The Gombe State Government, in a bid to end open defecation by 2025, has declared a state of emergency on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). Commissioner for Water Resources, Alhaji Mijinyawa Yahaya, disclosed this at a news conference on Wednesday, December 30, 2020 in Gombe, the state capital, after the State Executive Council Meeting. Yahaya said an Executive Order was signed to that effect by the state governor. The commissioner said that the declaration was subject to the memo submitted by his ministry to Gov. Inuwa Yahaya which was signed on Nov. 26. According to him, the Executive Order 006…
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A court in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region sentenced a man to 12-and-a-half years in jail for illegally transporting 29 kilogrammes of white rhino horn from Mozambique, state media reported on Wednesday, December 30, 2020. Do Thanh Son, 38, “was found guilty of violating regulations on the management and protection of endangered, precious and rare animals,’’ online newspaper VnExpress reported, quoting Can Tho provincial court. In December 2019, Son reportedly travelled to Mozambique and found work in a restaurant. Only a few months later, his employer asked Son to smuggle rhino horns to Vietnam for a fee of $1,000. Son left Mozambique in…
The World Bank has approved a $700 million credit from its International Development Association (IDA) for the Nigeria Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) Project. It said this in a statement issued in Washington on Thursday, December 16, 2021. According to it, the project will increase the implementation of sustainable landscape management practices in northern Nigeria and strengthen the country’s long-term enabling environment for integrated climate-resilient landscape management. It said that the productivity of major crops in Nigeria had been steadily declining over the past two decades, due partly to climate change, forcing an expansion of the area under agriculture…
The Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa has reached 9,155,691 cases. The specialised healthcare agency of the African Union (AU) said the death toll across the continent stands at 225,967 and some 8,329,481 patients have recovered from the disease so far. South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases on the continent, said Africa CDC. South Africa has recorded the most COVID-19 cases in Africa with 3,292,609 cases, followed by the northern African country Morocco with 952,628 cases as of late Sunday…
At least 375 people are now known to have died after a powerful storm struck the Philippines over the weekend. Super Typhoon Rai – with winds of about 195km/h (120mph) – sent some 400,000 people running for safety when it hit the country’s south-eastern islands. At least 500 people were injured, and 56 others have been reported missing by local police. Typhoon Rai’s (locally named Odette) heavy rains sustained winds causing flooding that displaced thousands and led to hundreds of casualties. Typhoon Rai is the 15th major weather disturbance to hit the Philippines this year and is classified as a…
The government of Japan Central Disaster Management Council has predicted that a powerful earthquake may kill up to 199,000 people in the north and northeast of the country. Council’s experts said that a magnitude 9.1-9.3 quake can cause a tsunami up to 29.7 metres (95.14 feet) high in the northeastern regions of the island of Honshu in Japan and 27.9 meters near the southern coast of Hokkaido. As a result of tremors and tsunamis, up to 137,000 people may die in Hokkaido, almost 41,000 in the Aomori prefecture and about 11,000 in Iwate. Moreover, 220,000 residential buildings may be destroyed,…
Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Tuesday, December 21, 2021, said that the state government had planted over eight million trees across the state since 2008. Sanwo-Olu made this known in Ikoyi, during the kick-off of the 1,000 Tree Planting Project in Lagos, tagged: ”The Evergreen Project Lagos”, an initiative of Miss Naita Gupta of the African Steel Evergreen Project. He said that 60,000 trees had been planted at different locations in the state during his tenure. According to him, the Lagos State Government was committed, through the Lagos State Parks and Gardens (LASPARK), to reducing its carbon footprint, in…
The Federal Government of Nigeria on Wednesday, December 22, 2021, destroyed over 1 million doses of Astrazeneca vaccines donated to combat COVID-19. Executive Director,National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Dr Faisal Shuaib, led the destruction at Gosa Dumpsite, about 2km from the Idu Railway Station, Abuja. “We withdrew about 1,066,214, doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines from across the country,” he said Nigeria joined other African countries, like Malawi, South Sudan, Liberia, Mauritania, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Comoros, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in destroying the expired COVID-19 vaccines. “As you can see these vaccines have now been deposited by…
Three Nigerians are among the 33 beneficiary candidates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Scholarship Programme’s doctoral and post-doctoral scholarships awards meant for candidates from developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The awards, according to the IPCC, will boost the new scientific research in developing nations and will provide critical support to the early career scientists to successfully complete their respective research and their doctoral theses. The 33 applicants were selected from over 320 applications received for this Sixth Round of Awards (2021-2023). Twenty-seven of the 33 scholarships were announced during the Prince Albert II of…
Stanford University, United States of America-based Elsevier B.V. has named two Nigerian professors among the topmost productive scientists in the world. Elsevier B.V. is an academic publishing company that publishes medical and scientific literature. The two Nigerian professors are Prof. Kayode Oyewumi, the Dean of Faculty of Physical Sciences, and Prof. Musa Yakubu, immediate past Director, Central Research Laboratories, both of the University of Ilorin. The university stated in its bulletin issued on Wednesday, December 29, 2021, in Ilorin. Speaking on behalf of the duo, Oyewumi said researchers’ ranking had become a global tool for evaluating intellectualism, academic prowess, research…