US ex-diplomat gets prison time for peeping at women

A former US State Department official specialized in antiterrorism was sentenced Wednesday to 32 months in prison for using his cell phone to secretly film women through their apartment windows.

Daniel Rosen, 45, of Washington, had pled guilty on July 29 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to six counts of voyeurism and five counts of stalking.

Judge Rhonda Reid Winston sentenced him to 11 years in jail but said she would suspend all but 32 months if he successfully completed five years of probation upon release.

Rosen, under pretext of walking his dog, “trawled city neighbourhoods in the late-night hours, sneaking into alleys and aiming his camera into the windows of women who had no idea they were being recorded,” said a statement from acting US Attorney Channing D. Phillips.

Hiding in the shadows, “Rosen recorded the women in various stages of undress, capturing some in the most intimate and private moments in their bedrooms and bathrooms,” the statement said.

Rosen focused on rear-facing basement apartments in isolated alleys, sometimes angling his cell phone through cracks in the women’s blinds.

He returned to film several of the women more than once, according to Phillips. Rosen’s surreptitious activities in Northwest Washington spanned the period from 2012 to 2014.

On the professional networking site LinkedIn, Rosen described himself as an “antiterrorism director” for the State Department, supervising a $300 million budget.

The State Department has faced earlier scandals in recent years involving allegations of prostitution or drug trafficking by some officials abroad.

VIDEO: Tanzania's new President John Magufuli sworn in

Tanzania’s new president John Pombe Magufuli took the oath of office Thursday, watched by regional leaders, after winning hotly contested polls.

The event, attended by Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, was full of pomp and colour.

Other leaders who attended the fete include the chairman of African Union (AU) and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, and DRC’s Joseph Kabila.

Other neighbouring leaders are Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique and Zambia’s Edgar Lungu. South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn were also present.

President Magufuli won the tight race with 8.8 million votes, beating his closest rival, Edward Lowassa, with a margin of 2.8 million votes

His win in the October 25 poll with over 58 per cent of votes cemented the long-running Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party’s firm grip on power.

“I promise to work to the best of my ability to deliver our election pledges,” Magufuli said after taking the oath of office.

“We are aware of the trust and enormous responsibility that you have assigned us … but with God’s guidance, people’s cooperation and goodwill our nation can prosper.”

Vice-President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who comes from Zanzibar, was also sworn in at a stadium in the economic capital Dar es Salaam, promising to “always strive to give proper and honest advice” to the president.

Elections were largely peaceful, but the opposition said the vote was rigged and also claimed victory, while semi-autonomous Zanzibar — which also voted for its own president — annulled polls over irregularities.

“We are all the winners because the polls ended peacefully … we must now stand together in the broader interest of our nation,” Magufuli added.

“I also hope our brother and sisters in Zanzibar will — sooner rather than later — settle their differences amicably.”

Outgoing President Jakaya Kikwete has said he is “so happy” to be leaving his job after a decade in power, having stepped aside after serving his two-term limit.

Beer that killed 75 in Mozambique brewed with toxic flour

A bottle of ‘Impala’, the world’s first commercial beer made of 70 per cent of cassava, at a SABMiller subsidiary Cervejas de Mocambique’s tasting bar, in Maputo. In Mozambique’s bars and street stalls, the tipple of choice nowadays is a cold “Impala” — a beer made from cassava rather than barley that is fast capturing a valuable slice of the African market. AFP PHOTO 

A homemade beer that killed 75 drinkers at a funeral in Mozambique earlier this year was brewed with contaminated flour, health authorities said Wednesday, ruling out deliberate poisoning.

Hundreds of people drank the beer, with dozens found dead in their homes later in the day and others rushed to a local hospital with diarrhoea and severe muscle aches.

A total of 232 people were affected, and 75 died in the incident in the village of Chitima in the northwest of Mozambique.

“The victims were poisoned by the homemade beer which had been contaminated by a toxic bacteria found in the corn flour used to brew it,” Ilesh Jani, director of Mozambique’s Health Institute, told reporters.

The woman who brewed the opaque beer and several members of her family were among the dead.

Some local media had initially speculated that the beer was laced with crocodile bile, a powerful toxin.

But tests conducted in the United States identified burkholderia gladioli, a bacteria found in the flour as the source of the poisoning.

Cases of similar poisoning from the same potent bacteria have in the past been reported in Indonesia and China, according to Jani.

How population pressure on land in Rwanda affects forests in Uganda

In Summary

It is a case of spill over effects, an issue in one country becoming a challenge in another. As the population grows, and the resources become scarce, many come looking for land and their first port of call are the forests.

KIBAALE: It is a sunny morning in a freshly opened up patch of land in Kanaga Central Forest Reserve, Kibaale District. The clearing is about 500 square meters, with gardens of beans, maize and cassava. In between the gardens, stand huge burnt-out stumps and logs.
Close by are newly constructed makeshift structures, scattered all over. Most of them are thatched with grass or covered with old tarpaulins.

In front of one, lies a young girl, Trifonia Tumuramye, 13. She is lying on a mat and covers herself with a cloth. Dirty sauce pans and jerrycans are scattered around the compound.
The mother, Mediathese Ntamuhera, 34, sits beside her with a sorrowful look. They are part of hundreds of Rwandese, who found refuge in Uganda after fleeing land pressure in Rwanda. And that is in the forests of Uganda, especially those in Bunyoro region, particularly Kibaale District. The area is home to 16 gazetted forest reserves.
“I was born in Rwanda in Birungi, Nyamarundi, where our family settled on a small piece of land and we were told that there is land in Uganda,” Ntamuhera says. “We came here in Kibaale about 18 years ago. At the time, the locals were selling a big chunk of land between Shs150,000 and Shs 200,000. We bought a piece of land not knowing that this was a government forest reserve”.

“Since then we have had run-ins with [National Forest Authority— NFA] over evictions. We can neither trace the people who sold the land to us nor is there anyone who can compensate us,” she narrates. “I lost my husband in February; he got sick and died without any medication. In March, we were evicted from the forest reserve by NFA, I have nowhere to go, I am resigned to my fate.”
Despite other challenges faced by NFA to manage forests in Uganda, the country has weak systems that have failed to stem illegal migration, coupled with the refugee settlements around the country, where refugees mingle easily with the nationals.

Over the years, they have come to own property and some are Local Council leaders who at times abet illegal settlement in Uganda’s forest reserves.
Uganda has porous borders that foreigners find it easy to cross and settle in Uganda unlike in any other country in the Great Lakes region.
Between 1995 and 2005, Hoima had a total of 61,170 hectares of forests. Statistics from the district forest office indicate that 38,000 hectares of forests were depleted by 2011.

According to the 2009 National Environmental Management Authority (Nema), in 1990, Uganda had more than five million hectares of forest cover. But by 2005, only 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) remained.
Conservationists estimate that Bunyoro loses about 7,000 hectares of forests annually. So, Nema warns that if deforestation continues at the present rate, Uganda will have lost all its forested land by 2050.
Fredrick Atugonza, the NFA supervisor attached to Kangombe in Kibaale District, points out that deforestation has led to the extinction of important medicinal tree species.
“For instance, the Lovore tree, which we no longer see. It is a medicinal tree and there are many others,” he says.
“The rains have reduced; the seasons have changed in the last 15 years of encroachment”.

The NFA Kagadi Sector Manager, Charles Ariani says, “This sector has 16 forests, but we found all forests were encroached on and cultivated with bananas, maize, sugar cane, tobacco and beans”.
He remarks that he is not convinced about the excuses he gets. “People say that they are hungry and have nowhere to farm. But we tell them they must return to where they were before 1994. So far, more than 1,000 people have left the forests.”

He adds, “We told them that whether you have 20 children or came from Rwanda or Kabale many years ago, and you no longer know where you came from, you must move out of the forests.”
Deforestation cuts across the Albertine basin. As a way to deal with the problem, the Rwenzori Anti-corruption Coalition (RAC) and Joint Effort to Save the Environment (JESE), NGOs based in Fort Portal, have joined hands to help in the management of environment and natural resources particularly forest resources.

“This is been attributed to the manner in which these resources are managed at national, district and sub county levels. This has caused immense destruction of these vital ecosystems especially in the Albertine region,” reads their joint report released in June.
The NGOs have formed an inter-district (Kyenjojo, Kyegegwa and Mubende) multi-stakeholder forestry and environment forum.

It is a coordinating mechanism to promote the sustainable use of environment and forests, proper accountability and advocating for increased investment in the natural resources sector in the three districts.
The forum brings together all key players in environment and natural resources for increased planning and voices in sustainable natural resources management.

In the last decade, civil wars in the neighbouring Rwanda and DR Congo have led to a steady stream of refugees in Uganda.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees has settled hundreds at Rwamwanja, Kyangwali and at Kyaka in Kamwenge, Hoima and Kyegegwa districts, respectively.
Lately, hundreds of refugees especially from Burundi have flocked into Uganda and have easily mingled with Ugandans and settled anywhere they find hospitable.

What others say about forest encroachment in Uganda
“Our preliminary investigations show that the victims were burnt without attempting to escape from the room which rises questions whether the fire started when the occupants were conscious,”’
Elijah Kashija, airtime vendor

“The issue is that people of Rwanda origin who came here for land were duped by the locals who sold to them part of the government’s gazetted forests, some of them have been evicted by NFA and are now landless. Among the forests encroachers, the Banyarwanda are about 45 percent, then the rest are the Bakiga, Bakonjo and the indigenous Banyoro”
George William Bizibu
Speaker, Kibaale District.

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com

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