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2, March 2023

Bayern Munich to extend Choupo-Moting’s contract with hefty pay rise ⁰

Choupo-Moting will extend his contract until 2024! NO option for one year more. The 33 year old striker will get a significant pay raise as reported. This season, the Cameroonian international has participated in 25 matches scored 16 goals and made 4 assists.

The 33-year-old Cameroonian striker joined the club as a backup from PSG, but has emerged as a key player, especially in the absence of Robert Lewandowski who joined Barcelona in July 2022. Choupo-Moting has made the jersey no.9 his own, resisting any competition from Sadio Mane, Thomas Muller, or Mathys Tel. His exceptional scoring record this season has earned him a significant pay rise, with his Bayern Munich salary doubling to around 10 million euros per year, according to German publication Bild.

By signing Choupo-Moting to an extension, Bayern have quashed any rumours of a pursuit for Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane or other recognized strikers like Dusan Vlahovic and Victor Osimhen. Choupo-Moting may not be a young striker, but he is effective in his role, and the club seemed satisfied with his performance. This move has also given Mathys Tel time to grow into the future striker position at Bayern instead of being replaced by a new signing from abroad. With his new deal, Choupo-Moting has secured his future at the club, and Bayern Munich have secured a reliable backup for Lewandowski.

Source: Planetsport.com.

2, March 2023

Pace of Reform Toward Equal Rights for Women Falls to 20-Year Low ⁰

The global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of women under the law has slumped to a 20-year low, constituting a potential impediment to economic growth at a critical time for the global economy, a new World Bank report shows.

In 2022, the global average score on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index rose just half a point to 77.1—indicating women, on average, enjoy barely 77 percent of the legal rights that men do. At the current pace of reform, in many countries a woman entering the workforce today will retire before she will be able to gain the same rights as men, the report notes.

“At a time when global economic growth is slowing, all countries need to mobilize their full productive capacity to confront the confluence of crises besetting them,” said Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “Governments can’t afford to sideline as much as half of their population. Denying equal rights to women across much of the world is not just unfair to women; it is a barrier to countries’ ability to promote green, resilient, and inclusive development.”

Women, Business and the Law 2023 assesses 190 countries’ laws and regulations in eight areas related to women’s economic participation—mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pensions. The data—which are current through Oct. 1, 2022—offer objective and measurable benchmarks for global progress toward legal gender equality. Today, just 14 countries—all high-income economies—have laws that give women the same rights as men.

Worldwide, nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men. Closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20% on average across countries. Studies estimate global economic gains of $5-6 trillion if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do.

In 2022, only 34 gender-related legal reforms were recorded across 18 countries—the lowest number since 2001. Most reforms focused on increasing paid leave for parents and fathers, removing restrictions to women’s work, and mandating equal pay. It will take another 1,549 reforms to reach substantial legal gender equality everywhere in the areas measured by the report. At the current pace, the report, notes, it would take at least 50 years on average to reach that target.

The latest Women, Business and the Law report provides a comprehensive assessment of global progress toward gender equality in the law over the past 50 years. Since 1970, the global average Women, Business and the Law score has improved by about 2/3, rising from 45.8 to 77.1 points.

The first decade of this century saw strong gains towards legal gender equality. Between 2000 and 2009, over 600 reforms were introduced, with a peak of 73 annual reforms in 2002 and 2008. Since then, reform fatigue seems to have set in—particularly in areas that involve long-established norms, such as the rights of women to inherit and own property. New analysis of the data shows that economies with historically larger legal gender gaps have been catching up, especially since 2000.

Currently, equality of economic opportunity for women is highest in OECD high-income economies but important reforms have continued in developing economies. Sub-Saharan Africa made significant progress last year. The region accounted for over half of all reforms worldwide in 2022, with seven economies—Benin, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda—enacting 18 positive legal changes.

Although great achievements have been made over the last five decades, more needs to be done worldwide to ensure that good intentions are accompanied by tangible results —that is, equal opportunity under the law for women. Women cannot afford to wait any longer to reach gender equality. Neither can the global economy.

1, March 2023

Head-on train crash kills dozens in Greece ⁰

At least 36 people were killed and another 66 injured after two trains collided head-on near the Greek city of Larissa, authorities said, as emergency services raced Wednesday to find survivors among the charred wreckage.

Several carriages were almost completely destroyed in the collision between a passenger train and a freight train just before midnight on Tuesday, with at least one car appearing to catch fire and trap passengers inside.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life,” said one rescue worker, emerging from the wreckage. “It’s tragic. Five hours later, we are finding bodies.”

Several cars had overturned or caught fire when they came off the tracks in the impact, leaving a tangled mess of metal and shattered glass.

The passenger train, carrying 350 people, had been travelling from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Health Minister Thanos Plevris said most passengers were “young people”, with the train carrying many students returning to Thessaloniki after a long holiday weekend.

“It was a nightmare… I’m still shaking,” 22-year-old passenger Angelos told AFP.

“Fortunately we were in the penultimate car and we got out alive. There was a fire in the first cars and complete panic.”

“The collision was like a huge earthquake.”

“I was stained with blood from other people who were injured near me,” a passenger named Lazos told the newspaper Protothema.

Source: AFP

1, March 2023

Nigeria’s ruling party candidate Tinubu wins presidential election ⁰

Ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu won Nigeria’s highly disputed weekend election, electoral authorities said on Wednesday, securing the former Lagos governor the presidency of Africa’s most populous democracy.

With President Muhammadu Buhari stepping down after two terms, many Nigerians hoped Saturday’s vote would usher in a leader capable of tackling the country’s widening insecurity, economic malaise and growing poverty.

Tinubu, 70, the candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, won 8.8 million votes against 6.9 million for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar and 6.1 million for the Labour Party’s Peter Obi, according to final results.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, confirmed Tinubu also secured the required 25 percent of votes in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and capital, a threshold to be confirmed president.

“Tinubu, Bola Ahmed, of the APC, having satisfied the requirements of the law, is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected,” INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu said.

Even before the final tallies, Labour and PDP had already called for the vote to be cancelled, alleging massive manipulation of the results. It was not clear whether they would take their case to court.

Tinubu, 70, a longtime political kingmaker who ran on his experience as Lagos governor from 1999 to 2007, campaigned saying “It’s my turn” to govern Africa’s largest economy.

He promised “Renewed Hope” but faced questions from rivals over his health, past graft accusations and ties to Buhari, who many critics say failed in his promise to make Nigeria safer.

Supporters cheered and danced to Afrobeats music at the APC’s campaign headquarters in the capital Abuja as the final results were being tallied in the early hours of Wednesday.

“He had done it before, and we know that he will do better than what he did in Lagos,” said supporter Adenike Mutiat Abubakar, 43. “He’s the man of the people, so that’s why everybody wants him.”

Tight race

The election was a tight race for the first time since Nigeria ended military rule in 1999, after the Labour Party’s Obi, 61, drew younger voters with his message of change from his political old-guard rivals.

PDP’s Abubakar, a 76-year-old businessman and former vice president, lost his sixth attempt at the presidency.

Saturday’s voting was mostly peaceful, but was troubled by long delays at many polling stations and some intimidation by thugs, while technical hitches disrupted the uploading of results to the INEC’s central website, fuelling concerns over vote rigging.

“The election is irretrievably compromised,” Labour Party chairman Julius Abure told reporters on Tuesday. “We demand that this sham of an election should be immediately cancelled.”

The INEC introduced biometric voter identification technology for the first time at the national level and its IReV central database for uploading results to improve transparency.

But opposition parties said failures in the system to upload tallies allowed for ballot manipulation and disparities in the results from the manual counts at local polling stations.

Nigerian elections have often been marred by vote rigging, ballot buying, violence and clashes between rival parties.

But the INEC dismissed opposition allegations.

“Contrary to the insinuation by both parties, results emanating from the States point to a free, fair and credible process,” the INEC said.

It said parties should allow the process to run its course and then take their claims to court.

But international observers, including from the European Union, noted major logistical problems, disenfranchised voters and a lack of transparency by the INEC.

In 2019, the INEC was forced to delay the election by a week just hours before voting started. PDP’s Abubakar cried fraud when Buhari beat him that time around, but the country’s Supreme Court later tossed out his claim.

Lagos surprise

One surprise result was Obi’s victory in Lagos, the state with the largest number of registered voters and the traditional bastion of APC’s Tinubu, known as the “Godfather of Lagos”.

After a grassroots and social media campaign, Obi, a former Anambra State governor, managed to attract voters with a message that he offered change from Nigeria’s establishment politics.

The state’s eponymous megacity has put Nigeria on the cultural map with its glitzy Nollywood film scene and global Afrobeats stars like Burna Boy, but nearly half of Nigerians live in poverty and inflation is in double digits.

Security challenges awaiting Nigeria’s next leader are huge.

A grinding Islamist insurgency in the northeast has displaced more than 2 million, bandit militias carry out mass abductions in the northwest and separatists attack police in the southeast.

Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer but struggles with sporadic fuel shortages, huge energy import bills due to a lack of refineries and crude theft from its wells and pipelines.

Source: AFP

28, February 2023

Yaoundé: Finance Minister Motaze banned from leaving country amid Martinez Zogo murder inquiry ⁰

Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze has been banned from leaving the country amid an investigation into his alleged involvement in the assassination of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered late today that a prosecutor is seeking charges against Mr Motaze, who has been asked to explain his links with a key suspect in the killing, French Cameroun business tycoon Amougou Belinga.

Records show the two men had multiple phone calls just hours before the assassination, prosecutors say.

Minister Motaze reportedly wrote to Prime Minister Dion Ngute asking for permission to lead a delegation abroad for the signing with Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) whose headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland, an amendment to a contract on the program to secure customs revenues.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that on February 23, 2023, the Secretary General at the Prime Minister’s Office wrote to Minister Motaze to inform him that Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute has rejected his request.

Kidnapped during the night of January 17, 2023 in Yaoundé, the journalist and whistleblower Arsène Salomon Mbami Zogo alias Martinez Zogo, was found on January 22, lifeless and his body mutilated.

Motaze’s name and that of Justice Minister Laurent Esso were mentioned during the hearings related to the murder of Martinez Zogo. The Head of State could at any time give his high approval for the auditioning of these two ministers.

By Miriam Metchane Ewang

28, February 2023

Messi beats Mbappé to FIFA Best award, Putellas retains women’s prize ⁰

Lionel Messi won The Best FIFA men’s player prize for 2022 on Monday on the back of his World Cup triumph with Argentina and Spain’s Alexia Putellas retained the women’s award at a ceremony in Paris.

Messi beat his Paris Saint-Germain teammate, and World Cup final rival, Kylian Mbappé to the men’s gong with Ballon d’Or winner Karim Benzema having been the other contender to claim the prize.

It is the second time that Messi has won the honour inaugurated by FIFA in 2016 after football’s world governing body split from Ballon d’Or organisers France Football.

The award, which is voted for by national team coaches and captains, journalists and also fans, recognises a year in which the former Barcelona star crowned his glorious career by leading Argentina to victory at the World Cup.

Messi scored twice in an epic final in Doha as Argentina beat France on penalties despite Mbappé netting a hat-trick for Les Bleus in a remarkable 3-3 draw.

He also claimed the Golden Ball for the best player at the tournament, although Mbappé was the top scorer with eight goals, one more than Messi.

“This year was just mad for me, to be able to achieve my dream that I had fought so hard for. In the end I got it and it was the most beautiful thing that has happened in my career,” Messi said of his World Cup win as he collected his award.

“It is a dream for every footballer but something that very few can make come true,” added Messi, who was sat in the Paris theatre in between Mbappé and his wife Antonella Roccuzzo.

He took the prize just 24 hours after combining with Mbappé to lead PSG to a 3-0 win against Marseille in Ligue 1.

Putellas pips Mead and Morgan

The 35-year-old, a seven-time Ballon d’Or winner, succeeds Polish star Robert Lewandowski on the FIFA honours list, while Putellas retained the women’s prize despite spending the second half of last year out injured.

The 29-year-old beat England’s European Championship-winning striker Beth Mead and United States star Alex Morgan to add the FIFA crown to the Ballon d’Or, which she has also won two years running.

Putellas is currently recovering from a serious knee injury suffered last July which ruled her out of the Euro in England with Spain.

Prior to that she had scored 11 goals on Barcelona’s run to the Champions League final, which they lost to Lyon.

Putellas has previously said she hopes to return from injury in time to play again this season, but it remains to be seen whether she will feature for Spain at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in July and August.

Argentina’s World Cup win in Qatar was also recognised as Lionel Scaloni claimed the men’s coach’s honour and Emiliano Martinez was named the best male goalkeeper.

Meanwhile, England’s European Championship victory helped their Dutch manager Sarina Wiegman win the prize for best women’s coach, while Mary Earps was named the women’s goalkeeper of the year.

Polish amputee player Marcin Oleksy took the Puskas Award for best goal, named after Hungary great Ferenc Puskas.

Source: AFP

28, February 2023

Equatorial Guinea: Death toll in Marburg outbreak rises to 11 ⁰

Two more people in Equatorial Guinea have died of Marburg haemorrhagic fever, a cousin of the Ebola virus, bringing the toll of fatalities to 11, the authorities say.

“Two days ago, the monitoring system recorded eight notifications, including the deaths of two people with symptoms of the disease,” Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Work is underway “to strengthen assessment of the spread of the epidemic,” said the statement, read on national television.

“Forty-eight contact cases have been documented, four of whom have developed symptoms, and three who have been quarantined in hospital,” it added.

The Marburg virus is a rare but highly dangerous pathogen that causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.

It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes the Ebola virus, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.

The central African state announced on February 13 that nine people had died from Marburg between January 7 and February 7.

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) held an emergency session the following day.

The national authorities have declared a health alert in the remote northeastern province of Kie-Ntem province and in the neighbouring district of Mongomo, which are located on the border with Cameroon and Gabon.

Measures include a lockdown plan implemented in collaboration with the WHO.

In their statement of February 13, the authorities had reported only three cases of infection in addition to the fatalities — individuals who were being isolated with “mild symptoms” in hospital.

The natural host of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carries the virus but does not fall sick from it.

But the animals can pass the virus to primates in close proximity, including humans, and human-to-human transmission then occurs through contact with blood or other bodily fluids.

Fatality rates in confirmed cases have ranged from 24 percent to 88 percent in previous outbreaks, depending on the virus strain and case management, according to the WHO.

There are currently no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments.

Potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, as well as early candidate vaccines are being evaluated, the WHO says.

Source: AFP

28, February 2023

Nigeria’s opposition leaders reject early results showing ruling party lead ⁰

Tensions rose Monday during the counting of Nigeria’s hotly contested presidential election when representatives from the parties of the two main opposition candidates walked out in anger from the center where state-by-state results were being announced.

With 11 of Nigeria’s 36 states having reported as of Monday evening, ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu was leading with 46% of the 6.7 million counted votes so far. He was followed by the main opposition party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who had 29%, and third party candidate Peter Obi, who had 20%.

In order to win, the candidate who leads the popular vote must also win at least a quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the states and the capital, Abuja.

Tempers flared Monday in Abuja where representatives of all the parties awaited the results. The two leading opposition parties claimed there were disparities between the results announced by the election commission and what their representatives learned at the polling stations.

“We are Nigerians and must defend our rights,” said Dino Melaye, a representative of the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party, led by Abubakar. Nigeria’s electoral law allows party representatives or agents to raise concerns about results while they are being announced by the election commission.

The country’s election chief, Mahmood Yakubu, dismissed claims of irregularities and said the results were authenticated by electoral officials.

Representatives for Nigeria’s ruling party accused the opposition parties of inciting violence and called on security forces to restrain them.

“If they don’t, a situation may well arise that none of us want, whereby people actually act on this incitement and begin to kill other people,” said Femi Fani-Kayode, former minister and part of the ruling party’s presidential campaign council. “And if that happens, I assure you it will be very difficult to restrain those on our own side not to retaliate.”

The ruling party pointed to Obi’s victory in the heavily coveted Lagos state, which is home to Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, as proof that the vote was free and fair. It was a particularly hard loss for ruling party candidate Tinubu, who was once the governor of the state.

It was not immediately known how many ballots were cast in the other 25 states or which candidates stood to gain the most votes from those results.

After the last presidential election in 2019, it took four days for a victor to be declared. A runoff election will be held if no candidate secures at least a quarter of the votes from two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and the capital city, in addition to receiving the highest number of votes.

On Monday, the African Union observer mission said voting had been delayed in more than 80% of polling units mainly because of logistical challenges caused by Nigeria’s currency swap program. The redesign of the Nigerian bank note, the naira, caused cash shortages nationwide, and voters and poll workers had difficulties getting to polling stations Saturday. Voters in some states had to wait until late in the evening to cast ballots, while in other states the election continued Sunday.

Observers from the missions of the African Union and the West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS said the election was generally “encouraging” except for isolated cases of violence that disrupted voting in some states.

Isolated cases of violence on election day led to the deaths of nine civilians, according to the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence company, pointing to a far more peaceful election than in previous years, when there were more deaths.

“Going by this trajectory, we are likely to have fewer deaths” during the election period compared to 2019,” said Confidence MacHarry, a security analyst with SBM Intelligence.

By Engelis Okesack Besong

27, February 2023

Buea: Gunmen attack Molyko primary school ⁰

Three gun men attacked a private primary school in Molyko, Buea, on February 22, at about 11 am.

Following the attack, the head teacher was kidnapped by the attackers after verbal threats had been sent to the school proprietor.

The gunmen fired several warning shots into the air as they left the school campus.

Security forces arrived the scene only when the perpetrators had gone.

The head teacher who had been abducted was released the following morning after a ransom was paid.

By Cecilia Manjang

27, February 2023

Nigerian Election: Peter Obi defeats Bola Tinubu in Lagos ⁰

Peter Obi, an outsider presidential candidate, has defeated Bola “The Godfather of Lagos” Tinubu in Lagos.

The defeat will come as a personal blow to Tinubu. He is a former two-term governor of the state who is referred to by his critics and allies as the “Godfather of Lagos” for his seemingly total political control over the country’s most populous state. The self-proclaimed “City Boy” had based his candidacy on his own perceived popularity in Lagos, promising at rallies to do for Nigeria what he did in Lagos.

For young people especially, Obi’s victory in the state, and the huge embarrassment it will cause Tinubu’s APC party, will be seen as a considerable consolation prize should the third-party candidate not win the presidency.

“I have a simple question, if your nickname is “city boy” and you lose the city, what would your new nickname be?” Modupe Odele, a prominent activist during the #EndSARS demonstrations wrote.

A popular Nigerian actor and activist known as Mr Macaroni said Obi’s victory was a victory for people power. “Nigerians, the power will always be yours anytime you are ready to take it!!!” he wrote on Twitter.

Lagos was at the centre of 2020’s #EndSARS protests, where thousands of young people took to the streets to protest against corruption and police brutality. Ever since the demonstrations ended after authorities allegedly shot at peaceful demonstrators in Lagos’ upscale Lekki neighbourhood, activists have worked to organise towards removing APC from statewide office. The effort will continue in two weeks when the state’s governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, one of Tinubu’s closest allies, will be up for re-election.

As residents voted on Saturday and word of a high turnout spread, there were widespread reports of violence and intimidation at polling stations across the city, specifically in areas that were believed to favour Obi.

The violence in the city meant many Lagosians chose to stay at home on Monday, with some schools closed.

The shock result comes as Nigerians await the final results of its presidential election.

Nigeria’s voting body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has been severely criticised for the collapse of its much-touted new digital reporting technology, which has meant that the votes have been declared days later than was promised. The new system was meant to ensure officers at each of the country’s 171,000 polling stations could report results online in real time.

As a result, most states are yet to declare their results almost two days after the election. In a statement on Sunday, INEC said the untested system had struggled to cope with the demand on its servers.

Source: Vice.com