Month: October 2016

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s main opposition party firmly rejected a deal signed Tuesday which would keep President Joseph Kabila in power until 2018 by postponing this year’s presidential vote until April 2018.
The UDPS, led by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, “rejects” the proposal to delay the vote as a “flagrant violation” of the constitution, the party’s secretary-general Jean-Marc Kabund told AFP.
The idea was agreed by the authorities and fringe opposition groups taking part in a “national dialogue” held to reduce tensions triggered by fears that Kabila has no intention of stepping down when his mandate ends in December.
On Tuesday, the leaders of the groups that took part in the dialogue gathered for a ceremony in Kinshasa to sign their 24-page accord.
Kabund said the postponement plan “unilaterally imposes Mr Kabila in flagrant violation of the constitution which sets the end of his mandate at December 20.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the election postponement plan was “no response to the crisis”.
“There’s only one way out of the crisis, and that is for the president (Kabila) to announce that he will not run again, and for an election date to be set,” he added.
The plan emerged after the EU threatened sanctions if the country did not hold elections in 2017.
The Catholic church in the country said it was imperative that any new agreement on the future presidential election should clearly mention that Kabila would not stand for a third term.
The National Episcopal Conference of the Congo (CENCO) said everything possible must be done “to reduce the period of transition so that it doesn’t last beyond 2017,” fearing a descent into chaos.
The main opposition coalition — “Rassemblement” (Gathering) — has boycotted the “national dialogue” talks, branding them a ploy by Kabila to stay in power beyond the end of his term.
It has also called for a general strike on Wednesday across the vast central African nation, to give Kabila a “yellow card”.
Kabila first took office in 2001, and in 2006 a new constitutional provision limited the presidency to a two-term limit which expires in December.

Rampant Monaco leap-frog champions Paris Saint-Germain into second with PSG and Nice both in action on Sunday.
Despite the lop-sided scoreline they did not have it all their own way on a night of controversial refereeing decisions, a sublime free kick and some rank-bad defending from Montpellier.
Monaco coach Leonardo Jardim also took aim at the game’s authorities who ordered the team to play Friday, just three days after competing in a Champions League clash in Moscow.
“After the match and a victory, it’s easy to say that it wasn’t a problem,” said Jardim.
“But I say that it’s not good to play Friday, not good for French football, for the players or for the spectacle.”
The visitors went ahead in the ninth minute when Ryad Boudebouz curled in a wonderful free kick from just outside the penalty box, his delicious left-footed strike leaving Monaco goalkeeper Danijel Subasic rooted to the spot and stunning the home crowd.
On 36 minutes Monaco were level in debatable circumstances.
At first glance Falcao’s strike partner Kylian Mbappe, just 17, appeared to have been chopped down in the box, but replays strongly suggested that he took a dive.
Referee Amaury Delerue waved away the Montpellier complaints and captain Falcao stepped up to send Geoffrey Jourdren the wrong way in what was the Colombian international’s first appearance since suffering a nasty concussion in Monaco’s 4-0 defeat to Nice on September 21.
The talented teenager Mbappe edged Monaco ahead four minutes into the second half when he headed home unchallenged.
On 61 minutes Montpellier were back level, Boudebouz’s penalty just squeezing in between the post and Subasic’s left glove.
The visitors had parity for just three minutes when up popped central defender Jemerson to prod home from a free kick for 3-2 and it was soon 4-2 when a Mbappe cross was nodded in by substitute Valere Germain, who had come on for Falcao.
Two minutes later Thomas Lemar brutally punished some poor goalkeeping by Jourdren and in the dying stages Adama Traore rounded off the rout from a tight angle.
The highlight of the weekend action in Ligue 1 comes on Sunday when struggling Marseille — now with a new coach and new owner — travel to PSG.
Lucien Favre’s Nice bid to extend their impressive unbeaten run when they visit Metz the same day.

“Cholera is eating us alive: my neighbor was the first to fall ill, then it came to our house, infecting my husband and daughter,” said Andrise Lubin as she stood before her badly damaged home.
The road that allowed villagers to reach the coast in a half-hour was swept away by a river still swollen after Hurricane Matthew barreled through early this month, bringing torrential rains.
To reach Randelle now, in the southwestern commune of Chardonnieres, requires a three-hour walk and several difficult river passages.
Lubin, whose foot was injured in the hurricane, got a friend to help her ailing husband and daughter make the difficult trek to seek care. Desperate, and with nothing to eat, she says she almost wishes she would fall ill next.
“Cholera can come to me, my stomach is empty — I would be better off in town than here,” says the woman in her 40s with a fatalistic shrug.
Ill villagers, housed temporarily in makeshift huts of leaky corrugated metal and plastic tarps, cram together onto the porch of Randelle’s small clinic as they await care.
The pages of its registry book have been rapidly filling up: since the hurricane, cholera has afflicted nearly 300 people.
Even before Matthew, Haiti was facing the worst epidemic of cholera in the world, with some 500 cases a week of the potentially-fatal bacterial infection.
Spread largely through contaminated food and water, cholera was brought into the country by Nepalese peacekeepers after the devastating 2010 earthquake, the United Nations has acknowledged.
Head nurse Marguerite Bernardin is utterly exhausted as she and two colleagues examine the unending flow of patients from Randelle and the surrounding mountains. She lost everything in the hurricane, but that is not her priority.
“We could use beds for the patients,” she said, pointing to an elderly man lying on a thin stretcher set directly on the saturated ground.
After two miserable weeks, the NGO Samaritan’s Purse provided some unexpected relief when it was able to open an emergency cholera-treatment center. Its beds are already full.
“Two extra tents are going to arrive today, so we should be able to treat at least 20 patients,” said Steve Averly, an urgent-care physician.
“It is difficult enough to get into the mountains here,” he explained, “so for patients with cholera it is very complicated to come down the hill to get care.”
“The closer we can get to the source, the more effectively we can save and help people,” he said, while tending to a young girl.
With Randelle still a scene of ruins — fallen tree trunks litter the landscape — the NGO chose an elevated site off to one side for its temporary clinic.
Inhabitants carrying the sick on their backs — and holding intravenous-drip bags high — thus have to make their way through a stretch of uneven terrain to reach the medical center.
The treatment center’s isolated location in the mountains imposes its own set of daunting logistical challenges.
“Mules are the most effective means of transport for bringing in equipment,” the doctor said with a smile. “They are the most ancient of technologies, but they work.”
Still, if only there were good weather and sufficient money to pay for them, helicopters could land in the village.
In the absence of help from an overwhelmed Haitian government, international aid efforts have been life-saving, said Romelus Caldo, an elected official with the town’s assembly.
“I remember Saturday, October 8,” he said grimly, standing drenched under an intensifying rain. “I saw six people die of cholera in the clinic.”
“The central government has not responded to my demands, so do you think the voices of ordinary inhabitants are being heard?” he said.
Two weeks ago, the river carried away Caldo’s home.

At least 60 people were killed and nearly 600 injured when a packed train derailed between Cameroon’s two main cities, officials said Saturday, as distraught relatives desperately sought news of missing loved ones.
With the dead and injured scattered between different hospitals, authorities were working flat out to cope with the scale of the disaster.
At Yaounde’s main hospital, where the morgue was holding 29 bodies including those of babies, distraught relatives thronged the corridors.
The first person allowed into the morgue, a woman, emerged in tears. “She recognised the body of her sister,” explained one of the people with her.
The train, travelling from the capital Yaounde to the economic hub of Douala, came off the rails near the central city of Eseka at around midday on Friday.
“We have received between 60 and 70 bodies at the station this morning,” a railway official who asked not to be identified told AFP in Yaounde.
The train was crammed with people because a collapsed bridge had made travelling the same route by road impossible.
“Some of the wounded are arriving unconscious. We think the death toll will rise,” said the railway official.
On Friday evening, state-run television reported that many of the injured were in a critical condition.
Health minister Alim Garga Hayatou told AFP after visiting some of the injured that more information would be released “once we are in control of the whole situation”.
In the meantime hospital staff were “working hard and efficiently”, he added.
At Yaounde’s main hospital, the 29 bodies in the morgue included those of white people, many women and babies, a policeman on duty there said.
He had no information on nationalities although the French foreign ministry said one French national was among the dead.
One woman waiting her turn to enter the morgue said: “We have had no news from our sister since yesterday. We don’t know whether she is alive.
“Her phone was ringing yesterday but it wasn’t since this morning. Her husband is looking for her in Douala,” said the woman who gave her name as Fadimatou.
Dan Njoya said he had come to the morgue “to see if the body of my four-month-old baby is here”.
At another morgue, in Yaounde’s Ekounou neighbourhood, there was a list of 24 names: 11 women, six men including one Ugandan, one child and six babies.
Most of those injured in the accident were taken to hospitals in Douala, medical sources said.
Rail operator Camrail, a subsidiary of French investment group Bollore, said the cause of the crash was under investigation.
“Technical investigations are ongoing to determine the causes of this terrible accident and the findings as they become available will be made known,” it said in a statement.
The company was doing everything necessary to “deal with the injured and ensure support for the families affected by this tragedy”, it added.
Police had cordoned off the railway stations in both cities.
Meanwhile, the road bridge that collapsed on Thursday night as a result of heavy rain reopened to traffic in both directions on Saturday after emergency work.
The road is one of the busiest in the country and one of the main commercial routes in central Africa, carrying trade towards landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic.

Defending champion Andy Sullivan carded 10 birdies to take a share of the lead after two rounds of the Portugal Masters on Friday, firing a season-low 61.
The Englishman won the event last season by a record nine shots with a 23 under par total and his round on Friday took his bogey-free run at the Vilamoura venue to 56 holes.
Overnight leader Marc Warren added a 65 to his opening 63 to also get to 14 under and a share of the lead.
“I knew I needed to go low today to get a beat on the leaders,” said Sullivan.
“So to go out there and shoot that score is absolutely fantastic. I had thoughts of 59 coming down the stretch there, but it wasn’t to be. It’s fantastic being on top of the leaderboard and giving myself a chance going into the weekend.”
The 14 under par total of 128 for Sullivan and Warren was the lowest 36-hole score this season achieved without preferred lies.
Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, without a win since his US PGA Championship triumph in 2008, fired a 63 to sit alongside Jens Fahrbring at 13 under in second place.

Crowds lined up Friday at Rio’s Maracana ahead of the first club game to be played in the famed football stadium since a long break for the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies.
A sellout crowd of more than 54,000 will attend the game Sunday between Rio de Janeiro team Flamengo and Sao Paulo’s Corinthians.
Big lines of fans converged on the stadium earlier this week and there were still hopefuls waiting outside Friday after the majority of tickets were snapped up online.
Flamengo are in a close race for the Brazilian title and Corinthians are battling for a berth in the South American championship, the Copa de Libertadores.
Flamengo usually play their home games at the Maracana, one of the world’s legendary footballing temples.
However, the top Rio club has been forced to make temporary arrangements to be hosted by neighboring clubs for much of the last year while waiting for the Olympic cycle to end.
Despite the Maracana’s status, it almost only hosts club games, with the national team mostly playing in other cities. The last club game played at the Maracana was a local Rio derby between Botafogo and Vasco in May.
The stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics in August and Paralympics in September, requiring weeks of work afterwards to restore the infrastructure.
It also saw a rare appearance there by the Brazilian football team which defeated Germany 5-4 on penalties to win the Olympic gold.

Worcester are furious that South Africa star Francois Hougaard has returned from international duty with a shoulder injury.
Hougaard has won 39 caps for the Springboks and is one of Worcester’s most influential players, but he is set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines after discovering he needs shoulder surgery.
The extent of his injury, which is likely to keep him out for the rest of 2016, only surfaced when he underwent checks by Worcester’s medical department after reporting back for club duty.
Worcester’s high performance director Nick Johnston said: “We are extremely disappointed that Francois returned to the club with an undiagnosed injury.
“As a club, player welfare is our priority, and we will be using our every resource to ensure that Francois has access to the right surgeon and that he receives the highest level of support during his rehabilitation.”
The 28-year-old is equally adept as a scrum-half or wing, and he has extended his stay with Worcester after initially joining them on a short-term deal last February.
In a statement, Worcester said: “The Warriors medical department assessed Hougaard on his return to Sixways and diagnosed the player with a shoulder injury.
“Hougaard visited specialist consultants following the diagnosis and was given an MRI scan to allow the club to fully understand the extent of the injury.
“The scan confirmed that Hougaard will need a Biceps Tenodesis and rotator cuff repair and will be ruled out of action for 10 to 12 weeks.”

The rise of Evangelicalism in Latin America has brought new power to conservative political movements, visible most recently in the shock defeat of a peace referendum in Colombia, experts say.
More and more Christians in traditionally Catholic Latin America are turning to Evangelical Protestant denominations, which have built a media-savvy empire of mega-churches over the past several decades.
Whereas just 10 percent of Latin Americans were raised Protestant, today nearly 20 percent describe themselves that way, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington.
And that is changing the political landscape in the region.
“The growing Evangelical influence on Latin American politics is one of the engines driving the region to the right,” said Andrew Chesnut, head of the Catholic studies program at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Evangelical churches have exploded onto the scene with lively services and pulpits open to ordinary worshippers, deftly using TV, radio and social media to reach into the homes and pockets of the faithful.
In a region with millions of poor, they have upstaged the Roman Catholic Church with the promise of a better life here and now, instead of waiting for the afterlife.
“As incredible as it may seem, Evangelical churches have managed to ‘Latin-Americanize’ more in less than 100 years than the Catholic Church has in 500 years,” said Chesnut.
That has played a part in a recent rightwing resurgence in the region, after a decade-plus “pink tide” of leftist governments.
The latest political victory for the Evangelical camp came in Colombia, with the October 2 referendum on a peace deal to end five decades of war between the government and the Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
Surprising pollsters and the international community, voters narrowly rejected the deal, which was nearly four years in the making.
In a vote marked by low turnout, Evangelical opposition played a decisive role.
The decision by the Evangelicals “to reject the peace accord with the FARC was based on morality,” said Fernando Giraldo, a professor at Universidad del Norte in the Colombian city of Barranquilla.
The right-wing opposition successfully capitalized on Evangelical recoil to certain aspects of the deal, especially on gender issues.
The FARC has many women members, and the peace negotiations included a “gender sub-committee” to ensure equal rights for women and sexual minorities during the peace transition.
But clauses in the final deal addressing the political participation of women and homosexuals became fodder for Evangelical attacks.
Conservatives also seized on the fact that the government’s top peace campaigner, former education minister Gina Parody, is a lesbian.
“We’re for peace, but not with this deal,” said pastor Edgar Castano, the president of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia, which has 266 member organizations.
After the accord was rejected, President Juan Manuel Santos — who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — met with Christian leaders to ask for their input as he seeks to renegotiate the deal.
Evangelicals now make up more than 30 percent of the population in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Puerto Rico, according to Pew.
In Latin American giant Brazil, they make up some 18 percent.
Brazil even has an “Evangelical caucus” in Congress, whose members played a key role in impeaching leftist president Dilma Rousseff this year.
In Argentina, new center-right President Mauricio Macri got a boost on the campaign trail last year from singer-songwriter Ricardo Montaner, a prominent Evangelical.
Chilean politicians also cater to Evangelicals, who make up 17 percent of the population.
President Michelle Bachelet won a second term in 2013 thanks in part to courting Evangelical voters with measures such as a “National Day of Evangelical Churches” on October 31.
Latin America’s Evangelicals have been flexing their political muscle at least since 1990, when Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, then a political outsider, was elected with strong support from Evangelical churches.
He went on to make one of their pastors, Carlos Garcia, his deputy vice president.

The victims were in Haiti’s northwestern Nord-Ouest department, which is particularly vulnerable to storms because of deforestation. The tropical storm made several rivers overflow.
“In the commune of Baie-de-Henne, two houses close to a ravine were swept away by floodwaters Thursday night,” said Jose Rethone, a civil protection official in the Nord-Ouest department.
“We recovered five bodies, and a person who was in one of the houses and swept away is still missing,” he said.
The communes that are flooded are those that had been most ravaged by Hurricane Matthew a little more than two weeks ago, the agency said.
Torrential rains continue to pound the southern peninsula of the Caribbean, where the hurricane hit hardest, and weather forecasters see no letup before Saturday.
On the southern coast, Les Cayes, Haiti’s third-largest city, is largely flooded. Residents who venture into the streets during the storm fight water up to their knees, an AFP reporter said.
Following the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew, nearly 1.5 million people, of a total population of 10.3 million, need emergency humanitarian assistance, according to a United Nations estimate.
The heavy rains have blocked efforts to deliver the aid because several bridges on the road that crosses into the southern peninsula remain damaged from the hurricane and some rivers cannot be crossed.

Sean Andrew’s and his ex girlfriend, Elodie, made headlines this week after their dramatic break up that went down on social media.
Sean accused his ex of using too much drugs and always out partying with her friends. Things indeed got ugly but Elodie tried to keep off from the media to avoid things from getting worse.
Anyway while going through Elodie’s instagram page I came across a post that highlighted 13 facts the public did not know about the YouTuber. She wrote to say,
 
 
 
 
13 WEIRD FACTS ABOUT ME.
1. I live in Nairobi though my entire family is in Europe.
2. I started youtube because I didn’t have any friends and I needed someone to talk to.
3. I love vanilla dairy fresh and lemon Ice tea.
4. I don’t have any siblings
5. I moved out of home at age 17 when I joined university last year.
6. My favorite series is American Horror Story.
7. Growing up I’ve always struggled with my weight so I can be a bit of a health freak.
8. I have 2 tattoos. One is a semicolon on my wrist and one is a wave on the side of my rib cage
9. I’ve played the guitar since I was 7, and taught myself the piano when I was 14.
10. Some of my friends call me El, Elo, and Zone
 11. I wear a silver bracelet on my left arm almost everyday and it was given to me by someone very special.
12. I won Braeburn Garden Estate their first 2 medals in swimming and first track and field medal for triple jump in history when I was in year 8.
13. I got into a fight at village market when I was 15 cause some annoying girl dissed my nail polish color.
 

In nine months, Venezuela has steadily plunged into a deep economic and political crisis linked to plummeting oil prices and constant clashes between the government and opposition.
Here is a timeline of key moments since the start of 2016:
– January 5: The opposition takes control of the National Assembly legislature from the socialist leadership for the first time in more than 16 years after winning elections.
It vows to drive President Nicolas Maduro from office and rescue Venezuela from economic chaos driven by plunging oil prices.
But the Supreme Court has so far blocked every one of its bills.
– January 15: Maduro decrees a 60-day state of “economic emergency.” It allows the government to seize assets of private companies to obtain essential food and goods.
– March 8: The opposition launches bid for a recall referendum. If it happens by January 10, 2017 and Maduro loses, new elections will be held. Otherwise, he can pass power to his vice president.
– May 3: The opposition presents 1.85 million signatures demanding a referendum — nearly 10 times the number needed to proceed to the next stage.
– May 14: Maduro declares a fresh three-month state of emergency to tackle “threats from abroad.”
– June 8: The electoral authorities validate 1.3 million signatures in favor of a referendum, opening the way to the next stage of the process, under which at least 200,000 of the signatories have to confirm their choice in person.
– July 10: Thousands of people cross the border to Colombia on foot to buy foodstuffs and medicines. Venezuelans are confronted with long queues to buy basic necessities at increasingly empty shops, with 2016 inflation estimated at 475 percent by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Venezuela also has one of the highest crime rates in the world.
– August 1: The electoral council confirms 399,412 signatures needed to pursue a referendum bid. On August 9, it schedules the next petition step for late October, putting a January 10 referendum virtually out of reach.
– September 1: Hundreds of thousands of protesters rally in Caracas demanding a swift referendum. Maduro supporters stage a counter-demonstration.
– September 22: The electoral commission announces that the referendum will not take place before January 2017, thwarting the opposition’s hopes of a change in government.
– October 21: Alleging fraud, the commission suspends the signature-collection drive for a referendum, further crippling the opposition campaign. The judicial authorities ban eight opposition leaders from leaving the country.

​After a brief haitus, the Kenyan-Norwegian singer/rapper and performing artiste is back with a self-titled EP.
Speaking about the new EP, Stella Mwangi says,adding,
s first single was – a mix of Stella’s distinct and authentic hip hop flow with bonafide electronic dance music. The song is a certified club hit, set to spark dance floors and the streets globally. The EP that has been released worldwide is set to add a different sound into the African music sphere. It will yet again unite her fans across the globe and remain authentic to her style and origin. 
On the new EP Stella has produced and created songs with action vibes, attitude, boost and energy to make listeners turn up. Her mix of Swahili and English in European songs is a great way of expressing her diverse identity. She says, “The EP continues the vibe I had started some years back with the single “Lookie Lookie”—its’ all about entertainment and massive energy!”

A Cameroon passenger train derailed Friday, while travelling between the capital Yaounde and the economic hub of Douala in the south, causing “substantial human and material damage”, Transport Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o said.
The derailment happened near the central town of Eseka, Mebe Ngo’o added, in comments made to the state broadcaster Crtv.
“The derailment has caused significant human and material damage but I can’t at this time give you any figures,” he said.
A ministerial delegation was bering sent to the accident site.
A source close to the local Eseka authorities said there were indeed victims, without giving any details.
According to Crtv the train left for Yaounde shortly after 11:00 am (1000 GMT) packed with passengers.
“Intervention and security teams have been mobilised,” the rail company Camrail said.
The route, between the capital and the economic hub, is one of the busiest in the country, with trains to Chad and the Central African Republic also using the axis which has a poor safety record.
Friday’s derailment badly disrupted rail traffic.
In 2014, Cameroon began building its first highway between the two towns, but the work is not due to be completed until 2018.

“We are treating 26 patients at the scene for difficulty breathing,” the London Ambulance Service said, adding of those two had been taken to hospital.
A “hazardous area response team” had also been sent to the airport in east London, which caters mainly for business travellers and short-haul flights.
The Fire Brigade said three fire engines had been sent to the scene following “reports of a chemical incident” but did not say what the cause might be.
“Around 500 members of the public and staff have been evacuated and there are reports of a number of passengers feeling unwell,” the Fire Brigade said in a statement.
London City Airport’s official Twitter account said it had been evacuated “due to fire alarm”.
Several incoming flights from destinations such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris had been diverted to other airports.
London City Airport is primarily aimed at business travellers and is the 13th busiest airport in Britain, with a total of 4.3 million passengers last year.

Apparently, a relationship was not as easy as she thought since it takes a lot of work to maintain one and that she was not ready for that kind of commitment.
Huddah informed her fans on her Snapchat.
While Huddah’s relationship has pegged out after a few weeks, Vera Sidika’s relationship with her Nigerian lover seems to grow by the day.
The socialite has of late been keeping Team Mafisi Members a hard time with pictures of her and her beau, all loved up!
Check out the cute couple below:
 
 
 

As a bitter row swirled in Britain over the age of child migrants arriving from Calais, a coach pulled up in London Friday with the latest arrivals from Calais, met by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters.
“Calais kids are welcome here,” chanted the dozens of activists, holding balloons and waving banners as the unaccompanied minors arrived at the main national registration centre in Croydon in southeast London.
Bekele Woyecha, of the charity Citizens UK, said he had stood every day since Monday outside the tower block in Croydon, where dozens of migrants have been bussed in this week, “to show that we are with them”.
“You cannot expect children to be in that place,” he said of the Calais “Jungle” camp, which will be cleared by French authorities on Monday.
“They need protection and safety,” Woyecha said.
France Terre d’Asile, the charity that deals with the minors, told AFP that 20 of them left the “Jungle” to be reunited with relatives living in Britain on Friday — the highest number to leave this week.
As the new arrivals disembarked, and were ushered into the building, they were blocked from sight by scaffolding and tarpaulin erected by authorities to keep them out of view of press and public.
A dispute has raged for days over their ages as some images have given rise to claims that adults may be posing as minors to gain entry.
One MP, David Davies, has called for testing teeth to determine age to outrage from the medical community.
Football star Gary Lineker’s support for the refugees has proved divisive, sparking a confrontation with The Sun tabloid which has even called for him to step down as the BBC’s Match of the Day presenter.
Another lawmaker, Philip Davies, told fellow lawmakers in a parliamentary debate on the issue on Friday that people only have to look at photographs of “so-called child refugees” arriving in Britain “to see that many of them are not children”.
Immigration minister Robert Goodwill ruled out dental checks and insisted the government does carry out age assessments and had rejected 10 percent of applications from Calais because of that.
Tim Clapton, a Church of England priest involved in welcoming the migrants, dismissed the age claims as “ridiculous”.
He said he met with new arrivals from Afghanistan, Eritrea and South Sudan on Tuesday and played cards with them while they waited to be registered.
“I can assure everybody they were children,” he said.
“They were vulnerable, scared and waiting to know what was going to happen to them.
“We want to show solidarity with the young people, to say they are welcome in this country, they have got a home here, they are going to be safe here.”
Croydon resident Violet Simpson also said she was satisfied that the migrants she had seen were children.
“They need our love and support,” said the retired mother-of-seven, who “felt like a fish out of water” when she arrived in Britain from Jamaica, aged 14.
“I cried my eyes out. I know what these children are feeling,” she added.
But one onlooker was less impressed with the enthusiastic welcome.
Maher Kadl Abdula said he came to Britain from the Iraqi city of Mosul 12 years ago and was still waiting for his asylum request to be processed.
“Why don’t they fix the people who have been waiting here for five, 10, 15 years, before letting in these people from Calais?” he said.

Marseille coach Rudi Garcia set the struggling French giants the goal of qualifying for Europe next season, a day after he was appointed the Ligue 1 club’s new boss.
The former Lille and Roma manager has penned a three-year contract at the Stade Velodrome, where his task is to resurrect a side that slumped to its worst league finish in 15 years last season.
However, he will have just two full days to prepare for Sunday’s clash away to bitter rivals Paris Saint-Germain, who have beaten Marseille in each of their last 10 meetings.
“I’ll have to go about things quickly to get to know the players, to know them personally as well, because behind each player there is a human being,” Garcia told a press conference on Friday.
Two wins in three have boosted OM, but the nine-time French champions remain 12th in the table and Garcia admits there is plenty of work to do following a 13th-place finish last term.
“For the moment we are still in the bottom part of the table, first we have to get back into the top half,” said Garcia, who singled out the domestic cups as priorities for his new side.
“I hope that by the end of the season we will be in a position to at least qualify for Europe, even if it’s the Europa League.”
US tycoon Frank McCourt, who completed his purchase of Marseille on Monday, vowed to invest 200 million euros into the club to help restore their former glory.
Garcia, who was sacked by Roma in January having guided the Italian outfit to successive runner-up finishes, admitted the squad he is inheriting at OM desperately needed strengthening.
“The group will need some changes, more quality and quantity. Particularly with the Africa Cup of Nations,” said Garcia, with the continental showpiece to run from January 14 to February 5 next year.
“I built a team in Dijon, I did it at Lille and I want to do it here too.
“I’m coming from Rome. You know the saying, it wasn’t built in a day, Marseille neither.”
Garcia’s desire to one day win the Champions League convinced McCourt that the 52-year-old was the right man to steer the 1993 European champions back towards the top, but the Frenchman made no attempt to downplay the magnitude of the job on his hands.
“That means lots of time, work time, sweat, decision, unity, motivation to, step by step, take Marseille back to where they should be, among Europe’s big clubs,” he added.

Organisers said they had called the demonstration following the recent closure on administrative grounds of five makeshift mosques.
Many Italian Muslims suspect local authorities are responding to a climate of mistrust caused by recent Islamist attacks in Europe by closing down the places of worship on the grounds of easily resolved problems such as the number of toilets on a particular premises.
“We feel people are pointing the finger at us,” said Francesco Tieri, a convert to Islam who acts as a coordinator for a number of Islamic groups.
“There is no political will to recognise that we are here and that we are a peaceful community.
“We are forced to rent places to pray — which for us is like breathing air, if we can’t do it we die.”
According to official figures there are just over 800,000 Muslims living in Italy legally and officials estimate that a further 100,000 live in the country permanently without official papers.
That would suggest the community makes up more than 1.5 percent of the population and that Islam is the second most followed faith in the mostly Roman Catholic country.
Islam however is not recognised as an official religion, unlike Judaism or the Mormon faith, and many Muslims from north Africa and South Asia feel discriminated against on the grounds of both race and religion.
Rome is home to the biggest mosque in the Western world but proposals to construct traditional-style mosques elsewhere have frequently run into opposition from local councils who can withhold planning permission on any number of technical grounds ranging from the size of proposed parking facilities to the architectural harmony of a particular neighbourhood.
Right wing parties have called for a blanket ban on any mosques built with funds from donors outside of Italy.
Lawmaker Barbara Saltamartini of the anti-immigration Northern League called Friday’s demonstration “an unacceptable provocation” which should never have been allowed to take place in Rome.

Championship leader Nico Rosberg bounced back to top the times with Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton back in third place after Friday afternoon’s second free practice ahead of this weekend’s United States Grand Prix.
The two Silver Arrows cars were separated by the Red Bull of Australian Daniel Ricciardo in a session that saw the top three wind up more than eight-tenths of a second clear of the pack led by four-time champion Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari.
Hamilton was fastest in the opening session in the morning, but he was pegged back in the afternoon when Rosberg clocked a best lap in one minute and 37.358 seconds at the Circuit of the Americas, 20-kms out of Austin.
That was 0.194 seconds quicker than Ricciardo and 0.291 faster than Hamilton who trails Rosberg by 33 points in the title race with four races remaining.
Both Mercedes men complained in different ways about their tyres, but kept low profiles in the paddock after the session as they analysed their data.
“Just let me know if my tyres have any cuts,” said Rosberg, referring to the amount of dangerous debris that had littered the circuit during the session.
Ricciardo, as usual, was beaming with optimism afterwards.
“That was good and we are feeling confident, but I am sure there is more to come from Mercedes and we don?t know how cautious they were being today.?
Vettel was 0.820 seconds adrift in fourth ahead of Dutch teenager Max Verstappen in the second Red Bull, Renault-bound Nico Hulkenberg of Force India and his team-mate Sergio Perez.
“A tough day for us,” said Vettel. “We had problems in the morning when a little wing failed and came off and we lost some track time.
“I think we have been on the back foot today and I?m not entirely happy with the balance of the car yet. It?s a bit too nervous all round.
“I think we can improve. I think the Ferrari you saw today is not the Ferrari you will see tomorrow.”
Jenson Button, the 2009 champion, was an encouraging eighth ahead of his McLaren-Honda team-mate and two-time champion Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen who was 10th in the second Ferrari.
Rosberg can clinch his maiden drivers? title if he finishes second in the final four races with Hamilton winning them all, but he has said he wants to win in style.
On a bright Texan day with an air temperature of 22 degrees Celsius and a track temperature of 37 degrees, the action was mostly routine with a only a few interruptions for debris on the circuit.
The second practice was halted by a red flag for three minutes shortly before the hour mark, when a piece of carbon-fibre was collected at Turn Four.
It appeared to have broken off one of the cars as they rode the high kerbs.
The day was notable, too, for being an anniversary of three memorable championship showdowns of the past -? Niki Lauda clinching his third title in Estoril on October 21, 1984, Ayrton Senna colliding with Alain Prost to confirm his second title in Suzuka in 1990 and, in 2007, Raikkonen grabbing his first title ahead of Hamilton in Sao Paulo.
The first two tussles involved McLaren team-mates and the third a former McLaren driver, in a Ferrari, beating a McLaren driver.
In their current mediocre position, McLaren may find it a bitter-sweet set of memories as they fend off rumours of the impending exit of long-serving boss Ron Dennis, widely reported by British newspapers this week.

The Nandi County Government has set aside over Sh100 million in legal fees in a case against the British government for past crimes committed against them in the early 1900s.
The case, filed in Britain, will be led by lawyer Karim Khan who successfully  represented Deputy President William Ruto and former head of civil service Francis Muthaura in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
 
The county has at the same time demanded that the British government return the head of Nandi political and spiritual leader Koitalel arap Samoei.
Koitalel, who led an eleven-year resistance movement against the British was killed in 1905 by the colonial masters.
Speaking during the Mashujaa celebrations, Governor Cleophas Lagat said that the county was seeking compensation for atrocities committed during the Nandi Resistance where close to 10,000 people were killed and thousands of others displaced.
In 2013, Britain agreed to pay out £20m in costs and compensation to more than 5,000 elderly Kenyans who suffered torture and abuse during the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s.
The then Foreign Secretary William in a statement announced the UK government recognised Kenyans were tortured and it “sincerely regrets” the abuses that took place.
The compensation amounted to about £3,000 per victim and applies only to the living survivors of the abuses that took place.
The Mau Mau, a guerrilla group, began a violent campaign against white settlers in 1952, but the uprising was eventually put down by the British colonial government.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission says 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed, and 160,000 people were detained in appalling conditions.

France plans to demolish the so-called “Jungle” camp in Calais, with work set to start next week. Here are five key questions to explain what’s at stake:
What is the ‘Jungle’?
It’s a collection of tents and shelters on a muddy, windswept patch of land near Calais, northern France, that has become a magnet for migrants seeking to cross the Channel to reach Britain.
Various squalid settlements have existed for decades around the gritty town that is home to one of the country’s biggest ports and the Channel Tunnel rail link connecting France and Britain.
In 1999, the Sangatte refugee camp run by the Red Cross was set up to manage the flow of migrants, but this was shut down three years later by then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The 700 to 800 inhabitants, mainly Afghan migrants, moved to a new location that became known as the “Jungle”.
Hundreds of police demolished this site in September 2009 despite protests by anti-globalisation activists and leftist groups.
From April 2015, a new “Jungle” camp emerged as hundreds of thousands of people headed to Europe from the Middle East and Africa in the continent’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II.
The population of mainly Afghans, Iraqis, Eritreans and Sudanese has peaked at more than 10,000, according to local charities, but in its final days was believed to be around half that number.
Why Calais?
The camp is near to where thousands of lorries drive on to ferries or trains heading for Britain, just 35 kilometres (22 miles) across the water.
Despite the dangers, desperate migrants try to break into the vehicles and hide. Those with money pay people smugglers to arrange the crossing.
Rather than apply for asylum in France, most have preferred to head to Britain for a variety of reasons.
Some have family networks there, while others are attracted to Britain’s reputation as a more economically vibrant country. The English language is also a big draw.
As the demolition approaches, more and more residents have begun seeking asylum in France, seeing it as the only way to avoid deportation.
How bad is it?
For the migrants, conditions are bleak. Sanitation is limited and illnesses spread easily. Women and children risk sexual violence, while brawls and deadly road accidents are commonplace.
For the local economy, the repeated targeting of trucks has seriously disrupted traffic at the port and Channel tunnel.
Locals complain about the image of their town, and Calais bars and restaurants say their trade has been severely hit. Protesters blocked roads in September to demand the closure of the camp.
The wretched conditions have also drawn criticism from the United Nations and charities, embarrassing the French government.
Why has it caused tension between Britain and France?
In 2003, the two countries signed the so-called Le Touquet accord, which effectively moved Britain’s border with France to the French side of the Channel.
Under the agreement, Britain pays millions of euros each year for security in Calais — the latest investment being a wall along the road leading to the port — but it is French police and border agents who are on the frontline.
Many French politicians believe London has simply outsourced a problem to France and the agreement should be torn up.
“We can?t tolerate what is going on in Calais, the image is disastrous for our country,” the centre-right frontrunner for next year’s presidential elections, Alain Juppe, said in an interview published this week.
The Socialist government has ruled out scrapping the agreement for now, but there are signs of frustration with Britain.
President Francois Hollande called on the British to “play their part” in September, while Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve reminded London of its “moral duty” to take in children from the camp believed to be numbered in the hundreds.
So is this the end?
In February, authorities razed the southern part of the camp and demanded that migrants living there move to temporary state-funded accommodation. Many refused.
On September 26, Hollande promised the camp would be closed by the end of the year and the government said it would relocate the Jungle migrants to accommodation around the country.
The plan prompted a right-wing mayor in the town of Beziers in southern France to put up posters warning “They’re coming”, depicting a group of dark-skinned men against the backdrop of the local cathedral.
The bigger question is whether history will repeat itself once the bulldozers have done their work. As one camp is demolished, will another spring up nearby?

October is the month legends were born. The best female boxer Kenyan has ever produced, Conjestina Achieng, has joined the list of ‘mashujaa’ being celebrated this month as she turned a year older.
The boxer who is currently living in her rural home Yala, Siaya County, was lucky enough to have her family and friends gather around as she marked her 39 birthday.
Apart from turning an year older, we are happy to announce that Conjestina’s health has improved and that the mum of one is looking way stronger than before. However, her mental state remains the same and this is the main reason she has not been able to make her grand return to the ring.
Her family hopes that she will make a full recovery and get back on her feet in order to support her son. Anyway checkout the photos from her birthday courtesy of.
 

The president had a moment of hesitation as he read his speech for the past Mashujaa day trying to pronounce a word. The speech writer had included a vocabulary that had the head of state struggling to understand and make meaning of and thus opted to brush it off.
“Our unity is not complete: we remain divided by ethnicity; the faults of the past still haunt us; and our politics, as we have seen today, is too… hiyo ngumu sana,”
It has now been revealed that the word was vitriolic which even going by the sentence flow points at the hatred and divisive nature of the Kenyan politics. The statement caught everyone by surprise considering the president had previously been hailed as eloquent and calm when giving speeches. He also went to prestigious schools in Kenya and abroad in St Mary’s School Nairobi and Amherst College in the US.
More than that, the president’s hiccup highlighted a more serious issue. Unlike leaders in the western world who go through their speeches along with the speech writer, it appears our leaders just red what has been presented to them verbatim on the material day.
 
This explains why the president struggled with his speech and why our leaders sound unnatural and boring when delivering their written speeches. It also accounts for why they usually veer off the subject of their speeches when they switch to delivering speeches without a script.
Here is that short clip as the president proved even years of reading speeches cannot act as proper preparation for reading a written speech on the material day.
 

Once a champion of the International Criminal Court (ICC), South Africa dealt a blow to the world tribunal Friday by announcing its intention to withdraw, a move that came on the heels of a similar move by Burundi.
Here are five key questions following Pretoria’s announcement:
Is this the end of the ICC?
Not according to Harvard law professor Alex Whiting. “International criminal justice has always had its ups and downs and setbacks in the past. This is another setback, but the court is not going to disappear,” he told AFP.
The ICC’s founding Rome Statute “is a treaty and parties are free to leave it as they want,” said Aaron Matta, senior researcher at the Hague Institute for Global Justice think-tank.
“South Africa’s decision to leave sends the wrong message. But in the end, the ICC is there for the victims, not the ones in power who decide to enter or leave a treaty,” Matta said.
Will there be mass withdrawal now?
Probably not. Burundi’s decision to leave the ICC amid a row with the UN’s main human rights body “may have opened a gate or a doorway for other countries… and it may be possible for other countries like Kenya and Uganda to follow as well,” said Whiting, but it did not mean many other African countries will necessarily do so.
For instance, Gabon last month referred a case to the ICC after deadly unrest was triggered in the central African nation over disputed elections, the analysts pointed out.
“There may be more pressure on other African countries to leave, but the ICC is not only African,” said Matta. Of the 124 countries to have ratified the Rome Statute since 1999, 34 are African.
Will current probes in Africa continue?
Yes. Pretoria’s decision to withdraw does not in affect any of the ICC’s investigations in any other countries in Africa. Neither does it free South Africa from any obligations, including financial, that it may have incurred while being an ICC member state.
Even if countries subject to preliminary assessments such as Burundi do pull out, the Rome Statute specifically states that a withdrawal “shall not affect any cooperation with the Court in connection with criminal investigations and proceedings… which commenced prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective.”
Is Africa being unfairly singled out?
“The prosecution has to follow evidence, and they go where the evidence leads them,” said Matta.
“They are in Africa because the victims are there. They are in Africa because that’s where serious crimes have occurred and most of these situations in Africa have been referred to the ICC by the countries themselves,” Matta said.
Cases involving actual investigations of alleged crimes in the Central African Republic, Uganda, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo were all referred to the ICC by the governments of those states. Cases in Libya and the Sudanese region of Darfur were referred by the UN Security Council. Only in Kenya and Ivory Coast did the ICC’s prosecutor initiate such investigations, and even in these countries, the governments cooperated to some extent with the court.
What about cases outside of Africa?
The court has not focussed exclusively on Africa. ICC judges in January gave the prosecutor permission to launch a full-blown probe into alleged war crimes committed in Georgia during its 2008 war with Russia over the Moscow-backed breakaway South Ossetia region.
The prosecutor also continues to conduct preliminary examinations — where issues of jurisdiction and admissability are evaluated — in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq and in Palestine.
The ICC only acts as a court of last resort when states are unable or unwilling to do so. It can only operate where it has jurisdiction, either because the country is an ICC member state, or through a referral by the UN Security Council.

Pakistan batsman Younis Khan marked his recovery from dengue fever with a splendid century against the West Indies on Friday but admitted he was concerned after shedding six kilos during his illness.
The 38-year-old hit an attractive 127 to guide Pakistan to 304-4 on the opening day of the second Test — three weeks after he was hospitalised in Karachi suffering the effects of the mosquito-borne disease.
Younis had to miss the first Test in Dubai as he had not fully recovered but came back strongly at Sheikh Zayed Stadium on Friday.
“Normally after dengue you don?t have that much strength but I managed to regain it thanks to the doctors and medical staff who gave so much care,” said Younis.
“I had no energy to play in the first Test so I told the board and they accepted it. I got enough rest and probably had I rushed into it I wouldn?t have managed this success.”
Younis admitted he was worried about lack of match practice ahead of his return.
“I had lost some six kilos and I was worried that I had not played a match since the Oval Test on August 14,” said Younis of his last match where he stroked an epic 218 to help Pakistan level the four-match series 2-2 against England.
“I played some club matches on cement wickets and that helped. It was hot and those matches helped me coming into this Test.”
Younis added 87 for the third wicket with Asad Shafiq (68) and another 175 for the fourth with skipper Misbah-ul-Haq who was 90 not out at close on Friday.
It was his 15th hundred partnership with Misbah in 49 innings.
“We know we have the responsibility to carry the team. That’s why whenever me and Misbah play together we want to do well,” said Younis.
“We are well aware of the responsibility and our mental preparation is always positive.”
Younis said he never felt nervous in the nineties — he has scored the most consecutive hundreds in all Test cricket (31) without being dismissed in 90s.
“There is no secret as such. Only once in Auckland (against New Zealand in 2001) I got out in the 90s.”

Chelsea star Oscar misses out but Brazil include the Real Madrid pair of Marcelo and Casemiro for the crunch clash next month with old rivals Argentina in World Cup qualifying.
Coach Tite on Friday named a strong 24-man squad for the games at home to Argentina on November 10 and away in Peru five days later.
Midfielder Oscar, out of favour at Stamford Bridge, is dropped from the squad but left-back Marcelo and defensive midfielder Casemiro are in following a calf injury and a leg break respectively.
The Sao Paulo defender Rodrigo Caio gets a call-up, as Brazil seek to cement their place at the top of South American qualifying for Russia 2018.
Argentina, led by fit-again Lionel Messi — he will line up against Barcelona team-mate and Brazilian star Neymar — are fifth.
Brazil squad:
Goalkeepers: Alisson (AS Roma/ITA), Alex Muralha (Flamengo), Weverton (Atletico Paranaense)
Defenders: Gil (Shandong Luneng/CHN), Marquinhos (Paris SG/FRA), Miranda (Atletico Madrid/ESP), Thiago Silva (Paris SG/FRA), Rodrigo Caio (Sao Paulo), Dani Alves (Juventus/ITA), Fagner (Corinthians), Luis Filipe (Atletico Madrid/ESP), Marcelo (Real Madrid/ESP)
Midfielders: Casemiro (Real Madrid/ESP), Fernandinho (Manchester City/ENG), Giuliano (Zenit Saint-Petersburg/RUS), Lucas Lima (Santos), Paulinho (Guangzhou Evergrande/CHN), Coutinho (Liverpool/ENG), Renato Augusto (Beijing Guoan/CHN), Willian (Chelsea/ENG)
Forwards: Douglas Costa (Bayern Munich/GER), Roberto Firmino (Liverpool/ENG), Gabriel Jesus (Palmeiras), Neymar (Barcelona/ESP)

The country paid off about $108 million due to the IMF, and “is now current on all its financial obligations to the IMF,” fund spokesman Gerry Rice said in a statement late Thursday.
Zimbabwe had been behind in its payments to the global crisis lender since 2001, Rice said.
The move is a positive first step for the country as it tries to stabilize its economy and finances, but does not automatically make it eligible for IMF lending.
It first must have a plan in place to clear arrears to other international financial institutions, the IMF said in a statement. This includes $1.1 billion it owes to the World Bank.
The IMF has applauded Zimbabwe’s reform efforts under a fund-monitored advisory program that ended in December 2015, which began to restore confidence and stabilize government finances.
But the commodity-dependent country has faced a decade-long crisis, and the IMF warns that without “bold reforms” the economic difficulties will continue.
Zimbabwe adopted the US dollar as its currency in 2009 to end hyperinflation. But the strong dollar has made its exports more expensive.
Unemployment is about 90 percent in Zimbabwe, which spends more than four-fifths of its revenue in the salaries of civil servants and is ranked by Transparency International as one the most corrupt countries in the world.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) selection panel has appointed former PS Bernadette Musundi of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops as its chairperson.
The chairman of the Supreme Council of Muslims in Kenya, Abdulghafur El-Busaidy, was chosen as Musundi’s deputy in the nine-member recruitment team.
The panel is tasked with the recruitment of commissioners to replace incumbent chairman Issack Hassan and his team.
Other members of the committee include Rev Canon Peter Karanja, the secretary-general of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, Bishop David Oginde, representing Evangelical Churches of Kenya and lawyer Evans Monari representing the Parliamentary Service Commission.
The Jubilee Party will be represented in the panel by Mary Kigen while retired judge Tom Mbaluto and Ogla Chepkemoi Karani will appear for the opposition Cord.
Speaking shortly after being appointed chairperson, Musundi assured Kenyans that the people who the panel will pick will be those of integrity and the commitment of the select team was beyond reproach.
The selection panel is expected to present 11 names to President Uhuru Kenyatta with two being the position of chairperson and nine for the commissioners.
The President will thereafter pick seven from the 11 one chairperson and six full-time commissioners — with the approval of Parliament.

A giant probe into an embezzlement and bribery network centered on state oil company Petrobras has already targeted two ex-presidents, ministers, senior legislators, and some of Brazil’s richest men.
The latest suspects are members of the congressional security service, including the Senate force’s chief, who “aimed to obstruct investigative operations by the Federal Police against senators and ex-senators, using counter-intelligence technology,” the Federal Police said in a statement.
A large number of police vehicles converged outside Congress early Friday as searches were conducted inside.
The G1 news site reported that the four officers conducted sweeps for police listening devices at the homes and offices of Senator Fernando Collor de Mello, who is also a former president, and former senator Jose Sarney and Senator Edison Lobao, both of whom are from current President Michel Temer’s center-right PMDB party.
All three politicians have been implicated in the Petrobras probe, codenamed Operation Carwash.
The police, allegedly working illegally on their behalf, made four visits to the senators’ houses and allegedly in at least two cases flew at public expense to their home states to conduct the counter-bugging sweeps.
However Senate President Renan Calheiros, who has also been implicated in the Petrobras scheme, defended the action of the legislature’s police force, saying they were only asked to root out “illegal listening devices.”
“The Legislative Police carried out their activities within the framework of the constitution,” he said in a statement.
The Operation Carwash probe, which has been running almost three years, has exposed a gargantuan kickback scheme involving a cross section of Brazil’s political and business elite.
Prosecutors have aggressively gone after figures once considered untouchable, using a variety of weapons, especially plea bargains in which suspects give inside information in hopes of getting lesser sentences. Wiretaps have also added to an atmosphere of paranoia in the capital Brasilia.
Earlier this week the former speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, was jailed on charges that he took millions of dollars in bribes.
Popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is also accused of taking Petrobras-related bribes and faces three separate corruption court cases.
Collor de Mello, who was president from 1990-92 before being impeached and resigning, was accused in August last year of corruption and money laundering.
Late Thursday, the prosecutor general’s office gave new details of the charges, saying that Collor de Mello had received at least 29 million reais ($9.2 million) in bribes between 2010 and 2014.
The prosecution document said that his wife Caroline Collor de Mello and seven others were part of criminal group, and that the former president should be removed from his senate seat.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Saturday he would not sever his nation’s alliance with the United States, as he clarified his announcement that he planned to “separate”.
“It’s not severance of ties. Severance is to cut diplomatic relations. I can not do that. Why? It’s in the best interests of my country that I don’t do that,” Duterte told reporters in his hometown of Davao after returning from China.
The firebrand leader signalled on Thursday during his four-day state visit to Beijing that he intended to end the Philippines’ 70-year alliance with the United States in favour of China and Russia.
“I announce my separation from the United States,” Duterte told a group of Chinese businessmen.
“America has lost. I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.”
Until Duterte took office on June 30, the Philippines had been one of the United States’ most important and loyal allies in Asia, and a key to President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to the region.
But since becoming president Duterte has done a dramatic foreign policy U-turn that has baffled Washington.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday that the United States would seek clarification from the Philippines about the “separation” remark.
“It’s not clear to us exactly what that means in all its ramifications,” he said.
Duterte on Saturday gave a series of comments to clarify those remarks.
“Sever is to cut. Separate is just to chart another way of doing,” he said.
“What I’m really saying was separation of foreign policy, which in the past and until I became president, we always followed what the United States would give the cue.”
Nevertheless, Duterte launched another tirade against the United States for criticising his war on crime, which has left more than 3,600 people dead and raised fears about extrajudicial killings.
Duterte said a defence pact signed in 2014, known by the acronym of EDCA and which allows for a much greater US military presence in the Philippines, remained in jeopardy.
“It will affect EDCA and the rest of the agreements, maybe, I will have to consult the military, the police and everybody,” he said.
Duterte also said he did not care if the United States or the European Union cut their foreign aid to the Philippines, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, over concerns about human rights abuses in his war on crime.
“Assistance, USAID, you can go to hell,” he said, referring to the US government’s overseas economic and development assistance organisation.
Duterte often laces his rhetoric with vulgar language, and has repeatedly referred to US President Barack Obama as a “son of a whore”.
On Saturday he let loose again at US and European critics of his war on crime.
“You sons of whores. Your euro, that’s a piece of paper. You run out of toilet paper, you wipe up your ass,” he said in a rant that at times appeared not to make sense.
“You guys are bullshit. Why am I saying this? It sounds the height of vulgarity. You started it.”
Duterte, 71, also repeated criticism of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, saying it was based on a lie and triggered turmoil in the Middle East that cost many lives.
“If there is one thing that America has failed miserably, it is in the province of the human dignity,” he said at the end of his critique of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
Duterte said he also endorsed Russian efforts to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power.
“If Assad is out they (the United States) will have destroyed the entire Middle East,” he said.

The Kiuna’s family is pretty much excited about the latest member of their family, Nia Gizelle Kiuna Kovac, who was welcomed a few months ago by their eldest daughter Vanessa Kovac.
Unlike most celebrities the ministers of the word did not held back in sharing photos of the little angel spicing their lives.
Reverend Kathy and her husband posted a few pictures of  Nia Gizelle through their social media handles allowing their ‘fans’ to meet her.
 
 
She is now a few months old and baby Nia keeps getting cuter by the day. Gizelle looks loveable and the short videos of her on social media have given us more reasons to ‘keep up ‘with her family.
Family is definitely an important aspect to the Kiuna’s and this can be seen in their cozy photos.
In one photo Kathy Kiuna wrote to say,
 
Looking at the photo and below Miss little Nia Gizelle is turning out to be quite the poser…cute huh!
 
 

The “Jungle” migrant camp on France’s northern coast will be cleared of its residents on Monday before being demolished, authorities said Friday.
The local administration “made a legal order Friday that is to take effect on Monday”, it said in a statement announcing the long-awaited operation.
Migrants at the camp in the ferry port of Calais will begin boarding 145 buses at 8:00 am (0600 GMT) Monday to take them to nearly 300 temporary accommodation centres dotted round France.
The demolition of the sprawling makeshift camp closes a difficult chapter in Europe’s migrant crisis.
The camp has strained relations between France and Britain, the country most of its residents are trying to reach.
On Sunday, officials and charity workers will pass through the settlement of shacks and tents to inform residents that they will have to leave.
The order from the local authorities informing residents that the camp is about to close was displayed from Friday in several languages.
“The aim is to give everyone a roof over their heads and we will do everything we can to make that happen,” one official said.
The current Jungle camp dates from April 2015 and housed more than 10,000 migrants at its peak, although that number has dwindled to around 6,400 in its final days.
Migrants were attracted to Calais because it is a key departure point for Britain, where some have family links and many believe they have a better chance of finding work.
Their persistent efforts to climb on to trucks heading across the English Channel aboard ferries or trains have led the authorities to build a wall to keep them off the main road leading to the ferry port.
The Jungle residents are mainly from Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea.
For many, the camp embodies the failure of European governments to deal with the influx of migrants.
Calais residents and businesses have called for months for the camp to be razed.
But the fate of around 1,000 unaccompanied minors has delayed the camp’s closure.
British authorities are allowing those with family links in Britain to settle in the UK.
By the end of the weekend, the week’s total number of children transferred to the UK was expected to have reached 200, according to the France Terre d’Asile charity.
The head of the charity, Pierry Henry, told AFP that 73 minors had travelled to Britain on Friday and more than 100 were due to follow on Saturday.
More than 500 have been interviewed by British officials to discover their ages and details of family members in the UK.
The ages of those migrants who have reached the UK has been the subject of a bitter row and sensational headlines there, as some photographs have given rise to claims that adults may be posing as minors to gain entry.
One British MP, David Davies, has called for testing of teeth to determine age, sparking outrage from the medical community.
Authorities in France said the minors remaining in France will not be bussed away from the camp but stay there in more permanent accommodation while their cases are considered.
But even when the Jungle is cleared away, some wonder whether another camp will simply spring up elsewhere.
Alain Juppe, the frontrunner to win the right-wing nomination for next year’s French presidential election, called Friday for the scrapping of the agreement that extends Britain’s border to Calais, effectively allowing the camp to exist.
Juppe said the Jungle gave a “disastrous” image of his country, and that Britain should conduct its evaluations of the migrants on its own soil, not in France.
In the camp this week, the remaining residents appeared resigned to their fate.
Mewagul Daulatzai, 22, from Afghanistan, who runs a small shop, told AFP on Thursday he would be happy to leave.
“Before I liked the Jungle. I had my friends and we were working here. But now it is too dangerous here so I am glad it’s over,” he said.

Police said Friday five incidents involving so-called scary clowns had occurred in two north German towns, including one assailant who hit a man with a baseball bat, amid fears that Halloween could spark a rash of similar attacks.
The masked individual attacked a 19-year-old in the eastern city of Rostock on Thursday, leaving him with bruises to the head and arms, police said.
Four other assaults or scares were reported in the region the same day.
A 15-year-old was threatened by a creepy clown with a knife at a bus stop, also in Rostock. The teen fled and was not injured.
In nearby Greifswald, two children aged eight and 13 were frightened in separate incidents by three clowns, including one with a chainsaw, and a woman had a frightening encounter with a clown who apparently wielded the same weapon.
Around a dozen other cases have been reported around Germany over the last week, according to Bild daily.
The phenomenon has spread to Europe from the United States, with Sweden last week reporting a case in which a man was stabbed by an attacker wearing a clown mask.
“The fear is that clown attacks will become a very, very ugly trend that could spread in big cities in the run-up to Halloween,” the head of Germany’s police union, Rainer Wendt told Huffington Post.
“These clowns are not only idiots, they are offenders,” Wendt said.
He called on victims to report any cases and for judges to “impose the highest sentences, and that can be a jail term of several years,” in order to quell the trend.

After a long suspense filled digital build, TECNO Phantom 6 is finally out.
It’s one beautifully crafted phone released in 2016. Has a very premium impressive design, with a mix of plastic, metal and glass. A lot of attention has been given to aesthetics this time around, it’s sleek and so slim unlike the Phantom 5.
Display is impressive; 6.0-inch display bright and sharp.
The camera; Super light sensitive , excellent in collecting and processing light, 21MP SONY IMX 230 Camera with Dual Flash, front camera sits at 8MP with a flash to take selfies at night with HDR, guidelines, gesture shots.
Software, storage and performance; runs on Android Mashmallow, processor is 2GHz, RAM size is an impressive 4GB while internal memory is 64GB.
Eye print which serves as a security features is also present.
One would expect with all this amazing features, the phone o retail more than the Phantom 5, but that is not the case. www.electronicsoko.co.ke 
is actually selling it at 22,500/=
 
Get yours now via the website or just call 0726118801 Electronic Soko is taking that into consideration with the introduction of FREE delivery in Nairobi, within 24hrs! Now you can shop for any gadget at   and have it delivered the same day to any location of your choice within and out of Nairobi.

Lilian Muli’s marriage has apparently hit the rocks and rumor has it that there is no way of fixing things between her and husband, Moses Kanene, of seven years.
The Citizen TV anchor is said to have already filed documents seeking to end her union with her baby daddy and she is now hoping that he will grant her the freedom she wishes.
 
 
 
According to the Lilian Muli walked out of her marriage citing irreconcilable differences that include infidelity among other things she wishes to keep out of the public eye.
Lilian and her soon to be ex husband have not been spotted together out in the open for a few years now and if this was to confirm anything, then their marriage was not a bed of roses as many thought.
We are however not sure what will happen to their six year old son and how the ex couple is planning to raise him.
 
 
 
The two join the list of media personalities i.e Dennis Okari and Betty Kyalo who have abandoned their union due to infidelity issues.
 
Source: Nairobian
 

Juliani caused shock and awe after he revealed a dirty secret about what happened to him when he was growing up in Dandora.
 
The ‘Utawala’ hit maker says he was exposed to pornographic material at a tender age, when he was in class three to be precise.
Wrote Juliani on his blog.
Shocked?? Then I don’t know how you will digest that fact that Juliani lost his virginity in the school toilet.
Juliani narrated his story.

A US destroyer sailed close to a cluster of islands claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea on Friday, the Pentagon said, amid continued tensions in the contested waterway.
The USS Decatur passed close to the Paracel Islands and “conducted this transit in a routine, lawful manner without ship escorts and without incident,” Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said.
“This operation demonstrated that coastal States may not unlawfully restrict the navigation rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea that the United States and all states are entitled to exercise under international law.”
The maneuver is the third South China Sea “freedom of navigation” operation conducted this year by the United States, which has repeatedly stressed it will ignore China’s “excessive” maritime claims.
Ross said the Decatur did not sail within 12 nautical miles of the islands, but crossed through a broader swath of ocean claimed by China.
Friday’s operation was the first since a July ruling by a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled there was no legal basis to China’s claims to nearly all of the sea — a verdict Beijing dismissed vehemently.
China that month held a week of military drills around the Paracels in the northern part of the South China Sea, during which other ships were prohibited from entering the waters.
Several other nations across the region including the Philippines and Vietnam have rival claims to various parts of the South China Sea.
China has been accused of doing massive environmental damage to the sea by building artificial islands, some with airstrips, capable of hosting military facilities.
The issue is a source of ongoing tension and anger in the region, and Friday’s US operation is likely to further inflame Beijing’s ire.

A Member of the County Assembly from Makueni County who invited Tennis superstar, Serena Williams to carry out a series of charitable projects in Kenya has been honoured by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Dickson Mutaiti, was among hundreds who were feted as heroes during this year’s Mashujaa Day celebration in Machakos county.
He was recognised for building and renovating 11 secondary schools in his ward and other areas across Makueni and Kibwezi West constituencies.
 
Mutaiti first met Serena in 2005 and implored on her to invest in education in his home area.
The tennis icon was receptive to the request and visited Kenya twice in 2008 and 2010.
During the two visits, Serena Williams commissioned two schools, the Matooni Secondary School and Serena Williams Wee Secondary School.
Speaking to the  by phone, Mutaiti was elated and said the honour was a humbling recognition.
He said the honour would energise his resolve to partner with sponsors and well-wishers to support the needy in the society.
The Serena Williams Wee Secondary School was built through a partnership between the Build African Schools initiative – an American non profit making organization – and Hewlett Packard, the world’s largest technology firm.
The partnership sees schools constructed by Build African Schools which will then be fully equipped by Hewlett Packard with state of the art computers and printers.
Solar Power and the internet will also be installed at each school.
By building schools and equipping them with electricity, computers and other teaching aids, Build African Schools and Hewlett Packard offers children educational opportunities and choices that will ultimately empower them to determine their own future.

An air strike killed 15 women on Friday at a shrine near the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, local officials and medics said.
“Fifteen women were killed and another 50 wounded in a raid that targeted a Shiite place of worship at Dakuk,” local council chief Amir Huda Karam told AFP.
The toll from the afternoon raid was confirmed by Dr Abbas Mustafa Dakuki at the local hospital, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Kirkuk.
Earlier, jihadists of the Islamic State group attacked Kirkuk in an apparent effort to divert thousands of troops and militiamen closing in on their stronghold in Mosul, Iraq’s second city.

Irish steeplechasing great Moscow Flyer died on Friday aged 22 of colic, his former trainer Jessica Harrington said.
The Harrington star won 26 of his 44 starts, including 10 Grade One events between 1999 and 2006 with the highlights two Champion Chase — the top race for two-mile chasers — victories.
“He was the horse of a lifetime, I’ll never have another like him,” said Harrington.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, I think the day he was at his best was Sandown in 2004 in the Tingle Creek.
“That day it all went like clockwork against two other brilliant horses (Azertyuiop and Well Chief),” she added.
Moscow Flyer — who retired from the track in 2006 after failing to land a third Champion Chase — also gave jockey Barry Geraghty’s career a huge boost.
“He’s the horse that kick-started my career. He was something special — a superstar,” said Geraghty, who has gone on to become one of the leading big-race riders in the British Isles.

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola on Friday rejected speculation star Argentinian striker Sergio Aguero and injury-plagued club captain Vincent Kompany are not part of his long-term plans.
Neither player started in City?s 4-0 defeat to Barcelona in the Champions League on Wednesday which has cast an element of doubt over both their futures.
Belgian international defender Kompany has struggled with injuries in recent seasons while Aguero has often been linked with a return to Spain’s La Liga.
Guardiola dismissed out of hand the link between their absence from the starting line-up and being considered surplus to requirements.
“I am sorry, when Sergio decides to leave Manchester City, it will be his decision,” said Guardiola.
“I appreciate him like a football player and appreciate like a man what he did here.
“The next time before you give your opinion and you decide he is not in my plans you can call me!
“I spoke with Sergio, we talked about that, he was so understanding and helped us a lot from the bench and in the last minutes if the game was close, the last 30/35 minutes and their central defenders were tired, I thought Sergio could help us a lot.”
Guardiola, who proved ruthless on his arrival in sending unwanted players such as Samir Nasri and Wilfried Bony off on loan, said Kompany — who missed Euro 2016 because of injury — was once again not fit enough.
“Vincent was not perfectly fit. That is why we took a decision to pick Pablo Maffeo,” said Guardiola.
“We appreciate him a lot. Normally Vincent Kompany would be on the bench. But he was not fit.
“With respect to Sergio Aguero, I said after the game it was a tactical decision.
“I wanted one midfield player more in the middle with Kevin de Bruyne, he has the qualities to hold behind the line, behind the back four and make the movements behind the full-backs.
“I think I took a decision and my plans (are) they have futures.”
Kompany would appear the more vulnerable of the two players given the amount of time he has spent on the treatment table.
The 30-year-old has started just one match -? a 2-1 win over Swansea City in the EFL Cup ?- this season and made just 14 appearances in the Premier League in the previous campaign.
But ahead of Sunday?s Premier League clash with Southampton at the Etihad Stadium, Guardiola claimed he remains a big admirer of the City captain.
“I saw him when he is fit, he is a real central defender. I like him,” said Guardiola.
?We try to take care of him.
“It was him, he went to the doctors and said ‘I am not available to play’. I am going to explain always what is the truth with players.
“We lost 4-0 to Barcelona. You want a guilty? I am guilty. We win? I am a genius. We win 10 games? You say we are going to win four titles,” added the 45-year-old Spaniard.

The rainy season is supposed to be over in Nigeria, but on Thursday just before midnight, torrential rain and crackling lightning let loose over Benin City.
For those in the crowd, the message was clear: with the rain the gods had blessed the new monarch of the kingdom of Benin in the country’s south.
The divine coronation was the climax of a day of royal pageantry, when some 100,000 people flooded the streets to catch a glimpse of the new “Oba” — king in the Yoruba language — Ewuare II.
The kingdom of Benin, now located inside Nigeria, is one of the oldest and most prestigious African realms which flourished from around the 13th century until the British invasion hundreds of years later.
It was famous for its vast wealth, sophisticated urban design and intricate bronzes.
The Oba does not wield any official powers in Nigeria, but has a great deal of influence.
Politicians, businessmen and traditional leaders from all across the country honoured the new king under the giant white tent with some 4,000 in attendance.
Northern sultans bundled in turbans walked alongside southern princes, shirtless and draped in loops of chunky coral necklaces, while the Yoruba king of Ife wore a leopard skin.
Wearing round John Lennon-style glasses and a string of pearls, Prince Burns Effiom was in the audience and explained the significance of the coronation.
“Politicians use traditional leaders to maintain peace,” he told AFP.
The Oba title is passed down from father to first-born son. So the new king, whose birth name is Eheneden Erediauwa, takes over from his father, Solomon Akenzua, who died earlier this year.
Huddled behind a wall of people armed with their cell phones, Christian Iyekekpolor jostled to snap pictures of VIPs.
“From here I can see my king,” said the young graduate of the University of Benin. “He’s like God for us.”
Beside him stood Rickson Ogwu, who made the trip from Delta State, once a part of the ancient kingdom.
Ogwu missed the coronation of the last Oba in 1979 because he was too young at age 12. He wasn’t going to pass this opportunity up.
“We can only see this once in a lifetime,” the trader said. “I’m proud to continue the tradition of my people.”
More than six hours late on the programme, the guests were finally assembled underneath the air-conditioned tent lit with multicoloured chandeliers and the king arrived.
Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, sat alongside other traditional leaders, foreign ambassadors and European delegations.
Nigeria, which has 170 million inhabitants, is deeply divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south; between supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress party and the opposition People’s Democratic Party.
Yet on Thursday, those divisions were put aside, with the four major traditional rulers — the Oba of Benin, Emir of Kano, Sultan of Sokoto and Ooni of Ife — standing above the political fray.
“Please welcome, honoured guests, the king of the century,” said the master of ceremonies when Ewuare II appeared in an intricate armour of red coral and surrounded by dozens of chiefs and princes.
A graduate of the best British and American schools, and a former Nigerian ambassador to Sweden and Angola, the new king is determined to revive the former glory of his kingdom and kickstart the economy.
“With international aid and private sector partners, we will save our heritage,” he said, promising in particular to invest in the bronze industry, the kingdom’s pride.
“I hope to attract tourists, help develop the agricultural industry,” he said.
“Long live the king!” exclaimed Eric Ojo, a 35-year-old entrepreneur.
“I am happy. He was sent by God, but it is a king who has feet on the ground.”

The UN accused DR Congo’s government Friday of obstructing its inquiry into violence that erupted at opposition protests in the capital Kinshasa last month, claiming dozens of lives.
Investigators probing the deaths of 49 civilians and four police killed during violence on September 19 and 20 had “been hampered by several restrictions”, the United Nations Joint Office for Human Rights (UNJHRO) said in a preliminary report.
“Since September 21, 2016, UNJHRO teams have notably been refused access, on the instruction of senior officials, to certain detention centres as well as to the official registers of some morgues and public hospitals,” said the report.
The protests were called to demonstrate against the government of President Joseph Kabila who many in Congo fear is manoeuvering to stay in office indefinitely beyond the end of his term in December.
“The denial of access has considerably impaired the work of the UNJHRO (which has) documented 422 victims of human rights violations by officials.”
The UN warned that the total number of victims could ultimately be “considerably higher”.
The report accused Congolese officials of “a disproportionate use of force, including lethal force… in response to protests organised by members of the opposition”.
Congolese authorities could not be reached for comment Friday.
The government has previously blamed the opposition for the violence while opposition figures accused Kabila and his officials over the bloodshed.
Following the violence, the US Treasury blacklisted two top allies of Kabila who the US accused of violently putting down opposition to Kabila and undermining democratic forces in the country.
A deal was signed Tuesday that would keep Kabila in power until the election in April 2018.
One of Africa’s biggest and most resource-rich countries, DR Congo has been ruled by Kabila since 2001, when his father Laurent was assassinated.
He was elected in 2006 to his first five-year term under a constitution that sets a two-term limit for presidents.
An opposition call for a protest strike on Wednesday was heeded in Kinshasa, where most shops were closed, but the appeal was ignored in the second city of Lubumbashi and Bukavu.

A 10th was opened in Georgia, the only country outside Africa.
Here are details of the main indictments and cases before the world’s first permanent war crimes court.
Congolese rebel warlord Bosco Ntaganda went on trial in September last year on 18 war crimes and crimes against humanity charges. Ntaganda — nicknamed “The Terminator” — has pleaded not guilty to the charges related to atrocities committed by his Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo in 2002 and 2003, including using child soldiers and sex slaves.
The ICC sentenced Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga in 2012 to 14 years in prison for conscripting children into his rebel army in 2002-2003, its first ever verdict. It upheld the decision on appeal in December 2014.
Ex-militia leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui was acquitted in December 2012 over a 2003 village massacre. However, another former militia leader Germain Katanga was sentenced in May 2014 to 12 years over the same attack.
Warlord Sylvestre Mudacumura, military commander of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), is wanted for crimes committed in the volatile eastern Kivu region.
Former DRC vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba was sentenced in June to 18 years behind bars for atrocities committed by his rebel army in the Central African Republic in 2002-2003. Bemba was found guilty on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed when his militia troops were sent to bolster the then government against a rebellion.
A second probe was opened in September 2014 into an “endless” list of atrocities committed by armed militias since August 2012.
Former president Laurent Gbagbo is in custody on four counts of crimes against humanity over months of deadly fighting that erupted after he refused to accept defeat in a 2010 presidential election. His youth leader, Charles Ble Goude, is also in ICC custody. Their trial started on January 28.
An arrest warrant for Gbagbo’s wife Simone, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the Ivory Coast for harming state security, has also been issued. The country has refused to transfer her to The Hague. She is currently also on trial for crimes against humanity in Abidjan.
Prosecutors in late 2014 dropped a crimes against humanity case against President Uhuru Kenyatta for his alleged involvement in deadly 2007-08 post-election violence.
The case against Vice President William Ruto and radio host Joshua arap Sang, were dropped in April, with ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda citing a “relentless” campaign of victim intimidation.
Currently in custody in Libya, Moamer Kadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam is accused of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the repression of the popular uprising which led to the fall of his father’s regime in 2011.
Libya and the ICC are competing for the right to judge him.
Malian jihadist Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi was sentenced to nine years for demolishing Timbuktu’s fabled shrines in a landmark ruling seen as a warning that destroying mankind’s heritage will not go unpunished.
President Omar al-Bashir, 72, was indicted in 2009 after a UN Security Council referral, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the conflict in the western region of Darfur. The following year he was charged with genocide over events in Darfur, where more than 300,000 people have died since 2003. Five other people are on the ICC’s wanted list. Bashir continues to travel around the continent, despite an obligation by ICC member states to arrest him.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and other commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 2005 for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the use of child soldiers and sex slaves. Senior LRA commander Dominic Ongwen’s trial is expected to start on December 6.
ICC judges in January gave the chief prosecutor permission to launch an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Georgia during its 2008 war with Russia over the Moscow-backed breakaway South Ossetia region.
Bensouda has also launched preliminary investigations into alleged crimes in Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, Gabon, Iraq, Palestine and Ukraine, as well as in Guinea and Nigeria.
“When no-one else is doing justice for the victims, my office will fulfil this duty,” she once said.
“We will not abandon the victims of atrocity crimes, not in the Democratic Republic of Congo, not in Africa and not in any of the 124 countries around the world which are members of the ICC.”