IGIHE

Category: People

  • Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

    Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer is to retire from the technology giant within the next 12 months.

    Shares in Microsoft, criticised for its slow response to the booming market for mobile devices, leapt 9% on the news.

    Mr Ballmer, who last month unveiled a restructuring to address the criticism, said in a statement: “There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time.

    “We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction.”

    The world’s biggest software company has created a special committee to find a replacement. This committee includes Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

    Mr Ballmer, 57, succeeded Mr Gates in 2000. The two men met in 1973 while studying at Harvard University, and Mr Ballmer joined the company in 1980.

    Microsoft emerged as the undisputed leader in the technology sector, and became the world’s largest company by market value.

    But the company had been criticised by investors recently for not reacting quickly enough to the way Apple and Google have led the way in mobile devices.

    Microsoft struggled as consumers began to shun desktops and laptops in favour of tablets and mobile devices.

    While its Windows software is used on the vast majority of PCs, Microsoft made little impact in the fast-growing tablet and smartphone segments.

    Microsoft’s transformation plan, announced last month, is trying to address that.

    In a memo to staff last month, Mr Ballmer said that the changes meant the company was “rallying behind a single strategy as one company – not a collection of divisional strategies”.

    The aim, he said, was to react faster to changes in the market.

    Andrew Bartels, analyst at Forrester Research, said Mr Ballmer has been rightly criticised for being “caught flatfooted by the shift to tablets”.

    But he added that he should get big credit for successful products such as the Xbox and Bing.

    BBC

  • Man Found with head Chopped off in Nairobi

    {{Kenya Police are investigating the killing of a 45-year-old man whose body was found on the roadside in Katani area, Utawala area.}}

    The body of Godfrey Mageto was discovered with his head chopped off a day after he failed to arrive home. His wife Modesta Nyachoti said police are yet to explain to them what transpired.

    “We are still waiting for police to tell us what happened. We are also shocked because the killers did not steal anything from him,” she said.

    Police said no arrest has been made so far and a hunt on the killers is ongoing.

    {Standardmedia}

  • African Laders in Ethiopia for Zenawi Memorial

    {{Several African leaders and high-level delegations from Rwanda,Uganda, Burundi, Somalia, Kenya, South Africa, South Sudan and Djibouti are also expected this morning in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to attend the first memorial service of the late Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi.}}

    Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir was among the first to jet in on Monday.

    The widow of the late premier and board chairperson of the Meles Zenawi Foundation (MZF), Azeb Mesfin, said that the occasion will be marked across the nation on Tuesday, with various events planned to commemorate the legacy of the former Ethiopian leader.

    At the memorial service, African leaders will pay tribute to the late prime minister for his outstanding efforts at both national and continental level to maintain regional peace and security, as well as his lead role in environmental protection and climate change negotiations.

    Zenawi, regarded as one of Ethiopia’s greatest leaders, died on 20 August 2012 after leading the country for over two decades.

  • North Korea agrees to family reunions with South

    North Korea has agreed to a South Korean proposal to resume reunions of families separated since the 1950-1953 war, official media in Pyongyang say.

    The reunions will take place in a North Korean tourist resort on 19 September.

    South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye called last week for the resumption of the reunions, last held in 2010.

    Her appeal followed an agreement to reopen a joint industrial plant, the latest step in the easing of tension between the two countries.

    The latest statement on the reunions came from the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea.

    It said: “The reunion of separated families and their relatives shall be made in Mt Kumgang resort on the occasion of the upcoming Harvest Moon Day.”

    Talks will take place between Red Cross officials from both sides on 23 August at Mt Kumgang to prepare for the reunions.

    Many families were separated at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War by the dividing of the peninsula. The two sides remain technically at war, because the conflict ended in an armistice and not a peace deal.

    The North Korean statement also called for the resumption of tourist trips to Mt Kumgang.

    The resort, the first major joint project between the nations, hosted thousands of South Korean visitors between 1998 and 2008 but tours were suspended after a North Korean soldier shot dead a tourist who strayed into a restricted area.

    {agencies}

  • Madagascar’s ex-First Lady Under Pressure to Quit Presidential Race

    {{The list of candidates to be disqualified from contesting the upcoming Madagascar presidential election is expected on Saturday while those officially cleared will be announced next Wednesday.}}

    The decision on who to disallow and who to clear hinges on the country’s newly-established Special Electoral Court (CES).

    The deadline for filing official requests by interested parties for a candidate’s disqualified passed on Friday morning.

    Six complaints were lodged regarding former First Lady Lalao Ravalomanana, the wife of ousted leader Marc Ravalomanana, according to her lawyer Hanitra Razafimanantsoa.

    Gal Albert Camille Vital, a former prime minister and current envoy to Geneva, was one of the competitors calling for her expulsion.

    A committee named CCL had also asked her name to be removed.

    However, Mrs Ravalomanana’s proxies immediately lodged a defence at the CES headquarters on Friday.

    “We have attacked nobody. We are just defending our candidate,” Ms Razafimanantsoa said. “What we are awaiting is the actual CES confirmation of the upholding of the decision made by previous electoral judges in April.”

    For her, the fact that the actual electoral court will make another decision signifies that the country must disregard the existing law.

    NMG

  • Pistorius to Face New Weapons Charges

    {{Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius will face new charges of recklessly discharging a weapon in public when he appears in a South African court next week accused of murdering his girlfriend, local media reported on Friday.}}

    Neither prosecutors nor lawyers for Pistorius would comment on the reports carried by TV broadcaster ENCA, radio’s Eyewitness News and the national SAPA news agency, citing law enforcement officials.

    They said he would face the new charges for allegedly discharging a weapon in a restaurant in January and from a car while driving home from a holiday. Both incidents are alleged to have happened before his girlfriend was killed.

    The hearing on Monday is expected to be swift and procedural, with the case moved to a high court and a date set for the start of his trial, legal sources have said.

    The double-amputee, known as “Blade Runner” for the prostheses he wears in competition, has admitted to firing four shots through a bathroom door at his Pretoria home, hitting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 29, in the head, arm and hip.

    Pistorius said in an affidavit presented at a magistrates’ court the shooting on Valentine’s Day had been a tragic mistake and he was acting in self-defense against what he thought was an intruder.

    Prosecutors accused him of premeditated murder for killing Steenkamp, a model and budding reality TV figure.

    Pistorius, 26, was one of the most celebrated athletes of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics in London, making the Olympic 400m semi-final and winning Paralympic gold over the same distance.

    {reuters}

  • Indigenous Families in Kiramuruzi Cry For Help

    {Man stands besides his hut which he says risks being washed away by the ongoing heavy rains in the area.}

    {{Four families of indigenous Rwandans resident at Nduba village in Kiramuruzi sector, Gatsibo District have appealed for urgent rescue before the rains could ruin their livelihoods whose main occupation is pottery.}}

    The lack of descent shelter and health insurance among other urgent basic needs are the major challenges of these families whose livelihoods are in contrast with other residents a few kilometers away.

    They say local authorities have abandoned them despite several promises that they would be given shelter and cultivation land.

    IGIHE made an impromptu visit to Nduba village in Akabuga cell where these families are based.Only one family of six members has managed to secure health insurance.

    Two families have occupied an abandoned kral. Other families live in makeshift huts which will most likely get destroyed by rains expected to intensify in September.

    The families say were resettled at the site by Sector authories near a livestock farm belonging Col.Twahirwa Dodo.

    Meanwhile, one family had started building a mudbrick house but authorities stopped without any substantive reason.

    Hitimana Emmanuel and wife Uwamariya Angelique are calling for help especially provision of shelter that would shield them from heavy rains and the cold. They also lack land on which to grow crops to feed their families.

    He adds that they have on several occassions appealed for help from Cell authorities and the most recent was last week when authorities promised to visit them on Monday.

    Uwamariya told IGIHE, “We were brought here by Murama Thomas (Akabuga Cell Executive Secretary) telling us that they would build houses for us but have been waiting invain. We are also Rwandans that deserve decent shelter.”

    These familes told IGIHE that they were directed to join local community groups where every member contributes funds pooled together to cater for their Health Insurance fees. However, Uwamariya says they have no source of reasonable income and thus cannot join the groups meaning they live without health insurance.

    She explains, “Only one family of six members receives health insurance cover provided by the sector authority while other families on the site are not catered for”.

    Murundikazi Claudine said she travelled all the way from Rugende near Kigali to find a husband, “iam lucky I found a man but our livelihood is not interesting”. The couple now occupied an abandoned livestock kral.

    Kayitesi Elina a mother of five resident at Nduba village, says she was evicted from her fathers land which the sector authorities say was a wetland. “I was brought here in the cattle kral.”

    {{Local Officials Decline to answer Phone calls}}

    Attempts to obtain comments from Murama Thomas the Executive Secretary at Akagari Cell were fruitless as his mobile phone was persistently unreachable.

    However, Kiramuruzi Executive Secretary Munyaburanga Joseph did not answer his mobile phone and also never responded to our text messages that informed him about the demands of the affected familes at Nduba village.

    By Press time, when contacted, Uwimpuhwe Esperance incharge of welfare at Gatsibo district didn’t answer her phone.

    The District Mayor Ruboneza Ambroise declined to answer his phone despite repeated attempts to obtain a comment from him.

    {Below are some IGIHE photos to show the life of the Indigenous Rwandan families}

  • French ‘Devil’s advocate’ Jacques Vergès dies

    Provocative French Barrister Jacques Vergès, nicknamed the “Devil’s Advocate” for defending some of the 20th century’s most notorious monsters, died Thursday in Paris aged 88.

    Vergès made a name for himself by taking on clients such as Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Venezuelan revolutionary Carlos the Jackal, former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz and ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.

    He caused a storm when he told German newspaper Der Spiegel in 2008 that he would have defended Hitler.

    Vergès died of a heart attack around 8:00pm Paris time in the house where 18th century enlightenment philosopher Voltaire once lived

    “It was the ideal place for the last theatrical act that was the death of this born actor who, like Voltaire, cultivated the art of permanent revolt and volte-face,” his publisher said in a statement.

    Algerian independence, Cambodian war crimes

    Born in Thailand in 1925 to a father from French territory Reunion and a Vietnamese mother, Vergès was a communist as a student and later supported the Algerian National Liberation Front in its fight for independence from France.

    After securing the release of Algerian anti-colonialist militant Djamila Bouhired, he married her.

    One of his last high-profile cases was the 2011 defence of his long-time friend, Cambodia’s former communist head of state Khieu Samphan, who faced charges of crimes against humanity for his role in the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime.

    Then aged 86, the short, bespectacled Vergès delivered a pithy riposte to prosecutors who had spent two days detailing the horror the country suffered under the Khmer Rouge, during which up to two million people died through starvation, torture and execution.

    The ‘dark side’

    Vergès’s life story reads like a novel, but there is one chapter that he preferred to leave unopened: from 1970 until 1978, when he left his wife and children and disappeared.

    He has referred to this period as “the dark side” of his life, leading to much speculation about these missing years.

    Among the more persistent theories are suggestions that he fostered ties with Palestinian militants, that he passed through Congo – or that he lived in Khmer Rouge Cambodia.

    Vergès himself said he “passed through to the other side of the mirror.”

    “It’s highly amusing that no one, in our modern police state, can figure out where I was for almost 10 years,” he told German newsweekly Spiegel in a 2008 interview.

    FRANCE 24’s Bangkok correspondent Cyril Payen, who met Vergès on a number of occasions, said the lawyer was “a very complex person”.

    “There is a wide gulf between the public man, the provocative and often aggressive barrister, and the private man, who was actually quite humble,” Payen said.

    Maximum publicity

    On his return to his legal activities, Vergès became the champion of extremists from both left and right.

    He was an advocate of Palestinian violence against the “imperialism” of Israel but he also defended neo-Nazi bombers and leapt at the chance to expose what he saw as establishment hypocrisy in the Barbie trial.

    Most of his clients lost their cases but Vergès’ flair was in courtroom provocation, attacking the prosecution and maximising the publicity of his defendants’ cause.

    Once asked by France Soir in 2004 how he could defend Saddam Hussein, after he said he was prepared to represent the Iraqi dictator, Vergès replied: “Defending Saddam is not a lost cause. It’s defending (then US president George W.) Bush that is the lost cause.”

    Vergès, a lover of thick Robusto cigars and author of some 20 books, had his colourful life portrayed in the 2007 Cannes Film Festival documentary “Terror’s Advocate” and starred in his own play in France, called “Serial Defender.”

    Source:{France24 & wires}

  • Libya’s ethnic Berber minority Storm Parliament

    {{Members of Libya’s ethnic Berber minority have forced their way into the parliament building in Tripoli, smashing windows and destroying furniture, in a demonstration to push for greater recognition, an assembly spokesman said.}}

    The protest occurred on Tuesday during a break in a regular session at the assembly, General National Congress spokesman Omar Hmaiden said.

    There were no immediate reports of casualties, but Hmaiden said furniture had been smashed and some documents belonging to assembly members were missing.

    Violence and lawlessness, much of it involving former rebel groups, has hobbled governance in the country since the war that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

    The indigenous people of North Africa, known to others as Berbers and among themselves as Amazigh, were brutally suppressed under Gaddafi, who considered the teaching of their language and culture to be a challenge to Arab dominance.

    They were among the mainstays of the rebellion, with their stronghold in the Nafusa Mountains southwest of Tripoli emerging as one of the main fronts.

    Berber was the main language of North Africa before Arabic arrived with the Muslim conquest in the 7th century. It is still spoken in the Sahara and in mountainous parts of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as well as Libya.

    Source: Reuters

  • Norway Prime Minister Works as Secret Taxi Driver

    {{Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg spent an afternoon working incognito as a taxi driver in Oslo, he has revealed.}}

    Mr Stoltenberg said he had wanted to hear from real Norwegian voters and that taxis were one of the few places where people shared their true views.

    He wore sunglasses and an Oslo taxi driver’s uniform for the shift in June, only revealing his identity once he was recognised by his passengers.

    His exchanges with his passengers were captured on a hidden camera.

    The footage – made in collaboration with an advertising company – has been posted on the Prime Minister’s Facebook page and made into a film which will be used as part of his campaign for re-election in September.

    “It is important for me to hear what people really think,” he told Norwegian media.

    “And if there is one place people really say what they think about most things, it’s in the taxi.”

    {{Driving errors}}

    Some of the passengers who appear in the film had been told to wait for the taxi – without being told who would be driving – while others were picked up randomly and from taxi ranks.

    Most of them appear to realise very quickly that there is something different about their driver, with one saying: “From this angle you really look like Stoltenberg.”

    Another says she was lucky to meet him as she “wanted to send a letter”.

    The conversation turns to politics in most cases.

    Mr Stoltenberg engages one passenger on education, saying: “The main point is to make sure good students have something to stretch for, and to give those who struggle extra help.”

    None of the passengers was charged for the ride.

    Mr Stoltenberg told the VG newspaper: “I’m pretty well known in Oslo, but I tend to sit in the back seat.”

    The Labour prime minister came in for criticism for his driving, at one point jolting the car abruptly when, he said, he mistakenly applied the brake pedal on the automatic car, thinking it was the clutch.

    He said he had not driven in eight years.

    Mr Stoltenberg is popular in Norway, but opinion polls suggest he is lagging behind the opposition ahead of the election.

    But asked by VG whether he would consider becoming a taxi driver full time if he lost the election, Mr Stoltenberg replied: “I think the country and the Norwegian taxi passengers are best served if I’m the prime minister and not a taxi driver.”

    -BBC