Students and management of the Federal Government Girls College, Lejja, Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State are terrified following a suspected attack on a JSS 3 student by yet-to-be-identified hoodlum.
It was gathered that the said student came out in the early hours of Saturday morning to ease herself when the hoodlum emerged from nowhere and attacked her with a knife.
The attacker severed his victim’s body until she managed to alert her fellow students.
At that point, the hoodlum bolted on sighting other students who emerged from the hostels to rescue their fellow student.
It was further learnt that the student was in pool of her blood when her fellow students rushed her to the school clinic for medical attention.
Following the incident, sources said fear has gripped the entire students and staff alike since such an incident should not have happened with the many internal security outfit guarding the school premises.
When contacted, the principal of the school, Dr. C.A Ogar, denied the incident but refused to provide more information on what actually happened at the school.
StoreDot, an Israeli developer of extreme fast-charging (XFC) battery technology for electric vehicles, unveiled this month what it called the “world’s first” silicon-dominant battery prototype capable of recharging in just 10 minutes.
The company’s cylindrical cells use a 4680 format — 46 millimeters wide by 80 millimeters long — that is favored by global carmakers, specifically electric vehicle giant Tesla.
The battery tech has been in development for three years and includes five patents in cell design, StoreDot said in a statement last week. The design “increases throughput and addresses safety and performance issues typically associated with the hard case structure of cylindrical cells,” the company said.
StoreDot said it was now working on setting up a production line with Eve Energy, the company’s manufacturing partner in China.
“Achieving the goal of extreme fast charging a cylindrical cell in only 10 minutes has been on StoreDot’s technology roadmap from day one,” said StoreDot CEO Dr. Doron Myersdorf. “It’s highly significant that we can offer Electric Vehicle manufacturers the choice of cell formats, utilizing our XFC technology that will overcome the current barriers to EV [electric vehicle] ownership: range and charging anxiety.” This refers to the fear of a battery running out mid-journey and the driver getting stranded at a charging station.
The 4680 format battery will be ready for production at scale in 2024, the company said, as will its first-generation fast-charging pouch cell, also aimed at the EV market. StoreDot is also working on extreme energy density (XED) solid-state technologies, that will allow for longer battery operability and will enter mass production in 2028.
The All Electricity Consumers Protection Forum (AECPF) says it will monitor the bills of customers for the month of October to ensure that there is no increment by electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos).
The group made this known in a letter to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) which was obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
Dated August 30, The letter signed by its National Coordinator, Adeola Samuel-Ilori, said electricity consumer groups were vehemently against any form of increment in tariffs by the DisCos.
Samuel-Ilori noted that the group would continue to maintain vigilance even if given assurances by NERC and the DisCos that there would be no tariff hike based on past experiences.
“We are of the opinion that your organisation is not oblivious of the provision of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act, 2005 as it relates to increase in tariff process and steps to be taken.
“Let us reiterate that any increase in tariff announced without following such process as mandated in Section 76(1) and 76 (2) (b) and (f) will be resisted by the consumers, ” he said.
According to him, this may involve protests or legal action against NERC and the DisCos in a court of competent jurisdiction. He said the DisCos had not met the provision for the tariff increment especially in investment in infrastructure upgrade to improve quality of power supply to Nigerians.
Storage limits for eggs, sperm, and embryos would be increased to a maximum of 55 years as British Government plans to give people greater choices over when to start a family.
Under the proposals announced by Health Secretary Sajid Javid on Monday, prospective parents would be given the option to keep or dispose of frozen reproductive cells or embryos at 10-year intervals. The existing storage limit is 10 years.
Doctors had argued that the current limit after which prospective parents must decide whether to undergo fertility treatment or have the cells destroyed was too restrictive.
Research from the Royal College of Obstetricians has suggested that frozen eggs can be stored indefinitely without deterioration, thanks to a modern freezing technique.
Javid said, “The current storage arrangements can be severely restrictive for those making the important decision about when to start a family, and this new legislation will help turn off the ticking clock in the back of people’s minds.
“Technological breakthroughs included in egg freezing have changed the equation in recent years and it’s only right that this progress puts more power into the hands of potential parents.
“By making these changes, we are going to take a huge step forward, not just for giving people greater freedom over their fertilities, but for equality too.’’
The proposals, which followed a public consultation launched last year, would need approval by Parliament.
Additional conditions would apply around third-party donors and posthumous use, with the health department saying it would be “inappropriate’’ for the limit to apply in all cases.
British Fertility Society chai, Dr Raj Mathur welcomed the plans saying, “This change ensures that UK regulation is compliant with the scientific evidence about the safety of storage, and protects the ability of all our patients to make reproductive choices for themselves as individuals and couples.’’
Top banks in Europe continue to use tax havens to book chunks of profits, a trend that has changed little since 2014 despite country-by-country disclosures becoming mandatory, the EU Tax Observatory said in a report on Monday.
Meanwhile, Rising Eurozone inflation provides the backdrop for the meeting of European Central Bank governors Thursday, with markets hoping for hints when policymakers might start easing their massive pandemic-era stimulus.
As the economic recovery gathered steam in the 19-nation club, consumer prices rose in August at a pace not seen in the past decade, climbing beyond three percent — overshooting the ECB’s new two-percent target.
ECB president Christine Lagarde previously promised to “look through” the surge and policymakers expect the rate to rise even further in coming months before falling back.
“We are more worried about the inflation rate being too low in the medium term rather than too high,” Isabel Schnabel, a member of the ECB’s executive board, said last month.
The ECB considers the jump in consumer prices to be driven by one-off, pandemic-related effects as energy prices recover and policies aimed at mitigating the economic impact are rolled back.
As such, observers do not expect the ECB’s governing council to touch historically low-interest rates or announce any significant change to their colossal bond-purchasing programme, despite some grumbling among its 25 members.
Jens Weidmann, the president of the German Bundesbank, urged the ECB in August not to ignore the risk of a higher inflation outlook and said the ECB must stand ready to gradually scale back its bond-buying.
“Even if some ECB hawks re-emerged over the last days, we don’t expect their pushback to be strong enough to deliver any changes to the ECB’s monetary policy stance,” ING bank economists Carsten Brzeski and Antoine Bouvet said.
The ECB last year launched a 1.85-trillion-euro ($2.2 trillion) pandemic emergency bond-buying programme (PEPP) to help the euro region weather the coronavirus crisis.
The huge asset purchases, scheduled to run until March 2022, are aimed at keeping borrowing costs low to keep credit flowing and boost economic growth.
The ECB will on Thursday also unveil the latest quarterly growth and inflation forecasts, but analysts expect few surprises.
The inflation outlook is predicted to stay roughly unchanged, at 1.5 percent in 2022 and 1.4 percent in 2023 — keeping the ECB’s 2.0 percent goal well out of reach.
The United Nations special adviser on climate change, Selwin Hart said, on Sunday, Australia’s government should increase its efforts to phase out coal or else climate change will dramatically damage the country’s economy,
Australia’s reliance on coal-fired power makes it one of the world’s largest carbon emitters per capita, but its conservative government has steadfastly backed Australia’s new deputy PM casts shadow over 2050 net zero emissions ambition fossil fuel industries, saying tougher action on emissions would cost jobs.
“We fully understand the role that coal and other fossil fuels have played in Australia’s economy, even if mining accounts for a small fraction – around 2% – of overall jobs,” Hart said in a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“But it’s essential to have a broader, more honest and rational conversation about what is in Australia’s interests.”
The U.N. has called for phasing out coal by 2030 in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, which include Australia.
In July, energy and environment ministers from the Group of 20 big economies failed to deliver a deal to phase out coal by 2025. But some experts said there were chances of progress at U.N. climate talks in Glasgow in November.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said Australia is on a path to net zero carbon emissions but has stopped short of committing to a timeline. He has said that Australia would update its 2030 emissions projections going into the Glasgow talks.
Most other developed countries have signed up to a target of net zero emissions by 2050.
Hart said that the Australian government should “seize the moment” and switch to renewables.
“If the world does not rapidly phase out coal, climate change will wreak havoc right across the Australian economy: from agriculture to tourism, and right across the services sector,” he said.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, slashed prices of all crude grades to Asian customers in October versus September, but left prices to north-western Europe and the United States steady.
The deep price cuts come as lockdowns across Asia have capped fuel demand in the region. Global oil supplies are also increasing as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their allies, a grouping known as OPEC+, is raising output by 400,000 barrels per day a month between August and December.
State oil giant Saudi Aramco lowered for the first time in four months the official selling price (OSP) of Arab Light crude for delivery to Asia in October to a premium of $1.70 per barrel versus the average of DME Oman and Platts Dubai crudes, according to a company pricing document. The price differential in September was a premium of $3 per barrel, the highest since February 2020.
The $1.30 price cut for October versus September was the largest monthly reduction in a year, and it took the market by surprise as buyers had been expecting prices to drop 20-40 cents a barrel, in line with changes in Dubai benchmark prices.
The deep price cuts were likely to boost demand for Saudi crude, oil traders in Asia said.
Elsewhere, Saudi Aramco kept the price differential of light crude to northwest Europe unchanged, at a discount of $1.70 per barrel versus ICE Brent crude. It also kept the price differential of light crude to the United States unchanged at a premium of $1.35 per barrel versus ASCI.
The University of Ibadan maintained its top spot in the 2022 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
However, the University of Lagos moved a step ahead to rank second in Nigeria and 501–600, out of over 1,600 institutions across the world.
In the 2021 ranking, LASU ranked second in Nigeria and 501 – 600 in the world, this year, the university dropped to seventh in Nigeria behind Covenant University, University of Ilorin, University of Nigeria, and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
This is according to the 2022 Times Higher Education World University Rankings released in September 2021.
The rankings were conducted based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
By this ranking, UNILAG took a leap from the range of 601–800 in 2021 to a higher range of 501–600.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2022 include more than 1,600 universities across 99 countries and territories, making them the largest and most diverse university rankings to date.
Although only six universities feature in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the country is home to almost 130 institutions. Some of these are owned by the federal and state governments, while 50 are privately owned.
Full list: Best universities in Nigeria, according to THE
The German government said Monday it supports plans for a North Sea spaceport that would be used to launch small satellites into space from Europe.
Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said the government would act as an “anchor customer” for the floating launch site off the German coast.
“We want to strengthen the national space program,” he said at an event marking the signing of cooperation agreements between the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance and four European rocket manufacturers — two from Germany, one from the Netherlands and one from Britain.
Siegfried Russwurm, head of the Germany industry association BDI, said a spaceport in the North Sea would make it easier to launch satellites into polar and sun-synchronous orbits.
There are more than 20 spaceports around the world already, but European space companies currently rely mostly on launches from Russia’s site in Kazakhstan, French Guiana in South America and from the United States.
The southern winter that just ended in New Zealand was the warmest ever recorded, and scientists say that climate change is driving temperatures ever higher.
For the three months through August, the average temperature was 9.8 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit), according to New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.
That’s 1.3C above the long-term average and 0.2C higher than the previous record posted last year.
Scientists have been keeping records since 1909, but most of the warmest winters have been recent.
Nava Fedaeff, a meteorologist at the institute, said that on top of a background of global warming, this year there were more warm winds than usual from the north and warmer sea temperatures.
She said the underlying warming trend can be tracked through carbon dioxide concentration, which has increased in New Zealand from 320 parts per million 50 years ago to about 412 parts per million today.
Fedaeff said snowfall at lower elevations was well below average this winter as it was often replaced with rain, which could make for lower river levels later in the year because there will be less snowmelt. That could impact irrigation for farms, she said.
There were also more extreme weather events, Fedaeff said, including severe flooding in some places and dry spells in others.
Professor James Renwick, a climate scientist at the Victoria University of Wellington, said that in the short term at least, some New Zealand farmers with cow or sheep herds might benefit from a longer grass-growing season.
But he said the changes were also putting pressure on natural ecosystems and over time, more species would face extinction. He said it was imperative for humans to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.
“If we don’t get on top of warming soon, there is going to be grief for large sections of the world,” Renwick said.
Renwick said that New Zealand had talked a lot about climate change but had so far done little to curb its emissions. But he said there were now good government policies in place, including a pledge to become carbon-neutral by 2050.
He said there were plenty of natural resources like wind, sun and water that could provide renewable power for the nation’s energy needs.
“New Zealand could become world-leading in green energy and a green economy,” he said.
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