Graphitti News collates 12 national and
international highlights from late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories
that will be talked about Friday:
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| FILE - In this Oct. 7, 2013, file photo, provided by Jeremy Writebol, his mother, Nancy Writebol, poses with children in Liberia. Nancy Writebol is one of two Americans working for a missionary group in Liberia who were infected with the Ebola virus, and who have been receiving treatment at Emory University Hospital, in Atlanta. Emory planned to hold a news conference Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014, to discuss both patients' discharge. (AP Photo/Courtesy Jeremy Writebol) |
1. CONFAB WON’T BE A WASTE OF TIME, RESOURCES –
JONATHAN
President Goodluck Jonathan has assured Nigerians that
the 2014 National Conference will not be a waste of time and resources.
He gave the assurance yesterday while receiving the
report of the conference from its chairman, Hon Justice Idris Legbo Kutigi,
former chief justice of Nigeria.
The president, who formally declared the conference
closed, said “As I receive the report of your painstaking deliberations, let me
assure you that your work is not going to be a waste of time and resources. We
shall do all we can to ensure the implementation of your recommendations which
have come out of consensus and not by divisions.
“The discourse reflected our latest challenges. We
shall send the relevant aspects of your recommendations to the Council of
States and the National Assembly for incorporation into the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria. On our part, we shall act on those aspects
required of us in the Executive”.
2. NFF CANCELS AUGUST 26 ELECTIONS
The Nigeria Football Federation has called on all
Nigerians to discountenance a statement by the Chairman of NFF Electoral
Committee, Mr. Amoni Biambo, to the effect that elections into the NFF
Executive Committee will hold at the General Assembly of Tuesday, 26th August,
2014. “The statement must have been made in error. As far as the NFF is
concerned, there will be no elections at the General Assembly of Tuesday, 26th
August. There is a proposal that we are taking to the General Assembly (the
supreme body of Nigeria football) for consideration and approval, with regards
to the elections. “It is for the NFF and the General Assembly to propose the
date for elections, not that of the Electoral Committee, which was put in place
by the General Assembly,” NFF General Secretary, Barr. Musa Amadu, said
yesterday.
3. PARDONED BIAFRAN SOLDIERS, OTHERS GET 20% PENSION
ARREARS
THE 160 Biafran soldiers
who were granted presidential pardon are among military pensioners that would
be paid balance of their 20 per cent pension arrears.
This came as the Federal
Government vowed to do everything within available resources to pay the
military pensioneers the balance of their arrears with effect from 2010 to
2013, running into billions of naira.
The government had, in
2013, paid the retirees 33 per cent instead of 53 per cent accumulated arrears,
but the military pensioners, three weeks ago, protested the payment of the
balance of 20 per cent in Abuja and threatened to disrupt the 2015 general
election if they were not paid.
Speaking during a visit
to the military pensions board, on Thursday, Minister of State for Defence,
Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, disclosed that the agitation of the retirees for the
payment of their arrears was receiving attention at the highest level of
government and would all be paid soon.
4. HAGEL: US AIRSTRIKES CURBING ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS
But
the militants along the Iraq and Syrian border will likely regroup and launch a
new offensive, the defense secretary says.
5. WHY PAYING RANSOMS FOR CAPTIVES IS TROUBLESOME
By acceding to kidnappers' demands, governments in the
Mideast and Europe have become some of the biggest financiers of terror groups.
6. ONE-TWO PUNCH APPARENTLY EFFECTIVE AGAINST POLIO
Giving
a vaccine shot to children who've already swallowed an oral polio vaccine
greatly boosts their immunity, research suggests.
7. FIRST TRUCKS IN
RUSSIAN AID CONVOY DRIVEN ACROSS BORDER INTO EASTERN UKRAINE
Russia unilaterally sent
an aid mission into rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Friday, saying its patience
had worn out after a week of delays it blamed on the Ukrainian government.
The International
Committee of the Red Cross, which had planned to escort the convoy to assuage
fears that it was being used as a cover for an invasion by Russia, said it had
not received enough security guarantees to escort the convoy.
Trucks loaded with water,
generators and sleeping bags sent from Moscow are intended for civilians in the
city of Luhansk, where pro-Russian separatist fighters are besieged by
government forces. Shelling of the city has been ongoing for weeks.
An Associated Press
reporter saw a priest blessing the first truck in the convoy at the rebel-held
checkpoint and then climbing into the passenger seat. A rebel commander on the
scene said 34 trucks had gone through. On the Russia side of the border, an
Associated Press reporter counted another 32 vehicles going into the customs
zone.
The vehicles' immediate
destination was not known and it was not clear whether Kiev had granted its
approval.
8. EXTREMISTS' USE OF
SYRIA AS A SANCTUARY IS AT THE HEART OF OBAMA'S COUNTERTERROR DILEMMA
At the heart of President
Barack Obama's quandary over the Islamic State militants is their haven in
Syria.
The president may
continue helping Iraqi forces try to reverse the group's land grabs in northern
Iraq by providing more arms and American military advisers and by using U.S.
warplanes to support Iraqi ground operations.
But what if the militants
pull back, even partially, into Syria and regroup, as Defense Secretary Chuck
Hagel on Thursday predicted they would, followed by a renewed offensive?
"In a sense, you're
just sort of back to where you were" before they swept into Iraq, said
Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who quit in February in
disillusionment over Obama's unwillingness to arm moderate Syrian rebels.
"I don't see how you
can contain the Islamic State over the medium term if you don't address their
base of operations in Syria," he said in an interview before an
intensified round of U.S. airstrikes this week helped Kurdish and Iraqi forces
recapture a Tigris River dam near Mosul that had fallen under control of
Islamic State militants.
9. REMAINS OF MH17
VICTIMS RETURN TO MOURNING MALAYSIA AS GOVT FACES FALLOUT OF 2 PLANE TRAGEDIES
Carried by soldiers and
draped in the national flag, coffins carrying Malaysian victims of Flight MH17
returned home Friday to a country still searching for those onboard another
doomed jet and a government battling the political fallout of the twin
tragedies.
The bodies and ashes of
20 victims from the Malaysia Airlines jet that was shot down over eastern
Ukraine in July were given full military honors and a day of national mourning
was declared, the first in the country's history.
Many people in offices in
the nation of 30 million observed a minute's silence as the hearses were driven
from the tarmac of Kuala Lumpur International Airport to private funerals. Some
public trains in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, stopped operating.
All 298 people onboard
died when the jet was shot down over an area of Ukraine controlled by
pro-Russia separatists on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The victims
included 43 Malaysians and 195 Dutch nationals. An international investigation
is ongoing, but no one has been arrested.
The return of the bodies
also represented a political triumph for Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose
already shaky popularity ratings were hit by his handling of the still unsolved
disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew
in March.
10. US EBOLA SURVIVOR
THANKS GOD, ASKS FOR PRAYERS AND AID FOR AFRICAN COUNTRIES FIGHTING OUTBREAK
As one of few Ebola
survivors with medical expertise, Dr. Kent Brantly seems keenly aware of the
position his painful experience has put him in. He hasn't spoken yet about his
plans, but spent much of his first public appearance pleading for help for
countries still struggling with the virus.
"I am forever
thankful to God for sparing my life and am glad for any attention my sickness
has attracted to the plight of West Africa in the midst of this epidemic,"
Brantly said Thursday at a news conference before leaving Emory University
Hospital, where he and a medical missionary colleague spent three weeks in an
isolation unit as they recovered.
"Please continue to
pray for Liberia and the people of West Africa, and encourage those in
positions of leadership and influence to do everything possible to bring this
Ebola outbreak to an end," he added before hugging all the doctors and
nurses, a display of affection telegraphing the message that Ebola survivors
are not contagious.
With the world watching,
Brantly could continue sending these messages from the United States or even
return to Africa with his doctors' blessing.
"My family and I
will now be going away for a period of time to reconnect, decompress and
continue to recover physically and emotionally. After I have recovered a little
more and regained some of my strength, we will look forward to sharing more of
our story," said Brantly, visibly thinner than he appeared in an image
circulated earlier by his charity organization, the North Carolina-based
Samaritan's Purse.
11. IN FERGUSON FALLOUT,
CALLS GROW FOR POLICE TO WEAR 'BODY CAMERAS' — BUT WITH CAVEATS
What if Michael Brown's
last moments had been recorded?
The fatal police shooting
of the unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, is prompting calls for
more officers to wear so-called body cameras, simple, lapel-mounted gadgets
that capture video footage of law enforcement's interactions with the public.
Proponents say the devices add a new level of accountability to police work.
"This is a
technology that has a very real potential to serve as a check and balance on
police power," says Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American
Civil Liberties Union.
The case supporters make
is simple: Cops and criminal suspects alike are less likely to misbehave if
they know they're being recorded. And there's some evidence supporting it. In a
recent Cambridge University study, the police department in Rialto, California
— a city of about 100,000— saw an 89 percent decline in the number of
complaints against officers in a yearlong trial using the cameras.
The number of times the
police used force against suspects also declined. After the trial, the cameras
became mandatory for the department's roughly 100 officers.
12. COAL GAS BOOM IN
CHINA THREATENS TO SPEW GREENHOUSE GASES AS WORLD TRIES TO CURB EMISSIONS
Deep in the hilly grasslands
of remote Inner Mongolia, twin smoke stacks rise more than 200 feet into the
sky, their steam and sulfur billowing over herds of sheep and cattle. Both day
and night, the rumble of this power plant echoes across the ancient steppe, and
its acrid stench travels dozens of miles away.
This is the first of more
than 60 coal-to-gas plants China wants to build, mostly in remote parts of the
country where ethnic minorities have farmed and herded for centuries. Fired up
in December, the multibillion-dollar plant bombards millions of tons of coal
with water and heat to produce methane, which is piped to Beijing to generate
electricity.
It's part of a
controversial energy revolution China hopes will help it churn out desperately
needed natural gas and electricity while cleaning up the toxic skies above the
country's eastern cities. However, the plants will also release vast amounts of
heat-trapping carbon dioxide, even as the world struggles to curb greenhouse
gas emissions and stave off global warming.
If all of the plants
start up, the carbon dioxide they'd release would equal three-quarters of all
energy-related carbon emissions in the U.S., according to U.S. government data
and energy experts from Duke and Stanford universities. That is far more than
now produced in China by burning coal, the country's main source of power.
So far, China is running
only two pilot plants to produce methane, which is also known as synthetic
natural gas, in the provinces of Inner Mongolia and far western Xinjiang, with
another 21 approved. Building all 60 plants would cost an estimated $65
billion.
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