Ebola: Experimental drug developed by Nigerian arrives Nigeria

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An experimental drug developed by a Nigerian in diaspora for the treatment of Ebola is expected to arrive the country today, the Minister for Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, has said.  The drug, called “Nanosilver”, has been approved for use by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an experimental treatment ethical in the case of the Ebola epidemic. The Federal Govt yesterday approved the use of experimental drugs in the treatment of the deadly virus.

Lagos doctor infected with Ebola as nurse who escaped from quarantine is returned back to Lagos

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A doctor who attended to late Patrick Sawyer at the First Consultant Hospital has been confirmed positive with the Ebola virus. Speaking at a news conference today, the Nigerian Minister of Health, Professor Onyebuchi Chukwu said the physician happens to be undergoing treatment at the quarantine centre in Lagos.

Prof Onyebuchi revealed  that a few of the 169 secondary contacts of Sawyer were no further under surveillance and have been released, having completed the 21 days of incubation period.  The Minister also said the nurse who'd escaped the quarantine center in Lagos and traveled to Enugu state has been returned back once again to Lagos with her husband in a special traveling ambulance.

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Boko Haram abducts 100 young men in Borno as military intercepts mass movement of 57 youths

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Boko Haram have abducted 100 teenage boys in Doron Baga, a village in Borno State during an attack on the village on Sunday August 10th. In accordance with a resident of the village, Halima Alhaji Adamu who spoke with journalists, she said the sect men killed at least 10 people and abducted 100 young children and men during the attack...

"The attack was on Sunday, in my family they killed six people, I don’t know about the other families but the Hadaijawa community which I belong also had 100 of the men abducted by the insurgents.” she said.

Halima also revealed that she lost her husband during the attack. ...

Graphic image: Headless human body of a person found in Mile 12, Lagos

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 Residents of Agiliti, Mile 12 Lagos, woke up today to a gruesome sight. The headless body of a son was found on the street. On closer inspection, it was unearthed that his manhood had been cut off. People suspect it was ritual murder but nobody knows for certain what happened. The murdered man has since been identified by those who claim to know him. See the graphic pix after the jump.

FG orders indefinite suspension of Resident Doctors in Teaching Hospitals

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 Resident Doctors in Nigerian Teaching Hospitals have now been suspended by the Federal Government starting yesterday August 13th. According to a letter delivered by the Permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health, the indefinite suspension is supposed to greatly help the Federal Govt'appraise the challenges facing the sector '. 

Army battle to retake gwoza as Boko Haram kills 20, kidnap women

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Nigerian troops have massed around Gwoza to retake the town from members of the Islamist group, Boko Haram, military sources have disclosed. The battle for control of Gwoza rages as reports emerged that Boko Haram insurgents yesterday killed 20 people in Doro Baga in Kukawa local government area of Borno State. The residents of the embattled village also disclosed that the militants kidnapped several women in an early morning raid. Continue...

Ebola: Singapore isolates Nigerian Woman.

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Authorities in Singapore sent a woman from Nigeria into a hospital isolation unit today on suspicion that she might have Ebola, the Straits Times reported on Thursday. The woman, in her 50s, was believed to have flown into Singapore recently and arrived at a hospital emergency department with a fever, the newspaper said. She was immediately isolated and transferred by ambulance to a communicable diseases centre, the newspaper said.

Ebola: FG Postpones Resumption of Schools until further notice.

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To prevent further  outbreak of the Ebola Viral Disease (EVD), the Federal Government has reportedly approved the extension of the present holiday of primary and secondary schools around the country until further notice.

NewTelegraph reports that the development, government stated, is part of measures to curb the spread of Ebola. Senior Special Assistant to the President on Youth and Students Matters, Comrade Jude Imagwe, who disclosed the postponement of school resumption in Abuja yesterday did not state 

Over 22,400 Sign Petition Demanding UN to Recognize Luhansk, Donetsk People’s Republics

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More than 22,400 people have signed an online petition calling on the United Nations to recognize independence of people’s republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“We should try to help the people gain independence by our votes, rather than just sitting on the couch in front of a TV-set,” said Vladimir, a Russian-speaking person living in Germany, who started the petition with Avaaz Community Petitions a month ago.
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Medvedev's Twitter Account Hacked, Resignation Tweet False – Press Service

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Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s Twitter account was hacked and the tweet about his resignation is untrue, Medvedev’s press service told RIA Novosti.

“[Medvedev’s] Twitter was hacked, the tweet on his resignation is false. We’re working on the problem,” the press service said.
“I’m resigning,” appeared on Medvedev’s microblog Thursday morning.
Medvedev’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said it was most likely a hacker attack.
“I don’t have any information, but I’m pretty sure that this was a hacker,” Peskov said.

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The Russian appeal to Germany

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My name is Egor Prosvirnin, I am the chief editor of the Russian site sputnikipogrom.com which advocates European values. I’ve heard that one of the aspects of life that Europeans, and Germans especially, cherish is history. If we were to recall recent history, we would remember that a vast army of 300,000 Soviet troops along with 5,000 tanks, 1,500 aircraft and 10,000 artillery pieces (including tactical nuclear weapons) simply left the then just-united Germany without firing a shot. 

It was an operation unprecedented in scope and brevity, when the entire Soviet army withdrew literally to open fields. Tens of thousands of Soviet officers, obeying the orders of the supreme command, went from their warm barracks to live in moldy tents set up in the middle of sodden snow-covered fields. In many instances along with their families.

The Nigerian soldiers’ wives mutiny

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November and December of 1929 saw thousands of women stampeding the Native Administration outposts in Calabar and Owerri to protest both the imposition of taxes on women and the appointment of warrant chiefs by the colonial administration. The protest, to be later described as the Aba Women’s War, saw employment of both guerrilla strategies and traditional acts such as “sitting on a man” – the practice of ridiculing men through song and dance performances carried out all night long.
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Ebola: 21 persons isolated in Enugu

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This is official. Lagos is not the only state in Nigeria that has been hit by the deadly Ebola Virus Disease; Enugu has become the next in line.

Twenty one persons out of the 198 so far quarantined because of the virus are in Enugu, says the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku.

Maku told State House correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja on Wednesday that Enugu came into the picture because one of the nurses that treated the American-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, shunned medical advice and travelled to the city.

Sawyer, the index case of EVD in Nigeria, died on July 25 in an Obalende, Lagos hospital five days after he arrived in the country.

Court stops panel from probing Omisore

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A High Court sitting in Osogbo has ordered the Commission of Enquiry on Disturbance of Public Peace set up by Governor Rauf Aregbesola to put on hold the investigation of Senator Iyiola Omisore.

The Chairman of CEDPP, Justice Moshood Adeigbe, said at the resumed hearing of the panel in Osogbo on Wednesday that the panel had received an interim order from the court stopping it from probing Omisore, pending the ruling on the application filed by him before the court.

Counsel to the petitioner, Mr. Lekan Olayiwola, urged the panel to allow the petitioner to go on with the hearing of the matter despite the interim order of the court.

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Ebola vaccine trials set to begin in September

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Officials at the World Health Organisation said that the first round of clinical trials of a potential Ebola vaccine made by drug maker GlaxoSmithKline could begin next month.

A vaccine resulting from the trials could possibly be available by 2015, MSN News reported Sunday.

Late last week, WHO declared the outbreak of deadly Ebola virus in West Africa a “public health emergency.”

The outbreak, which has already claimed 961 lives in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, “constitutes an ’extraordinary event’ and a public health risk to other States,” WHO said in a statement.

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Ebola & the $1bn question

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Like Boko Haram’s crazy insurgents who kill their victims and the soldiers who fight to protect them, the Ebola Virus Disease kills its victims along with some medical personnel who battle to save their lives. These are the twin devils of the season.  The twin scourges of 2014 share many other characteristics. Their roots date back to decades, but their ravages of human souls across the sub-Sahara Africa only peaked this year, even as a disbelieving world is left agape by their ferocity.

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Ebola: FG employs 490 environmental health officers

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The Federal Government on Wednesday assured Nigerians so it would recruit 490 trained environmental health officers who will soon be deployed in borders within strategies being employed to fight the deadly Ebola Virus Disease.  The  government also pledged to educate people on the best way to stop the spread of the illness and other related diseases in the country.

400,000 displaced in North-East -NEMA

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The National Emergency Management Agency has said that about 400,000 persons have been internally displaced in the troubled North-East region of the country from January 2014 till date.

Speaking to journalists in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, on Wednesday, the information officer of the North-East zonal office of the agency, AbdulKadir Ibrahim, said the number of Internally Displaced Persons from January to July 31 in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states before the explosion of recent attacks in Gwoza and Doron-Baga stood at 360,462.

Ebola: Why Patrick Sawyer travelled to Nigeria – Wife

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The widow of late Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian who brought Ebola into Nigeria, has defended her husband’s decision to travel to Africa’s most populous country, saying he did so in desperate search for a country with better healthcare system than his own country.

In an article published earlier today, TMZ Liberia Magazine quoted Decontee Sawyer, who is a radio host in New York, as explaining that Mr. Sawyer had no trust in the healthcare system in Liberia and had possibly headed to Nigeria with the hope of receiving better treatment for his ailment.
Mrs. Sawyer shared her thoughts on her Facebook profile from which TMZ Liberia sourced it for publication.

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Africa’s last polar bear Wang dies

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A polar bear considered to be the last in Africa has died at a South African zoo, a couple of months after his long-time mate passed away. “Africa's last polar bear Wang must be put  down because of liver and heart failure,” Johannesburg Zoo said in a statement on Wednesday. The bear, considered 28-years-old, stumbled on Johannesburg in 1986, as part of a conservation exchange program with a zoo in Japan. In 2010, Wang was identified as having liver ailments.