News recap
In a world where most things move at the speed of light, it is possible that some news pass you by. In case you missed some big news during the week, here are the ten top stories that you can catch up with.
1. President Muhammadu Buhari reminded Nigerians why his regime was toppled in 1985. He declared he was removed from office on August 27, 1985, because he was planning to purge the military hierarchy of corruption.
He specifically pointed a finger at two of his top subordinates in the army then, former Chief of Army Staff, General Ibrahim Babangida and two-time National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Gusau, as arrowheads who ousted his military government in August 1985 to save themselves from an impending purge.
2. While the president laid claim to his anti-corruption credential, the upper chamber of the Nigerian Senate was on hand to give the lower chamber a clean bill of health with regards to a new allegation of budget padding.
The Senate said it could not have been complicit in the alleged padding of the N6.06 trillion 2016 budget by the House of Representatives when the National Assembly is the authority statutorily empowered to produce the nation’s fiscal plan.
3. Still, in Nigeria, a stark warning emanated from an international aid organisation that famine was looming in northern Nigeria.
With hundreds of thousands trapped without help, Medical charity Doctors Without Borders asked the UN to declare a “top emergency” in the region.
The charity known by its French acronym MSF said the region devastated by Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency had between 500,000 and 800,000 people trapped in areas that cannot be reached by humanitarian workers.
4. In the US, President Barack Obama had a headache of its own. Contending with the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, Obama warned Democrats on Wednesday that anything was possible in the US elections and to “stay worried until all the votes are counted.”
Obama, who is the keynote speaker Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention, was asked in an interview with NBC’s Today Show whether Republican candidate Donald Trump could defeat the Democrat’s Hillary Clinton.
“Anything is possible,” he said.
5. As the Nigerian contingent head to Rio for the 2016 Olympic Games, the Nigerian sports ministry said the controversial appointment of Chelsea midfielders and Super Eagles’ captain, John Mikel Obi, as the captain of Team Nigeria was well thought-out.
“Sentiments apart, Mikel is one athlete that every sports lover, from China to the Bahamas, will easily recognise, so we chose him. It is purely for publicity purposes because we want to sell Nigeria to other countries at the Olympics,” an official of the Sports ministry told The Guardian.
6. The Central Bank, during the week, raised the interest rate to 14 percent from 12 percent in a move to stabilise the naira and tame soaring inflation.
CBN governor Godwin Emefiele told reporters the monetary policy committee which meets every two months “voted to increase the MPR (interest rate) by 200 basic points from 12 percent to 14 percent.”
MPR is the benchmark rate at which the CBN lends to commercial banks and it has been a key instrument in stabilising prices.
7. Still talking economy, The Guardian editorial on Monday, July 25, stated that, while recourse to mass retrenchment was not an option, it was unacceptable for any government to borrow billions to pay its workers especially when the productivity level of many of those workers remained questionable.
“It is worrisome that Nigeria’s financial condition has been so bad that salaries and allowances of federal workers can no longer be guaranteed regularly without recourse to credit facilities from the money market,” the editorial stated.
8. Another entity thinking of how to mitigate losses is the tech giant Apple. With iPhone sales and profits sliding, the company on Tuesday sought to highlight its growth in services as it seeks to reduce dependence on its main cash driver.
In its quarterly update, Apple said profits slumped 27 percent from a year ago to $7.8 billion on a sharp drop in iPhone sales.
Apple sold 40.4 million iPhones in the quarter ending June 25, down 15 percent from a year earlier, highlighting concerns over growth for the company’s iconic smartphone.
9. On a lighter note, we were told on Tuesday that the four genetically identical copies of Dolly the famous cloned sheep, which suffered ill health and died prematurely in 2003, are going strong at the advanced age of nine.
Debbie, Denise, Dianna and Daisy — identical sisters of Dolly, though born 11 years later — were “in pretty good health”, according to researchers who studied whether cloned animals can live long, healthy lives.
10. Another cheerful news! Ethiopian scientists have discovered mosquitoes are repulsed by the smell of chicken, raising hopes for the development of a novel way to prevent a disease that kills hundreds of thousands every year.
A team of insect experts led by Professor Habte Tekie at the University of Addis Ababa began their investigation after noticing that mosquitoes bite humans and other animals but stay away from chickens.
“We went into the chemical basis involved in repelling malaria mosquitoes by odours emanating from the chickens… The results show that compounds from chicken have very good potential as a repellent,” Tekie said.
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