Nyesom Wike, minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has announced plans to reintroduce monthly sanitation, in a bid to keep Abuja clean.

Wike, who stated this after a closed-door meeting with contractors handling different projects in the FCT on Monday, said that he had already briefed President Bola Tinubu on the idea that at least two Saturdays in a month would be declared for sanitation from 7a.m. to 10 a.m.

He explained that the move would enable companies supporting the FCT with logistics to go to market, and other public places to evacuate refuse. According to him, for Abuja to be clean, everybody has to cooperate.

“We must all make sacrifices. There is nothing like we are going to suffer. You also contribute to refuse. So, if you spare three hours on a Saturday at home, to clear the refuse and bring them out for us to evacuate and dispose, then that is the little way you can help. We are appealing to you (residents) to cooperate with us so we can achieve our goals”, he said.

On streetlights, the minister said that there were some improvements: “We are not there yet, but I can assure you that everywhere in Abuja will be lit up.”

For those who have distorted the Abuja Master Plan, Wike said that the issue would soon be addressed.

He added that the FCTA was working out which areas the parks and the greens were supposed to be and those that were built on. He also said that the government would look into those who refused to develop their plots for many years.

Wike said that the President Tinubu-led administration would not continue to allow undeveloped land across the city where criminals were taking refuge.

“How can you have empty land in the city and allow people to build shanties on them because you did not develop them. Some properties were built for 20 years but not completed. Go and see what is happening there, criminals have taken over the place and as a serious government, we will not allow that.

“We want to make Abuja a safe environment, but we can’t do it alone; we require the support of every stakeholder,” the minister said.

He also said that attention would be given to satellite towns beginning with a visit to the areas to determine the needs and decide on what can be done to improve their facilities and infrastructure.

He pointed out that there was no funding to intervene in all the satellite towns at the same time but one at a time subject to the availability of funds.

“It is unfortunate that contracts were awarded in virtually all the satellite towns but where is the funding? The finding is not there,” Wike said.

He said that what was approved for FCT in the 2022 national budget was N15 billion for “not less than a trillion naira worth of contracts”, stressing the need for the ministry to prioritise its spending.

The Biden administration’s first ever auction of offshore wind development rights in the Gulf of Mexico ended with a single $5.6 million winning bid on Tuesday, reflecting meager demand for the clean energy source in a region known for its oil and gas production.

That result represented a fraction of the billions of dollars of bids secured in an offshore wind lease sale off New York and New Jersey in February 2022.

Those states have passed laws that require utilities to buy power from offshore wind projects – mandates considered critical for a technology that is estimated to produce electricity at twice the cost of a natural gas plant.

The Gulf’s lower wind speeds, soft soils and hurricanes are potential challenges to the industry. The Southeast also has low power prices that could make it harder for higher-cost offshore wind generation to compete for electricity contracts.

The sale was, nonetheless, cast by the President Joe Biden’s administration as a major milestone in his agenda to make offshore wind a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to fight fossil-fuel driven climate change.

“Today’s lease sale represents an important milestone for the Gulf of Mexico region — and for our nation — to transition to a clean energy future,” said Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Elizabeth Klein.

She said the Louisiana lease had the potential to power about 435,400 homes and create hundreds of jobs. 

According to a BOEM document, fifteen companies were qualified to bid at the sale.

They included offshore wind development arms of European energy companies Equinor (EQNR.OL), Shell (SHEL.L), RWE (RWEG.DE) and TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA), all of which are already developing U.S. offshore wind leases in other regions. Equinor and Shell also have oil and gas operations in the Gulf.

Developers had been looking beyond the grid in the Gulf, with some eyeing the sale as a possible way to fuel a green hydrogen supply chain for the region’s vast industrial corridor.

Sixty-three year olf H.J.M Seneviratne, slices through yellowed paddy stems dried out by a drought that has destroyed over 95% of his crop and is threatening crisis-hit Sri Lanka’s summer rice harvest.

The island’s economy was crushed last year by its worst financial crisis in over seven decades, caused by a severe shortage of foreign exchange reserves that triggered widespread unrest and ousted its former president.

Helped by a $2.9 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Sri Lanka has slowly stabilised its economy since March, rebuilding its decimated reserves, moderating inflation and strengthening its currency.

But even before the country’s agriculture sector could recover from sky-rocketing prices of inputs from fertiliser to power, the rains failed.

“I’ve been a farmer for forty years but I’ve never experienced a harder time than this,” Seneviratne said, standing in the middle of a dusty field near Anamaduwa, a town in north western Sri Lanka, clutching a fistful of straw-like paddy stems with hollow rice kernels.

“We haven’t had enough rain since May. The harvest is so bad we don’t even have seed paddy for the next season.”

The southwest monsoon that farmers rely on for the Yala or summer harvest was scanty this year because of the El Nino weather pattern and the weather department estimates there will be no rains until October.

Typically, Seneviratne’s four acres yield about 4.5-6 tons of paddy for the summer harvest but this time he predicts he will get only about 150 kg. All but one of the eight water tanks, large ponds in which rainwater is collected for irrigation, in the area have dried out, destroying about 200 acres of paddy.

The paddy loss could be as much as 75,000 acres, according to Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera while other experts say full losses could be even higher as estimates are yet to be completed. Sri Lanka planted 1.3 million acres for the summer harvest, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

“We have lost at least 80,000 metric tons of paddy as per the latest data and it could be more,” said Buddhi Marambe, a professor of crop science at Sri Lanka’s Peradeniya University.

Last year, when the crop was decimated by a lack of fertiliser because of the economic crisis, the season produced 1.5 million tons of paddy.

The drought could reverse a recent trend of falling food prices, which dipped an annual 2.5% in July after rising 94% year-on-year last September.

Sri Lanka’s central bank warned last week that the dry weather coupled with higher global oil and commodity prices could also “weigh on expected growth in the near term,” as the island struggles to limit economic contraction to 2% this year after shrinking 7.8% in 2022.

Sri Lanka’s northern neighbour India is also expected to have the driest August in more than a century prompting it to restrict exports of certain categories of rice. Sri Lanka has previously imported rice from India to bridge production shortfalls.

Britain said on Tuesday it would remove some European Union rules it had retained post-Brexit that were meant to curb water pollution, to enable thousands of new homes to be built, a move environmentalists said would further spoil dirty rivers.

The EU’s “nutrient neutrality” laws were put in place to ensure that development does not pollute waterways with additional chemicals that cause plants to grow, from sources such as agricultural fertiliser and untreated sewage.

The British government said that while nutrients entering rivers was “a real problem,” the contribution made by new homes was “very small”.

Britain has for decades been grappling with an undersupply of homes. The government’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said in a statement the rule change would enable more than 100,000 homes to be built by 2030.

“Today’s announcement … also will provide an 18 billion pound boost to our economy and support tens of thousands of jobs, and we’re able to do this because previously it was a disproportionate and poorly targeted old EU ruling that blocked these homes,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters.

The government statement quoted David Thomas, boss of Britain’s biggest housebuilder Barratt(BDEV.L), as welcoming the move, which he said would allow the company to build more homes including 2,500 that were now stalled.

The Wildlife Trusts charity criticised the decision, saying the laws were about preventing pollution rather than housing.

“Scrapping the rules that are merely trying to stop rivers becoming even more polluted will allow vested interests to make more money at the expense of our rivers and the natural environment,” The Wildlife Trusts Chief Executive Craig Bennett said.

Doug Parr, Chief Scientist at environmental group Greenpeace UK, urged the government to force water companies and housebuilders to invest in infrastructure to better handle sewage so river health is not sacrificed for the sake of building more homes.

A research briefing published by the government in May said around 340,000 new homes needed to be supplied in England each year, more than the Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto target of 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s.

A wildfire burning in northeastern Greece for 11 days has destroyed an area larger than New York City, as firefighters from five countries battled to contain the flames.

Fuelled by gale force winds and hot weather, the fire that began near the city of Alexandroupolis quickly spread across the Evros region, killing at least 20 people last week in Europe’s deadliest blaze this summer.

It turned swathes of lush greenery into scorched earth and destroyed homes and livelihoods.

In a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service said the fire had ravaged at least 808.7 square kilometres (312.2 square miles). New York City takes up 778.2 square kilometres (300.5 square miles).

Copernicus said last week that the fire was the largest on European soil in years, and authorities warned that risks from the fire remained high on Tuesday.

Aircraft and hundreds of firefighters on the ground, including from Serbia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Albania, were battling the flames, the fire brigade said.

“We are trying to defend the rest of the unaffected area before the front line of the fire comes,” said Jiri Nemcik, commander of the Czech team. “The development of the fire is very dynamic so it’s very dangerous.”

Satellite images highlight the extent of the destruction in the area, with swathes of forest virtually flattened and lush pine trees turned into blackened, skeletal bark.

Panagiota Maragou, head of conservation at the Greece division of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said at least 30% of the National Park of Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli Forest had been lost to flames.

Thanks to its high biodiversity, the national park was “one of the most important protected areas in Greece and also in Europe, perhaps also on an international scale”, she said.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chaired a meeting on Tuesday on the fires that have ravaged Greece, touching on preventative measures among other issues, a statement from his office said.

Environmentalists have long accused Greece of spending more funds on extinguishing fires than on prevention.

“We’ve seen in the case of Dadia and in the case of the Evros fire in general …, one of the biggest fires in Europe, that a system that relies exclusively on suppression of fires is not working,” Maragou said.

Summer wildfires are common in Greece but the government says extreme weather conditions which scientists link to climate change have made them worse this year. Greece’s deadliest fire on record killed 104 people outside Athens in 2018.

All but one of the dead in the Evros fire are believed to have been irregular migrants who crossed over from Turkey, evading police in the forest. Authorities fear more bodies may be found when the flames are put out, as Evros is a popular crossing into the EU for thousands of migrants and refugees every year.

Hurricane Idalia was strengthening on Tuesday as it lumbered toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, where officials ordered evacuations and urged millions of residents to brace for a possible major Category 3 storm when it makes landfall on Wednesday.

Idalia was expected to intensify rapidly before slamming ashore on Wednesday morning, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged residents in low-lying areas to heed orders to seek higher ground, warning that the storm surge could cause life-threatening floods.

“If you are told to evacuate, you have to do that now,” he said at a Tuesday morning news briefing. Evacuation orders have been issued in 22 counties, and more than 20 emergency shelters have been opened, he said.

The NHC projected Idalia’s center would likely cross Florida’s coastline somewhere in the Big Bend region, where the state’s northern panhandle curves around into the Gulf side of the Florida Peninsula.

The area, roughly between the inland cities of Tallahassee and Gainesville, is much more lightly populated than the Tampa-St. Petersburg area to the south.

Despite the latest projection, the path of the intensifying storm was uncertain as it spun northward over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a day after passing just west of Cuba, where tens of thousands evacuated ahead of flooding and high winds.

Idalia intensified into a hurricane early on Tuesday. It was expected to reach Category 3 force – classified as a major hurricane, with sustained winds of at least 111 mph (179 kph) – on the five-step Saffir-Simpson wind scale by the time it reaches Florida on Wednesday, the NHC said.

Colonia Tovar is a charming German-style town that is located in the northern part of the Tovar Municipality, within the northeastern part of the State of Aragua, in the northern part of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Nestled more precisely in the Cordillera de la Costa mountain range, this small and yet very picturesque town known for its well-preserved German architecture, colorful gardens, and delicious cuisine, featuring traditional German dishes such as sausages, sauerkraut, and beer, has been founded on 8 April 1843 by a group of German immigrants from the then independent state of the Grand Duchy of Baden, nowadays Germany, seeking to recreate their homeland in South America.

As the immigrants were led by a man named Agustín Codazzi, who was commissioned by the Venezuelan government to explore and map the region, they were also seeking a new home away from the political turmoil and economic hardship of their native country and hoped to create a utopian society based on their German traditions and longstanding values.

Still, as Venezuela was facing significant political and economic turmoil at that time, many Venezuelans were emigrating to other countries in search of better opportunities and more stable life, but it was Colonel Agostino Codazzi, an Italian geographer and cartographer that was hired by the Venezuelan government to explore and map the country’s interior, and he discovered the amazing valley in the mountains near Caracas that he thought would make an ideal place for a new settlement.

Codazzi believed that the valley, which was surrounded by lush forests and fertile farmland, could be transformed into a thriving agricultural community, and upon sharing his vision with a wealthy Venezuelan landowner named Ramón Díaz, who was intrigued by the idea of creating a new settlement in the region formed a colonizing company and began recruiting settlers to join them in their new venture.

Their main focus was on attracting German immigrants, who were known for their hard work, discipline, and agricultural skills, and the first people from the Grand Duchy of Baden were convinced to create a utopian place in the amazing South American continent.

As the German immigrants have created a unique architectural marvel, one of the things that separates Colonia Tovar apart from other towns in Venezuela is its distinctive architecture, which features colorful half-timbered houses with steeply pitched roofs, reminiscent of the buildings found in small German villages.

Throughout the years, there have been many local stories embracing this charming little place, and one of the most commonly told is the secret tunnel that was used by the Germans during World War II to escape the country, as well as legends of ghost sightings in some of the town’s oldest buildings.

Nowadays, Colonia Tovar remains a popular tourist destination, attracting visitors from all over Venezuela and beyond who come to experience its unique blend of German and Venezuelan culture.

Despite its popularity, Colonia Tovar remains a relatively small and tight-knit community, with many residents descended from the original German immigrants and fiercely proud of their cultural heritage that has been kept for more than a century.

As there are many attractions to be explored in the colonial town, among the many things it is worth mentioning the charming town square with its fountain and flower beds to the local craft shops selling handmade goods and souvenirs, but visitors can also take a stroll through the town’s beautiful gardens, which are filled with colorful blooms and offer stunning views of the surrounding mountains.

In conclusion, Colonia Tovar is a unique and charming destination that offers visitors a taste of Germany in the heart of Venezuela, with its distinctive architecture, delicious cuisine, and rich cultural heritage, and it still serves as a testament to the vision and perseverance of Colonel Agostino Codazzi, Ramón Díaz, and the German immigrants who helped build the community.