Transparency International Zambia(TIZ) is elated that the newly established Economic and Financial Crimes division is already bearing fruits after convicting 3 people for corrupt practices in Ndola yesterday.

TIZ president Sampa Kalungu said that his organization welcomes the conviction and sentencing of former Postmaster General Macpherson Chanda and two others to 2 years imprisonment for 13 counts of theft by public servant involving over K300, 000, 000, by the Ndola subordinate court under the financial and economic crimes division.

Mr. Kalungu said that TIZ further applaudsed the collaborative joint efforts by the Anti-Corruption Commission-ACC and the Drug Enforcement Commission-DEC in successfully bringing this case to this conclusion and hopes for speedy trials of corruption and economic crimes going forward.

He is of the view that this conviction of the former Postmaster General and 2 others, should give great impetus to both the ACC and the DEC to work more effectively by bringing more corruption cases to successful conclusion while this begins to serve as a deterrence to those charged with public good not to abuse their authority and positions.

Mr. Kalungu has challenged the government to pick lessons from the origin of this case which came by way of whistle blowers, by strengthening whistle blowers act, enact the ATI law and other laws that promote citizens participation in the fight against corruption.

Police have shot dead a suspect linked to the recent stealing of property valued at K619, 450 from Mobile City Zambia Limited Shop in Kitwe.

Last Saturday unknown people broke into Mobile City Zambia Limited Shop No. 5 situated on Independence Avenue, Kitwe and stole K326, 450 cash, several phones and DVR.

Copperbelt Province Police Commanding Officer Sharon Zulu has confirmed that officers on Thursday shot the suspect only identified as Kamwefu unintentionally when attempting to apprehend him in Kitwe.

Ms. Zulu said the suspect was identified using CCTV installed at P N P Store near the Mobile City Shop which was broken into.

“Following the breaking at Mobile City in Kitwe on 02/07/22 between 02:40 hours and 03:30 hours in Kitwe. Police visited the scene and discovered that the CCTV Drive at Mobile City was also stolen but Officers used the Cameras at Pick n Pay next to Mobile City. After watching the footage, three Criminals were seen entering Mobile City and exiting during the time the breaking took place. Officers identified one as male Prince Mugala an Ex Convict. The two Security Guards from Armsecure who were guarding Mobile City also identified him as Kamwefu the Ex – Convict. A talk time seller only known as Dick also identified as Kamwefu the Ex – Convict who is known to street kids,” Ms. Zulu said.

“The street kids also confirmed that the said Kamwefu has bought a new Toyota Allison Registration number ADD 8363 silver in colour and that it has dent on the left side of the Vehicle he came to show them. Armed with that information, officers started looking for the said Vehicle and the said Kamwefu. Today the 7/7/22 at 09:30 hours, the Vehicle was spotted at Builders Ware House in Free Town Road in Parklands Kitwe and the driver was identified as the one of the criminals on the footage,” she narrated.

Ms. Zulu continued: “They (Police Officers) started trailing him from Parklands up to Kantanta Street in town is when he noticed a vehicle trailing him,. He increased speed and now officers fired three shots in the air to stop him but he increase speed going towards Wusakile. They fired four shots to deflate the tires unfortunately one caught him in head while others deflated tires and went off to hit into a wall fence at Shakaina School where he was found. He was rushed to Kitwe Teaching Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The body is in the mortuary.”

José Eduardo dos Santos, Angola’s second president who ruled the mineral-rich state for almost four decades, has died aged 79, the government says.

He died in Spain where he was being treated for an undisclosed illness.

Dos Santos will be remembered for ending a long-running civil war in the early 2000s – he was dubbed the “architect of peace”.

But his legacy is soiled by high levels of corruption and human rights violations while he was in power.

Having graduated in petroleum engineering in the Soviet Union in 1969, Dos Santos was only 37 years old when he became Angola’s president a decade later, following the death of the first president, António Agostinho Neto.

At the time, just four years after gaining independence in 1975, the country was wracked by a civil war between the two groups that had fought Portuguese colonisation – Dos Santos’ MPLA and Unita.

The war lasted for 27 years and ravaged the country. About 500,000 people are believed to have died in the conflict.

It also drew in foreign powers, with South Africa – then under white-minority rule – sending troops to support Unita, while Cuban forces intervened on the government’s side.

The department of National Registration, Passports and Citizenship on the Copperbelt has urged parents and guardians to obtain birth certificates for their children and dependents.

Provincial National registration senior register Lisuba Kabanda said in an interview in Ndola that the department has been issuing birth certificates to children who have been registered.

“Having birth certificates becomes easier for children to acquire services such as health school enrollment as well as the National registration card, ” he explained.

Stressing that the issuance of birth certificates is ongoing throughout the province, Mr Kabanda said the birth certificate would have a national identity number which will be used when obtaining a green national registration card at the age of 16 years.

The national registration office has deployed new systems in districts that is able to issue out birth certificates within a period of five working days.

And the Senior Register has also encouraged members who have lost their loved one to collect death certificates.

He said death certificates may be required to settle deceased estates and obtain insurance or pensions.

Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe died in hospital on Friday, the facility treating him confirmed, hours after being shot at a political campaign event in an attack condemned as “absolutely unforgivable”.

“Shinzo Abe was transported to (the hospital) at 12:20 pm. He was in a state of cardiac arrest upon arrival. Resuscitation was administered. However, unfortunately he died at 5:03 pm,” said Hidetada Fukushima, professor of emergency medicine at Nara Medical University Hospital.

The assassination of the country’s best-known politician comes despite Japan’s strict gun laws and with campaigning under way ahead of upper house elections on Sunday.

Earlier Prime Minister Fumio Kishida abandoned the campaign trail and flew to Tokyo by helicopter where he addressed reporters in a voice that wavered with emotion.

“I pray that former prime minister Abe will survive,” he said, condemning “a barbaric act during election campaigning, which is the foundation of democracy.”

“It is absolutely unforgivable. I condemn this act in the strongest terms.”

The attack came before noon in the country’s western region of Nara, where Abe, 67, had been delivering a stump speech with security present, but spectators able to approach him easily.

Footage broadcast by NHK showed him standing on a stage when a man dressed in a grey shirt and brown trousers begins approaching from behind, before drawing something from a bag and firing.

At least two shots appear to be fired, each producing a cloud of smoke.

As spectators and reporters ducked, a man was shown being tackled to the ground by security. He was later arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, reports said.

Local media identified the man as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, citing police sources, with several media outlets describing him as a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the country’s navy.

He was wielding a weapon described by local media as a “handmade gun”, and NHK said he told police after his arrest that he “targeted Abe with the intention of killing him”.

Witnesses at the scene described shock as the political event turned into chaos.

“The first shot sounded like a toy bazooka,” a woman told NHK.

“He didn’t fall and there was a large bang. The second shot was more visible, you could see the spark and smoke,” she added.

“After the second shot, people surrounded him and gave him cardiac massage.”

Abe was bleeding from the neck, witnesses said and photographs showed. He was reportedly initially responsive but subsequently lost consciousness.

Officials from the local chapter of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party said there had been no threats before the incident and that his speech had been announced publicly.

Kishida said “no decision” had been made on the election, though several parties announced their senior members would halt campaigning in the wake of the attack.

Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, held office in 2006 for one year and again from 2012 to 2020, when he was forced to step down due to the debilitating bowel condition ulcerative colitis.

He was a hawkish conservative who pushed for the revision of Japan’s pacifist constitution to recognise the country’s military and has stayed a prominent political figure even after his resignation.

Japan has some of the world’s toughest gun-control laws, and annual deaths from firearms in the country of 125 million people are regularly in single figures.

Getting a gun licence is a long and complicated process for Japanese citizens, who must first get a recommendation from a shooting association and then undergo strict police checks.

Japan has seen “nothing like this for well over 50 to 60 years”, Corey Wallace, an assistant professor at Kanagawa University who focuses on Japanese politics, told AFP.

He said the last similar incident was likely the 1960 assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, the leader of the Japan Socialist Party, who was stabbed by a right-wing youth.

“But two days before an election, of a (man) who is so prominent… it’s really profoundly sad and shocking.”

He noted, too, that Japanese politicians and voters are used to a personal and close-up style of campaigning.

“This could really change.”

Source: EWN