STATEMENT DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY MUHAMMADU BUHARI

STATEMENT DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY MUHAMMADU BUHARI,
PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, AT THE GENERAL DEBATE OF THE 72ND SESSION OF UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, IN NEW YORK, ON TUESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2017

Mr. President,

Fellow Heads of State and Government,

Mr. Secretary-General,

Distinguished Delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of my country, Nigeria, I congratulate you Mr. President on your election and Mr. Gutteres on his first General Assembly outing as our Secretary-General.

I assure you both of my country’s solidarity and cooperation. You will indeed need the cooperation of all member States as we are meeting during extra-ordinarily troubled and dangerous times.

Let me also thank former Secretary-General Mr. Ban ki Moon for his service to the United Nations and wish him peaceful retirement.

Mr. President,

2. The previous year has witnessed many far-reaching developments. Some of the most significant events include the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and, of grave concern, the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Mr. President,

3. I must also commend the UN’s role in helping to settle thousands of innocent civilians caught in the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular, we must collectively thank the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany under the commendable leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Governments of Italy, Greece and Turkey for assisting hundreds of thousands of refugees.

4. In an exemplary show of solidarity, the international community came together within my own region to assist the countries and communities in the Sahel and the Lake Chad regions to contain the threats posed by Al Qaida and Boko Haram.

5. We thank the Security Council for visiting the countries of the Lake Chad Basin to assess the security situation and humanitarian needs, and for pledging assistance to rebuild lives and livelihoods. Indeed, in Nigeria we are providing relief and humanitarian assistance to millions in internally displaced camps and those afflicted by terrorism, drought, floods and other natural disasters.

6. In the last year, the international community came together to focus on the need for gender equality, youth empowerment, social inclusion, and the promotion of education, creativity and innovation. The frontiers of good governance, democracy including holding free and fair elections, and enthronement of the rule of law are expanding everywhere, especially in Africa.

7. Our faith in democracy remains firm and unshaken. Our regional organisation ECOWAS came together to uphold democratic principles in The Gambia – as we had done previously in Cote D’Ivoire.

8. Through our individual national efforts, state institutions are being strengthened to promote accountability, and to combat corruption and asset recovery. These can only be achieved through the international community cooperating and providing critical assistance and material support. We shall also cooperate in addressing the growing transnational crimes such as forced labour, modern day slavery, human trafficking and cybercrime.

Mr. President,

9. These cooperative efforts should be sustained. We must collectively devise strategies and mobilise the required responses to stop fleeing ISIS fighters from mutating and infiltrating into the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin, where there are insufficient resources and response capacity is weak.

10. This will require strong UN cooperation with regional organisations, such as the African Union, in conflict prevention and management. The UN should continue to take primary leadership of the maintenance of international peace and security by providing, in a predictable and sustainable manner, adequate funding and other enablers to regional initiatives and peacekeeping operations authorized by the Security Council.

Mr. President,

11. New conflicts should not make us lose focus on ongoing unresolved old conflicts. For example, several UN Security Council Resolutions from 1967 on the Middle East crisis remain unimplemented. Meanwhile, the suffering of the Palestinian people and the blockade of Gaza continue.

12. Additionally, we are now confronted by the desperate human rights and humanitarian situations in Yemen and most tragically in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. The Myanmar crisis is very reminiscent of what happened in Bosnia in 1995 and in Rwanda in 1994.

13. The international community cannot remain silent and not condemn the horrendous suffering caused by what, from all indications is a state-backed programme of brutal depopulation of the Rohingya inhabited areas in Myanmar on the bases of ethnicity and religion. We fully endorse the call by the Secretary-General on the Government of Myanmar to order a halt to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and ensure the safe return of the displaced Rohingya to their homes in safety and dignity.

14. In all these crises, the primary victims are the people, the most vulnerable being women and children. That is why the theme of this session: Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet" is most apposite.

15. While the international community grapples to resolve these conflicts, we must be mindful and focus on the widening inequalities within societies, and the gap between the rich and the poor nations. These inequalities and gaps are part of the underlining root causes of competition for resources, frustration and anger leading to spiralling instability.

16. The most pressing threat to international peace and security today is the accelerated nuclear weapons development programme by North Korea. Since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, we have never come so close to the threat of nuclear war as we have now.

17. All necessary pressure and diplomatic efforts must be brought to bear on North Korea to accept peaceful resolution of the crisis. As Hiroshima and Nagasaki painfully remind us, if we fail, the catastrophic and devastating human loss and environmental degradation cannot be imagined.

Mr. President,

18. Nigeria proposes a strong UN delegation to urgently engage the North Korean Leader. The delegation, led by the Security Council, should include members from all the regions.

19. The crisis in the Korean peninsula underscores the urgency for all member states, guided by the spirit of enthroning a safer and more peaceful world, to ratify without delay the Treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, which will be open for signature here tomorrow.

Mr. President,

20. I end my remarks by reiterating Nigeria’s abiding commitment to the foundational principles and goals of the United Nations. Since our admission as a member state in 1960, we have always participated in all efforts to bring about global peace, security and development. Nigeria will continue to support the UN in all its efforts, including the attainment of the 2030 Agenda 

The Return of the Native

John Neumeier directs, choreographs and designs Orphée et Eurydice in Chicago and L.A.
By David Patrick Stearns 

Carolina Aguero and John Neumeier
© Kiran West

THROUGH BALLET  and opera are rarely far away from each other, their common ground is often limited to Orphée et Eurydice—Gluck’s classic myth about loss, grief and the power of song that beckons master choreographers into opera companies with which they might not typically collaborate. The latest example is John Neumeier, whose new production opens Lyric Opera of Chicago’s season on September 23 and arrives at L.A. Opera in March.
“It’s a big chance,” says Neumeier, director of the Hamburg Ballet since 1973. “There are many great opera directors. I am not a great opera director. I’m a kind of an auteur who designs the costumes and scenery as well.” In other words, he’s a theatrical storyteller, for whom movement, costumes and even lighting are all of a piece. This can be seen in his extensive body of full-length works, which prompted Lyric Opera of Chicago to form a collaboration with Neumeier, with the Joffrey Ballet as an essential component. Yet fundamental differences between the spontaneity of Neumeier’s choreographic process and the level of organization necessary to put on an operatic season required significant negotiations. In addition, this Orphic feast had to be moveable, with L.A. Opera and Hamburg State Opera as coproducers.
A precise, soft-spoken, aristocratic man, the seventy-eight-year-old Neumeier seems more interested in having a conversation than in being interviewed. Originally from Milwaukee, he grew up in the Midwest and might have had a rather different creative life had he settled in the U.S. instead of Europe. He didn’t have his sights set on Europe during his early days as a dancer in Chicago; staying on the Continent certainly wasn’t planned. He studied in Copenhagen and at the Royal Ballet School in London before he signed a contract in Stuttgart, starting in 1963. By 1969, he was director of the Frankfurt Ballet.
DOORS OPENED up in Hamburg, and there he was, reimagining the nineteenth-century full-length ballet not by creating something in the mold of Swan Lake but instead taking on works that hadn’t previously been staged; his efforts included the Mahler Symphony No. 3 (which was hardly standard repertoire in the mid 1970s), as well as Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, his version of which has had roughly 200 performances over the past thirty-plus years. Scanning the 155-plus works that he has created, the uninitiated might assume that he’s either a classical-theater director or a symphony-orchestra conductor.
Orphée is Neumeier’s first full-length work created in the U.S. Known for being neither radical nor retro, he shares with the late Pina Bausch a dislike for any sort of expressive mannerism, but he eclectically mixes balletic and modern elements. He’s as likely to create a piece around music by Simon & Garfunkel (and mix it in with Chopin) as he is to stage Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Put an asterisk next to that last one: though he has been asked to take on that gargantuan choral work, Neumeier doesn’t always initially respond to great music with a physical vocabulary.
“I was asked to do it, but I canceled three weeks ago,” he says in a way that suggests the decision was a not-yet rather than a no-never. “It’s like looking at a mountain and sometimes seeing a path to the top. I don’t know if it’s a good path or a bad path, but I know if I can do it. When I did the Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler—this was 1975—I had a moment between midnight and 2 a.m. when I was listening to a recording and felt an intuitive ‘yes.’ But when I was asked to direct Ring of the Nibelungs, I thought about it for two months and said, ‘I don’t have a Ring in me.’”

Arnold Böcklin’s painting The Isle of the Dead, left, which inspired the designs for the Orphée et Eurydice sets and costumes

THE MYTH  of Orpheus and Eurydice is a tale to which Neumeier has returned repeatedly, having choreographed the dance sections of the Gluck opera years ago. He also created his own version of the Stravinsky ballet Orpheus. What drew him back to Gluck was its deceptive surface: “I think what fascinates me about it is the fact that it seems like a very simple opera, but practically speaking, it’s not a simple opera,” he says. Or an easy one. Of Orpheus’s first-scene lamentation over the death of Eurydice, Neumeier observes, “He’s singing about somebody we don’t know. That bothers me. We are experiencing a real human tragedy of a man who loved a woman whom he lost. He disobeys all the rules of nature to retrieve her. But she was not an easy woman. It’s not a lovey-dovey relationship.”
The form these ideas will take onstage was far from fully determined as of April. The color palette is influenced by the famous Arnold Böcklin painting The Isle of the Dead, which has terra-cotta cliffs and beige structures tucked amid tall cypress trees, with a white figure approaching by rowboat. But the starting point of the staging will be a ballet studio where two dancers meet. From there, the moveable stage designs will allow Neumeier to keep his options open in ways that few opera directors do, including being able to clear the stage for purely choreographic scenes. The quantity of scenery is such that Neumeier will maintain the option to subtract—though, being a practical man of the theater, he doesn’t see himself cutting elements that have cost huge sums of money.

Designs for the Orphée et Eurydice sets and costumes © Andrew Cioffi

ONE THING Neumeier will not resort to is putting the singers in the pit and letting the production entirely tell the visual story. “I think that’s cheating,” he says. “I don’t want people to come away talking about the lovely music and the beautiful costumes. I want them to see themselves as part of all of the shades of grief in the opera. In our age, we’ve gone through the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic and found that death is not just something that happens to old people. I’m trying to evoke what Gluck wanted—true human emotion.”
Achieving that aim requires bending on all sides. The idea began with Lyric Opera’s innovative general director Anthony Freud wondering why his company had never truly collaborated with the Chicago-based Joffrey Ballet. Joffrey artistic director Ashley Wheater wondered why a choreographer of Neumeier’s stature wasn’t seen more in the U.S., though American Ballet Theatre and several regional companies have presented his work.
Neumeier was invited to restage his Sylvia at the Joffrey in 2015—an experience that turned out to be “transformative” for the company, says Wheater, partly because Neumeier didn’t simply revive the piece but made many changes. The relationship begged to be continued. “When you’re going to create something new, you need that stimulation, because choreography comes from all sides, not just one person,” says Wheater.
Meetings ensued with Lyric Opera. The 1774 French version of Orphée et Eurydice, with Orpheus written for haute-contre tenor, inevitably surfaced, since it contains the most dance. The first of Gluck’s reform operas, the piece rejects virtuoso vocal display for its own sake, favoring a more expansive manner in which characters examine their emotional states at length. The dances, many of which take place in the underworld as Orpheus tries to retrieve his deceased wife, Eurydice, have been choreographed in the past by Isadora Duncan, George Balanchine and Mark Morris.
Neumeier was keen to create something new on his home turf, though ideally with the kind of time for experimentation that he enjoys in Hamburg. Thus, he has two to three weeks with the Joffrey dancers before moving into the typical rehearsal period with the singers. Indeed, says Wheater, he will have about fifty percent more rehearsal time than is typical in the U.S.
“We understand that John needs to keep as much flexibility as possible—and as late in the process as possible,” says Freud. “John isn’t accustomed to delivering set designs a year before rehearsal begins, but that’s something we need to budget in nearly every project and plan technically. John was extraordinarily conscious about working in that timetable.”
Three strong personalities in the same room must have made for some colorful conversations. But when all three parties want to do the project, says Wheater, respect and friendship can be a civilizing influence. “It doesn’t mean we agree on everything, but there are thoughtful ways to have the conversation,” he says. “John is very good at hearing what someone is saying.”
And there were no arguments within the production team, because Neumeier was doing it all himself. Casually, he’ll say, “I’m the one-man band.” The bigger challenge is having technical rehearsals before he even starts to work with the singers. “I’ve been trying to calm myself about this process,” he says, “and I will do my best.” 
David Patrick Stearns is classical- music critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer, chief opera critic for WQXR’s Operavore blog and music reporter for WRTI-FM.

Nigeria Achievers Awards (NAA)

Yessss ooo....E don shele again....

Avatar Makeover has been nominated as best Make-up Artist at Nigeria Achievers Awards (NAA)
Venue: Bespoke Event Centre, lekki Lagos.
Date: Nov 12th 2017
Pls I need ur vote by sending SMS:
Award 17153 to 33070
SMS Cost #50
U can also vote on line
www.elfrique.com/NAA2.0
Nominees Code from (17115 to code 17199) mine is 17153
Thanks for ur support. I love u all

INFORMATION - Message From Pastor Mike Dunamis

INFORMATION

Information put your life in a winning formation. The level of the information you have determine;

·         1.        Your opportunity

·         2.   Value (your usefulness)

·         3.       Your worth

·        4.         The size of your pocket

·         5.    Command + position of authority

Never say you don’t know you must always have an idea, the idea you have creates the future you desire. Take time to build your information bank. Pay every conscious effect to be informed.

Social network is not for hanging out with friends only, make vital use of network, SEARCH, DISCOVER and KNOW.

OPPORTUNITY (Ecclesiastes 9:11 kjv)

“I have seen something else under the sun, the race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong nor does food come to the wise or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Opportunity gives light to your vision and ignite your passion. It gives you a chance to show what you have, your talent and gift, your dexterity.”

Opportunity gives you a chance to display. Bishop Oyedepo confirm in one of his writing that opportunity abound everywhere, but mankind is so blind that they cannot see it, because they are not informed.

                THREE THINGS THAT BRINGS OPPORTUNITY

1.       Association

2.       Communication

3.       Humility

HUMINITY:

Be a man of sincerity of heart and purity of mind, be a noble, submit to everyman, be a man/woman of simplicity, be simple to everyman to talk and associate with, smile, Laugh, help someone in need, be there for someone, be useful, be dependable,  be trustworthy, never loose your integrity to any situation.

Every Humble Man will never lack a man to help them.

Humility draws men to you, it make people love you, it grant you favour before everyman, it makes God loves you.

GET THESE

·         Advantages in the key to advancement, when you never take advantage of opportunities, you may always be a disadvantage.

·         Frustration is a major factor of failure, but when you are familiar with faith, you will be far from failure.

·         Self-discipline comes with self-denial, you can’t be truly discipline until you denial yourself of self-desire.

Hurricane Irma: Florida assesses damage as storm weakens

As Hurricane Irma leaves millions without power in Florida, disaster risk experts have started counting the possible cost from the deadly storm.

Irma, which hit Florida as a category four hurricane on Sunday, has since been downgraded to a tropical storm.
Analysts have cut their estimates of the total cost, but still expect it to run to tens of billions of dollars.
The storm is likely to have the biggest long-term economic impact in the Caribbean, experts said.
"In the Caribbean it's devastating because ... you're affecting the entire economy," said Chuck Watson, director of research and development for US hazard assessment firm Enki Holdings.

US damages

The combination of losses from Hurricane Irma and storm Harvey, which struck Texas and the Gulf of Mexico in August, could make 2017 "the most costly hurricane season yet," Bronek Masojada, the chief executive of the UK insurance firm Hiscox told the BBC.
Moody's Analytics expects combined damage of $150bn- $200bn from the two storms in the US, with an additional $20bn-$30bn lost in economic disruption.

Media caption Aerial footage shows the damage to homes in Orlando, Florida

Analysts had earlier warned the US faced as much as $300bn in economic impact from Irma alone, depending on the strength and path of the storm in Florida.
The storm has caused severe flooding and left more than 6 million homes without power in Florida. It has killed at least 39 people and devastated some Caribbean islands.
However, it weakened after making landfall in Florida and spared major cities along the eastern coast, such as Miami, a direct hit.
For parts of the state such as the Florida Keys, the recovery will take time, said Florida Governor Rick Scott.
But in other areas, he said: "I didn't see the damage I thought we would see."

Barrie Cornes, an insurance analyst at Panmure Gordon, said the economic impact of Irma may be half the $300bn he previously gave as the uppermost cost.
Enki predicts the economic impact could be about $50bn - well below the roughly $200bn the firm predicted early in the storm.
"A wobble 20 miles to the left and it would have virtually doubled the damages," Mr Watson said.
Shares on Wall Street rose more than 1% on Monday, partly on hopes Irma would cause less damage than previously feared.
The combination of the hurricanes could shave 0.5% off GDP in the third quarter, ratings agency Moody's estimates.
But the rebuilding effort is likely to lead to higher spending, boosting GDP growth in later months, which will blunt the longer impact.
"From an economics sense, a lot of times we get a little too excited about these storms," Mr Watson said. "The human tragedy, that's a whole different picture."

Caribbean damages

Even the worst storms have historically had little major effect on economic growth in the US.
But some small Caribbean islands are looking at damage from Hurricane Irma that is many times higher than their annual GDP.
Enki forecasts that Irma's economic impact in the Caribbean could be about $30bn, with about 40% of that figure coming from lost output.
Total damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure could run to more than $12bn, with places such as Sint Maarten, the US Virgin Islands and Cuba among the hardest hit, according to the Germany-based Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology.

Image copyright AFP/Getty

Image caption Cubans wade through a flooded street in Havana

That makes Irma the costliest hurricane in history for the Caribbean, a record that reflects the storm's strength - and the increase in property and infrastructure in the region, said James Daniell, a senior disaster risk analyst for the centre.
Major hotels and resorts are more likely to have insurance, but the share of damage covered is likely to vary significantly by island, he said.
Insured losses in the Caribbean are estimated at $5bn-$15bn, according to catastrophe modelling firm AIR Worldwide.

STOP BLAMING OTHERS

 DON'T PLAY THE VICTIM TO CIRCUMSTANCE YOU CREATED...


You can only achieve success in life if you stop put blame on others. Remember nobody is perfect, Nobody is God and nobody is holy like Jesus christ .

 
 In life nobody is above mistake. I get to know this when I became the President of a Christian organization, am always angry with my fellow executives and always blame them for everything that happen wrongly in the organization. Month after Month I find out that nothing changed, why? I asked myself. I decide to keep mute, do my best and leave the rest for God. I maintain that style for a month and I found out that the issue is not with my executives but with me. 



Everybody has a different way of archiving success.

Blame.
 It’s one of those things that seem to be a part of all kinds of relationships. It’s in our relationships with family members, with our partners or spouse, with friends and it can even be with our co-workers.
If we aren’t mindful over our habits of blaming others then it can become detrimental to the relationship. So how can you stop blaming others in your relationships? Here are 5 steps:
#1 — Recognize when you’re blaming. Examples of blaming include (but aren’t limited to) saying things like: “You never call me when you’re going to be home late,” “You’re too sensitive,” “You’re too needy,” “You never do the dishes when I ask you to,” “You need to change,” “You never listen to me,” or “You caused all these problems yourself.”
What is a common word in any of these examples? Yep, that’s right it’s saying “you.” It’s all “you did X” or “you did Y.” Sometimes there is also the element of saying the word “never” as well, which is clearly just an exaggeration. It’s not necessarily that the person “never” does what you ask, but that they don’t do it sometimes.
So the first step of the battle is being sure that we catch ourselves getting into the habit of blaming.
#2 — Take a moment to get centered. Often when we are blaming it’s not that we are doing it from a balanced and centered place. We aren’t thinking and seeing things clearly. More than likely, we’re stressed out because of various things that happened during our day or triggered by something.
So immediately after recognizing that you’re doing the “blame game” be sure to stop and take some time to get centered in yourself. Take some deep breaths. Walk around a little bit. Jump or shake your arms to let out the stress and tension of it all. Look around at the different items in the room.
Any of these little tools can help you to get centered back into yourself so you can think clearly and respond to the situation in an effective way rather than to just mindlessly react to what is happening, like most of us do often.
#3 — Recognize that you and this other person are both equals. When we’re blaming, we are coming from this mentality of, “You’re wrong and I’m right.” It involves putting yourself on a pedestal and making yourself appear all perfect and good, then condemning the other person and making them appear imperfect, flawed, and wrong.
Not exactly something we want to be doing in a marriage where both people are meant to be equals, right?
Exactly. Yet, unfortunately being in a continuous state of blaming can often be one of the big causes for divorce.
So, it’s important to recognize this illusionary thinking that blocks us from truly experiencing and expressing love.
#4 — Own your own experience. Once you’ve gotten centered and recognized that you and this other person are both truly equals, it’s time to really own your own experience. So check in with yourself and ask: How am I feeling about this situation? What do I think about this situation?
Once you have identified your thoughts and feelings, phrase them into an “I” statement. For instance, you may want to say something like, “I’m angry because there is a mess in the living room” or “I feel upset because I don’t think we talk as much anymore.”
Be sure that when using these statements that you don’t say something like “I feel you’re not listening to me” — because that is not true. That is a thought and not a feeling. So be sure that you’re identifying an emotion if you use the word “feel,” because if we don’t the other person will likely still think they are being blamed.
Don’t believe me? Reflect back on times where people have told you something like, “I feel like you don’t care about cleaning up the apartment.” What’s your initial reaction? It makes a difference.
Finally, when you’re making an “I” statement be sure that you don’t fall into the blame game again by saying something like “I’m upset because you don’t listen to me.” There is still a “you” there.
So be sure to really own your own experience and take responsibility.
#5 — Apologize. If you’ve said something where you were really blaming the other person, then be sure to apologize to them. If you’re dating or married to this person, be sure you express your love and affection to them. Doing so will help bring the two of you closer to each other and help deepen the relationship.


 

UK to build cut-price warships to spur on naval exports

UK to build cut-price warships to spur on naval exports, says Defence Secretary

Government backs construction across several shipyards


The UK will go ahead with the construction of a new generation of cut-price, multipurpose warships as it seeks to spur naval exports.
The Type 31e frigate has a price capped at £250m for the first five vessels to be produced for the Royal Navy.
That compares with a bill of up to £1bn apiece, including some dockyard-related costs, for the state-of-the-art Type 26 model that began production in July.
The first of the Type 31 craft should enter service in 2023, with the workload likely to be shared among UK shipyards and assembly focused on a central hub, in line with recommendations from a report into future naval programs, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement Wednesday.
The new approach is “designed to maximise exports and be attractive to navies around the world,” Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said in the release, adding that while the Type 31e will be designed to meet British needs, it will have the export market “in mind from the beginning.”
Britain initially placed an order for 13 Type 26 vessels, to be built at BAE Systems’ Glasgow shipyards.
Former Prime Minister David Cameron announced in late 2015 that the commitment would be cut to eight ships, with the balance of the requirement to be filled by a less capable but cheaper model with enhanced export prospects.
The commitment to build the Type 31e comes ahead of next week’s Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition in London, which will see a “real push” for maritime sales, according to Stephen Phipson, the outgoing head of arms exports at the International Trade Department.
The UK is working on several “very, very large” naval opportunities, he said Monday.
The switch to modular construction for the frigate follows a report last year into UK naval shipbuilding led by John Parker, chairman of miner Anglo American, which argued that BAE’s Scottish dockyards be excluded from the lead role on the new vessel in order to encourage competition and pare costs.
He also recommended the “e” designation to emphasise the export focus.
Britain’s £6.bn aircraft carrier programme pioneered the devolved-construction approach, with blocks for the HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales built at six UK locations before being assembled at Babcock International Group’s main yard at Rosyth near Edinburgh.

Cholera Kills 7 Internally Displaced Persons In Borno Camp

No fewer than seven Internally Displace Persons at the Borno IDPs camp have died of Cholera.

They died at Muna and Dala Lawanti cholera treatment centres, according to the Medical Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF, Anna Cillers.

She said that over 200 patients were admitted at the centres since the outbreak of Cholera last month and that seven of them had died while about 100 treated and discharged.

She explained that the centres had been working with the Federal and State Ministries of Health to ensure that the disease is totally eradicated.

According to him, the centre in collaboration with the government has established a 40 bed Cholera Treatment Unit, CTU, in Dala, which has so far admitted 70 patients.

She said that “MSF has also set up an Oral Re-hydration Point, ORP, in Muna camp with a team of 14 Community Health Workers, CHW, who are helping to find new cases.

“Their major role is to trace members of the community who might have had contact with Cholera patient so that we can stop the spread of the disease now.

Callers said that most of the Cholera victim came from Muna due to the invasion of Boko Haram insurgents there.
She also said that the Nigerian soldiers had continued to attack the terrorists in the area, making IDPs in camp to run away from the place.
Coupling with the heavy downpour during the week, the spread of Cholera had been devastating, she noted.

Taraba Supplies Cucumber, Vegetables To Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna – Osinbajo

Taraba State is now producing cucumber, vegetables, pepper in commercial quantities and supplying it to major supermarkets in Lagos, Abuja and Kaduna.


The Vice President Yemi Osinbajo disclosed this at Eid-el-kabir lunch held at the banquet hall inside Aso Rock on Sunday.

He said that the production of these items by a state in Nigeria had since reduced the importation of such materials to the country.

According to the vice president the vast farmlands of Kebbi, Jigawa and Kano are another areas that will increase the production of these foodstuff.

“Just five hectares of greenhouse in Taraba State is producing the needs of all the major supermarkets in Abuja, Kaduna and Lagos states,” he said.

He noted how an Israeli farmer who works in one of those greenhouses, exclaimed when he got to Jalingo for the first time and saw the beautiful hills.

“He sent a message to his wife saying, ‘we are close to heaven.’ But by the time he got to Mambilla and got to the Plateau, he sent another message and said, ‘we are now in heaven!” Osinbajo said.

On Boko Haram insurgence, Osinbajo said that the terrorists would continue to attack because of the vast land of Borno, which is almost the size of the United Kingdom and Demark put together.


for more click here

 

Hurricane Harvey: Texas governor warns bill could be $180bn

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said the bill for reconstruction after Hurricane Harvey could be as high as $180bn (£138bn).

He said the damage was worse than that caused by Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.
Meanwhile, the head of the government's disaster management agency has warned that flood-hit states should not rely on Washington to pick up the bill.
Brock Long said Harvey should be a wake-up call for local officials.
Recovery operations are under way across Texas, and in neighbouring Louisiana, although many areas are still battling floodwater.
The devastating hurricane made landfall in the state a week ago and has been blamed for at least 47 deaths. About 43,000 people are being housed in shelters.

• Uninsured and anxious, victims return home
• How hard has Harvey hit the local economy?

The US government has already asked Congress for $7.85bn as an initial contribution towards recovery efforts, which Mr Abbott called a "down payment".
He had previously said the state might need more than $125bn in aid, but revised that figure up on Sunday.

"Katrina caused, if I recall, more than $120bn [of damage] but when you look at the number of homes and business affected by this I think this will cost well over $120bn, probably $150bn to $180bn," he told Fox News.
The White House has warned that the US debt ceiling - the cap on government spending - will need to be raised to meet the bill for recovery. Only Congress can raise that limit.
Brock Long, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told CBS that Harvey should be a lesson to state officials that they needed to set aside reserve funds for their own emergency management departments.

• Why was Houston not evacuated?
• Hurricane Harvey: The climate link

"It is a wake-up call for this country for local and state elected officials to give their governors and their emergency management directors the full budgets that they need to be fully staffed, to design rainy-day funds, to have your own stand-alone individual assistance and public assistance programmes," he said.

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