The Nation Newspaper

Category: Foreign

  • WHO okays Oxford vaccine for malaria

    WHO okays Oxford vaccine for malaria

    A cheap malaria vaccine developed with the help of United Kingdom scientists that can be produced on a massive scale has been recommended for use by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

    R21/Matrix-M was developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with the Serum Institute of India and costs between $2 (£1.65) and $4 (£3.30) per dose.

    It’s the second malaria vaccine for children, which could save hundreds of thousands of lives by plugging a huge supply and demand gap.

    Read Also: NLC/TUC strike; in whose interest?

    The new R21/Matrix-M vaccine, developed by Britain’s Oxford University and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, has already been approved for use in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria.

    It has undergone clinical trials in the UK, Thailand, and several African countries and was first approved for use in children aged five months to three in Ghana in April.

    It has now been backed by the World Health Organisation following advice from the body’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE) and the Malaria Policy Advisory Group (MPAG).

  • Trump fraud case trial begins

    Trump fraud case trial begins

    A Civil fraud trial that could deal a major blow to former United States President Donald Trump’s real estate empire began yesterday, with a New York state lawyer accusing him, his sons and the firms of generating more than $1 billion by lying.

    Trump blasted the case as a “scam”.

    The trial in a downtown Manhattan courtroom case concerns accusations by state Attorney General Letitia James that Trump inflated his assets and his own net worth from 2011 to 2021 to obtain favourable bank loans and lower insurance premiums.

    Read Also: ‘Donald Trump raped me,’ accuser tells court

    James is seeking at least $250 million in fines, a permanent ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr and Eric from running businesses in New York and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organisation.

    Trump looked on with his arms crossed as Kevin Wallace, a lawyer in James’ office, called Trump “materially inaccurate” in describing his finances to banks and insurers.

    “This isn’t business as usual, and this isn’t how sophisticated parties deal with each other,” Wallace said in his opening statement. “These are not victimless crimes.”

  • ‘Our expectations from Liberia polls’

    ‘Our expectations from Liberia polls’

    A violence-free, fair, and transparent election will cement the nation’s democratic gains, secure national peace and ongoing reconciliation, the Alliance for Transitional Justice-Liberia, a conglomeration of 16 civil society organisations said yesterday.

    The alliance’s call, coming days before this year’s presidential and legislative elections, raises concern over a shortfall in the money paid to the National Elections Commission after being approved by the National Legislature.

    Read Also: DTAC deploys 16 Nigerian volunteer teachers to Liberia

    The alliance’s founder, Jeremiah S. Swen, said the 2023 general elections mark a historic turning point in Liberia’s democratic journey. As such, a credible election would uplift Liberia as a powerful model to be emulated by any post-war country and restore Africa’s current declining political image.

    As Liberians prepare to go to polls on October 10, there have been reports of violence in which two people were reported killed in Foya Lofa county.

    President George Weah has condemned the killings.

  • Five ways China seeks to manipulate global information environment, by U.S.

    Five ways China seeks to manipulate global information environment, by U.S.

    The United States has released a fact sheet on five ways the People’s Republic of China plans to reshape the global information environment.
    The report released on Thursday said China seeks to shape the information order to its advantage.
    “Beijing has invested billions of dollars to construct a global information ecosystem that promotes its propaganda and facilitates censorship and the spread of disinformation. While formidable, the PRC’s efforts have faced setbacks in democratic countries, due in large part to resistance from local media and civil society,” it said.
    The report identified the five ways as leveraging propaganda and censorship, promoting digital authoritarianism, exploiting international organisations and bilateral partnerships, pairing co-optation and pressure, and exercising control over Chinese-language media.
    “These five elements enable Beijing to bend the global information environment to its advantage. If successful, the PRC’s efforts could transform the global information landscape, creating biases and gaps that lead nations to make decisions that subordinate their economic and security interests to Beijing’s,” it said.
    The report went on: “China Central Television, a state outlet, provides free video footage and television scripts to 1,700 foreign news organizations and media groups. In many cases, content produced by PRC official media is repackaged for local outlets without branding that would identify it as coming from a foreign government.
    “To work around Thai laws limiting foreign media ownership, one of the PRC’s leading technology companies created a local subsidiary run by Thai nationals to purchase Thailand’s most popular news site with 30 million active monthly users.
    The PRC has become a leading provider of digital television services in Africa through StarTimes. By controlling cable TV service providers, the PRC gains the power to determine which stations viewers can access by excluding Western news channels from basic packages.
    “As of 2021, almost 100 influencers disseminated official PRC messaging in at least two dozen languages on multiple social media platforms to a combined audience of over 11 million followers in dozens of countries.
    The PRC is constraining global freedom of expression “Over 1,000 pro-PRC accounts sought to bury a report by the Spain-based nongovernmental organization Safeguard Defenders detailing the presence and activities of 100 “overseas police service stations” in 53 countries linked to local PRC public security authorities across multiple jurisdictions.

    Read Also: U.S. secures release of soldier after crossing into North Korea


    In September 2021, Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Centre reported that phones manufactured by PRC corporation Xiaomi had a default capability to censor a list of at least 449 phrases. This “feature” was inactive in phones shipped to Europe according to the Lithuanian report but could be activated remotely.
    “Beijing uses WeChat and WeiXin – applications popular among Chinese speakers globally and within the PRC – to censor overseas discussions. Communications between registered WeChat users outside the PRC feed through “pervasive” surveillance that directly improves the PRC’s domestic censorship capabilities by teaching WeiXin to recognize sensitive content more quickly.
    In September 2019, Huawei’s French subsidiary filed a defamation suit, which it ultimately withdrew in July 2022, against a French researcher and the talk show that hosted her after she said that Huawei was “under the control of the State and the [CCP]” due to the presence of a CCP committee within the company.
    The PRC is promoting an emerging community of digital authoritarians
    “The PRC exports digital ecosystems like “smart” or “safe” cities to assist in surveillance. As of June 2021, 163 global smart city-public security projects involved PRC firms that have operations in Xinjiang.
    As of 2019, PRC information controls had spread to 102 countries. In 11 of these countries, the deepest diffusion of PRC information control tactics resulted in imitation, or outright replication, of PRC information control laws and techniques.
    With assistance from Beijing, foreign governments have used Huawei systems worth hundreds of millions of dollars to support police work and even to intercept the electronic communications and cellular location data of domestic political opposition members.
    “In November 2021, at least 18 countries used Huawei-manufactured middleboxes, which facilitate and inspect internet traffic on some online networks, to block access to certain sites.
    TikTok’s owner ByteDance seeks to block potential critics of Beijing, possibly including those outside the PRC, from using its platforms. As of late 2020, ByteDance maintained a regularly updated internal list identifying people who were likely blocked or restricted from all ByteDance platforms, including TikTok.”

  • Germany ramps up border controls with Poland, Czech Republic

    Germany ramps up border controls with Poland, Czech Republic

    Germany announced yesterday that it is ramping up its border controls with neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic to “limit human trafficking,” as the country faces fierce debate on its migration policy while asylum applications surge.

    Police will carry out “additional flexible checks and mobile controls along the smuggling routes at the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters.

    She added that the measure would be effective immediately, with the support of Polish and Czech authorities.

    “We must absolutely stop the smugglers’ cruel business because they put human lives at risk with maximum profit,” the minister said.

    The announcement came as the interior minister raised the possibility of implementing fixed controls along the borders with its two eastern neighbors this week. Such a measure may only be temporary and exceptional under the Schengen Area’s rules.

    Until now, the southern state of Bavaria on the Austrian border was the only part of Germany with stationary border controls, a legacy of the 2015-2016 migration crisis when Europe’s leading economy took in over a million refugees.

    Immigration has once again become a hot topic in German politics in recent weeks. There is less than two weeks until regional elections in traditionally conservative stronghold Bavaria and central state Hesse, which may put Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left coalition to the test.

    Read Also: Bago to youths: I will arrest you and your parents if you protest over IBB varsity

    Earlier this month, the country’s Interior Ministry said it would postpone “until further notice” its intake of migrants coming via Italy, under a European voluntary solidarity plan.

    Berlin argues it has made the largest contribution and blames Rome’s decision to withdraw from its obligations to take back asylum seekers rejected in other countries.

    During remarks on Wednesday, Faeser, who is running as the candidate for Scholz’s Social Democratic Party in Hesse, called on countries on Europe’s borders – including Italy – to “better protect” those borders and “apply the procedures” laid down by Brussels.

    “We are fighting to keep internal border controls open within the European Union. But we need this European solution,” she said. “Otherwise, Schengen is in danger,” she added.

    Meanwhile, the German Federal Police counted 70,753 illegal entries into the country in the same period, a nearly 60 percent increase from last year’s data.

    Many local governments and municipalities say they have been overwhelmed by the influx, forcing Berlin’s center-left coalition government to react.

      “Municipalities must not be left to bear the costs, which would be fatal,” Alexander Handschuh, spokesperson for the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, told CNN Wednesday.

  • U.S. secures release of soldier after crossing into North Korea

    U.S. secures release of soldier after crossing into North Korea

    The United States has secured the release of an American soldier who sprinted across a heavily fortified border into North Korea more than two months ago, and he is on his way back to America, officials announced yesterday.

    U.S. ally Sweden and rival China helped with the transfer. Left unanswered were questions of why Pyongyang—which has tense relations with Washington over the North’s nuclear programme, support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and other issues—had agreed to turn him over and why the soldier had fled in the first place.

    North Korea had abruptly announced earlier yesterday that it would expel Pvt Travis King — though some had expected the North to drag out his detention in hopes of squeezing concessions from Washington at a time of high tensions between the two countries.

    “U.S. officials have secured the return of Private Travis King from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

    Read Also: Obasanjo should apologise to monarchs, says Afenifere

    “We appreciate the dedication of the interagency team that has worked tirelessly out of concern for Private King’s wellbeing.”

    Officials said they did not know exactly why North Korea decided to expel King, but suspected Pyongyang determined that as a low-ranking serviceman, he had no real value in terms of either leverage or information.

    One official, who was not authorised to comment and requested anonymity, said the North Koreans may have decided that King, 23, was more trouble to keep than to simply release him.

    Swedish officials took King to the Chinese border, where he was met by the U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, the Swedish ambassador to China, and at least one U.S. Defence Department official. Biden administration officials insisted they provided no concessions to North Korea to secure the soldier’s release.

    “We thank the government of Sweden for its diplomatic role, serving as the protecting power for the United States in the DPRK and the government of the People’s Republic of China for its assistance in facilitating the transit of Private King,” Sullivan added.

    King was flown to a U.S. military base in South Korea before being returned to the U.S.

  • Senate, House push ahead to avert American federal shutdown

    Senate, House push ahead to avert American federal shutdown

    As the Senate marches ahead with a bipartisan approach to prevent a government shutdown, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is back to square one — asking his hard-right Republicans to do what they have said they would never do: approve their own temporary House measure to keep the government open.

    The Republican speaker laid out his strategy yesterday behind closed doors, urging his unruly Republican majority to work together. He set up a test vote Friday, one day before Saturday’s shutdown deadline, on a far-right bill.

    It would slash federal spending by 8% from many agencies and toughen border security but has been rejected by President Joe Biden, Democrats and his own right-flank Republicans.

    “I want to solve the problem,” McCarthy told reporters afterward at the Capitol.

    But pressed on how he would pass a partisan Republican spending plan that even his own right flank doesn’t want, McCarthy had few answers. He rejected outright the Senate’s bipartisan bill, which would fund the government to Nov. 17, adding $6 billion for Ukraine and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief while talks continue. Instead, he insisted, as he often does, that he would never quit trying.

    Congress is at a crossroads days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for millions of federal workers and the military, close down many federal offices, and leave Americans who rely on the government in ways large and small in the lurch.

    Read Also: Bago to youths: I will arrest you and your parents if you protest over IBB varsity

    As the Senate pushes ahead in bipartisan fashion, McCarthy is demanding that Biden meet to discuss border security measures.

    But the beleaguered speaker has little leverage left with the White House without the power of his House majority behind him and after he walked away from the debt deal he and Biden reached earlier this year that is now law. On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened the chamber warning of the right-wing extremes that “seem to exult in shutting down government.” Schumer said: “A reckless shutdown will serve no purpose.”

     The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was in rare agreement with the Democratic leader, urging his House colleagues to consider the Senate’s stopgap approach that keeps funding at current levels, along with bolstered money for Ukraine and U.S. disaster relief, and move off the shutdown strategy.

    “We can take the standard approach and fund the government for six weeks at the current rate of operations or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy,” McConnell said.

    McConnell said he, too, would like to do something about the “Democrats’ reckless spending” and boost border security. But “these important discussions cannot progress” if the functions of government “end up being taken hostage.”

  • Biden appoints two Nigerian-Americans as advisers

    Biden appoints two Nigerian-Americans as advisers

    U.S. President Joe Biden has appointed two Nigerian-Americans as advisers.

    The appointees – Osagie Imasogie and Chiney Ogwumike – are part of the 12 members of the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement in the United States.

    Congratulating the duo on the appointment, the Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, said their recognition and appointment into the 12-member advisory council is a motivation for other Nigerians and Africans in general.

     “The nomination of the two great Nigerians into the advisory council is a welcome development,” she said on Wednesday in a statement by the commission’s spokesman, Abdur-Rahman Balogun.

     Chinenye Ogwumike is a two-time WNBA All-Star for the Los Angeles Sparks and a full-time, multi-platform ESPN commentator and NBA analyst.

     She is one of the only full-time professional athletes to also currently hold a full-time regular national sports media broadcast position.

    Ogwumike was the 2014 WNBA Rookie of the Year and is a two-time WNBA All-Star (2014, 2018). She is proudly Nigerian-American and graduated from Stanford University with an International Relations degree under the mentorship of Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

    In August 2020, she became the first Black woman to host a national daily sports-talk radio show.

    Read Also: Obasanjo should apologise to monarchs, says Afenifere

     The 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 honoree also holds the title of Executive Producer, producing an ESPN Films documentary “144” on the 2020 WNBA season.

     Osagie Imasogie, on the other hand, is the Chairman of the Investment Bank and SEC/FINRA registered Broker-Dealer, Quoin Capital and Quoin Advisors.

     In addition, Imasogie is a co-founder of PIPV Capital, a private equity firm that is focused on the life sciences vertical and has invested over $1 billion into that industry.

    Prior to co-founding PIPV Capital, he established GlaxoSmithKline Ventures and was its founding Vice President.

     Imasogie has held senior commercial and R&D positions within pharmaceutical companies such as GSK, SmithKline Beecham, and DuPont Merck. He has also been a Price Waterhouse Corporate Finance Partner as well as a practising attorney with leading U.S. law firm, Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis.

     Imasogie is a serial entrepreneur and investor who serves on the board of a number of financial institutions such as FS-KKR Capital Corp and Haverford Trust, institutions that cumulatively manage over $28 billion. He is an adviser to Brown Advisory, a firm that manages in excess of $140 billion.

    Imasogie is the Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Nominating & Governance Committee of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center.

    In addition, Imasogie is a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the Executive Committee of the University, and is also the Chairman of the Board of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where he is an Adjunct Professor of Intellectual Property.

    Imasogie holds LLM degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and is a member of the New York State Bar in addition to being admitted to practice in other jurisdictions.

  • Ukraine clarifies Russian commander’s alleged death in strike

    Ukraine clarifies Russian commander’s alleged death in strike

    Ukraine’s military has clarified information received about the alleged assassination of Russian Commander Viktor Sokolov, after Moscow released a video that appears to show him alive and well.

    Kyiv claimed on Monday it killed Sokolov, the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, in an attack on the fleet’s headquarters in occupied Crimea last Friday.

    But, the Russian Ministry of Defence published a video yesterday that appears to show Sokolov participating in a meeting with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and other Russian military leaders.

    Read Also: Real reason Ukraine isn’t ready to join NATO

    Ukraine’s new defence minister Rustem Umerov told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that if Sokolov is dead, “it’s good news for everybody.”

    In an exclusive interview from Kyiv, he neither confirmed nor denied Sokolov had been killed in the strike. “He [Sokolov] is in our temporary occupied territories … he should not be there at all. So, if he’s dead, it’s good news for everybody that we are continuing to de-occupy our territory,” Umerov told Amanpour.

  • UN urges joint approach to tackling migrant rights violations

    UN urges joint approach to tackling migrant rights violations

    The United Nations (UN) has reiterated its call for collaborative efforts to effectively tackle migrant rights violations across the West African sub-region.

    Adwoa Kufuor-Owusu, Senior Human Rights Adviser, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), reiterated the call in Abuja on Monday at a two-day training for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) titled: “Human rights-based response to smuggling of migrants and related crimes”.

    The training was organised by the UN in Nigeria to strengthen the capacities of civil societies to focus on the human rights-aspect of migration.

    Kufuor-Owusu decried the violation of migrants’ rights and other related abuses, saying they were of global concern.

    She described migration as a complex and multifaceted issue that has been harmful to the lives of countless individuals and communities across the world.

    “Not only in Nigeria, it has the power to transform societies, economies and most importantly, individual lives.

    “Migration is often accompanied by challenges, which can lead to violation of the rights of migrants, if not managed properly and safeguarded.

    “So, in order to do this very safeguarding, management of the vulnerability that might arise in the context of migration, there are various legal frameworks which have been established at the international, regional, and national levels,” she said.

    Read Also: NESG to fight brain drain, unemployment

    Speaking during the training, Mr. Tony Ojukwu (SAN), the Executive-Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). emphasised the need for government and civil society groups to work closely to tackle migration issues.

    Ojukwu, represented by Mr. Hilary Ogbonna, Senior Human Rights Adviser of NHRC, said migration, whether regular or irregular, “does not just happen”.

    “It (happens) because people want to exercise their fundamental human rights to freedom of movement or right to association.

    “As a commission, we believe migratory activities or human rights are significant for all the actors involved in it.

    “For government and CSOs, we all need to work closely together to be able to protect human rights to ensure every person that has reason to migrate or return is protected under national and international principles of human rights,” he said.

    Also speaking, Aishat Braimah, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Officer in charge of the Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants Programme, identified some causes of irregular migration.

    “People who are trying to flee persecution, conflicts or natural disaster in their home state, find themselves wanting to migrate through irregular means.

    “In terms of mitigating risks of migration, it is important we work in a holistic way – the reason this training workshop was put together – to bring stakeholders together to solidify the approach to the issues,” Braimah said.

    Some CSO participants who spoke in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) called for relevant awareness creation against violation of migrants, to achieve meaningful progress.