Friday 16 April 2021
It's All Over + And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going - Dreamgirls (2006)
COVID-19: ANGOLA REPORTS 144 NEW INFECTIONS, THREE DEATHS AND 29 RECOVERIES
Luanda - Angola registered, in the last 24 hours, 144 new cases, three deaths and the recovery of 29 patients.
According to the clinical bulletin to which ANGOP had access, 112 were diagnosed in Luanda, 10 in Benguela, 8 in Moxico, 5 in Cunene, 4 in Cabinda, 3 in Zaire, 1 in Huíla and 1 in Lunda Sul.
The new patients, whose ages range from 2 to 86, include 72 men and 72 women.
The deaths involve Angolan citizens resident in Benguela, with one, and Uíge with two.
The recovered patients reside in Luanda.
In the last 24 hours, the laboratory technicians processed 2,035 samples.
The country has 23,841 positive cases, with 557 deaths, 22,144 recovered and 1,140 active. Of those active cases, 4 are in critical condition, 13 serious, 55 moderate, 40 light and 1,028 asymptomatic.
In institutional quarantine are 48 citizens, while 112 people are hospitalised in treatment centres.
The authorities are keeping 1,301 contacts of positive cases under epidemiological surveillance.
ANGOLA PRESENTS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT REPORT AT UN
Luanda - Angola will present, in July this year, for the first time, at the United Nations, the voluntary report on the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 20/30 agenda, under execution in the country since 2018.
As a member of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) since 2018, in a three-year mandate, Angola will present the state of the implementation of the 17 SDGs in the country.
This information was released on Thursday, by the Minister of Economy and Planning, Sérgio Santos, during the evaluation workshop of the draft of the first voluntary report on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
"We are here to evaluate the state of play of the implementation of the 17 sustainable development goals of the 20/30 agenda, with teams subdivided into four multi-sectorial work groups, accompanied by UN members, in partnership with several social and economic partners of the State," he said.
For the government official, the presentation of this report at the UN Assembly, in July, is configured as a noble challenge for the country, for being the first time, parallel to the fact that it is a national objective.
The minister said that Angola had chosen as its 17-point priority the eradication of hunger, extreme poverty, ensuring education for all and gender equality as initial targets.
About the workshop, Sérgio Santos asked the technicians to work hard and with team spirit to produce a document in the name of Angola, with all the evidences of the progress in the country, where public and private projects are counted and the expectation of the last and final decade to achieve the goal, the SDGs.
Sérgio Santos, stressed that this is the last decade for the implementation of the 17 points of the 20/30 agenda and that in 2030 Angola will have concluded the international objective of improving the living quality of the people and the conservation of the environment.
ANTÓNIO OLE’S EXHIBITION IN PORTUGAL
Lisbon – A set of nine works by Angolan artist António Olé has been on display in Lisbon, Portugal, since Thursday.
The exhibition, dubbed "Matéria Vital", consists of works from different periods of Antonio Ole’s artistic career of over 50 years.
According to the curator, Ana Balona de Oliveira, the exhibition ranges from sculpture to photography and drawing to video.
Ana Balona de Oliveira reveals that the works highlight the attention the artist has dedicated to the nature and its vital elements and materials.
PRESIDENT LOURENÇO AT SWEARING-IN OF CONGO’S NGUESSO
Luanda – The Angolan Head of State João Lourenço is travelling Friday to Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to witness the swearing-in of local President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
The press officer to the Presidency of the Republic, Luís Fernando, said Thursday in Luanda that President João Lourenço is being accompanied in the trip by the Foreign minister, Téte António, and members of his office.
According to the official, President Lourenço is expected back in the country later this Friday.
Denis Sassou Nguesso was re-elected on 21 March this year with 88,57 percent of the votes, for a new five-year term.
He defeated six opponents led by his main rival, Guy-Brice Parfait Kolélas, who died of Covid-19 short before the election.
Fuel monitoring system will help check smuggling – Oil Marketing Companies
The Association of Oil Marketing Companies says the introduction of the National Retail Outlet Fuel Monitoring System is a game-changer in sanitizing the sector.
According to the association, this will help rid the system of non-compliant businesses.
In an interview with Citi Business News, President of the Association of Oil Marketing Companies, Henry Akwaboah, commended the government for the move and indicated his outfit’s commitment towards addressing the challenge.
“The automatic tank gauging system recently launched by the Vice President of the Republic is a step in the right direction. This is what the industry needs as far as sanitizing the industry is concerned.”
“The National Petroleum Authority has a clear set of guidelines within which all oil marketing companies are supposed to operate. This tool is really going to enhance these guidelines.”
He further expressed the association’s dedication towards ensuring a successful implementation of the initiative.
“As an association, we are very committed to partnering with the National Petroleum Authority and all related authorities to make sure that this system is implemented to the core. We believe in the National petroleum authority to be very effective in implementing this system.”
The government as part of efforts aimed at eliminating illicit activities associated with the transportation and effective distribution of petroleum products across the country introduced the National Retail Outlet Fuel Monitoring System.
Already, data from the National Petroleum Authority, NPA, show that between 2015 and 2019, the government lost over four billion Ghana Cedis in tax revenue because of illegal activities in the petroleum downstream sector.
The Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors, CBOD, commended the government for launching the National Retail Outlet Fuel Monitoring System.
However, speaking to Citi Business News, Chief Executive Officer of CBOD, Senyo Hosi, indicated that although the idea is commendable, efforts must be made to coordinate all information on the sector to address the issue of tax evasion.
“It is a fantastic idea, it is good, it will be helpful, but it is one piece of data. In fighting the smuggling, it’s not just having data scattered around, it’s about exactly how we would be coordinating with all the various pockets of data.”
CBOD had in a recent report stated that GH₵1.9 billion was lost through petroleum tax evasion in 2019.
On the other hand, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) said that beyond the introduction of the monitoring system by the government, prosecution of perpetrators is key to addressing the country’s fuel smuggling challenge.
According to the Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah, although the move is commendable it cannot sufficiently address the challenge.
“Unfortunately, it will take more than these devices or applications to curtail fuel smuggling. The human element contained in the fuel smuggling activities is quite a huge one. It will be prudent if persons found to the involved in this are arrested and prosecuted to send a further signal to persons engaged in this activity. These devices have been around for some time, unfortunately, the guys still can find some time to go round them and still beat the system and evade these taxes.”
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Nigeria: 7 years after Chibok mass abduction, still no solution
A string of mass kidnappings has resulted in the closure of 600 schools, Amnesty says, calling on the gov’t to hold perpetrators to account.
Seven years after the abduction of 279 girls from a government school in northern Nigeria, authorities have failed to find a strategy to protect schoolchildren and their right to education, according to a human rights group.
The schoolgirls were taken hostage by the armed group Boko Haram in Chibok, a town in Borno state, on April 14, 2014. While most of them were able to escape or were released, more than 100 are still missing.
In a report marking the anniversary of the mass kidnapping on Wednesday, Amnesty International highlighted how a string of recent attacks targeting students and learning institutions across northern Nigeria has resulted in the closure of more than 600 schools, with “disastrous consequences” for young people in the region.
Criminal gangs seeking lucrative ransom have intensified attacks and mass abductions in recent years, often targeting boarding schools located outside towns and cities.
Hundreds of students have been seized by gangs of so-called bandits in at least five separate incidents in northern Nigeria since late last year.
In December 2020, gunmen kidnapped about 300 students who were held in captivity for six nights in the northwestern state of Katsina.
Following the attack, the state governments of Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, Zamfara and Jigawa ordered the closure of schools, contributing to the number of children dropping out of school across the country, the group said.
To this today, that figure stands at 10.5 million, according to the United Nations.
“The Nigerian authorities risk a lost generation, due to their failure to provide safe schools for children in a region already devastated by Boko Haram atrocities,” said Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, urging the government to investigate the attacks and hold those responsible to account.
No one has been arrested or prosecuted for the mass abduction in Chibok, contributing to an escalation of attacks on schools and their closure, the group says.
The consequences reached beyond the level of literacy and school attendance, triggering a rise in child marriage and early pregnancy of school-age girls.
“Since many of my friends were kidnapped in school, my parents decided to give me out in marriage for my own safety,” a 16-year-old schoolgirl told Amnesty.
The government’s lack of action has also affected parents’ trust in authorities.
“The schools are not safe. The government is not trustworthy, and we do not believe them when they say that they would protect our children,” one parent was reported as saying in the report.
“Some of our children are about to write exams but they cannot continue because the schools are closed, yet the government is doing nothing to ensure that our children return to school,” said another.
Amnesty also called on authorities to restore security to schools and provide psychosocial support to victims of abductions and their families to enable them to heal from trauma and integrate back into society.
“There must be a plan to ensure that children can return to safe classrooms,” said Ojigho.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
At Least 8 Killed In Shooting At FedEx Warehouse In Indianapolis
At least eight people were killed in a shooting at a FedEx facility near Indianapolis late Thursday night, authorities confirmed early Friday morning.
Multiple other people were injured and either drove themselves to hospitals or were taken in ambulances, said Genea Cook, a public information officer for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. At least one person who was taken to the hospital in an ambulance was in critical condition with a gunshot wound.
In an earlier update, Cook said that authorities responded to reports of a shooting around 11 p.m. Thursday. When officers arrived on the scene, they came into contact with an active shooter.
The gunman took his own life. Cook said it was too early to know whether the gunman was an employee at the facility.
No police officers were injured in the altercation.
Video footage showed a heavy police presence at the scene, and a major highway was temporarily closed near the building in both directions due to the response.
Jeremiah Miller, who had just finished a shift and was preparing to start a second consecutive shift, said he heard about 10 gunshots, according to WISH-TV.
“I saw a man with a submachine gun of some sort, an automatic rifle, and he was firing in the open. I immediately ducked down and got scared and my friend’s mother, she came in and told us to get inside the car,” he said.
Family members of the facility’s workers have been asked to gather at a nearby Holiday Inn to await details. Some said employees were not allowed to use their phones at work which was making contacting them difficult, AP reported.
FedEx issued a statement early Friday and described the attack as “tragic.”
“We are aware of the tragic shooting at our FedEx Ground facility near the Indianapolis airport,” FedEx said in a statement. “Safety is our top priority, and our thoughts are with all those who are affected. We are working to gather more information and are cooperating with investigating authorities.”
Rep. André Carlson (D-Ind.) said in a tweet that he was “heartbroken” by the attack:
Last week, Carson publicly supported President Joe Biden’s executive orders directing the Justice Department to limit the proliferation of guns.
“I welcome his executive actions on gun safety. Congress must also continue our efforts to pass common sense reforms that save lives,” Carson tweeted.
Police plan to hold another news conference about the FedEx shooting on Friday morning.
Iran starts enriching uranium to 60%, its highest level ever
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran began enriching uranium up to 60% purity Friday, its highest level ever, after an attack targeted its Natanz nuclear site, the country’s parliament speaker said.
The comment by Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, quoted by state television, did not elaborate on the amount Iran planned to enrich. However, it is likely to raise tensions even as Iran negotiates with world powers in Vienna over a way to allow the U.S. back into the agreement and lift the crushing economic sanctions it faces.
The announcement also marks a significant escalation after the sabotage that damaged centrifuges, an attack this past weekend suspected of having been carried out by Israel. While Israel has yet to claim it, the country is widely suspected of having carried out the still-unexplained sabotage at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment site.
“The will of the Iranian nation is a miracle-maker and it will defuse any conspiracy,” state television quoted Qalibaf as saying. He said the enrichment began just after midnight Friday.
The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the country’s civilian nuclear arm, later acknowledged the move to 60%, according to state TV. Ali Akbar Salehi said more details would be forthcoming and declined to further elaborate.
It wasn’t clear why the first announcement came from Qalibaf, a hard-line former leader in the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard already named as a potential presidential candidate in Iran’s upcoming June election.
While 60% is higher than any level Iran previously enriched uranium, it is still lower than weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Iran had been enriching up to 20% — even that was a short technical step to weapons grade. The deal limited Iran’s enrichment to 3.67%.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s nuclear program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, it sent its inspectors to Natanz and confirmed Iran was preparing to begin 60% enrichment at an above-ground facility at the site.
The heightened enrichment could inspire a further response from Israel amid a long-running shadow war between the nation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed never to allow Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon and his country has twice preemptively bombed Mideast nations to stop their atomic programs.
The weekend attack at Natanz was initially described only as a blackout in the electrical grid feeding above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls — but later Iranian officials began calling it an attack.
Alireza Zakani, the hard-line head of the Iranian parliament’s research center, referred to “several thousand centrifuges damaged and destroyed” in a state TV interview. However, no other official has offered that figure and no images of the aftermath have been released. Satellite images from Planet Labs Inc. obtained by The Associated Press show no apparent above-ground damage at the facility.
Lula clear to take on Bolsonaro as Brazil court upholds ruling
The next presidential election is set for October 2022 and the devastating toll of the pandemic is likely to be a key issue.
Brazil’s Supreme Court has upheld a ruling annulling the corruption convictions of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, clearing the way for him to run for a new presidential term next year against incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
The majority decision, which was widely expected, came on Thursday after Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin determined in early March that the lower federal court where Lula was tried lacked jurisdiction; a ruling that was quickly appealed by Brazil’s top prosecutor.
The ruling does not find Lula innocent but in effect places prosecutors back at square one by sending the cases to a different court.
The quashing of Lula’s convictions – albeit on procedural grounds – has upended Brazilian politics as far-right President Jair Bolsonaro gears up to seek re-election as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages Latin America’s biggest country.
Bolsonaro has described a virus that has killed more than 365,000 Brazilians, the world’s second-highest death toll, as a “little flu”. After Fachin’s ruling, Lula described Bolsonaro’s approach to the pandemic as “imbecilic” and likened the situation to a genocide.
A popular but tarnished left-wing politician and former steelworker, the now 75-year-old Lula led Brazil through an economic boom from 2003 to 2010.
His lawyers called the judges’ decision “historic.”
“This is another Supreme Court ruling that reestablishes the credibility of the justice system in our country,” they said in a statement.
Bolsonaro warnings
Bolsonaro, a former army captain who is 66, said the ruling means “Lula is now a candidate” for 2022 – and ominously warned of the consequences.
“Look what Brazil’s future is going to be like with the kind of people he’d bring into the presidency,” the current president said in his weekly live address on Facebook.
“You can all draw your own conclusions.”
Lula was convicted of taking bribes from engineering firms in return for public contracts in 2018 and spent a year and a half behind bars until the Supreme Court ruled he and others could appeal their cases without serving time in prison.
Lula and his supporters blasted the anti-corruption task force that brought him down, called Operation Car Wash, which exposed enormous corruption involving state oil giant Petrobas, as a politically driven effort. Leaked conversations in 2019 raised questions about whether investigators had cut corners to secure prosecutions.
The task force was disbanded in February. Lula has always maintained he is innocent and that the cases against him were a conspiracy to sideline him politically.
The election is scheduled for October 2022. Early polls suggest it will be a tight race.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
US-China tech decoupling: IMF warns of global GDP crunch
Technological fragmentation could lead to losses of about 5 percent of global GDP, IMF research shows.
A technological decoupling between the U.S. and China and potentially Europe would cut global gross domestic product by an order of magnitude greater than the recent trade war, a senior International Monetary Fund official warned.
“The world is such an integrated place,” Helge Berger, head of the fund’s China mission, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Friday. “If you stop exchanging knowledge across countries or borders you will ultimately pay a price, and this could be fairly high.”
IMF research estimates that technological fragmentation could lead to losses of around 5% of GDP for many countries, or about 10-times the estimated costs of trade tariffs imposed by the U.S. and China.
The warning comes after the Biden administration earlier this month added seven Chinese supercomputing firms to the list of entities that U.S. businesses can’t sell to without special permission. It was an expansion of the crackdown that began under President Donald Trump with curbs on exports to companies like Huawei Technologies Co.
The Biden team is still reviewing the China policies it inherited from Trump — including tariffs on more than $300 billion in annual imports, and a partial trade deal — but has indicated that its strategy will be broadly similar.
“The tensions around the U.S.-China relationship are one of the risk factors that we look at,” Berger said. “This is a constant concern.”
Tariffs between the two countries subtracted from growth last year and will do so again this year, he said, estimating the global impact at about 0.4% of GDP.
“But things could become more difficult if we allow technological decoupling to take place between the U.S. and China, between other countries like Europe,” he said. “So it is important that these two large, very important economies that are such a large part of where the global economy goes find a way to work together.”
SOURCE: BLOOMBERG
Pfizer CEO: Third vaccine dose ‘likely’ needed within 12 months
Researchers currently do not know how long vaccines provide protection against the coronavirus.
The head of Pfizer has said that people will “likely” need a third dose of his company’s COVID-19 shot within six to 12 months of vaccination, while defending the relatively higher cost of the jab.
CEO Albert Bourla also said annual vaccinations against the coronavirus may well be required.
“We need to see what would be the sequence, and for how often we need to do that, that remains to be seen,” Bourla told broadcaster CNBC in an interview aired on Thursday.
“A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed,” he said, adding that variants will play a “key role”.
“It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus.”
Researchers currently do not know how long vaccines provide protection against the coronavirus.
Earlier this month, Pfizer published a study that said its jab is more than 91-percent effective at protecting against the coronavirus and more than 95-percent effective against severe cases of COVID-19 up to six months after the second dose.
But researchers say more data is needed to determine whether protection lasts after six months.
Rising prices
Bourla also defended the price of his company’s vaccine, saying they are saving lives and will not be sold to poor countries for a profit.
“Vaccines are very expensive,” Bourla said in an interview with several European news outlets.
“They save human lives, they allow economies to reopen but we sell them at the price of a meal,” he was quoted as saying.
According to data released several months ago by a member of the Belgian government, the Pfizer coronavirus jab has been the most expensive one for the European Union, along with the Moderna vaccine.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov explained earlier this week that the vaccine’s price was rising as sales were being negotiated, costing as much as 19.50 euros ($23), up from 12 euros ($14).
The prices are in sharp contrast to the vaccine produced by British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca, which pledged not to make a profit on its product during the pandemic and sold it to the EU for less than two euros ($2.39) a unit.
Bourla did not confirm the price of the Pfizer vaccine but admitted that it was sold at a higher price to developed countries like the US or those in the EU.
“In middle-income countries, we sell it for half the price,” he said. “In poorer countries, including in Africa, we sell it at cost.”
SOURCE: AFP
EU warns Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire over possible ban of cocoa into EU markets
The European Union (EU) has threatened Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire with a law that could ban Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire from exporting cocoa beans into the EU market.
This is due to the activities of illegal small-scale mining in cocoa-growing areas in the two West African countries, which produced over 60 percent of the world’s cocoa beans.
A Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) in charge of Agronomy and Quality Control, Dr Emmanuel Agyemang Dwomoh, made this known on the second day of the National Consultative Dialogue on Small-Scale Mining in Accra, on Thursday.
He noted that the activities of illegal small-scale mining were destroying the country’s forest cover and soil, therefore making it practically impossible to cultivate cocoa trees in certain parts of the country.
He said current satellite images showed red areas, which previously used to be forest areas.
Therefore, he said, the EU raised serious concerns about the growing depletion of the forest cover and could affect cocoa cultivation in the two countries.
Dr Agyemang-Dwomoh said currently, Ghana exported about 80 percent of her cocoa beans to the EU market and a ban on the commodity would not augur well for the country’s cocoa industry.
Dr Agyemang-Dwomoh said illegal mining was gradually eroding the gains made by COCOBOD’s extension programme due to the ravaging effects of illegal mining.
He said the activities of illegal mining into the country’s forest areas were of serious concern and called on participants at the Consultative Dialogue, to help address the phenomenon.
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