💭 Members of parliament in Uganda have passed a bill that would make homosexual acts punishable by death.
Nearly all the 389 legislators voted on Tuesday for the anti-homosexuality bill that introduces capital and life imprisonment sentences for gay sex and ‘recruitment, promotion and funding’ of same-sex ‘activities’. The bill will now go to President Yoweri Museveni, who can veto it or sign it into law. But in a recent speech he appeared to express support for the bill. The bill marks the latest in a string of setbacks for LGBTQ+ rights in Africa, where homosexuality is illegal in most countries.
👉 Courtesy: The Guardian
👉 Soon the ICC will Issue Arrest Warrant for President Yoweri Museveni.
…Let’s connect the dots….
💭 Hundreds of Ugandan Sect Members Flee to Ethiopia, Fearing Doomsday
Leaders of sect convinced them that end of world is near and death is about to strike their area.
HUNDREDS of people belonging to a religious sect in eastern Uganda have fled from their villages to Ethiopia, Ugandan police said Sunday.
Police said that according to their investigations, the sect members fled to escape the end of the world, which they believe will start from their area.
According to the Anadolu Agency, they said the members of the sect were told by its leaders that their area would soon be hit with death and all the people there would die. They reportedly sold off their property and fled to Ethiopia, from where they are communicating with some of their relatives in Uganda.
‘We are investigating a religious sect called Christ Disciples Church with its base located in Obululum village in the eastern Uganda district of Serere. We started the investigations after getting information that people were being trafficked to Ethiopia since February and it is going on till today,’ area police spokesman Oscar Ogeca told Anadolu’s Godfrey Olukya.
He said the people, who number in the hundreds, were told by their leaders that death is coming soon to their area and the only place they would be safe is in Ethiopia. They were convinced that they should go and spread the gospel there.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 9, 2021
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is reportedly not happy after he was told that Ethiopia’s Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was retreating, two months after advancing on the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa which sparked concerns among the international community.
Speaking to Sudans Post this morning, a TPLF diplomat in Nebraska, United States said Museveni has told Debretsion Gebremichael that he has a ‘strong disapproval’ of the decision by TPLF forces to retreat after making gains against Ethiopian federal forces.
“What happened in Afar and Amhara regions was not only a defeat for the TPLF and its allies, but it is also a disappointment for the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni who is not happy at all after all the gains and advances that we have made against the dictatorial regime of Abiy Ahmed,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
“When he was told that the forces are retreating back towards Tigray, Museveni said in his own words, that ‘I am not happy and I have a strong disapproval for what your troops have done to please those forces’ and this is what he said, but it was something that was outside of our power,” the official added.
Museveni and his son are believed to be pro-Tigrayans in the ongoing Ethiopian conflict.
In November his son Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba who is also a senior army commander sent shivers down the spines of some people for openly backing the Tigrayan rebel forces currently fighting the elected government of PM Abiy Ahmed.
Gen. Muhoozi posted on his verified Twitter account saying: “Our great Tigrayan brothers and sisters cannot be defeated. They have an unconquerable spirit!”
Two days earlier, Gen. Muhoozi had openly stated that he supports the cause of the Tigrayan forces who are currently fighting the government of President Abiy Ahmed.
“I urge my great and brave brothers in the Tigrayan Defence Forces to listen to the words of General Yoweri Museveni! I am as angry as you and I support your cause. Those who raped our Tigrayan sisters and killed our brothers must be punished!”
‘We have to turn back’
In a statement, TPLF leader Debretsion said the decision by his leadership to retreat was necessary due to unforeseen circumstances has Ethiopian federal forces have deployed heavily along the areas recently occupied by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
“We evaluated the overall situation, both ours as well as that of the enemy, and arrived at the decision on our own. We have to turn back; we shouldn’t continue in the present [course]; we have to carry out additional tasks, additional adjustments’ – it was after we identified this that we arrived at the decision,” he said in the statement.
“It was a tough decision but one which had to be made. We have to understand that it was a correct decision. [The decision] wasn’t made because of diplomatic pressure or through discussions,” he added.
The rebel leader further pointed out that “We don’t make discussions which the people of Tigray are not aware of or diplomatic activities which the people of Tigray have not accepted… This is a time of fierce struggle.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on June 30, 2011
What’s going on in Africa?
Local police spokeswoman Zura Ganyana said Wednesday that 51 students between the ages of 7 and 16 were injured Tuesday. She said the teacher who died was visiting the Runyanya primary school, about 160 miles (some 260 kilometers) west of Uganda’s capital.
Zombo education official John Ojobi says another school 200 miles (some 320 kilometers) northwest of Kampala was also hit by lightning Tuesday, injuring 37 students and two teachers.
Meteorology experts say school buildings are being hit because they don’t have lightning conductors and are built on high ground.
In the past few weeks, lightning strikes around the country have killed at least 38 people.
Local media reported that a further 21 pupils were burned after lightning struck at a second school in Zombo district, around 380 kilometres north of Kampala. Police could not confirm the incident.
Ms Nabakooba could not provide an exact figure for the total number killed by lightning in recent weeks, but local newspaper The Daily Monitor reported a total of 28 killed and scores injured in the past week, including Tuesday’s incidents.
Uganda is experiencing unseasonably heavy rainstorms and concern about the number of recent lightning strikes has prompted politicians to demand an official explanation from government
Eleven people were killed by lightning in two communities in northern Nigeria during torrential rains, Red Cross and local officials said Wednesday.
Eight peasant farmers were killed and another 12 injured on Tuesday during a thunderstorm outside Balanga village in Gombe State.
We see it, we hear it, we feel it, yet, we know nothing about it
The Mystery of Lightning
As common as lightning is, it still sparks considerable confusion among scientists.
Many of the basics are understood, but researchers admit they don’t really understand how lightning gets from there to here. And they’re totally baffled by lightning’s link to X-rays, a discovery made back in 2001.
“Nobody understands how lightning makes X-rays,” says Martin Uman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida. “Despite reaching temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun, the temperature of lightning is still thousands of times too cold to account for the X-rays observed.”
That said, Uman added, “It’s obviously happening. And we have put limits on how it’s happening and where it’s happening.”
In new research, Uman and colleagues have taken a step forward in their understanding:
As lightning comes down from a cloud, it moves in steps, each 30 to 160 feet long. In this “step leader” process, X-rays shoot out just below each step millionths of a second after the step completes, the researchers learned.
The finding, based on lightning created in a lab and detailed online this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could eventually lead to better predictions of lightning.
“A spark that begins inside a thunderstorm somehow manages to travel many miles to the ground, where it can hurt people and damage property,” said Uman’s colleague Joseph Dwyer, a professor in the department of physics and space sciences at Florida Institute of Technology. “Now, for the first time, we can actually detect lightning moving toward the ground using X-rays. So just as medical X-rays provide doctors with a clearer view inside patients, X-rays allow us to probe parts of the lightning that are otherwise very difficult to measure.”
But challenges remain.
“From a practical point of view, if we are going to ever be able to predict when and where lightning will strike, we need to first understand how lightning moves from one place to the other,” Dwyer said. “At present, we do not have a good handle on this. X-rays are giving us a close-up view of what is happening inside the lightning as it moves.”
The lab research will continue, and one thing they want to look into: whether lightning strikes to airplanes could produce X-rays harmful to passengers.
Source: LiveScience
Lightning, Thunder and Rain
In ancient times, most religious scripture taught that lightning bolts were missiles thrown in anger by their gods.9 In China, Taoist scripture regarded the rainbow as a deadly rain dragon.10 In Confucius scripture, the goddess of lightning, Tien Mu, flashed light on intended victims to enable Lei Kung, the god of thunder to launch his deadly bolts accurately.11
Since rain is so necessary to life, ancient people pondered what caused it. Some tried to stab holes in the clouds with spears. The Vedas (Hindu scripture) advised to tie a frog with its mouth open to the right tree and say the right words and rain would fall.
Our Bible also talks about rain, lightning and storms. But it contains none of these superstitious ideas found in the other so- called scriptures. The Judeo-Christian Bible taught that earth’s weather followed rules and cycles. Genesis 8:22. “While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
Job stated (28:26): “God made decrees [rules] for the rain. And He set a way for the lightning of the thunder:” Centuries later, scientists began to discern the “rules for the rain” that Job talked about. Rainfall is part of a process called the water cycle. Here’s how the cycle works. The sun evaporates water from the ocean. That water vapor rises and becomes clouds. This water in the clouds falls back to earth as rain, collects in streams and rivers and makes its way back to the ocean. That process repeats itself again and again.
About 300 years ago, Galileo discovered this cycle. But amazingly the Scriptures described this cycle centuries before. The prophet Amos (9:6) wrote that God “calls for the water of the sea. He pours them out on the land.” How did Amos know this? He wrote as he was moved by the Spirit of God.
Actually, scientists are just beginning to fully understand God’s “decrees or rules for the rain.” Since 68 BC it was thought that somehow thunder triggered the rainfall. Now scientists are beginning to realize that as stated in Job 28:26, it is lightning that triggers the rain to fall. Job knew this 3,000 years ago. Certainly his writings were inspired of God (2 Peter 1:21).
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