West Africa's main regional bloc on Friday said it had agreed an undisclosed "D-Day" for a possible military intervention to restore democracy in Niger if diplomatic efforts fail, stressing that it would not hold endless dialogue with the defiant junta.

The comments came at the end of a two-day meeting of West African army chiefs in Ghana's capital Accra, where they have been hashing out the logistics and strategy for a possible use of force in Niger. Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has said such action would be a last resort.

"We are ready to go anytime the order is given," ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security Abdel-Fatau Musah said during the closing ceremony. "The D-Day is also decided, which we are not going to disclose."

He said a peaceful resolution remained the bloc's preferred option.

"As we speak we are still readying (a) mediation mission into the country, so we have not shut any door... (but) we are not going to engage in endless dialogue."

There was no immediate response from the junta.

Military officers deposed Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26 and have defied calls from the United Nations, ECOWAS and others to reinstate him, prompting the bloc to order a standby force to be assembled.

"We've already agreed and fine-tuned what will be required for the intervention," Musah said, declining to share how many troops would be deployed and other strategic details.

Most of its 15 member states are prepared to contribute to the joint force excepting those also under military rule - Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea - and Cape Verde, according to the bloc.

ECOWAS has taken a harder stance on the Niger coup, the wider region's seventh in three years, than it did on previous ones. The credibility of the bloc is at stake because it had said it would tolerate no further such overthrows.

"The decision is that the coup in Niger is one coup too many for the region, and we are putting a stop to it at this time, we are drawing the line in the sand," Musah said.

Any intervention would spell further turmoil for West Africa's impoverished Sahel region, which is already battling a decade-old Islamist insurgency and a deepening hunger crisis.

Niger also has strategic importance beyond West Africa because of its uranium and oil reserves and role as a hub for foreign troops involved in the fight against the insurgents linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts continue. The United Nations special envoy for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simao, met with the junta's Prime Minister Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine on Friday.

Simao said in comments broadcast on Niger's state television that he wanted to listen to the junta's point of view "to study together a way for the country to return as quickly as possible to constitutional normality and legality too. We are convinced that it is always possible with dialogue."

 

Reuters

A middle-aged woman, simply identified as Mrs Rebecca Gbaje, broke down in tears after a wheel barrow pusher disappeared with the food stuffs she bought at Kwaita village market in Kwali Area Council of the FCT.

Our reporter, who was at the market, observed as some customers and traders gathered to sympathize with the woman, while some sympathisers walked round the market in search of the barrow pusher.

The woman, while narrating to sympathisers who stood to console her amid tears, said she bought the food items that comprised of Mudus of rice, beans, maize and other ingredients and engaged the barrow pusher to help her take the items to the road side.

She said after the barrow pusher started moving to the road with the items, she stopped over to buy fish and asked him to wait for her.

“After buying the fish, I turned back but could not see the barrow pusher again,” she said.

Gbaje said she came from Fogbe village to Kwaita market to buy the food stuffs, amounting to N23,300.

City & Crime reports that some traders contributted money for the woman, who refused to stop crying, to buy some other food stuffs.

 

Daily Trust

Some residents of Taraba have started stealing farm pŕoduce to feed their families.

Reports from some communities across the state revealed that incidents of stealing of raw Cassava, Yam and Maize were recorded in recent weeks.

A lady, who owned a cassava  farm in one of the villages in Ardo-Kola local government area of the state, said she caught her neighbours harvesting cassava in her farm severally.

The lady farmer, Lami John, told our reporter that the first person she caught in her farm confessed that he stole cassava from her farm not to sell but to feed his family.

“I told him to go and l did not report the matter to our ward head because l know him as an honest person,” she said.

Lami stated further that she recorded more of such cases in her farm and all those she caught were her neighbours and actually stole the cassava to feed their families.

Further findings revealed that theft of Yam and Maize in the farms is now rampant in villages across the state.

Another farmer, Ibrahim Suleiman, told Daily Trust that he caught his neighbours stealing Maize in his farm four times but did not report the matter to the police or to their ward head.

He said he knew that those he caught were never identified with any criminal acts in the village but probably  the hard time might be the factor behind their action.

According to him,  theft  of farm produce is now being carried out during the day time and those caught confessed that poverty and lack of food at home  pushed them to steal from the farm.

 

Daily Trust

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Putin visits Ukraine military operation headquarters

Russian President Vladimir Putin met the head of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, and other high-ranking military commanders during an unannounced visit to the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District, the Kremlin said on Saturday morning.

The head of state received classified briefings from Gerasimov and other senior commanding officers involved in the ongoing military operation in Ukraine, the brief statement said.

Russian state media shared a video of the rare visit, which shows the head of the General Staff greeting Putin at the headquarters ahead of the closed-door meeting. However, it remains unclear when exactly the meeting took place.

Last week, Putin convened a meeting with members of Russia’s Security Council and on Monday addressed the Army-2023 expo outside Moscow. In a video message to the congress, Putin lauded the expo's contribution to multifaceted relations between Russia and other nations, emphasizing that Moscow “is open to deepening equal technological partnership and military-technical cooperation with other countries.”

The city of Rostov-on-Don hosts the headquarters of the Southern Military District, currently primarily responsible for the military operation in Ukraine. In June, the forces of Wagner private military company briefly captured the headquarters armed with heavy weapons, but faced little resistance, as officials negotiated a peaceful resolution to the short-lived mutiny attempt.

The southwestern Rostov Region borders the frontline Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and has repeatedly come under Ukrainian drone and artillery attack over the past year and a half.

In July, the port city of Taganrog, some 60 kilometers from Rostov, was hit by a repurposed anti-aircraft S-200 missile, injuring over a dozen civilians and inflicting material damage.

** Kiev taking huge armored vehicle losses – Bild

As Ukraine struggles to breach Russian lines during its counteroffensive, the attacks are taking a heavy toll on its armored formations, with vehicle losses numbering in the dozens in just one sector of the front, Bild reported on Thursday, citing video materials reviewed by its journalists.

According to the report, while Kiev managed to capture the village of Staromayorskoye in the southwestern part of Russia’s Donetsk Region after more than a week of fighting, the success came “at a high price” in terms of destroyed armor. The Russian Defense Ministry has not confirmed this information, but did report numerous artillery strikes by Moscow’s forces in the area.

Citing Russian drone footage, Bild claimed that during the battle for Staromayorskoye, Kiev’s forces lost at least 31 armored personnel vehicles, including 23 mine-protected NATO-supplied vehicles. The wrecks of the destroyed vehicles still remain on the battlefield although some damaged armor has been salvaged, the outlet added.

Bild described the results as “a success from the Russian point of view,”explaining that Moscow aims to destroy as many Western-supplied armored vehicles as possible.

“Moscow's army knows that replacing and repairing vehicles is much more difficult for Ukraine than it is for Russia,” the article said, noting that while many damaged vehicles can be restored, they have to be transported to repair bases hundreds of kilometers away from the frontline.

Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive against Russia in early June, but has so far failed to gain any ground, according to Moscow. The Russian Defense Ministry has estimated that since the start of the push, Ukraine has lost more than 43,000 troops as well as over 4,900 pieces of heavy weaponry. 

In mid-July, Business Insider reported that Kiev had lost one-third of its US-supplied Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, while around the same time The New York Times claimed, citing Western officials, that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had cost it 20% of the weapons it sent to the battlefield in the first two weeks of its counteroffensive.

Amid these apparent difficulties – which Ukraine has attributed to delays receiving Western assistance – The Washington Post reported on Friday that US intelligence officials strongly doubted that Kiev would make headway in the southern sector of the front closer to the Crimean Peninsula. Meanwhile, an earlier Newsweek report suggested a growing rift among top Ukrainian officials, with some purportedly pushing to call off the counteroffensive. 

 

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Troop deaths, injuries in Ukraine war nearing 500,000 - NYT citing US officials

The number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022 is nearing 500,000, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed U.S. officials.

The officials cautioned that casualty figures remained difficult to estimate because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, and Kyiv does not disclose official figures, the newspaper said.

Russia's military casualties are approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injuries, the newspaper reported. Ukrainian deaths were close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, it added.

The NYT quoted the officials as saying the casualty count had picked up after Ukraine launched a counter-attack earlier this year.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, commenting on the NYT article, said only the General Staff could disclose such figures.

Advertisement · Scroll to continue

"We have adopted a model that only the General Staff has the right to voice the figures on the wounded, the disabled, people who lost limbs, and the missing, and, of course, the number of people who died in this war," he said in a live broadcast on the Youtube channel of journalist Yulia Latynina on Friday.

The Ukrainian military on Thursday claimed gains in its counter-offensive against Russian forces on the southeastern front. Kyiv said its forces had liberated a village, the first such success since July 27, signaling the challenge it faces in advancing through heavily mined Russian defensive lines without powerful air support.

There was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials to Reuters requests for comment. Russia made no immediate comment on the report.

** Ukrainian forces could fail to retake strategic city of Melitopol -US official

Ukrainian forces do not appear likely to reach and retake the Russian-occupied strategic southeastern city of Melitopol during their counteroffensive aimed at winning back territory from Moscow's army, a U.S. official said on Friday.

The Ukrainian military on Thursday said it had made gains on the southeastern front, pushing forward from a newly-liberated village, Urozhaine, in an attempted drive towards the Sea of Azov.

Melitopol, which had a pre-war population of about 150,000, has been under Russian control since March 2022 and has roads and railways used by Russian troops to transport supplies to areas they occupy.

Urozhaine in Donetsk region was the first village the Kyiv government said it had retaken since July 27, signaling the challenge it faces in advancing through heavily mined Russian defensive lines without powerful air support.

The U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was citing an intelligence report on Melitopol but the prediction is largely in line with Washington's view that the counteroffensive is going slower than expected.

The official added that despite the report and limited progress towards Melitopol, Washington believed it was still possible to change the gloomy outlook.

The assessment on Melitopol was first reported by the Washington Post.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday declined to comment but said there had been a number of analyses about the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022 and many of them had changed as it unfolded.

Russia controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine, including the peninsula of Crimea, most of Luhansk region and large tracts of the regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

 

RT/Reuters

After arguing with his mother about overdue homework, a 10-year-old boy in China ran away from home and straight to the local police station to complain and beg to be put into an orphanage.

Chinese media recently reported a bizarre incident that took place in Chongqing. CCTV footage shows a young boy storming into the Huixing Police Station in Yubei and being approached by two policemen. They start chatting and the 10-year-old boy tells them that he had been reprimanded by his mother for not completing his homework, so he left the family home to join an orphanage. After a bit of convincing work by the officers, the boy gave them his parents’ contact information, so the police contacted his mother who confirmed their argument about the overdue homework. However, she never imagined that her son would run away from home to join an orphanage because of it.

“My mom scolded me every day for not doing my homework and left the house,” the 10-year-old complained. “She just nags me to study every day. I’d rather go to an orphanage.”

After calming the boy down, the police called his father to pick him up, and even though he was reluctant to return home, they manged to persuade him that it was the right choice, much better than going to an orphanage, that’s for sure.

The news and CCTV footage went viral in China last week, where people were shocked by the boy’s reaction. Some saw it as a sign of a lazy generation of spoiled children, while others simply applauded the way the police calmed the boy down and ultimately solved the problem.

 

Oddity Central

Although it’s common knowledge that drinking too much is unhealthy, research sometimes conflicts about where the dividing line is between permissible and risky alcohol consumption — and whether drinking a small amount could come with any health benefits.

In the last few months alone, two large studies have further complicated the picture: A March analysis found that moderate drinkers do not have a lower risk of death than lifetime nondrinkers, while a June study found that heart health benefits associated with moderate alcohol consumption could be linked to the way it can reduce stress activity in the brain.

Meanwhile, a study published last month showed that deaths related to excessive drinking are rising in the United States, especially among women.

So how harmful is a weekly or even nightly glass of wine? NBC News spoke to eight nutritionists and doctors about the risks and supposed benefits of alcohol. They generally agreed that abstaining is healthiest, but that for most people, a modest level of drinking doesn’t carry significant risk.

The notion that drinking may somehow improve health, they said, is misguided.

“There’s no absolute safe level of drinking,” said Tim Stockwell, former director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. “We usually underestimate the risks from alcohol because we’re so familiar with it.”

What to make of studies suggesting health benefits of drinking

Perhaps the most common myth about the benefits of alcohol is the idea that an occasional glass of red wine boosts heart health.

Over the last few decades, several studies have found a link between moderate alcohol consumption and reduced risk of heart disease. However, experts said such research does not necessarily account for the possibility that light drinking can be associated with other healthy lifestyle factors, like being active and eating a balanced diet, or that participants who don’t drink may have experienced negative health effects of alcohol before deciding to go sober.

Dr. Krishna Aragam, a cardiologist and researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, said some past research has found that light to moderate drinkers may be more likely to have lower body mass index, eat more vegetables and engage in more physical activity than people who do not drink at all.

“There is a general theory that maybe people who can impose moderation with regards to how much alcohol they consume are also more able to impose moderation broadly in other aspects of their life,” Aragam said.

Aragam co-authored a 2022 study that also found a trend of healthy lifestyle habits among light to moderate drinkers, but concluded nonetheless that any level of alcohol consumption increased the risk of cardiovascular disease. The risk increased exponentially with heavier drinking, defined as more than eight drinks per week.

When it comes to the red wine myth, Dr. Zhaoping Li, division chief of clinical nutrition at UCLA Health, pointed out that the antioxidant thought to benefit the heart is also found in the skins of red grapes.

“I never would recommend to someone, ‘Go ahead and drink wine, even if you don’t like it, because you’re going to be less likely to have a heart attack,’” Li said.

How much alcohol is unhealthy?

The long-term health risks of drinking include liver and heart disease, a weakened immune system and several types of cancer. Studies have also shown that drinking large quantities of alcohol in one sitting or even a single drink a day can raise blood pressure.

U.S. dietary guidelines define a moderate, low-health-risk alcohol intake as one drink or less per day for women and two or less for men. (That does not apply, however, to people who are pregnant, have medical conditions that can be worsened by drinking or take medications that interact with alcohol.) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also provides a screening tool to help people assess their level of alcohol consumption based on individual health factors.

But Canada’s revised guidelines on alcohol, released in January, advise far less drinking: They list two drinks per week as a moderate, low-risk level.

Li said she generally tells people not to drink more than two or three times per week.

“Let’s say I’m going to drink alcohol, I know it’s going to come with calories and energy,” Li said. “So for dinner, I will drink the wine, I’ll have vegetables and fish, but I’m not going to have bread and other things that come with energy.”

When should you cut down on drinking?

Estimates suggest that more than 140,000 people die from alcohol-related causes annually, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol-related deaths have climbed nationally in the past few years: The U.S. saw a 25% spike in deaths during the first year of the pandemic, a trend that particularly affected middle-aged adults.

Katherine Keyes, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said her research has shown that adolescents drink less than they did a few decades ago, while drinking rates have risen among young and middle-aged adults.

For people who drink several times a week and do not have alcohol dependency, even slightly reducing intake can have significant health benefits, Keyes added.

“It’s not that ‘OK, you think you’re drinking too much, now you can’t drink at all’ — that health advice turns a lot of people off,” Keyes said. “Thinking about drinking as a continuum, not a binary, is an approach that we think will be really useful for improving population health.”

Emma Laing, director of dietetics at the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences, said she decided to be sober in 2020, after considering the health consequences of alcohol and a history of breast cancer in her family.

For people trying to cut down on drinking, Laing said she recommends balancing alcohol with nonalcoholic drinks, drinking slowly and consuming a meal before drinking. She often brings her own nonalcoholic beer or wine to social gatherings, Laing said, and most bartenders are happy to make a mocktail.

“Sometimes the toughest part about living a sober life or taking an alcohol break comes from peer pressure among those around you — even strangers — who question why you are abstaining from alcohol,” Laing said. “I have found that having a nonalcoholic alternative in my hand will reduce this type of societal pressure.”

 

NBC News

The relief aid given to the states by the federal government to cushion the effects of the removal of the petrol subsidy is a loan, TheCable can report.

Earlier, the federal government announced a N5 billion relief package for each state of the federation, including the federal capital territory (FCT).

Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno, who spoke on Thursday at the end of the national economic council (NEC) meeting presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima, said the palliative would enable state governments to procure 100,000 bags of rice, 40,000 bags of maize and fertilizers to cushion the effect of food shortage across the country.

However, in a memo to governors entitled “Re: Distribution of Palliatives – Terms of FG Facility”, Asishana Okauru, director-general of Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), said states might opt out of the offer and return a sum of N2 billion already given to them.

“I have been directed by the Chairman, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to forward the terms of the facility as follows,” Okauru said in the memo.

“Facility size: N4,000,000,000.00
Loan (48%): N1,920,000,000.00
FGN Grant: (52%)
N2,080,000,000.00 Beneficiary each state government
Tenure: 20 months
Interest Rate: Nil
Moratorium: Three months
Repayment Mode: Monthly
Repayment Amount: N120,000,000.00
Security Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO)

“Your excellency is invited to note that this offer is optional and states that do not wish to participate may opt-out and refund the N2 billion already disbursed to them.”

 

The Cable

Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 election, Atiku Abubakar has described the $3bn loan injected into the economy by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to stabilise the naira as fraudulent.

Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu in a statement on Wednesday, Atiku described the purpose given for the loan as a ruse to force the naira to appreciate in the parallel market.

He added that the move was cosmetic and unimaginative and had once again “Exposed President Bola Tinubu as a Lilliputian economist that lacked ideas on how to rescue the economy he had pushed to the edge with unviable policies.”

According to him, monetary policy is not the job of the NNPCL but the Central Bank of Nigeria and wondered why the former, “Which claimed to be a profit-making organisation, would go ahead to take a loan for the primary purpose of stabilising the naira.

Atiku also drew parallels between the actions of the NNPCL and the CBN under the authority of Godwin Emefiele.

He also claimed that oil production has dropped on Tinubu’s watch due to continuous oil theft, stressing that instead of boosting forex liquidity by increasing production and exports, “The President decided to take the jejune path of obtaining foreign loans, an inglorious road that his predecessor had travelled.

He said, “For many years, Tinubu claimed that he built the economy of Lagos from scratch. Now, he has been exposed as a charlatan. His administration detained Emefiele and vilified him for taking FX loans from JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs running into $7.5bn, which was used in defending the naira.

“Now, Tinubu’s administration is doing the same thing by forcing the NNPCL to take a loan of $3bn to defend the naira. We, however, have it on good authority that this is all a ruse to force the naira to appreciate at the parallel market, an action that will further affect the government’s credibility.

“The NNPCL has failed to shed the toga of an ordinary government agency. No wonder it has refused to become a public limited liability company, as stated in the Petroleum Industry Act. The NNPCL boss, Mele Kyari, who is also desperate to retain his job, has allowed himself to become a willing political tool just like Emefiele. If the NNPCL was a publicly listed oil firm like Aramco and Mobil, would it obtain a loan in order to ‘defend the naira’?”

He chided Tinubu for lacking a clear economic blueprint, arguing  that his policy flip-flops had already begun affecting Nigerian bonds.

 

Punch

Housewives in Rigasa community of Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State, along with their children, held a peaceful protest to highlight the pressing issues of hunger and exorbitant food prices in the state.

The protesters, who marched on the streets kept chanting slogans like “Tinubu, we are hungry.”

Some of the women appealed to the President for assistance, saying they had never faced such dire circumstances before.

One elderly woman, despite her illness, joined the protest to advocate for her five orphaned grandchildren whom she said were in need of nourishment.

She explained that the passing of her late husband’s siblings, who had been assisting her and the children, left her with no choice but to seek help publicly.

Another woman, aged 50, asserted that two children had tragically lost their lives due to hunger in the community, attributing their deaths to their parents’ inability to provide adequate sustenance.

The protesters emphasized that they were not seeking handouts, but rather urging Tinubu to address the food price crisis so that they can afford essential items at lower prices.

Another woman echoed this sentiment, imploring Tinubu for food assistance, stressing that this was to meet their primary need.

One of the protesters said in her 62 years on earth, she had never witnessed the cost of a mudu (cup) of grain selling at N1400 and a mudu of rice selling for N1700.

 

Daily Trust

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has introduced a foreign exchange (FX) price verification system (PVS) portal to enable importers to access forex.

The CBN, in a statement on Thursday night, said a price verification report from the portal is now mandatory for all Form M requests, effective from August 31, 2023.

The Form ‘M’ is a declaration of intention to import physical goods into Nigeria.

“Following the successful conduct of the pilot run and various trainings held with all the banks, the Central Bank of Nigeria hereby announces the Go- Live of the Price Verification System (PVS),” the statement reads.

“All applications for Forms M shall be accompanied by a valid price verification report generated from the price verification portal.

“For the avoidance of doubt, by this circular, the price verification report has become a mandatory trade document precedent to the completion of a Form M.”

“All authorised dealers are, hereby, advised to bring this to the attention of their customers”.

CBN also said any case of infraction would be appropriately sanctioned.

“Please, ensure compliance,” the bank urged exporters.

In June 2023, the CBN announced the unification of all segments of the foreign exchange (FX) market, signalling the end of its control of the forex market.

Since the decision — which was in compliance with the federal government’s directive — the exchange rate of the local currency has been experiencing significant volatility as market forces continue to determine prices.

 

The Cable