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14, August 2017

Sierra Leone: At least 312 people killed in mudslides ⁰

At least 312 people have been killed and more than 2,000 left homeless when a mudslide and heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, leaving hospitals struggling to cope. Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi told AFP the toll could rise further as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown, where heavy rains have caused homes to disappear under water and triggered a mudslide.

An AFP journalist at the scene on Monday saw bodies being carried away and houses submerged in two areas of the city, where roads were turned into churning rivers of mud and corpses washed up on the streets. Bodies were spread out on the floor of a morgue, Sinneh Kamara, a coroner technician at the Connaught Hospital mortuary, told the national broadcaster.

“The capacity at the mortuary is too small for the corpses,” he told the Sierra Leone National Broadcasting Corp. Kamara urged the health department to deploy more ambulances, saying his mortuary only has four.

Sierra Leone’s national television broadcaster interrupted its regular programming to show scenes of people trying to retrieve their loved ones’ bodies. Others were seen carting relatives’ remains in rice sacks to the morgue. Military personnel have been deployed to help in the rescue operation currently ongoing, officials said.
“It is likely that hundreds are lying dead underneath the rubble,” Vice President Victor Foh told Reuters at the scene of the mudslide in the mountain town of Regent, adding that a number of illegal buildings had been erected in the area.

“The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken,” he added. “We’re trying to cordon (off) the area (and) evacuate the people.” People cried as they looked at the damage under steady rain, gesturing toward a muddy hillside where dozens of houses used to stand, a Reuters witness said. Mudslides and floods are fairly common during the rainy season in West Africa, where deforestation and poor town planning put residents at risk.

(Source: Agencies)

14, August 2017

Maurice Kamto blames Anglophone crisis on Biya Francophone regime ⁰

The leader of the MRC party, Prof. Maurice Kamto has said that the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime has spent so much time resolving nothing on the Anglophone crisis. Maurice Kamto was speaking on Sunday, the 13th of August 2017 in Douala during a meeting with young French Cameroonians and the press. The French Cameroun opposition leader also observed that the electoral code does not guarantee a sincere and credible political game in La Republique du Cameroun.

Maurice Kamto also pointed out that Biya and his gang of French Cameroun political elites is to blame for La Republique du Cameroun’s failure in the construction of infrastructure for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations. He criticized the arbitrary arrests and subsequent convictions of innocent Southern Cameroonians in French Cameroun territory and ordered the Francophone regime in Yaoundé to release with immediate effect all West Cameroon detainees.

Kamto opined that the Anglophone crisis has stalled over time and the government continues to implement wrong solutions to the problem. He added that the only way to resolve the crisis is to create a commission made up of credible people in the eyes of the populations.

The much respected French Cameroun political elite noted that the educational system in La Republique no longer fits with the needs of this generation. Kamto revealed that all what men like the late John Ngu Foncha worked for at the Foumban conference for the reunification of the two Cameroons in 1972 has been thrown into the bin by Biya and his corrupt acolytes.

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News, Douala

14, August 2017

Southern Cameroons to apply for CAF, FIFA membership ⁰

After staging a friendly football encounter in Oslo, capital of Norway against the Black Stars of Ghana, the governing council of the Republic of Ambazonia (the Southern Cameroons) is expected to make an official application to become a member of the Confederation of African Football, CAF and the world football governing body, FIFA.

The match was organized at the request of the Southern Cameroons Football Association with permission granted to the players to brandish their Ambazonian passports as seen on the photo attached to this report.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that the interim leader of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council will make a pronouncement soonest authorizing the creation of a Southern Cameroons national football team. We also understand SCACUF will be applying for CAF and FIFA membership in the weeks ahead.

A well-placed source with ties to the spokesman of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council hinted that a committee has already been put in place to select a name for the Ambazonian national team.

By Chi Prudence Asong with files from Akoson Pauline

13, August 2017

Zambia to drop treason charges against opposition leader ⁰

Zambia plans to drop treason charges against the country’s main opposition leader and free him from prison on Monday under a deal brokered by the Commonwealth secretary-general, government and legal sources told Reuters. The United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema and five others were arrested in April and charged with treason after Hichilema’s convoy failed to make way for President Edgar Lungu’s motorcade.

Hichilema’s trial had been due to begin on Monday in the capital Lusaka but two sources said the prosecution would apply to the court to discontinue the case. The case has stoked political tensions in Zambia, seen as one of Africa’s more stable and functional democracies, following a bruising election last year.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland visited Zambia last week and told reporters she had met Lungu and Hichilema separately and that the two leaders had agreed to a process of dialogue facilitated by her office.
“That process of dialogue, which the Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Patricia Scotland is leading with the help of Catholic bishops, starts with the release of the opposition leader from prison,” a government source told Reuters on Sunday, referring to local religious leaders.

“The state will discontinue the treason case in the public interest as both the opposition leader and the head of state are committed to burying their past and starting dialogue envisaged to help address some of the issues the opposition raised after the 2016 elections so that the 2021 elections are better held.”

A spokesman for the UPND said the party was unaware of any plan to release Hichilema. “We don’t have anything on that. We are not privy to the agreement that was entered into between the two leaders and therefore can only wait for tomorrow,” UPND spokesman Charles Kakoma said.

The UPND later said that Hichilema and his co-accused were transferred from Mukobeko Maximum Prison – about 130 km (81 miles) north of the capital – to Lusaka Central Prison.

“They were airlifted this morning and have arrived safely in Lusaka,” the party said. The government source said Lungu is committed to all aspects of the dialogue agreed between the president and the opposition leader, which include promoting peace, stability and public good.

“An overt act serious enough to warrant prosecution exists but the public interest seems to be the overriding consideration, so a nolle prosequi will be entered,” a public prosecutor told Reuters, using the legal term for the discharge of a case.

The southern African country has always been relatively stable but relations between the government and the opposition have been fraught since August when Lungu’s Patriotic Front (PF) beat the UPND in a presidential election marred by violence and which the opposition says was rigged.

It was the second time that Lungu beat Hichilema, an economist and businessman popularly known by his initials “HH”, in a presidential election by a razor-thin margin. Lee Habasonda, a political science lecturer at the University of Zambia, said Hichilema’s release would ease political tension, improve Zambia’s image with investors and end mounting international pressure on Lungu’s government.

“In the face of Zambia seeking international assistance, it is time to make such a move because the state does not lose anything by releasing the opposition leader and dealing with him in other ways,” Habasonda told Reuters.
In June, church leaders including those from the influential Catholic Church, called for Hichilema’s release. Last month Lungu invoked emergency powers to deal with “acts of sabotage” by his political opponents, after fire gutted the country’s biggest market.

Under emergency laws police can prohibit public meetings, detain suspects longer than usual, search without a warrant, close roads, impose curfews and restrict certain people’s movements. The UPND has said Lungu’s use of emergency powers is unnecessary and a ploy to make it easier for police to arrest its supporters.

On Thursday police freed another opposition leader, United Progressive Party leader Saviour Chishimba, after holding him in detention for a week on accusations of defaming Lungu, an offence that carries a maximum five-year prison term. Chishimba hit the headlines in July after criticizing Lungu’s decision to impose emergency powers and suggesting the president should go to hospital for mental tests.

When he invoked the emergency powers, Lungu said the measure would safeguard investments in the country, which is Africa’s second-biggest copper producer and is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund over a financial aid package. The president said the IMF was free to terminate the negotiations if it considered his actions were wrong.

(Source: Reuters)

13, August 2017

French Cameroun Embassy in London comes under attack ⁰

A mammoth crowd of Southern Cameroonians converging in the UK have blocked all entrances leading to La Republique du Cameroon’s embassy in London. No car can pass through that road as angry protesters are staging a sit in strike. A serious traffic jam is slowly developing. Residents of the area say that if the protests continue for two more hours, almost a quarter of London will experience a lock down for most of the day.

The entrance into the embassy building has been barricaded by the British Police while the flag of La Republique could still be spotted flying. Some protesters hinted that as the crowd gathers and the day gets older, they will jump the barricade and bring down the doors, get in, remove and burn the flag of La Republique.

It is important to note that the UK remains a very import player in the struggle for the restoration of independence because the Brits failed to complete the independence process as was obliged by the Trusteeship Council of the UN in flagrant violation of international law.

Culled from AKOSON

13, August 2017

Akwaya people rally to back Southern Cameroons’s independence struggle ⁰

Hundreds of people from the Akwaya County have staged a demonstration in support of an independent state of Southern Cameroons. Some closed to 900 men and women from Tinta, Big Nyang, Abonadou took to the streets in Akwaya town on Saturday, expressing support for the interim leader of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council and the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

The Akawayas waved the Southern Cameroons flag and clamored for the release of Lord Justice Ayah Paul Abine. A representative of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council, who was present at the march, said the event was in solidarity with all prominent Manyu citizens arrested ever since the beginning of the Southern Cameroons revolution including Dr. Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Neba.

Our chief political correspondent in the Mamfe County observed that there were plenty of reasons behind the Akwaya rally. “The first is that the people of Southern Cameroons are demanding their own sovereignty. Others are saying they just want to create a fairer society. But a majority says that Ambazonia needs its sovereignty.”

Despite fierce opposition by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government, more than 80 percent of Southern Cameroonians have backed independence for Ambazonia, according to officials of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

Yaoundé is fiercely opposed to any independence bid by Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun political elites are hoping that the Southern Cameroons revolution would fail due to division among the 4.5 million residents of the territory.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Mpke Tambe in Akawaya

13, August 2017

300 Israelis desert military service in occupied lands ⁰

A report has revealed that hundreds of Israeli soldiers have abandoned their duties without permission, and are intent not to return in a show of disapproval of the military conscription policies of the Israeli regime.

The Hebrew-language news website Walla reported on Saturday that 300 Israeli troops had left or remained absent from their units over the past week. The report added that Israeli military officials have leveled charges against 60 soldiers, who have been dropped from their unit rolls and listed as deserters.

The report came as the Israeli military announced earlier this year that suicide was the main cause of death among Israeli soldiers, and that 15 troopers – all of them male – had taken their own lives last year. The army added that four soldiers were killed in the course of military operations, nine in on-base accidents, seven in off-duty car accidents and six died from illness or other medical reasons.

Another 43 soldiers were seriously hurt during the course of 2016. Most of the soldiers injured or killed were conscripted troops. A smaller portion were career soldiers, and a handful were reservists who were in service at the time of their deaths, the Israeli army said.

Source: Presstv

12, August 2017

Kenya: Uhuru Kenyatta wins second term as president ⁰

Kenya’s election commission has declared incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the country’s disputed presidential election. “Having fulfilled the requirement by law… I therefore wish to declare Uhuru Kenyatta… as president-elect,” said polls commission chairman Wafula Chebukati on Friday.

Kenyatta won the Tuesday polls with 54.27 percent of votes, beating his rival Raila Odinga, who scored 44.74 percent, the commission said. Following the announcement, angry protests erupted in Odinga’s strongholds. Reports say businesses are being looted and set on fire in the slum of Kibera in the capital city of Nairobi, while gunshots are heard in the port city of Kisumu.

In comments directed to opposition leader Odinga, Kenyatta called for national unity and peace. “I reach out to you, I reach out to all your supporters. To our brothers, our worthy competitors, we are not enemies, we are all citizens of the same republic,” Kenyatta said.

Kenyatta, 55, the son of Kenya’s first president after independence from British colonial rule, campaigned on a record of key infrastructure projects – many backed by China – while claiming strong economic growth. Odinga, 72, who is also the son of a leader of the independence struggle, presented himself as a champion of the poor and a fierce critic of corruption in the country.

Supporters of Kenya’s incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta celebrate after he was announced winner of the presidential election in the capital city of Nairobi on August 11, 2017. A day after the vote, Odinga rejected the preliminary results which put Kenyatta in the lead, claiming that the election commission’s voting systems had come under cyberattack, leading to “massive and extensive” vote fraud.

“You can only cheat the people for so long,” the opposition leader said. “The 2017 general election was a fraud.” The hacking claims prompted Kenya’s electoral commission to react and counter the allegations, assuring Kenyans that “all is well.” Tensions have been high since late last month, when Chris Msando, a key administrator of the biometric voting system, was murdered.

Despite Odinga’s call for calm, a group of his supporters took to the streets to rally against the preliminary results. The protests, however, turned violent after police forces intervened and fired tear gas at the crowd.

Two protesters were killed in Nairobi as riot police opened fire during the clashes on Wednesday. Kenyatta is broadly regarded as a representative of the nation’s largest ethnic group of Kikuyu, while Odinga is affiliated with the Luo voting bloc, which has never won a presidential race.

The top opposition candidate, who made his fourth presidential run, has further accused his rival of stealing victory from him through vote rigging both in the 2007 and 2013 polls. In 2007, the disputed election led to two months of ethnically-driven political violence that killed nearly 1,100 people and displaced 600,000 others.

Source: Presstv

12, August 2017

Contaminated eggs scandal spreads from Europe to Asia ⁰

A scandal involving eggs contaminated with insecticide spread to 15 EU countries, Switzerland and as far away as Hong Kong on Friday as the European Commission called for a special meeting on the growing crisis.

Brussels said the 15 affected EU countries were Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Britain, Austria, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Denmark, along with non-EU Switzerland. But in a sign the crisis is going global, Brussels also announced that Hong Kong had received some tainted eggs from the Netherlands, with the southern Chinese city becoming the first place in Asia known to be affected.

Hong Kong health minister Sophia Chan said Saturday authorities were “strengthening” inspections of eggs from Europe Ministers and food safety chiefs from around the European Union are set to meet on September 26 in a bid to get countries to stop “blaming and shaming” each other over the scare involving the chemical fipronil.

Millions of eggs have been pulled from supermarket shelves across Europe and dozens of poultry farms closed since the discovery of fipronil, which can harm human health, was made public on August 1. The issue has sparked a row between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, the three countries at the epicenter of the crisis, about how long they knew about the problem.

“Blaming and shaming will bring us nowhere and I want to stop this,” Vytenis Andriukaitis, the European Commissioner for health and food safety, told AFP as he announced the meeting. “We need to work together to draw the necessary lessons and move forward instead.”

European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said that “this is not, let’s be clear, a crisis meeting” and it is being held next month to get “distance to the events.” Fipronil is commonly used to get rid of fleas, lice and ticks from animals but is banned by the European Union from use in the food industry.

A picture taken on August 11, 2017 shows employees handle eggs at an egg farm in Gaesti. (By AFP)

The EU insists there is no threat to human health, but the World Health Organization (WHO) says that when eaten in large quantities it can harm people’s kidneys, liver and thyroid glands. As well as dealing with the immediate food safety issue, the EU is also seeking to calm tempers over the egg row after a series of divisive crises in the bloc in recent years, from Brexit to migration.

Belgium earlier this week accused the Netherlands of knowing about the fipronil eggs since November 2016 and failing to notify other countries. On Thursday Dutch Health Minister Edith Schippers admitted the government had made “errors” but denied a cover-up.

“We were well aware of a report of the presence of fipronil in the pens of egg-laying hens in November 2016, but there was no indication at the time that fipronil itself was found in the eggs,” said Schippers. A Dutch whistleblower separately said he had told the authorities that Chickfriend, the Dutch company at the center of the scandal, was illegally using fipronil in the treatment of lice in chicken pens in The Netherlands.

“I am the anonymous whistleblower,” Nick Hermens told the NPO public broadcaster. A Belgian company, Poultry Vision, has said it provided Chickfriend with the chemical. Dutch and Belgian investigators carried out coordinated raids on several premises on Thursday, arresting two people at Chickfriend.

However, Belgium itself has been forced to admit that it knew about fipronil in eggs back in June but kept it secret for nearly two months because of a criminal investigation. Fresh discoveries of contaminated eggs have continued daily. Denmark said on Friday it had found two tons of fipronil-tainted scrambled eggs, bringing the total of contaminated eggs to 22 tons, mainly from Belgium. Poland said it had discovered about 40,000 eggs imported from Germany.

French Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert said that since April the country had sold nearly 250,000 contaminated eggs, imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, but the risk for consumers was “very low” given French eating habits. The food scare is one of the biggest to hit Europe since the 2013 horsemeat scandal when equine meat was falsely labelled and mis-sold.

Previous food scandals include contamination of chickens and eggs by dioxin in 1999, which began in Belgium, and mad-cow disease — cattle feed contaminated by the ground-up carcasses of animals infected with a deadly brain disorder — which ran from roughly 1986-1998 and started in Britain.

(Source: AFP)

12, August 2017

Mr. Leo strikes again ⁰

Afro-pop and sensational artist, Mr Leo is back again, this time around with a hit song, “Partout”, dedicated to his fans for their support and continuous presence in his career.

The release comes barely four months after the artist and song writer made public a video music “C’est Faux”, a powerful vocal that denounces gossip and jealousy. The young Cameroonian superstar and brand ambassador settled for a rather slow but authoritative music clip.

State radio and television, CRTV reported that in just four days, the video has registered an impressive impact on the social media. Its YouTube has recorded over 121.679 views. The melody has been appreciated by many of his fans who say the song is a perfect blend of rap and afro beats.

Most of the shots were taken in Buea and featured Salatiel, Blaise B, Askia and Makon. Mr. Leo, one of the new generation artists, from Anglophone Cameroon is presently one of the most popular and successful artist on the African continent.

He signed to a local music production, Alpha Better Records and has some popular hits like “E go betta”, “Jamais Jamais”, “On va gérer” and “Kemayo”.

Source: CRTV