Jesus met a man who had been sick for 38 years and asked him a strange question:

“Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6).

“What kind of question is that?” I asked the Lord. “How can You ask a man who has been sick for that long if he would like to be healed?”

The Lord replied: “Femi, I asked him that because sickness was his life.”

 I was a bit slow on the uptake.

“What does that mean?”

The Lord said emphatically: “I said sickness was his life. He had known nothing but sickness. To save him, I had to deliver him from the only life he knew, which was a life of sickness. He did not know what it means to be well.” 

“But how can You save a man from life? I thought men were saved from death.”

“No Femi, the Lord replied again. “I save from life. That is why I kill before I make alive. I kill the lives of men to give them the life of God.”

Dying to Live

This makes true Christianity a death sentence. The psalmist laments to God:  

“We face death all day for you. We are like sheep on their way to be slaughtered.” (Psalm 44:22).

A believer dies to live. Paul says:

“We had the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that he will still deliver us.” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10).

The “great death” we are delivered from is this life. We are delivered from a life of death to eternal life. We are delivered from counterfeit life into original life. We are delivered from the life of the body to the life of the Spirit. We are delivered from the life of men to the life of God.

Therein lies our dilemma. Jesus’ prescription of death is unpalatable. We do not want to give up the vainglories of this life. We try, pretend but finally give up. We fail to realise that the devil is the author of the life we want to continue living in this world.

In effect, Jesus our Saviour becomes Jesus our adversary. We are determined to save our life from Jesus, who is equally determined that we must relinquish it.

Salvation from Life

Therefore, Jesus warns:

“Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26).

Jesus is in the business of saving men from themselves. He is in the business of saving a man from his own life. The reason is simple: we are our own worst enemies. My enemy is in me.  

Therefore, many sick people desire sickness. The alcoholic desires alcohol. The drug addict desires cocaine. The lung cancer patient desires cigarettes.

When a man must be saved from his own life there is inevitably a problem. He is confronted with death. Salvation from life requires death. Therefore, the Lord kills before he makes alive.

But are we prepared to face death? Is self-preservation not a basic human instinct? It might be human, but it is not divine. Jesus laid down his life, leaving us an example to follow.

Ministry of Death

Death is a minister of the gospel. The gospel was preached in the Old Testament, but the people did not understand it because they had a veil over their hearts. The ministration of death was written and engraved in stones at the hand of Moses. But nothing can give a man a whole new perspective on life than to come face to face with death.

Armed robbers attacked me on Airport Road in Lagos. A man pointed a gun at me and my whole life flashed before my eyes. It never occurred to me that my life was supposed to end like that. What about all my plans? What about all my hopes?

Solomon warns:

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21).

Then Jesus appeared to me, right there and then in the middle of the attack. “Trust me,” He said to me. “Believe in me,” He cajoled.

Just then, I looked up to see an armed robber approach. He pointed a gun at me, and he fired. The bullet hit me, and I fell and “died.” It ripped into my flesh, and I “died”. It is necessary to put it in graphic terms. I “bled to death” right there on that dreadful road.

There is nothing like death to make a man realise his need of a saviour. What does a dead man need? He needs a redeemer. What does a dead man need? He desperately needs a resurrection. A dead man needs Jesus.

Accordingly, Paul cried out:

“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 7:24-25).

Jesus came to save me from death. But this death was the very life of me. Therefore, Jesus “took my life.”

He made me work for Him in His fishing industry. But I am not a fisherman, and I am not interested in fishing. As a matter of fact, I am contemptuous of fishermen. They are poorly paid and are of low social status. I did not go to university to become a fisherman. By ending up as a mere fisherman it meant my life has been one big waste of time. 

Spiritual Life

Job lamented that man born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. (Job 14:1). What was Job’s problem?

He was born of a woman but not born again. He was born of a woman but not of the Spirit. He was born of a woman but not of God. Therefore, his life was full of insoluble trouble. Job had great possessions. However, he did not have the peace that passes all understanding. (Philippians 4:7).

It is incredible how many things can kill a man who is born of a woman. Ordinary mosquitoes can kill him. Armed robbers can kill him. He can be killed in car accidents and in plane crashes. He can fall sick and die. The spirit of fear forever torments him day and night. He is anxious about practically everything.

But what about those who are born of the Spirit? They are impregnable. Since they have died only to be born again, they can no longer be killed. Armed robbers cannot kill them. They are immune to sicknesses and diseases. Though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they fear no evil. (Psalm 23:4).

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David Cox

Male or female, young or old, a surprising number of us can’t make it till morning without a toilet break. Some simple changes could help

Every week, Hussain Al-Zubaidi, a GP, will see at least one patient who suffers from nocturia, the medical term for needing to get up in the night to pee. A weak bladder has long been known as a side-effect of getting older, and nocturia has been found to affect between 69% and 93% of men over 70. It is often related to benign prostatic hyperplasia, the swelling of the prostate and surrounding tissue that occurs with age.

“For many men over 60, this means that their ability to empty their bladder is poorer,” says Al-Zubaidi, the lifestyle and physical activity lead for the Royal College of GPs. “They take longer when standing over the toilet and generally they’ll retain urine, which means they’re much more likely to be triggered to wake up and go for a wee in the night.”

But Al-Zubaidi has begun to notice a worrying new trend – many of the patients coming to see him are men or women in their 20s and 30s. Some researchers have found that nocturia can affect up to 44% of men between 20 and 40. So what is going on?

One theory is that this is a consequence of modern lifestyles. “I think it’s mainly down to drinking habits,” says Al-Zubaidi. “People are often busier during the day, so they tend not to ‘fluid load’ in the morning, which is what we’re designed to do. In the evenings, they’ll drink more water because they’re thirsty, and then get really awakened in the early hours when their bladder is full.”

Such unhealthy drinking habits may be encouraged by our fondness for streaming platforms and social media. A recent study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the US found that 32% of participants over the age of 20 had to wake up and urinate twice or more in the night. This risk was almost 50% greater in people who spent five or more hours a day watching videos in various formats.

“I wonder whether it’s having that time for yourself in the evening while you’re watching Netflix, and suddenly you’re better able to notice your thirst, respond to it and do something about it,” says Al-Zubaidi. “But by that point, it’s a bit too late in the day and you’re going to wake up in the middle of the night needing to pee.”

But there are plenty of other factors that can contribute to nocturia. Rebecca Haddad, a doctor at the Hôpital Rothschild in Paris who has previously specialised in research on nocturia and ageing, says that smoking, consuming too much alcohol and being physically inactive can all reduce bladder capacity, making the need to urinate more frequent.

“There is a link between physical activity and urine production during the day and at night,” she says.

In particular Haddad explains that spending too much time sitting during the day, or staring at screens in the evening, may change the body’s circadian rhythms and lead to a strange phenomenon known as nocturnal polyuria, where people pass normal amounts of urine during the day, but large volumes at night.

Life’s big hormonal shifts also explain why nocturia becomes more common with age. Haddad points out that while it is often perceived as a male condition, it is just as much of a problem for women, with one leading study, called EpiLUTS, of 30,000 people finding that 69% of men and 76% of women over the age of 40 lived with nocturia episodes that woke them at least once in the night.

“Nocturia is definitely about much more than just the prostate,” she says. “Menopause is one of the transitional periods that generally impacts its occurrence. Diminished levels of the hormone oestrogen may induce anatomical and physiological bladder changes, contributing to a reduction in functional bladder capacity. Excess nocturnal urine production can also be provoked by oestrogen depletion.”

Menopause can also impair sleep and lead to weight gain, a combination of factors that drives many cases of nocturia. People with obesity and postmenopausal women are far more prone to a condition called obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), where your breathing stops and starts hundreds of times during sleep, reducing the amount of oxygen that gets into the bloodstream.

“The thinking is that when people are of increased weight, it puts strain on the heart,” says Al-Zubaidi. “And when people are also getting poor-quality sleep, the heart has to beat faster to keep your blood circulating with the oxygen that it has.”

Whenever the heart is working harder, it releases a hormone called brain natriuretic peptide, which increases urine production. “It’s basically trying to reduce the strain on the heart by removing some of the blood volume as urine,” says Al-Zubaidi. “There’s a huge proportion of the population who have undiagnosed OSA, and nocturia is one of the nine key symptoms that could point towards that. Although many people don’t connect the two.”

Because of the connections between the bladder and other bodily systems, nocturia can also be a sign of chronic conditions such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes and kidney impairment.

“Chronic kidney disease is a problem because the kidneys are no longer as effective at making concentrated urine, meaning that too much water may end up being peed,” says Prof Marcus Drake, a specialist in neurological urology at Imperial College London.

However, Drake says that people should not be unduly concerned unless there is a sudden increased severity in the problem, with no apparent behavioural cause. “It is more worrying if the person is also constantly thirsty, or if there are additional unexplained symptoms such as unsteady walking or excessive snoring.”

At the same time, having to get up during the night to go the toilet is not ideal for your health. We’re increasingly learning that poor sleep can have all kinds of negative consequences, not just for energy levels but also for the stability of blood-sugar levels and long-term cognition.

“When you have blood sugar that is regularly spiking, you’re more likely to retain weight, which causes obesity,” says Al-Zubaidi. “We also know that even after a single poor night’s sleep, you accumulate certain proteins in the brain that are linked to dementia in later life.”

When it comes to preventing nocturia, the best advice is probably to focus on scheduling most of your fluid intake earlier in the day. In particular, Al-Zubaidi advises not having more than 330ml of fluids within three hours of going to sleep. That’s the same amount as a typical can of soft drink, or a large glassful.

“You want to have at least a quarter of your daily fluid intake in that first hour to two hours, when your body is really requiring some hydration after sleep,” he says. “And then if you’ve been doing any exercise, try to replace that fluid there and then. We call it the golden hour – if you can do it within an hour of activity, it’s much, much better than going for a run, and then catching up three or four hours later.”

If you do have to get up in the night, try to get back to sleep as soon as possible. While it may be tempting to check your phone for notifications or scroll social media, the light from the screen will affect the levels of sleep hormones and make it harder to nod off again.

“Try to avoid switching on any lights when you go for a wee,” says Al-Zubaidi. “Your eyes should be adapted to the dark, given that you’ve woken up in the middle of the night. And then try to get back into bed as soon as possible. My final tip is that one of the key signals the body uses to go to sleep is a dip in temperature. So just turn the pillow round or have the duvet off when you get back into bed, and you’re much more likely to feel sleepy again.”

Five other reasons you might regularly wake during the night

1 Overheating During sleep, your core body temperature should dip by 1-2C, a common pattern across all mammals. However, if you’re too warm – something that can be triggered either by eating a large meal close to bedtime or by consuming alcohol or caffeine in the evening, because digestion increases your metabolic rate – you might struggle to reach deep sleep. Your duvet also might be too thick.

2 Stress A stressful day can mean that a complex network in your body known as the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which connects the brain and various glands, is still active when you’re trying to get to sleep. This means that cortisol, the main stress hormone, is far higher than your body expects it to be in the early hours of the morning. This can disrupt your natural sleep cycles.

3 Sleep apnoea Obstructive sleep apnoea, a condition that causes you to temporarily stop breathing, is estimated to affect 1.5 million people in the UK, becoming more common in people carrying excess weight. The resulting lack of oxygen activates a survival reflex that wakes you sufficiently to start breathing again, interrupting your sleep cycle. As a result, people with the condition tend to start their mornings feeling exhausted.

4 Heartburn Lying down for many hours in bed allows food and stomach acid to flow into the oesophagus, with this acidity slowly building throughout the night until you wake up with a burning sensation and discomfort. This can be triggered by smoking, eating large meals before bed, or consuming spicy, acidic or highly fatty foods, as well as drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and carbonated drinks.

5 Restless legs syndrome This surprisingly common condition affects 5-10% of adults in the UK and can have a variety of causes, from genetic predisposition to low iron levels in the brain. Some antidepressant or antihistamine medications can exacerbate the condition. Sufferers typically experience tingling or pulling sensations in their legs, with symptoms being more intense at night. The best remedies are thought to be daily exercise, a regular sleep schedule, stretching leg muscles before bed and taking a hot bath.

The Guardian

Disruption to internet services for millions of users in Africa could take weeks or even months to fix, following damage to undersea cables off the continent’s west coast.

Eight West African countries were suffering a second day of major connectivity issues on Friday with users in South Africa also affected, after damage to four sub-sea cables. The cause of the cable cutting was still not known, though a shifting of the seabed was among the likely possibilities.

“Repairs can take weeks to months, depending on where the damage is, what needs to be repaired, and local weather conditions,” said a spokesperson at internet analytics firm Cloudflare. “The assignment of repair ships depends on a number of factors, including ownership of the impacted cables.”

The West Africa Cable System, MainOne, South Atlantic 3 and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday and Friday.

MTN Group Ltd. – one of the largest wireless carriers in Africa – said that ACE and WACS have jointly initiated the repair process, and that they would send a vessel to fix the damaged cables.

Orange Marine said the firm was one of the specialist companies that would be involved in the repair operations for the cables, adding that other companies are also involved in efforts to restore the various cables. It said the repair time is not yet known.

Data show a major disruption to connectivity in eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia and Benin being the most affected, NetBlocks, an internet watchdog, said in a post on X. Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon are among other countries impacted. Several companies have also reported service disruptions in South Africa.

Ghana’s main stock exchange extended trading hours by an hour on Thursday and Friday, while Nigeria’s second-largest cement maker scrapped a call with investors as the damage to four subsea cables off the west coast of Africa, stymied businesses across parts of the continent.

“This is a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik.

Ghana’s National Communications Authority said cable disruptions also occurred in Senegal and Portugal.

“This has led to a significant degradation of data services across the country, with mobile-network operators working around the clock to restore full services,” the authority said.

Red Sea

The cable faults off Ivory Coast come less than a month after three telecommunications cables were severed in the Red Sea, highlighting the vulnerability of critical communications infrastructure. The anchor of a cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants was probably responsible, according to assessments by the US and cable industry group the Internet Cable Protection Committee.

The Red Sea is a critical telecommunications route, connecting Europe to Africa and Asia via Egypt.

Together, the problems with cables on either side of the continent create a capacity crunch, with customers of those cables scrambling to find alternative routes.

Microsoft Corp. reported disruptions to its cloud services and Microsoft 365 applications across Africa.

The Downdetector website showed that a number of companies in South Africa were still severely affected on Friday, including Microsoft and Nedbank Group Ltd.

Telkom SA SOC Ltd.’s Openserve fiber unit and Standard Bank Group Ltd. were also affected, they said in statement, with Openserve adding it had re-routed traffic.

Off the southeastern coast of South Africa, the island country of Mauritius also experienced outages, with Mauritius Telecom Ltd. having to arrange to redirect traffic to other cables, it said.

Last year, WACS, along with another pipe – the South Atlantic 3 – were damaged near the mouth of the Congo River following an undersea landslide. The loss of the cables knocked out international traffic traveling along the west coast of Africa and took about a month to repair.

Bloomberg

Consumer prices remain high in Nigeria, as the February Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading otherwise known as inflation, released yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that headline inflation scaled by 1.8 percentage points (ppts) to 31.7%, the highest level since April 1996.

The inflation rate, which was a negative surprise to analysts, outpaced the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 31.3% and the 31.1% projection of analysts at CardinalStone Finance, a Lagos based investment house.
The unabated inflation pressure indicates that Nigeria remains within the top 10 countries with the highest inflation reading in Africa.

Most inflationary pressure in Nigeria remains skewed to the food basket of the CPI, with the corresponding food inflation reading settling at 37.9% in February 2024, 2.5ppts higher than in January 2024.

The analysts stated: ”This is unsurprising, as our channel checks indicated a material jump in prices of food products like rice, a consequence of the increasing depletion of food reserves and incessant insecurity issues in food-producing regions.

”The rising food prices appear to be hitting Nigerians hard, as it triggered protests in some parts of the country during the review period”.

Also, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that 8.0% of Nigerians are at a high risk of food insecurity if the current trajectory persists.

Also the elevated energy prices have continued to pressure transport inflation, with a second-order impact on food prices.

NBS said: “In February 2024, the headline inflation rate increased to 31.70% relative to the January 2024 headline inflation rate which was 29.9 %.

“Looking at the movement, the February 2024 headline inflation rate showed an increase of 1.8 % points when compared to the January 2024
headline inflation rate.

“On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the headline inflation rate was 9.79% points higher compared to the rate recorded in February 2023, which was 21.91%.

“This shows that the headline inflation rate (YoY, basis) increased in February 2024 when compared to the same month in the preceding year (i.e., February 2023).

“Furthermore, on a month-on-month (MoM) basis, the headline inflation rate in February 2024 was 3.12%, which was 0.48% higher than the rate recorded in January 2024 (2.64%).

“This means that in February 2024, the rate of increase in the average price level is more than the rate of increase in the average price level in January 2024.”

On food inflation, it stated: “The food inflation rate in February 2024 was 37.92% on a YoY basis, which was 13.57% points higher compared to the rate recorded in February 2023 (24.35%). The rise in food inflation on a year-on-year basis was caused by increases in prices of bread and cereals, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, oil and fat, meat, fruit, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

“On a MoM basis, the Food inflation rate in February 2024 was 3.79% this was 0.58% higher compared to the rate recorded in January 2024 (3.21%).

“In February 2024, Food inflation on a Year-on-Year basis was highest in Kogi (46.32%), Rivers (44.34%), and Kwara (43.05%), while Bauchi (31.46%), Plateau (32.56%), and Taraba (33.23%) recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on Year-on-Year basis.

”On a MoM basis, however, February 2024 food inflation was highest in Adamawa (5.61%), Yobe (5.60%), and Borno (5.60%), while Cross River (2.08%), Niger (2.56%), and Abuja (2.60%) recorded the slowest rise in food inflation on MoM basis.

Vanguard

First ship to use a new sea route delivers aid to Gaza, Israeli miliary says

A ship delivered 200 tons of humanitarian supplies, food and water to Gaza on Friday, the Israeli military said, inaugurating a sea route from Cyprusfor aid to help ease the humanitarian crisis brought by Israel’s 5-month-old offensive in the enclave.

Israel has been under increasing pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, especially in the Palestinian territory’s isolated north where hunger is at its worst, with many people reduced to eating animal feed and weeds. The United States has joined other countries in airdropping supplies into northern Gaza and has announced separate plans to construct a pier to get aid in.

Aid groups said the airdrops and sea shipments are far less efficient than trucks in delivering the massive amounts of aid needed. Instead, the groups have called on Israel to guarantee safe corridors for truck convoys after land deliveries became nearly impossible because of military restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of order after the Hamas-run police force largely vanished from the streets.

The ship, operated by the Spanish aid group Open Arms, left Cyprus on Tuesday towing a barge laden with food, including rice, flour, lentils, beans, tuna and canned meat. The food was sent by World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, which operates kitchens providing free meals in Gaza.

Throughout the day Friday, the ship could be seen off Gaza’s coast. In the evening, the military said its cargo had been unloaded onto 12 trucks. Grainy footage released by the military showed a truck on a pier approaching the barge.

The food is to be distributed in the north, the largely devastated target of Israel’s initial offensive in Gaza, where up to 300,000 Palestinians are believed to remain, mostly cut off by Israeli forces since October.

The delivery is intended to pave the way for larger shipments. A second vessel will head to Gaza once the supplies on the first ship are distributed, Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said. Its timing depends in part on whether the Open Arms delivery goes smoothly, he said.

The Israel-Hamas war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 250 being taken into Gaza as hostages. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 31,000 Palestinians and driven most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, according to the United Nations.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza accused Israeli forces late Thursday of attacking Palestinians waiting for an aid convoy at a distribution point in northern Gaza, killing at least 20 people and wounding 155. At Shifa Hospital, doctors said the casualties were mostly hit by live fire, with some showing signs of being crushed.

The Israeli military denied its forces fired at civilians or the convoy. In a statement, it said Palestinian gunmen opened fire among the crowd and that some were run over by the trucks. Aerial footage released by the military appeared to show only one man pushing and shoving people.

Bloodshed surrounding an aid convoy on Feb. 29 killed 118 Palestinians in northern Gaza, when the Israeli military said its forces fired at people in the crowd who were advancing toward them and that tanks fired warning shots to disperse them. Witnesses and hospital officials said many of the casualties were from bullet wounds.

Military officials initially blamed many of the deaths on a stampede; a later military command review said only that the stampede caused “significant harm” without addressing the cause of the deaths.

After that, plans for the sea route took shape, and the United States and other countries joined Jordan in dropping aid into the north by plane.

But people in northern Gaza say the airdrops cannot meet the vast need. Many can’t access the aid because people are fighting over it, said Suwar Baroud, 24, who was displaced by the fighting and is now in Gaza City. Some people hoard it and sell it in the market, she said.

A recent airdrop that malfunctioned plummeted from the sky and killed five people.

Another landed in a sewage and garbage dump, said Riham Abu al-Bid. Men ran in but were unable to retrieve anything, she said.

“I wish these airdrops never happened and that our dignity and freedom would be taken into consideration, so we can get our sustenance in a dignified way and not in a manner that is so humiliating,” she said.

On average, around 115 supply trucks a day have entered Gaza over the entire course of the war, according to figures released by the Israeli prime minister’s office — far below the average of 500 a day before Oct. 7 — though on some days the number spikes to above 200.

This week, Israel began allowing trucks to enter directly into the north, a step aid groups have long called for. The military has also been arranging private commercial convoys and says more than 300 trucks — mainly private — have entered the north since the beginning of February.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that at least 31,490 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

International mediators have been working to broker a cease-fire, though hopes were thwarted for one before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started this week.

Hamas put forward a new cease-fire proposal calling for a three-stage process, according to a report by Al Jazeera television that was confirmed to The Associated Press by a Palestinian official.

The first six-week stage would bring a partial Israeli pullback in Gaza and the release of all female hostages held by the militants in exchange for the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. In the second stage, a permanent cease-fire would be declared, and Hamas would release all Israeli soldiers being held. In the third stage, reconstruction of Gaza would begin, and the Israeli blockade of Gaza would be lifted.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposal “unrealistic,” but said Israel would send negotiators to Qatar for more talks.

Netanyahu’s office also said Friday that Israel has approved military plans to attack Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza where some 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

It said the operation will involve the evacuation of the civilian population but did not give details or a timetable. The military said Wednesday it planned to direct civilians to “humanitarian islands” in central Gaza.

At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, the first Friday prayers of Ramadan were held without a major outbreak of protest or violence.

The mosque has been a frequent flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in the past. Israel limited West Bank Palestinians’ access to Friday’s prayers to men over 55, women over 50 and children under 10.

The compound has long been a deeply contested religious space, as it stands on the Temple Mount, which Jews consider their most sacred site.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Europe to use frozen Russian profits to arm Ukraine, Scholz says

Ukraine's backers will use windfall profits on frozen Russian assets to finance arms purchases for Kyiv, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said following a meeting with his French and Polish counterparts aimed at showing unity after weeks of friction.

At a joint press conference in Berlin, Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, whose ammunition-starved troops face their toughest battles since the early days of Russia's invasion two years ago.

European support has become increasingly key as U.S. President Joe Bidenhas been unable to get a big Ukraine aid package through Congress, and much of his foreign policy energy is focused on the war in Gaza.

Scholz said the leaders had agreed on the need to procure more weapons for Ukraine on the global market and to boost the production of military gear, including through cooperation with partners in Ukraine.

"We will use windfall profits from Russian assets frozen in Europe to financially support the purchase of weapons for Ukraine," Scholz said as he listed European Union efforts to increase support for Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called last month for the EU to consider using such profits to "jointly purchase military equipment for Ukraine".

The Commission is expected to make a concrete proposal in the coming days.

Some EU member countries such as Hungary have signalled reservations about the idea, according to diplomats in Brussels. But Scholz's comments suggested he is confident that EU countries will ultimately approve the proposal.

Scholz said the leaders also agreed on the need for the Ukraine Defence Contact group - a U.S.-led group of some 50 countries that provide military support to Ukraine - to set up a coalition to provide long-distance artillery to Kyiv.

A proposal to set up a long-range missile coalition had already been agreed in Paris on Feb. 26. It was unclear whether Scholz' comments referred to this and how Germany, which has opposed sending its long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, would participate.

Defence ministers from the contact group are set to meet early next week at the Ramstein U.S. Air Base in Germany.

Macron reiterated his warning that it was not just Ukrainian but European security at stake.

"We will do everything as necessary for as long as needed so that Russia cannot win this war," Macron said. "This determination is steadfast and implies our unity."

He added that the three leaders had agreed on the need to reinforce support for Moldova, which says Russia is trying to destabilize it through a "hybrid war".

He said the three leaders had agreed to never initiate an escalation with Russia, a possible way to downplay talk of sending Western ground troops to Ukraine, which has irked Germany.

FRICTION BETWEEN SCHOLZ, MACRON

The meeting of the so-called Weimar triangle - Germany, France and Poland - came after weeks of tensions, in particular between Scholz and Macron, that had alarmed officials in Kyiv and across the continent.

A hastily-arranged summit in Paris last month had aimed to give fresh impetus to stagnating Western efforts to help Ukraine repel a full-scale Russian invasion that has entered its third year.

Instead, Macron's refusal to rule out deploying Western troops to Ukraine triggered a dressing down from Scholz.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Reuters that "indecision and uncoordinated action" among Kyiv's allies was leading to "grave consequences".

"Russia starts to get cocky and begins to believe that it can quantitatively squeeze Ukraine," he said. "Ukraine, in turn, is experiencing a severe shortage of specific resources, primarily shells, and is partially losing the initiative."

Tusk said the meeting on Friday showed "that some malicious rumours that there are differences between European capitals are very exaggerated".

Tusk, who is seeking to revitalize the Weimar Triangle after eight years of nationalist rule in Warsaw, said Macron and Scholz had accepted his invitation to meet again in early summer to present their next joint plans.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

‘We’re not at war with Russia,’ Scholz tells Macron

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced that countries that support Ukraine are not at war with Russia. The statement came as the leaders of Germany, France and Poland met in Berlin on Friday to show solidarity after their recent disagreement over military support for Kiev.

During a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the chancellor stated that the countries stand firmly behind Ukraine and that allied help would continue for “as long as it takes.”

“It is also clear that we are not at war with Russia,” Scholz added.

The statement follows simmering disagreements between Paris and Berlin over possible supply of long-range missiles and deployment of troops on the ground in Ukraine.

Scholz has thus far refused to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine in order to avoid further escalating a conflict with Russia. France, on the other hand, has been delivering SCALP-EG cruise missiles, which are already being used by Ukraine and are roughly equivalent to the Taurus.

Macron’s recent suggestion that the West “cannot exclude” the possibility of sending soldiers to aid Ukraine in its conflict with Russia has also drawn criticism from Germany and other NATO states.

The chancellor and the French president came together before the three-way talks on Friday to clear the air, after weeks in which the two very publicly disagreed over their Ukraine strategy.

Simmering disagreements between the two threatened to undermine cooperation between the allies.

Germany, France and Poland are among Ukraine’s key allies. Germany has become Ukraine’s second-biggest supplier of military aid after the US and is stepping up support this year.

Reuters/RT

Unless we rely on anarchy and total system collapse to push complete political Restructuring, we need a quorum of two thirds, 66%, of votes, but with only about four states being financially viable, it might be a tall order to expect financially dependent states to vote for true fiscal federalism. Therefore it might be wise to address the colonial foundations of the Nigeria economy that has skewed development towards only a few states. Nevertheless, low hanging fruits like State Police demands could be achieved, but things like true representative democracy whereby ethnicities are empowered to vote out states to join congruous states or form their own will require a quorum to push through constitutional amendments.

We tend to forget that Nigeria is a product of European economic imperialism. A business enterprise started by the Royal Niger Company in an Age of Mercantilism when governments used everything including military means to promote merchant business. Therefore before the formal amalgamation of the two existing civilizations - Indigenous African and Afro-Arabic, the European colonists built railways from the innermost hinterland to the seaports to divert the existing civilizational trade routes to a colonial trade route and economy.

The Northern Afro-Arabic civilization was added to the Southern Indigenous African civilization, because the British needed to export Northern resources and dump their colonial manufactures on them. If the French colonization had not been delayed on the River Niger, their plan was to link Hausaland, the most populous Sahel population, to the Senegambia coast by railway, like the Belgians also built a railway from the coast to the interior of the Kongo Basin.

Colonization was basically an economic progression from the slave plantation economics, when after the 1791 Haitian Revolution that they were overwhelmed in numbers, it became clear that they could not continue to import African to American slave plantations to plant crops like sugarcane, cotton, tobacco that had initially been copied from Africa. So their new African colonies were basically national plantation/mining economies designed solely for the benefit of the European colonists.

Political restructuring is necessary to correct the sociopolitical structures that were set up for the efficient exploitation of the people, especially through the overcentralized unitary governance. So, political restructuring must be designed with a focus on economic restructuring from a colonial economy to an integrated industrialized economy to economically empower the people, and not just the political classes seeking power.

Though fiscal federalism is advocated, it would be unfair to restructure to fiscal federalism in a colonial economy whose only financially viable parts were those designed for colonial interests. It is not a coincidence that the two most viable states, Lagos and Port Harcourt, are colonial trade rail terminals and seaports. Since the focus of the colonial economy was on cash crops and minerals only needed by the Western colonial powers, the huge interregional civilizational trade based on food crops and goods were not integrated by rail transport, therefore face huge wastages and low productivity.

It has been advocated that a form of a Marshallian Plan to economically build and integrate large parts of the nation that are down the ladder of the colonial economy. Rather than just pumping money into the states or regions to build their productive capacities, the federal government must lay a template of balanced development by linking and integrating the national economy through building three East-West railways - (Lagos-Calabar, Ilorin-Yola and Sokoto-Maiduguri) that will reintegrate the previous civilizational economics. This will effectively turn the railway designed colonial economy into a railway structured national economy.

Though in Africa, railways were used to establish the colonial economy, railway was the launchpad of industrialization in Europe and especially USA. Therefore not only the direction of railway and where it serves is important in the type of economy being built, also the focus has to be on the economic and industrial multiplier effects of the railway system. Like with USA, where the 1830 to 1850 railroad boom was inspired with the construction of a few main routes that spawned thousands of miles of feeder routes to access the cotton plantations, the three East-West civilizational Routes being advocated, with the two North-South colonial routes, state and private investment would build feeder routes to every nook and corner.

Most important is that the railway complex would bring about industrial multiplier effects as all tiers of gvovernment and private investors will develop iron and chemicals industries to cater for the maintenance of the rails and trains with 30,000 components. Not only would Railways open up agricultural zones, Railways have the highest multipler effects across the economy as every Naira invested or railway job created will create 20 times in investment and employment in other industries. Railways spur growth in logistics, freighting, distribution and other businesses. Agricultural production and supply will multiply a 1,000% due to reduction in spoilage.

Most important is industrialization multiplier effects since Nigerian agriculture already provides 38% of employment and 24% of national income, compared to the 1.6% combined income of Iron and Steel, Plastic and Rubber, Electrical and Electronics that railways and industrialization need to multiply tenfold.

Just like when you empower a dependent person with education and skills, once they start marking money, they want their independence and move out of the house, so would it be the states that will push for fiscal federalism when they are economically empowered to be independent through manufacturing and services.

** Faloye is the author of the Blackworld: Evolution to Revolution and other books, an Economist, media practicioner, cultural activist, President ASHE Foundation and Deputy Publicity Secretary Afenifere.

Ultra-processed foods are linked to 32 adverse health effects including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and Type 2 diabetes.

That's according to a large new study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that adds to growing research on the harms of foods that typically include five or more ingredients and several additives.

Common ultra-processed foods include ice cream, crisps, breakfast cereals, flavoured yoghurts, and biscuits, according to the British Heart Association.

An international team of researchers from Australia, the US, France and Ireland contributed to the umbrella review of 45 analyses that included a total population of 9.8 million participants.

“This is an important review giving us high-level recent data that calls for clear policy discussion and ultimately action to make it clear to the population what foods are ultra-processed and harmful to health," Amelia Lake, a professor of public health nutrition at Teesside University who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.

"This is a live and lively debate but we have strong knowledge around the harmful effects of diets high in fat, high in sugar, high in salt on our health.

“This is good quality research bringing together recent evidence (within 3 years), there are always issues around how dietary data is collected but the authors have reviewed the evidence and graded its quality," she added.

'Harmful to most if not all body systems'

In a linked editorial, Carlos Monteiro, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, wrote that the authors found "diets high in ultra-processed food may be harmful to most—perhaps all—body systems".

He added that these foods are not "merely modified" but often include "chemically manipulated cheap ingredients" such as modified starches, sugars and fats with little whole food.

"No reason exists to believe that humans can fully adapt to these products. The body may react to them as useless or harmful, so its systems may become impaired or damaged, depending on their vulnerability and the amount of ultra-processed food consumed," Monteiro added.

These foods are increasingly becoming part of diets globally, the authors said, making up more than half of daily caloric intake in the US and UK.

"We note the consistent trend linking ultra-processed foods to poor health outcomes is sufficient to warrant the development and evaluation of government-led policy and public health strategies aimed at targeting and reducing dietary exposure to ultra-processed foods," Melissa Lane, the lead author of the study from Deakin University, said in a social media post.

The researchers also assessed the credibility of the analyses' evidence.

They found that the strongest evidence revealed direct links between eating ultra-processed foods and a higher risk of death, cardiovascular disease-related mortality, mental health problems, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

They said that further randomised controlled trials are needed to determine causality, stating that there are several limitations to this type of overall review.

The inclusion of research with different methods of assessing diet for instance leads to "an inevitable measurement bias".

They also pointed out that some ultra-processed foods may present a higher risk than others, but said that overall these foods are consistently linked to a higher risk of chronic diseases.

Euronews

Esther Joseph said she went "almost mad" with anguish when her 13-year-old daughter Precious Sim was kidnapped from a northern Nigeria high school along with other students on July 5, 2021.

In the following days, she tried to go after the kidnappers in the surrounding forest, but soldiers - alerted by fellow community members - caught up with her and brought her back.

In the end, she sold her meagre possessions - including pots, fans and a television set - and enlisted the help of her brothers and in-laws, as well as local church members, to pay a ransom of 2 million naira ($1,256) and secure her daughter's release.

Precious, kidnapped from the Bethel Baptist High School of Maraban Damish in Kaduna State, came home after one month in captivity, Joseph told Reuters.

The 51-year-old street hawker said that she has not fully recovered yet from the ordeal, and her daughter still suffers from panic attacks.

"Sometimes she gets agitated when you turn the light on. She jerks up in her sleep and runs to hold me. Heavy sounds scare her," she said in an interview in the town of Kaduna, northwestern Nigeria.

Kidnappings at schools in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, were first carried out by jihadist group Boko Haram, which seized 276 students from a girls' school in Chibok in Borno State a decade ago. Some of the girls have never been released.

But the tactic has since been adopted by criminal gangs without ideological affiliation seeking ransom payments, with authorities seemingly powerless to stop them.

With Nigeria's economy and poverty levels worsening, abductions have become an almost daily occurrence in recent years.

On March 7, 286 students - some as young as eight - and school staff were kidnapped by gunmen in Kuriga, a town in Kaduna State. Local authorities told Reuters on Wednesday that the captors demanded a total ransom of 1 billion naira, or just over $620,000, for their release. On Monday night, around 60 people were abducted in Buda, in the same state, residents said - bringing the total of those kidnapped across the country in the first two weeks of March to nearly 750, according to Amnesty International.

"Kidnapping for ransom has eclipsed other motivations for abductions, especially political reasons," research firm SBM Intelligence said in a July 2023 report.

Speaking about last week's mass kidnapping in Kuriga, Information Minister Mohammed Idris said on Wednesday that the government position was that security forces should secure the hostages' release without "a dime" paid for ransom. Paying to free hostages has been a crime in Nigeria since 2022 and carries a jail sentence of at least 15 years.

The kidnappings are tearing apart families and communities who have to pool their savings to pay the ransoms, often forcing parents to sell their most prized possessions like land, cattle and grain to secure their children's release.

While Precious returned to school and is now studying international relations in her first year of university, many other kidnapping victims drop out after being released, fearing they might be abducted again.

At least 10.5 million children are out of school in Nigeria, the highest number in the world, according to the U.N. children's agency UNICEF. That is due to insecurity, including abductions and a long-running insurgency in the northeast.

Kidnappings are "a major driver of withdrawal of children from schools in northern Nigeria," said Isa Sanusi, director at Amnesty International in Nigeria.

"No parent wants to go through the horror of having children abducted by ruthless gunmen... On and off, schools are closed due to security concerns and the children end up missing out on education. Because girls are usually raped when abducted, many girls have been withdrawn from schools and married off at an early age."

GUNMEN ON MOTORBIKES

SBM Intelligence estimates that 7,000 people have been kidnapped throughout Nigeria since President Bola Tinubu took office in May.

Successive Nigerian governments have deployed soldiers and bombed suspected hideouts used by armed groups, mainly in Kaduna, Zamfara and Katsina states.

But that has not stopped the kidnappings. Gunmen on motorbikes control large swathes of land. Schools in remote rural areas, often unfenced and with minimal, if any, security, are an easy target.

Sanusi said that it was difficult to get accurate figures for school kidnappings. He said that, according to Amnesty's findings, more than 780 children were abducted for ransom in 2021 alone. And as of 2022, more than 700 schools were closed in seven of Nigeria's 36 states.

"Some schools have reopened, while others remain indefinitely closed," Sanusi said.

Emmanuel Audu-Bature, a member of a vigilante group, remembered going to the bush with another vigilante to bring the ransom for his brother-in-law Treasure, 12, to his kidnappers.

"He was the only one left to be released and we had to take the ransom to the forest. In the process we were also kidnapped. After a week they released us, after we too paid a ransom," he said.

Treasure came back home a year later, he said. "We had already given up (hope). But there was this night when my mother-in-law called me and told me: 'Treasure is back'."

($1 = 1,592.9100 naira)

Reuters

Banks in Nigeria have been affected by a damage to submarine cables, causing internet outages in parts of Africa.

The submarine cable cuts, on Thursday, affected subsea cable providers and disrupted internet traffic in major parts of the continent.

According to reports, the damage affected major undersea cables near Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, affecting submarine communications cables, including West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3.

The issue is said to be causing downtime across West and South African countries, affecting telecommunications network as well as banks in Nigeria.

In a notice to customers on Thursday, Sterling Bank apologised to customers over the effect of the network disruption affecting transactions.

“We are aware that you may be experiencing difficulties trying to transfer funds, reach our customer care team, or transact via USSD and genuinely apologize for the effect of this on your day,” Sterling Bank said.

“We are fully committed to providing the best service and are working tirelessly to resolve this issue. You have our promise to notify you as soon as it has been fixed.”

Speaking to our correspondent, Rasheed Bolarinwa, president, Association of Corporate and Marketing Communications Professionals of Banks in Nigeria (ACAMB), said the situation impacted connectivity across many banks.

“Yes, it did impact connectivity across substantial number, if not virtually all the Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria as banking operations were substantially affected for most parts of today,” Bolarinwa said.

Bolarinwa said substantial progress is being recorded in gradual resolution of the glitch.

MTN SERVICES AFFECTED BY DAMAGE

MTN Group, Africa’s largest telecommunications provider, also said its services in several West African countries have been disrupted.

In a statement on Thursday, the telco giant said the ongoing disconnection experienced by its customers is due to breaks in multiple major undersea cables.

On February 22, 2024, Bayobab, a pan-African digital connectivity, partnered with MTN Nigeria to land a 45,000km subsea cable in the country.

The cable known as ‘2Africa,’ has its landing station at Mopo-Onibeju Lekki area of Lagos and in Qua Iboe, Akwa Ibom.

2Africa is said to be the longest underwater cable in the world, passing through three continents and 33 countries, several of which are in Africa.

Speaking further, MTN said efforts are being made to resolve the disruption.

“Recognising the critical importance of consistent internet and communication services, we are fully committed to swiftly addressing these disruptions,” MTN said.

“To mitigate the impact on our customers in the affected countries, we are actively working to reroute traffic through alternative network paths and engaging with our consortium partners to expedite the repair process for the damaged cables.

“Leveraging our robust and resilient network infrastructure, we aim to minimise service interruptions and maintain connectivity.

“We thank you for your patience and understanding as we work diligently to resolve this situation.”

In another statement, MTN Nigeria said the network disruption is due to damage to international undersea cables across East and West Africa.

However, Glo 1, owned by Nigeria’s leading digital services company, Globacom, was not affected by the damage and has continued to operate normally. Data users, internet service providers and financial institutions which run on Glo 1 have continued to operate normally.

Industry analysts believe the sturdy nature and resilience of Glo 1 International Submarine Cable is the reason why the damage did not affect the cable.

The Cable