Weekly Review

Canadian court sentences genocide suspect It was reported that a Canadian court sentenced Désiré Munyaneza, 42, to life in prison with no eligibility for parole in 25 years for his role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The ruling which is considered the harshest in the country comes after he was found guilty in May of seven counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and this makes him the first person in Canada to be tried and convicted for Genocide and war crimes. The Rwandan government welcomed the sentencing and hailed the growing positive response from the international community in dealing with genocide fugitives. Rwandan ICT expert honoured by US IT institute Rwanda’s Irene Niyonambaza, an Information Communication and Technology (ICT) expert was this week honoured by the United States Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) as Graduate number 8.000. According to the Chairman of USTTI, Ambassador Michael R. Gardner, the 27-year old Infrastructure Officer at the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA), was praised for her commitment to building and regulating Rwanda’s growing ICT infrastructure. According to a statement from the Institute, during her three week visit to the US, Niyonambaza will participate in several USTTI tuition-free training courses sponsored by Verizon, AT&T, Packet Clearing House, Qualcomm and Intel. Beraho’s row with Habineza likely to end in court After suspending the national Olympics committee (RNOC) supremo out of office, it was reported that Sports Minister Joseph Habineza is contemplating dragging the former to court on grounds of breach of privacy and insubordination. The two sports chiefs have been at loggerheads for a long-time but the feud reached a point of no return on Tuesday when the minister drove Ignace Beraho and his executive out of office. Habineza revealed that he had not only stopped at showing Beraho the exit but that he was in the process of taking the disbanded RNOC boss to court for breach of privacy and insubordination. Swine flu patients quickly recovering Government’s efforts to curb the spread of the contagious Influenza A, H1N1 (swine flu) have paid off with only four new laboratory confirmed cases reported as of yesterday.According to a statement from the Ministry of Health, 91 patients have finished treatment, with 90 of them having fully recovered. The Head of the Swine flu response team in the ministry, Dr. Justin Wane, attributes this impressive decline to the various interventions that government has made since the internal outbreak. FDLR problem on verge of being solved The United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, said that the problem of FDLR is being resolved by the European Union. Speaking to the press after his meeting with President Paul Kagame at Urugwiro Village this week, Obasanjo, disagreed with the notion that Europe is dragging its feet when it comes to reining in on FDLR leaders currently residing in European capitals. Pupils start PLE exams Over 168,000 pupils countrywide midweek began their Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) with girls constituting 53 percent of the total number of pupils who sat for the final exams. This was announced by the Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education, (MINEDUC) Dr. Mathias Harebamungu, while officially launching the exams in Runda sector of Kamonyi district in the Southern Province. “The number of girls sitting this year has gone up, and this is a big step that shows the effectiveness of the government policy on promoting girl child education,” said Harebamungu. Gov’t and AfDB signs $23 million grant The government and the African Development Bank (AfDB) signed a grant agreement worth $23 million (Rwf13bn) to finance the Bugesera Natural Regional Rural Infrastructure Project. The project is expected to start early next year (2010) and will be implemented over a period of six years. This will be done through the government’s existing Bugesera Agricultural Development Support Project Implementation unit. The project will put in place irrigation schemes and also facilitate the purchase of fertilizers to boost agriculture production in this region that has for years been hampered by prolonged droughts. Ends