IGIHE

Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

  • Anti-racism campaigner Darcus Howe dies aged 74

    {Civil rights activist who campaigned for more than 50 years has died at the age of 74.}

    Darcus Howe, one of Britain’s most prominent anti-racism campaigners, has died in London aged 74.

    An uncompromising champion for racial justice and fierce opponent of police brutality, Howe was born in British-ruled Trinidad in 1943 and moved to the United Kingdom in 1961.

    He intended to study law at London’s Middle Temple, but abandoned his plans for activism, joining the Black Panthers – a movement inspired by the American group of the same name – after experiencing racist abuse and prejudice from white Britons towards the Afro-Caribbean community.

    Howe would later begin a successful career in journalism, writing a regular column for the New Statesman magazine, but gained public attention in 1970 as a member of a group that marched on a west London police station to protest against repeated police raids on Mangrove, a popular Caribbean restaurant.

    Howe and the eight others – known as the “Mangrove Nine” – endured a 55-day trial before finally being acquitted of the main charge: incitement to riot.

    The trial managed to successfully highlight tensions between the black community and the British legal process, after Howe demanded an all-black jury. His request was rejected.

    Howe would gain further prominence in 1981 when he led 20,000 people on a “Black People’s March” to protest against an investigation into the New Cross Fire, when 13 black teenagers were killed in a suspected arson attack.

    Weyman Bennett, the joint national convener for Stand Up Against Racism, told Al Jazeera that Howe’s actions shaped and defined the debate on how to stop and resist racism.

    “Howe was one of the first people to empower young black people and oppose racism in the United Kingdom.

    “He led the fight against the [far-right] National Front in the 1970s and 1980s, a fore-runner to today’s organisations that are Islamophobic and fascist,” Bennett said.

    “He was outspoken on Islamophobia, the government’s [anti-terror] Prevent programme, and how Muslims are being demonised by authorities.

    “He was a living example to many people on why you should speak out when you see injustice, his fire to defeat such groups never died out. He was fearless.”

    The fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan in August 2011, which triggered riots in several poor neighbourhoods in London, further highlighted Howe’s powerful voice.

    During a live interview with BBC News, which has since gone viral, presenter Fiona Armstrong asked a poorly-phrased question which implied Howe was an apologist for the rioters.

    Howe challenged the interviewer, saying: ”Stop accusing me of being a rioter and have some respect for an old West Indian Negro. You sound idiotic – have some respect.”

    The BBC later apologised for any offence caused.

    Diane Abbott, a member of parliament with the opposition Labour Party and shadow home secretary, called Howe “a living embodiment of the struggle against police racism”.

    Several politicians also took to social media to pay tribute to the veteran campaigner.

    Howe was a leading figure in the fight against institutional racism in the UK

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Trump urged to mention Egypt prisoners as he meets Sisi

    {Protesters gather in Washington, DC to highlight plight of prisoners, including Americans, held in Egyptian jails.}

    Washington, DC – As the White House prepared to roll out the red carpet for the Egyptian leader, a parody look-alike of President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi showed up at the Washington Monument, a few blocks away.

    Wearing an oversized mask of Sisi, the impersonator was part of a vigil held on Sunday to bring attention to the thousands of political prisoners languishing in Egyptian prisons.

    The man under the mask kept quiet as he tore up protesters’ banners with gloves stained red to resemble blood.

    Others were more vocal, condemning President Donald Trump’s decision to meet Sisi and criticising the US’ support for his government.

    “We’re giving $1.5bn to an autocrat who has killed thousands of people, who has imprisoned tens of thousands of people, including Americans,” said Mohamed Soltan, an American who was jailed in Egypt for nearly two years. “We’re here to shed light on their plight.”

    With Trump calling Sisi a “fantastic man” after meeting him in September last year, activists are worried that human rights abuses in Egypt will be overlooked with a new leadership in the White House seeking to strengthen ties with the country.

    The Obama administration temporarily halted military aid to Egypt shortly after Sisi led the overthrow of democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. It also repeatedly criticised the government’s crackdown on political opponents, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

    Trump, on the other hand, appeared to praise Sisi’s leadership in an interview with Fox Business when he said Sisi “took control of Egypt, and he really took control of it”.

    Americans jailed

    A White House official said on Friday that the new administration’s approach is to handle “sensitive issues” such as human rights “in a private, more discreet way” than previous presidents have done.

    The official did not say whether Trump would bring up the case of the imprisoned American NGO worker Aya Hijazi when he meets Sisi.

    Hijazi could face a life sentence in Egypt after being accused of running a child sex trafficking ring and using children in anti-government protests. Human Rights Watch has called the case “a travesty of justice” and her supporters say she was running a children’s charity before her arrest in 2014.

    According to #FreedomFirst, the campaign that Soltan is spearheading, at least seven American citizens are currently imprisoned in Egypt.

    “We need to tell the world what kind of man Trump is bringing to the White House,” Soltan, who was jailed after attending a sit-in against Morsi’s removal in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya square, told Al Jazeera.

    Hundreds of people were killed as security forces dispersed the protest on August 14, 2013. Soltan’s father, a Muslim Brotherhood official, was also arrested and imprisoned.

    Mass trials have since been held for thousands of Brotherhood supporters, and hundreds have received death sentences or lengthy prison terms.

    Soltan fears that with Sisi getting a warm welcome in Washington, Egyptian security forces “will feel even more emboldened and empowered, that the whole world is behind them”.

    Besides Trump, Sisi will meet officials at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which both have extended loans to Cairo. He will also meet representatives of the American chamber of commerce and major US companies to discuss investment opportunities in Egypt.

    Abdallah Hendawy, a lecturer of global affairs at George Mason University, told Al Jazeera that at a time when Egypt’s relationships with Gulf Arab states are deteriorating, Sisi is looking for a new economic lifeline and a new strategic ally.

    A major reason why the new US administration seems willing to take on that role, Hendawy said, is that Trump needs a regional ally as he pushes on with his “anti-terror” agenda.

    “Trump doesn’t pay attention to human rights,” he said. “He is looking for support as people accuse him of being anti-Islam. He sees Sisi as a reformist who counters jihadi rhetoric – someone to support his fight against what he calls Islamic fanaticism.”

    Protesters rallied against President Sisi as well as the US' support for his government

    Source:Al Jazeera

  • Helen Zille faces disciplinary action after colonialism tweets

    {South Africa’s opposition party has launched disciplinary action against its former leader after she tweeted colonialism was not all bad.}

    The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been under pressure to sanction Helen Zille since she caused a storm of controversy with the tweets in March.

    It is feared it may have scuppered the party’s electoral chances.

    On Sunday, the DA announced the anti-Apartheid activist stood accused of bringing the party into disrepute.

    DA leader Mmusi Maimane, who took over from Ms Zille in 2015, said it was not “an easy decision to take”, but that he felt the social media posts had undermined the DA’s project, to build a “a non-racial, prosperous democracy”.

    The DA won 22% of the vote in 2014’s general election, coming second to the ruling ANC, and is hoping to build on the success of local elections in 2016 in 2019.

    Ms Zille – who is to continue in her role as Western Cape premier for the time being – could now be facing expulsion from the party for the tweets, which one caller to a local radio station said were “a bit like saying the holocaust was bad but Hitler’s engineers were great”.

    Other options include a fine or community service.

    But Mr Maimane – whose mission is to make the party historically seen as dominated by whites, more attractive to the black majority – warned it would “be incorrect to draw conclusions to say that she’s racist”.

    “That’s not the person I know,” he said.

    Helen Zille is in trouble following a series of tweets

    Source:BBC

  • U.N. council renews Congo peacekeeping mission, lowers troop cap

    {Despite a request by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to add two extra police units (320 officers) the council agreed to a Washington demand to keep the current total of 1,050 officers.}

    The resolution asks Guterres to explore “transfers of troops and their assets from other United Nations missions to MONUSCO” if needed and subject to council approval.

    It is the first peacekeeping mission to be renewed since U.S. President Donald Trump proposed that Washington, the largest U.N. contributor, cut funding. U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley is reviewing the 16 U.N. peacekeeping operations.

    “It’s not the number of people we have on the ground, it’s the quality of the work that’s happening on the ground,” Haley told the council after the Congo vote.

    Washington provides the most money for the total $7.9 billion U.N. peacekeeping budget, paying 28.5 percent, but Trump and Haley want to enforce a 25 percent cap.

    The council has asked Guterres to report by the end of September on options for reducing the peacekeeping mission after elections this year, President Joseph Kabila has stepped down and sustainable progress has been made in reducing the threat of armed groups in the country.

    Resource-rich Congo, which gained independence from colonial power Belgium in 1960, has never had a peaceful transition of power and Kabila’s refusal to stand down when his final term expired in December has raised fears the country could slide back into civil war.

    Opposition leaders signed a fragile deal with the ruling coalition and allies of Kabila on Dec. 31 that requires him to step down after elections that must happen by the end of 2017.

    The Security Council held a minute silence to honor two U.N. investigators whose bodies were found this week in Kasai Central province.

    Source:The Citizen

  • Montreal’s YMCA is refugees’ first Canadian family

    {Quebec’s unique resettlement program for asylum seekers feeling pressure with increase of migrants crossing from U.S.}

    MONTREAL—They arrive with bulging suitcases, carrying infants in car seats, often with little more than a backpack and a shaky grasp of the language and the land. They are fleeing war, despots and persecution in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere for a better life in Canada.

    It is a classic refugee tale with a Trumpian twist that has asylum seekers fleeing the land of liberty in fear of deportation, or using easy-to-obtain American tourist visas only to reach the northern beacon across the border.

    In the first two months of 2017, more than 1,100 people had arrived not by presenting themselves to border officers at a controlled crossing, but by entering the country on foot through a breach in the Canada-United States border to avoid forcible return under Canadian law.

    According to the Canada Border Services Agency, Quebec accounted for nearly 700 of the total cases in which the RCMP intercepted “irregular” asylum seekers.

    Upon entry, they are arrested and shackled first by awaiting Mounties, then processed and placed into what is becoming an increasingly burdened system.

    For those with no family or friends to take them in, the next stop is the first time in the long journey when they can truly rest their heads. The YMCA shelter in downtown Montreal, near the former home of the Montreal Canadiens, is the place some asylum-seekers meet what they describe as their first Canadian family.

    The members of this revolving clan speak different tongues and have endured different traumas, but they’ve all arrived with the same desperate hope to start over.

    Access to the facilities is restricted to employees and clients of the YMCA, and officials refused a request to tour the building and observe its operations. Instead, the Star spoke to former refugees who had participated in the programs, as well as people familiar with how they work.

    Gabriel Mujimbere spent six weeks at the bottom of a YMCA bunk bed when he made a refugee claim in 2015. The HIV/AIDS activist and openly gay young man fled his native Burundi at his family’s insistence, fearful of the laws against homosexuality. For the last two years the country has seen rampant political violence and human rights abuses.

    He was far from home and was further still from what he expected when he and a colleague made their asylum claim at the end of a week-and-a-half training session in Montreal.

    “I thought if we were lucky we would be housed somewhere in a dormitory, in a camp somewhere,” said Mujimbere, now 28.

    Thousands of asylum-seekers each year have benefited from this Quebec government program that has been operating since 2010 but remains unique in Canada. Here, staff offer refugees not only emergency shelter with hundreds of beds but also on-site counselling, psychological services and advice about navigating the dizzying new world of forms and lineups and interviews that all refugee claimants face.

    The Regional Program for the Settlement and Integration of Asylum Seekers (better known by its French-language acronym, PRAIDA) is a $6-million-a-year program founded on a simple idea.

    “It’s like an investment,” said Francine Dupuis, the program’s assistant director general. “You put a little bit of money in at the beginning, but instead of having people deteriorating in their mental and physical health, they can start to adjust faster to the new society.”

    But the increasing demand is starting to strain resources, as hundreds of asylum seekers have entered Quebec to get around the Safe Third Country Agreement. The 2004 accord prevents prospective refugees already in the U.S. from filing their claims at the Canadian border, and vice versa. But getting onto Canadian soil to make the claim gets around the deal.

    Dupuis said PRAIDA’s finances could hit a critical point as early as the summer, meaning that the Quebec and federal governments may need to increase funding if the number of refugee claimants coming into the province does not level off.

    “Usually when we have ups and downs like the wave we had with the Syrians, the curve eventually became flatter . . . but this new trend seems to persist,” she said.

    Mujimbere first heard about the program from another Burundian who had come to Montreal as a refugee. The program is run out of a downtown YMCA shelter around the corner from a shopping complex and movie theatre where the Montreal Forum once stood.

    “He said, ‘I can’t let you stay at my place because there’s not enough space,’” Mujimbere recalled. But his countryman told him: “ ‘When I got here I stayed at PRAIDA.’ ”

    Mohamed Al-Hashemi, a 47-year-old lawyer from Yemen, learned about the shelter from an immigration officer in May 2015 after he illegally crossed into Canada from the United States at Roxham Rd., in New York state, which is the busiest illegal crossing point in the country, connecting Quebec and New York.

    Al-Hashemi expected rougher living conditions based on what he knew of refugee camps in the Middle East. He also expected a reckoning — that he would one day have to pay for the services he was receiving in cash or in labour.

    “There was nothing,” he said. “They never asked for anything.”

    Apart from temporary shelter and meals, refugee claimants also receive crash legal courses on the process for claiming refugee status, assistance with the forms needed to receive medical care and welfare payments.

    There are trauma counsellors and translators, transit passes and even services that Al-Hashemi said helped him manage the anxiety of being separated from his wife and two children, and resulting from the ravages of the conflict in Yemen.

    “All the time I was thinking about my country and how the destruction has been so rapid,” he said, “and there was meditation every two days, there were yoga classes. There are people to comfort you and tell you that everything is going to be good.”

    Priority is given to those who arrive in Canada with no money, family or friends to rely on, though Dupuis said no one who asks for help is turned away.

    Two immigration lawyers, however, told the Star about clients who have used a Montreal homeless shelter, rather than the YMCA, as an emergency residence. None of those clients could be reached to provide further details.

    Matthew Pearce, director of Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission, confirmed there have been several recent instances. “I’m glad to say the numbers are not high here, but there are a few who’ve come and if it’s two, it’s two too many,” he said.

    About three years ago, Pearce said the mission asked PRAIDA to stop referring asylum seekers to the shelter when the YMCA ran out of available shelter beds, because shelter staff are trained to deal with mental health and addiction issues, not cultural integration. That discussion appears to have resolved the matter, although some asylum-seekers still trickle in on occasion, Pearce said.

    “Either they’ve fallen through the cracks, or everything is stuffed, such that there are no cracks and there’s no place to go,” he said.

    If all goes according to plan, the welcome for asylum seekers is a scene like the one that played out recently in the office of African Rainbow, an advocacy and support group for gays, lesbians and transgender people of African and Caribbean origins, where Mujimbere now works as assistant director general.

    In the middle of the afternoon, there was a knock on the door from a young man who had learned about the group from someone he had met at the YMCA — an encounter that involved three generations of PRAIDA beneficiaries.

    “Right now more than half of our members are new immigrants,” Mujimbere said. “Most of those are refugees and many of those are referred to us by PRAIDA.

    “We offer a place where they can be heard, where the person will feel at ease and understood.”

    Dozens of other organizations that offer support and services to refugees also have YMCA residents referred to them, whether for help finding rental housing or for more intensive counselling to deal with the traumas that have sparked the odyssey leading them to Canada.

    But Al-Hashemi remembers the more simple services, like the chef who prepared him special meals during Ramadan and remembered that he was allergic to fish, or the Saturday tours to help residents navigate and discover Montreal.

    “They transfer you from a bad situation to a very good situation.”

    Gabriel Mujimbere arrived in Canada in late 2015 as a refugee from Burundi and benefited from services at the YMCA's program for refugees and asylum seekers.

    Source:The Star

  • Uganda:Girl stabs own sister to death over a lover

    {Police in Kanungu District are hunting for a teenager who allegedly stabbed her sister over a lover. Gift Asiimwe died on the way to Bwindi Community Hospital in Kayonza Sub-county.}

    The two are residents of Rutwe cell in Kanyantorogo Sub County.

    Paddy Tumwendeze Rwozi, the Officer in Charge of Criminal Investigations Department at Kihihi police station, says the girl who is at large stabbed her sister accusing her of eloping with her husband Gideon Natukunda.

    Asiimwe was a mobile money agent in Kanyantorogo Trading Centre.

    It is alleged that the attacker stabbed her sister on the neck at about 9:30 pm on Saturday.

    Mr Tumwendeze says they have started investigations into the incident.

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • Mogae asks Machar to announce ceasefire

    {Mr Festus Mogae, the chairman of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) has asked South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar to declare a unilateral ceasefire.}

    The request was made during a meeting between the two in South Africa at the weekend. The two reportedly discussed solutions to the ongoing conflict in the country in the second meeting Mr Mogae has held with Mr Machar since fighting erupted in July 2016 in the capital, Juba.

    Mr Machar’s press secretary, Lam Kuei Lam said in a statement that Mr Mogae asked the SPLM-IO leader Mr Machar, to denounce violence and join President Salva Kiir’s dialogue initiative.

    Mr Mogae served as President of Botswana from 1998 to 2008.

    “On item one, the chairman [Machar] did inform President Mogae that indeed SPLM/SPLA-IO is not a war monger, the SPLM/A-IO is on self-defense,” Mr Lam’s statement partly reads.

    “On the second and third items, the chairman called for initiation of a political forum for the parties to engage in the peaceful settlement of the conflict, resuscitate and review the ARCISS [Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan],” he added.

    JMEC is tasked with overseeing the implementation of the signed peace deal in South Sudan

    According to Mr Lam, Mr Machar, the former South Sudan first vice president said a cessation of hostilities would be negotiated by the parties when the forum is initiated.

    Last week, President Kiir promised IGAD leaders that he would announce a unilateral ceasefire. However, the government said mr Kiir’s commitment would ll be first discussed by the Cabinet.

    Mr Kiir’s declaration raised hope that such a move would allow the international community to demand the armed opposition to also cease hostilities in order to create the needed security conditions for aid workers to reach civilians in the famine-hit areas in the country.

    According to a communiqué by the African Union, President Kiir made the assurance on the margins of the recent IGAD Summit on Somalia in a meeting with, the chairperson for the African Union Commission (AUC) Moussa Faki Mahamat.

    Mr Mahamat discussed the security situation in the country and the national dialogue initiative launched by President Kiir as well as the disastrous humanitarian crisis.

    “On that occasion, the President of South Sudan assured the AUC Chairperson that he accepted to proclaim unilaterally a ceasefire and grant general amnesty to promote participation in the National Dialogue, which he equally accepted to be inclusive and led by an independent and respective personality,” reads the statement.

    President Kiir further reaffirmed his acceptance of the deployment of the Regional Protection Force and stressed the added value that African ownership of the political process could contribute to the national dialogue.

    The South Sudanese leader, according to the African Union communiqué, stressed the added value that African ownership of the political process could contribute to the National Dialogue.

    Mr Machar (L) and Mr Mogae during the meeting.

    Source:Daily Monitor

  • Death toll from Colombia mudslides jumps to 254

    {Devastating mudslides in the Colombian town of Mocoa killed at least 254 people, 43 of them children, President Juan Manuel Santos has said, in yet another sharp rise in the death toll.}

    Santos, who travelled to the southern town to personally oversee relief operations, warned the toll could keep climbing.

    {{GRUESOME}}

    “Unfortunately, these are still preliminary figures,” he wrote on Twitter.

    “We offer our prayers for all of them. We send our condolences and the entire country’s sympathies to their families.

    Survivors described gruesome scenes in the remote southern town, as rescuers kept up a bleak search for victims in the muck and debris.

    Covered in mud, 38-year-old Marta Gomez told of going to search for her missing niece — and making a chilling find instead.

    “I went to look for my niece, but I couldn’t find her. I dug and dug and found what turned out to be a baby’s hand. It was horrible,” she said in a shelter set up for the newly homeless.

    {{NO HOPE}}

    As she stood in line waiting to register for government assistance for those who lost their houses, she told AFP she had given up on finding her niece.

    “The mud took her away. I’ll never see her again,” she said, clinging to the leash of her equally muddy German shepherd.

    Rescuers worked in stifling heat under a cloudy sky in the remote Amazon town, the capital of Putumayo department.

    The debris left by the mudslides was everywhere: buried cars, uprooted trees, children’s toys and stray shoes sticking up out of the mud.

    The torrent of mud, boulders and debris struck the town with little warning late Friday after days of heavy rains that caused three area rivers to flood.

    {{SWEPT AWAY}}

    It swept away homes, bridges, vehicles and trees, leaving piles of wrecked timber.

    Most of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods in the town of 40,000 are poor and populated with people uprooted during Colombia’s five-decade-long civil war.

    A “profoundly saddened” Pope Francis said he was praying for the victims.

    Santos declared an emergency to speed up aid operations.

    Health authorities said they had dispatched sanitation specialists in hopes of preventing outbreaks of disease.

    {{LOST ALL}}

    An unexpected offer of help also came from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist rebel group engaged in a historic peace process with the government.

    It said FARC members were prepared to help rebuild the town.

    Marta Ceballos, a 44-year-old street vendor, said she lost everything, but is thankful her family is alive.

    “Dear God, I don’t want to even remember that,” she said.

    “To see how some people screamed, and others cried, ran, tried to flee in cars, on motorcycles, and how they were trapped in the mud. It’s all too, too difficult,” she told AFP.

    {{NO POWER}}

    “The only things I fortunately did not lose were my husband, my daughters and my nephews,” she said.

    Electricity and running water have yet to be restored to Mocoa. Local authorities said repairing the electrical substation would take time.

    There were reports of people looting stores searching for bottled water.

    “There are lots of people in the streets, lots of people displaced and many houses have collapsed,” retired Mocoa resident Hernando Rodriguez, 69, said by telephone.

    “There were no preparations” for such a disaster, he said.

    {{BIG ROLE}}

    Several deadly landslides have struck Colombia in recent months.

    A landslide in November killed nine people in the rural southwestern town of El Tambo, officials said.

    The previous month, 10 people lost their lives in a mudslide in the north of the country.

    The Pacific rim of South America has been hard hit in recent months by floods and mudslides, with scores killed in Peru and Ecuador.

    Climate change can play a big role in the scale of such natural disasters, a senior UN official said.

    “Climate change is generating dynamics and we see the tremendous results in terms of intensity, frequency and magnitude of these natural effects, as we have just seen in Mocoa,” said Martin Santiago, UN chief for Colombia.

    People carry their belongings amidst the rubble left by mudslides following heavy rains in Mocoa, Putumayo department, southern Colombia on April 2, 2017.

    Source:AFP

  • S. Korea, Japan, US hold drill against N. Korea submarines

    {South Korea, Japan and the US held a joint naval exercise Monday aimed at countering missile threats from North Korean submarines, Seoul’s defence ministry said, amid mounting concerns over the hermit state’s weapons programme.}

    Pyongyang is on a quest to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five nuclear tests, two of them last year.

    {{800 TROOPS}}

    The three-day drills involving more than 800 troops kicked off after US President Donald Trump warned Sunday that the United States is prepared to act unilaterally to deal with North Korea’s nuclear programme if China proves unwilling to help.

    The exercise began off South Korea’s southern coast near Japan, featuring multiple naval destroyers and helicopters used in anti-submarine warfare, the ministry said.

    It was aimed at “ensuring effective response to the North’s submarine threats, including the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM),” and “demonstrates the three countries’ strong determination”, according to the ministry.

    Tensions have escalated in the region following a series of missile launches by North Korea in recent months and reports suggesting Pyongyang may be preparing another atomic test.

    {{4 MISSILES}}

    In February the North simultaneously fired four ballistic missiles off its east coast, three of which fell provocatively close to Japan, in what it said was a drill for an attack on US bases in the neighbouring Asian country.

    Last August Pyongyang also successfully test-fired a SLBM 500 kilometres towards Japan, far exceeding any previous sub-launched tests, in what the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un hailed as the “greatest success.”

    A nuclear-capable SLBM system would take the North’s threat to a new level, allowing deployment far beyond the Korean peninsula and a “second-strike” capability in the event of an attack on its army bases.

    Analysts say that while Pyongyang has made faster progress in its SLBM system than originally expected, it is still years away from deployment.

    The isolated North is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology.

    Replicas of a North Korean Scud-B missile (centre) and South Korean Hawk surface-to-air missiles are displayed at the Korean War Memorial in Seoul on March 6, 2017. Japan, South Korea and the US have joined forces to counter any attack from Pyongyang.

    Source:AFP

  • Kenya:IEBC announces 41,000 job vacancies ahead of polls

    {The electoral commission is looking to employ 41,940 staff for the 30-day voter verification period, which is scheduled to start on May 10.}

    The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission is also seeking to fill 32 vacancies.

    {{40,000 CLERKS}}

    These are permanent jobs— a Constituency Elections Coordinator for Kasarani, 30 County Information Communication Technology Officers and an administrative assistant for Dadaab Constituency.

    “The temporary staff will support our field staff during the 30-day voter verification period (May 10 – June 9),” IEBC Chief Executive Officer Ezra Chiloba said in advertisement in the Nation today.

    The temporary jobs are: 290 Constituency Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) clerks, 1,450 Register of Voters Verification Assistants and 40,200 Voter Verification Clerks.

    This means that there will be one ICT clerk per constituency, one voter verification assistant per ward and one clerk per polling station for the voter verification.

    “All jobs are applied online,” the IEBC said, and asked applicants to look up the duties, qualifications, requirements and application procedures on its website, www.iebc.or.ke.

    DEAD VOTERS

    The commission was on Monday morning yet to publish these details on its website.

    Verification of the voters register involves having all registered voters confirming their details as well as removing from the roll those who have died.

    IEBC officials have told the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee that the final register should be ready at least one month to the date of the August 8 General Election.

    This is because after verification, the IEBC then cleans up the register and comes up with the version against which voters’ names will be checked on the polling day.

    The committee also asked the electoral commission to submit an interim voters’ register to parties by the end of March to enable them hold their nominations well.

    Members of the committee told the IEBC’s top officials that this would amount to the technical assistance it has said it could offer parties during their primaries.

    MISCHIEF

    “We are not telling you we want a final one. Give us a draft. We’re trying to help political parties. Let us have an interim register pending your own verification,” said JLAC chairman Samuel Chepkong’a at a meeting with the commission.

    “If this interim register is not available, we’re going to have a lot of disputes after the party primaries. IEBC’s technical support to parties in the primaries is this interim register,” said Nyeri Woman Representative Priscilla Nyokabi.

    Mr Chepkong’a said the idea of giving parties the register is to minimise mischief in the nominations.

    Party officials conducting the nominations would ideally only allow their members to vote depending on IEBC’s record of their polling stations.

    Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission CEO Ezra Chiloba. He is looking for 40,200 voter verification clerks.

    Source:Daily Nation