A Tennessee couple, Tina and Ben Gibson, who spent years praying for a baby now have two miracle babies.

The family struggled with infertility for nearly five years before Tina’s parents saw a story about embryo adoption on a local news station.

Gibson, an elementary school teacher and her husband, a 36-year-old cyber security analyst, connected with the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), a Christian non-profit in Knoxville that stores frozen embryos that in vitro fertilisation patients decided not to use and chose to donate instead.

Families like the Gibsons can then adopt one of the unused embryos and give birth to a child that is not genetically related to them.

The Gibsons’ most recent child was born October 26, thanks to an embryo adoption that’s put little Molly Everette Gibson into the world record books.

Molly breaks the record of her older sister, Emma Wren Gibson, who was born in 2017 after a similar process of transferring a thawed then 24-year-old donated embryo for Tina to carry. Molly and Emma are genetic siblings.

According to the National Embryo Donation Center and research staff at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library, Molly’s embryo dates back to 1992. It was frozen for 27 years – setting the new known record for the longest-frozen embryo to ever come to birth.

The Federal Government of Nigeria has announced a scheme aimed at rolling out five million solar systems to provide power to unserved and underserved communities

This is expected to benefit over 25 million Nigerians and generate N7 billion yearly. The Federal Government through the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) also noted that as many as 250, 000 jobs would be created through the scheme.

The new initiative is expected to be funded with a facility from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo said the initiative is part of the economic recovery plan of the government. He also noted that the development was part of the government’s “commitment to resolving electricity challenges and delivering on the president’s objective to deliver efficient, stable and reliable power to Nigerians”.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued fresh guidelines on the management and payment of diaspora remittances to recipients, mandating the international money transfer operator (IMTO) to ensure that transfer funds are deposited in “the agent bank’s correspondent account”.

The apex bank, in the circular issued recently, also authorized the recipients to decide how they would be paid.

The circular signed by Director, Trade and Exchange Department, Dr. Ozoemena Nnaji, states that “The mode of payment either in cash or transfer is at the sole discretion of the beneficiaries/recipients.”

The apex bank also said the commercial banks, as against IMTOs, would henceforth take responsibility for payment of remittances to beneficiaries/recipients.

The directive followed a similar one issued on Monday on the domiciliary account management.

The bank had in the earlier circular provided policy guidelines on the operation of export proceeds and ordinary domiciliary accounts. 

Nigeria’s Finance Bill 2020 has scaled second reading on the floor of the Senate.

The proposed legislation stipulates various amendments made to the 2019 version of the Act.

The Leader of the Senate, Yahaya Abdullahi, in his lead debate said the bill proposed amendments into Capital Gains Act and the Value Added Tax.

He said Section 19 increased the penalty payable by a taxable person for non-remittance within the specified period from 7.5 per cent to 10 per cent

He also said section 28 of the Act provides penalty for failure to give notice of change of address or permanent cessation of business.

He said the penalties were increased from N5,000 to N50,000 in the first month and N25,000 in subsequent months.

The Bill, according to the Senate Leader, proposed a new section 8 of the VAT Act to cater for the registration of a taxable person upon commencement of business.

Naira exchanged to the dollar at 490/$ in the parallel market on Wednesday, after it had sold for N500 on Monday.

The Bureau De Change operators had attributed the devaluation the naira is currently experiencing to speculative activities of some operators.

The Central Bank of Nigeria however retained the official exchange rate at N379/$ on its website.

During the Annual Bankers Dinner organised by the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria in Lagos on Friday, the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, spoke on the exchange rate.

Due to the unprecedented nature of the shock, he said, it had continued to favour a gradual liberalisation of the foreign exchange market in order to smoothen exchange rate volatility and mitigate the impact which, rapid changes in the exchange rate could have on key macro-economic variables.

President Muhammadu Buhari has restated his resolve to mete stiff measures to any of the Discos or their agents selling prepaid meters to their customers against the directive that they should be distributed free.

This is in furtherance of the directive that a total of six million meters, manufactured or assembled locally, should be rolled out to electricity consumers to end the agitation against estimated billing.

The Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure, Ahmed Rufai Zakar, who represented the President at the FGN/NLC-TUC ad-hoc committee on electricity tariff stakeholders engagement in Ibadan, Oyo State on Wednesday, said the president understood the citizens’ plight on issues surrounding electricity and was determined to deal with bad elements.

He said it has been made very clear through the regulators direct order as well as intervention from the Ministry of Power that the meters are to be provided to Nigerians at no cost.