BILL GATES URGES NIGERIAN GOVERNMENTS TO PRIORITISE HEALTHCARE.

Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has tasked the federal and state governments to prioritise funding the health sector to secure the future of Nigerians.

Gates said this in his presentation to the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting, presided over by Vice-President Kashim Shettima at the State House, Abuja.

He said President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda, though ambitious, would need to deploy limited funds judiciously.

Gates explained that in two decades, the world had reduced the number of children who died before their fifth birthday by half as a result of investments in primary healthcare such as routine immunisation.

However, he said in Nigeria, 2.2 million children had never received a single vaccine.

Gates urged both the federal and state governments to put in more efforts to reverse the ratio.

He said President Tinubu’s administration had already taken a big step toward a stronger primary health system, by implementing an ambitious Sector-Wide Approach.

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CHINA PROMISES TO SUSTAIN HIGH-LEVEL COOPERATION WITH AFRICA.

The Chinese government has promised to sustain its high-level cooperation with Africa in the bid to strengthen the relationship that exists between them.

Its government officials disclosed this while briefing newsmen as part of activities at the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) that started from Sept. 4.

The Summit holding in Beijing, China is expected to end on Sept. 6.

The officials included Weiping Deng, Deputy Director-General, Department of Commerce, Hunan Province and Dai Zhiguang, the Deputy Director-General of the Foreign Office of Hunan Province, China.

They reiterated Hunan’s cooperation with Africa, saying strategic steps had been taken by the Chinese government to strengthen the bilateral ties between China and Africa.

The officials said, “Since 2019, Hunan provincial leaders have visited African countries including Kenya, Nigeria, Madagascar, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

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CHINA OFFERS AFRICA FIFTY-ONE BILLION DOLLARS IN FRESH FUNDING.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to step up China’s support to the world’s fastest-growing continent with funding of nearly $51 billion, backing for more infrastructure initiatives and a promise to create at least 1 million jobs.

The world’s biggest two-way lender, Beijing showed a desire to move away from funding big-ticket infrastructure and focus instead on selling to developing economies the advanced and green technologies in which Chinese firms have invested heavily.

Still, Xi told delegates from more than 50 African nations that the world’s second-largest economy would carry out 30 infrastructure projects across the resource-rich continent, and offer 360 billion yuan ($50.70 billion) in financial assistance.

“China is ready to deepen cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment,” Xi told delegates at a major China-Africa summit in Beijing.

He called for “a China-Africa network featuring land-sea links and co-ordinated development,” as he told Chinese contractors to return to the 1-billion-strong continent, after the lifting of COVID-19 curbs that disrupted its schemes.

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CONGO EXPECTS FIRST DELIVERY OF MPOX VACCINE DOSES ON THURSDAY.

Democratic Republic of Congo, epicentre of an mpox outbreak that prompted a U.N. declaration of a global public health emergency, said it expects to receive its first delivery of vaccine doses on Thursday and a second delivery on Saturday.

The World Health Organisation declared the health emergency last month but efforts to curb the spread of the disease have been hampered by a lack of vaccines.

At a press conference in Geneva later in the day, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed the doses were due to arrive in Congo.

They are manufactured by Bavarian Nordic and donated by the European Union.

The vaccine doses’ arrival should help address a huge inequity that has left African countries with no access to the two shots used in a 2022 global mpox outbreak, while they were widely available in Europe and the United States.

Washington and Brussels have pledged tens of thousands of doses of a vaccine made by Bavarian Nordic.

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GERMANY’S MIGRATION COMMISSIONER PROPOSES RWANDA MIGRANT DEPORTATION PLAN

Germany’s migration commissioner proposed deporting to Rwanda migrants who arrive illegally to the European Union through its borders with Belarus, as Berlin contemplates measures to restrict refugees arriving in the bloc.

The proposal comes amid rising pressure on Germany’s ruling coalition government to restrict irregular migration following a fatal stabbing linked to Islamic State at a city festival last month that fuelled far-right opposition and criticism of Berlin’s migration policies.

Germany’s Special Representative for Migration Agreements, Joachim Stamp, said the EU could utilise existing asylum facilities in Rwanda, which were initially intended for Britain’s 2022 plan to send unauthorised migrants to the East African nation.

The British plan was scrapped by Keir Starmer’s new government in July.

Under Stamp’s proposal, the asylum procedures in Rwanda would be conducted under the supervision of the United Nations.

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IMF SAYS SOUTH AFRICA NEEDS AMBITIOUS FISCAL CONSOLIDATION.

The International Monetary Fund said South Africa needed to pursue ambitious fiscal consolidation to restore the sustainability of its public finances.

The statement follows an IMF visit to South Africa in early July to conduct a “post-financing assessment” after its $4.3 billion loan to the country in 2020 to help it fight the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Durable expenditure-based consolidation of at least 3 percent of GDP over the next three years is required to place debt on a sustained downward path, while protecting vulnerable groups,” the IMF said.

The Fund said South Africa’s new government should build on a pre-existing reform agenda while increasing its ambition and accelerating implementation.

“The new government should use the opportunity of a new mandate to implement bold reforms to address long-standing challenges and achieve the economy’s full potential,” it said.

South Africa’s African National Congress formed a broad coalition with several parties including the market-friendly Democratic Alliance after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time in 30 years in a May election.

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UNITED NATIONS CHIEF WARNS AFRICA’S INADEQUATE ACCESS TO DEBT RELIEF IS RECIPE FOR SOCIAL UNREST.

African countries’ inadequate access to debt relief and scarce resources is a recipe for social unrest, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, proposing fresh reforms to the international financial architecture.

A growing debt crisis across the 1 billion-strong continent has seen a conflagration of civil unrest in recent months, after protests in Kenya, where police clashed with demonstrators rallying against proposed tax hikes, inspired people to take to the streets in Nigeria and Uganda over the cost of living.

African nations have been seeking to restructure their debts through a rework architecture designed by the G20 called the ‘Common Framework,’ but the scheme did not as expected expedite talks between a myriad of leaders from Chinese state-owned banks to London-based asset managers and New York banks.

Zambia in June became the first country to successfully restructure its debt through the scheme, more than three years after it defaulted on its loans.

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RUSSIA SAYS IT WILL TAKE ACTION AGAINST US MEDIA IN RESPONSE TO RUSSIAN MEDIA CHARGES.

Russia said on Thursday it would take retaliatory measures against U.S. media in response to U.S.

charges against Russian media executives and state broadcaster RT, which Washington has accused of trying to influence the 2024 presidential election.

The United States filed money-laundering charges against two employees of RT for what officials said was a scheme to hire an American company to produce online content to influence the 2024 election.

The U.S. Treasury and State departments also announced actions targeting RT, including the network’s top editor, Margarita Simonyan.

U.S. officials said Russia’s goal was to exacerbate U.S. political divisions and weaken public support for American aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the U.S. moves were part of a plan to purge any dissenting voices from the global media landscape and to stoke fears among U.S. voters about Russia as a mythical external enemy.

The France-based Reporters Without Borders ranks Russia at 162 out of 180 countries in monitors on press freedom, opens new tab and ranks the United States at 55. Norway was top and Eritrea was bottom.

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BIDEN CLOSE TO BLOCKING NIPPON STEEL DEAL TO BUY UNITED STATES STEEL.

The White House is close to announcing President Joe Biden will block Nippon Steel’s (5401.T), opens new tab acquisition of U.S. Steel (X.N), opens new tab citing national security concerns.

Two sources familiar with the situation said this amid growing bipartisan political opposition to the $14.9 billion deal.

U.S. Steel had earlier warned that a failure to conclude a deal with Japan-based Nippon would put thousands of U.S. union jobs at risk and signaled that it would close some steel mills and potentially move its headquarters out of the politically important state of Pennsylvania.

A decision could be announced as soon as later this week, sources told Reuters.

The move could potentially impact the United States’ relationship with Japan, a close ally.

The Washington Post first reported the plan. Shares of U.S. Steel closed down 17.5%. Nippon Steel shares fell 1.6% early on Thursday in Tokyo but later recovered to trade 0.3% up.

Both Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel said they did not receive any updates from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) regarding the deal, adding they did not believe the acquisition posed national security risks.

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TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL SUES BEXAR COUNTY OVER MAIL-IN VOTER REGISTRATIONS.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued one of the state’s most populous counties, asking a court to block its plan of mailing unregistered county residents voter registration forms, a court filing showed.

Bexar County lacks the authority to send out unsolicited registration applications, which county officials are sending to eligible, but unregistered, voters, the lawsuit said.

In the 2020 elections, Democratic President Joe Biden carried the county while Republican former President Donald Trump carried the entire state.

Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Biden won Bexar County, the state’s fourth most populous county and home to San Antonio, by 18 points, according to the Texas Tribune.

Overall, Trump carried the state with 52.1% of the vote compared to Biden’s 46.5%, the newspaper added.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the current Democratic candidate, are locked in a tight race for the presidency, with less than two months to go before the Nov. 5 election.

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ZELENSKIY TO ATTEND RAMSTEIN MEETING, PUSH FOR LONG-RANGE MISSILES.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will take part in a meeting on Friday of the Ramstein group of nations which supplies arms to Ukraine.

Zelenskiy is expected to push for more weapons deliveries, in particular long-range missiles and more air defences, during the gathering of defence ministers at the sprawling U.S. air base Ramstein in western Germany, Spiegel said on Thursday.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the United States gathered like-minded nations at Ramstein, establishing a group of now some 50 nations that meet regularly to match Kyiv’s arms requests with pledges of donors.

Zelenskiy has called on allies to help with air defences and lift restrictions that ban Kyiv from using donated weapons for long-range strikes into Russia.

Ukraine has long urged partners to allow it to fire Western weapons at targets far into enemy territory, and those calls have grown louder as Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian energy installations, other infrastructure and residential buildings intensify.

The Ramstein meeting on Friday comes only about a week after one of the biggest waves of Russian air attacks on Ukraine and amid fears that Western military aid might stall more than two years into the war.

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THAILAND TO FORGE AHEAD WITH CASINO PLAN.

Thailand’s new government will move ahead with plans to introduce casinos after a public hearing showed strong support to create a big entertainment complex offering gambling.

Casinos and most forms of gambling are illegal in Thailand but soccer betting and underground gaming activities and lotteries are rife, with vast sums of money changing hands.

Only some gambling is permitted, such as state-controlled horse races and on an official lottery.

The conclusion of a public hearing conducted online over a bill to establish a “mega entertainment complex” housing a casino showed 80% of participants agreed with the plan, Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat said.

“We will now adjust the bill based on the feedback, discuss this with our coalition partners before sending it cabinet for approval,” Julapun told reporters.

Several Thai governments have pushed to legalise gambling before to try to boost jobs and state revenues and draw more foreign tourists, but each attempt met pushback from conservatives in the Buddhist majority country.

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GEORGIA HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT KILLS FOUR, WOUNDS NINE IN CAMPUS SHOOTING.

A 14-year-old boy killed two fellow students and two teachers and wounded nine others in a shooting at a Georgia high school, jolting the United States with the first mass campus shooting since the start of the school year.

The suspect, who had been interviewed by law enforcement last year over online threats about committing a school shooting, was taken into custody shortly after the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, investigators said.

He was identified as Colt Gray, 14, and will be charged and tried as an adult, Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told a press conference.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said the gunman, armed with an “AR platform style weapon,” or semiautomatic rifle, was quickly confronted by deputies assigned to the school and that the suspect immediately got on the ground and surrendered.

Once under arrest the suspect was speaking with investigators, who believe he was acting alone, but they declined to say if they knew what motivated him.

Officials identified those killed as two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53. All nine of those hospitalized were expected to recover, Smith told reporters.