IGIHE

Category: People

  • World Population To Reach 8.1b In 2025

    {{According to a recent United Nations’ forecast, global population will increase from its present 7.2 billion to 8.1 billion in 2025, with more than half of the growth coming from Africa. By 2050, it will reach 9.6 billion. That of Nigeria is expected to hit 440 million.}}

    India’s population is expected to surpass China’s by 2028 when each country will be about 1.45 billion, according to the report on World Population Prospects. While India’s population is forecast to grow to around 1.6 billion and then slowly decline to 1.5 billion in 2100, China’s is expected to start decreasing after 2030, possibly falling to 1.1 billion in 2100, it said.

    Among the fastest growing countries is Nigeria, whose population is expected to surpass the United State’s before the middle of the century and could start to rival China as the second most populous country in the world by the end of the century, according to the report.

    By 2050, Nigeria’s population is expected to reach more than 440 million people, compared to US’ 400 million. In 2100, the country is predicted to hover around 914 million.

    The report found that most countries with very high levels of fertility — more than five children per women — are on the UN’s list of least developed countries. Most are in Africa, but they also include Afghanistan and East Timor.

    But the average number of children per woman has swiftly declined in several large countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Brazil and South Africa, leading to a reduction in population growth rates in much of the developing world.

    In contrast, many European and eastern Asia countries have very low fertility levels.

    The population in developing regions is projected to increase from 5.9 billion in 2013 to 8.2 billion in 2050. In contrast, the population of developed countries is expected to remain largely unchanged during that period, at around 1.3 billion people.

    The report found that Africa’s population could increase from 1.1 billion today to 2.4 billion in 2050, and potentially to 4.2 billion by 2100. Even as the number of children in less developed regions is at all time high at 1.7 billion. In those regions, children under age 15 account for 26 percent of the population.

    In the poorest countries, children constitute 40 percent of their populations, posing huge challenges for providing education and employment.

    In wealthier regions, by contrast, children account for 16 percent of the population. In developed countries as a whole, the number of older people has already surpassed the number of children, and by 2050 the number of older people will be nearly twice the number of children.

    Low-fertility countries now include all of Europe except Iceland plus 19 countries in Asia, 17 in the Americas, two in Africa and one in Oceania.

    The populations of several countries are expected to decline by more than 15 percent by 2050, including Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cuba, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia Serbia, and Ukraine.

    Life expectancy at birth for the world as a whole rose from 47 years in 1950-55 to 69 years in 2005-2010 and is projected to reach 76 years in 2045-2050 and 82 years in 2095-2100.

    wirestory

  • British envoy tells Mau Mau not to Focus on Money

    {{The British High Commissioner to Kenya, Christian Turner, has called on those saying the Sh340,000 awarded to each of 5,228 Mau Mau war veterans is too little to instead focus on the gesture.}}

    Turner said that while it was impossible to place monetary value on the atrocities the independence fighters underwent, the more important take away was the statement of regret.

    “I would refer you to what the mzee who heads the Mau Mau War Veterans Association said when the question was put to him and he said to put a monetary value on what he went through is almost impossible but I welcome this statement; this sign from the British government because reconciliation begins with acknowledgement and you cannot have peace without justice, without understanding, without accountability. So reconciliation is the important word we should focus on,” Turner said.

    The statement of regret, Turner said, is made all the more important by the fact that it was only the second time the British government has acknowledged the wrong doings of the colonial period.

    “The first was for the Chagos Islands in 2012. It is a very, very deep and sincere statement of regret for those who suffered on all sides of the Emergency period; an acknowledgement of wrongs that were carried out in the then government’s name,” he said.

    The High Commissioner also reiterated his government position that those who feel they too should have been compensated, should go the legal route.

    “This settlement was reached between the British government and this particular group of veterans, the Mau Maw War Veterans Association and it was very specific to a set of personal injury claims. I think what was as important as the cash payment is the statement of regret from the British government,” Turner reiterated.

    Eight thousand more claimants through Tandem AVH and its Kenyan partner Miller and Company Advocates still have a case pending before the London High Court and they too are demanding compensation for the suffering they underwent during the Mau Mau uprising.

    “The Mau Mau War Veterans Association, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the Leigh Day lawyers spent a long time going right across the country, not just in Central, looking for people who had suffered injury, torture and other things during that period and they worked very hard to find those numbers and as I say if there are others who wish to make a claim in the end, that would have to be done in the courts,” Turner concluded.

    CapitalFM

  • Councillor calls for black Italy minister to be raped

    {{A councillor belonging to Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League party called Thursday for the country’s first black minister to be raped, sparking an outcry and her expulsion from the party.}}

    “Won’t someone rape her, just to make her understand what victims of this terrible crime feel? For shame!” Dolores Valandro, a councillor in Padua in Northern Italy, wrote on Facebook alongside a photograph of African-Italian Immigration Minister Cecile Kyenge.

    Valandro was apparently reacting to an article on a website called “all immigrant crimes” which detailed an alleged attempt by a Somali in Genoa to rape two Romanian girls, Italian media reports said.

    Kyenge, an eye doctor and Italian citizen originally from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has been subjected to a barrage of racist attacks since being appointed minister in February.

    She has attracted heated criticism from the League for plans to push for legislation that would allow children born in Italy to immigrant parents to get automatic citizenship instead of waiting until 18 to apply.

    The League immediately expelled Valandro from the party.

    AFP

  • Rapper in Tunisia Jailed for Insulting Cops

    {{A Tunisian rapper who was sentenced to two years in jail in absentia in March for insulting the police was handed the same punishment on Thursday after he surrendered to the authorities.}}

    The ruling, which critics called another blow to free speech in Tunisia, came a day after three European feminisits were jailed for four months for staging a topless demonstration in the capital Tunis againt the Islamist led-government.

    Ala Yaacoub, known by his rap name “Weld El 15”, had been on the run since March but turned himself in earlier on Thursday. He has accused the police of using unnecessary force, and in a message posted on the internet earlier this year, said:

    “I was only using the language of the police. They have harassed me verbally and physically. As an artist, the only way I could answer them is through art. I gave them violent art.”

    In the video posted on YouTube that triggered the court case, the singer can be heard saying: “Police, magistrates, I’m here to tell you one thing, you dogs; I’ll kill police instead of sheep; Give me a gun I’ll shoot them.”

    After the verdict, dozens of the rapper’s supporters protested inside the courtroom, and when police forced them outside, scuffles ensued.

    Secular groups say freedom of expression are threatened under a coalition led by Tunisia’s moderate Islamist Ennahda party, a charge the government denies.

    In particular, they accuse authorities of failing to prevent attacks by militant Islamist Salafis on cultural institutions and individuals. Salafis disrupted several concerts and plays last year, saying they violated Islamic principles.

    They also ransacked the U.S. embassy in September during worldwide Muslim protests over an Internet video.

    {Reuters}

  • US whites now Losing Majority in under-5 age Group

    {For the first time, America’s racial and ethnic minorities now make up about half of the under-5 age group, the U.S. government said Thursday.

    It’s a historic shift that shows how young people are at the forefront of sweeping changes by race and class.}

    The new census estimates, a snapshot of the U.S. population as of July 2012, comes a year after the Census Bureau reported that whites had fallen to a minority among babies. Fueled by immigration and high rates of birth, particularly among Hispanics, racial and ethnic minorities are now growing more rapidly in numbers than whites.

    Based on current rates of growth, whites in the under-5 group are expected to tip to a minority this year or next, Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director, said.

    The government also projects that in five years, minorities will make up more than half of children under 18. Not long after, the total U.S. white population will begin an inexorable decline in absolute numbers, due to aging baby boomers.

    The imminent tip to a white minority among young children adds a racial dimension to government spending on early-childhood education, such as President Barack Obama’s proposal to significantly expand pre-kindergarten for lower-income families.

    The nation’s demographic changes are already stirring discussion as to whether some civil rights-era programs, such as affirmative action in college admissions, should be retooled to focus more on income rather than race and ethnicity. The Supreme Court will rule on the issue this month.

    Studies show that gaps in achievement by both race and class begin long before college, suggesting that U.S. remedies to foster equal opportunity will need to reach earlier into a child’s life.

    AP

  • Mandela ‘responding better to treatment’

    {{Nelson Mandela began responding better to treatment Wednesday morning for a recurring lung infection following “a difficult last few days,” South Africa’s president said.}}

    President Jacob Zuma told parliament that he is happy with the progress that the 94-year-old is making following his hospitalization on Saturday.

    Mandela spent a fifth straight day Wednesday in a Pretoria hospital, where he was visited by one of his daughters and two granddaughters.

    Zuma noted that Wednesday marked the 49th anniversary of the sentencing of Mandela to life in prison in 1964. He said “our thoughts” are with Mandela and his family “on this crucial historical anniversary.”

    “We are very happy with the progress that he is now making following a difficult last few days,” Zuma said. “We appreciate the messages of support from all over the world.”

    Zuma on Wednesday applauded the legacy of Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists. South Africa’s government disbanded its official policy of apartheid — racial segregation and discrimination — in 1994.

    “Our country is a much better place to live in now than it was before 1994, even though we still have so much work to do,” Zuma said.

    Mandela, the leader of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, spent 27 years in prison during white racist rule.

    He was freed in 1990, and then embarked on peacemaking efforts during the tense transition that saw the demise of the apartheid system and his own election as South Africa’s first black president in 1994.

    His admission to a hospital in Pretoria, the capital, is Mandela’s fourth time being admitted to a hospital for treatment since December. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama wished Mandela a “speedy recovery” on Tuesday.

    {wirestory}

  • Nigerian Man Survives 2 days Under sea

    {{After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness.}}

    Ship’s cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform.

    Of the 12 people on board, divers recovered 10 dead bodies while a remaining crew member has not been found.

    Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him.

    “I was there in the water in total darkness just thinking it’s the end. I kept thinking the water was going to fill up the room but it did not,” Okene said, parts of his skin peeling away after days soaking in the salt water.

    “I was so hungry but mostly so, so thirsty. The salt water took the skin off my tongue,” he said. Seawater got into his mouth but he had nothing to eat or drink throughout his ordeal.

    At 4:50 a.m. on May 26, Okene says he was in the toilet when he realized the tugboat was beginning to turn over. As water rushed in and the Jascon-4 flipped, he forced open the metal door.

    “As I was coming out of the toilet it was pitch black so we were trying to link our way out to the water tidal (exit hatch),” Okene told Reuters in his home town of Warri, a city in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta.

    “Three guys were in front of me and suddenly water rushed in full force. I saw the first one, the second one, the third one just washed away. I knew these guys were dead.”

    What he didn’t know was that he would spend the next two and a half days trapped under the sea praying he would be found.

    Turning away from his only exit, Okene was swept along a narrow passageway by surging water into another toilet, this time adjoining a ship’s officers cabin, as the overturned boat crashed onto the ocean floor. To his amazement he was still breathing.

    {{Fish ate the dead}}

    Okene, wearing only his underpants, survived around a day in the four foot square toilet, holding onto the overturned washbasin to keep his head out of the water.

    He built up the courage to open the door and swim into the officer’s bedroom and began pulling off the wall paneling to use as a tiny raft to lift himself out of the freezing water.

    He sensed he was not alone in the darkness.

    “I was very, very cold and it was black. I couldn’t see anything,” says Okene, staring into the middle distance.

    “But I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear the sound. It was horror.”

    What Okene didn’t know was a team of divers sent by Chevron and the ship’s owners, West African Ventures, were searching for crew members, assumed by now to be dead.

    Then in the afternoon of May 28, Okene heard them.

    “I heard a sound of a hammer hitting the vessel. Boom, boom, boom. I swam down and found a water dispenser. I pulled the water filter and I hammered the side of the vessel hoping someone would hear me. Then the diver must have heard a sound.”

    Divers broke into the ship and Okene saw light from a head torch of someone swimming along the passageway past the room.

    “I went into the water and tapped him. I was waving my hands and he was shocked,” Okene said, his relief still visible.

    He thought he was at the bottom of the sea, although the company says it was 30 meters below.

    The diving team fitted Okene with an oxygen mask, diver’s suit and helmet and he reached the surface at 19:32, more than 60 hours after the ship sank, he says.

    Okene says he spent another 60 hours in a decompression chamber where his body pressure was returned to normal. Had he just been exposed immediately to the outside air he would have died.

    The cook describes his extraordinary survival story as a “miracle” but the memories of his time in the watery darkness still haunt him and he is not sure he will return to the sea.

    “When I am at home sometimes it feels like the bed I am sleeping in is sinking. I think I’m still in the sea again. I jump up and I scream,” Okene said, shaking his head.

    “I don’t know what stopped the water from filling that room. I was calling on God. He did it. It was a miracle.”

    {reuters}

  • Kenya Court Sentences Somali Pirates to 5 years in Prison

    {The nine Somali men, who have been charged with piracy related activities, stand at the dock during their sentencing at a Kenyan law court in the coastal town of Mombasa June 10, 2013.}

    A Kenyan court sentenced nine Somali citizens each to five years in prison on Monday after finding them guilty of violently hijacking a vessel, MV Magellan Star, in the Gulf of Aden in September 2010.

    The nine were captured by international anti-piracy forces before being handed over to Kenya to be prosecuted, because Somalia was not considered able to try them properly.

    Although the number of attacks has fallen markedly since 2011 thanks to tougher security aboard ships and increased Western naval patrols, piracy emanating from the Horn of Africa nation may still cost the world economy about $18 billion a year, the World Bank said in April.

    Prosecutors told the court the men attacked the ship armed with three AK-47 rifles, a G3 rifle, one SAR rifle and other crude weapons.

    “They hijacked the vessel, using violence against its crew by firing at them, and took control of the … vessel, thus endangering the lives of the crew,” they said in the charge sheet.

    All nine had denied the accusations, and were held in custody at one of Kenya’s maximum security prisons during the trial.

    While handing out the sentence, the court noted that the accused had already served a long term in jail while the trial was in progress, and therefore were given shorter prison terms.

    “Such charges would ordinarily attract a jail term of up to 20 years,” magistrate Richard Odenyo said in his ruling, which was translated for the suspects who did not understand English.

    A lawyer representing the accused termed the ruling “fairly reasonable”, saying his clients had not yet decided whether to lodge an appeal.

    reuters

  • Mandela Remains in Intensive Care Unit

    {{Nelson Mandela faced a fourth day in hospital on Tuesday where he was said to be in a serious but stable condition receiving intensive care for a lung infection, as South Africans to come to terms with the mortality of their anti-apartheid hero}}.

    The 94-year-old former president was rushed to a Pretoria hospital early on Saturday, in the latest of a series of health scares that have been met with prayers and increasing concern.

    “He is receiving intensive care treatment,” presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj, who served jail time with Mandela, told AFP on Monday.

    He “remains in hospital, and his condition is unchanged,” the presidency said.

    The government had described Mandela as being in a “serious but stable” condition on Saturday.

    Visitors

    On Monday Mandela was visited by his former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and their daughter Zindzi.

    His two other daughters paid him a visit on Sunday, while his current wife Graça Machel has been by his bedside since his admission to hospital.

    Little information has been released about Mandela’s condition, but he has a long history of lung problems since being diagnosed with early-stage tuberculosis in 1988.

    It is the fourth hospital stay in seven months for the man beloved as a global symbol of peace and forgiveness and the father of the “Rainbow Nation”.

    The African Union Commission chief, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said she has heard that Mandela is “responding positively to treatment”.

    “He has done his part. We just pray that he recovers,” said Kennedy Moraga outside a private specialist heart clinic in Pretoria, where he is believed to be receiving treatment.

    Meanwhile access to the revered statesman has been restricted to close family members in a bid to reduce the risk of further infections.

    In late April, President Jacob Zuma and top party officials were photographed with an unsmiling Mandela looking exceedingly frail at his Johannesburg home.

    The visit prompted allegations that the ruling party was exploiting Mandela for political gain.

    The ANC – facing 2014 elections – has lost much of its Mandela shine amid widespread corruption, poverty and poor public services.

    The party and the government on Monday denied local media reports that they had been barred from visiting Mandela in hospital by the former leader’s entourage.

    News24

  • Mandela Family Denies Banning Visitors

    {{The family of Nelson Mandela has denied barring government officials from visiting him in hospital, the ANC said on Monday.}}

    “We have spoken to the family about this report and they deny that they issued such an instruction or spoke to the media on barring the ANC and government from visiting Madiba,” said ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu.

    “What we know is that given the pressure associated with the admission of president Mandela, there are general restrictions that permit only relevant people to have access.”

    The Star newspaper reported on Monday that the Mandela family had taken charge of the 94-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner’s hospital stay, banning everyone – including government leaders and senior party officials – from visiting him.

    Mthembu said: “We will continue as the ANC to pray for his recovery and call on all South Africans and the world to keep him and his family in their prayers… we appreciate the good work that is [being] done by his medical team.”

    Earlier, the presidency said Mandela’s condition was “unchanged”.

    “Former president Nelson Mandela remains in hospital, and his condition is unchanged. Madibawas admitted on Saturday, 8 June 2013, for treatment in a Pretoria hospital for a lung infection,” spokesperson Mac Maharaj said.

    Mandela has been in and out of hospital in the past few years. At the end of March and in April this year he spent nine days in hospital receiving treatment for recurring lung problems.

    {news24}