Israeli airstrikes rock Beirut, Hezbollah command centre hit

A wave of air raids hit Beirut's southern suburbs early on Saturday as Israel stepped up attacks on Hezbollah, after a massive strike on the Iran-backed movement's command centre that apparently targeted leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Reuters witnesses heard more than 20 airstrikes before dawn on Saturday. Abandoning their homes in the southern suburbs, thousands of Lebanese congregated in squares, parks and sidewalks in downtown Beirut and seaside areas.

"They want to destroy Dahiye, they want to destroy all of us," said Sari, a man in his 30s who gave only his first name, referring to the suburb he had fled after an Israeli evacuation order. Nearby, the newly displaced in Beirut's Martyrs Square rolled mats onto the ground to try to sleep.

An unprecedented five hours of continuous strikes early on Saturday followed Friday's attack, by far the most powerful by Israel on Beirut during nearly a year of war with Hezbollah. It marked a sharp escalation of a conflict that has involved daily missile and rocket fire between the two sides.

The latest escalation has sharply increased fears the conflict could spiral out of control, potentially drawing in Iran, Hezbollah's principal backer, as well as the United States.

There was no immediate confirmation of Nasrallah's fate after Friday's heavy strikes, but a source close to Hezbollah told Reuters he was not reachable. The Lebanese armed group has not made a statement.

Israel has not said whether it tried to hit Nasrallah, but a senior Israeli official said top Hezbollah commanders were targeted.

"I think it's too early to say... Sometimes they hide the fact when we succeed," the Israeli official told reporters when asked if the strike on Friday had killed Nasrallah.

Earlier, a source close to Hezbollah told Reuters that Nasrallah was alive. Iran's Tasnim news agency also reported he was safe. A senior Iranian security official told Reuters that Tehran was checking his status.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had killed the commander of Hezbollah's missile unit, Muhammad Ali Ismail, and his deputy Hossein Ahmed Ismail.

DEATH TOLL RISES

Hours before the latest barrage, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations that his country had a right to continue the campaign.

"As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely," he said.

Several delegations walked out as Netanyahu approached the lectern. He later cut short his New York trip to return to Israel.

Lebanese health authorities confirmed six dead and 91 wounded in the initial attack on Friday - the fourth on Beirut's Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs in a week and the heaviest since a 2006 war.

The toll appeared likely to rise much higher. There was no word on casualties from the later strikes. More than 700 people were killed in strikes over the past week, authorities said.

Hezbollah's al-Manar television reported seven buildings were destroyed. Security sources in Lebanon said the target was an area where top Hezbollah officials are usually based.

Hours later, the Israeli military told residents in parts of Beirut's southern suburbs to evacuate as it targeted missile launchers and weapons storage sites it said were under civilian housing.

Hezbollah denied any weapons or arms depots were located in buildings that were hit in the Beirut suburbs, the Lebanese armed group's media office said in a statement.

Alaa al-Din Saeed, a resident of a neighbourhood Israel identified as a target, told Reuters he was fleeing with his wife and three children.

"We found out on the television. There was a huge commotion in the neighbourhood," he said. The family grabbed clothes, identification papers and some cash but were stuck in traffic with others trying to flee.

"We're going to the mountains. We'll see how to spend the night - and tomorrow we'll see what we can do."

Around 100,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced this week, increasing the number uprooted in the country to well over 200,000.

Israel's government has said that returning some 70,000 Israeli evacuees to their homes is a war aim.

FEAR THE FIGHTING WILL SPREAD

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets and missiles against targets in Israel, including Tel Aviv. The group said it fired rockets on Friday at the northern Israeli city of Safed, where a woman was treated for minor injuries.

Israel's air defence systems have ensured the damage has so far been minimal.

Iran, which said Friday's attack crossed "red lines", accused Israel of using U.S.-made "bunker-busting" bombs.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington was not informed of that strike beforehand. President Joe Biden was being kept abreast of developments.

At the U.N., where the annual General Assembly met this week, the intensification prompted expressions of concern including by France, which with the U.S. has proposed a 21-day ceasefire.

"This must be brought to an end immediately," French Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere told a Security Council meeting.

At a New York press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: "We believe the way forward is through diplomacy, not conflict... We will continue to work intentionally with all parties to urge them to choose that course."

Hezbollah opened the latest bout in a decades-long conflict with a missile barrage against Israel immediately following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza last year.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine's Zelenskiy presents 'victory plan' to Trump at New York meeting

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy presented his war "victory plan" to Donald Trump during a closed-door meeting on Friday, after the Republican presidential candidate said he would work with both Ukraine and Russia to end their conflict.

The meeting between the two men at Trump Tower in Manhattan was their first in-person encounter since 2019. Zelenskiy said he was talking with both Trump and his Democratic rival in the Nov. 5 election, Vice President Kamala Harris, because Ukraine needed strong U.S. support in its continuing war with Russia.

Trump praised Zelenskiy, but said he also had a solid relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We have a very good relationship (with Zelenskiy), and I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin," Trump told reporters. "And I think if we win, I think we're going to get it resolved very quickly," he added.

Zelenskiy has used his U.S. visit to promote his "victory plan," which a U.S. official described as a repackaged request for more weapons and a lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range missiles. The plan presupposes the ultimate defeat of Russia in the war, the official said. Some officials see the aim as unrealistic.

When asked on Thursday by a reporter if Ukraine should hand over some of the Ukrainian land Russia has captured to end the war - a non-starter for Kyiv - Trump replied: "We'll see what happens."

At one point during a pre-meeting press conference on Friday, when Zelenskiy suggested he had a better relationship with Trump than Putin did, Trump responded: "Yeah, but you know it takes two to tango."

Still, Trump said on Friday he was pleased to meet with Zelenskiy, a marked change in tone from some of his previous comments on the campaign trail. After the meeting, Zelenskiy called his talks with Trump "very productive."

On Monday, Trump said Zelenskiy wanted Harris to win the election. He has also called Zelenskiy "the greatest salesman of all time" because his country has received billions of dollars in military aid from the United States and Europe.

"It's an honor to have the president with us, and he's been through a lot," Trump said on Friday. "He's been through a tremendous amount, like probably nobody else, almost nobody else in history, if you really get right down to it, and we're going to have a discussion and see what we could come up with."

TRUMP, HARRIS DIFFER ON UKRAINE

Trump on Friday said that if he won the Nov. 5 election he would immediately begin working toward a resolution of the Ukraine conflict, even though he would formally take office only in late January 2025.

Zelenskiy, who was in the United States for the U.N. General Assembly, met on Thursday with Democratic President JoeBiden and Harris.

Over the weekend, Zelenskiy traveled to a munitions factory in Pennsylvania with that state's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, a Harris ally. The visit upset Trump's campaign and enraged some congressional Republicans who viewed the trip as a campaign stop, particularly as Pennsylvania is an important battleground state expected to decide the U.S. election.

As late as Thursday, people close to Trump and his campaign had said a meeting appeared extremely unlikely, though the former president apparently changed his mind during Zelenskiy's stay in the country.

Trump and Harris' differences on Ukraine echo splits in their respective Democratic and Republican parties, and their view of the U.S. role in the world.

Along with Trump, some Republicans in Congress have questioned the value of U.S. funding and additional weapons for Ukraine's two-year battle against Russia's invasion, calling it futile, while Democrats led by Biden have pushed to punish Russia and bolster Ukraine, framing Ukraine's victory as a vital national security interest.

The war in Ukraine and foreign policy in general lag behind domestic issues like the economy, healthcare and immigration in terms of what most voters think are important.

But a strong majority, 64%, of registered voters say they support Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied arms to strike within Russia, according to an August Reuters/Ipsos poll, including 78% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian army plagued by desertion and draft-dodging – The Economist

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky's so-called ‘victory plan’ is being undermined by the reality that his nation does not have enough manpower or resources to prevail over Russia, The Economist reported on Thursday.

Zelensky is currently visiting the US to promote his proposal, which reportedly boils down to the West increasing its backing in terms of cash and weapons so Kiev can continue fighting.

The British magazine described the dire situation affecting the Ukrainian economy and dwindling military manpower. Unlike Moscow, which is fielding volunteers, Kiev relies on forced conscription, it noted.

”Officers complain that many of those drafted into service are ill-suited to fighting: too old, too ill, too drunk. There is no clear path out of the army once in it, which makes being mobilized seem like a one-way ticket to the morgue,” The Economist said.

”Some 5-10% of soldiers on active duty are absent without leave,” it added, noting that “fewer than 30% of Ukrainians consider draft-dodging shameful.”

There is a generational gap, with younger men eligible for military service being far less inclined to support Zelensky’s uncompromising stance, compared to those too old to be recruited, the report added.

In a separate editorial article on Thursday, the magazine accused Zelensky of “defying reality” with his military strategy, warning that he would “drive away Ukraine’s backers and further divide Ukrainian society” if he keeps pursuing it.

Ukraine needs to redefine victory over Russia as “becoming a prosperous, Western-leaning democracy,” after making concessions for the sake of peace. In return for “embracing this grim truth, Western leaders need to make his overriding war aim credible by ensuring that Ukraine has the military capacity and security guarantees it needs,” it suggested.

Moscow has stated that NATO’s intention to draw Ukraine into its ranks was one of the key triggers for the hostilities. Its vision for a stable peace includes a cap on Ukraine’s military strength and its non-alignment. Kiev agreed to those terms during peace talks in the early phase of the conflict, but then reportedly made a U-turn at the West’s suggestion.

Reuters/RT

Zoe Williams

The Traitors has shown just how adept some people are at lying. Here, an ex-FBI agent, a psychologist and a fraud investigator share their best tips for detecting dishonesty

Twenty-two people in a castle, Claudia Winkleman hamming it up like crazy, a number of silly challenges, a chunk of money sitting at the centre, almost glowing, and human nature laid bare. To try to pick apart exactly what makes The Traitors so compelling would be to miss the point, like trying to analyse the ingredients in a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

As enjoyable as it is, though, the show gets more infuriating with each episode. I don’t want to point fingers, still less give spoilers, so let’s keep this broad: why are they (the Faithful) all so stupid? Why can’t they tell when they are being lied to? It’s so obvious!

I asked three experts how to spot a lie – and why most people can’t. First, Dr Linda Papadopoulos, a psychologist, author and broadcaster, whom people of a certain vintage may remember as the standout discovery of the first season of Big Brother. Reality TV was in its infancy, so watching ordinary people interact under a microscope was fascinating in itself, but Papadopoulos, the show’s resident psychologist, added an almost superhuman level of insight into the contestants’ feelings; she was like a mind-reader.

Second, Joe Navarro is the author of What Every Body Is Saying, insights into non-verbal cues and tells gleaned from his career as an FBI agent. Gabrielle Stewart, the third, is a retired insurance investigator who works as a fraud consultant for the industry.

This trio don’t always agree but, seriously, you wouldn’t want to lie to any of them. Here are their 10 tips for spotting a liar.

Watch for self-soothing gestures

“The problem with the myth of detecting deception is that since the groundbreaking work of Paul Ekman [a psychologist whose visual test, Pictures of Facial Affect, was published in 1976] and all the researchers that came after him, we know that humans are no better than chance at detecting deception,” says Navarro.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t read anything into people’s expressions and behaviours. “What the human body does – and it does it exquisitely – is display psychological discomfort in real time,” he says. “King Charles – he’s always playing with his cufflinks. This is how he deals with social anxiety. Prince Harry – he’s always buttoning the button that’s already buttoned – another comforting behaviour.”

Facial touching is known as a pacifier – a way to soothe yourself under stress. “Right now, you are covering your suprasternal notch,” says Navarro as our video call starts. Protecting my neck, in other words, “which is because there’s a man right in front of you”. That makes me chortle, because I love men. But he is right in the sense that I have always keenly felt the jeopardy of the first few seconds of an interview – if you make a mess of that, the whole thing is ruined. So, there is the first principle: everything someone does with their hands and their face says something. Now, you have to figure out what.

Probe areas where you detect psychological discomfort

Navarro recalls a search for a fugitive during his FBI days. Interviewing the man’s mother, he asked if she had seen her son. She said no and was plainly nervous, but there was no way to connect the anxiety to the answer; she could have been telling the truth and simply been unsettled by the appearance of two FBI agents on her doorstep.

He changed tack and asked if it was possible that her son was sneaking in to the house while she was at work. “She said: ‘No, that’s not possible at all,’” displaying a nervous tell – covering her neck, in this instance. “But there was no reason for that, right? All she had to say was: ‘I don’t know.’” So the non-verbal show of nerves combined with the illogical answer hinted at deception. Sure enough, the man was in the house.

Don’t take obvious gestures at face value

Some striking non-verbal tells are rooted in archaic human self‑preservation. We cover our mouths when we see something shocking or horrible, because “it prevents the casting of our scent, which predators can pick up on,” Navarro says.

The problem is that the more obvious the gesture, the easier it is to plan for and mimic. So, every time they vote out an innocent player on The Traitors, all the Faithful cover their mouths in horror, but so do the Traitors. Big, set-piece events, where everyone is making the same face or gesture, probably won’t tell you very much.

Look for mismatch

Papadopoulos picks up on the space between the non-verbal and the verbal – the incongruity between words and gestures: “You’re nodding, but saying no.” Stewart listens for acoustic variance in speech, where pitch and tone change. Lying people will pad a story with elements of truth, which is probably smart, except that, when they come to the falsehoods, “they speed up and speak at a higher pitch”, says Stewart. “The voice is saying: ‘I’m in cognitive overload.’”

Learn to receive, not transmit

“The ability to actively listen, which is what psychologists do, is surprisingly rare. A lot of people are thinking of what they’re going to say next, rather than listening,” Papadopoulos says. We also forget how much of ourselves we bring to the interaction; if we are stressed or anxious, it’s harder to detect or decode stress in others.

Papadopoulos describes falling for a scam when she was in the middle of a family crisis: “I write about these things – I know my stuff – but, in that moment, I was duped. If I was on my game, that would have been much less likely. That’s the whole basis of psychology: we think through our emotions and that moderates the quality of our thinking.”

Don’t ignore the impact your tone is having on the conversation (memo to The Traitors’ Diane): “If you come across as accusatory, that affects how people react,” Navarro says. “I never did that, as it puts people on the defence and it begins to mask behaviours that I need to observe.” Don’t jump to conclusions, either. Classic ways to spot a liar – such as vagueness, or buying time, Papadopoulos says – might mean something completely different. “It might just mean they weren’t really listening,” she says. If you decide too quickly that you have uncovered deception, it gates off other possible explanations.

Get them to tell their side of the story

Stewart, who did her insurance investigation work by phone, says: “The structure of the account is key. You wouldn’t necessarily do this in person when you’re speaking to somebody, but any story will have a beginning, a middle and an end. It’s normally 30% buildup, 40% content, 30% afterthoughts and reflections. An untruthful account won’t stick to that structure, because they don’t really want to tell you that 40%. The most common structure of a lie will be 80% buildup, then they’ll tell you what happened really, really quickly, then they’ll want to get it over with.

“I would record an event using timelines and bullet points on landscape paper, then draw a line where I believe I’ve gone from beginning to middle to end. Almost every fraudulent account will have a very long beginning, bugger-all middle and bugger-all end.”

Memory-blamers are a flag: when something significant happens, it’s very unusual to forget it. Even if it has been misremembered or misperceived, there won’t be a big hole in the memory where that detail should be.

Listen for tenses and dissociation

“We use completely different language when we’re telling lies,” says Stewart. “A really famous example is President Nixon. He was asked straight out: ‘Did you know about Watergate?’ and his answer was: ‘The president would do no such thing.’

“First, he’s got disociation, which is very common. In an untruthful account, there’s a lack of ‘I’ and ‘my’, because we want to push the lie away from ourselves. Then, he’s slipped tenses.” A truthful person whose car has been stolen, for example, will say: “I left it here, came back an hour later and it was gone.” An untruthful account might slip into the present continuous: “I’m walking down the path and I’m looking for my car, thinking …”

Be alive to odd noises or random words

Stewart talks about “emotional leakage”. A liar might randomly start laughing, but it won’t sound like mirth. Time-filling sounds are common. “It’s an additional cognitive load, saying untruthful things,” she says. “It’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. So, they’ll be on high alert and they can’t bear silence. You’ll hear coughing, or strings of words that don’t need to be said.” Allied to this is non-committal language, or “linguistic hedging” – words such as “probably” and “possibly”. “They’re like disclaimers: ‘I don’t want to commit myself with this language.’”

Ask character questions

In the 80s, my dad, who was a prison psychologist, devised some recruitment tests for the police that were designed to establish whether candidates were honest. One of the progressions was: “Are you married? Have you ever had an affair? Have you ever thought about having an affair?” If you answered yes to the first, it didn’t matter what you said to the second, as long as you didn’t answer no to the third, because everyone’s thought about it. To apply this to The Traitors, a player could ask of another: “Do you find Zack annoying?” If they say no, it doesn’t prove that they are a Traitor, but they are certainly the kind of person who lies.

Ask yourself: are you looking through the right end of the telescope?

Every one of these clues – verbal, non-verbal and in between – relies on something: the liar’s discomfort. Not everyone will feel discomfited by mendacity; some people will enjoy it. “We know that 1% of any given population – here in America it may be way more – are psychopaths,” says Navarro. “These people can lie all day long. There are structures in their prefrontal cortex that just don’t function.” Added to that, “4% of the population is antisocial; these are people who live by criminal activity”, he says. Even if they weren’t born to deceive, they will be habituated to it.

Many people have to lie for their jobs. Navarro mentions spies and doctors, but makes the broader point that we all use lying “as a tool of social survival”. Inevitably, some of us will end up quite good at it. But what are we trying to survive? We want to remain members of the group and we fear expulsion. In a culture where lying is prized – politics, The Traitors – the act of lying might make you come across as more confident, rather than less.

So, if you cross-referenced the verbal and non-verbal cues, then reverse-engineered the tests to become reasonably good at identifying an honest nervous person, you could figure out who was lying by a process of elimination; even if they were psychopathically good at it, that wouldn’t matter.

In The Traitors – and in life – what will undo you is letting yourself become certain on the basis of too little information or ambiguous evidence. “I looked at 261 DNA exonerations in the US,” Navarro says. “All the police officers thought that they could detect deception, but not one of them could detect the truth. In fact, none of the men were guilty.”

The Guardian, UK

Megan Sauer

The next time you catch yourself nodding along to something you disagree with, stop and calmly enter the argument instead.

That’s advice from Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Learning how to effectively disagree — without simply saying “no” — can strengthen your relationships and make you more persuasive, Grant recently told the “What Now? with Trevor Noah” podcast.

“So often, people are told, ‘Just compromise. Pick your battles in relationships,’ that they end up treating them as fragile,” said Grant, in an episode that published on August 15. Then, “we never build the calluses for the bigger [conversations].”

That doesn’t mean you should name call or strong-arm your way into getting other people to seeing your point of view. Effective disagreements don’t need to cause lasting conflict: Calmly assert your point of view, genuinely listen to the other side and engage in a give-and-take conversation, Grant wrote in his 2021 book “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.”

“Although productive disagreement is a critical life skill, it’s one that many of us never fully develop,” Grant wrote. “Being able to have a good fight doesn’t just make us more civil, it also develops our creative muscles.”

Learning how to disagree can improve or create new ideas and set you apart as an original thinker, he added. Plus, effective leaders are often authentic and good at having difficult conversations constructively, research shows — helping you maintain a reputation as an agreeable person who’s liked by co-workers and job recruiters, without becoming a pushover.

Here are Grant’s top three ways to get better at disagreeing:

Keep conflicts task-oriented

Disagreements fall into two categories, Grant said: task and relationship conflicts. A task conflict focuses on a specific issue: What’s the quickest way to increase our company’s revenue? In HBO’s “The Sopranos,” was Tony Soprano good, evil or morally ambiguous?

A relationship problem often assigns an identity to a person: If you think Tony is bad, you’re ignorant. If you don’t like my solution to increase sales, you’re hard-headed. Those assumptions can keep us from moving forward and affect productivity, Grant wrote.

If you can defend your argument — while being open to other perspectives, and focusing on the task-specific problem instead of the other person — you might be able to brainstorm additional solutions together, Grant said.

“When a clash gets personal and emotional, we become self-righteous preachers of our own views,” Grant wrote. “Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought.”

Frame disagreements as debates instead of arguments

If a conflict feels like it’s starting to get personal, ask the other person if they want to debate.

Saying you’re going to debate, rather than disagree, signals to the other person you’re willing to hear their ideas, Grant wrote: ”[It] sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or a prosecutor — and encourages the other person to think that way, too.”

You don’t have to change someone’s mind, or vice versa, for a conversation to be effective. Hearing someone out is more productive than cutting the conversation off at the first sign of disagreement, Grant wrote.

Debates can also help you find common ground with the other person, without necessarily compromising your viewpoints, he added.

“A good debate is not a war [or] even a tug-of-war ... it’s more like a dance,” he wrote. “If you try too hard to lead, your partner will resist. If you can adapt your moves to hers, and get her to do the same, you’re more likely to end up in rhythm.”

Be someone you’d like to debate with

If you’re confident the other person has something to gain from your argument, treat them as an equal. Skilled negotiators — the ones who are most effective at changing other people’s minds — are better at finding common ground and ask more questions than average negotiators, Grant wrote.

Good arguments often have just a few, strong points rather than a long list of relevant points, studies show. It’s called the dilution effect: weaker claims water down well-constructed arguments.

Disagreements don’t always lead to concessions or compromises. Often, you simply learn more about the other person, or the problem, and move forward, wrote Grant.

“Convincing other people to think again isn’t just about making a good argument — it’s about establishing that we have the right motives to do so,” he wrote.

CNBC

No fewer than 30 million Almajiri and 20 million out-of-school children are roaming about and in need of attention, a government official has said.

Muhammad Idris, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children’s Education (NCAOOSCE) disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja.

Speaking at the inauguration of an eight-man committee to reform the Almajiri education, Idris said the children needed a sense of belonging and direction in their lives.

“With the emergence of social vices, a lot of people are taking advantage of the vulnerability of Almajiri children.

“It is no longer acceptable that people will give birth to children and throw them into the streets for begging. This is about Nigeria and not a segment of the society.

“Almajiri now has various leadership bodies with over 2,000 associations, and it became difficult for the government to harness them.

“So, the government felt there was a need to look at this with the view to give them modern pedagogy.

“We must put all hands on deck to address this part of education that has been neglected for some time,” he said.

Idris, therefore, tasked the committee to bring the various Almajiri groups under one umbrella in such a way that responsible scholars would emerge among them.

He also tasked the committee to unify all “Tsangaya” (Almajiri Schools) associations in the country under one umbrella, thereby streamlining interactions and fostering effective collaboration with the NCAOOSCE.

Idris assured that, once the measures were put in place, 60 per cent of the Almajiri children would be integrated into the Tsangaya education system before the end of the administration.

He gave the committee three weeks to carry out its assignment.

Idris also disclosed that the commission was in talks with state governments to take over the integrated Almajiri schools built by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), under former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Responding, the Chairman of the committee, Sheik Sayyadi Alqasim, pledged the commitment of the members to deliver on their task.

Alqasim thanked the government for finding them worthy of the job and pledged timely and efficient delivery of the task.

NAN

The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has decried the latest hike in the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) to 27.25 per cent from 26.75 per cent.

The association stated that the increase would compound the challenges faced by the sector, which included rising production costs in the face of declining consumer purchasing power.

Director General of MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, said yesterday in public statement titled “Reaction of MAN on the Report of MPC Meeting on September 23-24, 2024” that MAN is worried about the implications of the continuous rate hikes on the productive sector and earnestly expects the CBN to stop the rate hike and explore more of the monetary-fiscal policy handshake option to curb inflation.  

Ajayi-Kadir said: “With the increase in borrowing costs, manufacturers will now pay over 35 per cent on their credit facilities.

‘Clearly, this will lead to increase in production costs, higher prices of finished goods, lower competitiveness and production capacity expansion.”

He noted that “the impact of higher interest rates goes beyond compounding the challenges of manufacturers; it stifles opportunities for investment in crucial areas such as technology, retooling, and expansion within the manufacturing sector.

“Manufacturers will, all the more, be compelled to choose servicing existing credit facilities over expansion and investment in new product lines.

“For instance, over the first six months of the year, manufacturers incurred more than N730 billion in capital expenses due to the continuous rise in interest rates imposed by commercial banks.

“This dilemma hampers innovation, productivity and growth.”

He added that the sector is grappling with depressed consumer demand, primarily driven by lower purchasing power. This decline has severely hampered capacity utilisation within the sector.

According to him, data from the first half of the economic review published by the MAN revealed a troubling trend: the value of unsold finished goods inventory surged by 42.93 percentage points, reaching N1.24 trillion compared to N869.37 billion at the close of 2023.

“This growing stockpile of unsold products underscores the difficulties manufacturers face in a weakening market. The broader implications of these challenges threaten not only the manufacturing sector but also the Nigerian economy as a whole.

“As higher borrowing costs lead to poor access to funds, lower capacities and potential business closures. Truth be told, the capacity to absorb the country’s growing youth population into meaningful employment has diminished significantly with the attendant adverse socioeconomic and security implications.”

MAN also expressed surprised that the CBN is increasing the MPR against the backdrop of the meagre improvement in inflation figures, which could be largely traceable to the onset of the harvest season.

“We also note that this increase is coming at a time that central banks in other climes are either retaining or cutting rates.

“It is, therefore, expedient that government adopt a holistic and balanced approach to policy formulation and decisions, with due consideration of their overall impact on the various sectors of the economy, particularly the productive sector.

“Undoubtedly, price stability is crucial, and so is the survival and growth of the manufacturing sector. This should be top priority at this time and is in line with the government avowed commitment to growing domestic production, creating more jobs and alleviating poverty,” Ajayi-Kadir argued.

Thisday

Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, says the Federal Government will toll all major roads in the country upon completion of construction and renovation.

“We have the Lagos-Ibadan (Expressway), we are completing it and we are tolling it,” Umahi said on Thursday in Abuja at an Inter-Ministerial Press Briefing, part of activities to mark Nigeria’s 64th independence anniversary.
He listed some of the roads as Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kano Road, and Makurdi-9th Mile, among others.

The former Ebonyi State governor said the tolling of federal roads “is going to bring a lot of money to the Federal Government”.

Umahi said private sector members have been engaged “to bring in funds, construct these roads, work with the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Works to toll these roads”.

The minister said the government would start with the Keffi-Makurdi Road that has been completed, stating that his ministry has been engaging with the Ministry of Finance for a paperless mode of payment.

He said, “For example, we are completing the Lagos-Ibadan, we are working on Makurdi to 9th Mile in Enugu State, we are working from Abuja to Lagos. These roads are going to be tolled. But we are not just tolling them, we are bringing confidence in the use of these roads.

“If people can travel at night because we are bringing security, where the response time will be 10 minutes on the entire corridor, where you have solar light permanently there and then reduce travel time, and through the tolling, the roads are maintained, then, there will be confidence because Nigerians will pay if the roads are good.”

He said before now, road developments have not been handled as investments but the administration of President Bola Tinubu has been handling road developments more professionally.

He said the present administration inherited a total of 300 damaged roads and bridges, adding that more road constructions would commence from October 1, 2024, across the six geopolitical zones of the country.

CTV

Israel rejects US-backed Lebanon ceasefire plan, hits Beirut again

Israel rejected global calls on Thursday for a ceasefire with the Hezbollah movement, defying its biggest ally in Washington and pressing ahead with strikes that have killed hundreds in Lebanon and heightened fears of an all-out regional war.

Despite Israel's stance, the U.S. and France sought to keep prospects alive for an immediate 21-day truce they proposed on Wednesday, and said negotiations continued, including on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York.

An Israeli warplane struck the edges of the capital Beirut, killing two people and wounding 15, including a woman in critical condition, Lebanon's health ministry said. That took deaths overnight and on Thursday to 28 and over 600 since Monday.

The strike killed the head of one of Hezbollah's air force units, Mohammad Surur, Hezbollah said, the latest senior Hezbollah commander to be targeted in days of assassinations among the group's top ranks.

On the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon, the army staged an exercise simulating a ground invasion - a potential next stage after relentless airstrikes and explosions of communications devices.

Israel's air force is planning to assist troops in the event of a ground operation and will stop any arms transfers from Iran, Air Force Commander Major General Tomer Bar said late on Thursday.

"We are preparing shoulder to shoulder with Northern Command for a ground maneuver. Prepared, if activated. This is a decision to be made above us," he told soldiers in a video distributed by the Israeli military.

Israel has vowed to secure its north and return thousands of citizens who have evacuated since Hezbollah launched a campaign of cross-border strikes last year in solidarity with Palestinian militants fighting in Gaza.

Arriving in New York before addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters the military will keep hitting Hezbollah with "full force and we will not stop until we achieve all our goals, first and foremost returning the residents of the north safely to their homes."

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X, "There will be no ceasefire in the north."

Israel's stance dashed hopes for a swift settlement and Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib appealed to the U.N. to win an immediate ceasefire "before the situation spirals out of control, with a domino effect, making this crisis impossible to contain."

"Lebanon is currently enduring a crisis which is threatening its very existence," Bou Habib said at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly late on Thursday.

White House spokesperson John Kirby told a briefing earlier that Israel had been "fully informed and fully aware of every word" in the ceasefire proposal and allies expected it would be taken seriously. The U.S. is Israel's longtime ally and biggest arms supplier.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not believe Israel's rejection was definitive. "It would be a mistake by the prime minister to refuse it because he would be taking responsibility for regional escalation," Macron told reporters in Canada.

"We will do everything to ensure this proposal is accepted," Macron said, adding that France was ready to call a new U.N. Security Council meeting to endorse the proposal.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes during the heaviest Israeli bombardment of Lebanon since a major war in 2006.

Hezbollah has faced off against the Israeli military since the Shi'ite Muslim movement was created by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to counter an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It has since evolved into Tehran's most powerful Middle East proxy.

WASHINGTON STILL SEEKS CEASEFIRE

The White House said that U.S. and Israeli officials, including U.S. Mideast envoy Brett McGurk, were holding discussions. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken planned to meet with Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer.

In London, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned there was a risk of all-out war in the Middle East, but a diplomatic solution was still possible.

"So let me be clear, Israel and Lebanon can choose a different path, despite the sharp escalation in recent days, a diplomatic solution is still viable," Austin said.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of missiles at targets in Israel, including its commercial hub Tel Aviv, although Israel's aerial defense system has ensured the damage has been limited.

Israel's military said it intercepted a missilelaunched from Yemen late on Thursday. Yemen's Houthi militants, allies of Hezbollah and Hamas, have fired repeatedly at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli fighter jets on Thursday also hit infrastructure on the Lebanese-Syrian border to stop the transfer of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel's military said.

The Lebanese health ministry said most of the victims on Thursday were Syrians killed in the town of Younine in the Bekaa Valley. Lebanon is home to around 1.5 million Syrians who fled civil war there.

Hezbollah said in a statement it had struck the town of Kiryat Shmona in north Israel and an Israeli military northern command base, as well as using air defense weapons to force two Israeli warplanes back.

In Beirut, thousands of Lebanese were sheltering in schools. Aid organisations distributed clothes and food, and checked on medications needed by elderly people who fled too quickly to bring prescriptions with them.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Kremlin says changes to Russia's nuclear policy are a signal to the West

The Kremlin said on Thursday that changes to Russia's nuclear weapons doctrine outlined by President Vladimir Putin should be considered a signal to Western countries that there will be consequences if they participate in attacks on Russia.

Putin said on Wednesday that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

The decision to change Russia's official nuclear doctrine is the Kremlin's answer to deliberations in the United States and Britain about whether or not to give Ukraine permission to fire conventional Western missiles into Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said adjustments to a document called "The Foundations of State Policy in the Sphere of Nuclear Deterrence" had been formulated.

Asked by reporters if the changes were a signal to the West, Peskov said: "This should be considered a definite signal."

"This is a signal that warns these countries about the consequences if they participate in an attack on our country by various means, and not necessarily nuclear ones," Peskov said.

The world, Peskov said, was witness to an "unprecedented confrontation" which he said was provoked by the "direct involvement of Western countries, including nuclear powers" in the Ukraine war.

Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Moscow was attempting to intimidate alliance members.

"Russia's nuclear rhetoric is dangerous and reckless," Stoltenberg said at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We are closely watching what Russia is doing."

Peskov said a decision on whether or not to publish the nuclear documents would be made at a later date.

Russia's current published nuclear doctrine, set out in a 2020 decree by Putin, says Russia may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the state.

Asked if rejecting a post-Soviet moratorium on nuclear tests had been discussed as part of the changes, Peskov said he could not answer the question as Wednesday's meeting had been mostly top secret.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin's comments "totally irresponsible."

"I think many in the world have spoken clearly about that when he's been rattling the nuclear sabre - including China, in the past," he said in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Zelensky has no ‘tangible’ peace plan – Kremlin

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has no genuine plan to resolve the conflict with Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters at a press briefing on Thursday.  

Peskov was asked whether Moscow would consider it a threat to Russia’s sovereignty if the West were to accept the Ukrainian leader’s “victory plan” which he reportedly presented during his visit to the US this week. 

According to The Times, Zelensky’s new scheme, which has not yet been made public, consists of four points – the continuation of Kiev’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, Western security guarantees for Ukraine, the delivery of modern weapons, and international financial assistance for the country. 

Peskov stressed that Zelensky’s latest plan does not contain any specifics, even for Kiev’s Western backers. 

“Therefore, there can be no talk of any sort of adoption [of the plan],” he said. 

Bloomberg previously reported, citing sources familiar with Zelensky’s conversations with foreign leaders, that his ‘victory plan’ has underwhelmed Western officials as it contains no “real surprises” and is not a game-changer. One source described the initiative as nothing more than a “wish list” that underscores “a deepening sense of pessimism among allied nations” regarding the outcome of the Ukraine conflict. 

In an interview with ABC News earlier this week, Zelensky claimed that “we are closer to peace than we think.” However, he stressed that his latest scheme is not about negotiating with Russia but about “the strengthening of Ukraine.”  

Moscow reiterated on Tuesday that the only way the conflict with Kiev can end is with Russia achieving all the goals of its military operation “one way or another.”

Reuters/RT

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had barely finished announcing the result of last Saturday’s Edo governorship poll when I got a call to eat the humble pie. Adams Oshiomhole, the man I called a product vendor in my last article, had pulled off another big one!

Why? I had no dog in the fight. But I got the drift. I had warned that given Oshiomhole’s reputation for campaigning for candidates for whom he often ended up apologising, voters could hardly ignore the warning label on his candidate, Monday Okpebholo, and that, at any rate, if it wasn’t that in politics, crime multiplies grace, Comrade’s factory should have been sealed or closed long ago.

But he got this one, right? Okpebholo, who Oshiomhole carried on his back throughout the campaign, is now governor-elect. The Comrade is entitled to ask his critics to eat the humble pie. Fair enough. While I shop for the sugar-free variety, let’s review the poll, starting with issues we might agree on. 

Powershift 

Rotation or zoning is still a crucial factor in politics. The two leading parties in the contest—the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)—put forward candidates from Edo Central, which had not produced a governor before, except for the brief spell of Oserheimen Osunbor.

The governor-elect, Okpebholo (APC), and his rival, Asue Ighodalo (PDP), are from this senatorial district. But the Labour Party thought differently: the party put forward Olumide Akpata from Edo South, which, apart from being the home of Governor Godwin Obaseki, had also produced more governors than any other. Akpata invited the fight to his crowded backyard.

The first thing Saturday’s election taught was that Edo people wanted power to shift elsewhere. Ighodalo may not have reaped the full benefit, but the result showed that he defeated Okpebholo in Edo Central, even though he currently represents this zone in the Senate. That lesson – that zoning matters – was lost on Labour, and it paid dearly for it.

Godfather never sleeps

Godfathers matter, too. In elite circles and on TV discussion programmes, we can criticise godfathers and call them names, like I called Oshiomhole, a decorated vendor of lousy products. It doesn’t matter, as the results of the poll have shown. The election was a contest of godfathers: Oshiomhole vs. Obaseki, each with a hefty trail of other godfathers lurking in the shadows. 

If godfathers didn’t matter, Obaseki wouldn’t go, like a thief in the night, accompanied by Ighodalo, to the Abuja private residence of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, his interim godfather four years ago in a desperate attempt to curry favour. 

Complaining about the role of godfathers in our elections won’t change anything. Party members or their sympathisers must be prepared to put their money and energy where their mouth is. It’s a waste of time to disregard party funding and involvement in party organisation, only to complain at elections that Piper Godfathers are playing a disgusting tune. They will.

Oshiomhole has redeemed himself as a preeminent product vendor and godfather of Edo politics. He has also retired Obaseki to Afrinvest or whatever may be left of his investment company.

There’s a life lesson here, too: choose your fight. The question was not who Obaseki was fighting but who he was not fighting. He fought Oshiomhole, fought those who sheltered him from vagrancy four years ago, fought his deputy, fought relations of his deputy in the civil service, fought anyone remotely connected to Oshiomhole, fought the Palace, and fought anyone who advised him to stop fighting. Ultimately, he’ll have to deal with the echoes of what might have been – alone.

Over their dead body

The poll tells us yet another thing—something the PDP may learn over its dead body: that the division in the party that snatched its cap in 2023 may behead it sooner than later. The ruling APC has had problems, especially concerning the chairman's home troubles and the power tussle in the North Central. However, the gold for internal chaos must go to the PDP and the Labour Party. 

Even though PDP governors converged on Benin during the election to present a common front, the party’s core – the governors and its National Working Committee – has been wracked by divisions. The same problem has split the Labour Party down the middle, with each party's faction claiming to be the authentic one. On Saturday, the candidates of both parties were, strictly speaking, political orphans struggling to get to shore from the parties’ sinking boats.  

Broken 

Saturday also cleared any doubts that voter apathy is an increasingly severe problem. In a state with a population of about 4.4 million and over half registered voters, voter turnout was 24.49 percent. We have seen this trend in virtually every election. All that happens the day after is the parties and INEC trading blame. 

Until politicians restore trust and people begin to see elections as a viable means of making politicians accountable, the voter numbers will continue to drop. 

To make matters worse, elections have become warfare. For example, the ratio of voters to security personnel in the Edo election was 1:11. Ultimately, voters are either overwhelmed by indifference or lethargy or discouraged by fear. 

But who cares? Once the results are announced and the winner is declared, those who are displeased and have the money go to court. Voters go home until the next cycle.

Adding up

Discrepancies between the figures on the election result viewer portal (iREV), the number of accredited voters, and what INEC finally announces remain a severe headache. The bimodal accreditation system's whole point was to reduce significant disputes over figures and make the process more transparent. 

Some progress has been made since Mike Tyson was on the voter roll, and palm kernel shells were improvised as thumbprints. Yet, it’s a considerable irony that the same system, which seemed to work well in 2020 and was praised by the PDP and independent monitors as a contributory factor for the poll's success that year, was perhaps one of the most contentious in Saturday’s vote. INEC must get its act together.

Never say, never

And finally, we saw again on Saturday that interests are the only thing permanent in politics. And I’m not talking here about Philip Shaibu changing parties like underwear, although you would be right to cite that as a good example. I’m talking about Ighodalo and what might have been. 

In case you missed it, Babafemi Ojudu shared a viral message last week: Asue Ighodalo was a member of the Bola Tinubu transition committee after he was elected Lagos State governor in 1999. In another life, Ighodalo, a dyed-in-the-wool Lagos Boy, might have been on Tinubu’s side, as Obaseki once was. What politics cannot divide does not exist.

But who knows? Never say never. If lousy product vendors can get a second – even a third – life, you never know what the future holds. As they wrote on the tail of that famous mammy wagon to Eastern Nigeria many years ago: No condition is permanent!

** Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and the author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.