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Coronavirus: Concern grows over potential superspreader event during US Capitol riot
Concerns are mounting about the health of lawmakers and other people in the Capitol last week, after the first member to test positive for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) since Wednesday’s chaos, said she believed she was exposed in a crowded hiding place with hundreds of other legislators. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., tested positive on Monday while experiencing mild symptoms, and said in a statement that she believes she caught the virus from her fellow lawmakers while hunkering down as Capitol Police struggled for hours to contain a Trump-inspired mob attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers were trapped in a room near the Capitol with hundreds of others, in some cases for hours, where at least one person who later tested positive for the coronavirus was present. The Office of the Attending P...
Republican senator: Donald Trump must ‘go away as soon as possible’
A second Republican senator in the United States has called on Donald Trump to step down after some of the president’s supporters overran the Capitol building in Washington, DC this week in a deadly riot. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press news programme on Sunday, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey said Trump should resign for the good of the country. “I think the best way for our country is for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible,” he said. Toomey said president’s resignation is the “best path forward, the best way to get this person in the rear-view mirror for us”, but added that he did not believe Trump would step down before his term ends on January 20. He also said the president’s role encouraging the riot was an “impeachable offence”. Momentum has been buildi...
Governor Wike: PDP‘ll rescue Nigeria in 2023
Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, said Nigerians have known clearly that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), has their interest at heart with the commitment it has shown in fulfilling every promise made in ensuring an enduring improvement in their socio-economic situations. Governor Wike stated this at the commissioning of dualised Forces Avenue, Olumeni and Harvey Streets in Old Government Residential Area, Port Harcourt, by Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal on Friday night. Governor Wike said the administration of his predecessor under the All Progressives Congress (APC), deliberately ignored the roads in the Old GRA of Port Harcourt, thereby leaving the area in blighted condition. Governor Wike stated that his conviction in developing the city and building it into world class sta...
#EndSARS: It’ll take long to rebuild destroyed property – Governor Sanwo-Olu
Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, said, yesterday, that it would take the state time to rebuild the properties destroyed during the EndSARS protests. This came on a day the Lagos State government disclosed that the 2021 budget of N1.164 trillion would be funded from a revenue estimate of N971.028 billion in the fiscal year, with a target on the expansion of tax nets. Governor Sanwo-Olu stated this while briefing State House correspondents, after meeting behind closed doors with President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He said the meeting dwelt more on the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, security situation and the impact of the #EndSARS protests in the state. On rebuilding Lagos after the EndSARS protests, he said: “It is also some of the things I dis...
Woman shot dead in US Capitol was a veteran and Trump supporter
The woman who died Wednesday of a bullet wound during the violent storming of the US Capitol was shot by police, authorities said. The only fatality tied to Wednesday’s unrest was the woman, reportedly a dedicated Donald Trump backer and air force veteran who was among a throng of supporters of the president that invaded the US legislature. Washington police chief Robert Contee said three other people, one woman and two men, had died Wednesday in the area around the Capitol, but did not link those deaths to the violence. Each of the three “appeared to have suffered medical emergencies which resulted in their deaths,” Contee told reporters. Contee said 52 people had been arrested Wednesday, 26 of them on the grounds of the Capitol, for curfew violations, unlawful entry and weapons charges. ...
One dead, three injured as cocoa house elevator crashes in Ibadan
A middle aged man was Wednesday confirmed dead after an elevator crashed at the Cocoa House building in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. Newsmen learnt that three other people were also injured when the elevator at the high rise building in the ancient city crashed. The Cocoa House was said to have been built with proceeds from cocoa by the then government of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who was the Premier of the Western Region. The building as at now is being managed by the Odua Investment Company Limited, which is owned by the six states of the South-west. It was gathered that the elevator was being repaired Wednesday before it crashed and fell on people working on it. The Head of Corporate Affairs, Odua Investment Company Limited, Mr. Victor Ayetoro, while confirming the death of one pers...
George Moghalu: Igbo presidency not by mouth
YouTube The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of National Inland Water Ways (NIWA), Chief George Moghalu has told the Igbo to widen their horizon to convince other ethnic nationalities, if a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction must be realized. The All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship aspirant for Anambra 2021 election, Chief Moghalu said this during an interactive session with journalists in Nnewi on Saturday. He noted that the Igbo known for work hard should apply same and traverse the width and breadth of Nigeria to garner support for the 2023 presidency project and not to sit down at one place nursing self-pity. He declared that power could only be taken, not given. “Since it’s a democratic dispensation where number matters, there is need for Ndigbo to sit down an...
Russia says intercepted IS attack plot
Russia’s FSB security service said Saturday it had foiled an attack planned by a cell loyal to the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in the country’s unstable southern republic of Dagestan, arresting four people. “Members of the group planned to detonate an explosive close to an administrative building belonging to security services, followed by an armed attack against interior ministry employees” in regional capital Makhachkala, the FSB said in a statement. As well as arresting four “members of the international IS terrorist group”, investigators found “firearms and bladed weapons, a large amount of ammunition and an explosive device”, it added, along with mobile phones containing “exchanges with organisers located abroad”. On December 17, police killed two attackers targeting security fo...
Nigerian government posts 35 firefighters to man new Treasury House substation
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, on Wednesday commissioned a fire substation built for the Treasury House which houses the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation. Speaking at the event, the Minister extolled the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr Idris Ahmed, for building the facility which will help battle fire incidents in the building and its environs. She was also pleased that 35 firemen have been posted to man the facility by the Comptroller-General of the Fire Service. According to her, “the Treasury House is the key driver of the ongoing Public Financial Management Reforms in line with the desire of the Federal Government to bring the nation up to speed with other leading world economies. “In carrying out this enormous task, ...
FIFA lodges fresh criminal complaints against Sepp Blatter
Getty Images FIFA has lodged a criminal complaint against former president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter over the finances of a museum in Zurich, Switzerland bringing the name of the ex-President into the fray. The football world governing body lodged the complaint on Tuesday. The involvement of Bladder and other former officials in the FIFA museum project is the crux of the latest allegation of financial impropriety against the 84-year-old, who resigned from his post as president in 2015 amid a corruption scandal. The Swiss have always denied any wrongdoing. However, football’s world governing body allege that Blatter’s administration cost them £420m in renovation costs for “a building that the organisation doesn’t own”, while also “locking itself into a long-term rental agreement on unfavourable...
Thousands protest in Sudan in call for faster reform
Thousands of Sudanese protesters took to the streets of the capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman on Saturday, demanding an acceleration of reforms on the second anniversary of the start of an uprising that ousted Omar al-Bashir. The veteran leader was deposed by the military in April 2019 after months of mass protests against poor economic conditions and Bashir’s autocratic, three-decade rule. Many Sudanese are unhappy with what they see as the slow or even negligible pace of change under the transitional government that has struggled to fix an economy in crisis. The government was formed under a three-year power sharing agreement between the military and civilian groups which is meant to lead to fair presidential and parliamentary elections. Sudan’s state TV aired footage of thousa...
Families of kidnapped Katsina schoolboys fear time running out
Families of more than 300 kidnapped Nigerian schoolboys worried they may be brainwashed or held for years as security forces combed a vast forest on Wednesday for armed captors possibly from the jihadist Boko Haram movement. According to an unverified audio clip, the Islamist group – whose name means “Western education is forbidden” – was responsible for last week’s raid on an all-boys school in the town of Kankara in northwestern Katsina state. Parents fear time may be running out: Boko Haram has a history of turning captives into jihadist fighters. “They will radicalise our children if the government does not act fast to help us rescue them,” said trader Shuaibu Kankara, crying as he spoke from home. His 13-year-old son Annas was among those abducted from the Government Science school on...
