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Egypt’s Fighter Jets From France To Be Financed Through 10-year Loan

Angel Gimalo
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0
Egypt’s Fighter Jets From France To Be Financed Through 10-year Loan

Egypt’s military has ordered 30 Rafale jets from French defence firm Dassault Aviation, part of a multi-billion-dollar defence mega-deal confirmed by France.

The order, which follows the 2015 purchase of 24 Rafale jets, the first sold to a foreign country, will be financed through a 10-year loan, the military said in a statement.

An Investigative site had reported that the order concluded on April 26 was part of a secret defence mega-deal, including missiles and electronics, worth almost four billion euros ($4.8 billion).

French defence ministry sources confirmed the contract was worth “in the order of” that figure and included weapons and training.

Egypt is to take out loans from French banks, guaranteed by the state in France, the French finance ministry said.

Eighteen single-seat models of the Rafale and 12 twin-seaters are to be delivered between 2024 and 2026, according to the French defence ministry.

Egypt is the world’s third-biggest arms importer after Saudi Arabia and India, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Lebanon, Israel Hold Talks Over Maritime Border

Angel Gimalo
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Lebanon, Israel Hold Talks Over Maritime Border

Lebanon and Israel held US-mediated negotiations over their disputed maritime border on Tuesday after a months-long hiatus, in efforts to clear the way for offshore oil and gas exploration.

The five-hour indirect talks, between countries still technically at war, were held at the UN base in the town of Naqura in southern Lebanon, the National News Agency (NNA) said.

Washington said Friday they were to be brokered by US diplomat John Desrocher, and called the resumption of talks “a positive step towards a long-awaited resolution”.

Lebanon and Israel last year also took part in indirect US-brokered talks to discuss demarcation.

But those talks stalled after Lebanon demanded they cover a larger area, including part of the Karish gas field, where Israel has given exploration rights to a Greek firm.

Last year’s talks were supposed to discuss a Lebanese demand for 860 square kilometres (330 square miles) of territory in the disputed maritime area, according to a map sent to the United Nations in 2011.

But Lebanon then said the map was based on erroneous calculations and demanded 1,430 square kilometres (552 square miles) more territory further south, including part of Karish.

The Lebanese presidency said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting that US mediation wanted negotiations to deal with Israeli and Lebanese maps “registered with the UN”, referring to the 860 square kilometre area.

“This contravenes the Lebanese proposal and the principle of negotiating without preconditions,” the statement said.

Polls Suggest Solid Win For Isabel Diaz Ayuso, Spanish Anti-lockdown Leader

Angel Gimalo
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Polls Suggest Solid Win For Isabel Diaz Ayuso, Spanish Anti-lockdown Leader

Madrid residents voted Tuesday in a regional election expected to hand a comfortable victory to its hardline leader who has soared in prominence for stubbornly resisting virus restrictions.

After voting closed at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), the results of two polls taken in the days running up to the ballot, were released, both suggesting a solid win for Isabel Diaz Ayuso, a rising star in the right-wing Popular Party (PP).

At the helm of Spain’s richest region for just over 18 months, Ayuso has been one of the leading critics of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s leftist government and its handling of the pandemic.

An outspoken hardliner, she has won widespread support for resisting government pressure to impose tighter restrictions on the local economy.

Madrid is the only major European capital that has kept bars, restaurants and theatres open since the national lockdown ended in June 2020.

Just over 5.1 million people were eligible to vote in Tuesday’s election, which comes after a bitterly-fought and divisive campaign in a region that has been ruled by the PP for more than 25 years.

From the early hours, there were long queues outside polling stations, with turnout at just over 69 percent an hour before the close, some 11 percentage points higher than in 2019.

Although Madrid has suffered Spain’s highest numbers of infections and deaths, Ayuso has consistently defied calls to shut restaurants, turning her into the heroine of the hospitality sector.

A year into the pandemic, Ayuso caught the political establishment by surprise, calling a snap election in a bid to cash in on the political capital she has more than likely earned.

And polls suggest her gamble will pay off, with results from a final pre-vote survey by Gad3 suggesting Ayuso’s PP would take 62-65 seats in the 136-seat parliament, up from 30, while Sanchez’s Socialists would end up with 25-28, down from 37.

Another poll by Sociometrica predicted a similar outcome with the PP taking 58-62 seats and the Socialists between 26 and 29.

Tennis: Halep Knocked Out Of Madrid Open

Angel Gimalo
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Tennis: Halep Knocked Out Of Madrid Open

World number three Simona Halep was dumped out of the Madrid Open on Tuesday, losing 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 in the last 16 to Belgian Elise Mertens, while Dominic Thiem claimed a straightforward win in his first match since March.

Romania’s Halep, who won the Madrid title in 2016 and 2017, is still yet to reach a WTA Tour final this season and this was her earliest exit in the Spanish capital since a 2015 first-round loss.

Halep had sailed through the first two rounds on the Madrid clay without dropping a set but she ended up second best in a match which yielded 15 breaks of serve.

Halep served 10 double faults in the match, Mertens nine.

Halep, a two-time Grand Slam champion and former world number one, was twice a break up in the final set at 3-1 and 4-3 but finally succumbed after just over two and a half hours of play.

In the quarter-finals, 13th seed Mertens will meet her doubles partner, Belarusian seventh seed Aryna Sabalenka, who dispatched American Jessica Pegula 6-1, 6-2 in just 52 minutes.

Two other quarter-final line-ups are also settled, with world number one Ashleigh Barty set to meet ninth seed Petra Kvitova while eighth seed Belinda Bencic is up against Spaniard Paula Badosa, ranked 62 in the world.

The final last-eight tie will see Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova play either Maria Sakkari or Karolina Muchova.

The Russian edged out Australian Open runner-up Jennifer Brady 7-5, 6-7 (8/10), 6-3 despite missing a match point in the second set.

Senate Expecting Security Chiefs’ Briefing Thursday

Angel Gimalo
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Senate Expecting Security Chiefs’ Briefing Thursday

The Senate on Tuesday shifted its proposed meeting with Service Chiefs, the Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the Inspector General of Police to Thursday.

Senate President Ahmad Lawan disclosed this at plenary.

Lawan said the security chiefs, who are supposed to brief the Senate, are still engaged at the National Security Council meeting which may extend till Wednesday.

He said: “The briefing will be very crucial, for us to be properly informed and properly guided.The only item on the Order Paper on Thursday will be the briefing.”

The Senate last Tuesday, after an exhaustive debate, resolved to invite the heads of the nation’s Armed Forces and other security agencies over the deteriorating security situation in the country.
It had also resolved its leadership should meet with President Muhammdu Buhari, to seek ways of mitigating the security challenges bedeviling the country.

Lawan said: “You will recall that on Wednesday we announced that the Chief of Defence Staff, the Service Chiefs, the Inspector General of Police and the DG NIA will be coming today at 11.00am to brief the Senate on the security situation.

“Today the National Security Council is continuing its meeting that it started last week. Therefore the invited security heads will not be able to come for the briefing.

“We are not sure if they will finish their meeting today. We assume it could spill to Wednesday too just like it spilled from Thursday to Tuesday.

“So to be on the side of caution, we have now fixed the date for the briefing to be Thursday, 6th May.
“I want to appeal to all of us that the briefing we will take from the Service Chiefs and other security agencies will be very crucial for us to be properly informed, properly guided and that if there is any request for supplementary budget, we should be able to understand why we should consider and approve such request.

“On Thursday, the only item on the order paper will be the briefing. We will do that as a special day for the engagement, the interaction between the Senate and the service.”

Most Gorgeous Girl Nigeria, MGGN, Debuts

Koko Lawrence
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Most Gorgeous Girl Nigeria, MGGN, Debuts

Most Gorgeous Girl Nigeria (MGGN) has made its debut with the aim of empowering the girl-child in the country.

Miss Grace Ene, the Chief Executive Officer of MGGN, announced the maiden edition of the beauty pageant at a news conference on Monday in Abuja.

According to her, MGGN is a celebration of youth and empowerment, an important way to convey the true meaning of beauty and the empowerment of all women and girl-child.

She stressed that the MGGN was aimed at creating a formidable voice for the girl-child and making a meaningful impact for them through pageantry.

“The girl-child deserves more in our community, there has been terrible conflict that separated families in our country.

“It is time to make sure change and transition for peace to reign, we need to ensure the love and peace reign because all of us have only one thing in common,” she said.

Ene said that the pageant would be an opportunity to demonstrate at a national level that there was no intercultural barrier in spite of not speaking the same language, culture and tradition.

She said “we all speak the same language of life, respect and integrity through the pageantry.”

She said that the first edition would hold on October 29, with a unique process targeted at spotting young female stars with talents in a bid to accelerate their progress by providing mentorship.

According to her, there is going to be a star prize of a car and cash prizes for the winner, first and second runner up.

Ene said that 37 MGGN finalists would be selected, one from each state in the country and the FCT, adding that they would be in the academy for nine weeks before a winner emerged at the grand finale.

European Commission says Efforts To Ratify China Investment Deal On Ice After Sanctions

Elizabeth Williams
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European Commission says Efforts To Ratify China Investment Deal On Ice After Sanctions

The European Commission said Tuesday that efforts to win approval for the EU’s massive investment deal with China were effectively “suspended” given the soured diplomatic relations between both sides after tit-for-tat sanctions.

“We now in a sense have suspended… political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” EU Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told Newsmen in an interview.

“It’s clear in the current situation with the EU sanctions in place against China and Chinese counter sanctions in place, including against members of European Parliament (that) the environment is not conducive for ratification of the agreement,” Dombrovskis said.

Trying to ratify the deal “will depend really on how broader EU-China relations will evolve”, he added.

To the surprise of many, the European Union and China in late December approved a major investment pact, wrapping up seven years of painstaking negotiations thanks to a final push by Germany.

The pact has been defended as a much needed opening to China’s long-closed economy for European companies, but was sure to face a difficult ratification amongst the 27 member states as well as the European Parliament.

Dombrovskis, a former Latvian prime minister, is in charge of spearheading that approval process in the EU, which has already met with pushback from key MEPs.

The European Union sanctioned four Chinese officials in March over suspected human rights violations in China’s far western region of Xinjiang.

China responded by imposing its own sanctions against European politicians, scholars and research groups.

G7 Finance Ministers To Meet In Person June

Elizabeth Williams
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G7 Finance Ministers To Meet In Person June

Finance ministers from the G7 nations will meet in London next month for their first major face-to-face talks in over a year, with pandemic recovery plans high on the agenda, Britain said Tuesday.

The ministers will meet at Lancaster House on June 4 and 5, a week before the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Cornwall, southwest England.

Britain has hosted three meetings of global finance ministers since it took over the G7 presidency in January, but all have been virtual due to restrictions.

However, June’s meeting, in which Britain will “seek to progress” its priorities of “building a green and inclusive global economic recovery” following the pandemic, will be in person as restrictions are eased.

The ministers will be joined by the European Commission, World Bank, IMF, and OECD “in the first in-person Finance Track meeting in over a year”, the finance ministry said.

The G7 summit in Cornwall will be the first since Joe Biden became US president, with the global response to Covid-19 and climate change expected to dominate the talks.

It will be the group’s first in-person meeting in nearly two years after the 2020 event was cancelled due to the global health crisis.

Leaders and ministers from the seven nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — have met virtually in recent months.

Britain, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7 throughout 2021, has invited leaders from Australia, India and South Korea to attend as guest countries.

Budget Airline Norwegian To Cut 1,200 Jobs In Spain

Elizabeth Williams
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0
Budget Airline Norwegian To Cut 1,200 Jobs In Spain

Low-cost carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle, currently under bankruptcy protection after the pandemic pushed into a record loss last year, said Tuesday it plans to axe 85 percent of its workforce in Spain.

The no-frills airline has informed unions of its plans to axe up nearly 1,200 cabin crew in Spain as part of a group-wide restructuring programme.

Norwegian will retain just two of its five bases in Spain — in the southern coastal cities of Malaga and Alicante — as part of a reduction of its short-haul operations.

Like other airlines, Norwegian has been hit hard by the dramatic drop in air travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic and last year saw passenger numbers plummet by 81 percent to just 6.87 million.

Placed under bankruptcy protection in both Ireland and Norway, the carrier saw its bottom-line loss widen 15-fold to 23 billion kroner (2.2 billion euros, $2.7 billion) last year.

It has already closed its long-haul operations — where it had been a pioneer in launching low-cost transatlantic flights in 2017 — to instead focus on the Nordic market.

But the company racked up repeated losses, partly because of technical misfortunes. Its Boeing 777 Dreamliners encountered problems with their Rolls-Royce engines, and then its Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were grounded, as elsewhere in the world, after two fatal crashes.

At the same time, the company’s ambitious expansion programme saddled it with mountains of debt.

Spain, the world’s second most visited country after France before the pandemic, is the only country outside of Scandinavia where Norwegian said it plans to maintain a “permanent presence”.

Nigeria Extends NIN-SIM Verification Till June 30

Elizabeth Williams
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Nigeria Extends NIN-SIM Verification Till June 30

The Federal Government of Nigeria has again approved the extension of the deadline for NIN-SIM data verification to June 30.

The extension was as a result of the virtual meeting chaired by Nigeria’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami, and attended by the chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Adeolu Akande, the executive vice-chairman/CEO of NCC, Prof Umar Garba Dambatta and the director-general/CEO of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), Aliyu Azeez.

A statement jointly signed recently, by both the Director of Public Affairs, NCC, Dr. Ike Adinde and Head of Corporate Communications at NIMC, Kayode Adegoke, explained that the postponement of the deadline was also based on the request by stakeholders for an extension till June 30 in order to make it easier for all citizens and legal residents to register.

The earlier deadline was June 6, but that has been extended by another three weeks.

For example, almost 54 million people have obtained their NIN and this can translate to up to 190 million mobile numbers since empirical evidence suggests that each unique NIN maps to three to four phone lines. The much-awaited Android enrolment system is now ready for deployment and this has the potential to significantly accelerate the speed and ease of enrolments.

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