A wildfire on the outskirts of Iran’s capital triggered Friday an explosion of mines that had been planted around a high-security prison that houses political prisoners, but there were no injuries, state media reported.
The official IRNA news agency said the incident happened around noon at the Evin prison on the northern outskirts of Tehran, but that it caused no damage or casualties and that firefighters extinguished the blaze.
The report blamed the fire on the country’s current heatwave. Temperatures in Tehran around noon Friday were about 38 C (100 F).
Iranian media in the past have mentioned the mines, which apparently are anti-personnel mines planted to deter escape attempts.
The House of Representatives, says it will revisit the case of the N11.3 trillion allegedly spent by the Federal Government on the turn-around maintenance of Nigeria’s refineries between 2010 and 2020.
Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Rep. Bamidele Salam said this while speaking with newsmen in Abuja on Thursday.
According to him, the house intends to tackle the rising cost of petroleum products occasioned by the removal of fuel subsidy.
Salam said the house was bothered by the moribund state of Nigeria’s refineries in spite of the huge sum of money expended in trying to put them in shape in the last decade.
He said the era of wasting public funds on white elephant projects without consequences would soon be over.
Salam also said the committee would thoroughly examine the accounts of the federal government and those of the MDAs in order to expose wastage, inefficiency and corruption in the public sector.
He, however, expressed the optimism that President Bola Tinubu’s administration would reposition the Nigerian economy by fixing critical infrastructure like power, roads and rail transportation.
According to him, this can only succeed if there is value for money on all public contracts as well as adherence of government agencies to the provisions of extant laws and regulations on budgeting, procurement and jobs certification.
Salam said many roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure for which humongous sums of money were budgeted and spent in previous years had become dilapidated.
The chairman added that many other projects were abandoned by contractors after receiving full payments.
He said the increased in public revenue occasioned by removal of subsidy and a merger of foreign exchange trading windows, would only make the desired impact, if government blocked wastages and strengthened its audit institutions.
He appealed to Tinubu to urgently appoint a substantive Auditor General for the Federation in accordance with the provisions of Section 86 of the Constitution.
He explained that the non-appointmemt of a substantive auditor – general for close to a year, had impacted negatively on Nigeria’s public finance and accountability ratings by global organisations.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has declared that despite the nation’s current rate of energy supply, his administration is poised to address all the obstacles militating against stable electricity supply in the country.
He said his administration will bring solutions to the multifarious challenges across the electric power sector value chain which will significantly relieve longstanding problems of suppressed demand and improve the steadiness of peak supply for Nigerians, affirming that improved energy generation and distribution is an imperative for accelerated national growth.
President Tinubu spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony of the new 350 MegaWatts Gwagwalada Independent Thermal Power Plant (Phase 1) where he urged the NNPC and its partners to deliver the landmark project within the promised three years completion timeline, insisting that, three years must be three years.
President Tinubu noted that a swift improvement in the stability and quantum of energy supply will enhance national economic development, which remains a cardinal priority of his administration.
President Tinubu pledged his administration’s commitment to addressing the power challenges and gas utilisation with a clear focus on advancing the diversification of its energy mix.
Similarly, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPC Ltd, Mele Kyari, stated that the NNPC Ltd will leverage on the nation’s endowment of gas resources to power the nation’s industrial growth and stimulate ubiquitous job creation, adding that, through the project, the NNPC Ltd would be providing a huge boost to the national grid.
Kyari assured the President that NNPC Ltd will continue to execute power projects to enhance energy security, noting that several of such have already been completed. These, according to the NNPCL Group CEO, include the 50MW Maiduguri Power Plant, and the 900MW and 1,300MW power plants in Kaduna and Kano, respectively.
The colourful event was witnessed by many dignitaries and senior government officials, including the Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum, Governor of Nasarawa State, represented by his Deputy, Royal Fathers, the Chinese Ambassador to Nigeria, among others.
The Federal Government has lamented that the 2nd Niger Bridge may be blocked if miscreants continue to vandalise its metal components.
Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, Mr. Mahmuda Mamman, stated this when he visited the bridge to ascertain the level of vandalisation.
He called on security agencies to intensity surveillance on the Bridge to curtail the activities of the miscreants, who he said were after the mental components.
He said: “We are here to see the level of vandalisation of the 2nd Niger Bridge. It was an unfortunate situation that all of us woke up to the trending news of vandalisation of some metal components on the bridge.
“This is a massive investment put up by the Federal Government to ease movement of goods and services to Nigeria. To me, free movement is a basic human right and all of us must take collective responsibility to safeguard it.
“We have interfaced with the contractor handling the project, Julius Berger, and it is really unfortunate. The Federal Government has actually done what it is supposed to do.
“We have written to security agencies concerned, asking them to intensify surveillance activities along the road so that such things will not happen.
“At the same time, host communities have a responsibility to play because safeguarding national asserts is not a responsibility of one man; it is a collective responsibility.
“What the miscreants are actually after are the metal components on the bridge; anything metal, the miscreants are after it.
“And at the end of the day, if care is not taken, the entire bridge will become unmotorable.
“That is why it is good for us as stakeholders to make sure we safeguard this infrastructure in the interest of public good and the nation.”
On the delay in the completion of the project, he said: “We have interfaced with the contractor and he said the major challenge is security concerns.
“With the recent development, we are hoping that all things being equal, that is the commitment he gave us, in the next three weeks everything about the 2nd Niger Bridge will be completed.
“The bridge is still under maintenance by the construction company that built it and before the handing over, l am sure that most of the things that were vandalised are going to be replaced.
In the trading week ended Friday August 4, the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) All-Share Index (ASI) and equities market capitalisation increased by 0.22percent to 65,198.08 points and N35.480 trillion respectively.
All other indices finished higher with the exception of NGX Main Board, NGX CG, NGX Banking, NGX AFR Bank Value, NGX MERI Growth, NGX MERI Value and NGX Oil and Gas indices which depreciated by 0.07percent, 0.06percent, 2.13percent, 1.85percent, 2.43percent, 0.78percent, and 0.68percent respectively while the NGX ASeM index closed flat.
Forty-two equities appreciated in price during the review week higher than 39 equities in the preceding week. Fifty-two equities depreciated in price lower than 54 in the preceding week, while 61 equities remained unchanged, lower than 62 recorded in the preceeding trading week.
The market recorded total turnover of 2.575 billion shares worth N29.615 billion exchanged in 37,713 deals by investors on the floor of the Exchange, in contrast to a total of 2.854 billion shares valued at N37.645 billion that exchanged hands the preceding trading week in 41,547 deals.
The Financial Services Industry (measured by volume) led the activity chart with 1.921 billion shares valued at N16.514 billion traded in 17,689 deals; thus contributing 74.60percent and 55.76percent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively.
The Conglomerates Industry followed with 160.206 million shares worth N625.021 million traded in 1,811 deals, and the Oil and Gas Industry, with a turnover of 152.046 million shares worth N1.332 billion traded in 2,403 deals.
Trading in the top three equities namely AIICO Insurance Plc, FCMB Group Plc and Transnational Corporation Plc (measured by volume) accounted for 636.217 million shares worth N1.737 billion in 2,751 deals, contributing 24.71percent and 5.86percent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively.
Five companies along the East Coast — with operations in South Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland — drained over 700,000 crabs in 2021. That’s more than any other year since officials started keeping track in 2004.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that more than 30 percent of ocean fish stocks are being overfished and that many of the world’s fish stocks are at risk of being depleted.
The WTO agreement on fisheries subsidies, adopted at the 12th ministerial conference on June 17, 2022,was touted to be a major step forward for ocean sustainability by prohibiting harmful fisheries subsidies, a key factor in the widespread depletion of the world’s fish stocks.
India and other countries had raised concerns during the negotiations that the proposed deal would harm small-scale fishers.
An estimated 50,000 horseshoe crabs in the United States die every year as a result of being captured and bled to serve the pharmaceutical companies. Their populations along the Atlantic coast cascading negative effects throughout the ecosystem.
Horseshoe crab blood is an essential element in testing the safety of new drugs and vaccines.
The conflict now is…horseshoe crab blood has helped humans fight disease since the 1970s, but if over-harvesting continues, there may be none of these crabs left. The contention will be what becomes of this multi-million-dollar industry?
The pharmaceutical companies are raking millions of dollars from this sea creature.
The price of horseshoe crab blood is also unbelievably high, at $15,000 per quart, making it an expensive resource.
But the over-harvesting of horseshoe crabs has made the species increasingly vulnerable to extinction; as Conservationists Lament.
The extraordinary benefits of horseshoe crab blood
Frederik bang, a pathologist who was keen to understand how the ancient sea animal’s immune system worked, did a series of experiments to test horseshoe crab blood and its properties.
He injected bacteria from seawater directly into a horseshoe crab to see how its blood would react to the infected injection. What bang found would ultimately become one of the most important elements of modern medicine safety testing.
Bang suspected that this blood clotting was a natural defense mechanism to protect the rest of the horseshoe crab’s body from an invading pathogen. He published a study in a 1956 paper titled “a bacterial disease of limulus Polyphemus.” he ultimately identified the molecule responsible for this highly-effective immune system as Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL).
Before LAL was identified in horseshoe crab blood, the only way to test the toxicity of new vaccines was to inject lab rabbits and monitor their symptoms. With the discovery of LAL, however, medical scientists were able to simply put a drop of it into an experimental drug and immediately know whether it would be toxic to humans.
By the late 1970s, the U.S food and drug administration began allowing pharmaceutical companies to replace their testing rabbits with LAL kits. The LAL quickly gained popularity as the go-to method for testing toxins in new medicine. Soon, harvesting this blood became a major part of the pharmaceutical industry.
Every year, fishermen catch hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs to ship to their clients like Switzerland-based chemicals company Lonza, which sells LAL.
Horseshoe crab blood is now a sought-after commodity among medical scientists and drug companies. According to a report by the Atlantic, the price of horseshoe crab blood is as much as $15,000 per quart, while LAL kits can cost up to $1,000 per package.
However, the use of horseshoe crab blood in the pharmaceutical industry has also played a role in the decline. During blood harvesting, 30 percent of the crab’s blood is drawn. Although the animals are released back into the wild afterward, up to 30 percent of them don’t even make it through the blood-draining. a research study found that this was because the bleeding process made the animals more vulnerable.
So, even if bleeding a female horseshoe crab didn’t kill it, it may make them less likely to mate, which ultimately leads to dwindling population numbers.
The Bank of England raised its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a 15-year peak of 5.25% on Thursday, and gave a new warning that borrowing costs were likely to stay high for some time.
Unlike the U.S. Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank – which also both raised rates by a quarter-point last week – the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee gave little suggestion that rate hikes were about to end as it battles high inflation.
There had been fears, certainly among hard-pressed households and businesses, that the bank would repeat its outsized half-point increase from June. But figures last month showing that inflation fell more than anticipated to 7.9% eased the pressure to act as aggressively again. With inflation four times the bank’s 2% target, the bank is expected to raise interest rates again over the coming months.
British inflation hit a 41-year high of 11.1% last year and has fallen more slowly than elsewhere, dropping to 7.9% in June, the highest of any major economy.
Private funding by Israeli startups in the first half of 2023 dropped to a five-year low as the “ripple effect” from the growing uncertainty around the controversial judicial overhaul is taking a toll on the country’s tech ecosystem, according to a report published by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), a nonprofit organization that tracks Israel’s tech industry.
In the first six months of the year, Israeli startups raised a total of $3.9 billion from private financing rounds, marking a 29% drop from the volume of funds raised in the second half of 2022, and a 67% decline from the $11.9 billion nabbed during the same period last year, the data compiled by SNC’s Finder startup database showed.
More concerning, the report pointed to a quarter-on-quarter fundraising decline of 10% from the first quarter to the second quarter of this year, while in the US private funding trends are stabilizing, it was noted in the report.
Health tech and fintech were among the sectors that got hit hardest during the first half of the year in nabbing private funding, while climate tech firms attracted more capital and the downturn in investments in cybersecurity firms stabilized.
Amazon countries meeting next week for a summit on cooperation to save the rainforest aim to set up a scientific body like the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to share research, Brazil’s environment minister told Reuters.
“The idea is to have a scientific panel for the Amazon with scientists from different countries, along the lines of the IPCC,” Marina Silva said in an interview on Thursday.
The panel would help produce sustainable development policies for the countries of the region while remaining independent of governments, and monitor the impact of climate change on the Amazon rainforest and ecosystem, she said.
It would also seek to determine the limits of what scientists call the “point of no return” when the rainforest is damaged beyond repair.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Wednesday that leaders of the eight countries in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) would seek to draw up a common policy for the first time to protect the rainforest.
Marina Silva said the meeting on Aug. 8-9 in Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river, was long overdue.
“The summit took 14 years to assemble. This is unacceptable, given everything that is happening in the world, the speed of changes occurring to the detriment of the Amazon and its inhabitants, and the dynamics of global geopolitics on the climate issue,” she said.
Lula has overhauled Brazil’s environment policies since taking office in January, succeeding far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who relaxed protection the environment and encouraged development of the Amazon, where deforestation soared.
Preliminary government figures showed on Thursday that deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon fell in July to its lowest level since 2017, boosting Lula’s credibility on environmental policy ahead of the summit.
A fisherwoman rows her boat through a narrow waterway near the shore of Lake Titicaca in the drought season in Huarina, Bolivia August 3, 2023. REUTERS/Claudia Morales
The parched shoreline and shrinking depths of Lake Titicaca are prompting growing alarm that an ago-old way of life around South America’s largest lake is slipping away as a brutal heat wave wreaks havoc on the southern hemisphere’s winter.
Like many places suffering deadly consequences of climate change, the sprawling freshwater lake nestled in the Andes mountains on Bolivia’s border with Peru now features a water level approaching an all-time low.
Globally, July was the hottest month on record, as prolonged dry spells take an especially heavy toll on humans and animals alike.
Titicaca is only 30 cm (1 foot) away from reaching its record low of 1996 due to severe drought, said Lucia Walper, an official with Bolivia’s hydrology and meteorology service. She added that the drought could last until November in some parts of the country.
Farmers in the adjacent Huarina community are desperate for help.
The waters of Lake Titicaca have for decades ebbed and flowed at an altitude of around 3,800 meters (12,500 ft) above sea level, which makes it even more vulnerable to evaporation by solar radiation, according to experts at Bolivia’s Oruro Technical University.
Along extended stretches of the lake’s shore, once fertile areas have recently been reduced to dust.
“It’s like the earth is burning,” lamented Huarina leader Gabriel Flores.
Historic drought in South America has also slammed neighboring Argentina’s crucial farm sector, prompting the International Monetary Fund to forecast a 2.5% economic contraction this year as a result.
Meanwhile in Uruguay, the Canelon Grande Reservoir, a major source of drinking water for the capital Montevideo, shriveled in June as water levels sank so low that grass covered much of the lake bed.
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