Court freezes suspended Abiodun’s aide’s bank accounts, seizes Lekki home (Nation)
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos Tuesday ordered the interim forfeiture of the funds and properties traced to Mr Abidemi Ganiyu Rufai, the suspended aide of the Ogun Governor facing wire fraud charges in the United States.
The order covers Rufai’s property located at House 11. Omodayo Awotuga Street, Bera Estate, Chevy View, Lekki, Lagos and funds in his accounts with two new generation banks.
Justice Tijjani Ringim made the order sequel to an ex parte motion filed and argued by a counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) Ebuka Okongwu.
The EFCC joined Rufai and his firm Omo Mayodele Global Investment as 1st and 3rd respondents in the suit. Read more
Lagos nabs 24 suspects, seals property over wetland reclamation (Vanguard)
Lagos State Government has arrested 24 suspects over-involvement in the reclamation of a wetland at Mosafejo Mowo in Badagry.
It also sealed the premises of a private developer company (name withheld) that was constructing on the wetland.
Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr. tunji Bello, said the suspects were arrested on Monday during an operation by security agents and officials from the Department of Conservation and Ecology, following the non-compliance of the company with several “Stop-Work” notices served on them.
Bello stated: “Officials of the ministry observed the series of encroachment during routine monitorings of wetland in the State and on March 1, 2021, a stop-work order was served on the company followed by renewal on two different occasions. Read more
LASU teams win 2020 TETFUND research grants (Independent)
Two research Teams from Lagos State University led by a former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Prof. Adeniyi Harrison and the current Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Prof. Omobitan Olufunso respectively, have won the 2020 Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) National Research Fund to the tune of N66.8 million.
Prof. Harrison-led research project titled Developing Functional Metalanguage for the 21st Century Needs of Nigerian National Languages won a grant of Thirty Two Million Naira (N32,000,000) while Prof. Omobitan’s project titled Emerging Patterns and Determinants of Rape: Comparative Study of Rural-Urban Communities in Nigeria won a grant of Thirty-Three Million, Eight Hundred and Twenty-Four Thousand, Nine Hundred and Twenty-Four Naira (N33, 824,924,00) Only. The projects will run for a period of 18 and 23 months, respectively.
In a brief ceremony held at the Acting Vice Chancellor’s Office to present letters of award to the leaders of the two groups, the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Oyedamola Oke, congratulated the awardees for putting together the award-winning proposals, which attracted a chunk of the N7.5b TETFUND research facility to LASU.
He also thanked the outgoing Director, Directorate of Research Management and Innovation, Prof. Olumuyiwa Odusanya, for the role of the Directorate in attracting the grants. He urged the awardees, who were present at the ceremony, to be good ambassadors of the University. Read more
Lagos cautions filmmakers against obscenity, vulgar language (Nation)
The Lagos State Government on Tuesday cautioned filmmakers in the state against obscenity, vulgar language, scenes of excessive violence and negative Africa stereotype in films to guide against societal degradation.
Mrs Uzamat Akinbile-Yusuf, Lagos State Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, gave the warning during a stakeholder’s conference organised by the Lagos State Film and Video Censors Board (LSFVCB) in Lagos.
The theme of the meeting was: “Content Development as a Driver for Sustainable Growth in the Film and Video Industry’’.
Akinbile-Yusuf said that filmmakers must design measures to eliminate dysfunctional contents and exhibit positive values for a better society. Read more
Man bags 7 years’ jail term for job scam (Punch)
The Kano State High Court has convicted and sentenced a man, Ado Abubakar, to seven years’ imprisonment for a job scam.
Ado was alleged to have induced one Ibrahim Balanti to make payment into his account by promising to get him enlisted into the Nigeria Customs Service.
He claimed that he had a customs officer friend who was purportedly given slots to fill at the service
The complainant was said to have paid the sum of N330,000 out of the N530,000 Ado demanded in the hope of securing the appointment. Read more
JAMB abolishes UTME cut off marks (Guardian)
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Tuesday, cancelled general cut-off marks for admission into tertiary institutions and allowed the institutions freedom to set their individual minimum benchmark for admission.
The Board took the decision at the 2021 policy meeting which was held virtually and chaired by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu.
Speaking during the meeting, the Registrar of JAMB Prof. Is-haq Oloyede said some universities such as the University of Maiduguri proposed 150, Usman Dan Fodio University Sokoto proposed 140, Pan Atlantic University proposed 210, University of Lagos 200, Lagos State University190, Covenant University190, Bayero University Kano, 180.
The stakeholders also approved October 29, 2021, as the deadline for the closure of amendments for 2021 admissions. Read more
FG considers sanction for Nigerians who refuse COVID-19 vaccination (Punch)
The federal government may sanction eligible Nigerians who refuse COVID-19 vaccination.
The Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Faisal Shuaib, gave the hint at a press briefing briefing in Abuja on Tuesday.
In Edo and Ondo States, the state governments had already announced restrictions regarding some public places that those who have not taken COVID-19 vaccine cannot have access to. Read more
Journalists barred as military inducts 6 A-29 Super Tucano (DailyTrust)
The newsmen detailed to cover the induction ceremony of the six newly acquired A-29 Super Tucano aircraft into the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) Order of Battle, were on Tuesday barred from gaining entrance to the Presidential Air Fleet Apron, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
Armed security operatives from both military and para-military organisations, who were stationed at the venue of the ceremony and other strategic locations at the airport, told newsmen that the event had been postponed.
But a top official from the United States embassy in Nigeria told Daily Trust that the induction was neither cancelled nor postponed as informed by the security agents, saying the ceremony was done ‘quietly’.
When asked why the government and the military took the decision of barring journalists from the function, the official said he had no knowledge about the decision. Read more
CBN orders banks to publish names, BVN of Forex defaulters (Nation)
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed all banks to publish names of customers who try to break the rules on Forex acquisition on their website.
The CBN on Monday, August 30th issued a circular (BSD/DIR/PUB/LAB/14/059) to all banks lamenting that it has “received and noted with concern reports of sharp practices by some unscrupulous customers to circumvent the new CBN policy on the sale of forex for overseas personal and business travel”.
Some of the unwholesome practices, the CBN said: “include the use of fake visas and cancellation of air tickets after purchase of PTA/BTA”.
Haruna B. Mustafa Director Banking Supervision Department of the CBN, who signed the circular, noted: “this trend, if not curbed, portends risk to the integrity and stability of the forex market”. Read more
Paramount sues insurer over 7 “Mission: Impossible 7” shutdowns (LATimes)
“Mission: Impossible 7″ is an apt name for the latest installment of the Tom Cruise action film franchise.
The film was shut down seven times as a result of the pandemic and now Paramount Studios, the movie’s distributor and producer, is suing its insurance company to recover the sizable losses.
The Los Angeles studio sued Indiana-based Federal Insurance Co., owned by insurer Chubb Ltd., for breach of contract on its more than $100-million policy, according to a federal court lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles.
Paramount alleges the insurance company refused to cover a majority of its pandemic-linked claims. It is seeking punitive damages. Read more
“Tenet”‘s disappointing $364m gross now an aspirational box office benchmark (Forbes)
Chris Nolan’s Tenet was a pretty big miss in terms of raw theatrical earnings versus production budget. $363.7 million worldwide on a $200 million budget is a poor result, just as it was for the likes of Battleship ($303 million/$209 million), Prince of Persia ($336 million/$200 million) or Robin Hood ($321 million/$200 million) in the early 2010s. Yet, a year later, there is a skewed kind of irony in that the film’s comparatively inferior theatrical result (even if it would have been pretty great for an original movie directed by anyone other than Chris Nolan) now stands as an aspirational box office benchmark. As summer winds down with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, there have been almost no theatrical releases in 2020 and 2021 that have gotten anywhere near Tenet.
Maybe Chris Nolan was somehow singlehandedly bullying AT&T into releasing his movie into theaters last summer, come hell or high water. Maybe Warner Media put the film out theatrically to get it off the bench because they knew Nolan would never allow the picture to debut concurrently in theaters and on HBO Max. I’m guessing the truth is somewhere in between those extremes. No matter the reason, Tenet debuted overseas in advance of its American release to primarily positive reviews. However, as we’ve seen with Candyman, a divisive Film Twitter discourse created the impression of a more significant critical divide. While the picture opened with a solid $53 million overseas (including $29 million in China), the espionage actioner opened to mostly empty theaters in North America over an extended 11-day Labor Day week debut. Read more
What it’s like to inherit billions in your twenties (Vice)
At an age when most teenagers are swapping trading cards, Tyler Huang was involved in his father’s bid to buy a British football club. If they wanted to, his family could make a Monopoly board of London, purchasing properties on the roll of a dice. Tyler himself has the means to dine on wagyu for every meal. He is, if it wasn’t already obvious, unbelievably rich.
This kind of existence might sound like a dream, but Huang feels as though he’s merely sleepwalking through life. “It wasn’t as nice it sounds,” he tells me. “Wealth can fix many external problems, but it does nothing to tackle the internal ones.
“People say that I’m lucky to have the money – I am, I suppose; I know that I have a life most people dream of – but it’s wrong to value a person by how much money they have.”
Huang, who is now 23, inherited billions earlier this year when his parents died. But if you were to pass him on the street, you’d see a young man indistinguishable from any other, loafing around in his Crocs, head down, texting and tweeting as he walks. Read more
Taliban say US defeat ‘big lesson’ for other invaders (DW)
While declaring victory after the US military left Kabul, the Taliban said they wanted good relations with the US and the rest of the world.
The Taliban celebrated the departure of Western “occupiers” on Tuesday, hours after the last US plane left Afghanistan, but also said they wanted to have good diplomatic relations with the United States and the rest of the world.
The final departure of the US evacuation marked the end of 20 years of military intervention.
“Congratulations to Afghanistan … this victory belongs to us all,” said Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid at a press conference held from the Kabul airport runway.
“We want to have good relations with the US and the world. We welcome good diplomatic relations with them all,” he added. Read more
A cancer-quashing microbe emerges from the deep (Hakai)
On August 5, 2017, Amanda Johnson woke up with a headache so consuming that she memorialized her misery. In her datebook entry that day, she sketched a girl with her head crowned in jagged shards of torment, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain. “Headache!!!” she wrote next to the drawing. Downstairs, her parents were making breakfast, but the only thing Johnson could imagine putting into her body was Tylenol. She gulped down two, then made her way to her computer, which was set up on her father’s drawing desk.
Johnson, who was 31 that summer, was living with her parents in Mission Viejo, California, while she finished her second novel—a steampunk saga set in an alternate version of the First World War. She had planned to spend the day editing a chapter, but the daggers behind her eyes persisted, and the screen’s glow seemed to make them sharper. “I tried, but I just couldn’t do it,” she recalls now. “I had to go lie down.” By that afternoon, she was worried enough that she contacted her doctor, who referred her to a neurologist.
Over the next six days, as Johnson waited for the recommended neurologist to return from a vacation, her headache occasionally cleared, but then—invariably—came roaring back. By August 11, the pain had become unbearable, and she had begun to have trouble speaking. Read more
Moderna vaccine creates twice as many antibodies as Pfizer, study shows (BostonGlobe)
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine generated more than double the antibodies of a similar shot made by Pfizer and BioNTech in research directly comparing immune responses to the inoculations.
A study of almost 2,500 workers at a major Belgium hospital system found antibody levels among individuals who hadn’t been infected with the coronavirus before getting two doses of the Moderna vaccine averaged 2,881 units per milliliter, compared with 1,108 units/mL in an equivalent group who got two jabs of the Pfizer shot.
The results, published Monday in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested the differences might be explained by the:
higher amount of active ingredient in the Moderna vaccine — 100 micrograms, versus 30 micrograms in Pfizer-BioNTech
longer interval between doses of the Moderna vaccine — four weeks, versus three weeks for Pfizer-BioNTech. Read more
Cristiano Ronaldo sends message to Sir Alex Ferguson after Manchester United return (Metro)
Cristiano Ronaldo told Sir Alex Ferguson ‘this one’s for you’ after the Portugal superstar sealed his sensational return to Manchester United today.
The 36-year-old signed a two-year deal with his former club, who have the option of extending that by a further 12 months in 2023.
The forward spent six years at Old Trafford during his first spell and he was signed by Sir Alex Ferguson in 2003 after he tore United apart during a pre-season friendly against Sporting Lisbon.
Ronaldo had a fantastic relationship with Ferguson and the Scot is said to have spoken to the forward last week to convince him to return to the Theatre of Dreams. Read more
Paralympics: Nigeria’s Agunbiade, Olufemi reach table tennis semis (Punch)
The pair of Tajudeen Agunbiade and Alabi Olufemi on Tuesday in Tokyo qualified for the semi-finals of the men’s team event of the table tennis competition at the 2020 Paralympics.
In the Class 9 to 10 quarter-final fixture at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, the Nigerian duo defeated the Montenegro pair of Luka Bakic and Filip Radovic 2-0.
They opened with a 3-2 win in the doubles, winning 8-11 11-6 1-11 11-8 11-8, before Agunbiade went on to beat Bakic 3-0 (11-6 11-8 11-6) to make the Olufemi/Radovic face-off meaningless.
Nigeria will now take on Australia, who beat France 2-0, in the semi-finals scheduled for the same venue on Wednesday afternoon. Read more
Delighted Cristiano Ronaldo reacts to Manchester United return as transfer from Juventus confirmed (Eurosport)
Cristiano Ronaldo has heralded his return to Manchester United as a “dream come true”.
The 36-year-old completed his move to Old Trafford on transfer deadline day.
And the Portuguese star took to Instagram shortly after the announcement to pen a love letter to the club.
“Everyone who knows me, knows about my never-ending love for Manchester United,” Ronaldo said.
“The years I spent in this club were absolutely amazing and the path we’ve made together is written in gold letters in the history of this great and amazing institution.
“I can’t even start to explain my feelings right now, as I see my return to Old Trafford announced worldwide.” Read more
Henderson signs new long-term Liverpool deal (Guardian)
Liverpool announced on Tuesday that captain Jordan Henderson has signed a new long-term contract with the club reportedly keeping him tied to the English giants until 2025.
“Jordan Henderson has signed a new contract with Liverpool Football Club to commit his long-term future to the Reds,” they said in a statement.
The 31-year-old has made 394 appearances since joining from Sunderland a decade ago and led Liverpool to their first league title for 30 years in 2020.
“I’m obviously very honoured and proud to continue the journey I’ve already been on here,” said Henderson. Read more
Wolves star hires Mendes to ‘broker’ eleventh hour move to Spurs (Football365)
Wolves star Adama Traore has hired super-agent Jorge Mendes in an attempt to push through a move to Tottenham Hotspur, according to reports.
The winger has been linked with a move away from Wolves throughout this summer transfer window.
Tottenham and Liverpool have been mentioned as potential destinations for Traore in recent weeks.
The Premier League non-champions table-topping list
The 25-year-old made the move to Wolves in 2018 from Middlesbrough for a fee of around £18m.
Traore enjoyed his best season in England in 2019/20. That term, he grabbed four goals and nine assists in the Premier League as he shone for Wolves. Read more
Coco Gauff on close bond with Sloane Stephens and ‘weird’ Serena Williams absence (Eurosport)
Coco Gauff is expecting a “full-circle moment” when she faces Sloane Stephens at the US Open on Wednesday, with the pair sharing a close relationship since they were children.
Gauff, 17, rallied from a set down and 0-2 in the second set to beat Magda Linette 5-7 6-3 6-4 in the first round on Louis Armstrong Stadium.
She will next face fellow American Stephens, who she shares a strong history with. The pair attended each other’s birthday parties not long ago and also started their respective tennis careers with the same coach.
‘It would be a massive help’ – Pospisil hopes PTPA can earn support of Federer, Nadal’It would be a massive help’ – Pospisil hopes PTPA can earn support of Federer, Nadal
“I do remember when I was 10 years old, I had a birthday party at a water park, and she came to it, which is really cool,” Gauff said about Stephens, who beat another American, Madison Keys, in the first round. Read more
