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  • US deports German convicted of double murder in 1985

    (FLOWERBUDNEWS) A German national convicted of a double murder in the United States three decades ago will be released from prison in the state of Virginia and deported, US media reported late on Monday.

    Jens Soering, the son of a German diplomat, received two life sentences for the murder in 1985 of his then-girlfriend’s parents.

    It was not immediately clear if he will return to Germany.

    The Virginia Parole Board voted to release him, media quoted the office of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam as saying.

    Soering will be handed over to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, deported and prohibited from re-entering the country.

    Northam declined to pardon him.

    The decision to release the 53-year-old was described as a “surprise” by the Washington Post newspaper.

    The brutal murder had drawn national and international attention for decades.

    The parents of Elizabeth Haysom were stabbed to death in the Virgina city of Lynchburg.

    Haysom and Soering fled the country after becoming suspects, but were caught in 1986 in London and returned to the US.

    Haysom was sentenced to two jail terms of 45 years for being an accessory to murder.

    The 55-year-old, who has Canadian citizenship, will also be released and deported, according to the media reports.

    Soering had initially confessed to the murders, but later recanted and said that he had only wanted to protect his girlfriend from the death penalty. (dpa/NAN)

  • Appeal Court constitutes Election Petitions Tribunal for Kogi governorship election

    (Flowerbudnews.ng) President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa has constituted Governorship and House of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal to handle petitions from Nov. 16, Kogi governorship poll.

    This was disclosed in a statement signed by secretary of the tribunal, Mr Umar Abubakar and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lokoja.

    According to Abubakar, the mandate of the tribunal is to hear and determine petitions that may arise from Kogi governorship election held on Saturday Nov. 16, 2019.

    He said the tribunal will also handle petitions arising from the forthcoming supplementary and re-run election in Kogi West Senate seat and Ajaokuta Federal Constituency scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 30.

    Abubakar added that the secretariat of the tribunal was located at FCT High Court, Wuse Zone 2, Abuja and called on those wishing to file election petitions to approach the secretariat. (NAN)

  • Sanwo-Olu warns against rape, domestic violence

    Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Tuesday promised to wield “the big stick” on perpetrators of rape, domestic violence and child abuse in the state. (more…)

  • A/Ibom: Gov. Udom seeks FG’s attention on failed roads

    The Governor of Akwa Ibom state, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, has once again appealed to the Federal Government to urgently intervene in collapsed federal highways across the state.

    Emmanuel made this call while inspecting state government intervention work on some failed portions of the Calabar-Itu high way to save lives of commuters.

    According to him, the collapse of the post war federal road, an important linkage between the South south and South east regions, has severely affected free flow of traffic, economic activities of the people and caused untold hardship to residents and commuters.

    The governor disclosed that despite paucity of funds his administration has intervened in some of the federal highways to ease the hardship encountered by motorists and commended the contractor, Nigerpet, for addressing the underground erosion that has cut off some sections of the road.

    Recall that federal government has budgeted for Calabar-Itu highway on many occasions and mobilized Julius Berger to site weeks before the 2019 general elections, but the project site was abandoned soon afterwards.

    Similarly, Governor Emmanuel has raised concern about another abandoned Abak – Ikot Abasi Road project awarded by the Federal Government, calling for urgent review of the rehabilitation project.

    He said the road has been abandoned soon after excavation turning the highway into a deathtap for commuters.

    Other projects inspected by the governor were the ongoing over head bridge (Fly-Over) Project at Ikot Oku Ikono/Ekom Iman roundabout, Uyo LGA; Uyo – Etinan road project/Etinan roundabout, Etinan and Ekpene Ukpa Bridge, all in Etinan local government .

  • China summons US ambassador over Hong Kong bills

    (Flowerbudnews.ng) China summoned the U.S. ambassador on Thursday to “strongly protest” President Donald Trump’s signing of bills on Hong Kong human rights.

    Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told Ambassador Terry Branstad that the move constituted “serious interference in China’s internal affairs and a serious violation of international law.”

    Le called it a “nakedly hegemonic act.” He urged the U.S. to not implement the bills in order to prevent greater damage to U.S.-China relations.

    China has repeatedly accused the U.S. and other Western countries of orchestrating the mass pro-democracy demonstrations that have roiled Hong Kong for six months.

    A foreign ministry statement earlier Thursday repeated heated condemnations of the laws and said China will counteract. It said all the people of Hong Kong and China oppose the move.

    It’s still unclear, however, how China will respond exactly.

    Trump signed the bills, which were approved last week by near unanimous consent in the House and Senate, even as he expressed some concerns about complicating the effort to work out a trade deal with China’s President Xi Jinping.

    “I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong,” Trump said in a statement. “They are being enacted in the hope that Leaders and Representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long term peace and prosperity for

  • Disease ‘worse than Ebola’ kills 5,000 in DR Congo – WHO

    The World Health Organisation(WHO) said measles has killed more than 5,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo since January — more than double the toll in the country’s Ebola epidemic.

    “The DRC (measles) outbreak is the largest outbreak worldwide. It is one of the largest that we have seen,” Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s immunisation department, told reporters in Geneva.

    As of November 17, the country had registered 250,270 measles cases, including 5,110 deaths, the WHO said.

    DRC declared its latest measles epidemic in June, and in September the country launched an emergency vaccination campaign to counter the outbreak.

    WHO said that campaign was still ongoing, but was expected to be completed by the end of the year.

    O’Brien said the epidemic was still “all over the country”, pointing out that most of those affected were “children and babies”.

    Measles is a highly-contagious disease caused by a virus that attacks mainly children. The most serious complications include blindness, brain swelling, diarrhoea, and severe respiratory infections.

    The rapid spread of measles in DRC has garnered far less attention than the Ebola epidemic that has also been raging in the east of the country since August 2018. That outbreak has killed some 2,200 people.

    Ian Norton, at WHO’s Emergency Medical Team Unit, said the UN agency had begun training some of the Ebola teams in DRC to also manage measles cases, “because there is such a large burden”.

    Efforts to rein in the spread of both Ebola and measles are meanwhile being hampered by violence and unrest across the country, and especially in the east.

    On Tuesday, WHO said it had moved 49 Ebola-response staff out of the eastern town of Beni as insecurity in the area surged.

    Ninety-four civilians in the Beni area have been killed by armed groups since November 5, following the launch of an offensive by the country’s army, according to the Congo Research Group (CRG), a not-for-profit organisation.

    “The Ebola response is being hampered by the insecurity,” Norton told reporters.

    “The same can be said… for the measles response, not just in Beni but across the entire country,” he said.

    Attacks, even when not directed at medical staff or facilities, can block health workers from getting to work, and can prompt people feeling ill to stay home instead of seeking help.

    Norton said the WHO was “extremely worried” by the growing insecurity, warning it had a dire “impact on the management of disease”.

     

  • Brexit: YouGov predicts majority win for Johnson ahead of Dec.12 election

    (Flowerbudnews.ng) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on course to win a majority of 68 in parliament at the December 12 election, according to a model from pollsters YouGov that accurately predicted the 2017 election.

    Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit by January 31 if he wins the election after nearly four years of political crisis that has shocked allies of what was once considered one of the pillars of Western economic and political stability.

    His Conservative Party could win 359 seats out of 650, up from 317 in the 2017 general election and the best result for the party since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 victory, according to the YouGov model, called Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification – or “MRP” for short.

    “Our first MRP model projection for the 2019 election suggests that this time round the Conservatives are set for a majority,” said Anthony Wells, director of political and social research at YouGov.

    “The swing to the Conservative party is bigger in areas that voted to Leave in 2016, with the bulk of the projected Tory gains coming in the North and the urban West Midlands, as well as former mining seats in the East Midlands.”

    The Labour Party is on track to secure 211 seats, down from 262, according to the model. The SNP were on 43, the Lib Dems on 13 and the Brexit Party winning no seats.

    The YouGov model crunches data from more than 100,000 interviews over seven days along with demographics, specific constituency circumstances and national statistics to come up with a projection.

    It shows the election is now Johnson’s to lose. According to the model, Johnson’s Conservatives would gain 47 seats – 44 of them from Labour, two from the Liberal Democrats and one from the Speaker’s old seat. Labour are on course to not take any new seats.

    “Most seats changing hands are ones that Labour won in 2017 that are now set to be taken by the Conservatives,” YouGov said.

    “What happens in these constituencies is the most important dynamic in deciding whether Boris Johnson has a majority, and how large it ends up being.”

    The Brexit Party are hurting the Conservatives more than Labour, according to the model. Independents are finding it difficult to pick up seats. The model does not point to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab or Johnson being in danger of losing their seats.

    The margins of error in the model put the Conservatives seat projection between 328 and 385, YouGov said, adding that there was still more than sufficient time for people to change their minds before December 12 – the first Christmas election in nearly a century.

    In late May 2017, just over a week before the June 8 election, YouGov using the model to project that then Prime Minister Theresa May would lose her majority.

    The model, developed by Ben Lauderdale of the London School of Economics and Doug Rivers of Stanford University, was accurate: May did lose her majority, a failure that complicated Brexit and eventually destroyed her premiership.

  • Advert on NNPC chemistry competition fake -NNPC

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says the trending online advert inviting the public to submit entries for a phantom 2019/2020 Annual Chemistry Competition was fake.

    The corporation in a statement by it’s Acting spokesman, Mr Samson Makoji, in Abuja on Wednesday distance itself and all its subsidiaries from such advert.

    The corporation described the online advert which contrived that the exercise was organised to improve the standard of learning of Chemistry in Nigeria as phoney.

    It advised applicants to be wary of the fraudsters behind the act.

    It revealed that the advert had stated various fictitious monetary values to the categories of winners it was interested in luring into the fake scheme.

    (Flowerbudnews.ng) 1¹1It also listed eligibility of participants to include graduates of Chemistry, Industrial Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Petroleum Engineering and other related courses.

    The corporation further called on students and stakeholders in the education value chain not to fall prey to the nefarious activities of the fraudsters.

    “We have alerted the various security agencies to investigate the matter and apprehend the culprits,” it said (NAN)

  • Sanwo-Olu charges AIDS agency to track 60,000 untreated HIV victims

    ….Inaugurates HIV/AIDS Consortium Group, presents state’s 2018 Impact Survey

    The Lagos State Government is on the trail of about 60,000 people tested positive to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) but did not go back for treatment. (more…)