Police alleges that, Alex Gumisiriza an accountant attached to the Global Fund Programme forged paper work on how the funds were to be moved from one account to the other.

The suspect denies the charges, claiming that a top official from the Ministry instructed him to set out a work plan of how the funds could be channeled without notice.

He says that he was put under a lot of pressure by an official from the Ministry to speed up the paper work for the funds to be transferred.

The payments were purportedly for services rendered by the National Medical Stores, handling fees for medicines and pharmaceutical products under the Uganda Global Fund Programme.

The funds were to be moved from an account in Bank of Uganda to an account opened in ABC Capital Bank, as part of payment for drugs delivered by National medical stores to the Malaria Control Programme.

The post Accountant arrested for fraudulent transfer of1.2billion to secret account first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

It is eight years now since Ugandans woke up to the sad news that the former Attorney General, Francis Ayume had died in a motor accident.

On the morning of Tuesday, May 18, 2004, the people of Uganda woke up to the sad news of a grisly accident that had claimed the life of Ayume.

But prior to the accident, the Attorney General had got a ‘headache’ in explaining to the President of Uganda, Gen. Yoweri Museveni the correct constitutional process through which Article 105 (2) of the constitution of Uganda on the two presidential term limits could be lifted to allow Museveni to extend his rule.

Ayume had told Andrew Mwenda of the daily Monitor news paper that it would set a dangerous precedent to amend the Constitution of Uganda using unconstitutional means.

The president reportedly wanted the ruling party in Uganda to mobilize two thirds majority within Parliament to Amend Article 105 (2).

But what is shocking the family of Ayume is that the survivors in his accident have never told Ugandans what actually happened and the vehicle which crushed Ayume was not found! It is suspected that the accident that killed Ayume could have been planned.

The post Francis Ayume’s family, 8 years later, not given his death report first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

SCRIPT Scholarships: The SCRIPT Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law offers two scholarships for students wishing to pursue one of the following programmes:

• LLM Innovation, Technology and the Law (Distance Learning)
• LLM Medical Law and Ethics (Distance Learning)
• LLM Intellectual Property Law (Distance Learning)
• LLM Information Technology Law (Distance Learning)

Scholarship amount: £3,000 each.

Award Criteria

Awards will be based on a short paper (up to 1500 words including footnotes) on following topic:

Critically assess an example of how technological innovation (eg. in medicine, IT, intellectual property, forensics) impacts on the law, and vice versa.

Your paper must be your own original work, and you should not have used it in any other context. It will be judged on its academic merit.

At least two members of the academic staff will assess the paper independently (double blind), and in case of dispute will refer the paper to a third member/party.

The first award is open to applicants from around the world. The second award is open specifically to assist students from developing countries.

A developing country shall be considered any country classified as a low income economy by the World Bank.

Applications for the scholarship must be submitted to clare.neilson[at]ed.ac.uk by 31st July.

For more information, see: SCRIPT Scholarships – Distance Learning Website

SCRIPT Scholarships: The SCRIPT Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law offers two scholarships for students wishing to pursue one of the following programmes:

• LLM Innovation, Technology and the Law (Distance Learning)
• LLM Medical Law and Ethics (Distance Learning)
• LLM Intellectual Property Law (Distance Learning)
• LLM Information Technology Law (Distance Learning)

Scholarship amount: £3,000 each.

Award Criteria

Awards will be based on a short paper (up to 1500 words including footnotes) on following topic:

Critically assess an example of how technological innovation (eg. in medicine, IT, intellectual property, forensics) impacts on the law, and vice versa.

Your paper must be your own original work, and you should not have used it in any other context. It will be judged on its academic merit.

At least two members of the academic staff will assess the paper independently (double blind), and in case of dispute will refer the paper to a third member/party.

The first award is open to applicants from around the world. The second award is open specifically to assist students from developing countries.

A developing country shall be considered any country classified as a low income economy by the World Bank.

Applications for the scholarship must be submitted to clare.neilson[at]ed.ac.uk by 31st July.

For more information, see: SCRIPT Scholarships – Distance Learning Website

The post SCRIPT Scholarships for Distance Learning students first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Intellectual Property and Technology Law Scholarships: The SCRIPT Research Centre for Studies in Intellectual Property and Technology Law offers scholarships for students wishing to pursue one of the following Distance Learning programmes:

• LLM Innovation, Technology and the Law
• LLM Medical Law
• LLM Intellectual Property Law
• LLM Information Technology Law

Award Application Eligibility Criteria:

Awards will be based on a short paper (up to 1500 words including footnotes) on following topic:

• Critically assess an example of how technological innovation (for example; in medicine, IT, music distribution, forensics) impacts on the law, and vice versa.

Your paper must be your own original work, and you should not have used it in any other context.

It will be judged on its academic merit.

Please use the coversheet provided.

To be considered for the award, you must first complete the application process for entry to the LL.M in Innovation, Technology and the Law (distance learning).

Deadline: 31st July each year.

Applications for the scholarship must be submitted to: llm.distance [at] ed.ac.uk.

For further information and to download the coversheet, see: Intellectual Property and Technology Law Scholarships Website

The post Apply for Intellectual Property and Technology Law Scholarships first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Top scientists will tomorrow (20 February) urge governments to replace GDP as a measure of wealth, end damaging subsidies, and transform systems of governance to set humanity on a new path to a better future — or risk climate, biodiversity and poverty crises that will spawn greater problems worldwide.

These are among the messages from a new paper by 20 past winners of the Blue Planet Prize — often called the Nobel Prize for the environment.

Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues and a winner of the prize in 2010, will present the paper to government ministers from around the world at the UN Environment Programme’s governing council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya on 20 February.

“The current system is broken,” says Watson. “It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C warmer than our species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self.”

“We cannot assume that technological fixes will come fast enough. Instead we need human solutions. The good news is that they exist but decision makers must be bold and forward thinking to seize them.”

Watson’s co-authors include  James Hansen of NASA, Emil Salim, former environment minister of Indonesia, Susan Solomon of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and José Goldemberg, who was Brazil’s Secretary of Environment during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Their paper comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of that summit – the Rio+20 conference in June this year – when world leaders have an opportunity to set human development on a new, more sustainable path.

The paper urges governments to:

• Replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, built, human and social capital — and how they intersect.

• Eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture that create environmental and social costs, which currently go unpaid.

• Tackle overconsumption, and address population pressure by empowering women, improving education and making contraception accessible to all.

• Transform decision making processes to empower marginalised groups, and integrate economic, social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.

• Conserve and value biodiversity and ecosystem services, and create markets for them that can form the basis of green economies.

• Invest in knowledge — both in creating and in sharing it — through research and training that will enable governments, business, and society at large to understand and move towards a sustainable future.

“Sustainable development is not a pipe dream,” says Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development. “It is the destination the world’s accumulated knowledge points us towards, the fair future that will enable us to live with security, peace and opportunities for all. To get there we must transform the ways we manage, share and interact with the environment, and acknowledge that humanity is part of nature not apart from it.”

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “The paper by the Blue Planet laureates will challenge governments and society as a whole to act to limit human-induced climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in order to ensure food, water energy and human security. I would like to thank Professor Watson and colleagues for eloquently articulating their vision on how key development challenges can be addressed, emphasizing solutions; the policies, technologies and behaviour changes required to grow green economies, generate jobs and lift people out of poverty without pushing the world through planetary boundaries.”

The full paper will be ready for media around 5pm (UK time) on Friday – to request a copy email one of the following:

• Tetsuro Yasuda (The Asahi Glass Foundation, Japan) yasud@af-info.or.jp
• Shereen Zorba (UNEP, Kenya)   shereen.zorba@unep.org
• Mike Shanahan (IIED, UK)            mike.shanahan@iied.org
• Patricia Yakabe Malentaqui (Conservation International, USA)    p.malentaqui@conservation.org

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Blue Planet prize laureates who contributed to the paper are:

• Professor Sir Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Lord (Robert) May of Oxford, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and President of Royal Society of London
• Professor Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
• Professor Harold Mooney, Stanford University
• Dr Gordon Hisashi Sato, President, Manzanar Project Corporation
• Professor José Goldemberg, secretary for the environment of the State of São Paulo, Brazil and Brazil’s interim Secretary of Environment during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992
• Dr Emil Salim, former Environment Minister of the Republic of Indonesia
• Dr Camilla Toulmin, Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development
• Mr Bunker Roy, Founder of Barefoot College
• Dr Syukuro Manabe, Senior Scientist, Princeton University
• Dr Julia Marton-Lefevre, Director-General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
• Dr Simon Stuart, Chair of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
• Dr Will Turner, Vice President of Conservation Priorities and Outreach, Conservation International
• Professor Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Founder of The Natural Step
• Dr James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
• Lord (Nicholas) Stern of Brentford, Professor, The London of Economics
• Dr Amory Lovins, Chair and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute
• Dr Gene Likens, Director of the Carey Institute of Ecosystem Studies
• Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the World Health Organization, now Special Envoy on Climate Change for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
• Dr James Lovelock, independent scientist and proponent of the Gaia Hypothesis

ABOUT THE BLUE PLANET PRIZE

In 1992, the year of the Rio Earth Summit, the Asahi Glass Foundation established the Blue Planet Prize, an award presented to individuals or organizations worldwide in recognition of outstanding achievements in scientific research and its application that have helped provide solutions to global environmental problems.

The Prize is offered in the hopes of encouraging efforts to bring about the healing of the Earth’s fragile environment. A full list of its past winners is online here.

The award’s name was inspired by the remark “the Earth was blue,” uttered by the first human in space, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, upon viewing our planet. The Blue Planet Prize was so named in the hopes that our blue planet will be a shared asset capable of sustaining human life far into the future.

2012 is the 20th anniversary of the Blue Planet Prize. The Asahi Glass Foundation wishes to mark this anniversary with a fresh start in its efforts to help build an environmentally friendly society.

Contact Information:

The Asahi Glass Foundation: 2^nd Floor, Science Plaza, 5-3 Yonban-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0081 Japan

Secretary General  Tetsuro Yasuda (Mr.) TEL: 03-5275-0620 FAX: 03-5275-0871

e-mail：post@af-info.or.jp

URL：http://www.af-info.or.jp

The post Top scientists urge end to policy and governance failures to tackle social and environmental crises first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Alupo says that unlike in the previous years, Mathematics and Information Communication Technology subjects will be compulsory for all Senior Five (S.5) and Senior 6 students across the country. The academic year for Senior 5 and Senior 6 begins on Monday next week.

Ultimate Media

The post Information Communication Technology and Mathematics compulsory in schools first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

ANSTI Conference Grants: Academic staff of African Network of Scientific and Technological Institutions (ANSTI) member institutions can also benefit from conference grants (a maximum amount of award being $2,500) to attend international meetings where they will present papers.

Applicants for the conference grant must send the following to us when applying for this grant: –

• A curriculum Vitae (C.V)
• An abstract of the paper one is going to present
• The invitation letter to the conference you intend to attend which also will include the acceptance of the paper for presentation in the conference.
• The application letter for the conference grant.

Method of Application:

There are no special application forms for these fellowships.

All such application letters have to indicate that the conditions of the award mentioned above have been fulfilled. ANSTI does not take responsibility for the identification of conferences for the applicant.

Deadline: There is no deadline for submission of applications. Each application is acted upon as soon as it is received subject only to the availability of funds at the time.

For further details, and application materials, contact: ANSTI Conference Grants

More: Conference Grants » International Meetings Grants » Academic Grants

The post ANSTI grants Academic Conference first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant: The Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant program supports short-term academic placements for students enrolled in a Master’s or PhD program at African universities.

The program offers grants of up to CAD$10,000 each to fifteen students per year to conduct research for up to four months at select Canadian universities.

An additional prize of $1,000 will also be awarded to the best research paper produced by a grant recipient.

The program is building capacity by giving bright, highly-motivated students and scholars an opportunity to discover and impart new learning in a cross-cultural experience.

Supported research covers the Africa Initiative thematic areas of conflict resolution, energy, food security, health, and migration, with special attention to the cross-cutting issues of climate change.

The Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant program is currently accepting applications for research to be conducted between September and December.

Grant recipients are expected to self-identify professors and experts they would like to work with at universities in Canada and will be required to submit an official letter of support from the university where they wish to be based as part of their application for the grant.

Grant Eligibility Criteria:

• must be a Master’s or PhD student enrolled in an African university*
• must be in good academic standing (with at least an overall B, or equivalent, standing)
• proposed research must be original and timely, and must focus on one of the Africa Initiative’s thematic areas of conflict resolution, energy, food security, health, and migration, with special attention to the cross-cutting issue of climate change

Scholarship Application Requirements:

• completed application form
• proposal (maximum 5 pages) summarizing the applicant’s graduate research, including research objective, methodology and expected results and outputs; a timeline and proposed research plan in Canada; and an overview of the capacity of the host institution contacts’ involvement with the applicant’s work while in Canada
• one letter of support from the university the applicant plans to be based at (either a letter of support from the host university inviting the applicant as a visiting scholar or an acceptance letter from the host university inviting the applicant as an exchange student)
• current CV
• current university transcript
• two letters of recommendations (one letter from the applicant’s academic advisor and an additional letter from other academic or professional sources)
• passport scan
• writing sample (can be any written research work authored by the applicant)

Program expectations: Participants are expected to provide content for the Africa Initiative’s Africa Portal on a regular basis during their placement and write one major research paper for the Portal at the end of their placement.

For more information and scholarship applications, see: Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant

Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant: The Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant program supports short-term academic placements for students enrolled in a Master’s or PhD program at African universities.

The program offers grants of up to CAD$10,000 each to fifteen students per year to conduct research for up to four months at select Canadian universities.

An additional prize of $1,000 will also be awarded to the best research paper produced by a grant recipient.

The program is building capacity by giving bright, highly-motivated students and scholars an opportunity to discover and impart new learning in a cross-cultural experience.

Supported research covers the Africa Initiative thematic areas of conflict resolution, energy, food security, health, and migration, with special attention to the cross-cutting issues of climate change.

The Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant program is currently accepting applications for research to be conducted between September and December.

Grant recipients are expected to self-identify professors and experts they would like to work with at universities in Canada and will be required to submit an official letter of support from the university where they wish to be based as part of their application for the grant.

Grant Eligibility Criteria:

• must be a Master’s or PhD student enrolled in an African university*
• must be in good academic standing (with at least an overall B, or equivalent, standing)
• proposed research must be original and timely, and must focus on one of the Africa Initiative’s thematic areas of conflict resolution, energy, food security, health, and migration, with special attention to the cross-cutting issue of climate change

Scholarship Application Requirements:

• completed application form
• proposal (maximum 5 pages) summarizing the applicant’s graduate research, including research objective, methodology and expected results and outputs; a timeline and proposed research plan in Canada; and an overview of the capacity of the host institution contacts’ involvement with the applicant’s work while in Canada
• one letter of support from the university the applicant plans to be based at (either a letter of support from the host university inviting the applicant as a visiting scholar or an acceptance letter from the host university inviting the applicant as an exchange student)
• current CV
• current university transcript
• two letters of recommendations (one letter from the applicant’s academic advisor and an additional letter from other academic or professional sources)
• passport scan
• writing sample (can be any written research work authored by the applicant)

Program expectations: Participants are expected to provide content for the Africa Initiative’s Africa Portal on a regular basis during their placement and write one major research paper for the Portal at the end of their placement.

For more information and scholarship applications, see: Africa Initiative Graduate Research Grant

The post Graduate Scholarships » Research Scholarships » PhD Scholarships first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.

A paper published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development warns that African governments are signing away water rights for decades with insufficient regard for how this will affect millions of local users, including fishing, farming and pastoralist communities.

The water rights often feature in the growing number of large land deals that governments are signing with investors (see First detailed study of large land acquisitions in Africa warns of impacts on poor rural people) as many of these areas require irrigation to be viable.

Such deals have already raised concerns for being rushed, secretive and one-sided. Many fail to deliver real benefits and can even create new social and environmental problems (see Report shows how secret land deals can fail to benefit African nations – and how to make them better).

Now, researchers at IIED warn that governments risk signing away water rights in ways that harm the future prospects of their citizens, especially fishermen and pastoralists, who rely on the same water as the investors. Some investors in Mali and Sudan have been given unrestricted access to as much water as they need.

“Companies that acquire land for irrigated farming will want secure water rights, but long-term contractual commitments can jeopardise water access for local farmers,” says co-author Lorenzo Cotula. “This affects not only the people who have customarily used the land that is being leased, but also distant downstream users who can be hundreds of kilometres away and even across an international border.”

The Gibe III dam in Ethiopia will enable irrigation on 150,000 of land the Ethiopian government has allocated to investors, but studies suggest this project would lower the level of Kenya’s Lake Turkana – on which half a million Kenyans depend — by eight metres by 2024.

The ‘global water crisis’ is a crisis of water management, not of water quantity,” says the paper’s lead author Jamie Skinner, a principal researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development. “Good water management in the face of climate change is only possible if it is clear who the water belongs to, who holds rights to its use and when allocations to all users  are made in a transparent way.”

For interviews, contact:

Lorenzo.Cotula@iied.org

Jamie.Skinner@iied.org

ENDS

Mike Shanahan

Press officer

International Institute for Environment and Development [please note new address / phone]

80-86 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8NH, UK. Tel: +44 (0)20 3463 7399; Fax: +44 (0)20 3514 9055

www.iied.org

Twitter http://twitter.com/IIED

Biodiversity Media Alliance http://biodiversitymedia.ning.com

Climate Change Media Partnership roster http://climatechangemedia.ning.com

The post African governments urged against signing away water rights for decades first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.