DUNIA INAKWENDA WAPI?

Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 3:26 AM

Source: Mwananchi

Date::9/22/2009 'Gongagonga' afumwa akimlawiti mme wa mtu Na Habel Chidawali, Dodoma, TAnzania. POLISI mkoani Dodoma inamshikilia kijana mmoja wa umri wa miaka 17 kwa tuhuma za kumlawiti mwanamume mwenzake kwa njia za kishirikiana. Kijana huyo mkazi wa Chali, Isanga aliyejulikana kwa jina la Maneno Ngo’nda na ambaye ni maarufu kama ‘gonga gonga”, alikamatwa majira ya saa 6:00 usuiku kwenye kijiji hicho baada ya kufumwa akifanya kitedo hicho. Kamanda wa polisi mkoani hapa, Zelothe Stephen alisema kijana huyo, ambaye aliwahi kukamatwa kwa tuhuma za kuingilia wake za watu kwa njia za kimazingara, anaonekana kuwa na uzoefu wa kazi hiyo. Kamanda Zelothe alisema kuwa mtuhumiwa alikamatwa na wananchi waliomkuta akimlawiti mwanaume mwenye umri wa miaka 30 (jina limehifadhiwa) wa kijijini hapo. Zelothe alisema tukio hilo lilitokea wakati mtu huyo alipokuwa amelala na mkewe na kwamba mtuhumiwa alimtoa kitandani na kumshusha chini na kumfanyia kitendo hicho. Kwa mujibu wa Zelothe baada ya mke wa mtu huyo kuamka na kumkosa mumewe kitandani aliwasha taa na kumkuta mtuhumiwa akiendelea na kitendo hicho ndipo alipopiga kelele kuomba msaada. Akihojiwa kuhusu tukio hilo mtuhumiwa alisema kuwa alifanya hivyo baada ya kuona amewamaliza wanawake wote wa kijiji hicho. Alisema anawaingilia kimazingira ya kishirikina bila kujitambua na kufanya nao tendo la ndoa bila wao kujua kitu ambacho alikiri kuwa amekuwa akikifanya mara kwa mara na hivyo wanawake wa hapo kijijini wote aliokuwa akiwapenda alishafanya nao mapenzi. "Nimewamaliza wanawake wote hapa kijijini, sasa naona kuwa imefika zamu ya wanaume na kwamba huyu niliyekamatwa nae alikuwa ndio mwanaume wa kwanza kufanya tendo hili," alisema Gongagonga. Kamanda huyo alisema katika kesi ya awali mtuhumiwa aliachiwa huru kutokana na kukosekana kwa ushahidi wa kuthibitisha kuwa alimuingilia bila ridhaa mwanamke mmoja kijijini hapo kwa kutumia njia ya kishirikina. Katika tukio jingine, Sipundu Mtuli, 28, aliuawa na wananchi wenye hasira na kuchomwa moto baada ya kutuhumiwa kudaiwa kuiba mbuzi. Zelothe alisema kuwa tukio hilo lilitokea mnamo tarehe 20 mwezi huu majira ya saa moja usiku katika kijiji cha Nholi wilayani Bahi.

ASTAHILI PONGEZI MBUNIFU HUYU TOKA UGANDA

Imechangiwa na Mariam Ali Ana'am toka Atlanta, Georgia. Ilitoka GLOBALATLANTA.com ATlanta, Georgia, USA.
Atlanta, 09.17.2009.

From Atlanta Hotels, Tons of Soap Heading for Africa
By David Beasley

Video Links:

Sending Soap to Africa

Helping the Global Soap Project

Derreck Kayongo arrived in the U.S. from Africa 15 years ago and was staying at a hotel in Philadelphia, when he noticed that the cleaning crew would replace the bathroom soap each day, even if the bars were only slightly used.

“I called my Dad back home and told him, ‘You wouldn’t believe what happens here. They throw away soap that is used only once,’” said Mr. Kayongo.

His father, a former soap maker in Uganda, chalked it up to America’s wealth. People there can afford to waste soap, he said.

“We laughed about it,” said Mr. Kayongo. “But the idea stuck in my head. What if we took some of this soap back home, recycled it, made brand new soap and gave it to people who didn’t have a single bar of soap?”

After years of pondering the question, Mr. Kayongo, a field coordinator for Atlanta-based relief agency CARE International, this year launched an effort to collect used bars of hotel soap and recycle them for use in refugee camps in Uganda. He sees it as a way to fight the spread of disease and allow U.S. hotels to help Africa while also reducing the amount of trash they are paying to have hauled away to landfills.

Mr. Kayongo started by speaking to a meeting of Atlanta hotel managers last April. He was surprised at how many agreed to collect their used soap for him. There are now 40 Atlanta hotels participating. Mr. Kayongo has about two tons of soap in an Alpharetta warehouse and another two tons in a friend’s basement.

He hopes to make his first shipment to Africa in October. The soap will be shipped by freighter to Kenya and trucked to Uganda, where it will be sterilized and reshaped into new bars for distribution at refugee camps where soap is scarce. Reprocessing the soap will create jobs in Africa for local workers, he said.

Mr. Kayongo and his wife, Sarah Kayongo, who is also from Uganda and works for an Atlanta translation firm, have formed a non-profit corporation, the Global Soap Project. A freight forwarding company in Green Bay, Wis., Relief Cargo, that specializes in shipping donated items from humanitarian organizations, has agreed to defray part of the $18,000 cost of the first five-ton load to Africa. The project is also seeking donations to cover expenses.

“If we can make this work, I can see setting it up in every country in Africa,” said Relief Cargo president Andrew Drescher, whose company has shipped donated items ranging from blankets to school supplies, but never raw soap.

Soap Can Save Lives

The need for soap is great in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa where poverty and many other factors often make it difficult for people to get it, said Emmanuel d’Harcourt, a medical doctor and senior health director at International Rescue Committee, which specializes in resettling refugees and improving the conditions of the camps where they live.

“We have compelling evidence that hand washing with soap is very effective in combating diarrhea and other diseases,” Dr. d’Harcourt told GlobalAtlanta. Worldwide, 2 million people annually die of diarrhea, he said. A 2004 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that the number of deaths from diarrhea in the world’s poorest areas could be cut in half with increased hand washing with soap.

Steve Luby, one of the authors of that study who now heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emerging infections program in Bangladesh, sees promise in the soap project.

“It sounds to me like someone is trying to do something that is good for the world,” he told GlobalAtlanta in an e-mail interview. “I applaud this. It sounds like a better idea than discarding the soap in a landfill or doing nothing at all to address the problems of poverty or ill health.”

Poverty is the major reason there is so little soap in the poorest areas of the world, said Dr. Luby. “In Bangladesh, 70 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per person per day,” he said. “In these settings, it is very difficult for families to secure sufficient income for food, water and shelter. The population that would derive the greatest health benefits from soap is the population for whom it is least affordable.”

Bahadur Subba, an International Rescue Committee case worker in Atlanta, lived in a refugee camp in Nepal from 1992 to 2005. "We were not supplied with soap," he told GlobalAtlanta.

If families had money, they would buy soap from a local market. Those without money would use their food rations to buy soap. "People used to eat less," said Mr. Subba. "They would sell off the extra food in the local market and use the money to buy soap."

Expensive Soap, Diverted from Landfills

On a balmy August morning, Mr. Kayongo pulled his Ford Explorer up to the loading dock of Atlanta’s Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead and began transferring bars of soap from a dumpster into plastic bags to be hauled to the Alpharetta warehouse.

“This would all be in a landfill,” Mr. Kayongo said, lifting the heavy bags into his SUV.

The Ritz-Carlton room attendants collect the used bars of Bvlgari soap in separate bags for Mr. Kayongo instead of tossing them in the trash. It is expensive soap, selling new at retail for about $10 per bar.

The room attendants don’t mind the extra effort it takes to recycle the soap, said Valerie Stephens, room attendant trainer at the Ritz-Carlton. “When you’re thinking about someone else, it’s easier to do,” she said.

When the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead hotel manager, Olivia Brown, heard Mr. Kayongo speak at the hotel association meeting, she was impressed by his passion and by the chance for Ritz-Carlton to contribute to a community cause while increasing its recycling efforts.

Whether the donated soap will eventually help Africa, Ms. Brown is not sure. “If we don’t try, we won’t know,” she said.

At the Alpharetta warehouse, Mr. Kayongo opens the bags of soap, sorted by hotel, and displays them as if they were jewels. They are in different colors; yellow, bright green, white, with an assortment of scents such as lemon and sage. The more expensive the hotel, the larger, more colorful and fragrant, the bar of soap.

“The writing is still on this bar,” said Mr. Kayongo. “It’s still new soap.”

The Kayongos understand why Americans would be puzzled over why something as simple as soap would be hard to find in Africa. Yet they point to World Bank statistics that more than a billion people worldwide live on less than $1 per day.

“Having soap is really a luxury, believe it or not,” said Sarah Kayongo.

In northern Uganda, nearly 400,000 people still live in refugee camps following years of fighting between a rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army and government troops

Mr. Kayongo himself was once a refugee from Uganda. His family fled to Kenya following fighting during the reign of military dictator Idi Amin in the early 1970s. His father lost the soap business and a printing press but later returned to Uganda and became a member of parliament there.

With abundant donations from U.S. hotels and the need for soap so great, the Kayongos do not want to limit the project to Atlanta or to Uganda. The need is just too great, they said.

“How many hotels are in this country and how much soap are they throwing away?” Mr. Kayongo asked, preparing to collect another donation from another gleaming Atlanta hotel.

BADO WAFITINI WANAMCHOKONOA OBAMA

Hawaii again declares Obama birth certificate real
AP on Tuesday July 28, 2009



President Barack Obama gestures while speaking on the South Lawn of the White AP – President Barack Obama gestures while speaking on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, …

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By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer Jaymes Song, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jul 28, 1:54 am ET

HONOLULU – State officials in Hawaii on Monday said they have once again checked and confirmed that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.

They hoped to stem a recent surge in the number of inquiries about Obama's birthplace.

"I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said in a brief statement. "I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."

So-called "birthers" — who claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States — have grown more vocal recently on blogs and television news shows.

Fukino issued a similar press release Oct. 31, but was prompted to speak out again because of the renewed attention on Obama's beginnings. Hawaii's Health Department has been flooded in recent weeks with questions from individuals and several national TV news networks asking for proof that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

"They just keep asking over and over and over again," Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said.

The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. Birthers contend that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland. They've challenged his citizenship in court.

One widely circulated YouTube clip of a town hall meeting showed a Republican congressman getting booed for saying Obama is a citizen. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN's Lou Dobbs have also raised the issue, and 10 Republican members of Congress co-sponsored a bill that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.

However, it appears Congress has moved on and has accepted Obama's island birthplace. The U.S. House on Monday unanimously approved a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii becoming the 50th state. A clause was included that reads: "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."

State law bars the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.

However, Obama's birth certificate along with birth notices from the two Honolulu newspapers were brought forward even before he took office. But that's done nothing to shake the belief by many Obama critics that the president was born abroad.

HATUA ZA KUCHUKUA KULINDA VIINI-ASKARI

Imetoka kwa Dr. Weil.com

Your immune system is your interface with the environment, and a healthy immune system is the cornerstone of good health: it allows you to interact with germs and not get infections, with allergens and avoid allergic reactions, and with carcinogens and avoid getting cancer. Immune deficiency can be avoided with preventive measures: Maintain good oral hygiene (gum infections can use up a lot of the body's immune resources). Use antibiotics only when absolutely necessary and avoid immunosuppressive drugs unless there are no other alternatives left to consider. Cut back on sugar and stop eating polyunsaturated vegetable oils and artificially hardened fats - instead use extra-virgin olive oil and eat fresh fruits when craving something sweet. Don't forget moderate exercise - it helps keep every tissue in the body healthy and can raise levels of natural killer cells, a primary defense against cancer.

MAJADILIANO YA RASILIMALI ZA JAMHURI YA TANZANIA

The Bone of Contention still lies with the ever-expanding list of Union Matters in the First Schedule to The Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania, 1977.

It is now a very open secret tha the added matters after the originally agreed 11 Matters of the Union are ILLEGAL, and thus should be inoperative, as Shivji's book [(Issa G. Shivji, Pan Africanism or Pragmatism? : Lessons of the Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union, Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2008)] has amply revealed.

The legal fraternity and the general public who are empowered and take the trouble to follow current events in our country know fully well that the answer to all the UNION questions posed by both sides (Bara na Visiwani) lie on the PARTICIPATORY FORMULATION OF A NEW TANZANIAN CONSTITUTION.

The question is: Would the Chama cha Mapinduzi be courageous enough to emulate the Apartheid Regime of South Africa to legislate itself out of existence? That is, by allowing the participation of the Tanzanian public to contribute to the whole democratic process of writing a new Tanzanian Constitution?

BURIANI TAJUDEEN ABDUL-RAHEEM

BURIANI TAJUDEEN ABDUL-RAHEEM
>
> May 26, 2009 (MAKALA YAKE YA MWISHO)
>
> Govts discourage enterprise and penalise those fighting
> poverty
> Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
>
>
> The irony of Africa being a very rich continent but
> Africans being some of the poorest peoples in the world is
> no longer lost to anyone. While we can argue about the
> historical, structural, attitudinal, personal and
> institutional causes of this state of affairs, the fact
> remains that majority of our peoples remain in need amidst
> plenty.
>
> Decades of aid, humanitarian intervention, prayers,
> activism, development plans, action plans, government
> declarations and so many other initiatives have not produced
> fundamental change for the poorest and weakest sections of
> our societies. Yet Africans remain one of the most
> optimistic peoples, perpetually believing that tomorrow will
> be better. It is always a miracle how majority of
> the poor, whether in our urban slums or impoverished rural
> areas, survive.
>
> Our cities' overburdened road infrastructures have
> spurned entrepreneurship in the form of shops on roads and
> legs meandering between armies of pedestrians and impatient
> vehicle drivers frustrated at the gridlock traffic.
> Similarly informal settlements have developed, several times
> the size of our capital cities with little or no
> infrastructures. Some of them like Kibera Slum in Nairobi
> are even becoming 'famous' globally for poverty
> tourism. Unfortunately, it is not the impoverished peoples
> in these settlements who are even the beneficiaries of their
> own poverty.
>
> The majority of Africans continue to survive not because of
> government but in spite of governments. They eke out a
> living to keep body and soul together, provide for their
> families, doing all kinds of dirty work with little pay or
> selling anything that is buyable; hawking all kinds of
> household wares,
> fruits, vegetables and myriad of consumer items.
>
> The concept of informal settlements in Africa is not just
> about where people live but extends to informal markets in
> all kinds of goods and services.
>
> As the son of a hardworking woman who was a 'petty
> trader', I confess to a bias in favour of these
> small entrepreneurs who do not depend on any connections
> with government officials, politicians and big business
> influence. You go to many neighbourhoods rich or poor
> and you will find these largely female entrepreneurs,
> selling food to those working on construction sites, cheap
> vegetables to other poor members of the society from their
> baskets, trays or single tables at the corners of roads and
> streets.
>
> So living in Kenya, a settler, apartheid type state in all
> but name, I find myself in solidarity with 'Mama
> Mboga'. These are women who sell vegetables from their
> trays, or traditional load carriers tied to their heads,
> carried
> on their backs.
>
> From Mama Mboga selling daily perishable vegetables, the
> ambition is to own a kiosk where you can have storage for
> more goods , stock more, put a fridge and freezer that
> can preserve perishable items. When Mama Mboga becomes a
> kiosk owner, it is a personal triumph of hope over
> adversity- a long journey from grinding poverty to
> bearable survival and foundations for permanent exit from
> poverty. The bigger the kiosk and the better stocked it is,
> the further away the owner is from poverty. Government
> policy is threatening the survival of the Mama Mbogas across
> this continent. In the name of ridding cities of illegal
> constructions, returning to the original city plans and
> 'beautifying' our cities, city councils and central
> governments are creating more poverty. Of what use is
> a 'beautiful city' inhabited by people who have lost
> their livelihoods? Would they appreciate the beauty?
>
> The Mama Mbogas are on
> the street and in kiosks because they cannot afford the
> malls and most of their clientele cannot afford the price in
> the malls.
>
> Our elite are embarrassed by the mass poverty that
> surrounds us but they are unwilling to provide leadership
> and appropriate policies to take our peoples to prosperity.
> Instead they engage in avoidance and denial mechanisms to
> pretend to visitors that 'everything is okay'.
>
> That's why they rid our capitals of beggars, hawkers,
> and other undesirables before any major
> 'international' conference, but out of sight is not
> out of mind for the Mama/Baba Mbogas in our midst. You can
> pull down their kiosks and destroy their tables but they
> will come back with new tables, under umbrellas and their
> clientele will know where to find them. By no means are
> there clients all wretched of the earth. I still call my
> favourite Mama Mboga, Mama Sarah, or her husband, Martin, to
> send me top up cards from wherever Nairobi City Council
> have forced them to.
>
>
> Dr Tajudeen, a respected Pan Africanist and Daily Monitor
> columnist, died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya on May 25, 2009. This column, written last week, was his last for
> Daily Monitor. May his soul rest in peace.

MABADILIKO YA DUNIA YANAVYOELEKEA KUTOKOMEZA UHAI

Climate Change Killing 300,000 Per Year
CNN
posted: 17 HOURS 35 MINUTES AGO
LONDON (May 29) -- The first comprehensive report into the human cost of climate change warns the world is in the throes of a "silent crisis" that is killing 300,000 people each year.
More than 300 million people are already seriously affected by the gradual warming of the earth and that number is set to double by 2030, the report from the Global Humanitarian Forum warns.Skip over this content
The Effects of Global Warming

David Longstreath, AP23 photos




A new report examines the human cost of climate change, which it said causes more than 300,000 deaths per year. The report, released Friday, shows the impact of climate change on population displacement, malnutrition and diseases, such as malaria. "Climate change is not something waiting to happen," said former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.


Speaking to CNN's Becky Anderson in London on Friday, Annan said the migration of people from newly uninhabitable areas presents a security issue that needs to be addressed by the United Nations Security Council.
"This is one of the reasons why I've described climate change as all encompassing," he told CNN. "This threat to our health, this threat to food production, this threat to security. It raises political tensions, it will have people on the move -- and they are on the move -- and many more which will bring tensions."
The report, titled "Human Impact Report: Climate Change -- The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis" comes just six months before the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto climate agreement for 2012 and beyond. Skip over this content
Embedded video from CNN Video
Annan called on Member States to reach a "global, effective, fair and binding" outcome on climate change, as the report warned that the talks could "well be the last chance for avoiding global catastrophe."
He told CNN: "The U.S. administration has joined the mainstream about fighting climate change and that is a big step, and I hope that will also put a new momentum into the negotiations."
The report's startling numbers are based on calculations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the Earth's atmosphere warmed by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1906 to 2005, with much of that increase coming in recent decades. The panel predicts that by 2100 temperatures will have increased a minimum of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels regardless of what's agreed in Copenhagen.
"No matter what," the report concludes, "the suffering documented in this report is only the beginning." A rise of two degrees, it says, "would be catastrophic."
Of the 300,000 lives being lost each year due to climate change, the report finds nine out of 10 are related to "gradual environmental degradation," and that deaths caused by climate-related malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria outnumber direct fatalities from weather-related disasters.
The vast majority of deaths -- 99 percent -- are in developing countries which are estimated to have contributed less than one percent of the world's total carbon emissions.Skip over this content
Frightening Forecast for Earth


The report warns climate change threatens all eight of the Millennium Development Goals -- a set of goals agreed on by leading nations in 2000 that aim to reduce extreme poverty by 2015. The goals include eradicating hunger, reducing child mortality, and halting the spread of diseases including HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Around 45 million of the 900 million people estimated to be chronically hungry are suffering due to climate change, the report says. Within 20 years that number is expected to double. At the same time food production is expected to fall, driving food prices up 20 percent.
The countries considered to be most vulnerable are those in the semi-arid dry land belt that runs from the Sahara/Sahel to the Middle East and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and parts of the U.S., small island states and the Arctic region.Skip over this content
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Australia is singled out as the developed country most vulnerable to the direct impacts of climate change. Over the past 15 years, the combination of rising temperature and lower rainfall has produced the worst drought in the country's recorded history.
While developed countries -- including Australia -- have committed funds to counter the impact of climate change, the Global Humanitarian Forum says developing nations need a dramatic injection of funds -- up to 100 times more than is currently available to help them adapt to the changes.
The total economic cost of climate change each year is thought to be $125 billion, although the Forum warns that figure may be too conservative and doesn't take into account the impacts on "health, water supply and other shocks."
While commissioned by the Global Humanitarian Forum, the report was reviewed by a panel of experts, including Rajendra Pachauri of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Barbara Stocking of Oxfam. Skip over this content
High Water Risk in the U.S.



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2009-05-29 15:16:37