Opposition UPND Vice President Geoffrey Mwamba has refuted rumours circulating that he has quit the UPND as he prepares to rejoin the PF.

In a statement, Mr Mwamba who is commonly known as GBM said the rumours are baseless.

He said he has no desire to return to the PF adding that the ruling party has allegedly failed the Zambian people.

Below is Mr Mwamba’s statement.

I Would not normally respond to rumours but I am forced to depart from this norm because remaining silent may be construed as consent.

In the past few days the rumour mill has generated a story that I have or will resign from the UPND as I have intentions of going back to the Patriotic Front.

Let me categorically state and this is official that no iota of me desires to return to the PF, a party that has in a short lifespan sent the Zambian people into extreme abject poverty never seen in this country’s existence.

As a sane person how would I leave a progressive party such as the UPND that has the programs and strategies that would emancipate us from the lack of direction and plans of the PF.

The PF has failed the Zambian people, and in desperation they have now began to use methods that they intend to confuse the Zambians by running a propaganda and malicious campaign on unsubstantiated issues and hope that some of us will look like we have no morals and are job seekers.

I entered politics to serve the people and not for my benefit and I joined and accepted the position of Vice President Administration of this great party and will remain so until the party decides otherwise.

My position is that nothing will make me leave UPND ,and for PF? What a fallacy. Not a party that has no focus and no love for the people they are supposed to serve. A sinking titanic indeed.

Hear it from me, I have not and do not intend to resign from the UPND and will work tirelessly to ensure that the party forms government come August 2016. So all haters sorry.

A ZAMBIA Army officer in Ndola has told the Chifubu Local Court that his health has deteriorated because his wife cooks food using water from the mortuary besides secretly administering love potions.
Derrick Ng’ombe of house No. 0080 Pamodzi Township told Local Court senior presiding magistrates Kaala Nyambe and Agnes Mulengahe that he has since been losing weight since 2006 and decided to seek spiritual intervention.
This is a matter in which Ng’ombe has sued Euphresia Mubiana of the same address for divorce, saying he cannot continue living with a wife who is heavily dependent on love potions to sustain a marriage.
Ng’ombe and Mubiana are soldiers of Ndola’s Kalewa Barracks.
Ng’ombe told the court that there was a time a pastor was praying for him and it was revealed that their house needed prayers to rid it of demons.
Ng’ombe said when the pastor went to their house, he asked Mubiana to bring the charms which were in the house, which she did.
“The pastor told me that Mubiana also had a cooking stick which she uses to prepare my food using water from the mortuary. I was told by the pastor that as the cooking stick gets thinner, I also get slimmer,” Ng’ombe said.
The charms, cooking stick as well as the mortuary water were brought before court as exhibits.
Ng’ombe also told the court that he could not concentrate at work as he loses his memory due to the charms that Mubiana has been using on him.
Mubiana did not deny having kept the charms in the couple’s bedroom but instead told the court that she got the charms from her mother and that the charms were meant for the good health of her and the children.
She told the court that she was surprised when Ng’ombe told her that she was using charms on him. He then sprinkled the house with anointing water and stopped eating food cooked by his wife.
Mubiana said it was wrong for Ng’ombe to blame her for his failing health.
The court granted the couple divorce with no compensation on either party as there was no room for reconciliation.
The court also noted that any man would be put off to learn his wife was using charms.
The court ordered that the couple shares any properties that they acquired equally.

(DailyMail)

Helium Prime Media presents Jedi with his new ‘Like I Made It’ single. The song talks about the hustle that Jedi as an artist has experienced in making his foundation in the music industry.

BY KAPA187

Welcome to 2016 !! We hope you had a wonderful 2015 and we look forward to making 2016 a worthwhile one as you visit Lusakatimes.com

As the year starts, we would like to just highlight a few things:

Technology

In 2015 we introduced a whole host of new technological changes to the site when we made a decision not to support old browsers anymore and moved the site from the insecure http to the secure https. This process led to a loss of revenue and a big section of our audience. We have however, noticed that lately people are now upgrading to new browsers and the numbers are getting back to the levels we had prior to August when we made the changes.

The new changes enabled us to push more content to your browser at a much faster speed and we are pleased with the results thus far and continue to push for the 3 seconds mark per request. We are currently sitting at 6 seconds to load a page.

LT Best Blogger

LT Best “Blogger” 2015 Award to be Announced on Friday 8th January,2016.

As we have mentioned in the past, Comments is what drives this site. News you get here can be found elsewhere, but the comments and user engagement remain unique to this site and it is what makes people come back to this site again and again.

This year we want to honor the people that have been the driver of the comments section from the time we started keeping the records in 2007.

On Friday we shall publish the top five people that have posted the most comments on Lusaka Times and list the exact number of comments they have posted since 2007 when we started keeping the record. No doubt, a lot of people change IDs they use for posting, but this award will go to those that have maintained the same ID over the years. It is the only practical way to deal with this.

Going forward we shall look at giving an award to the person who posts the most comments and also the person who receives the most ‘up’ votes.

Comments Moderations and Flags

We have addressed this issue before, but looks like it is worth addressing as we continue to get new people visiting the site and posting comments.

The Flag does not necessary represent your location. Internet Traffic travel through a lot of gateways before it arrives at Lusaka Times website.

None of the comments you post on the site are censored by a human being. However, if you use the banned vulgar words the system will take care of your views and throw them into the trash bin and we shall lose the good parts of your contribution. Sometimes the system is kind enough to keep your comments in moderation and when the editors get to them, they will manually publish them or discard them based on their content, appropriate or inappropriate.

FAQs on comments

Why is LT blocking my comments?

Comments are sometimes held up automatically by our system for the following reasons

Our system mistakes you for a BOT

Your comment contains some words that have been blacklisted ie.offensive/vulgar words

You have posted many offensive comments in the past and your comments are being moderated

How long will it take for my comments to appear if they are held up for moderation

Comments held up for moderation are reposted on the site within 24hours

Coverage

We actually have some values! From time to time people mistake us for belonging to this group or that group, but we don’t and we thought we would share some of our values with you.

First, we place a huge responsibility on the LT team to focus on facts and truth. We deliberately avoid speculation and fancy and sensational reporting. There are a lot other sites that do that. We want to slowly, but surely build an institution and brand that will last many many years to come, even 100 years when we are long gone. No institution can last 100 of years if it is not founded on truth, justice and fairness in its dealings. Our model is premised on these five common core values:

1. Accuracy
2. Independence
3. Freedom from bias
4. Integrity
5. Reporting from the Internet(We shall NEVER have a printed paper)

In short we strive to be fair to all sides.

Secondly, we again deliberately avoid speculative or investigative journalism, unless we can back it up with solid evidence of audio, video or paper evidence with quoted sources. Speed of reporting facts is good enough for us. We have no political agenda of any sort. We don’t side with ruling or opposition party. Neither do we take funding from either sides. All are welcome to send us articles.

Thirdly, we avoid at all cost injecting our opinions into stories. We avoid labeling people we are reporting about like thieving politician, fool, rapists, wife beater , PF thugs, UPND thugs, MMD thugs, etc. We let our readers form their own opinion. They are intelligent enough. Our job is to give our readers facts so they can accurately think and form opinions. We deliberately avoid quoting unknown sources or some secret source or impeccable source, we leave that to the other papers that do that. We would rather go with a reaction from the person affected by the speculation.

Lastly, this platform is open to all.Whether you are a fisherman, secondary school pupil,bus conductor,politician,academic etc we value all your views and will gladly publish your article. At no point have we rejected any article sent to us based on difference of opinion. We cover/publish them all, albeit sometimes late because the queue can be long at times. From time to time one party sends in more stories than other parties and this may give the impression of bias.We encourage everyone to send in stories.However, the articles must be informative,of interest to our audience and comply with our values.

B FLOW, who recently announced that he was changing from dancehall to kalindula because he wanted to be original, has gone back on his decision saying his fans have been complaining.
This is a complete turn-around for the man who a fortnight ago said the decision to go the kalindula way was final.
In his own words: “I wish to announce to all my fans and followers that I have officially changed my music style from Dancehall to Kalindula because I want to be original. This decision is final. I urge you to carefully listen before you begin criticising. Without wasting your time, here are my two new Kalindula singles – Tekwesha Ft. Chef 187 and Veli Badi (produced by Henrik Berhane for Zedway movements).”
Now, he says fans have been complaining that they still want him to do dancehall, hence his quick turn-around.
“My fans have been complaining and lamenting that they don’t want me to do Kalindula because they want that dancehall fire in me to continue burning,” he says.
“Well, I’m sorry to abort Kalindula prematurely, so I’m officially back on the dancehall tip. Who am I to deny mi fan dem weh dem ask for? Meanwhile, look out for my new dancehall album produced by Magg 44 and Jerry Fingers”.
It was always going to be intriguing if not interesting to see how B’flow, who got recognition from President Obama for using music for social good, was going to make the transition from dancehall to kalindula.
The two genres are quite distinct, but a creative person can always play around with them.
While dancehall is some kind of digitalised version of raggamuffin reggae, influenced by hip-hop, which it combines with, kalindula has its roots in Luapula Province and has to be played with atleast two lead guitars, a bass guitar, percussion and drums.

(DailyMail)

PF Central Committee chairperson for information Frank Bwalya said that if Ms. Nawakwi does not get arrested, she should also be honorable enough to apologize for her claims.

Father Bwalya said that the apology should be made to the Zambian people because her accusation, which has been widely publicized would have proved to be falsehood.

In an interview with Qfm News Father Bwalya said that his party does not think a citizen can be arrested for simply campaigning outside the campaign time in the disguise of helping farmers with farming inputs.

Father Bwalya stated that the ruling PF is thus suspicious that there could something that Ms. Nawakwi is doing illegally in her business of helping farmers which she fears the police might arrest her for.

Father Bwalya said that it was however up to the Police itself to ascertain whether she should arrested or not and not by the instigation of the PF government.

Meanwhile, Zambians have been called upon to pray for the success of President Edgar Lungu’s assenting to the Constitution Bills on Tuesday the 5th of January this week.

People in the Country are being urged to do so keeping in mind how big the event to assent to the Constitution Bills will be in the life of their Country’s multiparty Democracy.

The ruling PF is of the view that President Lungu assenting to the Bills at a ceremony to be held at Heroes Stadium in Lusaka is therefore an event that any Zambian should want to be part of.

PF Central Committee chairperson for Information Frank Bwalya says his party believes that once the amendments to the Constitution come to effect, many things will change in Zambia.

Father Bwalya has referred to governance, politics and the rate at which the country will be developing as some of the things that are expected to change.

He states that his party is thus looking forward to Tuesday this week when the wave change in the country will be initiated.

Father Bwalya spoke to Qfm News in an interview

Rosah is a Zambian Born Singer/Rapper/Poet currently based in America . She recently released her EP “Low Commotion”. It can be described as a Blend of Soul/Rap and Trap.

President Edgar Lungu has directed ZESCO and the Energy Regulation Board to adjust downwards its new electricity tariffs following numerous complaints from many domestic users.

The directive marks a complete u-turn on President Lungu who just last month called on Zambians and the business community to embrace the new electricity tariffs.

President Lungu said this when he commissioned the Pensulo-Kasama 330 kilovolts transmission project in Kasama district on December 16 2015 adding that the new tariffs will guarantee meaningful investment and improvements in service delivery in the energy sector.

But through his Spokesman Amos Chanda, President Lungu on Sunday directed ZESCO to cut the new tariffs.

Mr Chanda said President Lungu will examine other ways of encouraging investment in the sector that has suffered stagnated growth due to relatively low tariffs compared to other countries in the region.

“The President wants Zambians to know that he is here to make decisions that will unite Zambia and not breed discontent,” Mr. Chanda said

He said the electricity tariffs reduction is something President Lungu felt had to be done expeditiously until economic alternatives to generate power and encourage investment in the sector are found because Zambians come above economic gains.