IGIHE

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  • Usain Bolt Hails Bale’s Final Stunner

    Usain Bolt Hails Bale’s Final Stunner

    {{Olympic champion Usain Bolt has hailed Gareth Bale’s brilliant winner for Real Madrid in Wednesday’s Copa del Rey final against Barcelona, saying it was the kind of goal any sprinter would be proud of.}}

    Wales winger Bale picked up the ball wide on the left on the halfway line five minutes from time and galloped away from Barca centre back Marc Bartra before slipping the ball between the legs of goalkeeper Jose Manuel Pinto to secure a 2-1 victory.

    “It was a great goal,” the Jamaican was quoted as saying in Spanish sports daily Marca on Friday.

    “He showed the fantastic speed he has to leave the defender behind and then incredible calm to put the ball between the keeper’s legs,” added the keen Manchester United supporter who retained the 100 and 200 metre titles at the London Games in 2012.

    “It’s the kind of goal any sprinter in the world would want to score one day.”

    {wirestory}

  • Anti-Gay Activists Abandon Demonstration in Ethiopia

    Anti-Gay Activists Abandon Demonstration in Ethiopia

    {{Anti-gay activists in Ethiopia said on Thursday they have been forced to abandon plans to demonstrate in the capital after apparently failing to win support from the government and the powerful Orthodox church.}}

    The anti-homosexuality rally had been planned for 26 April, and comes amid a trend of increasing stigmatisation of homosexuals across the continent – with Uganda and Nigeria recently adopting tough anti-gay legislation.

    Homosexuality is already illegal in Ethiopia, like in most of Africa’s 54 nations, and punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The government said there was therefore no need to make legislation any tougher.

    “We have no agenda to further it because the law is already there and there is no way that we are going to tamper with it,” Information Minister Redwan Hussein told journalists.

    Dereje Negash, the head of Christian association Woyniye Abune Teklehaimanot, said the group would nevertheless fight on in their bid to warn Ethiopians about the “dangers” of homosexuality.

    “We want to continue with our plan… want the Ethiopian people to know about this situation and we need to have a lot of rallies to stop these actions,” he said.

    “The constitution should be revised because the situation that is going on right now is getting worse,” he added.

    Ethiopia is a deeply religious society, with nearly 63% of the population practising Orthodox Christianity, according to official figures. However Negash signalled the organisers had also failed to win over the Church.

    – AFP

  • Wade’s Son on Trial For Corruption

    Wade’s Son on Trial For Corruption

    {{The son of former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade is to be tried in June for corruption after accumulating a fortune valued at well over $1bn, a judicial source said on Thursday.}}

    Karim Wade is alleged to have acquired by corrupt means companies and real estate valued at $1.4bn, including land in Dakar, a fleet of luxury cars and a number of media and finance companies operating across Africa.

    “Karim Wade will remain in prison and will go on trial in two months for illicit enrichment,” the ministry of justice source told reporters.

    The 45-year-old is also facing accusations relating to an unexplained sum of $205m which prosecutors say he deposited into several Monaco bank accounts.

    An account in Singapore containing $95m was attributed to him this week.

    Wade has been on remand in Dakar for a exactly year since his arrest and the city’s anti-corruption court ordered that he remain in custody, the source said, adding that the exact sum for which he will be tried had not yet been determined.

    Under Senegalese law, investigators would normally have had a maximum of six months to investigate Wade before sending him to trial or dismissing the case.

    But the anti-corruption court extended the pre-trial detention period in October for another six months.

    Wade refused last week to answer questions from investigating judges, stating that the “charges against me are political and fanciful”, but he has consistently denied any wrongdoing and said his wealth was acquired legitimately.

    Karim Wade
    – AFP

  • Renamo Rebels in Talks to Join Army

    Renamo Rebels in Talks to Join Army

    {{Mozambican rebel group Renamo said on Thursday it had reached an understanding with the government to integrate its fighters into the national army and police under the supervision of international observers.}}

    Renamo spokesperson Adriano Muchunga said international military experts would help identify eligible guerillas to join the security forces in a bid to end fighting that has flared up again two decades after the end of the country’s 16-year civil war.

    “Whoever is of the right age and has the physical ability and know-how will join the police,” Muchunga told reporters.

    He called the agreement a “big step forward” but said a final deal had not yet been signed.

    He added that the rebels had not reached an agreement to lay down their arms.

    In 2012, Renamo fighters returned to the bush in central Mozambique, often staging deadly attacks.

    The rebels’ revival raised fears the country was tilting back toward war 20 years after Renamo signed a peace deal with the government.

    “The only way to stop us using weapons is to integrate our men into institutions that use weapons. In Mozambique that is the police and army,” said Muchunga.

    The rebel group-turned-opposition party wants its men to be integrated into the army and police at “all levels” to make up half of the total security forces.

    It also wants pensions for fighters who are too old for active duty.

    International observers to work on the integration process are expected to come from the US, Britain, Italy, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

    Founded a year after Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975, Renamo (the Mozambican National Resistance Movement) boasts a bloody history of resistance to communist rule during the Cold War era.

    It fought a bitter civil war against the government that ended in 1992. Conflict flared again in late 2013 leading to ongoing military skirmishes, largely in the central province of Sofala.

    Renamo and the government – led since independence by the formerly Marxist-Leninist Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) – have been engaged in peace talks to end the violence.

    Central to Renamo’s demands is greater inclusion in the government and the overhaul of electoral laws.

    Negotiations between the government and Renamo are set to resume on Monday.

    – AFP

  • Facebook Activates ‘Nearby Friends’ Feature

    Facebook Activates ‘Nearby Friends’ Feature

    {{Facebook on Thursday began rolling out a feature allowing users of its mobile app to use smartphone location to discover friends near them.}}

    The optional “nearby friends” feature “helps you discover which friends are nearby or on the go,” said product manager Andrea Vaccari in a blog announcement.

    “If you turn on Nearby Friends, you’ll occasionally be notified when friends are nearby, so you can get in touch with them and meet up,” Vaccari said.

    “For example, when you’re headed to the movies, Nearby Friends will let you know if friends are nearby so you can see the movie together or meet up afterward.”

    With the feature, Facebook takes a page from other location-based services including the network Foursquare, numerous dating apps and the recently launched social network aggregator SocialRadar.

    Location sharing

    With the Facebook feature, Vaccari said, “You can choose who can see if you’re nearby [for example: your friends, close friends, or a specific friends list] and you can turn it on and off at any time.”

    He added that the location sharing must be mutual: “You and your friends both have to turn on Nearby Friends and choose to share with each other to see when you’re nearby. Your friends will only be able to see that you’re nearby if you share this info with them and vice versa.”

    Facebook will also allow users to share a precise location with the particular friends for a set period of time.

    “When you share your precise location, the friend you choose will see exactly where you are on a map, which helps you find each other,” said Vaccari.

    Facebook had an estimated 1.23 billion users at the end of December, and more than one billion who use the social network on a mobile device.

    The “nearby friends” feature will be available for Android and iPhone users in the United States over the coming weeks.

    – AFP

  • Zimbabwe Marks 34 years of Self Rule

    Zimbabwe Marks 34 years of Self Rule

    {{Queen Elizabeth II and US President Barack Obama have reportedly congratulated Zimbabwe on the occasion to mark its 34th Independence Day on Friday.}}

    According to The Herald, in a statement sent to through the British Embassy in Harare, Queen Elizabeth II wished Zimbabwe happiness and prosperity.

    On the other hand, Obama in his congratulatory message said the US remained committed to the people of Zimbabwe.

    He said the US would continue to support Zimbabweans as they strived to build a society “that responds to their needs and honours their democratic choices”.

    The report said Zimbabweans from all walks of life were expected to gather at various centres across the country to commemorate the event.

    The main independence celebrations would be in Harare at the National Sports Stadium where President Robert Mugabe will address the nation, the report said.

    This year’s celebrations will be held under the theme: “Zimbabwe @34: Defending Our Sovereignty and Providing an Enabling Environment for Sustainable Economic Empowerment and Social Transformation.”

    For many, the celebrations will be overshadowed by the country’s economic meltdown under Mugabe’s Zanu PF party.

    Economic and political analysts say the former liberation movement has failed to come up with concrete policies to rescue the country from sliding into a full blown economic crisis.

    – News24

  • 9 Guides Killed in Mount Everest Tragedy

    9 Guides Killed in Mount Everest Tragedy

    {{At least nine Nepalese climbing guides have been killed and five others are missing after an avalanche struck Mount Everest early on Friday, officials said, in the worst accident to hit the world’s highest peak.}}

    “We have retrieved nine bodies and rescued seven people,” tourism ministry spokesperson, Mohan Krishna Sapkota confirmed.

    “Five people are still missing,” Sapkota added, revising upwards the number of people previously thought to have been trapped in the snow.

    The avalanche occurred at around 06:45 local time at an altitude of about 5 800 metres (19 000 feet) in an area known as the “popcorn field” which lies on the route into the treacherous Khumbu icefall.

    Kathmandu-based mountaineering expert Elizabeth Hawley, considered the world’s leading authority on Himalayan climbing, said the avalanche was the most deadly single accident in the history of modern mountaineering on the peak.

    In 1996, eight people from two expeditions were killed, said Hawley, in a tragedy immortalised in the best-selling book “Into Thin Air”.

    The accident underscores the huge risks taken by sherpa guides, who carry tents, bring food supplies, repair ladders and fix ropes to help foreign climbers summit the 8 848 metre (29 029 foot) peak successfully.

    More than 300 people have died on Everest since the first successful summit by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

  • Colombian Novelist Marquez Dies Age 87

    Colombian Novelist Marquez Dies Age 87

    {{Garcia Marquez a Colombian author died at his home in Mexico City, where he had returned from hospital last week after a bout of pneumonia.}}

    Marquez was a prolific writer who started out as a newspaper reporter, Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece was “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” a dream-like, dynastic epic that helped him win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

    Known affectionately to friends and fans as “Gabo,” Garcia Marquez was Latin America’s best-known and most beloved author and his books have sold in the tens of millions.

    Although he produced stories, essays and several short novels such as “Leaf Storm” and “No One Writes to the Colonel” early in his career, he struggled for years to find his voice as a novelist.

    He then found it in dramatic fashion with “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” an instant success on publication in 1967. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes dubbed it “Latin America’s Don Quixote” and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda also compared it to Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century tour de force.

    Garcia Marquez’s novel tells the story of seven generations of the Buendia family in the fictional village of Macondo, based on the languid town of Aracataca close to Colombia’s Caribbean coast where he was born on March 6, 1927, and raised by his maternal grandparents.

    In it, Garcia Marquez combines miraculous and supernatural events with the details of everyday life and the political realities of Latin America. The characters are visited by ghosts, a plague of insomnia envelops Macondo, swarms of yellow butterflies mark the arrival of a woman’s lover, a child is born with a pig’s tail and a priest levitates above the ground.

    At times comical and bawdy, and at others tragic, it sold over 30 million copies, was published in dozens of languages and helped fuel a boom in Latin American fiction.

    A stocky man with a quick smile, thick mustache and curly hair, Garcia Marquez said he found inspiration for the novel by drawing on childhood memories of his grandmother’s stories – laced with folklore and superstition but delivered with the straightest of faces.

    “She told things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness,” he said in a 1981 interview. “I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself, and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.”

    Although “One Hundred Years of Solitude” was his most popular creation, other classics from Garcia Marquez included “Autumn of the Patriarch”, “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”.

    Tributes poured in following his death.

    “The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers – and one of my favorites from the time I was young,” said U.S. President Barack Obama.

    “Your life, dear Gabo, will be remembered by all of us as a unique and singular gift, and as the most original story of all,” Colombian pop star Shakira wrote on her website alongside a photograph of her hugging Garcia Marquez.

    In Aracataca, a lone trumpet played on Thursday night as residents held a candlelight vigil for the man who made the town famous.

    additional reporting Reuters

  • Rwandan Student in Indiana Marks 20th Commemoration

    Rwandan Student in Indiana Marks 20th Commemoration

    {Ines Giramata a Rwandan student studying at DePauw University in US state of Indiana, Greencastle after realising that she was the only Rwandan in the school, organised an event to Mark the 20th commemoration of Genocide against Tutsi.

    Dozens of other non Rwandan students joined her to pay tribute to victims of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi during which a million Tutsi were killed in just 100days.

    Giramata successfully organised the commemoration event at the university campus.}

    {{Giramata writes;

    There were three speakers. A Junior Sociology major Ashton Johnson who talked about how just like many people she had learned about Rwanda from watching Hotel Rwanda.

    She said how her parents showed her a different movie Sometimes in April which captured a different side of the genocide. }}

    She said we cannot rely on Hollywood movies and media in order to learn the truth however it can be a start point to learning bigger and more beautiful stories such as those of reconciliation in Rwanda.

    A senior Conflict studies Major Sandy Tran who talked about her academic experience since she had decided to study conflicts in the world. She said the Rwandan story is a painful story that left many wounds but as she continued to study about the conflicts, she learned of the beautiful Rwanda today which we don’t see much on the media.

    She said the international population has a lot to learn from Rwanda and she hoped that as students learned of this other side of Rwanda, they would learn to go beyond media and see Rwanda for what it is and not what was.

    The main speaker who is the director of the Conflict Studies department Professor Brett O’Bannon talked about how genocide is a part of a human condition. Human beings are capable of doing evil even those that feel that they cannot turn their heads.

    If neighbours could do what they did in Rwanda; a country with a strong sense of community, then it means its possible within anyone.

    However, Rwanda is no longer a story of shame, of dead bodies and no hope instead it is a story of a country that has proved the world wrong and shown that you can rise from ash and reconcile to build better future for their future generations.

    In the end, I, Ines Giramata, gave a speech about why I remember and why it is important for us to do so. “I am very proud of my country. I know everywhere I go, not everyone will understand why I could be proud of living in a country that had people capable of massacring each other.

    But I take this as an opportunity to teach them. I am blessed to have been born in Rwanda, I am a first generation post-genocide Rwandan and this has enabled me to see my country transform into something many believed was impossible.

    When I take public transport at home I am not asked for my ethnic group, when I was in school; I was never asked what my ethnic group was.

    I look at my ID and this is proof of why I should be proud. My ID card does not identify me in ethnic groups but as a Rwandan. This is what I take pride in.

    I do not think the love I have for my country could have been the way it is today if it wasn’t from where we have come from. Instead of trying to change the past, I have been given the opportunity to shape the future.

    I have been had the opportunity that many don’t get- knowing what freedom is. It feels great to have something to be proud of. It is amazing to have your country listed as an example.

    Why then shouldn’t I work for it to advance even more? Why would anyone give up all the achievements for the sake of petty things like tribal war? Everything that Rwanda is getting everyone is benefiting from.

    So, yes I remember, for my family. I remember for my country and even more I remember for the world. If Rwanda can do it, then all other countries can. If I can teach and inspire, then I am sure History would not repeat itself in different places. I remember for humanity.”

    During the event, we watched videos of the history of the genocide, we heard about testimonies and also looked at the achievements of Rwanda today. In the end, the students and faculty lit candles of hope for the next generation.

  • Exemplary Midugudu Leaders to Get Bicycles, Cow

    Exemplary Midugudu Leaders to Get Bicycles, Cow

    {{Local leaders in Nyamasheke district have been given mobile phones to help them in their daily work and exchanging information with other relevant authorities.}}

    The mobile phones will enable local leaders at Mudugudu level to communicate cost-free with all leaders including cell, sector, district and province levels.

    Minister James Musoni noted that village leaders are important and thus need to be supported and facilitated to be able to execute their duties and responsibilities without any difficulties.

    “The phones will enable you to provide vital information on time and thus receive prompt help”, Musoni told the village leaders who were also given an opportunity to suggest further ways of improving services at the grassroots level.

    The local leaders requested the Minister to consider providing them with health insurance cover, a bicycle and a cow under the one-cow per family national program to also improve their lives.

    Minister Musoni promised to honour the requests made by the local leaders however, stating that beneficiaries will be local leaders that exhibit better performance.