Featured News
now browsing by category
Gambia Confirms Second Corona Virus Death
A 80 year old Marabou has become The Gambia’s second documented Covid-19 related death since the first was recorded in March 2020.
According to the health ministry, the man not long a go returned from Senegal but leave quarantine and stayed in Manjai Kunda for a week before developing signs of the virus.
He was eventually taken to the Kanifing General Hospital but was pronounced dead two hours after arrival. He was diabetic too.
The registration takes the country’s toll of infection to 37, with 11 active and two probable cases.
There are 250 persons in isolation after 22 were recently taken in, with four new people
discharged upon completion of the mandatory quarantine stated time.
The health ministry said overcrowding at video clubs remains one of its biggest challenges after the resumption of Europe’s football leagues.
The ministry also said government continues to suffer “prohibitive and unsustainable” cost at various quarantine facilities.
As said by the ministry, there is no quarantine facility in Central River Region as of now and the holding facility at the Bansang Hospital is still not available for use.
He also complained that truck drivers, carrying essential commodities, are being allowed to enter the country from locations with ongoing community transmission.
It added: “People smuggling schemes common at three points of entry through use of motorcycles, donkey or horse carts and by foot.”
Source___Standard Newspaper
Nigeria’s COVID-19 Infections Surpass 20,000 With 436 New Infections
Nigeria’s COVID-19 infection have exceeded 20,000 as the country confirmed another 436 new infections on yesterday.
The Nigeria Centre For Disease Control (NCDC) disclosed this in a tweet.
According to the agency, of the new cases, 169 were recorded in Lagos, 52 in Oyo and 31 in Plateau.
Other affected states are Imo with 29 cases, Kaduna with 28, Ogun with 23, the FCT and Enugu with 18 each, Bauchi with 17, Bayelsa with 14, Rivers with eight, Osun and Kano with six each, Edo and Benue with five each, Adamawa with three, Borno with two, and Abia and Ekiti states with one each.
The NCDC also noted that a toll of 6,879 patients have recovered and have been discharged, while the number of death now stands at 518.
Source____Channels TV
APC Holds Governorship Election Primary In 192 Wards in Edo State Nigeria
The All Progressives Congress (APC) is conducting its primary election for the forthcoming governorship poll in Edo State.
This is meant to pick the party’s flagbearer in the September 19, it is ongoing across the 192 wards of the 18 local government areas of the state.
Party officials and delegates arrived early for the exercise at the APC secretariat in Ward 7, Oredo LGA in Benin City, the state capital.
The Ward Chairman, Osamudiame Osarenkhoe, said the party is conducting the exercise in line with the guidelines against coronavirus (COIVD-19).
According to him, the party has provided a bucket for the washing of hands while delegates participating in the exercise were compelled to wear face masks.
Elsewhere, APC members in Ward 3, Auchi in Etsako-West LGA also stormed the venue of the exercise to vote in the primaries.
But the exercise had not commenced as of 9:30am as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) observer was yet to arrive at the venue.
Source___Channels TV
Malawi’s rocky and daring year to Repeating their 2019 election
Malawians set to return to the polls after long uncertainty exceeding cancellation of 2019 vote over irregularities.
Security was tight on Malawi’s “Judgement Day”.
Around the country, shops and offices were close as citizens anxiously awaited the judges’ ruling on whether to annul last year’s disputed elections.
Tensions had been running high since the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) declared incumbent President Peter Mutharika the narrow winner of a May 2019 vote despite cries of foul play. Calling the results “daylight robbery”, two opposition parties petitioned the constitutional court to review the election as the dispute spilled on to the streets.
It would take more than 10 hours to read it in full, but the judges early on detailed a laundry list of gross irregularities, including the widespread use of the infamous Tipp-Ex correction fluid on ballot papers to alter figures. Glued to their radios, Malawians heard that the MEC’s actions “demonstrated incompetence” and “greatly undermined the integrity of the elections”.
Mutharika slammed the verdict as a “serious miscarriage of justice” and, along with the MEC, filed an appeal. But on May 8, the Supreme Court upheld the earlier ruling, setting the stage for Malawians to return to the polls again on Tuesday to pick their next president.
Source___Aljazeera
Five things to note about the India-China border impasse
India and China, two nuclear-armed Asian bordering, are in a tense diplomatic and military impasse exceeding their first deadly border clash in more than 40 years.
The June 15 occurrencein the disputed Galwan Valley, an arid Himalayan area along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border between the two nations, left 20 Indian soldiers dead. China has yet to officially declare its casualties.
Indian and Chinese troops have been engaged in the impasse since early May at several points along the 3,500km (2,200-mile) LAC, most of which remains undemarcated.
The escalated tensions between the world’s two most populous countries have drawn international concerns, with the United Nations urging both sides “to exercise maximum restraint”.
The fighting on June 15 was triggered by a disagreement over two Chinese tents and observation towers that Indian officials said had been built on its side of the LAC.
Chinese troops breached the Line to set up temporary “structures” in the Galwan Valley even after military officials had reached an agreement on June 6 to de-escalate, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told China’s senior diplomat, Wang Yi, in a phone call.
The problem arose when an Indian patrol visited the area near a ridge to verify a Chinese assertion that its troops had moved back from the LAC, two government sources told Reuters news agency.
The Chinese troops had become less in number, leaving behind two tents and small observation posts, which the Indian party demolished, the sources said.
Source___Aljazeera
Women in India dying more from Corona Virus than men- reaseach shows
More men are dying from Covid-19 than women globally, data shows.
In Italy, China and US, for example, more men have been infected, and a higher toll of men have died.
Sabra Klein, a scientist who studies sex differences in viral infections at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says “being male is as much a risk factor for the coronavirus as being old”.
But something confusing is happening in India.
New research by a group of scientists in India and US shows that although men make up the majority of infections, women face a higher risk of dying from the coronavirus than men.
The study, based on Covid-19 deaths in India until 20 May, shows early estimates that 3.3% of all women contracting the infection in India were dying compared to 2.9% of all men. (India had a caseload of more than 110,000 with 3,433 deaths and a fatality rate of 3.1% when the study was conducted.)
In the 40-49 age group, 3.2% of the infected women have died, compared to 2.1% of men. Only females have died in the 5-19 age group.
I asked SV Subramanian, a professor of population health at Harvard University and one of the leader authors of the study, what this implied.
He told me that the narrative of calculating the Covid-19 fatality rate by groups has conflated two key metrics – mortality risk and mortality burden.
Impermanence risk measures the probability of death in a specific group- in this case, total number of deaths of women divided by confirmed infections among women.
On the other hand, impermanence burden gives you the toll of deaths among women as a percentage share of the total deaths, both men and women.
Source___BBC
Re-election campaign denies low turnout manipulation claim for Trump
President Donald Trump’s re-election team has turned down allegations that a social media campaign by Tik-Tok users and K-Pop fans was behind the lower-than-expected turnout for Saturday night’s Oklahoma rally.
Teenagers are said to have booked for their tickets without any intention of attending Trump’s rally just too produce empty seats.
The Trump 2020 team said one million requests had been made for tickets.
But it insisted that it had weeded out bogus reservations.
The Bank of Oklahoma Center venue in Tulsa seats 19,000. The event was also planned to extend outside, though that part of it was cancelled.
The Tulsa fire brigade is quoted as saying more than 6,000 attended, but the 2020 campaign suggested the figure was much higher.
The team’s campaign director said in a statement that “phony ticket requests never factor into our thinking” as entry to rallies is on a first-come first-served basis. Brad Parscale blamed the media and protesters for dissuading families from attending.
“Leftists and online trolls doing a victory lap, thinking they somehow impacted rally attendance, don’t know what they’re talking about or how our rallies work,” Mr Parscale said.
“Registering for a rally means you’ve RSVPed [confirmed attendance] with a cellphone number and we constantly weed out bogus numbers, as we did with tens of thousands at the Tulsa rally, in calculating our possible attendee pool.”
Source___BBC
Brazil becomes second country to Surpass 50,000 Covid-19 deaths
Brazil has become the second country, after the United States, to register more than 50,000 deaths from Covid-19.
It comes in the mixed growing political tension and just days after the country confirmed more than one million coronavirus infections.
Graphs of Brazil’s deaths and infections show an escalation of continuity
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also confirmed the biggest one-day increase in cases worldwide, with most of the new infections in the Americas.
The decision of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro to oppose lockdowns and focus on the economy has been hugely divisive.
Two health ministers – both doctors – have left their posts as deaths and infections have surged. The first was sacked by Mr Bolsonaro, the second resigned after disagreeing with the president.
Yesterday, Brazil’s health ministry announced that 641 more deaths had been registered in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 50,617. Over the same period it also registered more than 17,000 new infections.
Only the US has more worse overall, with not less than 2.2 million cases and nearly 120,000 deaths from the pandemic.
Source___BBC
Victims notify Barrow against politicising TRRC suggestions
The chairman of the Gambia Centre for Victims of Human Rights Violations has notified President Adama Barrow and his government against politicising the TRRC suggestions.
Sheriff Kijera told The Standard that the Gambian leader will be make a vicious mistake “if he attempts to twist the TRRC recommendations to favour APRC for political gains. If they are thinking along those lines, they are warned to be mindful. We are watching.”
Kijera stated: “Victims are getting increasingly worried that there might not be that political will from the executive given that the TRRC’s mandate is coming to end at a time when the next presidential election is within touching distance. We are worried the executive might start to appease and lobby for APRC sympathisers.
“We are very concerned, especially with the recent appointments of Yahya Jammeh enablers back into the system – appointments that could be geared towards gathering sympathisers from the APRC. We are also sceptical about the outcome of the truth commission. We are sceptical about whether the TRRC recommendations will be fully implemented by the government especially the Office of the President,” he added.
He said sufferers are very content with the work of the TRRC and that the #Jammeh2Justice campaign will not stop to put pressure on government to ensure that the TRRC suggestions are fully adhered to.
“Victims are very much confident that with the launch of the J2J campaign which is an international campaign to bring Jammeh to justice, there will be no safe haven for fugitives who commit international crimes and torture,” he added.
Source___Standard Newspaper
D400M located budget for agriculture will not be enough in the Gambia, says lawmaker
Foday NM Drammeh, National Assembly Member for Toumana constituency, Upper River Region has said the government’s D400 million put forward for the agricultural sector will not enough.
“Looking at the amount of money that is allocated to the ministry of agriculture this last budget, it’s like D400 million and in that the committee had to advocate to the entire plenary to convince them to add another extra D100 million to make it over D500 million whereby the 100 million will be used to purchase farming implements, ” Mr Drammeh told The Standard exclusively.
“This Covid-19 is an opportunity for The Gambia to learn by looking at all the government sectors holistically to know their challenges. We all knew where the problem lies so why not we try to solve those problems?
“Looking at the amount of money and the entire agricultural sector to me it’s not even sufficient. So this is an opportunity for the government to look at the entire agriculture sector to come up with recommendations and tangible solutions that will at least try to remedy some of the challenges we have as far as agriculture is concerned,” he added.
Mr Drammeh said agriculture sector is an entity where most farmers survive so that should not be taken for granted.
‘Giving farmers this chicken change like D400 million cannot develop the entire agricultural system in the country, much need to be done so that the sector can upgrade, he stressed.
He called on government to tighten their belt to make sure agriculture is one of the most important sectors in this country and pump a lot of funds in to the sector so that it will be boosted for the betterment of the Gambians.’
Source___Standard
D5 Creation