Ministers of Works and Housing from Africa countries on have presented a common position on the global debate for the implementation of the New Urban Agenda at a UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

The minsters had met ahead of the UN High Level meeting to review progress in implementing a framework on sustainable urbanisation – New Urban Agenda.

The Ministerial Dialogue on the Africa Urban Agenda was hosted by Nigeria’s Minister of State for Works and Housing, Muazu Sambo.

The New Urban Agenda presents a shared global vision for how to build, manage, and live in cities, through urbanisation that is well-planned and well-managed.

Angelokastro is a Byzantine castle on the island of Corfu, Greece. Angelokastro also referred to as “Castle of Angels” or “Angelos’s castle” is located at the top of the highest peak of the island’s shoreline in the northwest coast near Palaiokastritsa and is one of the most important castles of Greece.

It was an acropolis which surveyed the region all the way to the southern Adriatic and presented a formidable strategic vantage point to the occupant of the castle.

The origin of its name is not completely clear, with some historians mentioning that in 1214 Michael I Komnenos Doukas, Despot of Epirus, sometimes called Michael Angelos, annexed Corfu to Epirus and following his death, Michael II Komnenos Doukas, often called Michael Angelos in narrative sources, further fortified the area and named it after himself and his father: Angelokastro.

The castle never fell, despite frequent sieges and attempts at conquering it through the centuries, and played a decisive role in defending the island against pirate incursions and during three sieges of Corfu by the Ottomans, significantly contributing to their defeat.

It played an important pivotal role during the Great Siege of Corfu in 1571 when the Turkish attack on the north western flank of Corfu was successfully repulsed by the defenders of the castle.

During invasions it helped shelter the local peasant population.

The villagers also fought against the invaders playing an active role in the defense of the castle.

The exact period of the building of the castle is not known, but it has often been attributed to the reigns of Michael I Komnenos and his son Michael II Komnenos.

The first documentary evidence for the fortress dates to 1272, when Giordano di San Felice took possession of it for Charles of Anjou, who had seized Corfu from Manfred, King of Sicily in 1267.

From 1387 to the end of the 16th century, Angelokastro was the official capital of Corfu and the seat of the Provveditore Generale del Levante, governor of the Ionian islands and commander of the Venetian fleet, which was stationed in Corfu.

With the advent of modern warfare the castle’s importance declined and gradually it fell into a state of disrepair.

The passage of time did to the castle what no aspiring conqueror could.

From 1999, however, the Corfu office of the 8th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities of Greece has undertaken a restoration program under the co-sponsorship of the Greek Ministry of Culture and the European Union.

A Climate Resilient Oil Palm Project (CROPP) in Ghana is targeting 1,000 hectares of land to plant oil palm and agro forestry trees in five years.

Participants at the training
The CROPP is part of Anglogold Ashanti Ghana’s agricultural development programme, which aims to contribute to the diversification of the local economy and afforestation.

The project, launched in 2021 in collaboration with Solidaridad West Africa, is to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation through local economic development.

It is also expected to enhance the livelihoods of beneficiaries in four municipal and district assemblies – Obuasi Municipal, Obuasi East District, Amansie Central and Adansi South Districts.

Agriculture extension Officers are being exposed to the use of digital tools for monitoring and reporting best management practices towards the implementation of the CROPP.

Economic Development Superintendent of AGA Obuasi Mine, Daniel Arthur-Bentum, said the training would help the extension officers to be able to support farmers adopt the best management practices and to better monitor plantations to achieve the carbon capture target.

A massive drought-starved reservoir on the Colorado River has become so depleted that Las Vegas now is pumping water from deeper within Lake Mead where other states downstream don’t have access.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority announced this week that its Low Lake Level Pumping Station is operational, and released photos of the uppermost intake visible at 1,050 feet (320 meters) above sea level at the lake behind Hoover Dam.

“While this emphasizes the seriousness of the drought conditions, we have been preparing for this for more than a decade,” said Bronson Mack, water authority spokesman. The low-level intake allows Las Vegas “to maintain access to its primary water supply in Lake Mead, even if water levels continue to decline due to ongoing drought and climate change conditions,” he said.

The move to begin using what had been seen as an in-case-we-need-it hedge against taps running dry comes as water managers in several states that rely on the Colorado River take new steps to conserve water amid what has become perpetual drought.

“We don’t have enough water supplies right now to meet normal demand. The water is not there,” Metropolitan Water District of Southern California spokesperson Rebecca Kimitch said this week.

The agency told some 6 million people in sprawling Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties to cut their outdoor watering to one day a week, effective June 1, or face stiff fines.

CLIMATE
The surface level of another massive Colorado River reservoir, Lake Powell, dipped below a critical threshold in March — raising concerns about whether Glen Canyon Dam can continue generating power for some 5 million customers across the U.S. West.

Lake Mead and Lake Powell upstream are the largest human-made reservoirs in the U.S., part of a system that provides water to more than 40 million people, tribes, agriculture and industry in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and across the southern border in Mexico.

At Lake Mead, the new pumps are fed by an intake drilled nearer to the bottom of the lake and completed in 2020 to ensure the ability to continue to draw water for Las Vegas, its casinos, suburbs and 2.4 million residents and 40 million tourists per year.

The “third straw” draws drinking water at 895 feet (272.8 meters) above sea level — below a point at which water would not be released downstream from Hoover Dam.

Together, the pipeline and pump projects cost more than $1.3 billion. Drilling began in 2014, amid projections that the lake level would continue to fall due to drought.

Increasingly dry conditions in the region are now attributed to long-term climate change.

Lake Mead, between Nevada and Arizona, reached its high-water mark in July 1983, at 1,225 feet (373.4 meters) above sea level. On Friday, the level was 1,055 feet (321.6 meters) — about 30% full. Some of the steepest cliffs bordering the lake show 170 feet (51.8 meters) of white mineral “bathtub ring.”

“Without the third intake, Southern Nevada would be shutting its doors,” said Pat Mulroy, former longtime chief of the Las Vegas-based water authority, who is now a consultant. “That’s pretty obvious, since the first straw is out of the water.”

A mid-level pipeline also can draw water from 1,000 feet (304.8 meters).

The authority maintains that the Las Vegas water supply is not immediately threatened. It points to water conservation efforts that it says since 2002 have cut regional consumption of Colorado River water by 26% while the area population has increased 49%.

President Joe Biden is turning to a Cold War-era law to boost production of lithium and other minerals used to power electric vehicles, but experts say the move by itself is unlikely to ensure the robust domestic mining Biden seeks as he promotes cleaner energy sources.

Biden’s action, part of his efforts to find alternatives to fossil fuels and combat climate change, does not waive or suspend existing environmental and labor standards, the White House said.

Nor does it address the chief hurdle to increased domestic extraction of so-called critical minerals: the years-long process needed to obtain a federal permit for a new mine.

Even so, the mining industry and supporters in Congress cheered Biden’s use of the 1950 Defense Production Act to increase U.S. supplies of lithium, nickel and other minerals needed for electric-vehicles batteries and other clean-energy technology.