Israel’s government on Monday ordered communications firms to step up their cyber security efforts in the wake of a rise in attempted hacking attacks.
New regulations are currently being implemented in which mandatory and unified standards will have to be met, the Communications Ministry and Israel’s National Cyber Directorate said.
Under the new rules, firms must formulate plans to protect communications networks using a combination of monitoring and control mechanisms to make it possible to establish an up to date picture of cyber protection while ensuring privacy.
“We are trying to put the right standard on communications companies in order to protect Israel and create a kind of ‘Iron Dome’ from cyber security attacks. We are suffering from thousands of cyber attacks every year,” Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel told a news conference.
Israel uses an Iron Dome air-defence system to intercept rockets fired by Palestinian militants, mostly from Gaza.
Hendel said that risks continued to mount, along with more digitisation.
“Communications networks are an attractive target for cyber attacks by hostile elements,” Hendel said, citing potential damage or shutdown of services and leakage of information being stored.
According to cyber security firm Check Point, there was a 137% annual jump in average weekly attacks on Israeli companies, to nearly 1,500 per week, in the first three months of 2022.
Gaby Portnoy, Israel’s new cyber security czar, said in the last month alone, Israel had seen a sharp rise in attacks trying to bring down websites. He accused Iranians of carrying out many of the attacks.
Last month, he noted, a denial of service attack aimed at bringing down government sites began through telecom providers but ultimately failed.
Portnoy said Israeli telecoms firms had very good cyber security but that the new regulations, which include a higher level of supervision, would be an improvement.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has directed all candidates who registered for the 2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to start printing their 2022 UTME notification slips from Saturday, April 30, 2022, ahead of this year’s exercise.
The director, Information Technology Services, Fabian Okoro, made the announcement via a statement posted on JAMB Bulletin.
According to the statement, the 2022 UTME notification slip is available for printing by all candidates who had registered for the 2022 UTME scheduled to hold from Friday, May 6, 2022 to May 14, 2022.
Okoro disclosed that the printing of examination notification slip was compulsory for all candidates, as it enables them to know the venue, date, session and time of their examination.
He further added that Candidates need not visit any CBT centres for the printing of the notification slip as it can be done at any available internet point, be it private or public.
To print the slip, candidates are to visit https://www.jamb.gov.ng then click on 2022 UTME slip printing then insert registration number to print.
The slip contains the candidates’ important details like registration number, the centre where they are to sit for the examination within their chosen examination town and the expected time to be at the centre.
In a related development, the Board has reiterated that all candidates would be checked into the examination hall using the Biometric Verification Machine (BVM) which is also a register of attendance in line with the Board’s policy of “No biometric verification, no examination.”
The head, public affairs and protocol of JAMB, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, said candidates are also to note that no examination would be rescheduled for whatever reason.
He said that candidates are advised to prepare ahead and stay close to their examination venues and if possible, they should pay a prior visit to their centers before the date of the examination.
Candidates are also reminded that the ban on prohibited items is still in force hence, candidates should be careful not to run foul of the law as necessary sanctions would be meted out to violators of its code of conduct.
He added that The list of the banned items within the examination hall include but not limited to: flash drives, smart watches, calculators, recorders, mobile phones, spy reading glasses, jewelries, among others.
Ruwenzori mountains are located on the border between DR Congo and Uganda. Rwenzori Mountains National Park is a Ugandan national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Ruwenzori are a range of mountains in eastern equatorial Africa, located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The highest peak of the Ruwenzori reaches 5,109 Metres, and the range’s upper regions are permanently snow-capped and glaciated. Rivers fed by mountain streams from one of the sources of the Nile.
Virunga National Park in eastern DR Congo and Rwenzori Mountains National Park in southwestern Uganda is located within the range.
The First Navigation Of The Six Ridges Of The Ruwenzori Was Done In 1975, Starting On January 27 And Ending February 13.
The navigation was done by Polish climbers Janusz Chalecki, Stanisław Cholewa and Leszek Czar-necki, with Miro-sław Kuraś accompanying them on the last half of the navigation.
Since Uganda’s independence from the British Empire, the Rwenzori Mountains have repeatedly become sanctuaries to rebel groups. The secessionist Rwenzururu movement fought an insurgency in the mountains in the 1960s.
In course of the Ugandan Bush War, the Rwenzururu movement reemerged and continued its struggle until signing a peace deal with Ugandan President Milton Obote’s government.
The Ruwenzori are known for their vegetation, ranging from tropical rainforest through alpine meadows to snow.
The range supports its own species and varieties of giant groundsel and giant lobelia and even has a 6 metres (20 ft) tall heather covered in moss that lives on one of its peaks.
Most of the range is now a World Heritage Site and is covered jointly by Rwenzori Mountains National Park in southwestern Uganda and the Virunga National Park in the eastern Congo.
There is no water shortage in the Ruwenzori; yet, several members of the afro-alpine family resemble species that normally thrive in desert climates.
The reason lies in their similar water economy. Water is not always readily available to the afro-alpine plants when they need it.
In addition, nightly frosts affect the sap transport in the plants and the intake of water by its roots.
As the day begins, the air temperature and radiation level rise rapidly, putting strenuous demands on the exposed parts of the plants as they try to meet the transpiration demands of the leaves and maintain a proper water balance.
To counter the effects of freezing, the afro-alpine plants have developed the insulation systems that give them such a striking appearance.
These adaptations become more prominent as the elevation increases.
There are five overlapping vegetation zones in the Ruwenzori:
The Evergreen Forest Zone – 2,800 Metres
The Bamboo Zone – 2,800 To 3,300 Metres
The Heather Zone – 3,000 To 3,800 Metres
The Alpine Zone – 3,500 To 4,500 Metres
The Nival Zone – 4,400 To 5,000 Metres
At higher elevations, some plants reach an unusually large size, such as lobelia and groundsels. The vegetation in the Ruwenzori is unique to equatorial alpine Africa.
TODAY
Uganda says it was inviting expressions of interest from investors to restart a vast copper mine in the country’s west that also holds significant cobalt deposits.
The Kilembe mine, which sits on the foothills of the ice-capped Rwenzori mountains on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is estimated by government geologists to contain about 4 million tonnes of ore that is 1.98% copper and 0.17% cobalt.
The statement did not specify when the government expects to have chosen an investor.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is eager to expand the exploitation of the country’s mineral wealth – which includes Gold, Base Metals, Uranium, Rare Earths, Iron, Titanium, Vermiculite, And Diamonds – to help boost growth.
World football body, FIFA, on Monday fined Nigeria CHF150,000 (N63.9m) following violence that occurred at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja on March 29, after the country’s failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
FIFA also ordered the country to play their next international match behind closed doors.
FIFA, however, gave room for appeal.
Hundreds of fans encroached the pitch, destroying the technical area and pelting the VIP section of the stadium after Nigeria played out a 1-1 draw against Ghana, which saw the Super Eagles crash out of their final playoffs for the 2022 World Cup on the away goal rule.
FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee, in their summary jurisdiction over incidents that occurred during the World Cup qualifiers, delivered the sanctions in a letter updated on April 28.
According to FIFA, Nigeria’s fines were a result of failure to implement “Order and security at matches (failure to implement existing safety rules and failure to ensure that law and order are maintained in the stadium, invasion of the field of play and throwing of objects).”
The violence, according to FIFA, breached Article 16 of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee.
A total of 49 countries were either fined or warned by FIFA for misconduct during the qualifiers.
Poland urged its European Union partners on Monday to unite and impose sweeping sanctions on Russia’s oil and natural gas sectors over the war in Ukraine, and not to cave in to pressure to pay for their gas in Russian rubles.
The appeal came as EU ministers met in Brussels to discuss their response to Russia’s decision last week to cut gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland. Energy giant Gazprom says the two countries failed to pay their bills in April.
“We will call for immediate sanctions on Russian oil and gas. This is the next, and urgent, and absolute step,” Polish Climate and Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said. “We already have coal. Now it’s time for oil, and (the) second step is for gas. The best option is to take them altogether.”
The EU has hit Russian officials, oligarchs, banks, companies and other organizations with rafts of sanctions since Moscow ordered an invasion of Ukraine in February.
The commission is working on a sixth round of measures, possibly including oil restrictions, and could announce them this week.
People fleeing besieged Mariupol described weeks of bombardment and deprivation as they arrived Monday in Ukrainian-held territory, where officials and relief workers anxiously awaited the first group of civilians evacuated from the steel plant that is the last stronghold of Ukrainian fighters in the devastated port city.
Video posted online Sunday by Ukrainian forces showed elderly women and mothers with small children climbing over a steep pile of rubble from the sprawling Azovstal steel mill and boarding a bus.
More than 100 civilians from the bombed-out plant were expected to arrive in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) northwest of Mariupol, on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
“Today, for the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” he said Sunday in a video message.
However, at least some of the people evacuated from the plant on Sunday were apparently taken to a village controlled by Moscow-backed separatists. The Russian military said that some chose to stay in separatist areas, while dozens left for Ukrainian-held territory. The information could not be independently verified.
In the past, Ukraine has accused Moscow’s troops of taking civilians against their will to Russia. Moscow has said the people wanted to go to Russia.
The steel-plant evacuation, if successful, would represent rare progress in easing the human cost of the almost 10-week war, which has caused particular suffering in Mariupol.
Previous attempts to open safe corridors out of the Sea of Azov city and other places have broken down, with Ukrainian officials repeatedly accusing Russian forces of shooting and shelling along agreed-upon evacuation routes.
Before the weekend evacuation overseen by the United Nations and the Red Cross, about 1,000 civilians were believed to be in the steel plant, along with an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters.
As many as 100,000 people overall may still be in Mariupol, which had a pre-war population of more than 400,000.
In other developments, European Union energy ministers met Monday to discuss new sanctions against the Kremlin, which could include restrictions on Russian oil — though Russia-dependent members of the 27-nation bloc, including Hungary and Slovakia, are wary of taking tough action.
Zelenskyy said he hoped more people would be able to leave Mariupol in an organized evacuation on Monday. The city council told residents wanting to leave to gather at a shopping mall to wait for buses.
As in the past when official evacuations faltered, some people managed to escape from Mariupol on their own, while others remained trapped.
To boost the oil palm value chain in the country, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) has partnered with the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) to train oil palm farmers in Edo State.
Speaking at the workshop held in Benin, the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Muhammed Abubakar, said the farmers would be trained on pest and soil fertility management.
Abubakar noted that the oil palm value chain was among the commodity value chains being promoted by the ministry, stressing the need to build the capacity of stakeholders in the sector.
Represented by the Deputy Director of the ministry, Mr Chukwuemeka Ukattah, the minister said the goal of the training was to ensure that Nigeria becomes a leading producer of oil palm, globally.
“Some of the achievements recorded by the ministry in its bid to improve the oil palm value chain include the production of 180,000 improved tender-sprouted nuts by NIFOR”.
“This is to be distributed to oil palm farmers in the 27 oil palm producing states and it has established two equipped oil palm processing centres for the production of crude palm oil”.
“Other farm inputs procured to be distributed to farmers are palm nutcrackers and separators, oil palm chisels and motorised harvesters, among others,” he said.
Remarking, the State Director, Edo FMARD office, Mr Wellington Omoragbon, said the ministry had organised a series of capacity building and empowerment programmes along the value chains of yam, rice, cassava, potato, and cashew, among others.
Also, he said the ministry had provided agricultural infrastructure support services to farming communities in Edo in form of feeder roads, rural water supply, and solar street lights, which NIFOR benefited from.
In his address, the Executive Director, NIFOR, Dr Celestine Ikuenobe, urged the farmers to take advantage of the workshop to earn a better income. Ikuenobe, represented by a director, Dr Isona Gold, said that NIFOR was committed to repositioning the oil palm sector to be a very significant sector of the economy, providing employment and income.
Meanwhile, AgroNigeria gathered that FMARD also distributed 200 oil palm fruit harvesting chisels and 1000 litres of organic path-away fertiliser to the farmers during the training.
World table tennis ruling body, International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), has named Egyptian and South African officials for the forthcoming Africa Cup holding in Lagos from May 26 to 28.
Egypt’s Mohamed El-Dawlatly is the competition manager, while Africa’s most experienced lady referee, Genevieve Lentz of South Africa, will handle proceedings at the continental elite tournament.
El-Dawlatly was part of the technical team for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan and also several international competitions across the globe.
He was competition manager of the Nigeria Open in 2018 and his experience will come to the fore in Lagos when the best players in Africa converge on Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre for the elite tournament, which serves as qualifiers for the WTT Cup Finals.
Like El-Dawlatly, Lentz was also part of the ITTF referee team for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, as well as the last World University Games in Italy. So, she will be heading to Lagos as an experienced official.
According to the tournament’s prospectus, each country is expected to nominate two players each in men’s and women’s events, while the host, Nigeria, will present four men and four women.
Egypt, as the men and women defending champions, will have three men and three women for the event.
The events shall be played in a round-robin format of five players in each group, with the top two players in each group advancing to the second stage of the tournament.
The allotment of the players in groups will hold according to the latest African ranking list of May 2022.
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