Good Morning. Meet Hannah Ford. The 86-year-old woman has fostered 189 children over 40 years. And she has no plans to stop. According to her, "There are just too many children out there in need. They're coming out of situations where they're not fed properly, they're not loved properly. They need me and I need them."
Indonesia. A stampede at a football match left at least 125 people dead on Saturday. The incident marks one of the worst football stadium disasters in history. The stampede occurred after the local team lost to one of its main rivals and the crowd panicked after police fired tear gas at spectators who ran onto the pitch before the game's final whistle.
Morocco. The government has called on Adidas to pull its new jersey collection for Algeria’s national football team off the market, accusing the German apparel company of appropriating “Moroccan cultural heritage”. The design on the jerseys of the rival North African team depicts a traditional mosaic of coloured earthenware tiles, known in Morocco as zellige.
Chad. Resolutions have been adopted that push back democratic elections by two years and allow interim leader Mahamat Idriss Deby to stay in power and be eligible to run for president in the eventual vote.The military authorities originally promised an 18-month transition to elections when Deby seized power in April 2021 after his father, President Idriss Deby, was killed on the battlefield during a conflict with insurgents.
At the end of a sensational trial, American former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson’s “dream team” of lawyers employed creative and controversial methods to convince jurors that Simpson’s guilt had not been proved “beyond a reasonable doubt,” thus surmounting what the prosecution called a “mountain of evidence” implicating him as the murderer.
The completion date for the second Niger Bridge has been postponed to the first quarter of 2024.
What was the previous date? The bridge, whose construction started five years ago and which links Delta and Anambra States, was previously scheduled to be completed in October, 2022. The Acting Federal Controller of Works in Anambra State, Mr. Seyi Martins, disclosed the new projected completion date when members of the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) toured the bridge.
What stage is the construction now? According to Martins, who noted that the first phase of the project -the bridge proper - has substantially been completed, work on the bridge has reached 95% completion. Martins said that the remaining 5% of the job was the final asphalt surfacing on the Asaba end carriageway lane, adding that the streetlights, handrails, and parapet wall have been completed.
Why's the 5% going to take more than a year to complete? “The bridge project was expected to be delivered by the end of December 2022, but there is a second phase which is a 3.3km road approach on the Delta side and 7km of approach road on the Anambra side that is yet to commence", Martins said. He, however, noted that the government has deemed it fit that upon completion of the first phase, which is expected soon, the bridge will be open to traffic. Source
LATIN AMERICA
Hanging in the Balance
The Story
Yesterday, voters in Brazil's presidential election were at various polling stations across the country yesterday to choose the country's next leader.
What does a candidate need to win? A candidate must secure more than 50% of the valid votes cast to be declared president. If none of the candidates receives the required percentage of valid votes cast, a run-off will be held between the top two on October 30. There are more than 130 million registered voters, and voting is compulsory for Brazilians between 18 and 70 years of age. There are eleven presidential candidates, but only two are projected to have a real chance of winning - incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro and his main rival, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Any hint of who is leading the voting at this time?
With almost all the votes counted, Lula had won 48% against Bolsonaro's 43% - a much closer result than opinion polls had suggested. But Lula fell short of the more than 50% of valid votes needed to prevent a run-off.
How soon are the results expected?
Because of the runoff, voters now have four weeks to decide which of the two should lead Brazil. But it's going to be a battle to the finish. The two men are arch-rivals and spent much of the campaign trading insults. In the last TV debate before the vote, President Bolsonaro called Lula a thief, in reference to the corruption charges that put him in jail for 580 days before the conviction was annulled. Lula, in turn, has labelled Mr Bolsonaro a madman.
Bolsonaro has been widely criticized for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. He also triggered controversy ahead of the election, as he expressed doubts over the country's voting system, raising questions about whether he would accept defeat. On the other hand, the 76-year-old former president Lula is making a bid to return to Brazil's top job 20 years after he first stormed to the presidency. The former union leader lifted millions out of poverty during his previous tenure but has since been tainted by corruption scandals. Source
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FOOD
The Magic Beans
The Story
The 9-5 grind of the rat race is probably not the best thing for our health, mentally or physically. The fuel that keeps our capitalist hell-machine running, though, might actually be a health food.
What's the news? According to a new study, drinking coffee regularly might protect people from cardiovascular disease and early death. The new look at coffee used data from the U.K. Biobank, a database that contains the coffee consumption preferences of nearly 450,000 adults, who had healthy hearts at the beginning of the study. Perhaps those jitters and trips to the bathroom are good for you.
How about its negative impact on sleep and the effect of that on health? After 12.5 years, the researchers took another look at the data, which showed that all types of coffee (ground, instant, and decaffeinated) were linked with a reduction in death from any cause. “The results suggest that mild to moderate intake of ground, instant and decaffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle,” said Peter Kistler, the author of the study.
What's the recommended volume to be consumed? The study showed that drinking two to three cups of coffee per day was associated with the largest reduction in early death compared to people who drank no coffee at all. “Caffeine is the most well-known constituent in coffee, but the beverage contains more than 100 biologically active components. It is likely that the non-caffeinated compounds were responsible for the positive relationships observed between coffee drinking, cardiovascular disease and survival,” said Kistler. Source
LIFE EXPERIENCES
Quora Question: What have you seen on a job resume that made your jaw drop?
Chris Gee: I love this one.
I was asked to conduct the technical portion of an interview, but didn't find out until about an hour prior to the appointment. In order to prep, I asked for a copy of the candidate's resume. As I was going through it, I saw a bullet that seriously made my jaw drop.
It said “Time Magazine's Person of the Year - 2006". What? I had to go online and check this out. The cover is the image above
I didn't know what to think, but I had to meet this guy. He was both extremely knowledgeable and personable, so he got the job. I asked him about the bullet, and he said something to the effect of “I put it in there to see how people will react. If they don't have a sense of humor, then I don't want to work with them.”
Harvard I Tatti/DHI Rom Joint Fellowship for African Studies
The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and the German Historical Institute in Rome (Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom) offer a joint residential fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year. With this fellowship, I Tatti and the DHI Rom seek to stimulate and support increased scholarship on cultural exchange with and within the African continent during the period c. 1250-1750 by creating and promoting opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
The application welcomes scholars of all nationalities. Applicants must have their PhD certificate in hand by the time they apply. Fellows will spend five months at the DHI Rom (September 2023 – January 2024). The stipend is Euro 2,500 per month, plus a monthly supplement of Euro 1,000 to offset rental costs.
Application Deadline: November 15, 2022. APPLY HERE
Trevor Noah highlights from “The Daily Show.” New York Times
Olumide Glowville's journey from Content Creator to Digital Marketing Specialist. Freshly Pressed
POLITICS TODAY
The Nigerian Dream: Obi's Cross
The bid for the Nigerian Presidency has always been a two-horse race, since the country's independence on October 1, 1960.
Despite several military interventions, it's remained the same each time democracy returned, and has been since the beginning of the current 4th republic in 1999. While there have been changes in name and formation in other parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has remained constant since 1999, and only lost the presidential seat in 2015, after four previous successful runs.
In addition to the two-horse race and the PDP's regular show since 1999, one other thing that has been constant is Nigerians' misery in the hands of successive governments, a misery that has been compounded since 2015, and is now at a level never experienced before.
