WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Patriot missile defense system in Ukraine likely damaged - US sources

A U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system being used by Ukraine likely suffered some damage from a Russian strike, two U.S. officials said on Tuesday, adding that it did not appear to have been destroyed.

The Patriot system is one of an array of sophisticated air defense units supplied by the West to help Ukraine repel a Russian campaign of air strikes that has targeted critical infrastructure, power facilities and other sites.

One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity and citing initial information, said Washington and Kyiv were already talking about the best way to repair the system and at this point it did not appear the system would have to be removed from Ukraine.

The official added that the United States would have a better understanding in the coming days and information could change over time.

The Patriot is considered to be one of the most advanced U.S. air defense systems, including against aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. It typically includes launchers along with radar and other support vehicles.

Russia's defense ministry said on Tuesday that it had destroyed a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defense system with a "hypersonic" Kinzhal missile in an overnight strike on Ukraine.

Ukraine said earlier that it had shot down 18 Russian missiles overnight, including an entire volley of six Kinzhals. When asked about the Ukrainian claim, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed it, the RIA news agency reported.

It was not clear which Western weapon Ukraine used. The Pentagon had no immediate comment.

** Kyiv says it shoots down volley of Russian hypersonic missiles

Ukraine said on Tuesday it had shot down six Russian Kinzhal missiles in a single night, thwarting a weapon Moscow has touted as a next-generation hypersonic missile that was all but unstoppable.

When asked about the Ukrainian claim, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed it, the RIA news agency reported. His ministry said a Kinzhal had destroyed a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defence system.

“A high-precision strike by the hypersonic Kinzhal missile hit a U.S.-made Patriot anti-aircraft missile system in the city of Kyiv,” the defence ministry said in a statement.

The commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, had said earlier that his forces had intercepted the six Kinzhals launched from aircraft, as well as nine Kalibr cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and three Iskanders fired from land.

Russia's Shoigu was quoted as saying the number of claimed Ukrainian missile intercepts in general is "three times greater than the number we launch".

"And they get the type of missiles wrong all the time. That's why they don't hit them," he said, without elaborating.

It was the first time Ukraine had claimed to have struck an entire volley of multiple Kinzhal missiles, and if confirmed, would be a demonstration of the effectiveness of its newly deployed Western air defences.

The United States and the European Union have supplied Ukraine with weaponry to defend itself since Russia invaded in February 2022.

EU and NATO member Hungary has refused, however, to provide any military equipment to neighbour Ukraine, and on Tuesday, the government said it had blocked the next tranche of the EU's off-budget military support known as the European Peace Facility.

Air raid sirens blared across nearly all of Ukraine early on Tuesday and were heard over the Ukrainian capital and the surrounding region for more than three hours.

"A year ago, we were not able to shoot down most of the terrorists' missiles, especially ballistic ones," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an address to the Council of Europe rights body in Iceland by video link.

"And I am asking one thing now. If we are able to do this, is there anything we can't do?"

The meeting of European leaders over two days was to focus on ways to hold Russia to account for its war, officials said.

Russia says its invasion was necessary to counter threats to its security posed by Ukraine's growing ties to the West.

Ukraine and its allies call it an unprovoked war of conquest and Ukraine says it won't stop fighting until all Russian forces leave its land.

FLASHES OF LIGHT AND DEBRIS

The six Kinzhals were among 27 missiles Russia fired at Ukraine over 24 hours, Ukraine's military said in its evening update on Tuesday, lighting up Kyiv with flashes and raining debris after they were blasted from the sky.

It was unclear which Western weapon Ukraine used to defend against the Kinzhals. The Pentagon had no immediate comment.

For its part, Russia's defence ministry said its forces delivered a concentrated strike with long-range air- and sea-based high-precision weapons at Ukrainian forces, "as well as at places of storage of ammunition, weapons and military equipment delivered from Western countries”.

Kyiv authorities said three people were wounded by falling debris.

"It was exceptional in its density - the maximum number of attack missiles in the shortest period of time," Serhiy Popko, head of the city military administration, said on Telegram.

Ukraine's military said two S-300 missiles had also targeted infrastructure in Kostyantynivka, west of the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut.

HYPERSONIC SPEED?

This month, Ukraine said it had shot down a single Kinzhal missile over Kyiv for the first time using a newly deployed Patriot system.

The U.S. military confirmed that but did not say whether the Russian missile was flying at hypersonic speed at the time.

The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) says the Kinzhal rapidly accelerates to Mach 4 (4,900 km/h) after launch and may reach speeds of up to Mach 10 - or 10 times the speed of sound. Hypersonic weapons travel at least five times the speed of sound.

The Kinzhal missile, the name means dagger, can carry conventional or nuclear warheads up to 2,000 km. Russia used the weapon in war for the first time in Ukraine last year and has only acknowledged firing them on a few occasions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has frequently touted the Kinzhal as proof of world-beating Russian hardware, capable of taking on NATO.

With Ukraine set to go on the offensive against Russia's invasion for the first time in six months, Russian forces are launching longer-range air strikes at the highest frequency of the war.

Ukraine says it is shooting down most missiles and drones.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine says it shoots down more missiles than Russia fires – Shoigu

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has refuted claims made by Ukrainian military officials about shooting down six Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles during overnight strikes on targets near the country’s capital city of Kiev.

Ukraine routinely exaggerates the effectiveness of its anti-aircraft defenses, primarily ‘intercepting’ incoming Russian munitions only with public statements, Shoigu told RIA Novosti.

“I have already said that, and I will repeat it again. We have not launched as many ‘Kinzhals’ as they allegedly shoot down every time with their statements. Moreover, the number of these ‘Ukrainian interceptions’ – and who really mans the American [anti-aircraft] complexes there, is still a big question – is three times as high as what we actually launch,” Shoigu stated.

The minister also said that Ukraine “always” misidentifies munitions used by Russia in its media statements. “That’s why they miss them,” he added, without providing any further information on the number of missiles used in the latest barrage.

Ukraine was subjected to a new massive missile and suicide drone barrage overnight, with the country’s capital city of Kiev seeing particularly intense activity by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses, footage circulating online suggests.

Moscow and Kiev have provided drastically different accounts of what happened overnight. Kiev claimed that it had shot down six state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles over the capital, as well as other incoming projectiles, using a battery of the US-made Patriot air defense system. The Russian military, however, said the battery was successfully hit by a Kinzhal missile. Footage available online shows multiple anti-aircraft missiles going towards an unseen target, with at least two explosions seen at the site from which they appeared to be launched.

Western media reports suggested the Patriot battery in question was likely damaged in the strike. According to CNN, citing an unidentified US official, Washington is currently assessing the extent of the damage in order to determine whether the Patriots need to be pulled back or whether on-site repairs by Ukrainian forces would be enough.

** Seven UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles shot down – Moscow

Several Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which were recently supplied to Ukraine by Britain, have been shot down by Russian air defenses over the past 24 hours, its Defense Ministry has said.

“Seven Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, three HARM anti-radar missiles and seven HIMARS multiple rocket launcher shells were intercepted,” the ministry’s spokesman, Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, announced during a briefing on Tuesday. He didn’t say where the intercepts had taken place.

According to Konashenkov, 22 Ukrainian drones were also destroyed over Russia’s newly incorporated territories: the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions.

The spokesman said Russia’s overnight missile barrage on Ukrainian military formations, hardware, and depots of ammunition and equipment that had been provided by the West had “achieved its goal. All intended targets were hit.”

Among those targets was a US-supplied Patriot missile system, which was destroyed in the capital Kiev by a Kinzhal hypersonic missile, Konashenkov said. 

Russia first announced the downing of a Storm Shadow on Monday, saying that one such missile had been intercepted.

The authorities in Lugansk previously claimed that, over the past few days, the British munitions had been used in several Ukrainian attacks on the city, in which residential buildings were damaged.

Britain confirmed the delivery of Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles to Ukraine last week. CNN earlier reported that Kiev had received the munitions well before the official announcement. With a range of up to 300km (200 miles), Storm Shadow became the longest-range weapon supplied to Kiev by its Western backers to date. UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace claimed that the missiles would allow “Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian sovereign territory.”

Moscow said the decision to provide Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine was “a very unfriendly step” on the part of Britain, which revealed the country’s “unprecedented level of involvement” in the conflict. The move would lead to “serious escalation” in Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry warned, adding that Russia “reserves the right to take any measures deemed necessary to neutralize a threat” posed by the new weapons.

During more than a year of fighting, Russian officials have often pointed out that deliveries of more sophisticated arms to Ukraine by the US, UK and their allies could cross its ‘red lines’. According to Moscow, the supply of weapons and ammo, as well as intelligence sharing and training provided to Kiev’s forces, have already made Western nations de facto parties to the conflict.

Reuters/RT

Air strikes, artillery fire escalate as factions battle in Sudan capital

Air strikes and artillery fire intensified sharply across Sudan's capital on Tuesday, residents said, as the army sought to defend its bases from paramilitary rivals it has been fighting for more than a month.

The air strikes, explosions and clashes could be heard in the south of Khartoum, and there was heavy shelling across the River Nile in parts of the adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman, witnesses said.

The conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has triggered unrest elsewhere in Sudan, especially in the western region of Darfur, but is concentrated in Khartoum.

It has caused a humanitarian crisis that threatens to destabilise the region, displacing more than 700,000 people inside Sudan and forcing about 200,000 to flee into neighbouring countries.

Those who have remained in the capital are struggling to survive as food supplies dwindle, health services collapse and lawlessness spreads.

The IFRC humanitarian network said 9 million people were living in close proximity to battles and under severe hardship, and cited reports of increased sexual violence against people on the move as it launched a $33 million fundraising appeal.

Officials have recorded 676 deaths and more than 5,500 injuries, but the real toll is expected to be far higher with many reports of bodies left in the streets and people struggling to bury the dead.

"The situation is unbearable. We left our house to go to a neighbour's house in Khartoum, escaping from the war, but the bombardment follows us wherever we go," said Ayman Hassan, a 32-year-old Khartoum resident.

"We don't know what the citizens did to deserve a war in the middle of the houses."

JEDDAH TALKS

Fighting has surged both in Khartoum and in Geneina, capital of West Darfur, since the two warring parties began talks in Jeddah brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States more than a week ago.

The talks have produced a statement of principles on protecting civilians and allowing aid supplies, but mechanisms for humanitarian corridors and agreeing a ceasefire are still being discussed.

Both sides had previously announced several ceasefires, none of which stopped the fighting.

The army has mainly used air strikes and shelling as it seeks to push back RSF forces from positions across Khartoum.

It has accused the RSF of using captured army officers and their families as human shields, something the RSF has denied.

The RSF attacked major military bases in northern Omdurman and southern Khartoum on Tuesday in an apparent attempt to prevent the army from deploying heavy weaponry and fighter jets, residents and witnesses said.

The RSF said it had captured hundreds of army troops in Bahri, releasing footage of rows of seated men in uniform with RSF fighters celebrating around them. Reuters could not immediately verify the claim, which the army denied.

The army has been trying to cut off RSF supply lines and to secure strategic sites including the airport in central Khartoum and the major Al-Jaili oil refinery in Bahri, where fighting flared again on Tuesday.

RSF forces also detained Anas Omer, an outspoken senior member of the ruling party under deposed former leader Omar al-Bashir, from his home in Khartoum, Omer's son told Reuters.

The RSF has accused the army of working with loyalists of the former regime, a charge the army has denied.

HOMES DESTROYED

The war began after disputes over plans for the RSF to join the army and the future chain of command under an internationally backed deal for a political transition towards civilian rule and elections.

Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, took the top positions on Sudan's ruling council following the 2019 overthrow of Bashir during a popular uprising.

They staged a coup two years later as a deadline to hand power to civilians approached, began to mobilise their respective forces as mediators tried to finalise the transition plan.

Both sides courted foreign backing from regional states attracted by Sudan's mineral and agricultural wealth, and its strategic location between the Sahel and the Gulf.

Most of those fleeing Sudan have headed north to Egypt or west to Chad, which borders Darfur. Others have headed to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, hoping to catch boats to Saudi Arabia.

"We came from war, we lost our husbands, our homes were destroyed," said Reem, a student camped out in scorching heat in Port Sudan with hundreds of others. "Even if there were peace, where are we going to live if we go back?"

Reuters

Spoiler alert: I am not going to talk about how ChatGPT responds when prompted about economic-development strategies. It basically regurgitates reasonable, but mediocre ideas that it has seen in its training set. But ChatGPT’s design, which has given it far greater capabilities than its creators anticipated, offers a valuable lesson for tackling the complexities of economic development.

For more than a decade, deep neural networks (DNNs) have outperformed all other artificial-intelligence technologies, driving significant advances in computer vision, speech recognition, and translation. The emergence of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT continue this trend.

To learn, AI algorithms require training, which can be achieved through two main approaches: supervised and unsupervised learning. In supervised learning, humans provide the computer with a set of labeled pictures such as “dog,” “cat,” “hamburger,” “car,” and so on. The algorithm is then tested to see how well it predicts the labels associated with images it has not yet seen.

The problem with the supervised approach is that it requires humans to go through the tedious process of manually labeling every picture. By contrast, unsupervised learning does not rely on labeled data. But the absence of labels raises the question of what the algorithm is supposed to learn. To address this, ChatGPT trains the algorithm simply to predict the next word of the text that is used to train it.

Predicting the next word may seem like a trivial task, akin to the auto-complete function in Google Search. But ChatGPT’s model allows it to perform highly complicated tasks, such as passing the bar exam with a better score than most high-performing law students.

The key to such feats lies in the impressive power of this simple learning process. In order to predict the next word, the algorithm is forced to develop a nuanced understanding of context, grammar, syntax, style, and much more. The level of sophistication it achieved surprised everybody, including its designers. DNNs proved capable of functioning much better without trying to incorporate into learning language models the theories that linguists had developed for decades.

The lesson for economic development is that policymakers should focus on a task that may seem mundane, provided that to excel at it, they will indirectly be forced to learn much more intricate development challenges.

By contrast, the prevailing approach in the field of development economics has been to distinguish between proximate causes and deeper determinants of growth and to focus on the latter. This approach is analogous to saying, “Instead of trying to predict the next word, understand the context and meaning of the entire book.”

In their 2012 book Why Nations Fail, for example, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson argue that institutions, by affecting the structure of incentives in society, are the ultimate determinant of economic outcomes. Brown University economist Oded Galor has taken a different approach, emphasizing the complex demographic and technological transformations that brought humanity out of the Malthusian equilibrium and led to longer life expectancy, lower fertility rates, and higher investment in education. Together, these trends boosted women’s participation in the labor force and increased the availability of skills needed to sustain technology adoption and economic growth.

But do these theories match the facts? Over the past four decades, the developing world has indeed undergone many of the radical transformations that Galor described. As the late physician Hans Rosling observed, the gaps between developing and developed countries in life expectancy, infant mortality, fertility, education, university enrollment, female labor-force participation, and urbanization have all narrowed sharply. Reasoning à la Acemoglu and Robinson, developing countries’ institutions could not be all that bad if they were able to deliver progress on so many fronts. In Galor’s framework, progress on all these fronts should explain why developing countries caught up so much with the developed world in terms of income.

Except that they did not: the median country is no closer to US income levels than it was four decades ago. How is it possible that the narrowing gaps in education, health, urbanization, and female empowerment failed to narrow the income gap as well? Why hasn’t progress in the supposed deeper determinants delivered the goods?

To make sense of this puzzling outcome, economists invoke a widening technological gap. More than an explanation, this is a mathematical necessity: if more inputs do not generate more output, something must be making inputs less effective.

To explain this unexpected outcome, it is useful to note that the few countries that did manage to catch up share two distinctive features: their exports grew much faster than their GDP, and they diversified their exports by shifting toward more complex goods.

To achieve this feat, these successful countries must have adopted and adapted better technologies, adjusted the provision of public goods and their institutions to support emerging industries, and reduced inefficiencies and costs by increasing productivity and training workers. In that process, they may have fixed a bunch of other problems.

A ChatGPT-inspired development strategy would focus on a simple goal: to improve the competitiveness, diversity, and complexity of exports. Figuring out how to do this would force policymakers to learn how to do important things, just like predicting the next word enabled ChatGPT to learn context, grammar, syntax, and style.

Like early AI programmers who were sidetracked by linguists and their convoluted theories, policymakers have been distracted by too many objectives, such as the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. But applying the ChatGPT approach to economic development could simplify things: just as the language model tries to predict only the next word, policymakers could try to focus on facilitating the next export, as successful countries seem to have done. While this may seem like a small step, it could lead to surprisingly significant results.

Project Syndicate

Unrealistic optimism and boundless passion are critical parts of any good entrepreneur's DNA. If building something new and important from nothing was easy, anyone could do it.

And if everyone knew how difficult starting a business was going to be, no one would ever try. Persevering in the face of what appear to be overwhelming odds is also part of the requirements to eventually get to the finish line.

But what it doesn't take is lying to your peers, investors and customers, as well as to the media. That's crossing a line that no one should ever cross. And whether you acknowledge it to yourself or not, there's a surprisingly bright boundary in almost every case.

There's a day or a point in time or an ethical test that presents a clear choice; you don't slip or fall into fraud, it's a straightforward decision. You either consciously plunge forward into the abyss of illegality or you sharply pull back and stay legit.

This is why it's so important for the people who are trying to build real businesses in the right way to call out the cheats and creeps.

To make sure that everyone sees that – even if we all admit to ourselves just how easy cheating might be – there's a substantive and real difference between readily available rationalizations to justify illegal acts and actually making that initial bad decision to head down the wrong road.

But just because you can understand the complexities, temptations and risks doesn't mean you get to stand quietly by – especially when it's your own business that's being adversely impacted by competitors willing to do and say anything to get the sale. You're the one who has to act, even if it's clearly not easy.

I call this asymmetric competition (or bringing a knife to a gunfight) because one side is always trying to do the right thing and compete fairly while the other side has no limits, no ethics and no boundaries on how low they're willing to go.

In fact, the Orange Monster and the scum on the other side think that dishonesty is an admirable survival skill and claim, much like Trump bragging about being smart enough to evade any taxes.

That cutting corners, shaving points and edges and using inferior goods and components are all part of a big game where only winning ultimately matters. As Hitler said: "It is not truth that matters, but victory. The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

Confronting and dealing with competitors who are lying to your customers is a very complicated task.

There's a fine line in the customers' minds between complaining and whining and the problem is growing because in the Trump era, where no lie is too big, bold or unthinkable, the numbers of unscrupulous players are multiplying.

It's becoming more and more difficult for buyers to determine who's telling the truth and who isn't. Worse yet, in the startup world, facts and factoids are often confused and concrete "proof" is often hard to come by.

Consider that JPMorgan Chase alleges it got hoodwinked by Charlie Javice, the  30-year-old founder of Frank, a fin tech the bank bought for $175 million.  The celebrated "fake it" culture and the media's glorification of growth at any cost, hasn't helped to clarify the worsening situation although we do seem to finally be turning a corner.  

It's been encouraging to belatedly see the demise of the "fake it 'til you make it" excuse for outright and grievous instances of theft and fraud although the general commentary in the mainstream media stills lags in calling out the harsh realities in many of these cases.

It appears that, in addition to simply creating copy, filling space and dancing around the truth, too many members of the tech press feel obliged to insert a paragraph or two reciting this old Silicon Valley saw, apparently in the name of neutrality, objectivity and even-handedness.    

In truth, spewing this bullshit adds nothing helpful to the conversation. This startup malarky persists even after convincing and broad-ranging criminal convictions.

It confuses and confounds the public and prospective investors, misleads other serious and honest entrepreneurs and frankly continues to provide some shelter and comfort to people who are demonstrably criminal.

We just had another round of criminal convictions in Chicago in the Outcome Health cases and sadly there are still far too many social media comments about how the thieves and villains are nice folks and did so many supportive things for others right up until the time their criminal scams and schemes were disclosed and prosecuted.

There really aren't two sides to these stories. Try telling the firemen that the arsonists aren't really such bad guys – they just have a thing for matches.

This bogus approach closely resembles the oblivious stupidity of the political press in constantly attempting to equitably compare the positions of conscientious and well-intentioned Democratic politicians with the dishonest, manipulative and extortionate proposals of performative MAGA morons whose sole interests are to delay, disrupt and interfere with the ongoing governance activities of the Congress and with those of state legislatures as well.

Instead of talking about what's happening in Washington, where one party is creating a potential catastrophe and attempting to hold the country and the economy hostage to their crazy demands, the media talks about the situation as if it were a normal, two-sided conversation among rational actors instead of a circus conducted by performative assholes.

These acts are so outside of the norm that the traditionalist and temperate Democrats like Dick Durbin don't even know how to address them.

It's hard to pretend that it's business as usual when people you have to call your colleagues are lying to your face and to the public daily, but that's what's going on and the country's much the worse for it.

Startup entrepreneurs face the same problem: Trying to honestly compete with liars and criminals in their own marketplaces. You've got to say something, you need to call the customers' and clients' attention to the situation – both for their sake and your own – but it's a difficult conversation to have.

It's frankly surprising how often we have to rediscover an old and very basic lesson,  which is that customers and clients don't really care even a little bit about your constraints and concerns, even when they clearly should. Even if theirbusinesses could also be at risk.

The pandemic presented case after case of this problem – honest suppliers (especially of food products) incurred enormous additional costs to avoid any risks of passing on virus-contaminated material.  But many were woefully unsupported when they tried to share these costs with customers.

They were happy to find lower-cost and less  conscientious vendors willing to sell them similar products and who falsely claimed that they had also taken suitable steps and precautions to avoid any problems.

In the end, your customers and clients believe that they hired you to do a job and not much else matters – get the job done, now and correctly.

They don't want you to waste their time with apologies or excuses. If that's all you've got to try to justify your concerns, you can bet that there's going to be some unhappy times ahead.

Let's be clear, though, that an apology isn't an excuse. Honestly, there's no such thing these days as a good excuse. But a thoughtful and solid explanation of the situation is an entirely different thing. The trick is to find the right way and the right time to tell your story.

Here are three key things to keep in mind.

(1)  The context of these kinds of conversations matters at least as much as the content. Find the right time and place and make sure that the customer is willing and able to listen. A congested and busy office isn't the right place.

A rushed phone call or having the talk while standing in the hall between meetings won't get the job done. Invest the time to make the conversation personal. Forget Zoom,  face-to-face matters.

(2)  In the war on truth that's raging these days, the only certain way to lose is to be passive. Honesty is difficult and sometimes painful at first, but it's the only way to develop a long-term relationship based on trust, which is the ultimate key to success.

A sincere effort is all anyone can ask. If you tell the truth, the truth becomes part of your past. If you lie, the lie becomes part of your future. The truth only hurts when it ought to.

(3)  Focus on a few important facts and stick to your story. It's more important to repeat the critical and personal concerns than to try to cover everything. Our minds process meaning before details. Passion and energy are more compelling and effective than a particularized parade of horrible.

 Take your time and be patient. Don't lose your place or your temper. If you're angry, people will focus on your anger and not on the facts that matter.

The objective in these conversations isn't to sell, convince, or share your burdens; it's to demonstrate why it's in the customers' own best interests to look carefully at the alternatives and the risks they face before they make the wrong choice.

Inc

The consumer price index (CPI), which measures the rate of change in prices of goods and services, rose to 22.22 percent in April 2023, up from 22.04 percent in the previous month.

The inflation rate data is contained in the latest CPI report released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The April increase comes across as the fourth consecutive surge in the country’s inflation figure since the year began.

“Looking at the movement, the April 2023 inflation rate showed an increase of 0.18% points when compared to March 2023 headline inflation rate,” the report reads.

“Similarly, on a year-on-year basis, the headline inflation rate was 5.40% points higher compared to the rate recorded in April 2022, which was 16.82%. 

“This shows that the headline inflation rate on a year-on-year basis increased in April 2023 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., April 2022).”

NBS said items such as food and non-alcoholic beverages; housing, water, electricity, gas & other fuel contributed largely on the divisional level to the increase in the headline index.

“The contributions of items on the divisional level to the increase in the headline index are presented below: food and non-alcoholic beverages (11.51 percent); housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuel (3.72 percent),” the agency said.

“Clothing and footwear (1.70 percent); transport (1.45 percent); furnishings, household equipment and maintenance (1.12 percent); education (0.88 percent); health (0.67 percent); miscellaneous goods and services (0.37 percent); restaurant and hotels (0.27 percent); alcoholic beverage, tobacco and kola (0.24 percent); recreation and culture (0.15 percent) and communication (0.15 percent).”

FOOD INFLATION RISES TO 24.61%

The report said food inflation rose to 24.61 percent in the month under review, an uptick compared to the 24.45 percent recorded in the preceding month.

The rise in the food index, NBS explained, was caused by increases in prices of oil and fat, bread and cereals, fish, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fruits, meat, vegetable, and spirits.

“On a month-on-month basis, the food inflation rate in April 2023 was 2.13%, this was 0.06% points higher compared to the rate recorded in March 2023 (2.07%),” the report further reads.

“The average annual rate of food inflation for the twelve months ending April 2023 over the previous twelve months average was 23.22%, which was 4.35% points increase from the average annual rate of change recorded in April 2022 (18.88%).”

The Cable

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has launched its Financial Literacy e-Learning Platform, called “SabiMoni” in its efforts to upscale Financial Inclusion in the country.

According to the CBN Governor, Godwing Emefiele, who launched the platform in Abuja on Monday, the apex bank was determined to achieve the 95 percent Financial Inclusion target next year.

He said that the “SabiMoni” would significantly impact the drive as more members of the Nigerian public key into the platform.

Emefiele promised that the CBN would urgently resolve the squabble between Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and telecommunication companies over the sharing of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) income.

According to him, USSD has been very useful as a part of the mechanism for Financial Inclusion and would not be allowed to have its services disrupted over the sharing of the income between banks and telecommunication companies.

Vanguard

Nigerian tycoon Tony Elumelu’s family raised its stake in the nation’s biggest conglomerate after warding off a takeover threat from a rival. 

Elumelu’s wife, Awele Elumelu, acquired 5.1% of Transnational Corp. of Nigeria Plc, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. That boosts the family’s holding to at least 30%, which according to Nigerian takeover rules is the threshold for triggering an open offer. Transcorp didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. 

Before the latest acquisition, the tycoon spent about $65 million to buy 11.7 billion shares of the company known as Transcorp at various price levels starting April 27. Elumelu began boosting his share days after rival Femi Otedola accumulated a 5% stake in the company, making him the largest single shareholder. Otedola has since sold his stake to Elumelu, according local media reports. 

Transcorp controls about 16% of Nigeria’s electricity generating capacity, runs hotels and explores for oil. That gives Elumelu an avenue to expand in areas that are crucial for Africa’s most-populous nation. A Transcorp-led group earlier this month acquired Abuja Electricity Distribution Co. in a move to expand into power distribution.

The fight for control has helped Transcorp’s shares advance 86% since April 1, making them the second-best performing on the NGX All Share Index.

Elumelu began his buying spree through his wholly owned investment firm HH Capital, raising his stakes in Transcorp to 25.58% from 2.07%. Elumelu rejected an offer from Otedola, who wanted to acquire Transcorp for 250 billion naira ($538 million), according to online newspaper Premium Times, citing a statement from Otedola. 

Lagos-based Transcorp owns three power plants, with a combined installed generating capacity of 2,000 megawatts. It also owns hotels in the capital, Abuja, the commercial hub of Lagos and the southern city of Calabar.

Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who leads the National Council on Privatization, last week said that a consortium led by Transcorp has been given approval to acquire Abuja Electricity, without disclosing financial details. 

United Bank for Africa Plc, a lender headed by Elumelu, put Abuja Electricity on sale in 2021 to recoup $122 million in debt that it had defaulted on. UBA declined to comment. 

Bloomberg

Oil companies including Shell Plc and Eni SpA should pay $12 billion to repair environmental devastation in Nigeria’s crude-rich Niger Delta, a new report said.

More than six decades of pumping oil has left Bayelsa state “in the grip of a human and environmental catastrophe of unimaginable proportions,” according to research published by a panel set up by the state government. The extraction of crude is “the overwhelmingly evident cause of this disaster” in the state, home to more than 2 million people, it said.

Bayelsa State Oil & Environmental Commission, established in 2019 by a former governor of the southern state, released its final report on Tuesday. British lawmaker and former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, chaired the London-headquartered commission, whose research was conducted by a group of international experts.

The area that is today Bayelsa was the first place in West Africa to produce commercial quantities of oil in the late 1950s. Since then, firms — mainly Shell and Eni — have pumped billions of barrels of crude from beneath the state’s land, swamps and waterways. Spills from their infrastructure have transformed the region into “one of the most polluted places on Earth,” according to the commission’s report.

A spokesman for Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary declined to comment on the report, saying the company is not “privy” to the commission’s allegations and recommendations. Eni did not respond to a request for comment.

The oil companies say outside interference — by thieves and saboteurs — rather than equipment failure is to blame for the overwhelming majority of leaks from their facilities.

But the firms have failed to “properly invest in, maintain, manage and protect pipelines” that develop spills at a rate “unparalleled when compared to other major oil producing countries,” the report said. There are also “strong reasons to believe that the official statistics significantly and systematically over-state the number of leaks caused by sabotage while downplaying those attributable to other causes,” it said.

‘Fundamentally Compromised’

About one-fifth of Nigeria’s oil output comes from Bayelsa — with almost all the rest is pumped from other states in the Niger Delta or off the country’s shores. While international majors for decades produced most of the nation’s crude in partnership with the state energy company, they have been selling onshore and shallow-water licenses to local companies in recent years.

The oil majors that have extracted crude in Bayelsa and the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Co. should invest $12 billion to restore impacted areas, create new jobs, provide drinking water and treat health problems, according to the report. The fund’s work will require a “parallel bureaucracy” involving both domestic and international oversight, it said.

The commission also recommended an overhaul of the regulatory and legal regime to allow heftier penalties, introduce a fast-track arbitration body and remove the influence of producers from the “fundamentally compromised” spill inspection process. The government departments tasked with enforcing environmental standards lack “capacity, independence and influence,” it said.

NNPC, National Oil Spill Detection & Response Agency and Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission did not respond to requests for comment.

An environmental assessment published by the UN Environment Programme in 2011 led to the establishment of a $1 billion fund backed by Shell and the NNPC to clean up pollution in Ogoniland, a kingdom about 20% of Bayelsa’s size in the neighboring Rivers state. Internal documents prepared by the UN agency and reported by Bloomberg last year indicate the project is marred by wastefulness and mismanagement that could be making the region even dirtier.

Studies conducted for the commission found that “toxins from hydrocarbon pollution are present at often dangerous levels in the soil, water and air” across Bayelsa and “have been absorbed into the human food chain,” according to the report.

By tolerating what “they would never contemplate in their home jurisdictions,” the multinationals have displayed “many of the hallmarks not just of gross negligence but of environmental racism,” it said.

Bloomberg

Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has declared a five-day warning strike following failure of the Federal Government to meet its demands.

This was made known after an extraordinary National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held virtually on Monday.

According to the doctors, the strike will begin on Wednesday, May 17, and end on Monday, May 22.

On April 29, NARD issued a two-week ultimatum to the Federal Government to implement the agreements or face industrial action.

The ultimatum, however, ended on Saturday, May 13, 2023.

The doctors are demanding an immediate increment in the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure to the tune of 200 per cent of the current gross salary of doctors and the new allowances included in the letter written by the association to the Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, on July 7, 2022, on the review of CONMESS.

They demanded the immediate payment of the 2023 Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF), which aligns with the agreements reached at the stakeholders’ meeting convened by the Federal Ministry of Health.

Also, they demanded the commencement of payment of all salary arrears owed to its members including 2014, 2015, and 2016 salary arrears as well as areas of the consequential adjustment of the minimum wage.

The Guardian

The United States of America has accused Nigeria of severe violations of religious freedom.

This was contained in the Annual Report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom published in April 2023 and obtained by our correspondent on Monday.

The commission stated that criminal activity and violent armed group incidents impacting religious freedom worsened.

The commission cited instances, such as “A Shari’a court sentencing Sheikh Kabara to death for blasphemy. Judicial authorities sentenced humanist leader Mubarak Bala to 24 years in prison for blasphemy and other charges,” among others.

According to USA, “in 2022, religious freedom conditions in Nigeria remained poor, with both state and non-state actors committing particularly severe violations of religious freedom.

“While some officials worked to address drivers of religious freedom violations, others actively infringed on the religious freedom rights of Nigerians, including by enforcing blasphemy laws. Criminal activity and violent armed group incidents impacting religious freedom worsened.”

It added that “rampant violence and atrocities across Nigeria continued to impact freedom of religion or belief, including militant Islamist violence; some forms of identity-based violence; mob violence; and criminal, political, and vigilante violence impacting worship.”

The US said it noted that the federal authorities accelerated efforts to address violence impacting religious freedom, including by institutionalising harsher punishments against perpetrators, improving military efforts to neutralise Islamist fighters in the North, and strengthening efforts to investigate and arrest perpetrators of the most egregious attacks.

It, however, said, “The effectiveness of these efforts remained in question, while in some regions state and local officials failed to fully prosecute individuals who incited mob violence against alleged blasphemers.

“Security and judicial sector reform aimed at deterring and providing redress for religious violence remained stagnant, with such efforts largely absent from or peripheral to leading politicians’ policy priorities.”

It added that despite continued religious freedom challenges in the country, “In November, the U.S. Department of State failed to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

The Commission advised the U.S. government to “Designate Nigeria as a CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act, and redesignate Boko Haram and ISWAP as ‘entities of particular concern,’ or EPCs, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, as defined by IRFA.”

Punch