The news report that about 15 airports that gulped no less than N301bn altogether failed to meet an annual threshold of passenger traffic exemplifies Nigeria’s white elephant peculiarity that I call “concrete democracy.” It is a phenomenon where the supposed dividends of democracy are expressed through concrete infrastructure or facility divorced from perceptible ideological agenda or end goals but still exists—justifiably by its initiators, designers, and contractors—solely for its mere tangibility.

In Nigeria, concrete democracy manifests in the building of bridges, flyovers, foot bridges, airports, highways, stadia, public buildings, universities, public transport systems, all of which are of minimal productive value. While conspicuous (and even) imposing, such projects are unsustainable and should never have materialised. The major reason they exist is because they are made of literal concrete and their sturdy physicality gives the impression that democracy is paying off well in those material tokens.

Since 1999, some 15 airports built by state governments of Ogun, Bayelsa, Osun, Delta, Ebonyi, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Anambra, Abia, Yobe, Nasarawa, Kebbi, Edo, Gombe, and Jigawa have (expectedly) been underperforming. Despite the fancy tag of “cargo” or “international” added to their monikers to give them some functional weight, these facilities do not attract much traffic to justify the expense of building them. According to Director-General of the National Civil Aviation Authority, Musa Nuhu, these state airports put a massive burden on the agency that has to manage them with federal resources. Some are patronised only by executives who travel once or twice a week. He said, “An airport that needs N300m a month (to maintain) and they have just 1,000 passengers a month, there is no magic that can make them sustainable, and FAAN doesn’t have the money.”

In a country that produces virtually nothing and a huge chunk of our economy—including our leisure activities—is sustained by importation, it surprises no serious thinking person that these facilities barely function. How many of these states that built the airport generate enough revenue to even pay salaries? How many of the airport builders have demonstrated any sustained initiative to create means of income generation outside the oil revenue they go cap in hand to beg for every month in the Federal Capital Territory? If not for docile legislators who rubber-stamp every frivolity, such projects would never have happened.

Aside from Lagos (which generates 60 per cent of FAAN’s revenue), Abuja, and maybe Port Harcourt, most airports in Nigeria do not see as much traffic as even a small town in well-developed economies. That is because airports are about mobility within a productive economy where people and goods must be able to move so as to beat the logistics of space and time. In Nigeria where the major subsisting industry is politics, it is unsurprising that most of these useless airports only come into use when a self-important politician needs to travel. Even in the airports with supposedly high traffic, the number of flight delays routinely experienced is either proof that we just do not have as much traffic to fill up air slots, or we are a badly disorganised society, or both are true.

So, why do public officials spend so much money on these useless projects? Well, there are at least three reasons. One is that the concreteness of those facilities has a colossal spectacular value which, in Nigeria, translates to cumulative propaganda points. Our people do not have the patience for a democracy of ideas, ideology, concepts, and long-term planning. You lose an average Nigerian voter the moment you start with intangibles like human capital development. You must give them something to feel and touch like bridges, railways, and physical facilities. It is this obsession with the tangible that makes our society start new universities frequently without an attendant plan to produce enriching knowledge.

Not only must you produce something concrete, but you must also spend a humongous sum of money to inaugurate such a project to burnish the impression of faux progress. On inauguration day, you must invite dozens of traditional rulers (especially those with gaudy ornamentation who will lug their staff of office around to give a patina of seriousness to an otherwise mundane occasion), Christian and Muslim leaders (who will sanctify the vacuity), a bunch of uncritical scribblers who call themselves journalists, and these days, social influencers too. Your aides must tag you with puerile labels like “Working Willie,” “Performing Governor,” “Mr Project,” and other silliness your vanity can accommodate.

It is the allure of concreteness that made some Nigerians convince themselves that the person who “built” a megacity that still lacks basic amenities can also build the whole of Nigeria if voted as president. Unfortunately, what we call “city” in the part of the world that truly has them did not begin with the shiny skyscrapers. Unlike Nigeria, societies with actual cities first got the basics of human development right.

Another reason concrete democracy trumps meaningful initiatives is that the budgeting and contracting processes of these ostentatious projects make it far easier for public officials to syphon money. It is easier to convince legislators to let you budget $500m for an airport than to initiate a 25-year educational development programme that will develop generations.

One could rightly argue that if the point is merely about the grandiosity of the projects, why not at least invest in proper grand projects that function? How about schools with well-equipped laboratories and libraries, motorable roads, energy and water resources, public facilities, functional hospitals/community health centres, urban development, etc.? Why would any reasonable person build an airport that they know right from the outset will be underutilised? Why do it despite seeing the fate of existing ones?

And that brings me to a third reason: some of these projects were primarily designed to serve public officials’ interests. The only reason governors of the states that produce nothing or contribute little into the national wallet would build an airport is because the governor thought it would ease his movement from his state capital to the FCT where he spends a huge part of his time lobbying and toadying before idle minds like himself.

Concrete projects like that are thus mainly self-directed. They are for public officials who want to legitimately use public resources to build projects that will service them and theirs. That is why those projects are most unusable to the poverty-stricken people in their states. How many people in the whole of the 15 states that built these airports earn enough salaries to even buy a plane ticket? Yet, their governor built it. Why? Well, because he does not expect his constituents to ever use it. In fact, he would prefer them not to use the airport, so it remains exclusive to him and those for whom he built it. Such a project being unconnected to any larger economic plan regularly lies dormant until the day Oga lands in his private jet and takes off again. That is the whole point: using public resources for private ends.

All over Nigeria, projects like those 15 airports consume money without returns. Some would have at least found some use if they were maintained but the point of their existence was never about sustainability; they were merely a pipeline for drawing money and covering up the ideological emptiness of the project executors.

It will take a long time for Nigerians to reorient themselves to look beyond a democracy that delivers concretely and begin to demand meaning. Until that day comes, states should not be allowed to run individual agenda that does not fit into a larger national scheme of action. Unless they convincingly demonstrate the viability of those projects, they should not be approved. Such projects are a waste of scarce resources and those who executed them knew that much.

Punch

Can success really be determined from a coffee shop order?

Mary-Faith Martinez

Can you tell how successful someone is just from watching how quickly they place an order? One CEO is convinced that she can.

In a recent podcast interview, Codie Sanchez, CEO of Contrarian Thinking, shared a few controversial thoughts on people who hold up a line by taking a long time to order. “Show me how long it takes you to order at a counter, and I will show you your bank account,” she said.

Sanchez used the example of waiting behind someone in a coffee shop line as a metric for how successful a person is. She described waiting behind a woman who took “four centuries” to order her coffee, something Sanchez couldn’t understand.

“If we know we are here for a finite amount of time, why spend so much time on that as opposed to a walk, a sunset, etc.?” she asked.

Sanchez went one step further, suggesting that someone who takes a long time to make up their mind ordering is “really comfortable inconveniencing somebody else around them,” saying this could even suggest narcissism or a lack of self-awareness.

They’re not very efficient at the things that don’t really matter,” Sanchez added. “If you want to get something done, you give it to a busy person.” 

According to Sanchez’s line of thinking, someone who takes a long time to order when other people are waiting behind them is inconsiderate and possibly self-centered.

Additionally, Sanchez implied that this behavior is indicative of someone who is professionally unsuccessful because it shows they are slow to make decisions regarding small, inconsequential things, like a coffee order.

Sanchez is the CEO of Contrarian Thinking, a company that helps people learn how to smartly invest in businesses and increase their passive income. She began her professional life as a journalist covering human rights atrocities in Mexico.

During her time as a journalist, Sanchez realized what a big role economic equity played in the lives of the marginalized and decided she wanted to address that. At that point, she made the jump from journalism to finance and has since become a millionaire herself, now teaching others how to do the same.

Is fast decision-making actually a beneficial trait?

While decision-making is certainly an important part of business, an article from the Harvard Business Review suggested that it doesn’t work like we typically assume — or, at least, shouldn’t. 

Their research found that a leader who acts like making a decision is a one-time event is not as effective. That means making a quick decision is not always preferable. Sometimes, it pays off to take time to really consider the issue and take multiple points of view into account. 

When a video clip from Sanchez's interview made its way to TikTok, users had plenty of thoughts on her coffee shop theory.

Most seemed to agree with the Harvard Business Review’s assessment, with one person writing, “Just say you’re [impatient].” Another said that Sanchez herself “took forever to get to the point.”

Whether or not you find yourself annoyed by someone taking a long time to place an order, it is important to remember that one interaction is probably not representative of their overall ability to make decisions. Judging someone’s business savvy off of such a short moment seems absurdly unfair.

** Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.

YourTango

The leaderships of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have ordered their members to embark on a nationwide strike from November 14.

According to Channels TV, the leaderships of the labour bodies reached the resolution after an extraordinary national executive council (NEC) meeting held in Abuja on Tuesday.

The unions said nationwide mobilisation of members and allies have begun immediately.

The announcement comes days after Joe Ajaero, president of NLC, was reportedly picked up from the Imo council secretariat of the congress in Owerri by heavily armed police officers.

The NLC in a statement had said Ajaero was beaten and 

blindfolded immediately after he was arrested by security operatives.

The union said the phones and personal belongings taken from the NLC president have not been returned.

However, the Imo police command said Ajaero was not arrested but was taken into protective custody to avoid being lynched by a mob.

The police said the NLC president had a heated argument with some individuals who resisted the picketing of tthe Imo airport.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had condemned the attack on Ajaero.

Tony Ojukwu, executive secretary of NHRC, said perpetrators of the brutality on Ajaero must be held accountable to serve as a deterrent to others, adding that it is improper to forcefully arrest unarmed citizens.

The Cable

Vice-Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 Presidential Election, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, has called on President Bola Tinubu and his vice, Kashim Shettima to resign because their swearing in was “unconstitutional.”

Baba-Ahmed said the Senate President Godswill Akpabio should be allowed to conduct another presidential election after the resignation of Tinubu and Shettima.

He made the call during an interview on Arise Television while responding to a question about the possibility of working with Tinubu’s administration.

The former lawmaker said that Tinubu and Shettima were fraudulently sworn in after the 2023 presidential election, adding that the LP would not collaborate with what he described as “illegitimate government.”

He said, “The petition court and the Supreme Court did not actually affirm the success of Tinubu’s presidency, they upheld the unconstitutionality of that election, and they are happy for it to remain so. And they have the power, nobody can do anything about it.

“That is why we said it is an unreasonable show of force. If there was something we could do, we would stop it, but we are law-abiding citizens, that is why I’m here sitting with you today and still complaining.

“I was not shaken one bit. I will never be shaken by certificate forgery, by (someone who) forfeited money over narcotics. I will never be shaken by IReV switched off in the middle of the game when they saw us winning.

“Labour Party won 2023 Presidential elections. No doubt about it. They are cheats, they are bullies and they have taken full advantage of the situation in Nigeria.

“Can Tinubu and Shettima just resign and let the Senate President conduct another election? They were fraudulently sworn in, and we will not work with an illegitimate government. If it is not constitutional, we are not touching it.”

Speaking of Tinubu’s past six months in power, Datti said the president had delivered nothing so far but disaster.

“This man has delivered nothing, and he is poised to deliver nothing. They have not moved an inch Nigeria from consumption and waste to production, and they will not do it. They will not stop the killings and start the healing. They will not stop the stealing and start the keeping, and they will not stop the slide of Nigeria, and they cannot start the climb.”

“For someone that has been playing ‘God’ for such a long time like Tinubu and it is time for a mortal like maybe Obi or someone else to put him in his right place, for someone who has wielded so much power in a country like Nigeria, where is that power in the last six months to apply in our welfare and in our security?

“They cannot do it. They are in power for themselves. For their ego, for their wealth, for their comfort, for their own considerations, not for Nigeria.”

Daily Trust

Academic Staff Union of Universities and the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities have described plan by the Federal Government to automatically deduct 40 per cent from the Internally Generated Revenue of universities in the country as an attack on the university system.

The  FG, in a letter dated  October 17, 2023, and titled ‘Implementation of 40% automatic deduction from internally generated revenue of partially-funded Federal Government institutions,’ said it would begin the deduction with effect from November 2023.

The letter signed by the Accountant-General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, Director of Revenue and Investment, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Felix Ore-ofe Ogundairo, also said the auto-deduction policy of gross IGR was in line with the Finance Circular with reference number FMFBNP/OTHERS/IGR/CRF/12/2021 dated December 20, 2021.

However, National President, ASUU, Emmanuel Osodeke, insisted that FG’s decision was disheartening, saying universities were not generating any revenue from the user chargers/service fees they gave students.

He argued that it was surprising that the government still wanted to collect from the subsidised charges on ID cards, hostel accommodation, lab coats, etc, of students.

“This is what we saw when we were fighting that the government should fund universities and Nigerians think ASUU is the problem.

“Universities are not revenue-generating agencies, so the 40 per cent of the subsidised money students pay for a hostel, medicals, ID cards, lab coat, chemicals in the laboratory should still be shared with the government?

“This is an extreme, that such is happening in Nigeria. Will the Presidency ask the NASS, NNPC, to give a return of 40 per cent?”

Osodeke called on parents, students and Nigerians as a whole to rise against what he described as an attack against the universities, adding that ASUU would also meet with the Federal Government agencies in charge of the policy to take the next line of action.

He said, “Parents, students, Nigerians need to rise up to this. This is an attack on universities. Universities are already paying taxes. They pay withholding taxes and it goes to government. There is nothing like IGR in universities. What we have are charges.

“We need to know the 40 per cent of what they want to collect from universities. They are even saying lecturers should pay them accommodation fees too.

“They want 100 per cent of what they pay as accommodation. It is sad. Give us some time to interact with the government,” Osodeke said.

On his part, Secretary-General, Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Yakubu Ochefu, revealed that the amount deducted by the FG from universities was 25 per cent but was increased to 40 per cent recently.

He called on the AGF to specify what it meant by IGR, saying universities only get user charges from students and not profits or revenues.

He added that universities were being run in deficit already, arguing that a deduction of 40 per cent would completely run the universities down.

Ochefu said, “The Federal Government, through the Accountant General of the Federation, is citing the Finance Act of 2021 as the basis for the decision.

“We also have to look at the provision of the law. It says that it is when you have surplus in terms of your Internally Generated Revenue, that is when you can make the return to the government. But many universities don’t have IGR, because most universities charge students’ fees as user charges. Paying N2,000 for an ID card, which has already been subsidised by the university; they pay health insurance, sports, ICT, accommodation, these are all the charges that come together and universities must provide all these for their students.

“If a user charge is considered as IGR, then we have a problem with the nomenclature. The accountant general should clearly specify what he was referring to as IGR.

“If it is all these subsidised charges that the government wants to collect 40 per cent, then the universities will lead towards financial catastrophe.

“We will open our books to the world to let them know that this is how much we get in terms of user charges. Universities are being run in deficit and FG still wants to collect 40 per cent; that means you want the universities to run down.”

Meanwhile, he insisted that if Federal Government wished to collect 40 per cent of what universities generate, they should fund the universities fully.

“If this happens, the financial challenges of the universities will get worse because the university is not a profit-making institution, it is not a revenue-generating entity. It is a service-providing entity.”

He also said the committee of VCs would consult with the Ministry of Education, accountant general and others.

Punch

Foreign airlines have disclosed that about 90 per cent of their $783m trapped funds have not been paid.

The airlines stated this during a stakeholders’ forum convened by the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, in Lagos recently.

According to data from the International Air Transport Association, as of August 2023, Nigeria accounted for a substantial $783m of airlines’ blocked funds.

Despite recent efforts to alleviate the situation, the airlines said a significant portion of those funds remained inaccessible to them.

Chairman of International Airline Operators, Chima Kingsley, emphasised that while international banks had received some funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria that only accounted for a fraction, less than 10 per cent of the trapped funds.

“The bulk of the blocked funds are with Nigerian commercial banks. The bulk of the money has not been paid,” he said.

President Bola Tinubu two weeks ago had promised to clear the estimated $7bn outstanding foreign exchange obligations of the Federal Government on forex forwards contracts owed to commercial banks.

CBN, last week, started clearing the forex backlog to commercial banks to ease pressure on the foreign exchange.

The CBN had initiated steps to clear the forex backlog to ease pressure on foreign exchange, but challenges persisted in disbursing the funds effectively.

Domestic carriers, represented by the Chairman of United Nigeria Airlines, Obiora Okonkwo, highlighted their struggles, with trapped funds and limited access to forex impacting their operations.

He cited examples, including aircraft maintenance fees accumulating due to the inability to source forex for payments.

The Area Manager of West and Central Africa for IATA, Samson Fatokun, underscored the need to reduce operating costs in the Nigerian aviation sector, advocating for sector-specific support.

Keyamo assured stakeholders that efforts were underway to address the forex challenge.

While the minister did not disclose the exact disbursement figures, he reiterated the government’s commitment to resolving the issue in the coming weeks, offering a glimmer of hope for the airlines grappling with financial constraints.

Punch

Nigeria's state oil firm NNPC Ltd on Tuesday said it had launched a new grade of crude called Nembe, as Africa's largest oil producer aims to ramp up crude production.

The country has long dealt with output declines due to crude theft, attacks on pipelines in the Niger Delta and a lack of investment, causing a dwindling of government revenue and large fiscal deficits. But output has picked up in recent months.

Nembe production was formerly added to the Bonny Light stream more than three years ago, until instances of sabotage on the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) hamstrung output, an NNPC source told Reuters on the sidelines of the Argus European Crude conference in London.

Now, the country has managed to resurrect Nembe as a separate grade, he added.

The first cargoes of Nembe were sold in October, consisting of two 950,000 barrel shipments sold to France and the Netherlands, a second NNPC source told Reuters.

The first Nembe cargo was sold to UAE-based trading firm Gulf Transport & Trading, which loaded the cargo onto the Suezmax tanker Maran Orpheus for a voyage to an unknown end buyer in Fos, France, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Nembe is similar to Nigeria's other distillate-rich grades such as Forcados, Bonga and Egina, Maryamu Idris, executive director of crude and condensate at NNPC Trading told the conference.

The low-sulphur grade commands a premium to the global Brent benchmark, and is a good candidate to compete with Brazilian and Azeri crude grades for European refiners, she added.

Production of Nembe is currently around 50,000 barrels per day, but the NNPC is aiming for a rise to 80,000 by the first quarter of next year and 150,000 barrels per day by the start of 2025, the source added.

An October Reuters survey showed Nigeria produced roughly about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), up from 1.39 million bpd in September, according to OPEC figures. But the country hopes to ramp up production to about 1.8 million bpd by the end of 2023, a third NNPC source told Reuters.

Last week, sources told Reuters that NNPC was set to supply the keenly anticipated Dangote oil refinery with up to six cargoes of crude oil in December to be used in test runs.

Nigeria imports almost all its refined fuel needs to inadequate capacity and poor maintenance. The country is now pinning its hopes of ending fuel imports on the 650,000 bpd refinery being built to by Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man.

The refinery is expected to run on crudes that carry an API gravity of 29 to 34 degrees, the first NNPC source said.

API gravity is an index of the density of a crude oil - typically in the range of 15 and 45 degrees. Higher API indicates a lighter, lower density crude. Nembe carries an API gravity of 29, the source added.

Reuters

Israel fights Hamas deep in Gaza City and foresees control of enclave’s security after war

Israel said Tuesday that its ground forces were battling Hamas fighters deep inside Gaza’s largest city, signaling a major new stage in the month-old conflict, and its leaders foresee controlling the enclave’s security after the war.

The push into Gaza City guarantees that the already staggering death toll will rise further, while comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about controlling Gaza’s security for “an indefinite period” pointed to the uncertain endgame of a war that Israel says will be long and difficult.

Israeli ground troops have battled Palestinian militants inside Gaza for over a week, cutting the territory in half and encircling Gaza City. The army’s chief spokesman, Daniel Hagari, said that Israeli ground forces “are located right now in a ground operation in the depths of Gaza City and putting great pressure on Hamas.”

Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad, speaking on Tuesday from Beirut, denied that Israeli forces were making any significant military gains or that they had advanced deep into Gaza City.

“They never give the people the truth,” Hamad said. He added that numerous Israeli soldiers were killed on Monday and “many tanks were destroyed.”

“The Palestinians fight and fight and fight against Israel, until we end the occupation,” said Hamad, who left Gaza days before Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel, which sparked the war.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the claims of either side.

Israelis commemorated the 30th day — a milestone in Jewish mourning — since the Hamas incursion, which killed 1,400 people. About 240 people Hamas abducted during the attack remain in Gaza, and more than 250,000 Israelis have evacuated homes near the borders of Gaza and Lebanon amid continuous rockets fired into Israel.

A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza has killed more than 10,300 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run territory. More than 2,300 are believed buried from strikes that reduced entire city blocks to rubble.

Around 70% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, and many of them are crowded into U.N. schools-turned-shelters. Civilians in Gaza are relying on a trickle of aid and their own daily foraging for food and water from supplies that have dwindled after weeks of siege.

FLEEING SOUTH

Israel unleashed another wave of strikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as hundreds more Palestinians fled Gaza City to the south.

Some arrived on donkey carts, most on foot, some pushing elderly relatives in wheelchairs, all visibly exhausted. Many had nothing but the clothes on their backs. “There is no food or drink, people are fighting in the bakeries,” said one man who didn’t want to give his name.

Hundreds of thousands have heeded Israeli orders to head to the southern part of Gaza, out of the ground assault’s path. Others are afraid to do so since Israeli troops control part of the north-south route. Bombardment of the south has also continued.

An Israeli airstrike destroyed several homes early Tuesday in Khan Younis. An Associated Press journalist at the scene saw first responders pulling five bodies — including three dead children — from the rubble. One man wept as he carried a bloodied young girl, until a rescue worker pried her from his arms, saying, “Let her go, let her go,” to rush her to an ambulance.

AP video at a nearby hospital showed a woman desperately searching for her son, then crying and kissing him when she found him, half-naked and bloodied, but apparently without serious injuries. A girl sobbed next to a baby on a stretcher, apparently dead.

“We were sleeping, babies, children, elderly,” said one survivor, Ahmad al-Najjar, who is the general director at the Education Ministry in Gaza.

In the town of Deir al-Balah, rescue workers brought out at least four dead and a number of wounded children from the wreckage of a flattened building, witnesses said. “My daughter,” screamed a woman as she ran behind them.

Israel says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and accuses the group of endangering civilians by operating among them.

At a school in Khan Younis, thousands of displaced were living in classrooms and the playground. One of them, Suhaila al-Najjar, said the last month had been filled with sleepless nights.

“What’s to come? How will we live? Bakeries have closed, there’s no gas. What will we eat?” she said.

ISRAEL TO MAINTAIN CONTROL

Israel has vowed to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities — but neither Israel nor its main ally, the United States, has said what would come next.

Netanyahu told ABC News that Gaza should be governed by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas,” without elaborating.

“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he said.

Netanyahu did not make clear what shape that security control would take. The White House on Tuesday reiterated that President Joe Biden does not support an Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza Strip after the war.

“We do think that there needs to be a healthy set of conversations about what post-conflict Gaza looks like and what governance looks like,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, adding that he would leave it to Netanyahu to clarify what he means by “indefinite.”

Israeli officials say the offensive against Hamas will last for some time and acknowledge that they have not yet formulated a concrete plan for what comes after the war. The defense minister has said Israel does not seek a long-term reoccupation of Gaza but predicted a lengthy phase of low-intensity fighting against “pockets of resistance.” Other officials have spoken about establishing a buffer zone that would keep Palestinians away from the Israeli border.

“There are a number of options being discussed for The Day After Hamas,” said Ophir Falk, a senior adviser to Netanyahu. “The common denominator of all the plans is that 1) there is no Hamas 2) that Gaza is demilitarized 3) Gaza is deradicalized.”

Israel withdrew troops and settlers in 2005 but kept control over Gaza’s airspace, coastline, population registry and border crossings, excepting one into Egypt. Hamas seized power from forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, confining his Palestinian Authority to parts of the occupied West Bank. Since then, Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on Gaza to varying degrees.

In his ABC interview, Netanyahu also expressed openness for the first time to “little pauses” in the fighting to facilitate delivery of aid to Gaza or the release of hostages. But he ruled out any general cease-fire without the release of all the hostages.

HEAVY FIGHTING IN THE NORTH

For now, Israel’s troops are focused on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, which before the war was home to about 650,000 people. Israel says Hamas has extensive militant infrastructure within residential areas, including a vast tunnel network.

The military says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters. The Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants — and slain fighters not brought to hospitals would not be in its count. Israel also says 30 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.

Several hundred thousand people are believed to remain in the north in the assault’s path.

Residents in northern Gaza reported heavy battles overnight into Tuesday morning on the outskirts of Gaza City. The Shati refugee camp — a built-up district housing refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants — has been heavily bombarded over the past two days, residents said.

The war has also stoked wider tensions, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group trading fire along the border. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war began, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles with Israeli forces during arrest raids.

Hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt since Oct. 21. But humanitarian workers say the aid is far short of mounting needs. Egypt’s Rafah Crossing has also opened to allow hundreds of foreign passport holders and medical patients to leave Gaza.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine increasingly conscripting older men – media

Ukraine’s military has been forced to conscript more older men to fill its battalions amid the heavy losses suffered in its conflict with Russia, reportedly increasing the average age of its troops by nearly ten years since shortly after the crisis began last year.

The average age of a Ukrainian soldier has risen to around 43, Time magazine reported in a cover story posted last week. That compares with an average of 30-35 in March 2022, when thousands of men were rushing to enlist voluntarily, according to the Financial Times. The heavy toll of dead and wounded “has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever-older personnel,” Time said.

An unidentified aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told the magazine that the shift in age has changed the makeup of Kiev’s forces. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with. This is Ukraine, not Scandinavia.” The article detailed Zelensky’s struggles with alleged betrayals by Western allies, as well as corruption and discord within his own government as the conflict with Moscow drags on.

Ukraine hasn’t publicly reported its casualty figures, but as of August, US officials pegged the number of killed and wounded on both sides at nearly 500,000. The Russian Defense Ministry estimated last month that Kiev had lost more than 90,000 troops just since June, when a foundering Ukrainian counteroffensive began.

Zelensky’s regime forbade adult males under the age of 60 from leaving the country when the conflict began. Ukrainian authorities have reportedly filed more than 8,200 criminal cases against alleged draft dodgers, according to a local media report posted on Monday. Zelensky fired the directors of Ukraine’s enlistment offices in August, after a government investigation found that officials were selling fake medical exemptions to reluctant recruits for up to $6,000 each.

Aleksey Arestovich, a former senior adviser to Zelensky, said last month that Ukraine should conscript younger recruits because they are better-suited to endure the rigors of the battlefield and are easier to manipulate into an aggressive fighting force. “What is needed are wolves, who are 25 to 28, who want to fight and enjoy that, who still have things to prove,” he said.

Ukraine’s manpower struggles are worsening at a time when US public support for continuing to send massive military aid to Kiev is waning. However, a Zelensky aide told Time that even if Washington were to send all the weapons to Ukraine that have been promised, the country’s military simply doesn’t “have the men to use them.”

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine says troops repel Russian attacks along front line

Ukraine's military said on Tuesday its troops had repelled Russian assaults in widely separated sectors of the war and braced for a fresh attempt to capture the key frontline eastern town of Avdiivka.

Russia is engaged in a slow-moving campaign in eastern areas of the 1,000-km (600-mile) front line after failing in its bid to march on Kyiv in the conflict's early days. Ukraine has registered only limited progress in a counteroffensive launched in the east and south in June.

Ukraine's General Staff, in its evening report, said its forces had beaten back 15 attacks near Kupiansk in the northeast and 18 attacks near Maryinka further south, where battles have raged for months.

Nine attacks were repelled in and near Avdiivka, where Moscow launched the latest of several drives in mid-October.

Vitaliy Barabash, head of Avdiivka's military administration, said several days of rain had for the moment ruled out any new Russian advance - what he described as the "third wave".

"We've had nearly a week of heavy rain," he told the public broadcaster Suspilne. "The terrain is too difficult and equipment cannot move."

Barabash said Russian troops had been targeting the town's vast coking plant with artillery for the past week.

The last 16 workers keeping the plant operating had finally been evacuated, he said and only two doctors and four nurses remained in what was a town of 32,000 before Russia's February 2022 invasion.

"These are our city's angels," he told the television.

Avdiivka has become a hallmark of Ukrainian resistance - and is seen as a gateway if Ukraine is to retake main areas in the east, including the town of Donetsk, 20 km away.

Occupied briefly when Russian-backed separatists seized large areas of eastern Ukraine in 2014, the town was retaken by Ukrainian forces who subsequently erected substantial fortifications around it.

Russian accounts of the fighting said Moscow's troops had launched strikes on Ukrainian men and equipment in villages near the eastern town of Bakhmut, seized by Russian forces last May.

Reuters could not independently confirm battlefield accounts made by either side.

RT/Reuters

OpenAI announced its new, more powerful GPT-4 Turbo artificial intelligence model Monday during its first in-person event, and revealed a new option that will let users create custom versions of its viral ChatGPT chatbot. It's also cutting prices on the fees that companies and developers pay to run its software.

OpenAI's announcements show that one of the hottest companies in tech is rapidly evolving its offerings in an effort to stay ahead of rivals like Anthropic, Google and Meta in the AI arms race. ChatGPT, which broke records as the fastest-growing consumer app in history months after its launch, now has about 100 million weekly active users, OpenAI said Monday. More than 92% of Fortune 500 companies use the platform, up from 80% in August, and they span across industries like financial services, legal applications and education, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati told reporters Monday.

The event also included a surprise appearance by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

"The systems that are needed as you aggressively push forward on your road map require us to be on the top of our game, and we intend fully to commit ourselves fully to making sure you all... have not only the best systems for training and inference, but also the most compute," Nadella told OpenAI CEO Sam Altman while onstage together. He added, "That's the way we're going to make progress."

Earlier this year, Microsoft's expanded investment in OpenAI — an additional $10 billion — made it the biggest AI investment of the year, according to PitchBook, and in April, the startup reportedly closed a $300 million share sale at a valuation between $27 billion and $29 billion, with investments from firms such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. As recently as last month, OpenAI was reportedly in talks to close a deal that would lead to an $80 billion valuation.

In his speech Monday, Altman said the day's announcements came from conversations with developers about their needs over the past year. And when it comes to GPT-5, Altman told reporters, "We want to do it, but we don't have a timeline."

Here's what OpenAI announced Monday:

GPT-4 Turbo

GPT-4 Turbo is the latest AI model, and it now provides answers with context up to April 2023. Prior versions were cut off at January 2022. For example, if you asked GPT-4 who won the Super Bowl in February 2022, it wouldn't have been able to tell you. GPT-4 Turbo can.

"We are just as annoyed as all of you, probably more, that GPT's knowledge about the world ended in 2021," Altman said in a speech Monday.

It also accepts a lot more input. While earlier versions limited you to about 3,000 words, the GPT-4 Turbo accepts inputs of up to 300 pages in length. It means you could ask it to summarize entire books.

GPT-4 also supports DALL-E 3 AI-generated images and text-to-speech. It also has six preset voices to choose from, so you can choose to hear the answer to a query in a variety of different voices.

OpenAI said GPT-4 Turbo is available in preview for developers now and will be released to all in the coming weeks.

OpenAI said it's also cutting the prices for developers. "GPT-4 Turbo input tokens are 3x cheaper than GPT-4 at $0.01 and output tokens are 2x cheaper at $0.03," the company said, which means companies and developers should save more when running lots of information through the AI models.

Personalized chatbots

Personalized chatbot builder

OpenAI

Until now, ChatGPT's enterprise and business offerings were the only way people could upload their own data to train and customize the chatbot for particular industries and use cases. Now it's adding the option for anyone to create custom chatbots.

AI "agents" are one of the buzziest uses of the technology recently, with many startups vying to offer the kind of personalized AI tools that consumers may already be familiar with via pop culture representations, such as Tony Stark's J.A.R.V.I.S. in Marvel movies, or Pam in Disney Channel's Smart House.

"Anyone can easily build their own GPT—no coding is required," the company wrote in a release. "You can make them for yourself, just for your company's internal use, or for everyone. Creating one is as easy as starting a conversation, giving it instructions and extra knowledge, and picking what it can do, like searching the web, making images or analyzing data."

More than two million developers building their own tools using ChatGPT's API will also be able to customize the chatbot, meaning consumers will likely see personalized AI chatbots popping up in many more places, including apps and websites they use regularly.

Open AI's version of the App Store

Now that users and developers can launch their own, personalized AI chatbots, OpenAI is introducing a new revenue driver for the company: Its own version of the app store.

The GPT Store allows people who create their own GPTs to make them available for public download, and in the coming months, OpenAI said people will be able to earn money based on their creation's usage numbers.

"Once in the store, GPTs become searchable and may climb the leaderboards," the company wrote in a release. "We will also spotlight the most useful and delightful GPTs we come across in categories like productivity, education, and 'just for fun.'"

As for revenue share for people who create custom chatbots featured in the store, the company will start with "just sharing a part of the subscription revenue overall," Altman told reporters Monday. Right now, the company is planning to base the payout on active users plus category bonuses, and may support subscriptions for specific GPTs later.

"What OpenAI is really in the business of selling is intelligence -- and that, and intelligent agents, is really where it will trend over time," Altman told reporters.

New all-in-one image-generation, browsing and summarization

Until Monday, ChatGPT users had to hop between different apps and websites to use all of OpenAI's tools, which contributed to a slightly higher learning curve. On Monday, the company announced it has streamlined its AI tools into one place: Using ChatGPT now offers image generation via DALL-E, browsing, data analysis, document upload and PDF search. Before now, Anthropic's Claude was the only competitor chatbot to allow PDF search.

CNBC