Category: Lifestyle

Residents of Mariene in Imenti Central Sub-County are looking forward to a wave of economic transformation following the government’s commitment to boost the completion of Mariene University Campus, under the Meru University of Science and Technology.

The majority of them are now gearing up to start business ventures targeting students, set to be admitted to the institution as well as the teaching staff and other workers.

One of the residents, James Karemu told KNA that the announcement by President William Ruto to set aside Sh500 million for completion of various structures including lecture halls was a clear indication that the institution will soon kick off its operations.

‘We needed that assurance and now that the President has pronounced himself towards this, it is now up to us to take advantage of this opportunity to tap in money from learners and the staff from the institution,’ said Karemu.

On her part, Mary Kathambi who owns a food kiosk in the area said that she was looking for money to expand
her business to accommodate more people.

‘It is now our time to thrive in terms of business and I am optimistic that this area will soon undergo overhaul economic transformation,’ said Kathambi.

She added that considering the fact that the institution will solely be dealing with agricultural research activities, then it will play a key role in the transformation of agriculture not only in Mariene, but also the entire country.

On the other hand, Jason Kirimi anticipated that the value of parcels of land in the area would soon go up, but warned the residents against selling their land without a worthy cause.

Out of the Sh500 million pledged by the government, the initial Sh200 million will be released during the current financial year to complete a section of the buildings and kick-start operations at the proposed university, while the other bunch of Sh300 million will be released in the next financial year.

On February 27, 2015, then President Uhuru Kenyatta visited Meru and granted Meru University of Sci
ence and Technology a research institute based at Mariene Coffee Research Centre.

Subsequently, on June 23, 2017, Kenyatta presided over the issuance of a title deed of 10 acres of land and promised financial assistance for the construction of the institute.

Currently, the institute has 27 acres of land after 17 more were added last year.

The mandate of the campus is to offer graduate training and research in priority areas aligned to Vision 2030 and the Bottom-up Economic Transformation Agenda, agriculture value addition technology, and Agro-processing for coffee, tea, avocado, macadamia, and potatoes, among others.

Students will also acquire training on post-harvest technology, climate-smart agricultural technologies, Food Science, Agriculture, and Environmental Science.

It will create the first research university model in the Country, working closely with Kenya’s Agricultural Research and Livestock Organisation for co-supervision and teaching.

Source: Kenya News Agency

Moscow has suspended its implementation of a U.N.-brokered grain export deal that has allowed more than 9 million tons of grain to be exported from Ukraine, helping to ease the global food crisis and lower prices.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said it would no longer guarantee the safety of cargo ships participating in the U.N.-led initiative, citing as the reason for its exit an alleged Ukrainian drone attack against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet ships anchored off the coast of occupied Crimea. Russia said the attack took place early Saturday; Ukraine has denied the attack.

“In connection with the actions of Ukrainian armed forces… the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships participating in the Black Sea initiative, and suspends its implementation from today for an indefinite period,” the Russian statement said.

The Russian declaration came one day after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the grain deal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the Russian move “predictable.” He accused Moscow of “blockading” ships carrying grain since September, The Associated Press reported. Currently, he said, 176 vessels are backed up at sea, carrying more than 2 million tons of food.

“This is a transparent attempt by Russia to return to the threat of large-scale famine in Africa and Asia,” Zelenskyy said Saturday in his nightly video address. He called for a tough response against Russia from international bodies like the U.N. and the G-20.

Speaking to reporters in Delaware Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden called Russia’s decision to suspend its participation from the Ukrainian grain deal “purely outrageous” and said it would increase starvation.

“There’s no merit to what they’re doing. The U.N. negotiated that deal and that should be the end of it,” Biden said.

In a comment Saturday, U.N. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations is in touch with the Russian authorities on the matter.

“It is vital that all parties refrain from any action that would imperil the Black Sea Grain Initiative which is a critical humanitarian effort that is clearly having a positive impact on access to food for millions of people around the world,” Dujarric said.

The Joint Coordination Center, which implements the grain deal, in a statement released Saturday, said it “is reviewing recent developments, assessing the impact on JCC’s operations and is discussing next steps.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister accused Moscow of using a “false pretext” Saturday to suspend its participation in the Black Sea grain corridor.

Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter, “I call on all states to demand Russia to stop its hunger games and recommit to its obligations.”

Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s first deputy representative to the U.N., also said Saturday that Russia had requested a meeting Monday of the U.N. Security Council because of the alleged attack on the Black Sea Fleet and the security of the grain corridor, the AP reported.

The Russian Defense Ministry accused the British royal navy of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month. Moscow did not provide any evidence to back up its claims that a leading NATO member had sabotaged critical Russian infrastructure that delivers much needed gas to Europe.

London denied the claims and responded Saturday, saying on Twitter, “To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic scale.”

Russia claims that “British specialists” from the same unit that took part in the planning, provision, and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 also directed Ukrainian drones against Russia ships in Crimea early Saturday.

“Today at 4:20 a.m., the Kyiv regime carried out a terrorist attack on ships of the Black Sea Fleet and civilian ships that were on the outer and inner roadsteads [protected bodies of water] of the Sevastopol base,” Igor Konashenkov, chief spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry said. He added that the air targets were destroyed by Russia forces.

Konashenkov asserted the Black Sea Fleet ships that were attacked were there to secure “the grain corridor” as part of the international initiative to export agricultural products from Ukrainian ports.

In a statement Friday, Swedish lead prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in reference to the damaged gas pipeline, “I’ve decided together with the security police to carry out a number of additional investigations at the scene of the crime.” Swedish armed forces are scouting the area around the two damaged Nord Stream pipelines with minesweepers.

Sweden and Denmark have both concluded that four leaks on Nord Stream 1 and 2 were caused by explosions, but they have not said who might be responsible. World leaders have called it an act of sabotage.

Elsewhere, Russian authorities in the occupied territories of Ukraine are dismantling the regions’ health care systems, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his daily address Friday.

“The occupiers have decided to close medical institutions in the cities, take away equipment, ambulances – just everything. … They put pressure on the doctors who still remained in the occupied areas for them to move to the territory of Russia,” the president said.

“Russia is turning the Kherson region into a zone without civilization, without elementary things available in most countries of the world,” said Zelenskyy. “Before the arrival of Russia, this region, like all other regions of Ukraine, was completely normal and safe, all social services for people were guaranteed there. … Life was guaranteed there.”

“And now Russia is trying to make the Kherson region literally an exclusion zone,” the president said. “The world must react to this.”

The Kherson region was also the focus of Britain’s Defense Ministry’s intelligence update Saturday. The report said that earlier in the week, Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of the Kherson region, claimed more than 70,000 people had left Kherson city.

The update said Saldo also claimed that “Russia had removed the remains of a well-known 18th century Russian statesman, Prince Grigory Potemkin, from his tomb in Kherson’s cathedral to east of the Dnipro.”

“In the Russian national identity,” the report said, “Potemkin is heavily associated with the Russian conquest of Ukrainian lands in the 18th century and highlights the weight Putin almost certainly places on perceived historical justification for the invasion.”

 

Source: Voice of America

The U.S. Embassy in South Africa has issued a rare warning of a possible terror attack this coming weekend in Sandton, an upmarket business district of Johannesburg sometimes dubbed “Africa’s richest square mile.” South Africa’s president has criticized the U.S. for putting out the alert and causing “panic” without first consulting the government.

 

The Johannesburg neighborhood of Sandton is one of the wealthiest areas in Africa, home to luxury boutiques, upmarket restaurants and major international corporations.

 

So it was a shock to many South Africans when the U.S. Embassy issued an alert Wednesday saying “The U.S. government has received information that terrorists may be planning to conduct an attack targeting large gatherings of people at an unspecified location in the greater Sandton area.”

 

The embassy did not give any detail as to who’s believed to be behind the threat or the exact target or expected method of attack. It advised its staff to avoid the area over the weekend, with the attack believed to be planned for Saturday.

 

At Sandton City, a mall directly across from the U.S. Consulate, security was beefed up Thursday, with armed guards stationed at the shopping center’s entrance.

 

Asked if she was alarmed by the terror warning, shopper Stella Sebalo said she was very concerned because such threats are extremely unusual in South Africa.

 

“It’s a first in South Africa, hence it was like ‘what?’ It’s a first so I’m really hoping it’s just a threat and nothing more,” she said.

 

Friedrich Van Zyl, a businessman who’s been attending a work conference in Sandton this week, said since hearing of the warning other attendees were staying away.

 

“At this moment a lot of our colleagues and friends have not come to Sandton,” he said.

Johannesburg’s gay pride event is set to take place in Sandton this weekend, with some speculation in local media that it could be a target.

 

Asked at a press conference Thursday about the terror alert, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa criticized the U.S. for having issued it without first having a discussion with the government, calling it “unfortunate.”

 

“Any form of alert will come from the government of the republic of South Africa and it is unfortunate that another government should issue such a threat as to send panic amongst our people,” he said.

 

However, Ramaphosa said the government and its agencies were looking closely at the U.S. warning.

 

U.S. Embassy spokesman David Feldmann told VOA he didn’t have anything to add to what was already in the alert.

 

Many of the South Africans VOA spoke to at the mall expressed trepidation at the threat and said they’d be staying away from Sandton this weekend.

 

But one shopper, Preshaan Salikram, joked with trademark South African black humor that given Johannesburg’s high rate of violent crime, it was the terrorists who should be worried.

 

“No I’m not worried about it at all. This is South Africa, we terrorize terrorists here…They’ll probably get robbed before they get to us,” said Salikram.

 

Unlike other African countries fighting Islamist militant groups, including neighboring Mozambique, South Africa is at peace and threats like this are rare.

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Two penalty kicks ensured that Nigeria and Tanzania parted 1-1 on Saturday in Dar es Salaam in an Under-23 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifying round first leg match.

Team captain Success Makanjuola put Nigeria ahead in the 29^th minute, after Qudus Akanni was fouled and a penalty kick awarded to the visiting side.

The Nigerian side thereafter created and wasted a good number of goalscoring chances which, with a little more precision, would have put the match to bed by half-time.

The home team piled on the pressure in the second half at the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium.

They hit the crossbar on two occasions, before Djiboutian referee Souleiman Djama awarded them a penalty kick which was brilliantly converted in the 74^th minute.

The Olympic Eagles fought tenaciously to earn a winner, but it was not to be.

However, they will return home with their heads high and determined to finish off the task when they host the Tanzanians at the Lekan Salami Stadium in Ibadan on Oct. 29.

The winners on aggregate will proceed to the next round of the Under-23 AFCON  qualifying campaign.

The tournament, which is scheduled for Morocco in November 2023, will determine Africa’s flagbearers at the men’s football tournament of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

 

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

On this World Food Day, food systems and global food security are at a critical moment.  The compounded impacts from a global pandemic, growing pressures from the climate crisis, high energy and fertilizer prices, and armed conflicts, including Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, have disrupted production and supply chains and dramatically increased global food insecurity, especially for the most vulnerable.

The human impact is staggering.  At the outset of 2022, more than 190 million people had been driven into acute food insecurity.  The war in Ukraine could add an additional 70 million people on top of that.  Millions are facing hunger and malnutrition.

Conflicts are driving unconscionable levels of hunger as violence stops food from getting to the neediest.  Pandemic disruptions to supply chains have destabilized food systems.  High prices and availability issues are reducing fertilizer use.  From the droughts in the Horn of Africa to the floods in Pakistan, we are also seeing how climate change poses a critical threat to our food supply.  Parts of Somalia are at risk of famine for the second time in just over a decade.

The work before us is clear.  Only by working together can we overcome the global food security challenges we face.  Earlier this year, the United States chaired a Food Security Summit at the United Nations, which launched the Roadmap for Global Food Security.  At that meeting, we reaffirmed the commitment for world leaders to act with urgency and at scale to respond to the pressing global food crises and avert extreme hunger for hundreds of millions of people around the world.  More than 100 countries have signed on to the initiative that calls on them to take seven actions, which include increasing fertilizer production and investing in climate-resilient agriculture.

The United States is leading the way.  Last month, at the United Nations General Assembly, President Biden announced over $2.9 billion in new assistance to address global food insecurity.  That announcement builds on the $6.9 billion in U.S. assistance to support global food security already committed this year.  This assistance will save lives through emergency interventions and invest in medium to long-term food security assistance to protect the world’s most vulnerable population, often women and children, from the escalating global food security crisis.

There is no longer any doubt that food security is an issue of acute global urgency.  So, on this World Food Day, let us be true to its theme – Leave No One Behind – because the health, the stability, and the wellbeing of all our people depends on the food security that we build together.

 

 

Source: US State Department