RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine lying about wanting peace talks – Moscow

Kiev’s statements about resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict by political and diplomatic means are empty words and deception, a senior Russian diplomat told TASS news agency on Wednesday.

Alexey Polishchuk, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Department, explained that a ban on negotiations with Moscow introduced by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is still in effect, making peace talks impossible.

“If the authorities in Kiev were actually ready to resolve the crisis using political and diplomatic methods, they would first of all cancel the decree that is in force in Ukraine on the self-prohibition of negotiations with the Russian leadership,” he said.

In March 2022, Zelensky signed a decree declaring any prospect of Ukrainian peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin illegal, but left the door open to negotiations with Russia.

Kiev’s statements about seeking peace are made “to win the sympathy of countries of the Global South and lure them into the anti-Russian Western camp,” Polishchuk said, adding that he hopes most states understand this.

His comments come a day after Zelensky suggested that Ukraine and its supporters intend to hold a second ‘peace summit’ by November, and will invite Russia to participate.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the goals and agenda of such an event were unclear, noting that the previous Western-backed gathering in Switzerland had made no progress in resolving the crisis.

The Swiss-hosted summit was focused on three points of Vladimir Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’, including calls on Russia to withdraw from all territories that Ukraine claims as its own, reparations paid by Moscow to Kiev, and a tribunal for the Russian leadership after the conflict. Moscow has dismissed the proposal as being detached from reality.

Zelensky’s offer of negotiations was set out days after a survey carried out by the Razumkov Center for Political and Economic Studies suggested that nearly 44% of Ukrainians support the idea of “official peace talks” with Russia. At the same time, the poll showed that an absolute majority are still not ready to make concessions to Moscow and believe that Kiev could prevail in the conflict.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Zelenskiy proposes legislation to strip awards from Ukrainian 'traitors'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged parliament on Tuesday to pass legislation that would define procedures to strip "traitors" of state awards previously bestowed on them, including the country's highest honours.

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, named no individuals that would be subject to the proposed legislation to alter Ukraine's criminal code.

He said the measure sought to "restore justice" by targeting those who "as a result of their actions, have lost the right to any respect from Ukrainians".

"A legal mechanism is needed to effectively strip such individuals of all state awards of Ukraine and honorary titles," he said.

"They deserve only one 'title' - traitors. And their 'reward' will be accountability to Ukraine and our people for everything done against Ukraine, against our state and against our independence."

He said the legislation would apply to all state awards, including the country's highest honour, Hero of Ukraine.

Since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of Ukrainians have been accused of collaborating with Moscow, including a number of prominent personalities.

These include Viktor Medvedchuk, pro-Kremlin business magnate and chief of staff to former President Leonid Kuchma, who was sent to Russia after being included in a mass prisoner swap in September 2022.

Any legislation could also apply to former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov who fled Ukraine during the 2014 popular uprising that removed from power President Viktor Yanukovych, since convicted of treason in absentia.

RT/Reuters

Fears that AI will be stealing jobs were given fresh life on Wednesday, when accounting giant Intuit announced it would lay off 1,800 employees as part of an AI-centered reorganization. The cuts will affect 10 percent of workers at the company, which owns accounting software TurboTax and QuickBooks.

In a memo sent to staff, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi noted that aligning the business with AI will make it competitive as technological change sweeps the economy.

"Companies that aren't prepared to take advantage of this AI revolution will fall behind and, over time, will no longer exist," he wrote.

The layoffs, which will be completed in September, are not a result of economic hardship, according to Goodarzi, who maintained that Intuit is "in a position of strength" financially. (Laid off employees will receive at least 16 weeks' severance and a minimum of six months' health insurance coverage.) Rather, Goodarzi cited poor performance as the motivating factor in laying off 1,050 of the company's 1,800 employees.

"We've significantly raised the bar on our expectations," he wrote.

Goodarzi added that the company would replace departing staff at a rate of 1:1 by creating new roles bolstered by generative AI tools. "We will hire approximately 1,800 new people primarily in engineering, product, and customer-facing roles such as sales, customer success, and marketing," the CEO said in the memo.

In an email to Inc., a company spokesperson said that the layoffs are "about increasing investment in key growth areas: Gen AI, money movement, mid-market expansion, and international growth."

Intuit's shift to AI-oriented labor is happening amid fears that the technology could displace droves of workers. According to a June survey conducted by Duke University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta, two-thirds of the American CFOs who responded said their companies are looking to replace human workers with some kind of automation. Over the last year, 60 percent of the 450 companies surveyed said they have "implemented software, equipment, or technology to automate tasks previously completed by employees."

AI software, which is often used to produce text, audio, and images on demand, is increasingly viewed by company leaders as essential to competitiveness.

Last August, Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, spoke to the New York Times about a shift in thinking regarding AI capabilities. "To be brutally honest, we had a hierarchy of things that technology could do, and we felt comfortable saying things like creative work, professional work, emotional intelligence would be hard for machines to ever do," he said. "Now that's all been upended."

Additional data shared with Inc. indicates that startups are turning to OpenAI's text generation tool, ChatGPT, in lieu of hiring freelancers on gig work sites, such as Fiverr, Upwork, and Toptal.

According to an unpublished survey by the accounting firm Kruze Consulting, the number of startups paying for enterprise versions of ChatGPT has exploded since 2023. Nearly two-thirds of the companies on Kruze's client list of 550 VC-backed startups are paying for the service, Kruze reports, whereas, the average spend on freelance copywriters has plunged by 83 percent since November 2022.

"Basically, startups aren't spending money on outsourced marketing -- mainly writing -- now that they can use AI," Healy Jones, VP of financial strategy at Kruze, said in an email to Inc.

While recent news and figures make for grim reading for freelance copywriters, data indicate that AI's incursion into other roles has been less dramatic, at least for now. A recent survey by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that companies could only replace 23 percent of wages paid to human workers with AI tools performing the same jobs. Researchers determined this by assessing the current cost of using AI models to perform certain tasks, and then comparing that cost with compensation for human workers.

"This is not something where all of the jobs are replaced immediately," Neil Thompson, director of MIT's FutureTech research project, said in a press release last month.

Nonetheless, layoffs at high-profile companies like Intuit will signal that a technological tipping point is near -- and along with it, more fallout for workers.

Inc

Nigeria’s inflation rate rose to 34.19 percent in June 2024 — up from 33.95 percent in May.

The data is captured in the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its consumer price index (CPI) report for June, released on Monday.

The CPI measures the rate of change in prices of goods and services.

According to the bureau, food inflation also surged to 40.87 percent in the month under review as prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages continued to surge.

NBS said the headline inflation rate in June showed an increase of “0.24% points when compared to the May 2024 headline inflation rate”.

“On a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 11.40% points higher compared to the rate recorded in June 2023, which was 22.79%,” the NBS said.

“This shows that the headline inflation rate (year-on-year basis) increased in the month of June 2024 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e. June 2023).

“Furthermore, on a month-on-month basis, the headline inflation rate in June 2024 was 2.31%, which was 0.17% higher than the rate recorded in May 2024 (2.14%).

“This means that in the month of June 2024, the rate of increase in the average price level is higher than the rate of increase in the average price level in May 2024.”

FOOD INFLATION EDGED UP BY 15.62% IN JUNE

NBS further said the food inflation rate in June 2024 was 40.87 percent on a year-on-year basis — a 15.62 percent uptick compared to the rate recorded in June 2023 (25.25 percent).

This, the bureau said, was caused by increases in prices of items such as millet whole grain, garri, guinea corn, bread and cereals class, yam, groundnut oil, palm oil, and catfish.

“On a month-on-month basis, the Food inflation rate in June 2024 was 2.55% which shows a 0.26% increase compared to the rate recorded in May 2024 (2.28%),” the bureau said.

“The rise in food inflation on a month-on-month basis was caused by the rise in the rate of increase in the average prices of groundnut oil, palm oil, etc (oil & fats class), water yam, coco yam, cassava, etc (potatoes, yam & other tubers class), tobacco, catfish fresh, croaker, mudfish fresh, snail, etc, (Fish Class).”

“The average annual rate of Food inflation for the twelve months ending June 2024 over the previous twelve-month average was 35.35%, which was an 11.31% points increase from the average annual rate of change recorded in June 2023 (24.03%).”

The report also said Edo (47.34 percent), Kogi (46.37 percent), and Cross River (45.28 percent) states spent more on food in June, while Nasarawa (34.31 percent), Bauchi (34.78 percent) and Adamawa (35.96 percent), recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis.

On the other hand, Yobe (4.75%), Adamawa(4.74%), and Taraba (4.12%) states had the highest food inflation month-on-month.

NBS said states such asNasarawa (0.14 percent), Kano (0.96 percent) and Lagos (1.25 percent) recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on a month-on-month basis.

A few African nations have been designated as hunger hotspots by international organizations and media sources in recent years. While identifying regions that are vulnerable to hunger is crucial for coordinating assistance and support, designating a region as a "hunger hotspot" has serious and frequently negative consequences for the affected nations.

These countries can are considered hunger hotspots for key reasons, the most prominent of which is conflict. Conflicts typically exasperate hunger as the constant fighting deters the production of food. Additionally, food sent as relief aid is usually controlled by those at the forefront of the fighting, leaving the more vulnerable population with very few options.

The recently released Hunger Hotspots report by the United Nations highlights that organized violence and armed conflict are the primary causes of deteriorating severe food insecurity in the majority of hunger hotspots (17 out of 21 countries/territories).

Other significant reasons can cause acute food shortages including a rapidly rising food inflation level. This causes severe strains on households and leaves the poor with very short rations.

Climate change has also become huge, as extreme temperatures cause stagnation of farming. Some countries can experience intense heat which is very unconducive for crop production, while some countries experience massive bouts of rainfall, causing erosion and all sorts of drawbacks for farming.

With that said, here are the 10 African countries considered hunger hotspots in 2024.

Top 10 African countries with the highest number of hungry people

Methodology

Food security experts, disputes, economic, and natural hazards analysts from FAO and WFP, both in Rome and on the ground, collaborate to identify hunger hotspots. The strategy starts through prioritizing based on quantitative and qualitative variables elaborated on in the report.

Business Insider

In a bid to address the pressing issue of widespread hunger in Nigeria, the Bola Tinubu-led federal government has recently announced a controversial policy to import food. While the intention to provide immediate relief is commendable, this approach may prove to be a double-edged sword, potentially causing more harm than good in the long run.

The government's plan includes suspending duties, tariffs, and taxes on the importation of essential food commodities such as maize, husked brown rice, wheat, and cowpeas for 150 days. Additionally, the government intends to import 250,000 metric tons each of wheat and maize. These measures, while seemingly providing a quick solution to food shortages, raise serious concerns about their long-term impact on Nigeria's agricultural sector and economy.

Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, has voiced strong opposition to this policy, warning that it could "destroy Nigeria's agriculture." His concerns are well-founded and highlight several critical issues:

Firstly, the massive influx of imported food threatens to undermine local agricultural production. Nigerian farmers, who have been working tirelessly to increase domestic food supply, may find themselves unable to compete with cheaper imported goods. This could lead to a significant setback in the country's efforts to achieve food self-sufficiency and may discourage further investment in the agricultural sector.

Secondly, the policy is likely to exert additional pressure on the already struggling Naira. Increased demand for foreign currency to finance these imports will likely lead to further devaluation of the national currency, exacerbating Nigeria's economic challenges.

Moreover, the low value of the Naira relative to the currencies of neighboring countries presents another risk. There is a high likelihood that a substantial portion of the duty-free imported food will be smuggled across borders, mirroring the fate of subsidized petroleum products. This not only defeats the purpose of addressing domestic food shortages but also results in a loss of potential revenue for the government.

Instead of relying on imports, the government should focus on addressing the root causes of food insecurity in Nigeria. Priority should be given to tackling the security issues that hinder farmers from producing at full capacity. Efforts should be made to stabilize the value of the Naira and provide essential agricultural inputs and machinery to boost local production.

Furthermore, the government's plans to ramp up production for the 2024/2025 farming cycle, including support for smallholder farmers, agricultural mechanization, and irrigation improvements, are steps in the right direction.

While the immediate need to address hunger is undeniable, it is crucial that short-term measures do not compromise long-term food security and economic stability. As Adesina rightly pointed out, "Nigeria cannot import its way out of food insecurity." The nation must strive to feed itself with pride, focusing on boosting local production, creating jobs, and reducing dependence on foreign imports.

In conclusion, while the government's intentions are noble, the food importation policy risks undermining Nigeria's agricultural sector and economic stability. A more balanced approach that prioritizes long-term sustainability over short-term relief is essential. Only by fostering domestic production and addressing underlying issues can Nigeria truly achieve lasting food security and economic resilience.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates reached an agreement allowing for the resumption of travel between the two countries, Nigeria's information minister said on Monday.

The UAE stopped issuing visas to Nigerians in 2022 after Dubai's Emirates Airline suspended flights between the countries due to an inability to repatriate funds from Nigeria.

Nigeria's central bank has since cleared a backlog of around $137 million in foreign exchange owed to international airlines.

Information Minister Mohammed Idris said the deal includes the resumption of visa issuance to Nigerian passport holders for travel to the UAE, effective from Monday.

"This agreement includes updated controls and conditions to facilitate obtaining a UAE visa," Idris said in a statement.

In May, Emirates said it would resume flight schedules to Nigeria in October, ending a nearly two-year halt to flights.

Reuters

Controversial Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi has urged Nigerians to engage in peaceful protests as a means of conveying their grievances to the government, emphasising that protests are a crucial tool for driving change.

"Politicians are very stubborn, it is mass protests that only disturb them," he said.

Addressing concerns over comparisons with past protests in countries like Sudan, Lebanon, and Liberia, Gumi highlighted Nigeria's unique diversity. 

"In Sudan and Liberia, the conflicts were like family feuds, which are very dangerous. But Nigeria is different, with diverse ethnicities, religions, cultures, tribes, and sects," he explained, noting internal tensions even within religious sects like the Izala in Nigeria.

Gumi expressed optimism that peaceful protests would convey the public's demand for good governance and development. 

"Protest is the only language the government understands," he asserted, urging authorities to heed the calls for reform and improvement.

Highlighting past political actions, Sheik Gumi criticised the government's response to protests, contrasting it with previous protests led by current officials. 

"In 2015, Muhammadu Buhari and other top All Progressives Congress (APC) officials came out to protest that the previous government had spoiled Nigeria. Then, protest was legal but now it's illegal," he pointed out, lamenting the inconsistency in how protests are viewed and treated.

"God willing, the protest will proceed peacefully, and the government must understand and respond positively to the language of protest," Gumi concluded, calling for constructive dialogue and meaningful reforms for the benefit of all Nigerians.

Gumi's comments coincide with growing discontent in northern Nigeria, where some people are planning protests to voice their concerns about the economic situation, including rising inflation and poverty, under President Bola Tinubu's administration. 

Sahara Reporters

Kenya braced for more anti-government protests as talks proposed by President William Ruto to help end the nation’s political crisis appeared to stall.

Activists have called for demonstrations across the East African nation on Tuesday over the government’s failure to prosecute security forces suspected of killing at least 41 people protesting against plans to raise taxes over the past month. Ruto announced last week that a so-called national dialogue would begin on Monday to defuse tensions in the country.

Kenya’s main opposition Orange Democratic Movement said it’s unclear about when the talks — which seek to bring together political parties, civil society groups and professional associations — will take place.

“We haven’t received any invitation,” ODM Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna said by phone. “When called, we’ll go because we are keen on getting broad-based reforms.”

A spokesperson for the presidency said parliamentary leaders were in charge of the planned talks. National Assembly majority leader Kimani Ichung’wah didn’t respond to request for comment.

Protests began in Kenya in mid-June over Ruto’s plans to increase taxes on everything from bread to diapers to raise more than $2 billion the government needs to reduce its budget shortfall. The demonstrations forced Ruto to scrap the proposal. Last week, he took the drastic step of firing almost all of the members of his cabinet in a bid to address public anger of its performance.

As a result of the decision to scrap the revenue-raising measures, the government expects its budget deficit to widen to 3.6% of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year, compared with a previous projection of 3.3%. Moody’s Ratings last week downgraded Kenya’s rating by a step to Caa1, or seven notches into junk, in a sign of the country’s worsening fiscal plight.

Ruto on Saturday vowed to hold to account those responsible for killings in the country. On Monday, he called on the Ford Foundation, a private entity that promotes civic engagement, to “explain its role in the recent protests.”

The foundation didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

Bloomberg

Kidnappers have reportedly abducted five residents of Yangoji in the Kwali area council of the Federal Capital Territory, shooting a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Musa Majaga.

A resident of Yangoji simply identified as Abdullahi, said the incident happened on Monday, around 12:23 am when the kidnappers invaded the APC chieftain’s house.

He said the kidnappers destroyed the burglary windows of the Majaga’s house, entered the room and shot him. They were said to have abducted two of his children.

“After they had picked two of his children, they went into another apartment and abducted three other neighbours,” he said.

A vigilante member, who spoke to our reporter during a visit to the area on Monday, said the kidnappers took advantage of lack of cartridges in vigilantes’ guns.

“You know the kidnappers took advantage after they got information that vigilantes were short of cartridges. They then struck and abducted five people. We have not witnessed any attack by kidnappers in the past five months here in Yangoji,” he said.

He said the APC chieftain, who was shot on the leg, had been taken to a private hospital at Gwagwalada for treatment.

The spokesman of the FCT Police Command, Adeh Josephine, asked our reporter to give her time to find out about the incident. She was yet to get back as of the time of filing this report.

Daily Trust

The driver and 18 passengers of a Port Harcourt-bound Akwa Ibom State Transport Corporation bus were on Wednesday, last week, abducted by yet-to-be-identified gunmen.

The incident, our correspondent gathered, occurred along the Azumini boundary between Akwa Ibom and Abia states.

It was gathered that the bus had left its Uyo terminal passing through Iwukem in the Etim Local Council Area before the passengers were intercepted by their abductors in the Azumini area of the road.

A source who pleaded not to be mentioned told our correspondent that the gunmen stopped the bus driver after shooting into the air while others came out from the bush and joined in the shooting spree.

The source added that all the passengers were ordered to come out of the vehicle or be killed if they did not oblige.

“The driver was the first person to come down. Other passengers were ordered to follow suit immediately. The kidnappers moved all of them to the bush and escaped with them. The whereabouts of the passengers are not known for now,” the source said.

The Akwa Ibom State Police Public Relations Officer, Timfon John, who confirmed the incident while speaking with journalists on Monday, said the police were still monitoring the situation.

“That incident happened along the Azumini area of the road after the Etim Ekpo Local Government Area. All I can say is that the police are still monitoring the situation now,” the PPRO said.

Punch