The Federal Government has finally inaugurated the first cargo movement from the Lagos-Ibadan rail corridor after initial concern over the under-utilization of the standard gauge rail line 2 years after its commissioning.

The inauguration was performed by the Minister of Transportation, Saidu Alkali, during his first official tour of the rail corridor on Tuesday, September 12, 2023.

The minister kicked off the tour at the Ebute Meta station before proceeding to Apapa for the launch, then travelled to Ibadan using the 157 km rail corridor.

Three coaches of 30 wagons were loaded as the inaugural freight movement was kicked off.

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said it would start with 3 coaches per day with its Managing Director (MD) noting that the corporation had the capacity to scale up the numbers.

This effort is expected to decongest the Apapa port as shippers moved 92.28% of Nigeria’s total exports and 60.77 percent of imports through the facility in the first quarter of 2022 (Q1’22).

What you should know
Recall that earlier in July, the NRC had announced that it would start the movement of freight from the Apapa ports to Moniya in Ibadan on August 1.

This development comes after the corporation encountered impediments in the complete linkage of the track to the Apapa Port quay, including a radioactive scanner belonging to the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS).

However, the NRC confirmed that the movement of containers will begin from August 1 and that the national railway network will be able to facilitate the movement of over 3.2 million tonnes of cargo per year.

President President Buhari had on June 10, 2021, formally inaugurated the $1.5 billion 157 kilometres Lagos Ibadan standard gauge railway line in Lagos, which was the first double-track standard gauge rail in West Africa after several delays and setbacks.

The NRC commenced full commercial operations on that route on Tuesday, June 15, 2021.

Salang Pass is a major mountain pass which connects mostly the Parwan and Kabul Provinces with further connections, in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

As it stands at an elevation point of 3,878 meters (12m723 feet) above sea level, it represents one of the highest mountain passes in the world. The mountain range Hindu Kush, on which it is located, stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.

Nevertheless, there is at the moment the Salang Tunnel which bypasses the mountains, and runs underneath them. During the Soviet-Afghan War, the Salang Tunnel was a crucial link to the south, and prone to ambushes from the mujaheddin.

On 3 November 1982, there was a fire caused by a collision of a tanker which blew up in the tunnel and the fire engulfing the military convoy, killing 64 Soviet soldiers and 112 Afghans. However, there are also avalanches that can cause fatalities, like the ones in 2002, 2009 and 2010.

In 2010, it was recorded that the Salang Pass was hit by 17 avalanches, killing dozens, burying miles of highway, and trapping the vehicles in the Salang tunnel. Yet, even though it is very dangerous and requires good driving skills, the Pass offers quite gorgeous landscape for any photographer and person who likes the mountains.

The government of the southern Spanish region of Andalusia plans to buy swathes of land around the Donana National Park in a bid to preserve and expand its wetlands threatened by frequent droughts, rising temperatures and illegal water usage.

Regional leader Juanma Moreno said on Tuesday the planned purchase of 7,500 hectares (18,533 acres) would expand Donana’s area by 14% in what he called “the biggest action for the conservation of the park in the last decades”.

The Donana wetlands harbour many endemic and threatened species, such as freshwater eels and turtles and provide an important refuge for migratory birds heading southward after breeding in northern Europe.

Average rainfall in Spain over the past 12 months has been 17% lower than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020.

The planned land purchase comes after Moreno’s conservative administration came under heavy criticism from environmentalists and the government in Madrid over its plan to legalise additional irrigation around Donana.

The purchase includes around 3,500 ha of artificial wetland in Veta la Palma estate that was used as fish farms until 2021 and now runs the risk of drying out.

Donana’s lagoons are surrounded by a sea of greenhouses and a complex system of pipes that take water from illegally drilled wells for use by farmers growing strawberries and other berries.

Acting Environment Minister Teresa Ribera, whose Socialist- led national government has vowed to protect the park, welcomed the measure but said it does not tackle the problem of lack of water head on.

She has announced a plan to spend more than 12 billion euros to alleviate the impact of drought. The funds will go mostly towards reusing water, building desalination plants and improving water infrastructure, she added.

Many survivors of Morocco’s earthquake struggled in makeshift shelters on Tuesday after a fourth night in the open, while villagers in devastated mountain areas voiced frustration at having received no help from the authorities.

The death toll from the 6.8 magnitude quake that struck in the High Atlas Mountains late on Friday evening rose to 2,901, while the number of people injured more than doubled to 5,530, state television reported.

It was the North African country’s deadliest earthquake since 1960 and its most powerful in more than a century.

Rescuers from Spain, Britain and Qatar were helping Morocco’s search teams, while Italy, Belgium, France and Germany said their offers of assistance had yet to be approved.

The situation was most desperate for people in remote areas cut off by landslides triggered by the earthquake that blocked access roads, while in accessible locations relief efforts were stepping up with tent camps and distribution of food and water.

More than 2,000 people were killed and at least 10,000 were missing in Libya in floods caused by a huge Mediterranean storm that burst dams, swept away buildings and wiped out as much as a quarter of the eastern coastal city of Derna.

Officials expected the death toll to rise further after Storm Daniel barrelled across the Mediterranean into a country divided and crumbling after more than a decade of conflict.

In Derna, a city of around 125,000 inhabitants, Reuters journalists saw wrecked neighbourhoods, their buildings washed out and cars flipped on their roofs in streets covered in mud and rubble left by a wide torrent after dams burst.

Mohamad al-Qabisi, director of the Wahda Hospital, said 1,700 people had died in one of the city’s two districts and 500 had died in the other.

Bodies were lined up on the street outside a crowded hospital, with residents looking under the shrouds covering them in search of loved ones.

Similar devastation reigned on the way into Derna, with vehicles overturned on the edges of roads, trees knocked down and houses inundated and abandoned.

“Bodies are lying everywhere – in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings,” Hichem Abu Chkiouat, minister of civil aviation in the administration that controls the east, told Reuters by phone shortly after visiting Derna.

“I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed.”

Other eastern cities including Libya’s second biggest city Benghazi, were also hit by the storm. Tamer Ramadan, head of a delegation of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the death toll would be “huge”.

“We can confirm from our independent sources of information that the number of missing people is hitting 10,000 so far,” he told reporters via video link.

United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that emergency teams were now being mobilised to help on the ground.

As Turkey and other countries rushed aid to Libya, including search and rescue vehicles, rescue boats, generators and food, distraught Derna citizens rushed home in search of loved ones.

Deep in an open coal mine in southern Greece, researchers have discovered the antiquities-rich country’s oldest archaeological site, which dates to 700,000 years ago and is associated with modern humans’ hominin ancestors.

The find would drag the dawn of Greek archaeology back by as much as a quarter of a million years, although older hominin sites have been discovered elsewhere in Europe. The oldest, in Spain, dates to more than a million years ago.

The Greek site was one of five investigated in the Megalopolis area during a five-year project involving an international team of experts, a Culture Ministry statement said.

It was found to contain rough stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic period — about 3.3 million to 300,000 years ago — and the remains of an extinct species of giant deer, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros and a macaque monkey.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio now holds the record for the longest U.S. spaceflight.

Rubio surpassed the U.S. space endurance record of 355 days on Monday at the International Space Station.

He arrived at the outpost last September with two Russians for a routine six months. But their stay was doubled after their Soyuz capsule developed a coolant leak while parked at the space station.

The trio will return to Earth on Sept. 27 in a replacement capsule that was sent up empty for the ride home. By then, Rubio will have spent 371 days in space, more than two weeks longer than Mark Vande Hei, the previous U.S. record holder for a single spaceflight, Russia holds the world record of 437 days, set in the mid-1990s.

“Your dedication is truly out of this world, Frank!” NASA chief Bill Nelson said via X, formerly known as Twitter.

A replacement crew of two Russians and an American is set to launch to the station from Kazakhstan on Friday.

Emergency workers uncovered hundreds of bodies as they dug through the wreckage of Libya’s eastern city of Derna on Tuesday, and 10,000 people were reported still missing after floodwaters broke through dams and smashed through the city, washing away entire neighborhoods.

At least 700 recovered bodies have been buried so far, the health minister for eastern Libya said. Derna’s ambulance authority put the current death toll at 2,300.

But the toll is likely to be far higher, in the thousands, said Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He told a U.N. briefing in Geneva via videoconference from Tunisia that at least 10,000 people were still missing.

The situation in Libya was “as devastating as the situation in Morocco,” Ramadan said, referring to the deadly earthquake that hit near the city of Marrakesh on Friday night.

The death toll from floods in Greece has risen to 15 after 4 more bodies found, authorities say

The destruction came to Derna and other parts of eastern Libya on Sunday night, when Mediterranean storm Daniel pounded the coast. Residents said they heard loud explosions and realized that dams outside the city had collapsed, unleashing flash floods down Wadi Derna, a river running from the mountains through the city and into the sea.

The wall of water sweeping through Derna “erased everything in its way,” said one resident, Ahmed Abdalla.

Videos posted online by residents showed large swaths of mud and wreckage where the raging waters had swept away the residential neighborhoods on both banks of the river. Multi-story apartment buildings that once were well back from the river had facades ripped away and concrete floors collapsed. Cars lifted by the water were left dumped on top of each other.

Residents in the city of some 90,000 were on their own in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, with authorities in eastern Libya saying they were unable to reach Derna. On Tuesday, most of the eastern government had arrived in the city.

Local emergency responders, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents were digging through rubble to recover the dead. They also used inflatable boats to retrieve bodies from the water.

Footage showed dozens of bodies covered by blankets laid out in the yard of a hospital in Derna. Many bodies were believed trapped under rubble or had been washed out into the Mediterranean Sea, said eastern Libya’s health minister, Othman Abduljaleel.

“We were stunned by the amount of destruction … the tragedy is very significant, and beyond the capacity of Derna and the government,” Abduljaleel told The Associated Press on the phone from Derna.

Red Crescent teams from other parts of Libya also arrived in Derna on Tuesday morning but extra excavators and other equipment had yet to get there, hampered in part by cutoff and destroyed roads.