A Liberian teenage motorcycle taxi rider has become a national hero after he found and returned $50,000 (£37,000) that had gone missing from a prominent businesswoman in north-eastern Nimba County on the border with Ivory Coast.
The young man, Emmanuel Tolue, saw the money wrapped in a plastic bag on a highway and heard the owner, Musu Yancy, desperately making a radio appeal to anyone coming across the cash.
He then let her know he had found it in the presence of local officials.
Ms Yancy told the BBC she and her boss have rewarded the cyclist with $1,500 (£1,100) and other gifts.
She was so happy and relieved about getting the money back she has almost lost her voice thanking God.
As people sing the praise of the motorcyclist, well-wishers have been pouring into the home of the lady in the town of Tappita in celebration.
Such gestures are exceptionally unusual in post-war Liberia.
Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been given a role with the United Nations as a special representative.
Writing on Twitter, the ex-minister said the job would focus on helping Africa’s economy recover from Covid.
It comes four months after Mr Hancock resigned from his cabinet post for breaking social distancing guidelines by kissing a colleague.
The Under Secretary General of the UN, Vera Songwe, praised his “success” in tackling the UK’s pandemic response.
In a letter posted online by Mr Hancock, Ms Songwe said the “acceleration of vaccines that has led the UK move faster towards economic recovery is one testament to the strengths that you will bring to this role, together with your fiscal and monetary experience”.
The announcement also comes on the day a report from MPs was published, claiming the government and its scientists’ failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic was one of the country’s worst public health failures.
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Mr Hancock’s official title will be “UN special representative on financial innovation and climate change for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa”.
The Conservative MP said he was “honoured” to be appointed and would help “promote sustainable development”, alongside working on the economic recovery.
Ms Songwe said the UN had been working with people across the world on Africa’s climate actions and resilient recovery – and that she wanted to appoint Mr Hancock “given your global leadership, advocacy reach and in depth understanding of government processes through your various ministerial cabinet roles”.
She added: “The role will support Africa’s cause at the global level and ensure the continent builds forward better, leveraging financial innovations and working with major stakeholders like the G20, UK government and COP26.”
In his acceptance letter, which he also posted on Twitter, Mr Hancock wrote: “As we recover from the pandemic so we must take this moment to ensure Africa can prosper.”
The chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, said it was a “fascinating and important appointment”.
He added: “Boosting the economies of Africa is one of the most essential tasks of this generation.”
Four charred tobacco plant seeds found in an ancient Utah fireplace suggest early Americans may have been using the plant 12,300 years ago.
The finding makes the first known use of tobacco some 9,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Researchers believe hunter-gatherers in the Great Salt Lake Desert may have sucked or smoked wads of the plant.
Until now, the earliest evidence of tobacco use was a 3,300-year-old smoking pipe discovered in Alabama.
Archaeologists discovered the millimetre-wide seeds at the Wishbone site, an ancient camp in the desert in what is now northern Utah.
There, they found the remnants of an ancient hearth that was surrounded by bone and stone artefacts. These included duck bones, stone tools, and a spear-tip bearing the remains of blood from a mammoth or an early form of elephant.
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
Image caption,The charred remains of one of the tobacco plant seeds
The tobacco plant is native to the Americas and contains the psychoactive addictive substance nicotine.
Tobacco was widely cultivated and dispersed around the world following the arrival of Europeans in the Americas at the end of the 15th Century.
“The tobacco seeds were the big surprise. They are incredibly small and rare to be preserved,” Daron Duke of the Far Western Anthropological Research Group told the New Scientist.
“This suggests that people learned the intoxicant properties of tobacco relatively early in their time here rather than only with domestication and agriculture thousands of years later.”
Today, the Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake. But 12,300 years ago, the camp would have been on a vast marshland.
“We know very little about their culture,” Mr Duke said of the hunter-gatherers. “The thing that intrigues me the most about this find is the social window it gives to a simple activity in an undocumented past. My imagination runs wild.”
Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has claimed victory for his nationalist Saeroun movement in Iraq’s election.
Mr Sadr, who wants to end US and Iranian influence over Iraq’s internal affairs, promised to form a government free from foreign interference.
Partial results showed Saeroun winning 73 of the 329 seats in parliament and Sunni Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi’s Taqaddum coalition second with 38.
The pro-Iranian Fatah alliance suffered a surprise setback, getting only 14.
It is likely to take many weeks of negotiations to build a new governing coalition, which Mr Sadr cannot lead because he did not stand as a candidate.
But the record low official turnout of 41% suggests many Iraqis do not believe that there will be any real change to the power-sharing system, based on sectarian and ethnic identity, that has allowed a narrow elite to keep a firm grip on power since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Sunday’s election was the first since mass protests over government corruption, high unemployment and dire public services erupted in 2019.
The poll had been due next year but was brought forward by six months in response to the unrest, during which more than 550 demonstrators were killed by security forces and gunmen suspected of links to powerful Iran-backed Shia militias in the paramilitary Popular Mobilisation force.
The old electoral system was also replaced with one meant to make it easier for independent candidates to challenge established parties.
Mr Sadr hailed the results as a victory for reform and for Iraq.
“It is the day of the victory of reform over corruption. The day of the people’s victory over occupation, normalisation, militias, poverty, injustice and enslavement,” he said in a televised speech.
“It is a day when sectarianism, ethnicity and partisanship were defeated. It is the day of Iraq and we are the servants of the Iraqi people.”
The cleric warned foreign powers that all embassies would be welcomed “as long as they do not interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs and the formation of the government”, and that any intervention would be “met with a diplomatic or even a popular response”.
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
Image caption,Moqtada al-Sadr cannot serve as prime minister because he did not stand in the election
Mr Sadr, 47, is one of the best-known and most powerful figures in Iraq.
A son of the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, he shot to prominence after the 2003 invasion as a vocal opponent of the foreign occupation and the head of a militia that repeatedly clashed with US forces.
In recent years, he has recast himself as an anti-corruption campaigner and also distanced himself from Iran, vowing that he would “not leave Iraq in its grip”.
He has also criticised the Iran-backed militias, which have developed significant political and economic power since helping the Iraqi government defeat the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State in 2017.
Fatah leader Hadi al-Ameri, a militia commander with close ties to the hard-line leadership in Tehran, rejected the election results.
“We will not accept these fabricated results, whatever the price, and we will defend the votes of our candidates and voters with full force,” he was quoted as saying by Al-Sumaria TV on Tuesday.
Consider spending more time and resources on the experiences that add value to your life.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, congratulations for reaching day 15!
We have completed the 15 days of continuous challenge and we are proud of having arrived so far. The final action area is #Choose Experience and consider spending more time and resources on the experiences that add value to your life.
What have you learnt from living better and lighter for two weeks? Was it difficult?
“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
Creating a sustainable future does not rest on our individual shoulders alone. We can adopt more sustainable lifestyles, but this needs to be supported and facilitated by those in power, especially Governments, international institutions, businesses and billionaires. By galvanizing a global movement, we can demand a call to action.
#ChooseExpereince
Consider spending more time and resources and on experiences that add value to your life.
Could you imagine that stress levels increase with accumulation of material goods, and ultimately affects good health?
More often than not, buying something does not represent an profound or enriching life event, while living experiences may bring us closer to certain places and people – thus shaping who we are and how we see the world.
For instance, exposure to nature increases children and youth’s emotional affinity toward nature, ecological beliefs, and willingness to engage in pro-environmental behaviours.
Our collective future is dependent on the cumulative outcome of our actions today. The final (and fun) actions from the Anatomy of Action prove to positively impact individual and collective well-being. It’s time to undo the materialistic ways of the past and embrace a life of experience and adventure (be it near or far).
HOW-TO:
CONSIDER SPENDING MORE TIME AND RESOURCES ON THE EXPERIENCES THAT ADD VALUE TO YOUR LIFE?
-Engage in experiences and services that add value to your life
-Find ways to spend time with people that you care about and make you laugh
-Spend more time connecting with nature and natural spaces
-Opt for active recreational choices for increased health and well being (sports, games, and outdoor activities)
-Find daily ways to relax, and take time out to reduce stress and anxiety
-Give yourself (more) digital detox time and embrace analog experiences
Social Media Challenge Report
Wow, what a two incredible weeks of connection, community, and collective impact!
The challenge target youth around the world - the next generation of consumers and change-makers - to show that sustainable living is easy, cool and fun.The challenge introduces one action every day and can be reactivated at any time.
Over 14 days we covered 5 main domains: food, stuff, move, money and fun, and maps out top-priority actions individuals everywhere can take to reduce their carbon footprint based on scientific evidence. By making individual changes to what food we eat, the stuff we buy, how we spend our money, how we move around and what we do for fun, we can bring about new ways of living that have more positive planet impacts.
The Anatomy of Action is also disseminated as a 15-day social media challenge that engages organizations, global influencers and the public to encourage their communities to make sustainable lifestyle changes.
Sustainability is about the social, economic, and environmental considerations of what we do in our personal lives, the way we do business, and the government decisions that our elected representatives make on our behalf so that we can sustain the systems (such as food, air, and water) that every single living thing on Earth needs to survive and thrive.
Our everyday motto is: "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food
How do we create effective campaigns for living well and sustainably? Where we live, what we eat, how we move around, all have an impact on the issues we care about - our happiness, connected communities, equity, security, climate change and more. Lightening our load on the planet while improving our daily lives is a worthwhile and urgent goal for the coming decade.
Interview with Patricia Ramos
What happens when you try to raise issues around consumerism and over-consumption and the sustainability of lifestyles?
Good Morning! What is your name?
Good morning, my name is Patricia Ramos.
Could you talk a little about yourself? Do you live a sustainable lifestyle?
Not a hundred percent.
What do you do in your daily life, do you like fresh air, do you practice sports?
Well, my daily life is very busy. I like to practice sports in the morning or at the end of the day because it is good for my health. As for my diet, I do not have a regulated diet because of the lifestyle we live in Angola. We wake up very early to go to work and come home very late. We often take the lunch in the car because of the workload and we forget to eat well.
While on duty we also violate lunchtime, sometimes we are a little late at lunch. But I am already used to this lifestyle.
What do you eat?
I eat a little of everything, I don't have many preferences or restrictions as long as the food is well conditioned.
Do you eat meat, chicken and fish?
Yes I eat meat, chicken, fish and seafood.
What kind of beverage do you drink?
I like the water but I really enjoy coke and eka is a type of Angolan alcoholic drink.
What do you do in your free time?
In my free time I like to visit this Zedu media library, to investigate, I like reading, I like to run, play sports and I like to stay with my family, enjoy a good movie at home, in my room and on the computer.
Alright. Thank you so much!
Together we can show that small actions can have a positive impact not only on the planet but also on our personal well-being!
Many of the global challenges we face today are caused by the rate we consume. Pollution, the over-extraction of resources and biodiversity loss are directly linked to increasing production to meet consumption demands. How we consume corresponds to how we live our lives. Taking individual actions to consume less, choose quality over quantity, buy local and reframe how we spend our free time sends power messages to not only our friends and family but also to the decision makers in our communities.
Find your place in the climate change movement by activating your Anatomy of Action. Build planet-friendly habits during the Take Action Challenge, where you, your friends and your family can challenge each other to make at least one better choice (or all 15 as champions of change!) to reduce the CO2, plastics, and other pollutants wreaking havoc on our planet.
The actions anyone can take
We are sorry that some of you were not able to attend all the 5 main domains of the Anatomy of Action Challenge 2021. We thought you might be interested in and benefit from watching the entire campaign.
Don't worry, we care about you! In case you missed out, you can still watch the campaign recordings and summaries, and do not forget subscribe to our channels.
Click here to watch again the 15-day social media challenge:
PROTEIN SWAPS
Reduce meat and animal product consumption habits and adopt a more plant-based diet
USE ALL YOUR FOOD
Get organic waste out of trash heaps and landfills to reduce methane, improve soil fertility, and increase equitable access to fresh food
GROW YOUR OWN
Grow your own food and connect to where it comes from in order to save money and to reduce transport, packaging, and food waste
Consider what you need and buy products that will last longer, be used multiple times, and are intended to be in use for as long as possible before being remanufactured or recycled
FASHION SLOW DOWN
Buy fewer and better clothes, stay away from fast fashion that mass produces at the cost of environmental and human justice
DITCH DISPOSABLES Refuse everyday products which cannot be reused
Keep or take up walking and cycling to work and advocate for your government and local businesses to provide more sustainable and safer public transport options
SHARE YOUR RIDE
Continue or opt for public and shared transport instead of driving, and advocate for more options
GO CLEANER
Swap to options like electric vehicles, cleaner fuels, and fewer kilometers to reduce your transport footprint
Staying local can reduce your carbon footprint, help local economies, and can be more cost effective. When you do go the distance, stay longer and choose better products
STAY CURIOUS
Embrace a life of constant learning, adventure, and curiosity, and keep an open mind
CHOOSE EXPERIENCES
Consider spending more time and resources on the experiences that add value to your life
Angola vs Argentina | International Friendly Football Match 2025 | eFootball PES 21 Simulation 🔴AO VIVO! 🇦🇴🇦🇷 ARGENTINA VS ANGOLA 202...
