Month: October 2013

Nigeria is set to immunise an estimated 35 million children against measles this month, an official said here Thursday.

The immunisation exercise will be conducted in two phases and children between nine months and five years will benefit from the programme, Xinhua reported citing Executive Director of Nigeria’s National Primary Healthcare Development Agency Ado Muhammad.

The first phase, which will kick off in the capital city Abuja and the 19 northern states of the West African country, will take place between Oct 5 and Oct 9, he said.

Authorities in Kenya Thursday seized a container carrying ivory at the port of Mombasa.

Beatrice Memo, an official from Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), said the pieces of ivory were discovered wrapped in one of the 90 kg sacks, Xinhua reported.

Declaration documents indicated the container as carrying Sesame seeds packed in 250 bags with a total weight of 2,370 kg.

KRA documents show the goods were imported by Melmet Vegetable Oil Industry of Turkey. The exporter is Cosmo Freight Company of Uganda.

The container will go through further inspection.

Cecilia Attias, the ex-wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, is settling a few scores from her past in an autobiographical book.

“Une envie de vérité” (A Desire for Truth), which will go on sale in France Oct 9, promises to be a big hit on the fall reading list.

Attias tries not to ruffle too many feathers but nevertheless dots her i’s and crosses her t’s about some of the landmark events in her life with the former head of state.

Police confirmed Thursday evening the death of the woman implicated in an incident that began in front of the White House earlier in the day and ended minutes later, after an automobile chase, when police shot her near the Capitol.

District of Columbia police chief Cathy Lanier confirmed that the woman, whom she did not identify, died after being shot by police.

Authorities also found a child in the woman’s vehicle, but the youngster was not hurt in the incident.

Lithuanian prosecutors today declined to investigate fresh claims that a Saudi terror suspect was held in an alleged secret CIA jail in the Baltic state.

Last week, two human rights groups said they had lodged a complaint with prosecutors for 45-year-old Mustafa al-Hawsawi, insisting he was imprisoned at an alleged CIA “black site” on Lithuanian soil between 2004 and 2006.

Prosecutors in Vilnius today said the group had failed to provide any evidence of wrongdoing. It also insisted a previous probe had ruled out claims that Al-Qaeda suspects were brought to the EU country.

Another day, another radioactive-water spill. The operator of the meltdown-plagued Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant says at least 430 litres (110 gallons) spilled when workers overfilled a storage tank without a gauge that could have warned them of the danger.

The amount is tiny compared to the untold thousands of tons of radioactive water that have leaked, much of it into the Pacific Ocean, since a massive earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant in 2011.

But the error is one of many the operator has committed as it struggles to manage a seemingly endless, tainted flow.