Justina Asishana, Egypt

United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) Director-General Li Yong, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) Antonio Guterres and President of Egypt AbdelFattah El-Sisi have urged world leaders to scale up improvement on youths’ growth and employment.

According to them, with more than half of the world’s population under the age of 30, the rate of unemployment has continued to rise steadily.

Speaking at the opening of the World Youth Forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Yong said the unemployment rate has risen from 9.3 per cent in 1991 to 12.8 percent in 2018.

“Global Youth unemployment rate risen steadily from 1999 to 2018 from 9.3 percent to 12.8 percent,” the UNIDO Director-General said.

He argued that when young people participate and are included in the economic and democratic process, the processes would be sustainable.

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Yong urged governments to focus on technology and manufacturing, adding that manufacturing is one of the fundamental drivers for technology innovation.

The director-general expressed concern that the United Nations’ 2030 agenda for sustainable development will not be visible unless leaders address the need for investing in young people.

“We need to realise that youths are the game-changers in their quest for innovation, sustainable solutions, jobs, wealth and economic development.

“Youth inclusion in the workforce is an integral part of achieving sustainable industrial development. It is time for us to put those who will lead the future of tomorrow in the driving seat,” he said

Guterres said a lot of young people face challenges that prevent them from achieving their full potentials, adding that it is unacceptable.

He said the UN Youth 2030 sustainable goals would not be achieved without needful participation from young people.

He encouraged the youths across the world not to give up and to keep pushing to overcome conflict, gender inequality, poverty, insecurity, unemployment among others.

Declaring the 2019 event open, El-Sisi said the World Youth Forum was created to bring youths worldwide together to discuss and proffer solutions to problems affecting nations.

He said the platform was also set up to spread peace and hope towards a better future of stability in the world.

The 2019 edition of the World Youth Forum is hosting 7,000 Egyptian and foreign youths, as well as a number of other experts, journalists, public figures and officials from around the globe.

U.S. President Donald Trump has cast doubt on whether he will participate in the customary televised debates in 2020 ahead of the presidential election in November.

“I will make a decision at an appropriate time,” Trump said as part of a series of tweets in which he bashed the non-profit Commission on Presidential Debates that has sponsored and produced the debates for the past three-decades.

Trump has avoided taking part in debates so far this election cycle, as he is facing no serious contender within his own Republican Party.

The rival Democrats have held five primary debates so far, with another planned for this week.

Seven Democrats have qualified for the upcoming televised forum, down from a peak of 20 at the onset.

“I look very much forward to debating whoever the lucky person is who stumbles across the finish line in the little watched Do Nothing Democrat Debates,” Trump said.

Trump’s anger at the commission stems in part from an incident in 2016, when his microphone volume was modulated during the first debate with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Polls done at the time showed Clinton performed better in all three debates.

Recently, the New York Times reported that Trump aides were on the fence about the president’s participation in debates in 2020, in part over his anger at the commission and in part because he wanted a say in who will moderate them.

Trump was elected as president in 2016 in spite of no prior career in politics.

He is running for a second and final term in the 2020 cycle.

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has called the European Union (EU) stance against the World War II-era Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact a “shameless lie”.

The EU adopted a resolution two months ago stating that the 1939 non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, named after the diplomats who signed it in Moscow, “paved the way for the outbreak of World War II.”

Russia has preserved the Soviet position that the pact was a necessary evil to prevent the Nazi offensive into the Soviet Union – which nevertheless came two years after the signing, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941.

Speaking to officials organising festivities for the 75th anniversary of the war’s end, Putin said the EU’s position is “not based on anything real,” according to a Kremlin transcript.

The Nazi-Soviet pact is rarely discussed in today’s Russia, whereas the Allied – and particularly Soviet – victory over Nazi Germany, ending the war in Europe, remains a much celebrated source of national pride.

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The EU resolution said the pact set out to divide Europe “between the two totalitarian regimes” of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Historians said that Soviet leader Josef Stalin used the pact as an opportunity to annex territories that, before the 1917 communist revolution, had belonged to the Russian empire.

As Nazi Germany expanded into western Poland, the Soviet Union occupied Baltic territories and eastern Poland.

HIGH turn-out of voters was recorded on Thursday as Britons went to the polls to elect their leaders in the country’s third general election in less than five years.

Conservatives were predicted to win an overall majority of 86 in election, according to an exit poll conducted for the BBC, ITV and Sky News.

Many voters on social media said polling stations were busier than usual yesterday, after having to queue to cast their ballots.

One of those who commented, Bryony Thomas in south London, tweeted that there was a 20-minute wait to cast ballots at her polling station.

“First time I’ve actually stood in a queue at the polling station and “very happy about this,” Jules Bailey tweeted.

Others commented that it was the “first time in 20 years” that they’d seen a queue at their voting booths.

The contest, the first to be held in December in nearly 100 years, followed those in 2015 and 2017.

Polling stations in 650 constituencies across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland opened at 07:00 GMT.

The survey taken at UK polling stations suggested the Tories would get 368 MPs – 50 more than at the 2017 election – when all the results have been counted.

Labour would get 191, the Lib Dems 13, the Brexit Party none and the SNP 55.

The Green Party will still have one MP and Plaid Cymru will lose one seat for a total of three, the survey suggests.

In the exit poll, voters were asked to fill in a mock ballot paper as they leave the polling station indicating how they have just voted.

The exit poll was conducted by Ipsos Mori at 144 polling stations, with 22,790 interviews.

Exit polls have proved to be very accurate in recent years. In 2017 it correctly predicted a hung Parliament, with no overall winner, and in 2015 it predicted the Conservatives would be the largest party.

The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said if the exit poll figures are broadly correct, then Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister Boris Johnson will get the backing he needs in Parliament to take the UK out of the EU next month.

It would be the biggest Conservative victory since 1987 and Labour’s worst result in recent history, the poll suggests, but it will not become clear whether it is accurate until the results start rolling in during the early hours of today.

Elections in the UK traditionally take place every four or five years. But, in October, MPs voted for the second snap poll in as many years. It was the first winter election since 1974 and the first to take place in December since 1923.

Johnson cast his vote at a polling station in central London, taking his dog, Dilyn, along with him. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn posed for pictures when he went to vote in north London.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon visited a polling station in Glasgow, while Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson cast her vote at a polling station in East Dunbartonshire, accompanied by her husband, Duncan Hames.

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price voted in Carmarthenshire and Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley did so in south London.

READ ALSO: Eminent Nigerians bid Johnson farewell

Ahead of the poll, the elections watchdog reminded voters that taking selfies and other photos inside polling stations was not permitted and a breach of the law.

But Merton Council in London’s southwest said it had taken “urgent action” after political posters were illegally displayed near polling stations in the area.

“Our enforcement officers have been carrying out inspections across the borough, and taking urgent action to remove posters which have been put up on roads and publicly-owned land,” a statement from Merton Council said.

“Fly-posting is a criminal offence and perpetrators face fines of many thousands of pounds. We will seek to prosecute the perpetrators.”

Police in Scotland yesterday arrested a man in connection with a “non-viable” suspicious device that was found in a block of flats near a polling station overnight.

“Police in Motherwell have arrested a 48-year-old man in connection with a suspicious device found on the ground floor of Glen Tower flats, Motherwell around 1am on Thursday, 12 December, 2019,” Chief Inspector Mark Leonard, from Lanarkshire Police, said in a statement on Facebook. “Enquiries are ongoing,” he added.

 

 

By Bolaji Ogundele, Abuja

 

President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned the terrorist attack in Inates, western region of Niger Republic, which killed 67 military personnel, with 34 people still unaccounted.

Buhari, in a statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu, sent condolences to the families of those affected as well as the government of Niger Republic.

Expressing deep shock and sadness over the attack by terrorists that reportedly crossed in from neighbouring Mali, the President expressed Nigeria’s solidarity with the government and people of Niger Republic.

Buhari reaffirmed the resolve of his administration to continue working closely with countries neighbouring the Sahel and the Sahara as well as international partners to defeat the roving terrorists creating havoc in the sub region.

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‘’On behalf of myself, the government and people of Nigeria, I send our deepest condolences to the families of the bereaved, the government and the people of Niger Republic following this dastardly attack.

‘’We offer prayers for the repose of those murdered and for the safe recovery and return of those who are still to be accounted for,” said the President.

The attack was the deadliest on Niger’s military since the armed forces began fighting Islamist militants in 2015.

“The attack killed more than 60,” a source told AFP. “The terrorists bombarded the camp with shells and mortars. The explosions from ammunition and fuel were the cause of the heavy toll.”

The source did not say which group was responsible for the deadly assault.

The town of Inates is in the Tillaberi region, around 260 km (160 miles) north of the capital, Niamey.

Local media put the death toll at more than 70, with dozens reported missing.

A security source claimed that dozens of assailants on motorcycles surrounded and attacked the camp at around 7:30 p.m. (1830 GMT).

President Mahamadou Issoufou cut short a visit to Egypt, where he was attending a conference on sustainable peace, security and development in Africa to return to Niger following the attack, the Presidency tweeted.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, accusing him of abuse of power and obstructing Congress.

Democrats announced the move at a news conference, saying they must act now because the integrity of the 2020 elections is at risk and because the president has consistently put his own interests above those of the country.

“We do not take this action lightly, but we have taken an oath to defend the constitution,” Representative Jerry Nadler said, calling it a “solemn step”.

The House Judiciary Committee, which Nadler leads, will meet to consider the articles of impeachment on Wednesday evening.

The articles are expected to pass in the House, which is dominated by Democrats.

This means that Trump likely become the third president in history to have been formally “impeached.”

If the articles pass the House, the process then moves to the Republican-controlled Senate, where a trial overseen by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts would be held followed by a vote of all 100 members.

It appears unlikely enough Republicans would join Democrats in the Senate vote to remove Trump from office.

Tuesday’s announcement was expected after Democrats, who have conducted an impeachment inquiry over the last several weeks, held a final hearing on Monday at which lawyers for the intelligence and judiciary committees presented their case for impeachment.

Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly called the impeachment inquiry a “hoax,” tweeted earlier Tuesday in anticipation of the Democrats’ next step.

“To Impeach a President who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness!” he wrote.

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Democrats, undeterred by their slim chance of success in the Senate, said again Tuesday the matter is too important not to act.

“To do nothing would make ourselves complicit in the president’s abuse of his high office, the public trust and our national security,” Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee, said.

Justifying the accusations, Schiff said Trump solicited a foreign nation – Ukraine – “to publicly announce investigations into his opponent and a baseless conspiracy theory promoted by Russia to help his re-election campaign.”

Schiff said Trump abused the power of his office by conditioning two official acts to get Ukraine to help his re-election – the release of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid Ukraine desperately needed and a White House meeting.

Democrats say that Trump withheld the aid as part of a pressure campaign to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, the former U.S. vice president and a frontrunner among Democrats seeking their party’s nomination to run against Trump next year.

Biden’s son Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, raising questions about corruption. However, previous investigations turned up no evidence that the younger Biden did anything illegal.

Trump also wanted Ukraine to look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Schiff said when the president got caught he committed his second impeachable act, which was obstruction of Congress’ ability “to make sure that no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States” by blocking testimony from certain witnesses and refusing to release documents.

He said if Congress didn’t take action “it would decimate Congress’ ability to conduct oversight of this president or any other in the future.”

Finland’s parliament has chosen Sanna Marin as the country’s new prime minister, making the 34-year-old the world’s youngest sitting head of government.

Marin took office in Helsinki today as the head of a five-party, centre-left coalition alongside four other parties all headed by women – three of whom are in their early 30s.

The 200-seat Eduskunta parliament approved Ms Marin in a 99-70 vote. The government has a comfortable majority of 117 seats.

Marin’s new finance minister, Katri Kulmuni, is even younger at 32, and only one of her coalition partners is over 35.

Marin had previously served as the minister for transport and communication since June this year.

The previous youngest world state leader was Oleksiy Honcharuk, the current prime minister of Ukraine, who was appointed at the age of 35 by comedian-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky in August.

Despite making global headlines Marin today deflected questions about the international attention she has received over becoming the world’s youngest premier.

She told reporters outside parliament: “My own thoughts have been on practical things and this week, I haven’t followed what the press have been writing very much either at home or abroad.”

Earlier this week she said: “I have never thought about my age or gender, I think of the reasons I got into politics and those things for which we have won the trust of the electorate.”

Marin grew up looked after by her mother and her mother’s girlfriend, and said that her ‘rainbow family’ showed her the importance of ‘equality, fairness and human rights’.

In a 2015 interview, Marin said she felt ‘invisible’ as a child, because she could not speak openly about her family setup.

She has also said that her childhood has strongly influenced her political priorities, which include protecting Finland’s generous welfare system and low levels of inequality.

“I come from a poor family and would not have been able to succeed and move forward were it not for the strong welfare state and the Finnish education system,” she told Helsingin Sanomat.

The Social Democrats took office in June after defeating the far-right, anti-immigration Finns Party by the narrowest of margins in April’s general election.

The victory was seen by some commentators as a triumph for Finland’s liberal, equal society over a party that ran on a ticket of cutting asylum levels almost to zero and halting anti-climate change measures.

Speaking after Tuesday’s parliamentary vote, Marin pledged to rebuild trust in her party.

“We have promised the Finnish people change and now we must deliver on that promise. In June we agreed a government programme together and I believe it is through actions that we will best restore people’s trust,” she said.