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Allegations of fraud and ballot stuffing have been raised by the opposition leaders, leading to their call for a demonstration on the inauguration day.
Critics have called it a stunt to invite sympathy. Yet Amuriat says campaigning without shoes is a protest and that those who do not get its symbolism are missing a point.
Uganda is due to hold a general election on January 14. Amuriat and another opposition candidate, Bobi Wine have had their rallies violently dispersed by security forces or been arrested.
In mid-November, scores of people were killed as security forces attempted to quell protests against the arrest and detention of Bobi Wine.
Police has accused the candidates of addressing huge gatherings in contravention of regulations on COVID-19 prevention.
Swollen feet
In an interview with one of the dailies in Uganda, Amuriat said his feet hurt a lot and has to pour cold water on them in between campaign stops for some relief.
Doctors have cautioned him on the potential danger of contracting tetanus from cuts to his feet.
Yet Amuriat remains adamant. He says by refusing to wear shoes, he’s standing in solidarity with people whose wealth and opportunities have been stolen by the country’s longtime ruler Yoweri Museveni.
JUST IN: FDC presidential candidate Patrick Amuriat has been arrested at the border of Rubirizi and Bushenyi districts. The reason for his arrest is yet to be known📹 @MukhayeD#MonitorUpdates#UGDecides2021 pic.twitter.com/xopK4FMoD0
— Daily Monitor (@DailyMonitor) December 4, 2020
Museveni, in power since 1986 is seeking a new term. In 2017, he changed the constitution to remove age limits that would have stopped him from seeking re-election.
FDC is Uganda’s largest opposition party. In 3 previous elections, the party fronted veteran activist and retired army colonel Kizza Besigye for president.
Halle Berry, who was born Maria Halle Berry, is a multiracial model, actress, and former beauty queen who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1968. Her mother Judith Hawkins Berry, who is white, worked as a psychiatric nurse in a Cleveland hospital. Berry’s African American father, Jerome Berry, was an attendant at the same hospital. Berry’s parents divorced when she was four and she was subsequently raised by her mother.
Halle Berry grew up in an African American neighborhood in her younger years, but then her mother Judith relocated the family to a white neighborhood. Berry attended Bedford High in Cleveland and quickly became involved in cheerleading and the school newspaper. She was also class president, a member of the honor society, and Prom Queen of her class. Berry became Miss Teen Ohio in 1985 which led her to winning the Miss Teen All-American title the same year and then Miss Ohio in 1986. Berry came in second place in Miss USA in 1986 and was the first African American to compete for the Miss World competition in 1986.
As she developed a budding modeling career Berry also studied broadcast journalism at Cuyahoga Community College for a short time before she decided to become an actress. She traveled to Chicago where she modeled and learned about acting. In 1989 Berry was cast in a short-lived television series, Living Dolls. While taping one of the episodes she lapsed into a coma and was diagnosed as a diabetic. Nonetheless Berry was noticed by filmmaker Spike Lee who gave her a supporting role in his 1991 film Jungle Fever, where she gave a powerful performance as Vivian, a drug addict. That role led her to recurring role in the television series Knot’s Landing and other film roles including Boomerang (1992), The Flintstones (1994), Losing Isaiah (1995), Bulworth and Executive Decision (1996), X-Men (2000), Swordfish (2001), Die Another Day (2002), and Catwoman (2005).
Berry married David Justice, a baseball player, in 1992 but their marriage lasted only two years. She was married to
[Monitor] The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party yesterday challenged the Electoral Commission (EC) to summon all political candidates defying Covid-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs) during campaigns, including President Museveni.
[African Arguments] I was arrested and beaten last week for daring to contest the presidential election. This is not a fair fight, but I have no option but to be strong.
Cuango — At least twenty four health technicians, including nurses and doctors, have been trained to handle positive cases of covid-19 in Cuango municipality, Lunda Norte province.
The Cuango municipality has a reference hospital, with 26 beds for the admission and treatment of patients with Covid-19.
Guilherme Cango informed that the municipality has a genexpert device, to perform tests of the new coronavirus, waiting only the cartridges for the purpose.
As part of the restrictions imposed by the Angolan state to halt the spread and/or import of the virus, all the country's borders were closed.
The governor of Lunda Norte province, Ernesto Muangala, Tuesday in the town of Xacassau, municipality of Lucapa, called for the involvement of traditional authorities in raising awareness of the population to comply with preventive measures to combat the new Coronavirus.
The 70-page draft review - circulated last month to aid officials working in Congo and obtained by The New Humanitarian - looks at everything from corruption within the Ebola response to how women and girls are subjected to sexual exploitation.
The operational review was commissioned by an anti-fraud taskforce created by UN agencies and aid groups in Congo after the NGO Mercy Corps discovered a fraud scheme in late 2018 - first made public this week by TNH - that raised the alarm about widespread corruption and problems with the systems designed to root it out.
The review was shared with TNH by a senior aid official working in Congo who expressed dissatisfaction with how the humanitarian sector is managing fraud and corruption risks.
DFID, a major donor to humanitarian aid in Congo, said it had provided funding for the review because it is committed to tackling fraud and corruption, but refused to comment on the findings and recommendations until a final version is published later this month.
Fraud, mistrust, and lost aid
Ongoing corruption has caused a mutual lack of trust between the aid sector and local communities, who \"perceive humanitarian aid as corrupt and driven by external agendas\", according to the draft review.
Polling station closed across Burundi on Wednesday in a largely incident free process in keenly watched general elections.
Burundians stood in long lines outside polling stations, which opened shortly after six am, most centers had hand washing points for people arriving to vote and election officials had some protective equipments in some instances.
Meanwhile, main opposition candidate, Agathon Rwasa, has protested what he says is fraud in Wednesday’s general election.
He said his party’s election observers were chased away from some polling stations.
In the presidential vote, 5.1 million registered voters are to choose between Nkurunziza’s handpicked heir and frontrunner, 52-year-old general Evariste Ndayishimiye, main opposition competitor Agathon Rwasa, and five other candidates.
[East African] Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have indicated they will tighten controls on mineral exports to tame a weakening local currency against the US dollar.
The Futsal Super League is the youngest of the 12 competitions under the football association, Fufa.
Majority of the clubs are desirous to complete the season but league managers sense obstacles in return to action.
When Fufa declared the football season null and void last week, the futsal organising body, FAU, was allowed more time to take a decision.
Ghulam Ssengendo, the manager of league leaders, Park, said: \"Clubs have been hit financially and will find it impossible to compete fairly and field players while adhering to the guidelines.\"
At the beginning of the season, FAU became a full member of Fufa which tightened competition rules.
The Springboks started the year atop the standings and they will finish the year in the same position, despite not playing a single Test.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has begun administering Ebola vaccinations in an effort to curb the spread of the virus which resurfaced in the country recently.
With the help of various partners, vaccination begun over the weekend in the north-east of the country, a region considered the epicentre of the epidemic.
A new outbreak in Mbandaka, the capital of Equateur province, announced on May 31, is Congo’s 11th outbreak.
The outbreak coincides with a waning epidemic in the east of the country where 2,280 have died since August 1, 2018.
The mineral rich nation is hoping to declare the end of this epidemic on 25 June, after a 42-day countdown with no new cases.
On 20 May, the official committee to fight the coronavirus said three of its workers were threatened at knifepoint, part of what the government last Friday described as \"rising cases\" of abuse of virus campaigners.
When official figures were quoted to him – the DRC has documented more than 3 300 cases rising at the rate of more than a hundred a day, almost all of them in Kinshasa, with 72 dead – Hussein was dismissive.
Many people surviving on day-to-day jobs have borne the brunt of emergency measures that President Felix Tshisekedi introduced on 20 March.
The deaths from Covid-19 include around a dozen people at the apex of power in the DRC, according to official figures.
\"Scientifically, there is still no proof that has come forward to say anything other than that Covid-19 caused the deaths that we have regretfully seen in the president's circle,\" Tshisekedi's spokesperson, Tharcisse Kasongo Mwema Yamba Y'amba, told state broadcaster RTNC, which asked him about the rumours.
A federal judge on Monday permanently blocked Georgia’s 2019 “heartbeat” abortion law, finding that it violates the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled against the state in a lawsuit filed by abortion providers and an advocacy group. Jones had temporarily blocked the law in October, and it never went into effect. The new ruling permanently enjoins the state from ever []
Luanda — The 9th Extraordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) takes place on the 3rd and the 4th of June, in videoconference, with the participation of the Angolan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Téte António.
The session will address, among other items on the agenda, the pre-selection of the members of the ECCAS Commission, as well as analyze the political and security situation in the Central African Republic, based on the Report of the Secretary General of ECCAS, prepared by the Central African Rapid Alert System.
The analysis of the information note prepared by the ECCAS 's Secretariat about the modalities of organizing the next session of the ECCAS Conference of Heads of State and Government will also be reviewed on the first day of works.
The session basically aims to discuss the reform process of the regional organization, whose revised Treaty was initialed by the Heads of State and Government during the IX Extraordinary Summit held in Libreville, Republic of Gabon, in December 2019, which, among other decisions, called on member states to present candidates to fill the organic framework of the regional body.
ECCAS was created in Libreville, Gabon, in October 1983 and groups together Angola, Cameroon, Burundi, Chad, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo, Rwanda and São Tomé and Prince.
Government will have to purchase over 137,000 television sets if they are to facilitate distance learning as proposed by President Museveni.
In his televised address on Monday, Mr Museveni postponed the partial reopening of schools for another one month but said \"children must continue studying under the distance learning programme\" on televisions and radios.
He made a number of proposals to facilitate the programme, among them; provision of two television sets to each village and a radio set to each home.
Mr Museveni says much as there are fears that the TV sets could bring about congregation, thereby undermining social distancing of the children, he is optimistic that it is easy to identify any child who has the virus since they are from one village.
\"Children from the same village, if they have sickness it would have already shown up,\" added Mr Museveni.
The Electoral Commission (EC) has outlined measures to curb spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) as it laces its boots for the compilation of a new voters register.
Though it is yet to give an exact date for the exercise, the EC has given indication of compiling a new register once it gets the green light from health experts.
The EC had scheduled April 18 for compilation of the new voters register ahead of the December general elections but had to put it on hold due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country.
The move to discard the old voter register, the EC contends, is in favour of the new Biometric Voter Management System (BVMS) which would among other things have a facial recognition ability.
The NDC has however vehemently resisted attempts by the EC to register citizens for a new register amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dundo — The eastern Lunda Norte government is intensifying precautionary measures in the border areas with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to halt the import and spread of Ebola in Angolan territory.
The DRC government announced on Monday the emergence of a new Ebola outbreak in Wangata County, Mbandaka, in the province of Ecuador (north).
Although the outbreak has not yet spread to the provinces of Kassai Central, Kassai, Kwango in DRC, which share border with Angola's municipalities of Cuango, Cambulo, Cuilo, Lóvua and Caungula, the government is anticipating prevention measures so as not to be caught by surprise.
According to Lunda Norte governor, Ernesto Muangala, the local government has enough biosecurity material and drugs to prevent contagion and possible positive cases of the epidemic.
He also said intervention health teams and epidemiological surveillance are being strengthened which, in addition to raising awareness about Ebola, will advise citizens living along the borders to continue to observe the COVID-19 pandemic prevention measures.
BANGUI (Reuters) - Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera has won five more years in power by securing more than 53% of votes in an election that was marred by violence, according to provisional results announced on Monday. The electoral commission declared Touadera the winner of the Dec. 27 election, saying he had secured enough votes in the first round to make a second round runoff unnecessary in the gold- and diamond-producing country. Touadera, 63, has struggled to wrest control of vast swathes of the country from armed militias since first winning power in 2016, three years after former President Francois Bozize was ousted by another rebellion. The presidential election went ahead despite an offensive by rebel groups who tried to disrupt the vote after Bozize’s candidacy was rejected by the country’s highest court. “Faustin-Archange Touadera, having received the absolute majority of the vote in the first round with 53.9%, is declared winner,” Mathias Morouba, the electoral commission’s president, told a news conference in the capital, Bangui. He said about half of the country’s electorate, or around 910,000 people, had registered to vote and turnout among the registered voters was 76.3%. Provisional results of a legislative election held the same day will be announced at a later date, Morouba said. INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED Separately on Monday, prosecutors said an investigation had been launched into Bozize’s role in the rebellion intended to disrupt the election. Bozize and other accomplices were being investigated for various crimes including sedition, rebellion, assassination and theft, the prosecutors said in a statement. Bozize could not immediately be reached for comment. His party had previously denied the government’s accusations that the former president was plotting a coup, but some in the party have suggested that they are working with the rebels. The vast but sparsely populated country of 4.7 million which is larger than France has struggled to find stability since Bozize was ousted in 2013. Successive waves of violence since then have killed thousands and forced more than a million from their homes. The United Nations, which has over 12,000 peacekeepers in the country, said in a statement that calm had returned to Bangassou, a town attacked on Sunday by rebels allied to Bozize. “The situation in Bangassou is calm but tense, with the presence of armed elements in parts of the city,” the U.N. mission said, adding that 180 civil servants and workers from humanitarian organisations had sought refuge at its base. - Reuters
Luanda — The Council of Ministers of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) approved Thursday, by consensus, the candidate of Angola for the position of president of the organ's Commission, Gilberto Veríssimo, as part of the ongoing reform process.
The two-day meeting held Wednesday and Thursday in Luanda also approached the need to fill the vacancies for the positions of vice-chairs of Commissions for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Rural Development.
The meeting, held via videoconference, also approved the methods for electing the members of ECCAS Commission and discussed the political and security situation in the Central African Republic (CAR).
As for the draft regional strategy against the covid-19 pandemic, the members decided to hold a meeting, still without a date, to tackle the issue.
Created in 1983, ECCAS comprises Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and São Tomé and Príncipe.
With 156 out of 266 districts counted, Mohamed Bazoum had crossed the one million vote mark while his closest rival - Mahamane Ousmane trailed with 425,000 votes
Kenya and Tanzania are among 16 African countries set to benefit from 2Africa, a subsea 4G and 5G Internet project that will link them Europe and the Middle East.
The other African countries in the project are Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Gabon, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Egypt, Djibouti, Sudan and Somalia.
The system is expected to go live in 2023, delivering more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180 terabytes per second on key parts of the system.
The project aims at delivering Internet capacity and reliability across large parts of Africa and push growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people.
The 2Africa cable has been designed to improve resilience and maximise performance, including the option of a seamless optical crossing between East Africa and Europe.
By COLLEEN LONG and ED WHITE Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and his allies say their lawsuits aimed at subverting the 2020 election and reversing his loss to Joe Biden would be substantiated, if only judges were allowed to hear the cases. There is a central flaw in the argument. Judges have heard the cases and have been among the harshest critics of the legal arguments put forth by Trump's legal team, often dismissing them with scathing language of repudiation. This has been true whether the judge has been appointed by a Democrat or a Republican, including […]
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