blames Maduro for the economic crisis. He says it is due to a capitalist conspiracy.
    The wave of protests has revived fears of broader unrest in Venezuela, where 43 people were killed during riots in 2014.

    The country has undergone three attempted military coups since 1992.

    Capriles branded the move part of what the opposition alleges is a 'coup' by Maduro

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Stockholm truck attack: Man held for ‘terrorist crimes’

    {Swedish prosecutors say man arrested for ‘terrorist crimes’ after truck rammed into crowds in Stockholm, killing four.}

    Swedish police said on Saturday that a man arrested on “suspicion of terrorist crime” was likely to be the driver of a truck that ploughed into a crowd of people in central Stockholm a day earlier, killing four.

    “The person in question has been arrested as the culprit … in this case the driver,” Lars Bystrom, police spokesman, said.

    Swedish media reported police had arrested a second man and that he had a connection to the previously arrested person, citing police sources. The police declined to comment on whether it had arrested any additional suspects.

    The incident, which also left 15 people injured, occurred just before 13:00 GMT on Friday at the corner of the Ahlens department store and Drottninggatan, the Swedish capital’s biggest pedestrian street, above-ground from its central metro station.

    Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said everything indicated it was “a terror attack”.

    “We are thinking of the dead and the injured and their families. I am urging the public to be vigilant and keep updating the police,” Lofven said.

    The capital was paralysed with a huge security presence after the attack. Police told people to stay away from the centre of the city, and movie theatres as well as many shops were closed.

    The metro system was halted, train traffic from the nearby Central Station disrupted and thousands of people were seen walking across the city’s bridges with no alternative transportation available.

    Photos from the scene showed a beer truck sticking out of the department store. Swedish beer maker said one of its vehicles had been carjacked earlier on Friday as its driver was unloading goods at a restaurant.

    “We stood inside a shoe store and heard something … and then people started to scream,” witness Jan Granroth told the Aftonbladet daily.

    “I looked out of the store and saw a big truck.”

    Body-like forms covered by blankets were seen on Drottninggatan.

    The vehicle caught fire after driving through the busy pedestrian zone and slamming into the building.

    The European Union offered Sweden support and solidarity on Friday.

    “An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all,” said EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker. “One of Europe’s most vibrant and colourful cities appears to have been struck by those wishing it – and our very way of life – harm.”

    A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “We stand together against terror.”

    Friday’s incident was near the site of a December 2010 attack in which Taimour Abdulwahab, a Swedish citizen who lived in Britain, detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring two others.

    Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year.

    In London last month, a man in a car ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead by police.

    In Nice, France, last July, a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.

    The truck was driven along Drottninggatan before ramming into a department store

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • UN: Army attack prompts mass exodus from South Sudan

    {Troops ‘slaughtered civilians like animals’ refugees say, as thousands flee to neighbouring Uganda.}

    More than 6,000 people have fled from southern South Sudan into the northern Ugandan district of Lamwo, recounting the slaughter of civilians by armed forces, according to the UN refugee agency.

    A statement from the UNHCR said on Friday more residents of Pajok town in South Sudan’s Equatoria region were hiding in the bush trying to find their way to safety in Uganda.

    “People fleeing the recent incident claimed that the town came under an indiscriminate attack by the South Sudan armed forces,” the statement said.

    The crisis comes after fighting between government forces and rebels erupted on Monday in Pajok in a previously peaceful part of the country that has seen a surge in conflict in recent months.

    “Refugees told the UNHCR team on the ground in Lamwo terrifying stories of violence and abuse against civilians. Many have witnessed their loved ones shot dead or slaughtered like animals,” Rocco Nuri, UNHCR spokesman, told AFP news agency.

    “Families fled in all directions. Those unable to run were reportedly shot dead, including the elderly and people with disabilities.”

    A local pastor who fled Pajok on Wednesday, and asked not to be named, said soldiers had entered the town in tanks “and suddenly we saw shooting and we just had to run”.

    Both he and regional Anglican Bishop Oringa Benard reported about 135 people had been killed, however, it could not be independently verified.

    Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan, including more than 270,000 in the Bidibidi refugee camp, which in eight months has gone from an empty patch of land to the world’s biggest refugee camp.

    {{Government confirms}}

    Michael Makuei, South Sudan government spokesman, confirmed its forces had attacked Pajok.

    “As you know Pajok has been in the hands of the rebels so what happened was government forces went there and fighting ensued and so the civilian population that has been staying with the rebels had to run away,” he said.

    “I don’t know the figure [of those who might have been killed or injured] but in any fighting there must be casualties.”

    The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS said in a statement on Wednesday it had twice been prevented from accessing Pajok.

    “The mission has received reports of fighting between SPLA [government] troops and the opposition there and is trying to follow-up on reports of civilians killed in the area,” it said.

    UNMISS urged the government to immediately allow it access “so it can fully implement its mandate, including to protect civilians and report on human rights violations”.

    Uganda currently hosts more than 832,000 refugees from South Sudan

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Gambia’s long-time opposition UDP wins absolute majority

    {The Gambia’s long-time opposition UDP has won an absolute majority in Thursday’s parliamentary elections.}

    Official results show the party took 31 of the 53 available seats in the country’s National Assembly.

    The vote was the first time Gambians had gone to the polls since President Yahya Jammeh stepped down in January after 22 years as head of state.

    President Adama Barrow was hoping for a majority to be able to bring in political and security reforms.

    He won December’s presidential election as the flag bearer for an opposition coalition including the UDP.

    The results were announced by chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission Alieu Momar Njai who said the turnout was 42%.

    Five more seats are appointed by the president meaning there is a total of 58 seats in the chamber.

    The parliamentary election was the first poll of the post-Jammeh era

    Source:BBC