Category: Foreign

More than 100 migrants were missing after their boat sank off the coast of Libya in what might be the worst tragedy in the Mediterranean this year, aid agencies said Thursday.

“The sinking took place off the coast of the city of Khoms,” some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Tripoli, said Safa Msehli, spokesperson for the International Organisation of Migration in Libya.

About 145 migrants were rescued by the Libyan coastguard, and survivors had reported that about 150 people remained missing, she said.

General Ayoub Kacem, a spokesman for the Libyan navy, said that “134 migrants were rescued and a body recovered, while 115 other migrants are still missing”.

The charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said as many as 250 migrants were still missing.

The migrants had been apparently headed out to sea on three boats lashed together, MSF mission chief Julien Raickman told AFP by telephone.

He said survivors had reported a total of almost 400 people on board.

Kacem said most of the rescued migrants were from Ethiopia while others were Palestinians and Sudanese. The coastguard was waiting for authorities to provide accommodation for them.

The head of the UN refugee agency Filippo Grandi tweeted that it was “the worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year”.

“Restoring rescue at sea, ending refugee + migrant detention in Libya, increasing safe pathways out of Libya must happen NOW, before it is too late for many more desperate people,” he added.

The capsize came only a few weeks after some 68 migrants died when an Italy-bound boat sank off Tunisia.

That vessel, filled with mostly African migrants, tipped over shortly after setting out from the Libyan town of Zuwara, west of Tripoli, with the aim of reaching Italy.

Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed president Moamer Kadhafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, desperate to reach Europe.

Humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee said Sunday it had relaunched rescue efforts off Libya seven months after abandoning operations as European ports refused to accept the migrants.

The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking will “conduct search and rescue activities in the central Mediterranean” for SOS Mediterranee and MSF, the group said in a statement.

It said the exodus from Libya was “one of the most perilous sea crossings in the world”.

After nearly three years of operations in which it rescued some 30 000 migrants, the Aquarius had been forced to cease operations because of what the group said was obstruction by some European countries.

Italy’s populist-dominated government has become particularly hardline against accepting undocumented migrants on its territory.

Chinese researchers have used iPS cells to regenerate retina, which holds the potential to develop new therapies for some blinding diseases such as retinal degeneration.

The iPS cells are a type of pluripotent stem cell artificially derived from a non-pluripotent cell. It can be induced to have the same genetic information as early embryonic cells.

Researchers from China’s Central South University made iPS cells from somatic cells in the patients’ urine or blood and induced the iPS cells to differentiate into RPE cells, a layer of cells in the back of the eye.

According to the research published in the journal, Acta Biomaterialia, the RPE cells can form an ultra-thin layer of structure similar to the retina.

In future studies, the researchers plan to transplant the structure behind the patient’s retina to see if it can fix the patient’s vision.

Since the iPS cells are derived from the patient’s cells, immune rejection of cell transplantation is avoided.

The retinal degeneration, which may lead to permanent blindness, is one of the most common eye diseases among people over the age of 50 NAN.

The United States (U.S.) Department has imposed visa restrictions on Nigerians who were involved in trying to or undermined democracy in the concluded 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections.

It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari won a second term in office in February in an election characterized by logistical problems, violence and killings.

The department, however, did not list the names of the individuals or say how many were affected by the visa ban, but it clearly pointed out that it was for those who undermined the process.

Morgan Ortagus, spokeswoman of the department said: “These individuals have operated with impunity at the expense of the Nigerian people and undermined democratic principles and human rights.

“The Department of State emphasises that the actions announced today are specific to certain individuals and not directed at the Nigerian people or the newly elected government,” Ortagus added.

An Egyptian criminal court on Monday sentenced 11 defendants to life in prison on charges of joining the Islamic State extremist group in Syria and Iraq.

The Giza Criminal Court also sentenced two other defendants to 15 years in prison and another to three years in the same case.

All verdicts can be appealed.

The charges against the defendants include receiving training to carry out hostile acts in the country, plotting attacks on police and military forces and seeking to forcibly topple the government.

Egypt has been battling an Islamist insurgency in northern Sinai since the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time autocrat Hosny Mubarak.

The attacks have intensified after the military in 2013 deposed Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically elected but divisive Islamist president of Egypt.

After his ouster, Morsi was detained and tried in several cases.

He died in mid-June at the age of 67 after suddenly collapsing inside a courtroom in Cairo. (dpa/NAN)

China National Offshore Oil Co (CNOOC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) on upstream exploration and development, state-backed China News Agency reported on Monday.

The pact also covers oil refining and liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade.

The MOU was signed on the sideline of a state visit by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Zayed.

Under the agreement, companies will share the latest know-how in developing ultra-acidic natural gas fields, the report said, citing a statement from CNOOC Group.

The two companies will consider enlisting CNOOC’s engineering arms, Offshore Oil Engineering Co Ltd. (600583.SS) and China Oilfield Services Ltd. (601808.SS) as contractors for design, purchase and construction as well as oilfield service providers for ADNOC.

The companies will also explore cooperating in LNG marketing and purchases.

In the downstream oil refining and petrochemicals sector, ADNOC will look into opportunities for investing in CNOOC’s existing refineries, the report

An American multinational company, Stericycle Inc., recently hoisted the Nigerian flag in honour of a hardworking new employee, Mrs Omolanke Shelle.

Thirty eight years old Shelle, an indigene of Ekiti, Western Nigeria, works at the company’s facility in Aurora, Illinois, where the Green-White-Green was raised in April.

This came barely a month after Stericycle gave the mother of three a full-time job on March 17, following the expiration of her temporary employment that lasted for about five months.

Her supervisor, Mr John Katchka, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that Shelle was honoured on account of her “attitude, work ethic, ability to learn and team spirit’’.

“Ms Shelle came to us via a temporary employment agency during our busy season,’’ Katchka said in a written response to NAN’s inquiry.

“We were impressed by her attitude, work ethic, ability to learn and team spirit. When her (temporary) assignment ended; we offered her full-time employment, which she accepted,’’ it stated.

A short video of the flag raising ceremony, which has been circulating on social media, caught the attention of Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Chairperson of the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission.

On July 9, Dabiri-Erewa retweeted the video posted by a broadcast journalist, AbdulRasheed Abubakar, with the comment: “Big congrats. #Proudly Nigerian’’.

Abubakar, on his part, wrote: “Nigerians are not criminals. A big congratulations to Lanke Shelle for making Nigeria proud in the Diaspora.’’

Shelle told NAN on phone that she started working with Stericycle through a temporary employment agency when she moved to the U.S. with her family in 2015.

“When we came to the U.S., I had to work to assist my husband with the bills; besides I want to return to school, so I need money.

“As a temporary staff, I was supposed to work for eight and half hours from 7 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., but I begged them for overtime, which they granted.

“This saw me working for 12 hours (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.) on week days and six hours most Saturdays, and I was being paid about 11 dollars per hour,’’ she said.

Checks by NAN revealed that Illinois and federal labour regulations do not limit the number of hours employees are permitted to work in a day or week.

But the state requires employers to give workers no fewer than 24 hours off in each calendar week.

Shelle, who said she was the only African working at the Aurora centre, added that the Nigerian flag was still hoisting as at the time of filing this report on Saturday morning.

Katchka explained that flag raising was a tradition introduced by the company since 2008 to honour the `birthplace and heritage’ of worthy new team members.

Stericycle is an environmental and regulated waste management company, with specialty in the collection and disposal of medical, pharmaceutical and hazardous wastes.

It also provides services for recalled and expired goods, in addition to provision of related education, training and patient communication services.

Founded in 1989 and with its headquarters in Lake Forest, Illinois, Stericycle, has many operational bases around the world, including toxic waste incinerators in Utah and North Carolina, U.S. (NAN)

An Australian Supreme Court on Friday sentenced a 25-year-old man, Anthony Harvey, who admitted to killing his three young daughters, twin, two-year-old and three-year-old with their mother and grandmother to life imprisonment.

The people were found dead inside their home in suburban Perth in Sept. 2018, after Harvey, walked into a police station in the Pilbara region and reported the himself.

Supreme Court Justice, Stephen Hall, held that Harvey’s crimes were exceptionally horrific and sentenced him to life in prison.

Hall said, Harvey was the first person in Western Australia that will never be released from jail, a provision that was introduced to the state’s homicide laws in 2008.

“There is no other case that is truly comparable,’’ the judge said,  as the women were unsuspecting, while the children were asleep before they were horribly murdered.

However, Harvey had written in a journal about embracing his “darkness and animal instincts and eliminating’’ his family.

“I am no psycho. I feel too much, I always have, I will regret what I do’’ he wrote, according to Australian news agency AAP.

Hall said the journal entries were “not a mere record of dark fantasies’’ and added that Harvey had planned the murder for days.

dpa/NAN

South Africa’s Zuma worried

(Reuters/NAN) Former South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday said he had received a death threat after his testimony the previous day to an inquiry on corruption.

Zuma told the inquiry on Monday that he had been the victim of a plot to get rid of him and that he could trace that conspiracy to foreign intelligence services and the apartheid government in the 1990s.

Appearing again on Tuesday, Zuma said his personal assistant received a phone call late on Monday from an unknown caller threatening to kill Zuma and his children.

The country’s deputy chief justice, Raymond Zondo, who is overseeing the inquiry, said the threats were unacceptable.

There was no immediate comment from the police.

Zuma, ousted by the governing African National Congress (ANC) in February 2018 and replaced by President Cyril Ramaphosa, has consistently denied wrongdoing over his nine years in power.

His appearance at the inquiry caps a dramatic fall from grace for a politician, who long dominated the country’s politics.

The inquiry is investigating allegations that Zuma allowed three Gupta brothers, friends of his, to plunder state resources and influence senior government appointments.

Several former officials have told the inquiry that the Guptas were privy to information about senior government appointments.

On Monday Zuma denied that he had done anything unlawful with the Guptas or that he had discussed anything with them that he should not have.

The Gupta brothers, who denied the allegations at the time, left the country around the time that Zuma was ousted.

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