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Inside MARCH 25, 2019.qxp_Layout 1 22/03/2019 10:30 PM Page 3 •The threat level was temporarily raised to its highest level after the shooting Utrecht shooting: Suspect admits deadly tram attack A MAN has admitted to killing three people on a tram in Utrecht and said he acted alone, Dutch prosecutors say. Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, 37, wounded five others and was arrested on Monday after a city-wide manhunt. A judge on Friday extended his detention for two weeks as investigations continue. Prosecutors are assessing whether he was driven by terrorist motives or his actions came from personal problems combined with radicalised ideas. Three other men, aged 23, 27 and 40, were arrested after the incident but have since been released. Prosecutors said their investigation now led them to believe the gunman had no help from other people. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had previously said his country's intelligence service was "looking into" the attack. BBC DAILY HERITAGE MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2019 WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH World news in 4 stories •Jacob Zuma Anti-Bouteflika protests continue in Algeria HUNDREDS OF thousands of people have taken to the streets of Algerian cities for the fifth consecutive Friday to demand the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The anti-government website, El Khabar, said the rain in Algiers had not dampened people's spirits; another website said that thousands also turned out in the cities of Relianze, Oran, Bouira and Tizi- Ouzou. Demonstrations began a month ago when the 82-yearold president decided to stand again for office - but they continued after he said he would not contest a fifth term. President Bouteflika also postponed upcoming elections, prompting largely peaceful protests calling for immediate change. BBC Zuma 'nuclear plan could have averted blackouts’ FORMER SOUTH African President Jacob Zuma has waded into the national debate of how to deal with the crippling interruption of electricity in the country. State-owned power utility company Eskom has been implementing daily power cuts designed to prevent a total collapse of the overstretched electricity grid. Mr Zuma told local Business Day news site that a controversial nuclear deal with Russia, that he fronted when he was in office, could have averted the current crisis. “The fact of the matter is nuclear could solve our problems, once and for all. Now we are in deep, we are therefore increasing the debt of the country with no hope to bring it down. That’s a problem," Mr Zuma said. The plan to build eight nuclear plants, with the support of Russia and other countries at an estimated cost of around 1tn rand ($76bn; £59bn) was annulled by a court in 2017 following a legal challenge by environmental groups. There were also allegations that the cost of the project had been inflated. The country currently has one nuclear plant. Environmental groups say South Africa should rely more on renewable energy to meet its electricity needs. BBC • The people demand the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika Golan Heights: Syria condemns Donald Trump's remarks SYRIA HAS condemned as "irresponsible" US President Donald Trump's comments that it was time to recognise Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. A statement published by the Syrian state news agency said it showed the "blind bias" of the US towards Israel. It said Syria was determined to recover the area "through all available means". Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981 in a move not • The Golan Heights has a political and strategic significance which belies its size recognised internationally. Israel wants to contain the military presence of its arch-enemy Iran in Syria, which has grown stronger throughout eight years of conflict. Mr Trump's remarks on Thursday overturned decades of US policy on the issue. In a tweet, he said the plateau was of "critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and regional stability!" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the US president in a phone call, telling him "you've made history". The statement carried by the Sana news agency said Mr Trump's comments had shown "contempt" for international law and that they would not change "the reality that the Golan was and will remain Syrian, Arab". "The Syrian nation is more determined to liberate this precious piece of Syrian national land through all available means," the unnamed foreign ministry source added. BBC
WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH DAILY HERITAGE MONDAY, MARCH 25, 2019 05 Editorial Passenger empowerment can reduce accidents BY ALL means every one of us will die one day but how we exit this earth and what causes us to leave together is the issue. “Why this statement?” one may ask. The statement becomes highly significant when we think about the fact that some die in good old age from natural causes while others die from unnatural causes like suicides and accidents and the fact that some deaths are described as being premature. In the case of premature deaths, age is not so much the issue but the fact that such deaths have come about through hopelessness or carelessness of the dead persons or somebody else who may be alive. Sometimes some people lose all hope or do something careless and take their lives to avoid the consequences of their actions and at other times some people, through sheer carelessness, send innocent people to their graves. The saddest of all deaths are those that are caused by sheer careless of others, who often stay back to enjoy life. One of the people who kill others and mostly hang around to eat and drink is the driver. For their carelessness, which come in various forms such as non-maintenance of their vehicles, speeding and disregard for road signs, drivers, commercial drivers in particular, send people to their early graves. Without trying to remind relatives of accident victims, dead or alive, the DAILY HERITAGE wish to make reference to the carnage on our roads, the fresh one being the one that occurred at Kintampo on Friday in which about 50 people lost their lives with 40 being injured. We understand that there are road traffic laws but deem it sad to say that everything seems to point to the fact that those who check those laws are either relaxing or the task is beyond them and so others must be made to come in and help them. We can see that drivers are so much engrossed in impunity that they do not care about the laws, probably because they not deterrent enough. People who see the impunity of the driver at play the best are passenger, so the DAILY HERITAGE wants to advise that passengers must be given some power of arrest or control over the driver so that they can check speeding and other road offences. Ghanaian drivers insult passengers who try to ask them to drive well and their insults and other hostilities deter others to keep quiet because it seems the drivers assume unnecessary power over the passengers. It is about time passengers are educated at the point of boarding vehicles, the lorry stations and given some powers to check drivers. The DAILY HERITAGE believes that if this is well done the road carnage will come down drastically. PRESIDENT NANA Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his vice, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, have consoled bereaved families following a fatal road carnage in Kintampo that claimed over 50 lives. Akufo-Addo, Mahama mourn Kintampo accident victims BY KENT MENSAH PRESIDENT NANA Akufo- Addo and his vice Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia have consoled bereaved families following a deadly road carnage in Kintampo claiming over 50 lives. A head-on collision involving two buses in Kintampo on Friday also left over 40 passengers injured in the new Bono East region. The buses were each carrying about 50 passengers at the time of the crash. Emergency services were at the scene, including firefighters who helped put out fire which engulfed one of the vehicles. Speaking at the annual end-of-year gettogether of the West Africa Security Service Association (WASSA) of the Ghana Police Service on Friday, 22 March 2019, Mr Akufo-Addo said: “My sympathies and condolences go to all the families and loved ones of the deceased. May the Almighty grant their souls peaceful rest”. Former president John Mahama has also expressed concerns about deaths on Ghana’s road, calling on all stakeholders to find solution to it. •Flashback: President Nana Akufo-Addo exchanging greetings with John Dramani Mahama, Flagbearer of NDC The cause of the crashes is still to be established but rumours are that the driver of one of the vehicles lost control after falling asleep. “Fifty-five were brought in dead and out of that number 35 were burnt beyond recognition. Forty people were brought in alive, but one died. Four people have been referred – two had severe head injuries and other two sustained multiple fractures on the rib,” Dr. Prince Kwabena Tabi of the Kintampo South Medical Hospital told Starr News Rose Anane, who was on one of the buses, said: “I was fast asleep then I heard a loud bang. We managed to break the glass and it was just a few of us – about 10 – who managed to move out. “In a matter of seconds, the vehicle went on fire, with the others still trapped in the car. We watched as the fire consumed them. It was late into the night.” The crash has renewed calls for Ghanaian authorities to enforce traffic rules to reduce deaths on the country’s poorly maintained roads. Gifty Mintah, a resident, said: “We’ve been speaking to the local assembly to fix rumble strips on the road, but they said this is a highway so it’s not possible. For how long are we going to look on for people to keep dying?” Rumble strips are positioned at the edges of roads and make noise when cars pass over them to alert drivers.Crashes are common on highways in Ghana because of poor maintenance, disregard for traffic regulations and unroadworthy vehicles. An average of six people die on the country’s roads every day, according to the Ghanaian police’s motor transport and traffic directorate. In February 2016, 70 people were killed and 13 injured when two buses collided in Kintampo. In July 2017, a bus carrying players and officials from one of Ghana’s leading football clubs, Asante Kotoko, crashed into the back of a stationary lorry
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