IGIHE

Category: People

  • Community Policing Donates Money to Genocide Survivor

    {{Omar Nishimwe 31, is a genocide survivor, resident at Masaka sector in Kicukiro District, was overwhelmed by excitement on July 12, when a delegation showed up at his house and handed him Frw300.000 in cash.}}

    Omar was attacked during the genocide, but he survived the killings. He fell in a whole and broke his back, which resulted into parysis.

    He only moves in a wheelchair. With no family to help, and no resources left, Omar’s life is constantly at the threshold.

    The community policing committee (CPC) of Kicukiro district was thus compelled to mobilize funds and help him. Madjid Ndambendore is the representative of the committee. He said the act was part of their mechanisms of providing peace and security in their neighborhood.

    “Seeking solutions to our problems is one of the ways of ensuring a peaceful community,” he said.

    Omar lives with his relative, Chantal Mukeshimana, in a small house. But Chantal has many other orphans to look after. Even the house isn’t enough for the family.

    According to Madjid, the funds will help buy more iron sheets to expand the house. He said members of the CPC have promised to volunteer expand the house. Omar could not hide the excitement. He appreciated the love and care demonstrated to him.

    The gesture from the CPC is part of the strategies learnt from the recent trainings across the country offered by the Rwanda National Police Community Policing Department. More than 600 members benefited from the training in Kicukiro District alone.

    RNP

  • Wole Soyinka Dismisses Rumour that he got 3rd Class Degree

    {{Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has dismissed age-long speculation that he acquired a third class degree from university and declared he had actually a second class upper.}}

    Soyinka was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. However, there has been wide speculation that he had poorly performed while at university and had prefered to remain incommunicado on the matter.

    On Sunday, the Nobel Laureate spoke at his private residence, when he hosted 79 secondary school students across the country as part of activities marking his 79th birthday.

    He explained that he had kept silent over the years on the matter but decided to open up for the sake of the children as a mark of respect for them.

    Soyinka, fielded questions from all his 79 guests who participated in an essay competition to commemorate his birthday.

    “Don’t be satisfied with failure but rather strive to excel in all your endeavours,” he said.
    While advising students not to be discouraged by certain negative happenings in the country, Soyinka urged them to draw inspiration from the life of a 16-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head on October 9, 2012 by Taliban fighters over her campaign for girl-child education in Pakistan.

    On his non-believe in any religion, Soyinka said he believes religion should be a private thing. He stressed the need for inter-religious tolerance among all Nigerians.

    On his role model, Soyinka, described his first teacher (one Mr. Olagbaju) as his role model, even as he explained that there was no mystery behind his grey hair.

    On his aspiration in life, the literary giant pointed out that he would have loved to become an architect, musician or a pilot. “I would have loved to be an architect, or a musician, but not an amateur, a trained one.

    When I left school, I wanted to be a journalist. I actually sat for an exam to be absolved in Daily Times, but after the exam, I was told that I wrote a short story and not a news story. So, I was not taken. Thank goodness, I did not become a journalist,” he added.

    The event, tagged: “Memoirs of our future”, was organised by a Lagos-based multimedia company, Zmirage, in conjunction with the Ogun State government.

    patrick@igihe.com

  • Snowden Puts His Future in Russia’s Hands

    {Snowden at Friday’s meeting, seated next to Wikileaks’ Sarah Harrison, at left.}

    Former U.S. National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden met with Russian human rights activists, lawyers and government officials Friday to seek their support in securing asylum in Russia in order to later travel safely to South America, leaving Russia with little wriggle room to remain neutral.

    “I do intend to ask for political asylum in Russia. I believe that the legal means to stay in Russia safely, to attempt to move to Latin America, is to request asylum in the Russian Federation. I can only at this time formally accept asylum in Russia because of the limitations on my ability to travel,” Snowden told his handpicked audience.

    The meeting took place in an unidentified room of Sheremetyevo Airport’s transit zone, where Snowden has been apparently stuck for three weeks after the United States revoked his passport. Snowden’s guests were followed by dozens of frenzied journalists as they made their way to a special door meant for staff only. The drama reached its peak when the overcrowding on the escalator made it malfunction and journalists had to rush up the frozen stairs.

    Snowden’s plea for Russian protection marks his second attempt to obtain legal status in Russia. On July 2, he withdrew a request after President Vladimir Putin said he could only stay in Russia if he stopped inflicting damage against “our American partners.”

    This time, Snowden reasoned that his request was not at odds with Putin’s condition, as he was not actually inflicting damage against the U.S.

    “He called on the organizations present to intervene in support of his asylum claim. He also said that he did not find Putin’s remark problematic because, as he says, he did not do any harm to the United States and he did not plan to do any,” Tanya Lokshina, senior researcher at Moscow’s Human Rights Watch office, said after the meeting, noting that Snowden “looked like a schoolboy.”

    Snowden also asked for assistance in convincing international organizations to petition the U.S. and European Union to allow him to travel, since such organizations require applicants to come to them, and he is stuck in the airport, Lokshina said.

    The Russian government is clearly watching the situation closely, as representatives of Russia’s secret services were evidently present at the meeting, said Sergei Nikitin, head of Moscow’s office of Amnesty International.

    “If you see men in suits with military bearing and a heavy look on their faces, then who do you think these people are, school teachers?” he said.

    Nikitin also said that whoever was taking care of Snowden seemed to be doing it quite well, as Snowden himself clearly stated that the conditions he enjoyed in Moscow were good. At the same time, according to Nikitin, Snowden said he had not yet been able to improve his Russian despite listening to hundreds of airport announcements each day.

    The head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, told Interfax on Saturday that the agency had not yet received Snowden’s asylum application. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s foreign ministers in Kyrgyzstan on the same day that the government was not in contact with Snowden.

    Putin discussed the Snowden situation with U.S. President Barack Obama over the phone Friday, though no details of that conversation have been made public.

    All participants of the meeting, including both pro-Kremlin State Duma Deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov and human rights organizations — the offices of which have been raided by government authorities in recent months — agreed that Snowden had a strong case to seek asylum in Russia.

    The asylum request leaves Russia with fewer options to remain neutral in the matter. The Kremlin has publicly indicated a desire to be rid of Snowden, whose presence in Russia has hurt already strained U.S.-Russia ties, but signals Friday pointed to a possible change in attitude.

    State Duma speaker and strong Putin ally Sergei Naryshkin told Rossia 24 television that he thought Russia should grant Snowden asylum, assuming he fulfilled the condition set by Putin. And lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, a member of the Public Chamber who has represented outspokenly pro-Putin film director Nikita Mikhalkov and United Russia lawmaker Iosif Kobzon, said he had agreed with Snowden to help him in preparing his asylum request, according to Interfax. The application process would take between two and three weeks, he said.

    Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said Friday that “providing a propaganda platform for Mr. Snowden runs counter to the Russian government’s previous declarations of Russia’s neutrality and [claims] that they have no control over his presence in the airport.”

    It was unclear from Snowden’s statements regarding his attitude toward the U.S. whether he intended to stop leaking secret U.S. documents, for which the United States wants to charge him with espionage, or whether he believes that he is actually helping the U.S. by leaking the information.

    United Russia parliamentarian Alexei Pushkov, who heads the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said on Twitter that Russia had acted correctly in not extraditing Snowden.

    “Russia did the right thing in not giving up Snowden. There are things more important than a momentary gain. Pragmatism in foreign policy is not the same as cynicism,” Pushkov wrote.

    {Journalists swarming around lawyer Genri Reznik ahead of Snowden’s appearance at Sheremetyevo on Friday. }

    The Moscow Times

  • Guatemala ‘to extradite drug lord’ to US

    {{An appeals court in Guatemala has ruled that the suspected drug lord, Waldemar Lorenzana, can be extradited to the US, where he is wanted for his alleged links to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.}}

    Washington accuses Mr Lorenzana of working with the Sinaloa gang to smuggle tonnes of cocaine to the US.

    The Guatemalan national, who has said he is innocent, was arrested in 2011.

    Mexican cartels have stepped up their influence in Guatemala, a transit country for Colombian cocaine.

    The extradition of the alleged drug trafficker was ratified by the First Chamber of the Court of Appeal, after a lower Guatemalan tribunal ruled in August 2012 that he could be extradited. No date has yet been set.

    The suspected drug trafficker, nicknamed the Patriarch, has been sought by the US since 2009.

    Washington says he is the ringleader of a group of drug traffickers that operates in eastern Guatemala, and plays a key role in facilitating cocaine trafficking between Colombia and Mexico.

    BBC

  • Osama bin Laden lived in plain sight

    {{Osama bin Laden lived in plain sight for almost a decade and was once even pulled over for speeding but not apprehended, thanks to the incompetence of Pakistan’s intelligence and security services, an official report into his killing said on Monday.}}

    The report, leaked to Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera which circulated it late on Monday, offers fascinating details about life on the run for the world’s most wanted man, who, it says, wore a cowboy hat to avoid being spotted from above.

    Written by a judge-led commission that the Pakistani government set up shortly after U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in 2011, the 336-page report is based on interviews with 201 sources including members of his family and various officials.

    In one testimony showing how close bin Laden came to being captured, “Maryam”, the wife of one of his most trusted aides, recounted how his car was stopped by Pakistani police in the Swat region.

    “Once when they were all … on a visit to the bazaar they were stopped for speeding by a policeman,” the report says. “But her (Maryam’s) husband quickly settled the matter with the policeman and they drove on.”

    To avoid detection from the sky, bin Laden took to wearing a cowboy hat when moving about his compound in the city of Abbottabad, his wives told investigators.

    The inquiry’s findings – which have not yet been officially published – include evidence of incompetence at almost every level of Pakistan’s security apparatus. The report is also fiercely critical of the “illegal manner” in which the United States conducted the raid.

    agencies

  • World’s Biggest Cocaine Dealer Deported to Italy

    {{An Italian mafia capo alleged to be the biggest cocaine trafficker in the world will be deported to Italy on Saturday, a day after being arrested in a Colombian shopping mall, prosecutors said.}}

    Roberto Pannunzi was detained in Bogota with a fake Venezuelan identity card in a joint operation by Colombian police together with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

    “He is the biggest cocaine importer in the world,” said Nicola Gratteri, deputy chief prosecutor in Reggio Calabria in southern Italy.

    “He is the only one who can organise purchases and sales of cocaine shipments of 3,000 kilos (6,600 pounds) and up,” he said.

    “Pannunzi is the only one who can sell both to the ‘Ndrangheta and to Cosa Nostra. He is definitely the most powerful drug broker in the world,” he said.

    The ‘Ndrangheta is based in Calabria and is a major player in international drug trafficking. The Sicilian mafia is known as Cosa Nostra.

    Gratteri said Pannunzi was being deported since “an extradition order would have taken several months”.

    He is expected to land at Rome’s Fiumicino airport later on Saturday.

    In April, Colombia captured another suspected top mafioso, Domenico Trimboli, alleged to be a lynchpin between the Medellin drug cartel and the ‘Ndrangheta.

    Pannunzi had escaped from a Rome clinic where he was being held under house arrest in 2010 — repeating an earlier escape in the same way in 1999.

    He was previously been detained in Colombia in 1994, when he reportedly offered the arresting officers a million dollars in cash to walk away.

    Gratteri said that during Friday’s arrest, Pannunzi had told the police he was ill but he said he hoped the alleged trafficker would not be granted house arrest in a hospital in Italy again.

    “I hope that he is not given house arrest a third time because he could attempt a third escape.

    “It’s exhausting having to go around the world to find him every time he escapes,” Gratteri said.

    wirestory

  • Desmond Tutu urges Nelson Mandela’s family to end feud

    {{Two leading South Africans have called for an end to a bitter row among members of Nelson Mandela’s family over the reburial of three of his children.}}

    Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said he hoped the public dispute could be resolved in a “dignified manner”.

    Archbishop Desmond Tutu pleaded with the family not to “besmirch” Mr Mandela’s name with their squabble.

    President Jacob Zuma has meanwhile denied reports that Mr Mandela, 94, was in a vegetative state.

    South Africa’s first black president has spent the past four weeks in a Pretoria hospital with a recurrent lung condition.

    “Madiba remains in a critical, but stable condition. The doctors deny that the former president is in a vegetative state,” said a statement from Mr Zuma, who visited Mr Mandela on Thursday.

    The statement came after court papers filed on behalf of Mr Mandela’s eldest daughter, Makaziwe, on 26 June said his health was “perilous” and that he was “assisted in breathing by a life-support machine”.

    However, subsequent court papers also on behalf of Makaziwe Mandela, do not mention that he was in a “vegetative state”.

    One of Mr Mandela’s friends and fellow former prisoners, Denis Goldberg, who visited the anti-apartheid icon on Monday, also said he was responsive but was prevented from speaking because he had tubes in his mouth.

    “I’m quite satisfied he was responsive to what I was saying,” he said.

    His wife, Graca Machel, on Thursday said he is sometimes “uncomfortable, but he has never been in pain”.

    BBC

  • Rwandan Girls Deliver Message to Global Leaders

    {{Armed with recording equipment, notebooks and laptops full of questions, and aspirations of girls from all over Rwanda, Ritha and Cecile—journalists from Ni Nyampinga Magazine and the weekly Ni Nyampinga Radio program—headed to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to be part of the largest international event to focus on the advancement of girls and women, Women Deliver 2013. }}

    During the event, the young journalists interviewed global leaders including Maria Eitel, President of the Nike Foundation, Chelsea Clinton from the Clinton Foundation, Cathy Kalvin UN Foundation President, Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda World YWCA General Secretary, Holly Gordon producer of Girl Rising, and Barbara Bush co-founder of Global Health Corps:

    “We invest in girls because women and girls are half the population of the world. So if you want the society to grow, you have to empower [them].

    You [Ni Nyampinga journalists] are an incredible example of leaders that are adding your voice to the [global] conversation and using your platforms of radio and media to effect dialogue in your country and around the world.” – Barbra Bush

    They also interviewed EmmanuellaManjolo a 13 year-old girl champion from Malawi who shared challenges girls in her country are facing especially when it comes to child marriage and education and how she was at the conference to represent all Malawian girls.

    This conference presented an exceptional opportunity to have girls participate in high-level discussions with global influencers that affect their lives and their futures so directly.

    The girls engaged in plenary sessions and other conference events, and asked questions and contributed their thoughts directly during sessions and during the Youth Pre-Conference events.

    Under the Girl Tree, they talked to Maria Eitel and engaged her in a discussion about her plans for getting Rwandan girls on the post-2015 agenda.

    The Girl Tree was full of aspirations and goals from girls from all over the world that will be used in the development of the Girl Declaration—girls’ voice for the Post-2015 agenda.

    Over a thousand participants signed on in support of getting girlsin the next set of development goals.

    Through their involvement in Ni Nyampinga, Ritha and Cecile delivered messages directly to those who affect their lives from girls just like them in Rwanda.

    At the same time, they’vebrought back answers to questions about how girls in Rwanda can become future leaders and achieve their dreams.

  • Mrs. Obama’s advice to first ladies

    {{First ladies in Africa have the opportunity to speak to their husbands and help formulate strategies that will empower women across the continent, US First Lady Michelle Obama said yesterday.}}

    Speaking during the African First Ladies Summit in Dar es Salaam, Mrs Obama said the continent’s economic development would get new impetus if first ladies in Africa used their positions to lobby for formulation of best strategies that will help women.

    “Women participate in all activities from family level to community activities, if properly empowered women will spur the economic development of the continent,” she said.

    Opening the summit earlier, President Jakaya Kikwete said that despite their significant contribution, women were still poor and do not control the wealth they produce. He added that women also did not have equal access to education and faced difficulties in accessing health services.

    “Women perform most of the work. They fully participate in agricultural activities but at the end middlemen buy cheaply their crops and sell at profitable prices. This is a hindrance to women’s development,” President Kikwete said.

    He said that if African women had full access to education, health services and credit, they would be active members of society, which, in turn, would spur the continent’s economic growth and boost poverty alleviation efforts. “In Africa, women work more and harder than men, so investing in them will assure the continent with food security and stable income.”

    Former US First Lady Laura Bush said that women put back 90 per cent of their income into their families and that they stood at the forefront of championing changes. A country with well-educated and healthy women was more likely to prosper, Mrs Bush said. The two-day summit brings together seven first ladies from across the continent, and was also attended by, among others, former US President George Bush and Mrs Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

    Mrs Blair announced the expansion of mobile services to Tanzania’s businesswomen as part of a multi-year initiative to provide tailored business information.

    She said the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women in collaboration with ExxonMobil would also provide face-to-face skills development and training to women entrepreneurs.

    The service was developed based on groundbreaking research conducted by the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and Booz and Company on the challenges women entrepreneurs face and how mobile technology can be used to address them.

    The research which was also supported by ExxonMobil Foundation concluded that the extensive and ever-increasing penetration of mobile phones in developing and emerging markets presents opportunity to women entrepreneurs who want to develop their micro businesses.

    {agencies}

  • SA Police Investigating Mandela Grandson in Grave Dispute

    {{South African police opened an investigation on Tuesday into Nelson Mandela’s grandson on suspicion of illegally exhuming the bodies of three of the ailing anti-apartheid hero’s children, a police spokesman said.}}

    The investigation is the latest twist in an unedifying family feud that has drawn global attention as the 94-year-old Mandela lies in a Pretoria hospital in a critical condition.

    Sixteen members of the Mandela family have already won a court order forcing Mandla Mandela – officially chief of the Mandela clan – to return the bodies that he dug up two years ago from the village of Qunu, where Nelson Mandela grew up.

    Mandla had the remains moved 20 km (13 miles) to his Eastern Cape village of Mvezo.

    He has not commented on why he moved the bodies but Mvezo is where Mandela was actually born and where many South Africans believe Mandla wants South Africa’s first black president to be buried.

    The three Mandela children buried in Mvezo are an infant girl who died in 1948, a boy, Thembi, who died in a car crash in 1969, and Makgatho, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 2005. In all, Mandela fathered six children from his three marriages.

    “We have started our investigation and we will send the case to the senior prosecutor for a decision on whether to prosecute or not,” Eastern Cape police spokesman Mzukisi Fatyela said.

    Nelson Mandela has spent more than three weeks battling a lung infection, forcing South Africans to accept that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who helped end white-minority rule will not be around forever.

    {wirestory}