Atiku Abubakar welcomes NNPC change
Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, has welcomed the change in NNPC.
In response to the change, which occurred on Tuesday, July 19,2021, the former vice president stated on his official Twitter handle, @atiku, that he had made plans to reform NNPC in light of what had occurred during the change.
“I had in 2018 made public my plans to reform the NNPC to make it more profitable, transparent and efficient,” he Tweeted.
“The APC-led government denigrated me for my patriotic vision.”
He said in the end, despite the negative statements shared on both the conventional and social media about him wanting to sell NNPC to his friends and cronies, the government of the day still went ahead to commercialise it.
“But today, I am happy to note that the same government has taken a tentative step along the lines of the suggestions that I had made. It is a step in the right direction, but we are still far from what I had envisaged,” he said.
“I hope I’ll have the opportunity to complete the process of turning the NNPC into a genuinely world-class company in the mould of NLNG, Aramco of Saudi Arabia, and Petrobras of Brazil, where Nigerians and institutions will invest in.” –AA, “he concluded.
Read also: NNPC to list on stock exchange mid-2023, says Kyari
Kyari narrates experience during Kuje prison attack, to know fate on bail application August 30
Abba Kyari, the suspended Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), has narrated his experience during the attack on the Kuje Medium Security Correctional Centre in Abuja by members of the Islamic State for West Africa (ISWAP).
Kyari shared his experience before Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court in Abuja during his trial on Wednesday.
His lead counsel, Onyechi Ikpeazu, said that Kyari hid from the insurgents during the day of the attack.
According to him, the terrorists, after blasting the prison wall and door open, had opened all the inner prison doors, asking all the inmates to escape, but he, along with the four other members of his Police Intelligence Response Team detained with him, declined to flee.
As a result, the suspended police officer asked the court to grant his fresh application for bail.
He asked the court to grant his plea because he and the others remanded with him wouldn’t jump bail if given that chance.
However, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) pleaded with the court not to grant his prayer for bail on the ground that there was no evidence to prove that they were being confined with criminals at the correctional facility.
After listening to the counsel, Justice Nwite adjourned the case until August 30 for the ruling on Kyari’s fresh application for bail.
Heatwave forced Google and Oracle to shut down computers
The rise in temperature that is harming much of Europe took its toll on the technology industry after tech giants Google and Oracle suffered outages as cooling systems failed at London data centres.
According to the BBC, the data centres, which are large, highly secured buildings that hold banks of computers and are the powerhouses behind many online services, suffered an overheating crisis, and extra cooling needed to be quickly added to avoid a total shutdown.
However, both companies said it had been resolved.
Oracle had reported that the two cooler units in the data centre experienced a failure when they were required to operate above their design limits, a situation that forced the temperatures in the data centre to rise above normal. This resulted in the system shutting down as a protective measure. The issue was resolved on Wednesday.
The Google Cloud data centre, which is located in London, suffered a similar fate.
The firm said that in order to prevent damage to machines and an extended outage, some of the machines had to be powered down.
Biden unveils $2.3bn plan to fight climate change
Joe Biden, the United States of America’s President, has announced a $2.3bn investment to help build infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and natural disasters.
According to the BBC, President Biden, who spoke in Massachusetts, was responding to the current heatwave that has affected much of Europe and North America.
“Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world,” the president said in Wednesday’s speech, which was delivered outside a former coal-fired power plant in the town of Somerset.
He said the new funding would go to expanding flood control, shoring up utilities, retrofitting buildings, and helping low-income families pay for heating and cooling costs.
It includes $385m to help states fund air conditioning units in homes and community cooling centres.
The administration also plans to provide additional support for offshore wind and energy development in the Gulf of Mexico and enforce new workplace standards to help protect workers from extreme weather. This is according to the BBC.
The president stopped short of declaring the extreme climate conditions as “an emergency”.
Donald Trump remembers Ivana Trump’s ‘beautiful life’ at funeral
Donald Trump, the former president of the United States of America, paid his final respects to his first wife, Ivana Trump, whom he regarded as having lived a ‘beautiful life’.
The beauty and fashion icon helped the former president build much of his business empire in the 1980s. Ivana Trump also took part in Donald’s businesses, managing one of his Atlantic City casinos and picking out some of the design elements in New York City’s Trump Tower.
The ex-president joined all his children and an array of other relatives and friends at a Manhattan church for Ivana Trump’s funeral Mass.
According to the Associated Press, the founder of Truth Social wrote that it was a very sad day, but at the same time a celebration of a wonderful and beautiful life.
Ivana and Donald Trump’s three children — Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric — stood with their father and their families as the gold-toned casket was carried from St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan. Eric Trump briefly put an arm around his sister’s shoulders as she held the hand of one of her small children, who clutched a red flower.
Tiffany Trump, the daughter of the former president and his second wife, Marla Maples, also attended the service, as did family friends, including Jeanine Pirro, co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” and Charles Kushner, a real estate developer and the father of Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner.
