60 die in Darfur gold mine collapse

 A tub full of gold nuggets is shown at a gold mine in the Sudanese
 desert

Sudan, May 2 – Dozens of people have been killed in a gold mine collapse in Sudan’s Darfur, said the chief of the district where fighting over gold in January led to the region’s worst unrest in years.
It is not known how many people may still be missing after Monday’s accident.
“The number of people who died is more than 60,” Haroun al-Hassan, the local commissioner in Jebel Amir, North Darfur, said on Thursday, adding that rescue operations were still taking place.
“I cannot give exact figures because no one got precise numbers of how many people were going inside the tunnel,” which went down 40 metres (yards), he said.
Rescuers were using traditional tools to try to reach the victims, he said, without specifying whether anyone might still be alive.
“We cannot use machines because if they came near, the ground will collapse. People are using traditional tools and because of this, the rescue is very slow,” Hassan said.
Seven weeks of clashes between two Arab tribes in Jebel Amir during January and February killed more than 500 members of the Beni Hussein tribal group, a Benni Hussein member of parliament for the area said earlier.
The violence uprooted an estimated 100,000 people.
Fighting erupted on January 5 between Beni Hussein and another Arab tribe, the Rezeigat, when a Rezeigat leader who is an officer in Sudan’s Border Guard force apparently laid claim to a gold-rich area in Beni Hussein territory, Amnesty International said.
Humanitarian sources said at the time that the incident was the worst example of inter-Arab violence to emerge in the past two years as government-linked Arab groups got “out of control” and turned on each other.
One humanitarian source said the Beni Hussein had refused to pay newly imposed government mining fees adding up to “huge, huge money”.
Gold has become a key commodity for cash-strapped Sudan since South Sudan separated two years ago with the loss of about 75 percent of the country’s oil production.

South Africa suspends protocol boss over wedding flight scandal Read more,

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa suspended a senior foreign ministry official on Thursday after a charter plane carrying nearly 200 guests for the wedding of a family with close ties to President Jacob Zuma used an Air Force base without proper military permission.

The scandal over Tuesday’s flight from India to the Waterkloof Air Force Base near Pretoria has dominated South African media, with newspapers and radio phone-in callers accusing the wealthy Gupta family of influence peddling.

 

The defence ministry said it had rejected a request from the Guptas to use the base but the Indian High Commission in Pretoria then went behind its back and sought authorisation from the Chief of State Protocol at the foreign ministry.

 

“The clearance should be rescinded and that aircraft should immediately be removed,” it said in a statement.

 

The foreign ministry said its protocol chief, Bruce Koloane, had been suspended to “allow the department to get to the bottom of this matter”, adding that no “executive authority” was granted for a civilian aircraft to land at the base.

 

Foreign ministry spokesman Clayson Monyela confirmed that the flight carried some Indian state ministers arriving for the wedding.

 

The business empire of Gupta brothers Atul, Ajay and Rajesh covers mining, resources, aviation and technology. Two of Zuma’s children have served as directors of Gupta firms, according to South Africa’s companies database, and the family is a major financial backer of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

 

   

Tycoon Flies Singer Kabasiita To UK, Wendy pissed

Kabasiita

 Info reaching us from Entebbe based fusion band is that curvaceous singer Maureen Kabasiita has jetted out to the UK where she is set to deliver a tycoon’s kid.

However, insiders have revealed that the ‘Kasengejja’ singer’s trip left some people pissed like the former Tusker Project fame star Winfrey Nanyonjo aka Wendy

Apparently, wendy is unhappy because while she was giving birth to a baby boy last month, she was never treated like a queen. Previously, there has been bad blood between Iryn Namubiru, Shamim, Desire, Daina, Phina and Wendy.

A source revealed that every one among those members has a special treatment. Some are given cars whereas others are rented special houses away from band houses where the regular members stay

Miss UG Regional Tours Kick Off

The REDD’S sponsored Miss Uganda title is set to kick off this weekend with a regional tour to Lira. Sources have intimated that several babes have been picking entries into the Miss Uganda Franchise owners.

Aspirants form across the region are expected to turn up in numbers at Lira Hotel for auditions on Thursday May 2, 2013 to identify the top 20 finalists who will feature in the regional pageant on Saturday.

 The next regional pageant will be in Mbarara on 18^th may and for the first time in the pageant’s history, Miss Uganda 2013 will take home a luxurious Mercedes Benz A-class and a monthly allowance of shs1.5mfor one year. The run up will take will take 1m while the second runner up will bag shs500000 in addition to various prizes.

Kilembe Mines Hospital Closed After Floods

Kilembe Mines Hospital in Kasese has been temporarily closed following the Wednesday floods.

one of the wards doused in water

The heavy downpour that started on Wednesday morning forced water downstream to villages in low-lying areas.
The Medical Superintendent, Edward Wafula says that the facility will remain closed until rehabilitation on some of the facilities like the medical store, kitchen, surgery rooms, private wards, and the drug store, which were all washed away during the floods, is done.

This is one of the hospital’s private wards covered in mud

Wafula told Uganda Radio Network that some of the patients have been transferred to Kasese Municipal health centre III, Bwera hospital and Kagando hospital.
Several relatives of the patients were seen at the compound of the hospital carrying the patients to ambulances and other vehicles, to be transferred. They were accompanied by some medical workers of Kilembe hospital.

The hospital’s staff quarters were not spared by the over flooding River Nyamwamba. Only one house was left standing

Francis Muhindo, a resident of Rugendebara Sub County, says that he had brought his wife to give birth. He says that he is worried about her health and that of the baby as she has to travel a long distance to Bwera hospital, where she has been transferred after the floods.
Muhindo says that the hospital management should have set up temporarily structure at the hospital to handle emergency cases.
On Wednesday, medical workers at the hospital struggled to evacuate the patients who included pregnant women and children from the wards that were flooded. Some patients were removed from the surgical, children and emergency wards.
Meanwhile the bodies of the four people who were killed by the floods have been recovered.

DRIVE HOT,

mail,princerado2006@yahoo.co.uk

 

In a telephone interview, Godfrey Kabyanga, the Mayor Kasese Municipal Council identified the dead as Paddy Karunsi, Gad Mbusa, a teacher at Kakiri Primary School identified as Kibuzu and Grace Kabugho, all residents of Kanyaruboga in Bulembia division in Kasese Municipal Council. The four bodies were found trapped in the mud.

most of the roads were impassable on Wednesday

According to Kabyanga, they are searching for two residents from the same area, who are still missing.
This morning, workers of the Red Cross from Kasese and Kabarole erected tents for the displaced people who have temporarily camped at Kisementi in Kilembe Township.
Elijah Muzigiti, the chairperson Kasese Red Cross Society, told Uganda Radio Network in a telephone interview that more than 900 people have been displaced by the floods. Most of the displaced are from Kyanjukli and Kanyaruboga villages in Kasese Municipal Council.
Red Cross spokesperson Catherine Ntabadde confirms that at least 432 homes have been affected by the floods. 200 of these homes have been completely destroyed.
On Wednesday, the floods hit the district after River Nyamwamba burst its banks, submerging several homes.
The floods cut off the Kasese-Fort Portal Road, leaving many vehicles and people stranded.
Several houses in areas along the banks of River Nyamwamba were submerged, leaving their occupants stranded.
Parts of the Nyakasanga Airfield and the neighbouring playfield, all in Kasese town were also cut off.
River Nyamwamba, which is fed by melting glaciers from the Rwenzori Mountains, is the main source of water for both agriculture and domestic, including the Mubuku Irrigation Scheme.

460 people killed in bloody month for Iraq

In Summary

 The majority of April's deaths came during a wave of unrest near the end of the month, when security forces moved on Sunni anti-government protesters in the north, sparking clashes that killed 53 people.

Violence in Iraq rose sharply in April, killing 460 people, according to figures, and May began with attacks on Wednesday, including one on a police station, that killed 18 people.

The majority of April's deaths came during a wave of unrest near the end of the month, when security forces moved on Sunni anti-government protesters in the north, sparking clashes that killed 53 people.
Dozens more people died in subsequent violence, which included revenge attacks on security forces. That raised fears of a return to the all-out sectarian conflict that cost tens of thousands of lives from 2006 to 2008.
The late-April violence was the deadliest so far linked to protests that broke out in Sunni areas of Shiite-majority Iraq more than four months ago.
The protesters have called for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, to quit. They criticise the authorities for allegedly targeting their community with wrongful detentions and accusations of involvement in terrorism.
Unrest in April also wounded 1,219 people, according to the AFP figures, based on reports from security and medical sources.
Among the dead were 54 police, 53 soldiers, 14 Sahwa anti-Qaeda militiamen and two members of the Kurdish security forces.
The wounded included 171 police, 76 soldiers, eight Sahwa fighters and five Kurdish security forces members.
The majority of April's remaining casualties were civilians, although the figures also include some gunmen who died or were wounded in clashes with security forces.
In March, 271 people were killed and 906 wounded, but those figures only included security forces and civilians.
On Wednesday, armed men attacked the police headquarters in Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, killing a colonel and at least three police, an officer and a medical official said.
In Fallujah, west of the capital, a suicide bomber targeted Sahwa militiamen who were gathering to receive their pay. Four of them and a high-ranking police officer were killed, police and a doctor said.

The Sahwa, which means "Awakening" in Arabic, are made up of Sunni Arab tribesmen who joined forces with the US military against Al-Qaeda from late 2006, helping turn the tide against the insurgency.
They are regarded as traitors by Sunni militants and frequently targeted.
A car bomb in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killed three police on Wednesday, while another in the capital left three people dead and gunmen killed two police near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, security and medical officials said.
And gunmen shot dead a provincial elections candidate in the northern city of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh, one of two provinces in which polls were postponed because authorities said security could not be ensured.
"Conditions have definitely worsened in the country," said John Drake, an Iraq specialist with risk consulting firm AKE Group.
"If the government fails to contain the unrest and address some of the grievances of the protesters, the momentum could certainly build and lead to a reemergence of widespread violence," he said.
Violence in Iraq has fallen from its peak during the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, when death tolls of more than 1,000 a month were reported.
But attacks remain common, with people killed on 29 of the 30 days in April, and more than 200 people dead in unrest each month so far this year.