Kioo17 Journal

All radio and television stations in Uganda have been forced to adjust their Sunday programming, following a directive from the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) to broadcast President Museveni’s New Year message live. In his letter to all broadcasters in Uganda dated December 28, UCC executive Godfrey Mutabazi says they will be required to allocate Mr Museveni two hours to deliver his New Year message to Ugandans. ORDER: “Reference is made to our letter dated 22nd December 2017 under reference Number UCC/OED/02/17, on the above subject [live transmission of presidential New Year's message]. The Commission hereby notifies you of the changes made in the time for the live broadcast of His Excellency, the President's New Year's message on 31st December 2017,” reads a letter signed by Mr Mutabazi. “The President's New Year's Message has now been scheduled to be broadcast between 1900 hours to 2100 on the 31st December 2017.” ...

African asylum seekers take part at a protest against the “Deposit Law” in Tel Aviv on June 10, 2017. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90) Exactly one decade ago, liberal Israelis were boasting of their government’s treatment of the refugees who had recently begun entering the country, largely from Sudan. In the face of the genocide in Darfur, Jewish organizations all over the world had enlisted to move the international community to act. Israelis got on board, motivated by what Haaretz’s Bradley Burston called a “kinship of genocide.” In September 2017, after extensive hand-wringing, the Israeli government extended residency permits to roughly 500 refugees from Darfur. In an ordinary Western country, this would have been unremarkable. In Israel, which has virtually no legal paths to residency for non-Jews who aren’t related to Jewish citizens, this was a sweeping show of humanitarianism. The intervening years have seen a dramatic decline in the country’s treatment of the people who hav...

REUTERS  | London | Moscow : Russian tankers have supplied fuel to North Korea on at least three occasions in recent months by transferring cargoes at sea, according to two senior Western European security sources, providing an economic lifeline to the secretive Communist state. The sales of oil or oil products from Russia, the world's second biggest oil exporter and a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, breach U.N. sanctions, the security sources said. The transfers in October and November indicate that smuggling from Russia to North Korea has evolved to loading cargoes at sea since Reuters reported in September that North Korean ships were sailing directly from Russia to their homeland. "Russian vessels have made ship-to-ship transfers of petrochemicals to North Korean vessels on several occasions this year in breach of sanctions," the first security source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. A second source, who i...

From  THE ECONOMIST  |  This article appeared in the   Leaders   section of the print edition under the headline   "The world’s most valuable resource" A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world. Their profits are surging: they collectively racked up over $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon captures half of all dollars spent online in America. Google and Facebook accounted for almost all the revenue growth in digital advertising in America last year. Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up, ...

According to   hinnews.com : Ninety-three-year-old Robert Mugabe may not be the Zimbabwean president anymore‚ but he will be living like one. Mugabe was forced to resign in November‚ but the current president has – in an official gazette – revealed that Mugabe and his wife Grace are entitled to more than 25 staff‚ a fully furnished office‚ two properties‚ a fleet of cars for  ployees‚ private international travel and an entertainment allowance. Grace Mugabe will be looked after when Mugabe dies and be entitled to stay in an official residence. The Herald newspaper reported on Thursday that President Emerson Mnangagwa had released a special gazette detailing the benefits applicable to a retired president‚ their spouse and dependent children. Here are the perks allocated to Mugabe: - A fully furnished official residence in Harare - Housing allowance or a private residence anywhere in Zimbabwe with five bedrooms and three guestrooms or lump sum of money equ...

TUNDU LISSU. KIOO17 | Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: The Tanzanian Law Society's President and  Singida East MP for the main opposition party, CHADEMA, Tundu Lissu has issued a document condemning human rights violations and unlawful limitations of freedom of speech in Tanzania.  Lissu released the document yesterday on December 28, 2011 at Nairobi Hospital in Kenya where he has been treated since September 7, 2012 when he was attacked and shot more than eight times outside his residence in the country's capital, Dodoma. Lissu also mentioned the incident of the journalist of Mwananchi Communications Ltd (MCL), Azory Gwanda, who today is on 39th day since he disappeared at the Kibiti region on the Eastern coast of the country while performing his duties. "Tanzanians who have been using their freedom of opinion to give thought have been arrested and charged in court ... ... a Cadre of CHADEMA, Ben Saanane and the Mwananchi journalist (Azory Gwanda) have ...

The World Health Organization is adding an unexpected disorder to its list of mental health conditions in 2018. Next year, people who play an excessive amount of video games could find themselves diagnosed with "gaming disorder." WHO's beta draft of its upcoming 11th update of International Classification of Diseases characterizes gaming disorder as "a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour ('digital gaming' or 'video-gaming'), which may be online (i.e., over the internet) or offline, manifested by: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences." The inclusion of gaming disorder in the ICD-11 means health care workers and doctors can now...

Kenya has banned the smoking of water-pipe tobacco popularly known as shisha. The Health minister, Cleopa Mailu, in a gazette notice on Thursday barred the importation, manufacture, advertising and sale of shisha in the country. According to the legal notice, anyone found guilty of contravening the ban faces a Ksh50,000 (about $500) penalty or a six-month jail term or both. A further Ksh1,000 ($10) will be fined for each day a person infringes the law. "No person shall import, manufacture, sell, offer for sale, use, advertise, promote, facilitate or encourage shisha smoking in Kenya,"  Dr Mailu said in the notice. Kenya becomes the third East African country to ban shisha smoking after Tanzania and Rwanda in the last two years. Other countries with similar practice include Pakistan, Jordan Singapore and Saudi Arabia. The Director of Medical Services Jackson Kioko said:   "Our decision for the ban is informed by all a...

The Constitutional Court will hand down judgement on an application to have President Jacob Zuma impeached tomorrow. "We are expecting the full judgment tomorrow,"  said Eric Mabuza, the attorney for the EFF, UDM and Cope in the matter. He said that they were informed on Thursday morning that the court would be sitting. The court reserved judgment on the matter in September. The matter was brought by the country political opposition party, Economic Freedom Fighters(EFF), which is also seeking a declaratory order that the speaker of national assembly failed to hold the President accountable over the Nkandla-saga, The famous corruption allegations agaist the President Zuma. The opposition parties told the court that they wanted the establishment of a fact-finding ad hoc committee that would force Zuma to answer questions about his conduct during the Nkandla debacle. This follows the 2016 Constitutional Court ruling that the President failed to uphold, defend a...

THE ECONOMIST |  This article appeared in the   Middle East and Africa   section of the print edition under the headline   "Fall of the mountain king" THE palace gates are locked, but the bullet holes remain. It is a year since the Ugandan army and police raided the compound of the Rwenzururu king in the western town of Kasese. More than 100 people were killed, the bloodiest incident in the country for more than a decade.  The king, Charles Wesley Mumbere, and nearly 200 people were arrested; they still await trial, on charges including murder, terrorism and treason. “ The situation is only calm on the surface,”  says Geoffrey Madebeya, a local councillor. “Inside, we have tears.” The Bakonzo people, the main ethnic group in Kasese, straddle the vertiginous borderland between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the Rwenzori mountains.  It is here, the Ugandan government alleges, that Bakonzo radicals want to...

Oliver Gill made only four appearances in Manchester United's first team squad before choosing another path Image: Getty. Most people would do anything to play for the team they supported from being a child, just once. Oliver Gill was on the verge of doing that, and possibly more, but chose to go to university rather than stay at Manchester United. Not many footballers even get as playing for the under 18s at their team, let alone making the bench for a team in a Champions League game, even if it was a dead rubber. In December 2009 Oliver Gill, son of former Manchester United chief executive David, found himself on the bench when Manchester United faced Wolfsburg, a match that Michael Owen's hat-trick gave all three points to the Red Devils. Gill on one of his four occasions on the bench for United. Image: PA Images. But 18 months later he'd rejected a new deal at Old Trafford instead going to university to study economics. Now working...

According to South Korea’s  chosun llbo , U.S. recon satellites have photographed around 30 illegal transactions involving Chinese vessels selling oil to North Korea on the West Sea in October. The images allegedly showed large Chinese and North Korean ships transacting in oil in a part of the West Sea closer to China than South Korea. The satellite pictures even showed the names of the ships. A government source said,  “We need to focus on the fact that the illicit trade started after a UN Security Council resolution in September drastically capped North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum products.”    Meanwhile, on paper, China’s trade with North has recently collapsed after U.S. President Donald Trump unleashed a barrage of sanctions in September targeting North Korea’s imports of refined petroleum products. Back in November, the US. Treasury Department sanctioned an additional six North Korean shipping and trading com...

THE SACKED ZAMBIA'S MINISTER OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING. MR. LUCKY MULUSA. President Edgar Lungu has fired Minister of National Development Planning Lucky Mulusa. President Lungu has also revoked the nomination of Mr. Mulusa as a nominated member of Parliament. This is according to a brief statement released to the media by President Lungu’s Special Assistant for Press and Public Relations Amos Chanda. “His Excellency Mr Edgar Chagwa Lungu, President of the Republic of Zambia has terminated the services of Hon Lucky Mulusa as National Planning Minister and also revoked his nomination as Member of Parliament with immediate effect, ” read the brief statement. No reasons were given for Mr Mulusa’s dismisal. In October , National Planning and Development Minister Lucky Mulusa’s statement in which he likened the 42 fire tenders to wheelbarrows has gotten him into trouble with the PF leadership. Four PF members have wrote to President Lungu to press for Mr Mulus...

CAMBODIA'S PRIME MINISTER, HUN SEN. REUTERS | Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen vowed to extend his more than 30 years in power by at least another decade on Wednesday, weeks after the highest court dissolved the main opposition party ahead of a 2018 general election. The Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) was dissolved in November at the request of Hun Sen’s government, signaling what one rights group called the “death knell” for democracy in the Southeast Asian country. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre who defected from the genocidal group and helped drive it from power in 1979, is credited with helping Cambodia achieve economic growth but has also been criticized for his crackdown on civil society groups and the media. China, Cambodia’s biggest backer, has said it supports the government’s attempts to maintain Cambodia’s national security. At a speech given to thousands of garment workers on Wednesday at a pagoda on the outskirts o...

Now that North Korea has flexed its muscle and show it can launch an intercontinental ballistic missile further than most realized, the conversation about a war is more real today than ever. This has certainly created a paradigm shift in Kim Jong-un’s capabilities, and the President of the United States has certainly taken notice. Despite warnings from the USA that swift retaliation is forthcoming if the testing does not stop, North Korea is warning that they are ready to start a full-scale war with President Trump. With a North Korean warhead capable of hitting US soil, the question now is which countries would support North Korea in case it attacks USA? The following six countries would certainly want to stay on the good side of Kim Jong-un’s wage of war on President Trump and the rats living in the United States. 1. China – One of North Korea’s closest allies happens to be China, although they did condemn the most recent missile tests of Kim Jong-un. China wan...