IGIHE

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  • Uganda Miniskirt ban: Police Stop Protest March

    Uganda Miniskirt ban: Police Stop Protest March

    {{Police in Uganda have prevented women from marching through the streets of the capital, Kampala, in protest at new laws banning the wearing of miniskirts.}}

    Instead about 200 women, some dressed in short skirts, gathered outside the national theatre to voice their anger.

    There have been several incidents over the past week of women in short skirts being publicly harassed and assaulted.

    This follows the signing by the president of the anti-pornography bill, which bans “indecent” dressing.

    Proposing the legislation last year, Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo said that women who wore “anything above the knee” should be arrested.

    Uganda is a socially conservative country – and this week President Yoweri Museveni enacted a bill toughening penalties for gay people in the country.

    Dubbed “the miniskirt law” by Uganda’s media, the anti-pornography legislation was raised in parliament on Tuesday after the cases of harassment – some women have been publicly undressed for wearing miniskirts.

    The prime minister and attorney general told MPs that the cabinet would recall the law to review it.

    The police have issued a statement condemning those who engaged in “mob… undressing”.

  • India Navy Says Missing Sailors Dead

    India Navy Says Missing Sailors Dead

    {{Two sailors who went missing after an accident on board a submarine off the coast of Mumbai on Wednesday are dead, India’s navy confirms.}}

    The INS Sindhuratna was being tested at sea when smoke triggered the automatic closure of hatches.

    Seven sailors injured in the incident are recovering in hospital. The vessel returned to port on Thursday morning.

    Last year 18 sailors died in one of the navy’s worst disasters when a submarine sank after a fire at a Mumbai dockyard.

    Initial investigations showed arms on board the Russian-built INS Sindhurakshak may have played a role in its sinking.

    On Wednesday night Indian navy chief Admiral DK Joshi resigned, accepting “moral responsibility” for this latest incident as well as other operational accidents involving navy ships in recent months.

    {The INS Sindhuratna was towed back to port on Thursday morning}

  • Angela Merkel to Give Symbolic Address to UK Parliament

    Angela Merkel to Give Symbolic Address to UK Parliament

    {{German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to address both Houses of Parliament and have tea with the Queen during a one-day visit to the UK.}}

    Mrs Merkel will follow in the footsteps of other leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, in addressing MPs and peers.

    She will later hold talks with the three main party leaders.

    David Cameron is pulling out all the stops as he sees the German leader as crucial to his aims in Europe.

    He is hoping to persuade Mrs Merkel to accept the need for EU treaty changes that would allow him to return powers from Brussels before a promised referendum on Britain’s EU membership in 2017.

    The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Berlin was prepared to offer “limited opt-outs” to the UK over its future compliance with existing EU directives and to make sure some other regulations were more flexibly enforced.

    {{‘Disappointed’}}

    The newspaper said it was a sign of the lengths that Germany was willing to go to to ensure the UK remained a member of the EU amid fears in Europe that a referendum could lead to British withdrawal.

  • Egypt Court Sentences 26 to Death

    Egypt Court Sentences 26 to Death

    {{An Egyptian court has sentenced 26 people to death for founding a “terror group” with the aim of attacking ships using the Suez Canal.}}

    Judges said the men were also accused of manufacturing missiles and explosives, local media report.

    The defendants were tried in absentia, Reuters news agency says.

    The sentencing comes a day after the new Prime Minister designate, Ibrahim Mahlab, vowed he would “crush terrorism in all the corners of the country”.

    Mr Mahlab has been put in charge of forming a new government following Monday’s surprise resignation of interim Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi and his cabinet.

    Mr Beblawi was appointed in July 2013 after the military overthrew President Mohammed Morsi in the wake of mass protests.

    Since then, more than 1,000 people have been killed and thousands of others detained in a crackdown by the security forces on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement to which Mr Morsi belongs.

    Militants based in the Sinai peninsula have meanwhile stepped up attacks on government, police and the armed forces, killing hundreds.

    {{‘Harmed unity’}}

    In Wednesday’s verdict, the court said the accused had harmed “national unity”, inciting violence against the army, police, and Christians.

    The case will now be referred to the mufti, Egypt’s top Islamic official, who has to validate the sentence.

    The final verdict is expected on 19 March.

    No further details were available about the group on trial, AFP reported.

    In a separate development, Mr Mahlab has begun reappointing several ministers in his new government.

  • Detained South Korean Missionary in North Korea Apology

    Detained South Korean Missionary in North Korea Apology

    {{A detained South Korean missionary has appeared before media in North Korea to read from a statement publicly apologising for “anti-state crimes”.}}

    Baptist Kim Jong-uk, 50, said he was arrested after entering via China with religious materials in October.

    Religious activity is restricted in the North, with missionaries arrested on multiple occasions in the past.

    Foreign nationals arrested in North Korea sometimes make public confessions which they later say were under duress.

    Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old US national, was briefly held last year. He was freed after confessing to committing crimes during the Korean War – a statement he said was given under duress.

    ‘Destroying the system’
    In his first public appearance since his arrest, Mr Kim said he wanted to let his family know he was in good health.

    He said he acted “under directions” from South Korea’s National Intelligence Services (NIS), setting up an underground church in Dandong, China, to collect information on life in North Korea to send back.

    “I was thinking of turning North Korea into a religious country, and destroying its present government and political system,” he also told the news conference.

    One report said Mr Kim had been working in Dandong for seven years helping North Korean refugees.

    Mr Kim said he was unsure of his punishment and asked that he be released.

    The North’s state media in November said it had arrested an unnamed South Korean “spy”, a charge which South Korea’s intelligence agency denied.

    Meanwhile, Australia’s foreign ministry said it had not received any information about John Short, 75, a missionary who was arrested at his hotel in Pyongyang last week.

    Mr Short, an Australian based in Hong Kong who entered Pyongyang on a group tour, was detained after apparently leaving Christian pamphlets at a tourist site.

    “We do not know anything about the conditions in which he’s being held,” Justin Brown, head of the consular section, told a parliamentary hearing in Australia.

    Australia does not have diplomatic representation in Pyongyang and is being represented by the Swedish embassy.

    In November 2012, North Korea also arrested Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae. He is currently serving 15 years of hard labour after being convicted of trying to overthrow the government.

    Efforts from Washington to secure Mr Bae’s release have so far been unsuccessful.

    {Kim Jong-uk, a South Korean Baptist missionary, speaks during a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, Thursday, 27 February 2014
    South Korean Kim Jong-uk said he wanted his family to know he was in good health}

    wirestory

  • Kepler Bags Huge Haul of Planets

    Kepler Bags Huge Haul of Planets

    {{The science team sifting data from the US space agency’s (Nasa) Kepler telescope says it has identified 715 new planets beyond our Solar System.}}

    This is a huge new haul.

    In the nearly two decades since the first so-called exoplanet was discovered, researchers had claimed the detection of just over 1,000 new worlds.

    Kepler’s latest bounty orbit only 305 stars, meaning they are all in multi-planet systems.

    The vast majority, 95%, are smaller than our Neptune, which is four times the radius of the Earth.

    Four of the new planets are less than 2.5 times the radius of Earth, and they orbit their host suns in the “habitable zone” – the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state.

    Whether that is the case on these planets cannot be known for sure – Kepler’s targets are hundreds of light-years in the distance, and this is too far away for very detailed investigation.

    The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 on a $600m (£360m) mission to assess the likely population of Earth-sized planets in our Milky Way Galaxy.

    Faulty pointing mechanisms eventually blunted its abilities last year, but not before it had identified thousands of possible, or “candidate”, worlds in a patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.

    It did this by looking for transits – the periodic dips in light that occur when planets move across the faces of stars.

    Before Wednesday, the Kepler spacecraft had confirmed the existence of 246 exoplanets. It has now pushed this number up to 961. That is more than half of all the discoveries made in the field over the past 20 years.

    “This is the largest windfall of planets that’s ever been announced at one time,” said Douglas Hudgins from Nasa’s astrophysics division.

    “Second, these results establish that planetary systems with multiple planets around one star, like our own Solar System, are in fact common.

    “Third, we know that small planets – planets ranging from the size of Neptune down to the size of the Earth – make up the majority of planets in our galaxy.”

    When Kepler first started its work, the number of confirmed planets came at a trickle.

    Scientists had to be sure that the variations in brightness being observed were indeed caused by transiting planets and not by a couple of stars orbiting and eclipsing each other.

    The follow-up work required to make this distinction – between candidate and confirmation – was laborious.

    But the sudden dump of new planets announced on Wednesday has exploited a new statistical approach referred to as “verification by multiplicity”.

    This rests on the recognition that if a star displays multiple dips in light, it must be planets that are responsible because it is very difficult for several stars to orbit each other in a similar way and maintain a stable configuration.

    “This technique that we’ve introduced for wholesale planet validation will be productive in the future. These results are based on the first two years of Kepler observations and with each additional year, we’ll be able to bring in a few hundred more planets,” explained Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at Nasa’s Ames Research Center.

    Sara Seager is a professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is not involved in the Kepler mission.

    She commented: “With hundreds of new validated planets, Kepler reinforces its major finding that small planets are extremely common in our galaxy. And I’m super-excited about this, being one of the people working on the next generation of space telescopes – we hope to put up direct imaging missions, and we need to be reassured that small planets are common.”

    {The habitable zone is the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state}

    BBC

  • First Lady Expected in Nyagatare For GBV Scale Up Launch

    First Lady Expected in Nyagatare For GBV Scale Up Launch

    {{Today, Her Excellency the First Lady Mrs Jeannette Kagame is expected to officially launch the scale up of the Isange One Stop center for Gender Based Violence (GBV).}}

    The event will be held at Nyagatare district hospital, in the Eastern Province. The main purpose of the scale up is to extend a comprehensive response (including medical, psychosocial, forensic and legal services) to all victims of GBV.

    Following the successful piloting of the Isange One Stop Centre Model at Kacyiru Police Hospital in Kigali, the country is now embarking on a national scale up in health facilities across the country.

    As part of the scale up, 6 existing centers will be upgraded and 17 new ones established. The Rwandan Government in partnership with the Dutch Government and the ONE UN are financing this activity.

    The reason for selecting the Eastern Province as the venue for the launch is that it is the second Province after the City of Kigali, with the highest numbers of GBV cases.

    In the last 2 years, more than 558 victims have been treated at the GBV center in Nyagatare. It is the hope that by Nyagatare district hosting the event, more awareness against GBV will be raised, among the population.

    The launch at national level will be preceded by an anti-GBV march from the town center to the One Stop Center premises to raise more awareness on ending GBV. Around 2,000 local Nyagatare residents, as well as Ministers of Gender, Health, Internal Security, local leaders are expected to attend the event.

    The First Lady, Mrs. Jeannette Kagame advocated for and launched the Isange One Stop Centre Model at Kacyiru Police Hospital in Kigali.

  • 31 Police Officers Complete Cyber Crime Investigation Course

    31 Police Officers Complete Cyber Crime Investigation Course

    {{Thirty-one Interpol Officers from 22 countries, on February 26th, completed a four-day training in cyber crime investigation at Rwanda National Police (RNP) Head Quarters’ Ethics Centre, in Kacyiru.}}

    While officially closing the training, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Emmanuel K. Gasana observed, “Cyber crime is one the sophisticated crimes.”

    “Related acts pose a great threat to the entire world. It is time states cooperate by sharing timely information to deal with it effectively,” the IGP said.

    He lauded trainers for making the course a success and thanked participants for taking the course seriously.

    The IGP appealed to the officers to make good use of the acquired techniques to properly investigate on cyber-related crimes efficiently.

    The Director for Interpol Digital Crime Centre, Sanjay Virmani,said,”No single country and no one individual can fight alone cyber crimes”.

    “It requires a team efforts. Timely disseminated and shared information is key to handling related crimes effectively,” Virman said.

    The training covered areas like Computer Forensics on VISA cases, Networking Internet Fundamentals, E-mails forensics and digital crime profiling.

    The officers were also taught on how to investigate on social media investigation, as well as how to preserve and report online data.

    Cyber crimes include fraudulent sales, hacking,selling of personal and private online information.

    And one of the participants, Chief Sup. Adesoji K.IDOWU,from Nigeria, who spoke on behalf of the participants, thanked RNP and Interpol for what he called, “a capacity boosting training,”Adesoji said.

    “The acquired skills and knowledge will enable us investigate on serious crimes, especially those related to cyber. We commit to use them fruitfully for the good of the entire world,” he observed.

    The training which was organized by Interpol in partnership with RNP was also attended by three officers from Interpol offices in Nairobi and France.

    The officers were also given certificates of attendance.

    Course participants are from Interpol Zone V countries which are Malawi, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Seychelles, Swaziland, Zambia, Sudan, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria.

    others are Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Mauritius, Djibouti, Lesotho, Mozambique and the host, Rwanda.

    RNP

  • Norway Cuts Aid to Uganda over Hash anti Gay Law

    Norway Cuts Aid to Uganda over Hash anti Gay Law

    {{The Norwegian government has withdrawn Norwegian Kroner 50m in budget support to Uganda over the Anti-Homosexuality law President Museveni assented to on Monday.}}

    “The new law violates fundamental human rights and the Ugandan Constitution,” the country’s Foreign Affairs minister, Mr Børge Brende, said.

    “We will hold back around Norwegian Kroner 50m of our aid to Uganda…we will increase our support to human rights and democracy defenders,” reads a statement by Kyrre Holm, the First Secretary at the Norwegian Embassy.

    Both The Netherlands and Denmark were reported to be considering slashing their aid package to Uganda, having frozen development assistance in 2012 over pilfering of $13m by bureaucrats in the Office of the Prime Minister.

    The developments follow announcement by the US and Sweden that they are reviewing their assistance to Uganda too. “…we are beginning an internal review of our relationship with the government of Uganda to ensure that all dimensions of our engagement, including assistance programmes, uphold our anti-discrimination policies and principles and reflect our values,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement on Monday.

    The White House said Mr Museveni, by signing into law a legislation criminalising homosexuality, had taken Uganda a “step backward”. Mr Kerry added: “…this law is more than an affront and a danger to the gay community in Uganda; it reflects poorly on the country’s commitment to protecting the human rights of its people and will undermine public health, including efforts to fight HIV/Aids.”

    Separately, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton described as “draconian” the legislation criminalising homosexuality, providing up to life sentence for the worst crimes in gay relationships.

    President Museveni said individuals who promote homosexuality, those recruited on financial inducement, and those who public exhibit homosexual affection should be punished harshly by the law.

    The President castigated Western government for attempting a “social imperialism” by imposing their values on Africans forcibly under the guise of promoting human rights, warning that homosexuality has no place in Uganda.

    NV

  • Pakistan, Nigeria Have Highest Child Mortality Rate – Report

    Pakistan, Nigeria Have Highest Child Mortality Rate – Report

    {{A million newborn babies a year die within 24 hours, charity Save the Children said in a report out Tuesday which urged governments to tackle preventable deaths.}}

    The report by the British-based organisation said 6.6 million children around the world died in 2012 before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes.

    The number has almost halved from the 12.6 million in 1990, but there remains a “deplorable problem of lack of attention to babies in their first days of life”, the aid organisation said.

    In its report, entitled “Ending Newborn Deaths”, it said one million babies did not survive their first 24 hours of life in 2012.

    It said two million babies could be saved each year if preventable newborn mortality was ended.

    “Child mortality remains one of the great shames of our modern world. Every day, 18,000 children under five die, and most from preventable causes,” the report said.

    “Unless we urgently start to tackle deaths among newborn babies, there is a real danger that progress in reducing child deaths could stall and we will fail in our ambition to be the generation that can end all preventable child deaths.”

    It said the reduction since 1990 had been achieved through immunisation, family planning, better nutrition and treatment of childhood illnesses, as well as improving economies.

    Pakistan had the highest rate of first day deaths and stillbirths at 40.7 per 1,000 births, followed by Nigeria (32.7), Sierra Leone (30.8), Somalia (29.7), Guinea-Bissau (29.4) and Afghanistan (29.0).

    In Pakistan, fewer than half of women had a skilled health worker present at birth.

    Attempts to improve this have been dogged by “delays in the salary disbursements, ‘stock-outs’ of medicines, unavailable and dysfunctional equipment, and an unhelpful referral system”, the report said.

    India had the highest number of first day deaths and stillbirths at 598,038 per year — a quarter of the 2.2 million lives lost.

    The under-five mortality rate in India has been more than halved since 1990, from 126 per 1,000 live births to 56.1.

    “(Indian) states with strong health systems and implementation mechanisms have done exceedingly well compared with others,” the report said.

    – Call for action –

    Save the Children, which operates in more than 120 countries, called on world leaders, philanthropists and the private sector to commit to ending preventable newborn deaths.

    They said they would present their action plan to government ministers.

    They want governments to issue declarations on ending preventable newborn mortality.

    Save the Children wants them to ensure that by 2025, every birth is attended by trained and equipped health workers, and user fees for maternal and newborn health services are removed.

    They demanded a commitment to spending at least $60 per capita on training maternity workers.

    The also urged pharmaceutical companies to increase the availability of products for the poorest new mothers.

    “In many cases, small but crucial interventions can save lives in danger. Skilled care during labour could reduce the number of stillbirths during labour by 45 percent and prevent 43 percent of newborn deaths,” the report said.

    wirestory