The Regional Centre of Expertise on Education (RCE), for Sustainable Development, says Nigeria loses its forests at the rate of 11.1 per cent annually, making it the highest on earth. Prof. Albert Olayemi, the Focal Person of the Ilorin RCE for Sustainable Development, made the disclosure on Thursday, at the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara state. He spoke while signing a document backing the Kwara House of Assembly on its proposed amendments to improve the law governing the operations of chainsaw men and the law that governs the charcoal economy in the state. According to him, an estimated 13 million…
Author: Abdallah el-Kurebe
An Abuja-based Oncologist, Dr Uzodinma Kalu, has warned that younger people between age 30 and 50 could get thyroid cancer. Kalu said on Thursday in Abuja that thyroid cancer developed when cells genetically mutate or change. He said that the abnormal cells begin multiplying in your thyroid and, once there were enough of them, they form a tumor. According to him, if it is caught early, thyroid cancer was one of the most treatable forms of cancer. Although there are four types of thyroid cancer which included: papillary, follicular, medullary and anaplastic thyroid cancer. He explained that anaplastic thyroid cancer…
Germans are using far fewer plastic bags than before, reducing the use of plastic by more than one third, a report has shown. In 2017, there were 1.3 billion fewer plastic bags in use than in 2016, a fall of more than one third. The figures come from a report by the Society for Packaging Market Research ton Thursday. The average German used 29 plastic bags over the 12 months of 2017, representing a total of 2.4 billion for the whole country. The report looked specifically at plastic carrier bags, and not the transparent bags used for fruit and vegetables.…
The N493 million erosion control project awarded by the Federal Government in Tambuwal Local Government, Sokoto State, have been completed. The project was flagged-off on June 4, 2017 by Minister of State for Labour and Productivity, Prof. Stephen Ocheni, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari. The project involved road improvement at Dogon Daji, erosion control works at Bashire and works on man-made gully erosion at Jabo community. Residents said the speed with which the work was completed was commendable, adding that it would help ease threats of erosion and flooding in the affected communities. Some of the residents, Malam Chika Malami, Abubakar…
Denmark’s Parliament on Monday approved the construction of a 70-kilometre fence on the border with Germany as part of efforts to combat the threat of African swine fever often carried by wild boar. The fever is not dangerous to humans, but is almost always fatal in pigs yet there is no vaccine. “If African swine fever reaches Denmark, we calculate that exports worth 1.7 billion dollars would be immediately halted,’’ Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, Danish minister for environment and food, said in a statement. He was referring to exports of pigs and pork to countries outside the European Union that would be…
The cholera outbreak in Mubi North and Mubi South Local Government Areas of Adamawa has extended to Hong and Maiha local governments. A statement from the Information Officer of Adamawa Ministry of Health, Mohammed Abubakar, said two cases were recorded in each of the Local Government areas but there was no death. Abubakar said as at Sunday, the total number of cases recorded in Mubi North, Mubi South, Maiha and Hong stood at 985, with 16 deaths. The breakdown indicated that Mubi North had 427 cases, with 10 deaths, while Mubi South had 554 cases, with 6 deaths. Hong and…
By Marion Nestle The FDA has concluded its “consultation process” on Golden Rice. This, you may recall, is rice bioengineered to contain genes for beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) consulted with the FDA to make sure that the agency had no objection to this rice being used in human or animal food products. The FDA’s letter to IRRI concluding the consultation includes this statement: Although GR2E [“Golden”} rice is not intended for human or animal food uses in the United States, when present, it would be a producer’s or distributer’s responsibility to ensure that labeling of human and…
The former Chairman of the Lagos Island chapter of Nigerian Environmental Society, Mr John Ekoko on Monday called for increased research on biodegradable materials to replace plastic packaging materials. He made the call when he spoke on the 2018 World Environment Day in an interview in Lagos. The United Nations (UN) has fixed June 5 as the World Environment Day to draw global attention to the need to protect the environment and the theme for the 2018 celebration is “Beat the Plastic Pollution’’. Ekoko stressed that plastic materials were not biodegradable and they were, therefore, not environmental friendly. “The 2018…
An outbreak of swine flu at a hospital in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City has left 16 patients infected and another 80 quarantined, state media reported on Monday. The infections began on Friday at Tu Du, the largest obstetrics hospital in the southern city, when a patient due for surgery began showing signs of fever, the Vnexpress news site reported. Other people in the hospital, including patients and medical staff, began showing flu symptoms shortly afterward. By Saturday, 16 people had tested positive for swine flu. Swine flu is a respiratory disease caused by the virus H1N1, originally found in pigs,…
A new study showed that a drug approved for lymphoma and leukemia may also help treat the most common and lethal type of brain tumor. The findings, published in the latest journal Science Translational Science, offer hope that the drug called ibrutinib may one day be used in patients with glioblastoma and improve its poor survival rates. Bao Shigang, an investigator at Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, said that ibrutinib slowed brain tumor growth in mice and extended survival more than 10 times the rate of the current standard-of-care chemotherapy drug Temozolomide. Shigang’s team found that ibrutinib could inhibit glioma…