Thousands of travellers and truck drivers bound for Arizona had to be rerouted after floodwaters washed out a section of Interstate 10 near the Arizona-California border.
The flooding was triggered by seasonal rain and the road has since been reopened.
Pakistan is appealing for further international assistance as floods devastate the country, leaving people searching for higher, drier ground.
The death toll from the monsoon rains has reached 1,033 – with 119 killed in the last 24 hours, the National Disaster Management Authority says.
The US, UK, UAE and others have contributed to a disaster appeal, but more funds are needed, officials say.
One man told newsmen his daughter had been swept away by a flooded river.
“She told me: ‘Daddy, I’m going to collect leaves for my goat,'” Muhammad Fareed, who lives in the Kaghan Valley in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said.
“She went to the bank of the river and a gush of water followed and took her away.”
An aide to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told the newsmen the country was desperate for international support.
“Pakistan has been grappling with economic issues, but now just when we were about to overcome them the monsoon disaster hit,” Salman Sufi said.
Funding from a lot of development projects had been rerouted to the affected people, he added.
According to reports by the Dawn newspaper, Prime Minister Sharif has announced a grant of 10bn rupees ($45m) for those in the most affected Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Every flood-affected family would be given 25,000 rupees ($112), Mr Sharif said, which would be disbursed within a week.
In the north-west of the country, thousands of people fled their homes after rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa burst their banks, causing powerful flash floods.
“The house which we built with years of hard work started sinking in front of our eyes,” Junaid Khan, 23, told a news agency. “We sat on the side of the road and watched our dream house sinking.”
The province of Sindh in the south-east of the country has also been badly affected, with thousands displaced from their homes.
There were displaced people in all of the villages we drove through across Sindh.
The full scale of the devastation in the province is yet to be fully understood, but on the ground the people describe it as the worst disaster they’ve survived.
Floods are not uncommon in Pakistan but the people here tell us these rains were different. They were more than anything that’s ever been seen here. One local official described them as “floods of biblical proportions”.
Near the city of Larkana, thousands of mud homes have sunk under water, and for miles all that’s visible is treetops.
Where the water level is slightly lower, thatched roofs creep out from underneath the menacing water.
The needs of the survivors are varied. In one village we visit, the people sat there are desperate for food. In another they say they’ve got their grains, but they need money to meet their other needs.
We visit one where many children have developed waterborne diseases. A mobile truck pulls over and scores immediately run towards it. Children carrying other children make their way to the long queue.
One 12-year-old girl says she and her baby sister have not eaten in a day. “No food has come here. But my sister is sick, she has been vomiting, I hope they can help.”
Mr Sharif said 33 million people had been hit by the floods – about 15% of the country’s population.
He said the losses caused by floods this season were comparable to those during the floods of 2010-11, said to be the worst on record.
Officials in the country blame climate change for the devastation.
But poor local government planning has exacerbated the impact in the past, with buildings often erected in areas prone to seasonal flooding.
The American space agency is counting down to the lift-off of its giant new Moon rocket – the Space Launch System.
SLS is the most powerful vehicle ever developed by Nasa, and will be the foundation of its Artemis project which aims to put people back on the lunar surface after a 50-year absence.
The rocket is timed to go up from the Kennedy Space Centre at 08:33 local time (12:33 GMT; 13:33 BST) on Monday.
Its job will be to propel a test capsule, called Orion, far from Earth.
This spacecraft will loop around the Moon on a big arc before returning home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean in six weeks’ time.
Orion is uncrewed for this demonstration but assuming all the hardware works as it should, astronauts will climb aboard for a future series of ever more complex missions, starting in 2024.
“Everything we’re doing with this Artemis I flight, we’re looking at through the lens of what can we prove out and what can we demonstrate that will buy down risk for the Artemis II crewed mission,” explained Nasa astronaut Randy Bresnik.
Parents, under the aegis of the National Parent Teacher Association of Nigeria, NAPTAN, have said they only expect reports that would put an end to the ongoing strike by members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, as the National Executive Council, NEC, of the union meets to decide on the industrial action.
Speaking in an interview on Sunday, the National President of NAPTAN, Haruna Danjuma, also expressed optimism that the meeting would lead to the face-off between the union and the government being resolved.
Also speaking, the National President of the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, Comrade Sunday Asefon, said if the lecturers are really fighting for students, they should suspend the strike.
“Our children have stayed at home for too long. As parents, we are not happy with that. My expectation and the expectation of other parents is that the strike be called off and that the union and the government should meet to iron out things and for progress to be made.
“This is not a time to apportion blame, but to find the way out of this logjam. We need to get our public universities running again,” Danjuma said.
Danjuma added that he was optimistic that things would turn out in the positive as a number of well-meaning Nigerians and opinion leaders have stepped into the matter.
According to Asefon, the issue of withheld salary should not stop the union from suspending the strike.
“Our expectation is that the strike be suspended. They should have a rethink. If they are actually fighting for students’ welfare and issues relating to students, enough is enough. Let them suspend the strike.
“Moreover, the issue of their salaries that are not yet paid should not debar them from calling off the action. That one can be sorted out when they resume work. This is not the first time the government would threaten to invoke “No work, no pay,” but it has always paid in the end. The future of Nigerian students is at stake here,” he added.
Meanwhile, the national leadership of the union started to meet on Sunday evening and that would be followed by the NEC which would collate views from across the branches of the union nationwide.
The position of the union is expected to be made public early Monday morning.
The union has been on strike since February 14 this year, while other non-academic staff unions which went on strike after them have suspended their own actions.
Nduka “The Duke” Odizor is a Nigerian tennis legend. He is the last Nigerian to get to (and beyond) the second round of any grandslam tournament. He is also the only Nigerian to play on centre court at Wimbledon.
Nduka Odizor grew up in Maroko, a large slum that was near Victoria Island in Lagos. He attended Edward Blydon Memorial Primary School at Okesuna on Lagos Island. He sometimes worked as a ball boy at Ikoyi Club and Lagos Lawn Tennis Club. It was there that his interest in tennis grew.
He once said that he was so poor, but he loved tennis so much, that he was faced with a decision of whether he should buy akara to eat (because he was very hungry) or go to the National Stadium by bus to watch tennis and he chose trek from Lagos Lawn Tennis Club to the stadium because he was going to be there all day and so he also had to eat.
He attended the famous New Era secondary school in Benin City. Governor Samuel Ogbemudia of the Mid-West State established the school as a centre of excellence for sportsmen and women, so that they can get an education and play sports, but Odizor said that the system broke down after Ogbemudia left office and the school began admitting “anybody”. Odizor played at the National Sports Festival and for the Nigerian National Team while he was still a teenager.
I had a neighbour who was a Nigerian tennis legend in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also very close to the Americans. This was during the Cold War when the Americans and Russians were competing for influence around the world.
In the 1970s (after he had retired), my neighbour told the Americans that tennis was getting very popular in Nigerian and that they could create a good feeling towards Americans if they invested in Nigerian tennis. (This was revealed in the diplomatic papers that were released by Wikileaks).
The US Embassy got some American tennis players to participate at the Ogbe Hard Court tournamen (at the Ogbe Stadium in Benin). They got Pepsi/7up to sponsor the tournament. They also held many tennis clinics in Nigeria.
A visiting American professor called Dr Robert Wren saw Nduka Odizor playing at one of the USAID tennis clinics in the 1970s. He offered to sponsor Odizor’s education in the United States. Odizor finished his secondary school education at St Thomas High School, Houston. He also attended the University of Houston, where he graduated with a degree in Business Marketing and Finance in 1981.
Wimbledon
Nduka “The Duke of Wimbledon” Odizor played at Wimbledon for the very first time in 1975. He played in the junior tournament on that occasion. He played in the senior tournament in 1982 and got to the second round before he was beaten by Swedish legend, Mats Wilander. However, it was his appearance at Wimbledon in 1983 that made waves.
Odizor got to the fourth round at Wimbledon in 1983 and he was just one victory away from the quarter-final when he was beaten by Chris Lewis of New Zealand.
Racism
Odizor said that he was given police protection by Scotland Yard when he played at Wimbledon because skin heads and other racist groups sent death threats to him. He said that police officers had to follow him where ever he went.
He also said that he suffered from racism many times on the tour. Some people would not want to share locker rooms with him, some wouldn’t want to practice with him and some wouldn’t want to play doubles with him.
He said that the problem of racism did not only exist abroad. He said that some Nigerians in Nigeria were also affected by it. For example, he said that he was very angry when he watched a Nigerian tennis star lose to an Ethiopian at the All Africa Games in Lagos in 1973. He said that he believed that even he, as a kid, could have beaten the Ethiopian and that the problem was that the Nigerian believed that the Ethiopian was better simply because of his lighter skin.
Australian Open
Odizor also got to the third round of the Australian Open in 1985, where he lost to American legend, John McEnroe. This match has gone into tennis history books because of a little trick that Odizor played. He surprised McEnroe by serving a underarm drop shot that earned him an ace. McEnroe was so surprised that he did not even move.
US Open
Odizor also got to the third round of the US Open on two occasions, 1985 and 1987.
He was not as succesful in the French Open, where he lost in the first round in 1986.
Titles
Nduka Odizor won singles titles in Lagos, Taiwan and Benin. He also won doubles titles in Monterrey (Mexico), Dallas, Tokyo and Sydney. He won 28 titles overall, including in Taipei, Lagos, Thessaloniki, Monterey, Tokyo, Forest hills in New York City, Benin City, etc.
His highest singles ranking was number 52 in the world in 1984 and number 20 in the doubles.
Nigerian National Team
He was part of Nigeria’s Davis Cup team that played in the Euro-Africa Zone Group 1 (just below the World Group. We got to the quarter final of that group in 1988 and 1989). He also represented Nigeria at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.
After retirement
He established the DOIT Foundation after retiring and he has returned to Nigeria many times to run tennis clinics and to teach Nigerian children how to play the game.
Crushed Rock is an abandoned quarry in Mpape, Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.
The quarry was opened in 1977, just a year after the decision to relocate Nigeria’s capital to Abuja from Lagos.
During the 1980s the quarry provided much of the stone for the construction of the new city.
It has been abandoned since at least 2010.
The quarry and quarry lake are now a popular tourist location.
History
The quarry was operated by Crushed Rock Industries (Nigeria) Limited, which was incorporated on 13 May 1977.
The quarry was created after the 1976 decision to relocate the capital of Nigeria to Abuja from Lagos.
It was heavily utilised during the 1980s when it, and others in Mpape, supplied much of the stone required for the construction of new buildings in the city.
The quarry is in the nearby neighbourhood of Mpape (which means “rock” in the Gwari language).
Jextoban Secondary School, Ibafo, Ogun State, has advised parents to develop an effective home training curriculum for children.
Vice-Chancellor, First Technical University, Ibadan, Prof. Adesola Ajayi, gave this counsel as a guest speaker at the 24th valedictory service and graduation ceremony of the school.
Ajayi who was represented by Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Tech U, Prof. Iyiola Teller, maintained that attention must be paid to physical, spiritual, cognitive, socio-cultural, mental, emotional, academics, economics and political development of children.
He said, ‘‘Parenting is a ministry, it is a serious task, take it as a ministry. Train a child in the way he should go, training means there will be moments of examination and rewards. Are we just feeding them, and not training them? Develop a curriculum to bring up your children.’’
Also speaking, Zonal Educational Officer, Obafemi Owode, Local Government Area, Ogun State, Akeem Bisiriyu, told the graduants to ‘‘inculcate good habits as social vices lead to bad lives. I want you to continue to dress well as you have been taught here. Parents should visit them at school. Success comes by enthusiasm, hard work with utmost seriousness.’’
The proprietress, Adunola Ojo , also admonished the graduating students that they needed to be hard working to overcome any situation, saying they should never lose hope, but remain steadfast and fervent in prayers.
The Principal, Samson Oladeji, said, “I charge all our students to remember to render themselves for services to make the school stronger, visionary, focused and sustainable.’’
Chairman, Board of Governors, Emammeuel Ojo, who was represented by Dr Olarenju Ojo, said, ‘‘To succeed in life, you have to see the need to dream big and work diligently towards your goals. Success is sweet but it doesn’t come cheaply. Try and build on this solid foundation of transparent honesty and integrity.’’
1189 Third Crusade: the Crusaders begin the Siege of Acre under Guy of Lusignan
1609 English explorer Henry Hudson, discovers and explores Delaware Bay
1830 1st American built locomotive, “Tom Thumb” races a horse-drawn car from Stockton and Stokes stagecoach company from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills. Let history record that due to mechanical problems the horse won!
1845 Scientific American magazine publishes its first issue
1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I have a dream” speech addressing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom civil rights march at Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
Historical Events Today
Today in Film & TV
1956 17th Venice Film Festival opens. No Golden Lion awarded
Today in Music
1965 Bob Dylan booed for playing electric guitar In concert at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in Queens, New York City
Today in Sport
1972 Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut becomes media darling at the Munich Olympics; wins gold in the teams all-round ; follows with 2 gold and a silver
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1924 British children’s writer Enid Blyton (27) marries editor Major Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (36)
Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has called for more investments in agricultural development to curb rising food insufficiency in Nigeria.
He said that oil palm production was one area that wealthy Deltans and Nigerians could invest in to create job opportunities and economic development of the people.
Okowa, the vice-presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), made the call at the weekend after inspecting Oil Palm Plantation and Refinery under construction at Akwukwu-Igbo, Oshimili North Local Government Area of the state.
He said: “Four years ago, the management of Norsworthy Farms spoke to me when they were to commence and I thought it a worthy venture to have the state government stay supportive and in partnership with them to develop this oil palm plantation, now with a mill already being installed.
“Where we are now is quite interesting because we have had the opportunity to go round the one thousand four hundred hectares of land, all planted with oil palm seedlings that have grown so much; some are already producing.
“As a state government we believe in this worthy partnership because beyond the fact that it will help to grow the economy of this environment and also help the immediate communities that are around here, we are very mindful of the fact that it is going to generate a lot of employment for our people.
“I have been told that on the average, 300 persons are working on a daily basis in this place and I believe that when the mill comes on stream, we are going to have more persons engaged.”
Okowa added that the partnership would create more opportunities for outgrowers, especially in the oil palm development value-chain and urged Deltans to key into the opportunity provided by the partnership.
He commended the Management and staff of Norsworthy Farms, the Obi of Akuku-Igbo and the people of Illah for their support and cooperation towards the successful take-off of the project.
In his remark, the Managing Director of Northsworthy Farms and Allied Industries Limited, Dr Gabriel Ogbechie thanked the governor for his support and vision for the project.
He said the project, which is a joint venture between Northsworthy Farms, and Allied Industries Limited and the Delta State Government had successfully planted over 250,000 oil palm trees in over 1,400 hectares of land.
Ogbechie said that the project will indeed contributed to the agricultural development and food sufficiency need of the country.
The Okomu National Park is situated to the north-west of the ancient city of Benin, Okomu National Park is a fascinating rainforest in Ovia South-West, Edo state. It is an exciting place where even students go for excursions.
The Okomu National Park is a pleasant forest where you experience the beauty of a rainforest full of huge forest trees, several species of plants and animals. Although the forest reserve continues to shrink due to encroachment, it still holds some endangered wildlife such as the rare white-throated monkey.
There are only two rainforest parks in the country. Okomu National Park located in Edo State, the western end of Nigeria is one. The second is the Cross River National Park in Cross River State.
Okomu is, however, a thrill for many reasons. Despite its small enclosure, 118 sq kilometres, it has abundant flora and fauna resources with a very rich ecosystem that is very unique and distinct.
The Okomu Wildlife Sanctuary is a forest block set within the 1,082 km² Okomu Forest Reserve, and situated about 60 km north-west of the city of Benin. Okomu is a home of forest elephants, buffaloes, red river hogs, chimpanzees, leopards, putty nosed guenon, porcupine, pangolins, duikers, antelopes etc.
The vegetation is a typical Guinea–Congo lowland rainforest and is characterized by a mosaic of swamp-forest, high forest, secondary forest, and open scrubs.
The white-throated monkey which is one of the rarest monkeys in the world today is found at the park as well. Butterflies and birds are abundant making it one of the best places for bird watching in Nigeria.
The park has two tree houses, one 140 feet high in a silk-cotton tree, from which visitors can view the park from above and observe bird life. This is the most intriguing feature anyone is likely to see in the park.
The houses are vintage spots for visitors to relax and savour the beauty of nature that the park presents.
The park which had received some international tourists contains a viable population of white-throated monkey, one of Africa’s most threatened primates and one of the two monkeys endemic to Nigeria.
It also contains a population of rare red capped mangabey.
Okomu National Park also known as ‘Pride of our National Heritage’ is tucked in the deep forest of Okomu in Ovia South-West local government area of Edo State also served as one of the tourist destinations for lovers of nature.
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