The deposed Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi, has reacted to his removal from office. According to a video message he released, Mr. Sanusi accepted his dethronement as an act of destiny. He said in part: “With almost six years on this throne and (in charge of) our heritage. Today, the Almighty Allah, who gave me the leadership has destined to take it back,” Mr. Sanusi said. As I always say, leadership has predetermined tenure, the days Allah destined are numbered. When the days come to an end one must leave. We have accepted whatever Allah decides. We have agreed. We…
Author: Doris Emmanuel
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Wuhan on Tuesday for his first visit to the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic since the crisis erupted in January — a major sign that officials believe the outbreak is under control. Xi’s unannounced visit comes as unprecedented quarantine measures that have sealed off Wuhan and the rest of central Hubei province since late January appear to have paid off, with new infections dropping dramatically in recent weeks. The Communist Party leader arrived by plane in Hubei’s capital for an “inspection of the epidemic prevention and control work” in the region, according to the…
Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok has survived an assassination attempt targeting his convoy in the capital Khartoum, state television and a cabinet source said on Monday. Hamdok, who was appointed to head a transitional government after the overthrow of longtime President Omar al-Bashir last year, has been moved to a safe location, state TV said. Images broadcast on regional TV channels and social media showed a convoy including several damaged white SUVs and a badly damaged car. Three witnesses told Reuters the attack happened near the northern entrance to Kober bridge, which connects Khartoum North with the city center, where…
An animated video highlighting the achievements of women around the world is this year’s theme for Google’s International Women’s Day 2020 doodle. The struggle for gender equality and labour movements from both this century and the 1900s are depicted through multi-coloured layers in the video which Google’s guest artists Julie Wilkinson and Joyanne Horscroft from London have highlighted through a 3D-paper mandala animation. The black-and-white layer in the first part of the video highlights the suffragette movement and movements in which women sought equal rights in labour during the 1800s to the early nineties. The second part of the video…
Egypt has recorded 33 new cases of the coronavirus. Health minister Hala Zayed told the media Saturday that the cases were recorded aboard a cruise ship on the Nile river in Luxor, Southern Egypt. “Out of the 12, 11 are negative. Then we found 33 new positive cases. All of them have the virus with no symptoms. So there are 45 cases related to the Nile cruise ship, all of them are with no symptoms, 11 of those 45 became negative today”, she said. She said the North African nation has a total of 3 confirmed cases as of now.…
In a new documentary, ex U.S President Bill Clinton has said that his extramarital affair with his secretary, Monica S. Lewinsky – that led to his impeachment in 1998 – was a way of “managing my anxieties.” When asked by the director, Nanette Burstein, why he engaged in an affair and whether he weighed the risks, “Nobody sits down and thinks, ‘I think I’ll take an irresponsible risk,’” Mr. Clinton says. “It’s bad for my family, bad for my country, bad for the people who work with me.” He says that he was under enormous pressure, but that his actions…
Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said on Thursday he is reconsidering a proposed stint in Africa this year due to coronavirus concerns, walking back his plans amid a call by activist investor Elliott Management for his ouster. “With everything happening in the world, particularly with coronavirus, I have to reconsider what’s going on and what that means for me and for our company,” Dorsey said, speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference in San Francisco. Dorsey tweeted in November, as he was wrapping up a shorter trip through Africa, that he was planning to move to the continent for three…
Senegal’s health minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr on Monday announced the first case of coronavirus in the country. This is the second case in sub-Saharan Africa after one was confirmed in Nigeria last week. The patient is said to be a French man who lives in Senegal and came back from a skiing holiday in France on Feb. 26 on an Air Senegal flight. According to the minister, the patient had passed a temperature check at the capital Dakar’s main airport on his return but developed a fever two days later and went to a private clinic for a check-up causing the clinic…
With the viral outbreak spreading to more countries, the price of oil has dropped precipitously as global demand weakens even further. That has sent shares tumbling for oil giants like Exxon and Chevron while smaller producers with idling rigs continue to slash jobs. Hundreds of new cases of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease have been announced in recent days outside of China. The list of countries touched by the illness has climbed to nearly 60 as Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Iceland, and the Netherlands reported their first cases. More than 85,000 people worldwide have contracted…
Royal Dutch Shell’s Bonga oilfield in Nigeria will undergo maintenance in March and April, though the impact on production and exact dates are still being finalised, a spokesman said. Shell operates the offshore field via its Nigerian subsidiary SNEPCo. In March, around 153,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude were due for export, according to a loading program. “The Bonga FPSO will be undergoing scheduled maintenance and project activities in addition to regulatory inspections during March and April. Exact dates and production impacts are currently under review,” the spokesman said. So far, no April loading program has emerged. Traders said…
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds announced their engagement on Saturday evening, adding that they are expecting a baby in early summer, setting up Johnson to be the first prime minister to divorce and marry while in office. Johnson and his second wife, Indian-origin Marina Wheeler, are at an advanced stage of divorce. They reached a financial settlement earlier this month as a precursor to the formalisation of their divorce. Johnson, 55, and Symonds, 31, moved into Downing Street when he became prime minister in July 2019. It will be Johnson’s third marriage; he first married Allegra…
South Korea urged citizens on Saturday to stay indoors as it warned of a “critical moment” in its battle on the coronavirus after recording the biggest daily jump in infections, with 594 new cases taking the tally to 2,931. South Korea is grappling with the largest outbreak of the virus outside China, as a new death took the toll to 17, amid a record daily increase in infections since the country confirmed its first patient on Jan. 20. “We have asked you to refrain from taking part in public events, including a religious gathering or protest, this weekend,” Vice health…
The United States has delayed a regional ASEAN summit scheduled to take place in Las Vegas next month due to fears of the coronavirus, a senior administration official said Friday. “As the international community works together to defeat the novel coronavirus, the United States, in consultation with ASEAN partners, has made the difficult decision to postpone the ASEAN leaders meeting,” said the official on condition of not being named. Leaders from the Association of South East Asian Nations had been due to be hosted by President Donald Trump on March 14. The official said the United States “values our relationships…
Tokyo has no Plan B for this year’s Summer Olympics despite alarm over the spread of the coronavirus in Japan and elsewhere with under five months before the event, a senior official said on Friday. “There will not be one bit of change in holding the Games as planned,” Katsura Enyo, deputy director-general of the Tokyo 2020 Preparation Bureau at the city government, told Reuters. Having prepared for years and invested some $12 billion, Japan is eager to quell fears the Games might be called off, postponed or moved to a different location due to the virus. Though on the…
A small group of desert locusts has entered Congo, marking the first time the voracious insects have been seen in the Central African country since 1944, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency said Tuesday as U.N. agencies warned of a “major hunger threat” in East Africa from the flying pests. Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda have been battling the swarms in the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years. The U.N. said swarms have also been sighted in Djibouti, Eritrea, and Tanzania and recently reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already…
Two more Iranians infected with a coronavirus have died, media website Eghtesaonline said on Tuesday, taking to 14 the toll in the Islamic Republic, which has the highest tally of deaths outside China, where the virus emerged late last year. “Tests showed they had the new coronavirus,” the head of the Medical Science University of Saveh said, according to the website. On Monday, the health ministry said 61 people had been infected in Iran. Iran’s clerical rulers have been struggling to rein in the virus since Wednesday, when Tehran confirmed its first two deaths, in the holy Shi’ite city of…
Africa is ill-equipped to respond to the deadly corona virus outbreak, the World Health Organization said Saturday. The global health body is concerned about the spread of the virus in countries with weak health systems on the continent. Director General of the WHO Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus said this at a meeting of 36 African health ministers at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa via video link from Geneva, Switzerland. “If truly we have a virus introduced on the continent and it becomes a larger issue the ability to procure diagnostics in a timely fashion to support that testing will still…
Organizers for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics have postponed training for volunteers because of the spread of the coronavirus in Japan. Training was scheduled to be held starting Saturday but will be rescheduled, the organizing committee said in a statement released late Friday. The postponement of training will not affect other preparations, and organizers are not considering cancelling the games, the statement said. Japan is facing growing questions about whether it is doing enough to stop the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which emerged in central China late last year and has spread to 24 other countries. Some investors are starting to worry…
Borno Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum has declared next Monday, February 24, 2020, for statewide fasting and prayers to combine with an intensified offensive by Nigeria’s military and volunteer forces against Boko haram insurgents. Zulum made the declaration in a six-minute broadcast to the people of Borno State. He, however, said there will be no public holiday on the coming Monday. The insurgents have lately resumed serial attacks on communities in different parts of Borno state with the latest in Chibok on Tuesday after the previous one in Auno last Sunday. The Governor after enumerating ongoing collaboration with the military,…
President Muhammadu Buhari has assured that with the various reform agenda implemented by his administration, very soon, all government financial transactions will be done in the open. The President gave this assurance Tuesday in Kaduna at the Passing-Out Parade of Detective Inspector Course Five, of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). “My resolve is to ensure that the reforms are deepened such that there will be no hiding place for corrupt persons and proceeds of corruption. My aim is to ensure that no government financial transaction is done in secret and all are subjected to public scrutiny. “The objective…
Forty Americans are among hundreds infected with the new coronavirus on a cruise ship quarantined off Japan, a US official said on Sunday, after other Americans on board left for chartered flights home. The evacuation came as Japanese authorities stepped up warnings over the deadly outbreak, urging citizens to avoid crowds and “non-essential gatherings”. The Diamond Princess was placed in 14-day quarantine in early February after a former passenger tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. But US authorities announced on the weekend they would offer American passengers the option to leave and fly home, where they will face another 14-day…
A massacre in an anglophone region of Cameroon left up to 22 villagers dead including 14 children, the UN said Sunday, with an opposition party blaming the killings on the army. Armed men carried out the bloodshed on Friday in the village of Ntumbo in the Northwest region, James Nunan, a local official of humanitarian coordination agency OCHA, told AFP. “Up to 22 civilians were killed, including a pregnant woman and several children,” Nunan said, adding that 14 children — including nine under age five — were among the dead. Eleven of the children were girls, said Nunan, head of…
English champions Manchester City have been banned from European competition for the next two seasons and fined 30 million euros (£25 million) by European soccer’s governing body UEFA after an investigation into alleged breaches of Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. UEFA said in a statement that City had committed “serious breaches” of the rules while the Premier League club swiftly said they intended to appeal the decision to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The ruling, if upheld, would mean City would not be able to compete in next season’s Champions League should they again qualify for Europe’s…
Scientists in Antarctica have recorded a new record temperature of 20.75 degrees Celsius (69.35 Fahrenheit), breaking the barrier of 20 degrees for the first time on the continent, a researcher said Thursday. “We’d never seen a temperature this high in Antarctica,” Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP. He cautioned that the reading, taken at a monitoring station on an island off the continent’s northern tip on February 9, “has no meaning in terms of a climate-change trend,” because it is a one-off temperature and not part of a long-term data set. But news that the icy continent is now recording…
The World Health Organization has extended its designation of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a global health emergency. The decision was partly made to keep global attention on the epidemic. The WHO’s Emergency Committee unanimously agreed to continue the designation known as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern for the DRC, which gives the organization more power to limit the spread of the disease. WHO’s assessment of the situation means the risk of Ebola spreading within the DRC and regionally remains but low globally. WHO declared the DRC’s Ebola outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in mid-July after…
China has recorded a new morbid highest with more than a 100 people dying of the novel coronavirus on Monday and the death toll crossing the 1000-mark. The number of dead from the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) stood at 1016 on the mainland at Monday midnight while as many as 42634 remain infected, health officials said on Tuesday morning. At least two persons have so far died outside the mainland: One each in Hong Kong and the Philippines. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 319 cases in 24 countries have been reported so far. The toll continued to rise…
The death toll in China due to the novel coronavirus epidemic has gone up to 908 and the number of confirmed cases rose over 40,000, Chinese health officials said on Monday. There were 97 deaths and 3,062 new confirmed cases of the lethal infection on Sunday, China’s National Health Commission said. Ninety-one deaths were in Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic, two in Anhui, and one each in Heilongjiang, Jiangxi, Hainan, and Gansu, according to the commission. A total of 908 people have died of the disease and 40,171 confirmed cases of the outbreak were reported in 31 provincial-level…
A soldier with a grudge gunned down 26 people and wounded 57 in Thailand’s worst shooting spree before he was fatally shot inside a mall in the country’s northeast on Sunday, officials said. Officials said the soldier angry over a financial dispute first killed two people and then went on a far bloodier rampage Saturday, shooting as he drove to a busy mall where shoppers fled in terror. “The police have killed the perpetrator and rescued eight hostages. Some were wounded,” said a member of the security sources who declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak…
Instant noodles are pre-cooked noodles, processed using flavoring powder and seasoning oil and are usually sold in individual packets or cups and bowls. Mostly they are prepared using ingredients like maida- the milled, refined and bleached version of wheat flour, salt and palm oil. The are laced with artificial color, seasoning, preservatives and monosodium glutamate (MSG). Nutrition fact Since they are made for longer shelf life, they are highly processed. They are low on nutrition, high on fat, carbs, calories and sodium and low in calories, fiber and protein. How they are made? First the ingredients- wheat flour, palm oil,…
A US citizen has died from the new coronavirus at the epicentre of the epidemic in China, the US embassy said Saturday, in what appears to be the first confirmed foreign death from the outbreak. The American, who died on Thursday, was around 60 years old and died at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, according to the United States Embassy in Beijing. Two people familiar with the matter said the person was a woman and had underlying health conditions. “We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss,” said a spokesman for the embassy. “Out of respect for the…
