Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{After the East African Court of Justice halted Speaker Margaret Zziwa’s censure by the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) members, the house is set to resume business after a one and half month indefinite adjournment.}}

Zziwa adjourned the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) sittings indefinitely on April 1, after a motion to remove her from office backfired.

However according to Bobi Odiko the EALA senior public relations officer, the regional parliament was set to resume business starting May 26 in Arusha Tanzania.

In a press statement, Odiko noted that high on the agenda was the deliberations on the 2014/2015 financial year budget and bills that have been pending in the house.

“The East African Legislative Assembly will resume business next week in Arusha Tanzania, and we shall have plenary sessions from Monday 26th to Friday June 6th.

He noted that the sitting which will be chaired by EALA Speaker Zziwa is the sixth meeting of the second session of the third Assembly.

During the sitting, the Assembly will receive and discuss the EAC budget speech for the financial year 2014/2015.

The Budget Speech will be delivered on May 29, by the chairperson of the Council of Ministers Phyllis J Kandie.

The Assembly is also expected to consider the East African Community (EAC) integration (Education) Bill 2014, the EAC Appropriation Bill 2014 and the EAC Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2014 and receive and consider reports from various committees of the Assembly.

{ The Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has disagreed with western powers on the state of terrorist attacks in the East African biggest Economy that houses the biggest United States and United Kingdom diplomatic headquarters in the region.
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In his statement to the media yesterday, Uhuru said the travel advisory issued by the foreign partners which he did not directly name, was “misleading” and carries the risk of damaging the security of his country.

“Earlier this week, some of our foreign partners issued travel advisories. They give a misleading picture of our security situation, and they run the risk of inadvertently damaging our security,” Uhuru angrily noted.

Early this week, the US and UK issued a warning and travel advisories to their citizens against visiting specific areas in Kenya which have faced constant attacks from the Islamist Al Shabaab mainly the capital Nairobi and the East African biggest port of Mombasa which is as well the biggest tourist hub in the region.

Hours after the US and UK issuance of the advisories, president Uhuru also reacted saying, his country’s intelligence groups do not have any new information that warrant travel advisory. “Our intelligence community has not heard any findings that call for a travel advisory.

Chimpreports

{{The world’s oldest and best-preserved sperm, dating back 17 million years, has been unearthed in Australia, scientists said Wednesday.}}

The sperm from an ancient species of tiny shrimp was discovered at the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site, an area in the far north of the state of Queensland where many extraordinary prehistoric Australian animals have previously been found.

They include giant, toothed platypuses and flesh-eating kangaroos.

Mike Archer, from the University of New South Wales School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, who has been excavating at Riversleigh for 35 years, said the sperm was an exciting find.

“These are the oldest fossilised sperm ever found in the geological record,” he said.

The sperm are thought to have been longer than the male’s entire body, but were tightly coiled up inside the sexual organs of the fossilised freshwater crustaceans, known as ostracods.

“We have become used to delightfully unexpected surprises in what turns up there,” he added of Riversleigh.

“But the discovery of fossil sperm, complete with sperm nuclei, was totally unexpected. It now makes us wonder what other types of extraordinary preservation await discovery in these deposits.”

A research team led by Archer collected the fossils in 1988 and sent them to John Neil, a specialist ostracod researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, who realised they contained fossilised soft tissues.

He drew this to the attention of several European specialists, including Renate Matzke-Karasz from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and Paul Tafforeau from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France.

A microscopic study revealed the fossils contained the preserved internal organs of the ostracods, including their sexual organs.

Within these were the almost perfectly preserved giant sperm cells, and within them, the nuclei that once contained the animals’ chromosomes and DNA.

The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, estimate the sperm are about 1.3 millimetres long, slightly longer than the shrimp.

Archer said that about 17 million years ago the site where the fossils were found was a cave in the middle of a vast, biologically diverse rainforest.

“Tiny ostracods thrived in a pool of water in the cave that was continually enriched by the droppings of thousands of bats,” he said.

His UNSW colleague Suzanne Hand, a specialist in extinct bats and their ecological role in Riversleigh’s ancient environments, said the steady rain of droppings would have led to high levels of phosphorous in the water.

This could have aided mineralisation of the soft tissues.

“This amazing discovery at Riversleigh is echoed by a few examples of soft-tissue preservation in fossil bat-rich deposits in France,” she said.

“So the key to eternal preservation of soft tissues may indeed be some magic ingredient in bat droppings.”

AFP

{{Tanzania Zambia Railways Authority (Tazara) Tuesday announced the suspension of freight and passenger operations between Dar es Salaam and Tunduma due to a strike, a company statement said.}}

Tazara workers in the Tanzanian stations and some in the Zambia’s Kasama station have withdrawn gone on strike demanding their unpaid salaries from February.

“As a consequence of the on-going illegal strike, which started on May 12, 2014, Tazara regrets to announce the suspension of both freight and passenger operations between Dar es Salaam and Tunduma, until further notice,” Tazara spokesman Conrad Simuchile said.

“However, normal operations will continue between Nakonde and New Kapiri-Mposhi on the Zambian side,” he said.

Tazara, built by the Chinese over three decades ago, has been struggling to improve operations and standards due financial difficulties.

NMG

{{A new United Nations report on the atrocities of war committed by both South Sudan government forces and rebels loyal to former vice president Riek Machar has sucked the UPDF in the use of cluster bombs in the conflict.}}

The United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (Unmiss) in the 61-page human rights report titled; “Conflict in South Sudan” said it had “found physical evidence” on the use of cluster munitions in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)/UPDF controlled Malek area of Bor County.

“While opposition forces controlled Bor Town, from December 31 to January 18, they pushed south, and heavy fighting occurred between government forces supported by the UPDF.

Between 11 and 16 January, Unmiss is aware of several instances of aerial bombardments by Ugandan forces in areas south of Bor,” reads part of the report.

Both Uganda and South Sudan are reported to have denied the use of such kind of weaponry.

The UPDF spokesperson, Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, could also not be reached immediately for comment as his known phone number remained switched off.

Half of university graduates in East Africa are ill-prepared for the job market.

A study conducted by the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) and the East African Business Council (EABC) to establish employers’ perceptions of graduates shows that more than 50 per cent of university graduates are half-baked as they lack basic workplace proficiencies.

This means university students are graduating without attaining basic and technical skills required in the job market, denying the five East African Community (EAC) economies the quality human capital that they need to grow.

“Universities in the East African region are producing a theoretical, unskilled and unpractical labour force,” Mayunga Nkunya, executive secretary of IUCEA, told an EAC higher education quality assurance forum in Arusha last week.

“Employers told us that graduates lack self-confidence at work, they can’t translate the knowledge they got in universities into work and they normally wait to be told what to do.”

NMG