The United Nations says that 72 drivers contracted to deliver humanitarian aid have been arrested in the war-torn north of Ethiopia.
It said that the drivers, who were working for the World Food Programme (WFP), were detained in Semera, capital of the Afar region.
The UN is speaking to the government to establish why they were stopped.
The war in Ethiopia has caused a massive humanitarian crisis, with more than five million in need of aid.
Boeing has reached an agreement with the families of the 157 people who died in the Ethiopia 737 Max crash in 2019.
The plane maker accepts liability for their deaths, according to court documents in Chicago.In return, families of the victims will not seek punitive damages from the company.
Lawyers for the victims’ families said Boeing would still be held “fully accountable”, welcoming the agreement as a significant milestone.Boeing shares fell 1% to $218.50 on the news.
The agreement opens the way for families outside the US, in countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya, to claim compensation through the US courts, rather than in their home countries, which might be more difficult and result in lower payments.
Ghana’s parliament on Thursday will hold its first public hearing on a new law that would make it illegal to be gay or to advocate for gay rights, its press office said.
The so-called family values bill is currently before the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, which said it had received more than 150 memoranda from individuals, groups and faith-based organizations on the bill.
The committee is expected to hear 10 petitions each week in a series of public sessions before the bill is put to a vote, deputy majority leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin said.
Gay sex is already punishable by prison time in Ghana, but no one has been prosecuted in years.
The new bill would go much further, criminalising the promotion and funding of LGBT+ activities as well as public displays of affection, cross-dressing and more.
Librals and and LGBT+ protagonists have tried to villify the Ghanaian government through western media have met stiff opposition.
Ghana’s speaker of parliament, Alban Bagbin, pledged in his opening address last month that parliament would pass the bill into law “at the earliest possible time”.
The LGBT+ agenda has been trying to make its way into Africa with many western nations in a bid to arm-twist African leaders in giving their values in exchange aid.
The World Health Organisation, says it has distributed assorted Infectious Prevention Control materials to 42 Primary Healthcare Centres in Adamawa State.
WHO’s Coordinator in Adamawa, Mr. Semeeh Omoleke, disclosed this at the distribution exercise, on Tuesday in Yola.
Omoleke, represented by Mr. Katuga Emmanuel, WHO’s National Immunisation Officer, said that the materials were meant to safeguard the health of the populace in communities across the state.
He commended the management of the healthcare centres for ensuring effective utilisation of the kits earlier provided to them and urged them to sustain the tempo.
“On a good note, we have distributed this material before, this is additional supply we are given to you, all to safeguard the health of our populace in your various communities.
“It is not only for COVID-19, we want to ensure that all our populace are prevented from all diseases.
Read Also: New blood test tool can detect 50 types of cancers
“Cholera just affected us and it is still ongoing, so our health workers should use these materials to ensure they and their patients are protected,’’ he said.
In his remarks, Dr. Bashir Ahmed, Executive Chairman, Adamawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, commended the gesture and pledged to ensure judicious use of the donated items.
Ahmed, represented by Ibrahim Talba, Director, Essential Drug and Logistics in the agency, said the gesture would assist to stem the spread of cholera in the state.
He also lauded the UN health agency for its interventions in the health sector, adding that it impacted positively on enhancing quality healthcare service delivery in the state.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the materials included isolation gowns, boots, antiseptics, gloves, among others.
FW de Klerk, the former president of South Africa and the last white person to lead the country, has died at the age of 85.
Mr de Klerk, who was also a key figure in the transition to democracy, had been diagnosed with cancer this year.He was head of state between September 1989 and May 1994.
In 1990 he announced he was releasing Nelson Mandela, leading to historic elections that brought the anti-apartheid leader to power.
Mr de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr Mandela for helping to negotiate an end to apartheid. But his legacy divides opinion in South Africa.
A statement from the former president’s FW de Klerk Foundation on Thursday said that he died peacefully at his home in Cape Town following his struggle against mesothelioma cancer.
The foundation had announced the diagnosis – a cancer that affects the lining of the lungs – in June.
Mr de Klerk is survived by his wife Elita, his children Jan and Susan and his grandchildren, the statement said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have warned that the risk of measles outbreaks is mounting, as over 22.3 million infants missed their first dose of the vaccine due to the COVID-19 in 2020.
“The Ten countries with the highest numbers of infants not receiving Measles- Containing Vaccine (MCV1) in 2020 were Nigeria (3.3 million), India (2.6 million), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1.5 million), Ethiopia (1.4 million), Indonesia (1.1 million), Pakistan (1.0 million),” the report read.
Others are Angola, the Philippines, Brazil, and Afghanistan all below one million infants.
The report disclosed that the number of unvaccinated children is the largest in 20 years, adding that critical gaps in disease surveillance increase the risk of measles outbreaks.
Reported measles cases fell by more than 80 percent in the 2020 year compared with 2019, and about 3 million more children missed the vaccines in 2020 than the previous year, threatening global efforts to eradicate the viral disease.
Only 70 percent of kids received their second dose last year, which is well below the 95 percent threshold needed to protect communities, the report added.
The report noted that vaccination campaigns in 23 countries, originally planned for 2020, were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic – leaving more than 93 million people at risk for the disease.
It was a huge sigh of relief on Wednesday when the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) weighed into the collapse of the 21-storey building at Gerrard Road, Ikoyi, Lagos with an investigative panel.
The body’s prolonged silence on the building collapse had been a source of worry.
The panel, COREN explained, was aimed to investigate the causes of the collapse. Members of the public expect that the outcome of the investigation would put an end to all forms of speculations on why and how a structure of that magnitude came down crashing.
The collapse of a 21-storey structure or building is an infrastructure and engineering failure. So, we are acting in line with our Act to know the remote and immediate causes and technically, of course, why this building came crashing,” he explained further.
Rabiu stressed that the panel was also to prevent speculative causes of the collapsed building. “As a professional, I do not speculate; that is why I have set up this committee,” he said, noting that building in Nigeria has become an all-comers affair, hence Nigerians are advised to engage only professionals in the built industry whenever they want to build.
He assured that COREN would not allow cover-ups as was experienced in some previous cases where action was not taken on evidences provided by the council, citing Synagogue Church of All Nations building collapse which claimed the lives of over 100 persons including foreign nationals.
The panel, which has been given six weeks to conduct a thorough investigation into the causes of the collapsed structure, has George Okoroma, the president of the Association for Consulting Engineering in Nigeria (ACEN) as chairman.
The Lagos State government has said that there is no plan on ground at the moment to demolish the two buildings at the site of the collapsed 21-storey in Ikoyi, Lagos. This counters speculations in some quarters that the two buildings would be demolished by the state government.
The state government, in a statement signed by its commissioner for information and strategy, Gbenga Omotosho, explained that an integrity test, which would determine their health or otherwise, was yet to be conducted on the two buildings.
He added that operations at the site of the collapsed building were continuing while vehicular movement around the site had been smooth, following the reopening of the road.
Sadly,however, the commissioner disclosed that two more bodies were recovered from the site on Tuesday, bringing to 45 the number of bodies retrieved from the site so far.
A new blood-testing technology that can detect up to 50 types of cancers will be made available in the United States by the end of the year.
The new test tool, known as Galleri blood test, was developed by GRAIL, a California-based biotechnology company.
The test tool can detect 50 different types of cancers including pancreatic, ovarian, and oesophageal via a simple blood test, LN247 gathered.
The Galleri test, the company also added requires two tubes of a patient’s blood.
The company also added that it can take up to ten days of laboratory analysis for a person to get their results.
Speaking on the science behind the innovation, the senior medical science liaison at GRAIL, Dr. Julia Feygin said, “We can find and sequence these tiny bits of tumour-derived DNA in the blood and based on the patterns we see we can reveal if there is a signal for cancer present.”
She added that it can predict with very high accuracy where the cancer signal is coming from in the body.
The test has been hailed by experts as a game-changer that can potentially save the lives of millions of people through an early cancer diagnosis.
Read Also: Ikoyi Building Collapse: Lagos collects Victim’s DNA samples
The Galleri test showed promise in clinical trials, according to GRAIL, the biotech company.
The company added that this new testing technique will not replace going for regular screening but instead, it should be paired with regular screening.
A study conducted by the Mayo Clinic using the new test tool that included 6,600 participants found 29 people with a cancer case they previously did not know about.
The test was found to only have a one percent false-positivity rate.
The new test tool is however yet to receive FDA approval.
Nigeria Police was first established in 1820. In 1879, a 1200 member armed paramilitary Hausa Constabulary was formed.
In 1896, the Lagos Police was established. A similar Force, the Niger Coast Constabulary was formed in Calabar in 1894 under the newly proclaimed Niger Coast Protectorate.
In the north, the Royal Niger Company set up the Royal Niger Company Constabulary in 1888.
When the protectorate of Northern and Southern Nigeria were proclaimed in the early 1900s, part of the Royal Niger Company Constabulary became the Northern Nigeria Police and part of the Niger Coast Constabulary became the Southern Nigeria Police.
During the colonial period, most police were associated with local governments (native authorities).
In the 1960s, under the First Republic, these forces were first regionalized and then nationalized.
The British merged Lagos colony and the southern and northern protectorates in 1913 and named the new colony Nigeria.
The northern and southern regional police forces were later merged, in 1930, to form the colony’s first national police – the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).
The Nigeria Police Force is the principal law enforcement agency in Nigeria. It has staff deployment across the 36 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The command and control of the Nigeria Police Force is under the Inspector General of Police.
For administrative ease, the Force is divided into seven (7) administrative departments, viz. Finance and Administration; Operations; Logistics; Force Criminal Investigation Department; Training; Research and Planning; and Information and Communication Technology, each headed by a Deputy Inspector General of Police.
The Force is further divided into 12 operational Zonal Commands (usually comprising between two and four State Commands) and 37 State Commands including the FCT (usually comprising Area Commands which further comprises Divisions).
While the zone is headed by an Assistant Inspector General of Police, the State Command is headed by a Commissioner of Police, the Area Command by an Assistant Commissioner of Police and the Division by a any officer in the Superintendent cadre.
The current and 20th indigenous Inspector-General of Police is IGP Mohammed Abubakar Adamu, NPM, mni.
DUTIES OF THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE
Section 4 of the Police Acts and Regulations lists the duties of the police force to include:
RANKS OF THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE
ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE
A Department – Finance and Administration
B Department – Operations
C Department – Logistics and Supply
D Department – Criminal Investigation
E Department – Training
F Department – Research and Planning
G Department – Information and Communication Technology
ENTRY LEVELS INTO THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE
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