18th November 2022 |
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Good Morning. Someone bought Steve Jobs' worn-out Birkenstock sandals for $218K.
Looks like someone is way too into feet.
United States. Republicans have won the 218 seats needed to control the House of Representatives. Pollster Edison Research forecasts that the GOP will have a slim minority in the House. As a result, the U.S. will have a divided Congress after the Democratic Party managed to retain control of the Senate in the midterms.
Myanmar. The military junta governing announced the release of four foreign prisoners on Thursday. The move comes after a period of diplomatic friction caused by international governments lobbying on behalf of the detained foreigners. The junta came to power after the country's military overthrew the democratically-elected government in February 2021. At least 1,500 people were killed in the first year of protests following the coup.
World Cup. Senegal forward Sadio Mane will not play at the Qatar 2022 World Cup due to a leg injury, the team’s doctor has said. Mane has been the team’s talisman, scoring the winning penalty at the Africa Cup of Nations final in Cameroon in February and six weeks later securing World Cup qualification. On both occasions, they edged out Egypt on post-match penalties. Mane, 30, has twice been named African Footballer of the Year.
Equatorial Guinea. On Sunday, elections will be held in which the world’s longest-standing president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, will seek to extend his 43-year authoritarian rule, marked by alleged rights abuses and corruption. The West African oil-producing nation of about 1.5 million people has had only two presidents since independence from Spain in 1968; Obiang and his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema who he removed in a coup in 1979.
1978 Mass Suicide at Jonestown
Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American nation of Guyana. Many of Jones’ followers willingly ingested a poison-laced punch while others were forced to do so at gunpoint. The final death toll at Jonestown that day was 909; a third of those who perished were children.
NIGERIA
Worse Poverty Than Imagined
The Story
The federal government has announced that the number of people living in poverty in Nigeria is as high as 63% of the country's population.
Is this a new report?
This was disclosed on Thursday, during Nigeria’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Survey, where president Muhammadu Buhari was represented by his chief of staff Prof. Ibrahim Gambari. According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the National Social Safety-Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, the figure represents 63% of Nigeria's population living in poverty (OPHI).
How did they arrive at the data?
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in Nigeria was calculated using five components of health, living standard, education, security, and unemployment. "In general, the incidence of monetary poverty is lower than the incidence of multidimensional poverty across most states. In Nigeria, 40.1% of people are poor according to the 2018/19 national monetary poverty line, and 63% are multidimensionally poor according to the National MPI 2022", the report said.
What's the government's plan to fix this?
In his speech, Buhari said the index was chosen because it offers a means of identifying poverty and addressing it through governmental policies. According to the survey, which was conducted between November 2021 and February 2022 and sampled more than 56,000 households across the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT, 65% of the poor (86 million people) live in the North, while 35 (47 million people) do so in the South. According to the report, Sokoto State has the highest rate of poverty among the states (91%), while Ondo has the lowest rate (27%). SOURCE
AFRICA
Kenya's Building Tragedies
The Story
Two persons were killed Thursday in Kenya when a multi-story building under construction collapsed, the second such tragedy in less than a week.
How did the building collapse?
There's been a suspicion of negligence on the part of the developers. "Mum and Dad were inside the house when the building started collapsing, then collapsed on them. When the ambulance came to rescue them they found them already dead and the construction was not fully completed", one of the victims lamented.
Unhabitable structure
Three other people were rescued alive from the family home that was next to the collapsed building located in the Ruaka suburb. "This is not the first story or rather instance. In the course of this one week we have had two buildings that have collapsed. We have lost innocent lives", resident Willy Kamau lamented. This did not just start though. Similar collapses in the country in 2015 led to an order by the presidency for an audit into Kenya's buildings. The National Construction Authority found that 58% of the buildings in the capital, Nairobi, were unfit for habitation.
"Last month we had a woman and her children that were buried; innocent they were also same case. They were not in the building, but a building near their house collapsed and the mother and the children just died like that. So we are asking this is the work of the county government it is not even the national government. The approvals, the drawings and everything is the work of the county government", Kamau added. SOURCE
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EUROPE
Russian To Conclusions
The Story
According to multiple governments, a blast that killed two people in south-eastern Poland on Tuesday was not caused by missiles fired by Russia, easing concerns over the explosions drawing NATO countries into the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
What caused the blast?
Poland’s president announced that Ukraine’s air defenses were responsible for the blast, with the missiles fired in an attempt to shoot down Russian cruise missiles aimed at the invaded country. NATO still assigned blame for the incident to Russia, stating that the superpower’s invasion of Ukraine launched the attack which triggered the country’s air defenses. Ukraine, however, differs on the cause of the blast.
What's Ukraine saying?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy maintains that he had “no doubt it was not our missile.” According to senior Ukrainian defense official Oleksiy Danilov, his country requested “immediate access” to the blast site following the attack, and that Kyiv expects its allies to provide evidence backing their claims that the blast was caused by a Ukrainian missile. Moscow called initial responses to the attack blaming Russia “another hysterical, frenzied Russophobic reaction … without having any idea of what had happened.”
Exonerating Ukraine
Polish president Andrzej Duda declared that the blast was caused by “an S-300 rocket made in the Soviet Union, an old rocket, and there is no evidence it was launched by the Russian side.” He said that it was “highly probable that it was fired by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defence” and that it “unfortunately fell on Polish territory.” The U.S. and NATO backed up this claim, with NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declaring that initial investigations pointed to the blast being “likely caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory.”
Stoltenberg clarified the organization’s stance on the attacks, saying,“Let me be clear: this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears the ultimate responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.” He continued, saying there was “no indication” that the attack was deliberate, and that there was “no call for NATO article 4.” NATO’s Article 4 states that members of the organization can call a meeting if they feel that their territory or security have been threatened. SOURCE
BIOLOGY
Why We Have "Sleep Debt" but not "Sleep Surplus"
adp1314:
Your brain is like a trash can. Throughout the day it fills up with garbage, and at night that garbage is slowly removed. If you don't get enough sleep, only some of the garbage gets taken out. Over time, it builds up until your can is almost always full. A full can is bad and makes you fall asleep or hallucinate.
However if you sleep lots and lots, your trash-can can't get under 0% full. It will always only hold a certain amount of garbage.
INEC reacts to outrage over irregularities in voters’ register
Buhari removes of NYSC DG over ‘incompetence’
‘I’m kneeling and begging’ — Obi asks Wike to support LP for presidency
Two Nigerian athletes convicted of wire fraud in US, risk 10 years in prison
Nigerian Army wins Africa's best land force award
Fayose: I don’t see PDP winning SW, SE… negotiating with Obi will be good
Drunk soldier kills General in Lagos barrack
Ugandan varsity dismisses Nigerian lecturer, alleges sexual misconduct
Take precautions visiting Abuja, Ghana advises citizens
Manchester United remove Ronaldo’s poster from Old Trafford
Food, energy costs push UK inflation to 41-year high
US to demolish four dams in river restoration effort
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
MTN Nigeria Graduate Programme
MTN’s Global Graduate Development Programme seeks to source, develop, and accelerate top graduates from across MTN’s footprint in Africa and the Middle East. The programme offers a privileged experience that fast-tracks talented individuals into critical roles at MTN.
The MTN Graduate Development Programme combines both formal development in partnership with Duke Corporate Education and the MTN Academy, as well as on-the-job development through full employment and placement into a strategically aligned role. The formal component includes modules at MTN’s 3 regional learning centres, located in Southern, Northern and Western Africa. APPLY HERE
World Cup snub: A Premier League XI of players who didn’t make the planes. Football365
How life expectancy has changed since 1950. VC
Are you as smart as a 6-year-old? Freshly Pressed
FULL LIST: Squads of ALL African teams at 2022 World Cup. The Cable
FOOTBALL KNOWLEDGE
Didier Drogba's Jinx
TRIVIA
World Population Knowledge Quiz
No better time to take a world population quiz than now - remember we grew larger yesterday. Take the World Population Quiz to test your understanding of human history and the impacts of population growth.
- What percentage of the earth is arable land?
- What is the world's most densely populated continent?
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