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TV, radio, activist and music industries mark ‘Blackout Tuesday’
Radio stations and TV channels have altered their programmes to mark “Blackout Tuesday”, meditating on George Floyd’s death in police custody.
BBC Radio 1Xtra also host series of conversations and debates in support of the black community, with song choices that reflect black pride and recognition.
Many record labels and music stars have stopped work to observe the initiative. And the observation have been posted on social media with the #blackouttuesday by not less than 4 million people.
MTV went silent for eight minutes – just the exact time a white police officer pressed on Mr Floyd’s neck.
The gesture has been recreated on other channels including VH1 and Comedy Central, while 4 Music will pause its output once an hour all through the day.
There have also been significants of mirroring on BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2, while commercial radio stations including Kiss, Magic and Absolute Radio are observing a social media blackout “to show that racism of any kind cannot be tolerated”.
Source___BBC News
Ibuprofen tested as a therapy for Corona Virus
Scientists are conducting a try-out to see if ibuprofen can help hospital patients who are infected with coronavirus.
The team from London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospital and King’s College trust the drug, which is an anti-inflammatory as well as a painkiller, could cure breathing difficulties.
They expect the cheap treatment can keep patients off ventilators.
In the try-out, called ‘Liberate’, fifty per cent of the patients will take ibuprofen in addition to usual care.
The try-out ‘will use a special formulation of ibuprofen rather than the regular tablets that people might usually buy. Some people already take this lipid capsule form of the drug for conditions like arthritis.’
Research in animals propose it might treat acute respiratory distress syndrome – one of the problems of acute coronavirus.
Prof Mitul Mehta, one of the team at King’s College London, said: “We need to do a trial to show that the evidence actually matches what we expect to happen.”
Quick in the pandemic there were some agitation that ibuprofen might be bad for people to take, should they have the virus with mild symptoms.
*These were heightened when France’s health minister Oliver Veran said that taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, could aggravate the infection and advised patients to take paracetamol instead.*
A going over by the Commission on Human Medicines quickly ended that, like paracetamol, it was safe to take for coronavirus symptoms. Both can bring a temperature down and help with flu-like symptoms.
Source___BBC News
Nigeria: Why It Is Essential To Go Ahead With Electoral Activities – INEC
The Independent National Electoral Commission in Nigeria (INEC) has elucidated why it is necessary for Nigeria to proceed with electoral activities in the period of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
As said by INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, health authorities in Nigeria have put forward guidelines on how public institutions can keep safe their workforce and harmlessly serve the public interest.
He made the comments at the first virtual consultative meeting of the commission with Civil Society Organisations which was held on Tuesday.
Yakubu trust the nation’s democracy and electoral activities cannot be abridged as a result of the pandemic.
Taking on the guidelines issued by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) established on the advisory from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and global health authorities.
The INEC boss disclosed that the electoral leaders has put together a policy document on how electoral activities can proceed while tackling the risk to all involved in the process.
He also pointed that some political parties have informed INEC of the dates for their primaries, adding that this marked the formal starting point of the process for the Edo State governorship election scheduled for September 19.
Source___Channels TV
Lagos Seizes Houses Used For Deception
The Lagos State Government on Tuesday said it has seized two houses discovered to be used in decepting inhabitants in the state.
The Special Adviser to the Governor on Housing, Mrs. Toke Benson Awoyinka, disclosed this at a press briefing to celebrate the first year of the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration in the state
She said the government has set on to take strong procedures to stop developers or agents from cheating members of the public and therefore anyone caught in the act would be charged by the law.
Benson, who is also in charge of the Lagos State Real Estate Transaction Department (LASRETRAD), said her office is presently charging a developer who deceived members of the public in the Ketu area, and also another developer who cheated people in the Mafoluku area.
She said the government has also taken their properties and her office is working on how to sell the properties back to the public. According to her, the profits from the sale would be used to settle the cheated members of the public.
She, nonetheless, called to members of the public to always be a customer of agents and developers who are registered with her agency.
Awoyinka said: “We have successfully reviewed the Lagos State Estate Agency Regulatory Law, Cap L28, Laws of Lagos State, 2015 (“Law”) presently in operation in the state, which provides for the establishment of the Lagos State Real Estate Regulatory Authority.
“The essence of this Law is to regulate real estate transactions in Lagos State by identifying persons eligible to be licensed as Real Estate Practitioners and providing for the issuance or renewal of annual permits.”
She clear out that the authority has the power to maintain a register of Licensed Real Estate Practitioners and the dismissal of unlicensed Estate Agents in the state.
Source___Channels TV
Mali Teachers Strike Over COVID-19 Concerns As Schools Resumes
Teachers in the West African state of Mali went on strike Tuesday, the first day schools resumed after two months of closure, over fears of the spread of coronavirus.
Details of the number of students affected were not disclosed, but seven teachers’ unions are striking, officials said, in a move that will hit public primary and secondary schools, as well as teacher-training colleges involved.
The government shut schools to tackle coronavirus in late March. The reopening on Tuesday is made only for final year students who are facing exams.
Sambou Diadie Fofana, the general secretary of Mali’s National Union of Secondary School Teachers, told AFP that the strike was triggered by a “lack of measures (taken) in schools to protect everyone”.
Authorities have confirmed 1,351 coronavirus cases in the country to date, with 78 deaths.
Source___Channels TV
Tropical storm cause the death of 20 people in Central American countries
Tropical Storm Amanda has killed not less than 20 people in Central America, most of whom in El Salvador, as it smashed across several countries causing floods and landslides.
In El Salvador, officials said some 7,000 people have gone on refuge in 154 shelters as severe rain and strong winds eliminate hundreds of homes and destroy roads.
“We have 15 people dead and seven missing,” El Salvador Interior Minister Mario Duran told reporters on Monday, saying that relief efforts were under way.
Carolina Recinos, a senior aide to President Nayib Bukele, said the storm had discarded the equal of “almost 10 percent” of the yearly rainfall on the country in a comparably short space of time.
Bukele proclaimed a 15-day state of emergency to deal with the effects of Amanda, which he proclaimed to have caused $200m in damage.
On Sunday, officials said the storm had washed away at least 900 homes.
“We’ve never experienced this,” Maria Torres, whose house was damaged, told The Associated Press news agency. “The rain was so strong and suddenly, the water entered the homes, and we just saw how they fell.”
The storm came at a time a country of some 6.6 million people are struggling with the danger of the coronavirus pandemic. To date, El Salvador has reported 2,582 confirmed infections and 46 related deaths.
“We are experiencing an unprecedented situation: one top-level emergency on top of another serious one,” said San Salvador Mayor Ernesto Muyshondt.
The Legislative Assembly consented the government’s use of a $389m loan from the International Monetary Fund to help tackle the pandemic and the storm’s impact.
Source__Aljazeera
DR Congo make known New Ebola outbreak in country’s northwest
Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have make known a fresh Ebola outbreak in the country’s northwest, just weeks before they hoped to announce the end of another Ebola scourge in the country’s east.
The emergence of the deadly disease on the other side of the vast country comes as an additional roar as the DRC make up means to also tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
Health Minister Eteni Longondo said on Monday “four people have already died” from Ebola in a district of the northwestern city of Mbandaka.
“The National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB) has confirmed to me that samples from Mbandaka tested positive for Ebola,” Longondo told a news conference.
“We will send them the vaccine and medicine very quickly,” the minister said, adding that he planned to visit the site of the outbreak at the end of the week.
‘The capital of Equateur Province, Mbandaka is a transport hub on the Congo River with a population of more than a million’.
Equateur Province was in the past strike by an Ebola outbreak between May and July 2018, in which 33 people died and 21 recovered from the disease.
“This is a province that has already experienced the disease. They know how to respond. They started the response at the local level yesterday [Sunday],” Longondo said.
Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said the new Ebola outbreak in Mbandaka “represents a challenge, but it’s one we are ready to tackle”.
Source__Aljazeera
Autistic Palestinian killed by Israeli police buried in the middle of revenge call
Hundreds of people have were present in the funeral of an autistic Palestinian man who was gunfire and killed by Israeli police.
Iyad Halaq, 32, was shot to dead on Saturday in occupied East Jerusalem while he walked to his special needs school.
Israel’s police force said officers have a suspicion that Halaq was having a weapon and that they opened fire when he refused to obey orders to stop. He was later found to have been with no weapons at all.
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz bring forward his regret over the shooting.
“We are sorry about the incident in which Iyad Halaq was shot, and we of course share in the grief of his family. I am sure this issue will be quickly investigated and conclusions will be drawn,” he told a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
Mr Gantz added that Israeli security forces would “make every effort to use necessary force with the intention of reducing casualties as much as possible”.
Anxieties have increased in recent weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would press ahead with a plan to take over parts of the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority has answered by saying it is no longer bound by concurrence with Israel and the United States – which backs Israel keeping part of the West Bank – including those closest to security.
Source___BBC News
Intolerable’ strikes on reporters at protests of George Floyd
Many journalists covering anti-racism protests that have sparked the US have reported being attacked by security forces using tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray.
In numerous cases, they said it was despite showing clear press recommendations.
Such attacks “are an unacceptable attempt to intimidate [reporters]”, said the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based group.
The strike on journalists from protesters have also been reported.
*The arrest of a CNN news crew live on air on Friday in Minneapolis, where unarmed black man George Floyd died at the hands of police, first drew global attention to how law enforcement authorities in the city were treating reporters covering protests that have descended into riots.*
But over the weekend a lot of attacks on journalists and media crews around the country were reported on social media. In total the US Press Freedom Tracker, a non-profit project, says it is making findings of more than 100 “press freedom violations” at protests in the last three days. About 90 cases involve attacks.
On Saturday night, two members of a TV crew from Reuters news agency were fired at with rubber bullets while police disband protesters in Minneapolis refusing to obey an 20:00 time limit.
Source___BBC News
Unconventional autopsy discovers George Floyd’s death a homicide due to ‘asphyxiation from sustained force’
An independent autopsy called George Floyd’s death a homicide and said that he died of “asphyxiation from sustained pressure” — an examination that is at odds with the medical findings
The autopsy brought forward by Floyd’s family says compression to the neck and back, caused by officers pressing on him, led to a none flow of blood to the brain.
The independent autopsy’s examination came after the Hennepin County Medical Examiner found “no physical findings” to “support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation,” according to a criminal objection emancipated by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office on Friday.
Initial autopsy results put in the complaint consisting Chauvin said fused effects of being limited, any potential intoxicants in Floyd’s system and his basic health issues, notwithstanding heart disease, probably contributed to the man’s death. Toxicology results can take longer time.
The objection noted the examination are initial and the full report from the medical examiner is still pending.
Source___CNN
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