Soldiers took Mali’s interim president and prime minister to a military base outside of the capital Bamako on Monday, two officials in the unstable West African country said.
An official at the prime ministers’s office said President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane had both been taken to the Kati military camp near the capital.
A senior member of the military junta, who declined to be named, confirmed the information.
The US Capitol stood unprotected by National Guard troops for the first time in nearly five months Monday.
The last 2,149 of what had been nearly 26,000 troops in an extraordinary deployment in Washington departed over the weekend as their mission to protect Congress formally ended.
The troops were mobilized after hundreds of supporters of then-president Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, halting the joint session of Congress to confirm Trump’s rival Joe Biden as winner of the presidential election.
Amid fears of more threats around and following the January 20 inauguration of Biden, thousands of Guard troops were mobilized, patrolling the Capitol area day and night while a large fence encircled the grounds, making it appear a building under siege.
The troops remained in Washington for months after the inauguration as what many dubbed an insurrection was investigated.
Since January 6 the FBI has arrested and charged some 440 people involved in attacking the legislature.
EU leaders on Monday agreed to ban Belarus’ airlines from the bloc’s airspace and urged EU-based carriers not to fly over its airspace after Minsk forced a jet to land to arrest a dissident.
The leaders of the 27-nation bloc also called for the “immediate release” of journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega from detention, according to the conclusions of a Brussels summit, said an EU spokesman.
Have you ever thought how deeply black pepper benefits us, popular known as the king of spice black pepper remains the most traded spice in the world, also known as ‘Black Gold’ because of the stature it had in the world spice trade centuries ago.
The hot and strong spice with a distinct aroma and flavour is sharp on the tongue but warms the body. A dash of black pepper not only gives a delectable spark to food, but this wonderful spice has been much sought after for centuries for its medicinal value. The exotic spice is equally beneficial in whole as peppercorn or powdered form.
According to the USDA National Nutrient Database, black pepper is an excellent source of vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin, C, E, B6, and K. Moreover, it is also rich in minerals like zinc, sodium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, calcium. High in dietary fibre, black pepper also contains folate and moderate quantities of protein and carbohydrates.
The benefits of black pepper are quite numerous below are a list of some of the most prominent ones
Stimulates Digestion
Piperine in black pepper stimulates the secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, which is essential for proper digestion of food. This preventing bloating, constipation and diarrhoea.
Soothes Cough and Cold
The spice is a godsend when it comes to treating cough or cold. A pinch of black pepper powder mixed with half a teaspoon of honey is a known remedy for treating a sore throat due to flu, viral or pollution. Black pepper added to the tea, along with ginger, cinnamon and cardamom, is known to bring relief from a severe bout of cold for many. Rich in vitamin C, the spice acts as an antibiotic, and you could also add a pinch of black pepper powder and cinnamon powder to hot water and take steam.
Helps in Losing Weight
Regular consumption of black pepper is hugely beneficial in boosting metabolism. This, in turn, helps in breaking down fat and is a natural way to shed some weight. The phytonutrients in the spice help in breaking down the fat cells, making it easier for the body to process and get rid of the extra fat and toxins. A pinch of the spice in one meal is enough to do the trick.
Improves Skin Health
Another fabulous black pepper benefit is that it can prevent and repair the damage caused to the skin by free radicals. The powerful antioxidant properties of the spice protect the skin from premature ageing, age spots and wrinkles. Added to this, it is one of the best natural exfoliator. Mixed with a little honey or curd, it improves blood circulation and clears the skin dramatically.
Fights Infections
Another powerful health benefit of black pepper is its exceptional ability to fight infections. The antibacterial properties of the spice are hugely beneficial in building the body’s immunity and in healing insect bites and other topical infections.
Enhances Bioavailability
Black pepper extract benefits us by improving the bioavailability properties of the accompanying spices, foods or even medicines. It not only ensures enhanced taste but also makes nutrients more accessible to our system.
Fights Cancer
Studies show that piperine in black pepper helps in increasing the absorption of nutrients like selenium, beta-carotene, curcumin and vitamin B. These nutrients are vital for preventing and fighting cancer, especially colon and prostate cancer
Improves Cognitive Function
Many studies have shown that piperine in black pepper can boost brain function, thus reducing cognitive damage and memory impairment. It is especially known for its role in controlling Alzheimer’s disease. Extensive research shows how black pepper in synergy with curcumin, a bioactive compound found in turmeric, has helped in lowering the incidence of Alzheimer’s in India, turmeric being a staple spice in most Indian homes.
Improves Dental Health
Black pepper has proven anti-inflammatory properties that are of great help in treating gum inflammation. Mixing a little amount with salt and water and massaging the gums can bring instant relief from toothache. Take very little quantity, though.
Helps in Treating Diabetes
The antioxidants present in black pepper help in regulating the blood sugar levels in the body. Research proves that black pepper oil can regulate the production of enzymes that break down starch into glucose, thus delaying the absorption of glucose in the body.
Rejuvenates the Hair
Mix a teaspoon of pepper powder with the juice of one lemon and apply on the scalp and hair. Leave for 15 minutes and rinse with cold water. It will energise your hair, making them soft and lustrous. To strengthen the roots, mix a teaspoon of black pepper powder with one tablespoon of honey. Keep for 20 minutes and rinse off. Fluffy soft and smooth mane is all yours.
When getting your black pepper, it is critical that you buy only the best quality spice, which is pure & authentic and will give maximum health benefits while stroking those taste buds of yours.
Interesting Facts about Black Pepper
World’s most traded spice, pepper is the most widely used spice around the globe
The word ‘pepper’ comes from the Sanskrit word ‘Pippali’, meaning berry.
Pepper gets its sharp taste from the compound ‘piperene’.
Pepper is indigenous to India, and its origin goes back at least 2000 BC.
Green, black, red and white pepper, all come from the same plant. The colour is dependent on the ripeness and the method used for processing the spice.
An expensive spice in the Middle Ages, a man’s wealth was measured by his stock of pepper.
A prized possession, pepper was so sought after that traders formed spice routes from India to Europe and many wars were fought over it.
Romans demanded pepper as ransom when laying siege on a city or kidnapping important dignitaries.
Pepper was considered a valuable currency and a coveted spice for the cuisine of only the elite citizens on ancient Rome.
Take Home
Pepper loses its flavour and aroma very quickly, so it’s best stored in airtight containers. You will be doing yourself a whole of good just by a sprinkle of the marvellous spice to your food, for both taste and health.
Make sure you use only the purest and the most authentic black pepper powder as it will not only make a remarkable difference to the taste of the food but also your wellbeing.
Also, next time you have some little sniffles and aches to deal with, peek into your kitchen before you head out to the doctor. The little remedy might well be sitting right there in your spice rack!
Kenya’s Education Cabinet Secretary Professor George Magoha is set to issue guidelines of the placement process for universities in the country.
The Cabinet Secretary is expected to outline the cut-off points for the various programmes, giving students an opportunity to revise their choices depending on their performance.
The students’ portal on the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) will then be open until June 11.
They will review their options based on their grades and career aspirations when the portal is on for three weeks. They will also have a chance to change the institutions they wish to attend, according to the programmes on offer.
KUCCPS will analyse the data by considering students’ choices against available places then open a second window for revision before they conclude the process.
The Ministry of Education wants to ensure students report in September, having lost about seven months of school time last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The same applies to those joining technical and vocational education and training (Tvet) institutions, teachers’ training colleges and medical schools.
Some 143,140 students scored a mean grade of C+ (plus) and above, the minimum qualification for university admission in the rescheduled 2020 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination. This was a 13.8 per cent rise from the 2019 Class, which qualified 125,746 students for varsity admission.
As expected, most of the top candidates will battle it out for courses traditionally perceived as ‘superior’ such as medicine, engineering, law and computing.
A KUCCPS report shows that out of the 122,831 candidates who were placed in universities last year, 66,661 (54.27 per cent) joined science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses, the majority of them (63.41 per cent) being male.
Nationally, 893 candidates scored a clean A and 6,420 others had A- (minus). Some 14,427 candidates had B+ (plus), 25,207 had B, 38,194 had B- (minus) while 57,999 scored a C+ (plus).
The other 600,159 students, who scored between C and E, qualify for placement in diploma, certificate and artisan courses.
Prof Magoha had earlier announced that varsities, colleges and Tvet institutions have enough places for all candidates.
Over the recent past, the government has been placing and sponsoring some students in private universities to ensure that all those who qualify transition to higher education.
However, the increase in the number of students qualifying for varsity courses comes in the wake of reduced funding by the exchequer. The 2021/2022 budgetary allocation for universities has been slashed by Sh9.4 billion.
In the current budget, universities had been allocated Sh109.3 billion but the Treasury has reduced it to Sh99.9 billion. The budgets for the middle-level colleges have also been substantially reduced.
The Higher Education Loans Board has also warned that 95,000 students may miss out on loans that many of them depend on for upkeep, following a reduction of its budget by Sh2.2 billion.
The board has also had a tough year financially as it failed to recover Sh1 billion from past students, mainly due to the effects of the pandemic.
The government has invested heavily in the expansion of technical training institutions to offer more opportunities to students.
The number of technical training institutes (TTIs) in each constituency has grown from 52 in 2013 to 233. Out of these, 52 are fully operational, 140 have been built, equipped and staffed. Four of them cater for Tvet students with special learning needs. About 41 are under construction.
The Senate has queried the National Examination Council, NECO, over alleged award of contracts to the tune of N6.5 billion without due process.
According to the Senate, the contracts awarded by NECO are the printing of security and non- security documents.
This was raised by the Senate Committee on Public Accounts, led by Senator Matthew Urhoghide, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which relied on the 2017 report of Office of Auditor General for the Federation submitted to it for consideration.
According to the Auditor General, NECO is unable to present any record to show that approval was granted for the contract by the Ministerial tender board in the first contract that cost about N451 million.
In the second contract that cost about N6.1 billion, quotations were not collected from three bidders as required by PPA 2007.
It also noted that taxes were not deducted from some of the contract payment, even as there was no technical and financial evaluation.
According to the report, evidence of placement of advertisement was not attached to either payment vouchers or contract files.
The report noted further that the amount expended was above the threshold of the Council and that the contracts were split, with some awarded to same contractor with LPO and work order issued on the same date.
The query read: “Examination of records and documents revealed that the Commission’s Tenders Board approved the award of contract for printing of security materials in the sum of ¦ 451 million to a company in March 2017 in contravention of provisions of federal government circular No.SGF/OP/I/S.3/XI/849 of January 16, 2016.
‘’The circular reiterated that the approved revised thresholds for service wide application, for which the Parastatal Tender Board can only exercise authority on works whose value is less than ¦ 250 million, while any sum above this, is to be referred to the Ministerial Tenders Board for approval. “We sought the authority for the above approval, including the ministerial approval but none was provided. “The above unilateral award of contracts without following due process may lead to awarding contracts to unqualified contractors. Recommendation The Registrar/CEO should be sanctioned in line with provisions of Financial Regulation 3117.”
In his response, NECO’s Registrar, Prof. Godswill Obioma, who spoke on the issue of N461 million, said the payments were made to Data Science Nigeria Limited for the supply of optical mark readers for objective question papers for various examinations conducted by the Council.
The committee sustained the queries on the ground that the Council could not provide evidence of approval from the Ministerial Tenders Board before awarding contracts beyond its threshold.
The second query read: “Examination of contracts awarded for the printing of security and non- security documents valued at ¦ 6,166,405,407.42 revealed that the contracts were awarded without compliance with the provisions of PART VI, Section 24 (I) of the Public Procurement Act (PPA) 2017 as amended, which states that except as provided by this Act, all procurements of goods and works by all procuring entities shall be conducted by open competitive bidding.
“The following irregularities were also noted, quotations were not collected from three bidders as required by PPA 2007, taxes were not deducted from some of the contract payments.
‘’There was no technical and financial evaluation, evidence of placement of advertisement was not attached to either payment vouchers or contract files.
The amount expended was above the threshold of the Council, ‘’the contracts were split as some contracts were awarded to same contractor with LPO and work order issued on the same date.”
Also responding to the N6.1 billion query, the Registrar said: “ The contracts for the printing for our questions are warded through selective tendering. This is the case to avoid leakages of our examinations and award of contract to printers of doubted integrity.” Chairman of the committee sustained the query because the Registrar was unable to defend it.
Cervical cancer rates have dropped one percent annually since 2001, while other HPV-related cancers without standardised screening guidelines are on the rise, according to research set to be presented at the 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.
The finding was published online by the Becker’s Hospital Review— a hospital magazine for hospital business news and analysis for hospital and healthcare system executives.
Researchers evaluated data on 657,317 people from 2001-17 using the U.S. Cancer Statistics Programme, and found at the same time that cervical cancer rates dropped, likely due to clear screening and HPV vaccination guidelines.
The incidence of oropharyngeal, anal, rectal and vulvar cancers rose 1.3 percent per year among women. Those HPV-related cancers don’t have standardised screening guidelines, researchers highlighted.
By 2025, the incidence of oropharyngeal, anal, and rectal squamous cell carcinoma cancers is projected to surpass that of cervical cancer in every age group over 50, according to the study.
Read Also: WAHO: More women surviving childbirth in Nigeria
Oropharyngeal cancer accounted for the majority of all HPV-related cancers among men. HPV-related cancers have risen 2.36 percent annually over the last 17 years among men, with oropharyngeal cancer incidence increasing the most.
“Without standardized screening, HPV-related cancers, such as oropharyngeal cancers and anal rectal cancers, are increasing,” said Cheng-I Liao, MD, lead study author and physician at Kaosiung Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan. “In order to reduce what we’re seeing with cervical cancer we must develop effective screening strategies and determine vaccine efficacy in these patient populations.”
The House of Representatives is seeking to repeal the NYSC Act and discontinue the National Youth Service Corps scheme, as the Bill reaches the second reading.
The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Alteration Bill, 2020, which is seeking to repeal the NYSC Act, is billed for the second reading.
The sponsor, Mr Awaji-Inombek Abiante, in the explanatory memorandum of the proposal, listed the various reasons why the NYSC should be scrapped.
It read in part, “This bill seeks to repeal Section 315(5)(a) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, (as amended) on the following grounds:
“Incessant killing of innocent corps members in some parts of the country due to banditry, religious extremism and ethnic violence; incessant kidnapping of innocent corps members across the country;
“Public and private agencies/departments are no longer recruiting able and qualified Nigerian youths, thus relying heavily on the availability of corps members who are not being well remunerated and get discarded with impunity at the end of their service year without any hope of being gainfully employed;
“Due to insecurity across the country, the National Youth Service Corps management now gives considerations to posting corps members to their geopolitical zone, thus defeating one of the objectives of setting up the service corps, i.e. developing common ties among the Nigerian youths and promote national unity and integration.
Read Also: Nigerians to submit phone IDs in three months – NCC
The military regime of General Yakubu Gowon had established the NYSC on May 22, 1973, under Decree No. 24 of 1973 as a way of reconciling and reintegrating Nigerians after the civil war between July 6, 1967 and January 15, 1970.
Nigeria’s agricultural sector grew by 2.28 per cent in real terms in Q1 2021 compared to a growth of 3.42 and 2.20 per cent in Q4 2020 and Q1 2020 respectively, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has revealed.
This was disclosed in the Q1 2021 GDP report the NBS released on Sunday.
According to the report, real GDP grew 0.51 per cent in Q1 2021 compared to 0.11 in Q4 2020.
NBS added that crop production under agric real GDP grew by 2.31 compared to 3.68 per cent in Q4 2020 and 2.38 in Q1 2021.
Livestock under agric real GDP grew by 1.65 compared to 2.38 in Q4 2020 and 0.63 per cent in Q1 2020.
It added that fishing under agric real GDP grew by 3.24 per cent compared to -3.60 per cent in Q4 2020 and 1.49 in Q1 2020.
The report disclosed that forestry under agric real GDP grew by 1.28 per cent compared to 1.24 in Q4 2020 and 1.71 in Q1 2020.
The 2020 agric GDP grew by 2.17 per cent compared to the 2.36 recorded in 2019.
The World Bank has invested over N4.9trillion ($12bn) in Nigeria.The bank said it has one of its largest portfolios in the country, promising not to relent in a bid to boost economies of neighbouring countries.
Speaking during a media roundtable for Western and Central Africa with the World Bank Group president, David Malpass at the weekend, the bank noted that, Nigeria has huge potential, adding that, “with some of the improvements in the economic policies, the growth can be rapid for people across Nigeria.
“As we speak, we have probably the largest portfolio of the World Bank in Nigeria, which is in excess of over $12 billion. Those were programmes under implementation covering a variety of sectors, access to electricity, water, education, health and agriculture.”
In this year, the Malpass said, the bank has prepared a pipeline of a number of programmes to execute, stating that, it has delivered about $2 billion projects for Nigeria to help the population have access to critical services while supporting governments and institutions to provide some technical assistance to a variety of stakeholders.
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