10-year-old girl used as human bomb in Nigeria attack

January 2, 2017

Kano (Nigeria), Jan 2: One person was seriously injured when a suicide bomber aged around 10 blew herself up in a New Year's Eve attack in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, witnesses and aid workers said today. The girl approached a crowd buying noodles from a food vendor in the Customs area of the city around 9:30 pm yesterday and detonated her explosives, they said.

kano

Although no one has claimed responsibility the attack bore the hallmark of Boko Haram Terrorists who are notorious for using suicide bombers, mostly women and young girls, in attacking civilian targets. "The girl walked towards the crowd but she blew up before she could reach her target," said witness Grema Usman who lives in the area. "She died instantly, while one person was seriously hurt after after he was hit by shrapnel."

"(Judging) from her corpse the girl was around 10 years old," Usman said. An aid worker involved in the evacuation of the body gave a similar estimate of the bomber's age. "The girl was clearly not more than 10 and this could have made her too nervous, making her to detonate the explosives prematurely," the aid worker suggested.

Borno state police spokesman Victor Isuku, meanwhile, said a second female suicide bomber was caught and lynched by an angry mob. Her bomb was safely detonated by security forces, he said. In December two girls aged between seven and eight detonated explosives in suicide attacks on market in the city, injuring 19 people.

Authorities blamed the attack on Boko Haram, whose seven-year insurgency has killed 20,000 people and displaced 2.6 million others. The conflict has spilled into Nigeria's northern neighbours.

Yesterday's attack came a week after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said the jihadist group had been routed from Sambisa forest, its last stronghold in Borno state.

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Agencies
August 1,2020

Mexico City, Aug 1: The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 688 to 46,688 within the past 24 hours, Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said.

The number of victims in Mexico is now higher than in the United Kingdom, where 46,119 people have died of the disease. The largest number of fatalities - 153,311 - has been recorded in the United States, while Brazil comes second with 92,475 deaths.

Lopez-Gatell also said on late Friday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 8,458 to 424,637 over the past day.

A day earlier, the Latin American nation recorded 7,730 new cases of the coronavirus, with 639 fatalities.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, over 17.5 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 677,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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News Network
March 23,2020

Singapore, Mar 23: Oil prices fell at the open in Asia on Monday after a trillion-dollar Senate proposal to help the coronavirus-hit American economy was defeated and death tolls soared across Europe and the US.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate initially tumbled more than three percent but then pulled back some ground to trade 1.5 percent lower, at $22 a barrel.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 4.9 percent to $25 a barrel.

Prices have fallen to multi-year lows in recent weeks as lockdowns and travel restrictions to fight the virus hit demand, and top producers Saudi Arabia and Russia engage in a price war.

The latest drop came after a trillion-dollar Senate proposal to rescue the US economy was defeated after receiving zero support from Democrats, and with five Republicans absent from the chamber because of virus-related quarantines.

The bill had proposed funding for American families, thousands of shuttered or suffering businesses and the nation's critically under-equipped hospitals.

Coronavirus deaths soared across Europe and the United States at the weekend despite heightened restrictions.

The death toll from the virus -- which has upended lives and closed businesses and schools across the planet -- surged to more than 14,300 Sunday, according to an AFP tally.

AxiCorp chief markets strategist Stephen Innes said that "total demand devastation" had set it.

"Oil markets collapsed out of the gate this morning as prices react... to stringent containment lockdown measures," he said.

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Agencies
July 29,2020

If everything goes as Russia’s expectation, it will be world’s first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine for widespread in the second week of August despite safety and efficacy concerns, according to a report. The adenoviral vector-based vaccine developed by Russian military and government researchers is currently in phase 2 trials.

According to a report from CNN, Russian officials are hoping to get approval for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute on Agust 10 or even before that. The officials told the outlet that the vaccine will be approved for public use with frontline healthcare workers receiving it first.

“It’s a Sputnik moment,” said Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is financing Russian vaccine research, referring to the successful 1957 launch of the world’s first satellite by the Soviet Union, according to CNN.

“Americans were surprised when they heard Sputnik’s beeping. It’s the same with this vaccine. Russia will have got there first,” he was quoted as saying.

However, Russia is yet to release the scientific data on its coronavirus vaccine trials, hence, questions remain about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, said the report. The vaccine is in the second phase of testing with developers planning to launch the phase 3 trials sometime after August 3.

Earlier, Interfax reported, citing Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, that the vaccine will be widely used in parallel with phase 3 trials. He said the country plans to vaccinate medics who are at high-risk for COVID-19 next month before clinical trials are completed.

Murashko added that individuals at higher risk of getting infected with the coronavirus such as older people or those with health conditions will also be prioritised for the vaccine, although he did not estimate or reveal when that would happen. The minister added 800 people will be recruited for the phase 3 trials.

Meanwhile, health officials were more cautious considering the fact that human testing of the vaccine is incomplete, and the state registration is expected to begin after August 3, reported The Moscow Times.

On Monday, Moderna and Pfizer announced the commencement of the final phase 3 trials of their candidate vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has so far claimed at least 654,477 lives and infected 16,514,500 people worldwide. 

Researchers will recruit up to 30,000 volunteers in separate trials both backed by the US government. India's first indigenous coronavirus vaccine, COVAXIN, is undergoing phase 1 human clinical trials across the country. More than 150 COVID-19 vaccines are being developed all over the world with at least six candidates already in late-stage clinical trials.

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