Monthly Archives: October 2021

Friday, January 29, 2010

Diplomats have said that Chad called on the United Nations’ peacekeeping force to withdraw its civilians and soldiers from the country, and wants a timetable for the withdrawal.

“There is a [Chadian] political imperative for a withdrawal. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, it will be a withdrawal,” said an unnamed diplomat to the Reuters news agency; diplomats say that the deployment of UN personnel was never fully accepted by the government, and that Chadian president Idriss Deby views their presence as an encroachment on their sovereign territory.

The UN has sent out a high-level team to Chad, for talks, although diplomats noted there wasn’t any scope to renegotiate the organisation’s mandate, which is due to expire on March 15. Chadian authorities said they had asked the UN not to renew the mandate. Some concerns have been raised that aid agencies would not be able to operate in Chad should the withdrawal take place.

“There is no question of that [changing the mandate]. The Chadians are demanding a calendar for the retreat. It will not be long,” said another diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous.

The UN is mandated to have approximately 5,000 soldiers in Chad, although at the moment there are only 3,000, as the force is still deploying; it took over the peacekeeping role in the country from the European Union in 2009. Human rights groups say that about 200,000 refugees from Darfur in neighbouring Sudan are in the eastern part of the country, where they have faced violence from fighters. The UN was tasked with protecting those refugees.

UN peacekeeping forces are also present in the northern Central African Republic (CAR), as civilians there came under violence from local rebellions, as well as the larger regional conflict. According to a diplomat, the UN would have to withdraw from the CAR if it pulled out of Chad. “The UN can’t operate in a country that doesn’t want them. But it also means a withdrawal from CAR,” he noted.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

At least one person has been killed and at least thirty were injured as the result of a fire in the city of Lagos in Nigeria after an explosion in a building with fireworks stored in it. As many as nine other buildings in the Lagos Island fire yesterday were also impacted by the flames, according to authorities. The fire was reportedly the cause of the explosion, although this is yet to be confirmed.

Some local residents reportedly jumped out of the windows of buildings in fright in the large commercial area of Jankara. One man, Wasiu Olaleye, required treatment for a cut to his leg because “I had to jump from the first floor to save my life”, he said. Some local businesses were open when the incident occurred, but yesterday was a public holiday in Nigeria.

A school located in close proximity to the warehouse was significantly damaged in the incident. Numerous vehicles in the area were completely burnt out by the fire. The windows of several nearby buildings were also destroyed as the fire caused the windows of houses a few miles away to shake. Thick smoke was also sighted above Lagos.

Crowds of thousands of nearby people accumulated near the fire, with spectators and individuals intending to assist or gain information about relatives amongst them. Three fire service tanker vehicles attended the scene, but used up all their water supplies. Some people in the crowd attempted to assist fire crews with holding fire hoses and gathering water-filled containers. Some of these people were taken to hospital for treatment after experiencing injuries. One official reported military assistance was used. Additional water arrived later, as the severity of the fire slowly decreased.

The large crowds were part of the reason it took around an hour for fire service members to reach the scene of the fire. News agency Reuters was told by a government official that the possibility of further explosions from fireworks also interfered with the fire service’s rescue operation. “It’s very dangerous for the firemen to go in, because the government don’t want any of these men to be injured”, they said.

Ibrahim Farinloye from the National Emergency Management Agency reported one fatality to Agence France-Presse (AFP), saying: “We pulled out a body from the building”. Nicolas Adesile, of the Red Cross, told the same news agency that as many as thirty people have been treated thus far.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Local municipal and provincial volunteers in Manitoba, Canada are exhausted in their efforts to divert the rising waters of the Red River of the North.

It has been hard work with little sleep for the residents who live on the shores of the Red River to shore up their defences with sandbags, build dikes, clear frozen culverts and break ice jams

Volunteers to spell relief for local volunteers and food are desperately needed.

“It’s a week now we’ve been doing this … you’re talking four, five, six public works guys. In my one community we’ve got 25 volunteer firefighters and those guys have been going 24/7, so of course it’s wearing them down.” said Paul Guyader, Manitoba’s emergency measures coordinator.

“We’re dealing with one of the biggest floods the province has ever seen,” said Steve Strang, mayor of St. Clements, Manitoba “We’ve put out hundreds of thousands of bags already. The municipalities are working very well, we’re working with the provincial government, we’ve brought in every possible resource we could to address this issue. The volunteerism within the community has been phenomenal.”

The Portage Diversion has taken some spring waters from the Assiniboine River and diverted the flow to Lake Manitoba.

Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation has been totally evacuated, as well as many homes near the Canada – United States border.

The cold weather is freezing the ice jams into place. Guyader has had 2 Amphibex Excavators operating on the river breaking up ice.

The Red River is right now 16.7 feet (5 metres) above spring ice conditions. The Red River Floodway gates cannot be opened with the current ice jams.

“If we operate now, we can get ice jamming going into the floodway, jamming up against the St. Mary’s bridge, as such, the floodway capacity would be reduced and would cause higher water levels in the city of Winnipeg.” said Steve Topping, Manitoba Water Stewardship spokesman

The floodway was constructed in 1968 following the 1950 flood to divert the overflow spring flooding waters of the Red River. The floodway has been widened the since the 1997 “flood of the century” and the expansion is expected to be completed this spring. As well Manitoba built permanent dikes around communities within the flood plain since the last two major floods..

The Red River waters will crest between the beginning of April to mid April, at which time also the weather should be warming up. Communities are bracing for higher water levels, more ice jams as well as melting snow in the warmer spring temperatures.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

A small twin-engined Cessna 402 crashed into a lake in the Bahamas shortly after take off Tuesday, killing all eight Bahamian occupants.

The Cessna crashed into Lake Killarney, located near the Lynden Pindling International Airport, after a fire broke out in one of its engines, according to assistant commissioner Hulan Hanna of the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

It is reported that several bodies were recovered from the lake and a person was pulled out alive, but later died of a broken neck. It is reported that the plane, which departed the airport at about 12:30 p.m. local time, was travelling to San Salvador in the southern Bahamas. According to police, an investigation is in progress to specify the cause of the crash.

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

Australian researchers say they have scientifically proven that stress causes sickness. The Garvan Institute in Sydney has discovered that a hormone, known as neuropeptide Y (NPY) is released into the body during times of stress. Their findings show the hormone can stop the immune system from functioning properly.

“Neuropeptide Y is one of those hormones that gets unregulated or released from neurones when stressful situations occur…it’s known for example that it regulates blood pressure and heart rates so your heart rate goes up but it hasn’t been known that it actually can affect immune cells as well,” said Professor Herbert Herzog, one of the researchers.

Herzog feels it is good to finally have proof of something people have suspected for so long.

“Now we have proven without doubt that there is a direct link and that stress can weaken the immune system and that makes you more vulnerable when you for example have a cold or flu and even in the more serious situations such as cancer can be enhanced in these situations,” said Herzog.

The Garvan Institute study centres on two key events that enable the human body to recognise foreign substances and control invaders. When our body encounters a pathogen (bacteria and viruses), the immune cells retain and interrogate suspects. Their activation is made possible by NPY. These cells then return to the lymph nodes, which are found all over the body, with information about the foreign invaders. The lymph nodes are where decisions about defence are made.

“Most of us expect to come down with a cold or other illness when we are under pressure, but until now we have mostly had circumstantial evidence for a link between the brain and the immune system,” said lead Garvan researcher, associate Professor Fabienne Mackay. “During periods of stress, nerves release a lot of NPY and it gets into the bloodstream, where it directly impacts on the cells in the immune system that look out for and destroy pathogens (bacteria and viruses) in the body.”

In the case of bacteria and viruses, TH1 cells are part of the attack team that is sent out on the ‘search and destroy’ mission. But when their job is done they need to be turned ‘off’ and the immune system reset. The same hormone, NPY, that activates the sentry cells now prompts the TH1 cells to slow down and die.

“Under normal conditions, circulating immune cells produce small amounts of NPY, which enables the immune cells on sentry duty and the TH1 immune cells to operate – it’s a yin and yang kind of situation. But too much NPY means that the TH1 attack is prevented despite the foreign invaders being identified – and this is what happens during stress,” added McKay.

The impact of stress on the body has been observed in athletes. Ph. D researcher at the University of Queensland, Luke Spence, together with the Australian Institute of Sport, studied elite and recreational athletes over five months.

They found elite athletes were more susceptible to respiratory diseases under stress.

“A lot of elite athletes put themselves through vast amounts of physical stress in their training, but also their emotional, psychological stress of feeling the pressure of Australia on their shoulders, wanting to compete and wanting to do their best,” said Spence.

It’s not just athletes who are prone to stress. Pressures at work and at home may cause emotional and mental stress that can be equally damaging. Almost a third of all work absenteeism in Australia is due to illness, costing employers over $10 billion a year.

“I think it has a huge impact for the work force and also for employers – if their employees are constantly stressed, constantly under pressure, they are more likely to get sick,” Spence said.

Further research could lead to the development of new drugs which may inhibit the action of the neuropeptide Y hormone.

Herzog warns people to minimise stress before it becomes a problem.

“Relaxation methods like yoga will help you to prevent that but there will still be people out there that are not responding to that and treatment by interfering with the system will be important,” he said. “There’s obviously some time until such a treatment will be available but this is something we will definitely work towards.”

The Garvan research will be published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Volume 202, No. 11.

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Leaders of African Union (AU) member states met in Niamey, Niger’s capital, for an AU summit where on Sunday Presidents Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and Patrice Talon of Benin signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.

Nigeria previously announced it planned to join the AfCFTA in the week leading up to the summit. AU trade and industry commissioner Albert Muchanga announced Benin was to join. The commissioner said, “We haven’t yet agreed on rules of origin and tariff con[c]essions, but the framework we have is enough to start trading on July 1, 2020”.

Niger’s president Mahamadou Issoufou said, “Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy and most populous country. Without Nigeria the free trade zone would’ve been handicapped.”

The agreement seeks to remove tariffs on 90 percent of commodities and better intregrate African economies.

At the opening of the AU summit, AU chairperson President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt said, “The success of the AfCFTA will be the real test to achieve the economic growth that will turn our people’s dream of welfare and quality of life into a reality”.

With Sunday’s signings, all but one of the member states of the 55-member AU have signed on to the agreement, with Eritrea the only state unsigned. African leaders have negotiated the deal over the last four years. While 54 nations have signed onto the AfCFTA, only 27 have ratified the agreement.

While many transactions in Africa occur using U.S. dollars or euros, the AU announced an electronic pan-African payment system.African Export–Import Bank president Okey Oramah said the use of third-party currencies “costs Africa between $5 and $7 billion,” further saying, “Beyond that, it also reduces trade because Africa has a scarcity of foreign exchange.”

There are reportedly 1.3 billion people in the free trade area, with the combined economies of the countries worth US$3.4 trillion. One of the stated goals of AfCFTA is to encourage more intra-Africa trade. Currently about 16–17 percent of African trade occurs between African countries. This is in contrast to the European Union members, where intra-European trade accounts for over 60 percent of trade.

The International Monetary Fund said in May the AfCFTA might be for African countries comparable to the European and North American trade blocs as an “economic game changer”.

Seven members states had bid to host the AfCFTA secretariat, the operational organ of the free trade agreement, with Ghana winning the bid.