Sex and Masturbation a Risk to Ebola. WHO

Geneva – The WHO has advised all male
survivors of Ebola to be tested three months
after the onset of symptoms and then monthly
until they know they have no risk of passing on
the virus through their Fluid.

Bruce Aylward, Head of the WHO’s Ebola
Response, said on Thursday in Geneva that
isolated flare-ups of Ebola may point to a higher
risk of transmission via the Fluid of male
survivors than previously thought.

“It’s not the sex that is dangerous; it’s the
Fluid that is dangerous. How people actually
get exposed, in soiled linens or whatever, is not
clear.

“Transmission through Fluid may explain why
a few cases continue to occur even though the
outbreak has been almost completely eradicated
by an intense international effort, recently
bolstered by the deployment of a trial vaccine in
Guinea and Sierra Leone,’’ he said.

Aylward said the latest flare-up, in a village on
the northern border of Sierra Leone, followed
the death of a 67-year-old woman late last
month, 50 days after the previous confirmed
case in the region.

He said transmission chains are considered to
have been broken after 42 days with no new
infections.

However, Aylward said that sexual transmission
was “obviously not a huge risk, because if it
were we would have seen a lot more in the
areas that were hardest hit at the beginning of
this outbreak.”

He said this could undermine the hope of
ending the outbreak in West Africa by 2015.
A clinician said on condition of anonymity, that a
forthcoming study in the New England Journal of
Medicine, based on around 200 survivors, found
that around half still had traces of the virus in
their Fluid after six months.

“The old advice of three months is no longer
good.

“The number of people with persistent virus in
their Fluid is much greater than expected,”
clinician said.

The clinician added that the risk might not only
be from sex but also from masturbation.
(Reuters/NAN)

US Marks 14Th Anniversary Of September 11, 2001

The U.S. on Friday will mark the 14th remembrance of the Sept.11, 2001 attacks with ceremonies including memorial services at some sites of the attacks.

 

One of the memorial services would be at the newly opened Visitor Centre at the rural Pennsylvania site where one of four hijacked airliners crashed.

N

 

Similarly moments of silence will be held nationwide to commemorate the deadliest terrorist attacks ever on US soil, which killed 2,977 people.

 

On September 11, 2001, extremists on suicide missions hijacked four passenger jets, turning the aircraft into guided missiles against the two World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon defence headquarters outside Washington.

 

A new memorial, which opened Thursday, honours the victims of United Airlines flight 93, the fourth plane seized in the plot, which passengers apparently crashed on a field in Pennsylvania to thwart an attack on Washington.

 

The Flight 93 National Memorial Visitor Centre, located just outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, pays tribute to the 40 passengers and crew who died at the site, which is also the final resting place of the victims.

 

In New York, a ceremony is planned at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, where family members will read the names of victims of the 2001 attacks and those killed in the 1993 terrorist bombing at the World Trade Center.

 

In Washington, services will be held for victims’ families at the Pentagon Memorial(dpa/NAN)

News Source: Leadership  News

Julius Berger Returns To Lagos-Ibadan Express Way

Julius Berger Nigeria plc has returned to site on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway ahead of its plan to start full repair works by the end of September.

The rehabilitation works on the road were stopped by the company some time ago following some issues with the Federal Government

A visit to the site on Thursday revealed that officials and other workers of the company were already on the road preparing for the work ahead.

Officials of the company said the road rehabilitation would start from kilometre 12, otherwise known as the ”long bridge,” and would run towards the Shagamu Interchange.

The rehabilitation of the entire expressway was awarded in 2013, at a cost of N167 billion by former President Goodluck Jonathan.

The expressway is now being built to three lanes on both sides up to Sagamu Junction and two lanes up to Ibadan.

A fly-over and inter-change are being built at the Redemption Camp area to solve the perennial traffic gridlock on that section of the road.

The Federal Government terminated a concession agreement on the maintenance of the road with Messrs Bi-Courtney in 2012, because of alleged inability of the company to make progress after four years.

Mike Olememen, a former minister of works, had said in 2013 that the contract work consisted of reconstruction of Lagos-Ibadan Dual Carriageway from Shagamu-Ibadan.

Olememen said that the road reconstruction would commence at the Shagamu Interchange in Ogun State and terminate at Ojoo Interchange in Ibadan, a total length of about 84 kilometres.

The road is made up of a two-lane dual carriageway of 7.3 metres on each direction, 2.75 metres of outer hard shoulder and 1.8 metres of inner hard shoulder and median.

News Credit: Business  Day

Abia Saves 300Million From Ghost Worker in Two Months

outstanding arrears to be offset with bailout fund

Abia State government has saved more than N300 million, nearly three months since it began the process of ridding the state civil service of the problem of ghost workers.

According to Obinna Oriaku, special adviser on Economic Affairs to Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, the Integrated Payroll Verification process embarked upon by the state was yielding positive results.

“In the month of May, government was able to save N160 million from ghost workers. The summary of the state savings for both the month of May and June in salary payment stands at over N300 million,” Oriaku said.

Speaking further on salary payment in the state, Oriaku said, “we have paid all for the three months we are in charge, while the bailout fund will be used to offset arrears.”

According to him, “we had arrears before we came in. We started from when we came in, which is May, June and July. We took over on May 29th. There is no way we could have paid that same May, so we paid May in June, June in July and then July in August. The bailout fund will be used to take out all outstanding salaries and pension that we met on ground.”

The effect, according to Oriaku, was being felt by the state civil servants, saying, “please note that civil servants now take it for granted that they all will be paid at the end of every month… All the institutions in the state are back to work, while streetlight is back at Umuahia town.”

Recently, health workers in the state, under the aegis of Joint Union of Health Workers (JOHESU), protesting unpaid salary arrears, suspended their five-month-old strike following a meeting of the state leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), and Governor Ikpeazu, who assured them that he would soon pay them their arrears.

News  Credit : Business  News

Tribunal: Rivers APC Accuses Wike of 10bn Bribe Intent

The All Progressives Congress, Rivers State Chapter, has accused Governor Nyesom Wike of plotting to bribe tribunal judges with N10 billion.

In a statement issued by Chris Finebone, the Rivers State Publicity Secretary of the APC, he said the alleged move was as a result of the PDP’s poor showing in the tribunal sitting in Abuja.

According to the statement, “Following a spate of recent negative outcomes for the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the various Election Petition Tribunals sitting in Abuja, the Governor has commenced negotiations to borrow a whopping N10 billion from Zenith Bank PLC for the sole purpose of bribing judges of the Tribunals, Appeal Courts amongst others.

“To date, the Governor has collected a total of about N100 billion comprising Federal allocations, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), balance in the Reserve Fund and other sundry sums left in the State’s various accounts with the banks by 29th May.

“The aforementioned sum is exclusive of the earlier N30 billion obtained from banks by the governor since he assumed office. In sum total, about N130 billion has passed through the hands of the governor in 3 months with only a few projects of his predecessor he is completing and some cosmetic asphalting and pothole filling of some streets to show for it. If he borrows additional N10 billion from Zenith Bank as he has already decided to do, Rivers people and our next generation shall have been enslaved further to the tune of N40 billion as loan before the tribunal shows the governor the way out of Government House, Port Harcourt.

“Indeed, the APC is saddened at the carte blanche Nyesom Wike has handed to himself to recklessly borrow in the name of the people without consideration for the present and future generations of Rivers people.”

He added that “With the Governor as Commissioner for Works, Due Process Office and Site Engineer all rolled into one, the world can better imagine the big scam going on in Rivers State by a master underhand deal-maker as Governor.

“But most worrisome to the APC is the fact that information available to us indicates that the Governor made up his mind to borrow the N10 billion from Zenith Bank which he will keep exclusively to bribe judges every step of the way especially now that news coming to the Governor from the tribunals sitting in Abuja is not that cheery to his ears.

“We recall that his earlier attempt to approach the Chief Justice of Nigeria [CJN] with a view to compromising the latter ended in fiasco as the APC exposed his antics before he could get close to the revered CJN.

“After that unpalatable incident, we believed [though wrongly] that his disastrous experience with the CJN would have taught him a lesson but from what we now know, Nyesom Wike has learnt nothing from the CJN debacle as he has since devised other means of compromising some of the men of the hallowed realm. Our happiness is that some of the judges place premium on their reputation and name and care little about the filthy lucre the Governor dangles at them.

“The APC will not forget that Nyesom Wike prides in his ability to compromise any living being as long as the person has a price. He boasts of his escapades with men of the judiciary; cavorts with court registrars, clerks and even bailiffs. We are sure he believes that he is the best at his game the way late Pablo Escobar saw himself in exaggerated terms in Colombia as a drug warlord. But there is always one mountain too high to climb for mortal man.

“Therefore, the APC would like to appeal to well-meaning Rivers elders and leaders-of-thought to prevail on Gov. Nyesom Wike against incessant and needless high-interest borrowing he has embarked on for his selfish desires as this has catastrophic outcome for the future of our people and generations yet unborn.”

Primary Source: Daily  Post

250 Million Fake Phones Sold In Nigeria Per Year. NCC

The Nigerian Telecommunications Commission yesterday disclosed that about 250 million substandard phones were sold annually in the country.

The acting Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, who gave the figure during a stake holders meeting on ‘ Combating Counterfeit and Substandard ICT Devices Programme in Abuja, noted that the damaging impact of the substandard products on the economy cannot be quantified in socio-economic terms.

Specifically, he lamented the damaging effects of the products on a broad spectrum of the national life, saying that the ugly development poses grave danger to the health, safety and privacy of buyers and the nation’s environment.

He said” counterfeiting is a growing economic problem affecting a wide range of products in the ICT sector, mobile phones are especially targeted with some 250 million counterfeits sold annually. This number constitutes about 15% to 20% of the global mobile phone market.

“Apart from the obvious negative economic impact of this ugly trend on the manufacturers of genuine products, government, authorized dealers which include brand evaluation, loss of revenue, copyright and trademark infringement, unfair competition, loss of tax, cost of compliance with applicable national legislation, national security and loss of employment opportunities.

“This menace also poses danger to the health and safety of consumers equally breaching the privacy of consumers. Collective efforts is urgently needed to curtail counterfeiting in ICT,” Danbatta added.

Also speaking, director EMEA Mobile Manufacturers Forum, Thomas Barmuller, stressed the need to address counterfeit phones due to the hazardous substances which he said were not only a risk to safety, health and economic development,, but was a tool used for transmission of deadly viruses.

According to him, investigations has shown that the incidence of malware, spyware and SMS Trojans has increased dramatically especially with the usage of fake smart phones.

He however called for increased consumer education through communication strategy both at the national and regional levels, to create awareness on the negative effects of counterfeit phones so as to enable consumers, manufacturers and operators link to a trustworthy source.

He added that, “it is necessary to work with stake holders to address the situation by developing communication campaigns, build awareness and support reforms in key markets.”

News Source : Nigerian  Mirror