Sudan paramilitary RSF to attend Jeddah talks with armed forces

Envoys from Sudan's warring military factions - the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces - were in Jeddah for talks on Saturday, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said, as international mediators pressed for an end to the three-week old conflict.

The U.S.-Saudi initiative is the first serious attempt to end fighting that has turned parts of the Sudanese capital Khartoum into war zones and derailed an internationally backed plan to usher in civilian rule following years of unrest and uprisings.

Riyadh and Washington earlier welcomed the "pre-negotiation talks" between the army and the RSF, and urged them to actively engage following numerous violated ceasefires.

But both sides have made it clear they would only discuss a humanitarian truce, not negotiate an end to the war.

Confirming his group's attendance, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, said he hoped the talks would achieve their intended aim of securing safe passage for civilians.

Sudan's armed forces said they sent a delegation to the Red Sea city on Friday evening, but special envoy Dafallah Alhaj said the army would not sit down directly with any delegation that the "rebellious" RSF might send.

Hemedti has meanwhile vowed to either capture or kill army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and there was also evidence on the ground that both sides remain unwilling to make compromises to end the bloodshed.

Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan said in a tweet he hoped both sides would "engage in dialogue that we hope will lead to the end of the conflict".

In the city of Bahri across the Nile from Khartoum, warplanes were heard overnight and explosions startled residents. "We don't leave the house because we're scared of stray bullets," said a resident who gave his name as Ahmed.

An eyewitness in Eastern Khartoum reported gun clashes and air strikes over residential areas on Saturday.

Other witnesses said later in the day that they heard a large explosion and saw a plume of smoke that appeared to be coming from the industrial zone in Bahri.

The Turkish ambassador's car also came under fire from unknown assailants, a Turkish diplomatic source said. The envoy was safe inside the embassy.

Turkey's foreign minister said Turkey would move its embassy from Khartoum to Port Sudan following the attack.

Both the RSF and army accused each other of being behind the attack.

The conflict erupted on April 15, following the collapse of an internationally backed plan for a transition to democracy.

Burhan, a career army officer, heads a ruling council installed after the 2019 ouster of long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir and a 2021 military coup, while Hemedti, a former militia leader who made his name in the Darfur conflict, is his deputy.

Prior to the fighting, Hemedti had been taking steps like moving closer to a civilian coalition that indicated he had political plans. Burhan has blamed the war on his "ambitions."

HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE

Western powers have backed the transition to a civilian government in a country that sits at a strategic crossroads between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Africa's volatile Sahel region.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was travelling to Saudi Arabia at the weekend for talks with Saudi leaders.

Saudi Arabia has had close ties to Burhan and Hemedti, both of whom sent troops to help the Saudi-led coalition in its war against the Houthi group in Yemen. The kingdom is also focused on security in the Red Sea, which it shares with Sudan.

The U.N. has significantly cut back its operations in Sudan after three of its employees were killed and its warehouses were looted, and sought guarantees of safe passage of humanitarian aid.

The fighting has also impacted vital infrastructure and caused the closure of most hospitals in conflict areas. U.N. agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe if clashes continue.

The World Health Organisation said on Saturday it had delivered medical aid to Port Sudan, but was awaiting security and access clearances that have prevented several such shipments from reaching Khartoum, where the few hospitals that are functioning are running out of supplies.

 

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia blames Ukraine, U.S. for car bomb that wounded writer

A prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was wounded in a car bombing that killed his driver on Saturday and investigators said a detained suspect admitted acting on behalf of Ukraine.

The attack took place three days after the Kremlin said Ukraine attempted to hit the Kremlin with drones - Ukraine denied it had anything to do with the attack.

Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and the Western states backing it, particularly the United States, for the latest attack on the writer, an ardent proponent of Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine.

Ukraine's security services, in its standard response, refused to confirm or deny involvement. A senior Ukrainian official accused Russia of staging the incident.

Russia's state Investigative Committee said Prilepin's Audi Q7 was blown up in a village in Nizny Novgorod region, about 400 km (250 miles) east of Moscow, which it was treating as an act of terrorism. It said Prilepin had been taken to hospital.

The committee released a photograph showing the white vehicle lying overturned on a track next to a wood, with a deep crater beside it and pieces of metal strewn nearby.

The committee later issued a statement saying investigators were questioning a suspect identified as Alexander Permyakov.

"The suspect was detained and, in the course of questioning, he provided testimony that he acted on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services," said the statement, read by a woman in uniform.

The governor of Nizhny Novgorod region, Gleb Nikitin, said on Telegram that doctors had successfully operated on Prilepin and that he was now under sedation to help his recovery.

Russia's Foreign Ministry, in a statement on its website said: "Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with Ukrainian authorities, but also their Western patrons, the United States in the first instance...".

It said Washington's failure to denounce this and other attacks was "self-revealing" for the U.S. administration.

State news agency TASS quoted security sources as saying the suspect was a "native of Ukraine" with a past conviction for robbery with violence.

Ukraine's SBU Security Service issued its standard response of declining to confirm or deny involvement in the bombing.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he believed Russian authorities had staged the attack.

"Everyone understands that this is all a staged performance," Podolyak told Ukrainian television. "This is staged and the bombings at the Kremlin are aimed at domestic audiences."

The novelist was the third prominent pro-war figure to be targeted by a bomb since Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

Russia has blamed Ukraine for the deaths of journalist Darya Dugina and war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in the two previous attacks, and Kyiv has denied involvement.

Ukrainian news site UNIAN ran an online poll asking readers who "in the pantheon of Russian scum propagandists" should be targeted next after Dugina, Tatarsky and Prilepin.

Officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. No comment was immediately available from Britain's Foreign Office.

MOSCOW SAYS UKRAINE ACTING ON WEST'S BEHALF

It was the second time this week that Moscow has accused Ukraine of carrying out terrorist attacks on behalf of the West, a narrative it appears to be pushing with increasing urgency but which Kyiv and Washington reject as baseless.

On Wednesday, Russia accused Ukraine of trying to kill President Vladimir Putin with a night-time drone attack on the Kremlin. Ukraine denied that too, and the White House said accusations that Washington had a hand in it were "lies".

Prilepin often speaks out in support of the Ukraine war on social media, with more than 300,000 followers on Telegram and his own website and YouTube channel.

He fought for Russian proxy forces in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region before last year's invasion and led a military unit there, boasting in a 2019 YouTube interview that his unit "killed people in big numbers".

"These people are dead, they are buried and ... there are many of them," he said. "Not a single unit among the Donetsk battalions had such results. It was outrageous chaos what we did there ... Not a single field commander had such results as I had."

 

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

US responsible for Prilepin car bombing – Moscow

The US bears ultimate responsibility for the terrorist attack against Russian writer and political activist Zakhar Prilepin, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. Killing ideological opponents, the ministry said, has become “the Kiev regime’s basic reflex.”

Prilepin, a journalist and novelist who fought in Ukraine in a Russian National Guard unit earlier this year, was seriously injured when a roadside bomb detonated as he drove past in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region earlier on Saturday. Prilepin’s assistant, who was behind the wheel, was killed.

A suspect apprehended near the scene of the blast told Russian investigators that he had been recruited by an unspecified Ukrainian intelligence agency in 2019, and admitted to planting two anti-tank mines beside the road and detonating them remotely as Prilepin’s car passed.

“The terrorist attack against Evgeny Prilepin is yet another demonstration of [Kiev’s] systematic approach to eliminating ideological opponents,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to Prilepin by his birth name.

“The responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies on the Ukrainian authorities together with their Western patrons, mainly the United States, through whose efforts the anti-Russia project blended with neo-Nazism has been painstakingly nurtured in Ukraine since the coup in February 2014,” the statement read.

The ministry then described how enemies of the Ukrainian state are added to the ‘Mirotvorets’ (Peacemaker) database, with their personal details listed next to a description of their “crimes” against Ukraine. This ‘kill list’ is allegedly maintained by the Ukrainian security services, and includes Western journalists and politicians who have spoken favorably of Russia or condemned Ukraine and its government.

The ministry added that the list is “used by hired killers” to target Kiev’s enemies, and noted that Russia has repeatedly called on Ukraine’s Western supporters to have the list taken offline, which they have thus far refused to do.

“Time has shown that Washington and its satellites deliberately ignore this and other crimes of the Ukrainian authorities,” the statement continued.

As Ukraine’s largest financial backer and provider of intelligence, Russia contends that the US was ultimately responsible not just for the attack on Prilepin, but also the murders of nationalist writer Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, and the attempted assassination of Tsargrad TV founder Konstantin Malofeyev. 

Moscow has also blamed Washington for a recent, albeit unsuccessful, drone attack on the Kremlin. “We know full well that decisions to carry out such terrorist actions are made not in Kiev, but in Washington,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

** Suspect in Prilepin bombing admits Ukrainian intel ties

The suspect in the bombing of the car carrying Zakhar Prilepin has admitted links to Ukrainian intelligence services, Russia’s Investigative Committee revealed on Saturday.

Prilepin, a prominent Russian writer and political activist, was targeted by a roadside bomb earlier in the day in the village of Pionersky, some 70km from the eponymous city, located some 400km to the east of Moscow. The blast killed Prilepin’s associate, who was driving the car, and left the writer critically injured.

The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Ukrainian-born Alexander Permyakov, was apprehended shortly after the attack while trying to escape the scene on foot. Locals alerted the police to the fleeing man, who was ultimately captured in a nearby village.

During questioning, Permyakov admitted having attempted to assassinate Prilepin, revealing he had been recruited by an unspecified Ukrainian intelligence service back in 2018. The Investigative Committee released a video of the questioning, with the suspect telling investigators he had planted two anti-tank mines on the side of the road and waited for Prilepin’s car to pass before detonating the explosives remotely.

The blast obliterated the engine compartment of Prilepin’s car, flipping the vehicle onto its roof. While the writer was critically wounded by the blast, his close associate, who was behind the wheel, was killed on the spot. The explosion left a large crater by the side of the road, and sent sizeable pieces of the car, including its gearbox, flying some 100 meters away, footage from the scene shows. 

Prilepin was rushed to a hospital and underwent a successful operation after which he was sedated, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod Region, Gleb Nikitin, revealed without elaborating on the injuries. According to Russian media reports, citing eyewitnesses, the writer suffered fractures to both of his legs, and also reportedly received a spinal column injury.  

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal probe into the incident, treating the blast as a terrorist attack.

** Russian forces take control over 95% of Artyomovsk — Prigozhin

Russian forces control about 95% of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) and the remaining 5% have no influence on the progress of the special military operation, Wagner PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin says.

"Almost 95% of the city territory has been captured in Artyomovsk to date. The remaining 5% does not play any role for the so-called development of progress and the march of the ‘Red Army’ further to the West. Two square kilometers do not influence the progress of the military operation at all," he said, cited by the Prigozhin’s press office in its Telegram channel.

Nobody communicated with him about the shortage of ammunition, Prigozhin said. "The personnel of Wagner PMC will be preserved for the next operations in interests of Russia," he noted.

The Wagner PMC founder also said he had no ambitions of leaving his mark as the person "that took Artyomovsk." "I have ambitions to be of service to our nation and state," he added.

 

Reuters/RT/TASS

In Port-Harcourt, Rivers State last week as guest of Governor Nyesom Wike, President-elect, Bola Tinubu, promised to fight corruption. To delink judicial officers’ minds from corruption, Tinubu’s blueprint of fighting this goblin, he said, would be to incentivize judicial officers.

“You don’t expect your judges to live in squalor, to operate in squalor and dispense justice in squalor. This is part of the changes that are necessary. We must fight corruption but we must definitely look at the other side of the coin. If you don’t want your judges to be corrupt, you got to pay attention to their welfare. You don’t want them to operate in hazardous conditions,” he said.

Corruption has a long history in Nigeria, with some scholars submitting that it is buried deep down the skin of the African. Indeed, one of the Africanist scholars whose commendable works tried to locate the connect between the African and corruption, late Stephen Ellis, found out that “bribery and corruption were rooted in (African) social networks and moral conventions.” 

By 1970, however, as the Nigerian civil war was reaching its denouement, it had become obvious to the Nigerian military rulers that if the menace of corruption – with its twin nuance of kick-back and armed robbery – was not confronted headlong, the country was headed for ruins.

That generation of Nigerians deployed, among others, popular music to combat the evils of corruption, stealing and robbery. Most of Nigeria’s famous musicians of post-independence era keyed into this crusading and earned their stripes through social and political commentaries. One of them was Ilorin, Kwara State-born Salawu Woro Idofian. Salawu apparently hailed from Idofian in Ifelodun Local Government of the state. While Cameroonian-Nigerian highlife musician of Nigerian mother and a Cameroonian father, Nico Mbarga, struck the soft cord of many by eulogizing motherhood with his blockbuster vinyl Sweet Mother, Yoruba Sakara music deity, Kelani Yesufu, alias Kelly, among many other social thematic concerns, intervened on the social menace that the near-epidemic which the venereal disease, gonorrhea, called atosi in his native homeland, was causing among young boys and girls of the era.

As the epidemic soared, sufferers of its painful jab on their penile part rationalized the affliction as a popular disease that only the famous could contract. In that song he entitled Atosi Atogbe, Kelani deconstructed this widely held impression and submitted, via this fluidly racing track, that gonorrhea could never be a disease of the famous – gbajumo. How could a disease that causes so much pain and turmoil within the male genitalia, with the patient who was, most times, reaping the harvest of his libidinal rascality and thus forced to swallow several discomforting concoctions, be an affliction of the famous? he asked.

To combat armed robbery, in 1970, the military government enacted a decree which made the crime punishable by the firing squad. On April 26, 1971, the first public execution of an armed robber took place. Armed robbery was so rampant that, by 1976, 400 of such executions had taken place between its commencement and the end of the civil war. The rate of the executions was so frightening, especially with the realization that the southern part of the country recorded the highest figure of 338 executions in 1984 alone.

Salawu Woro Idofian’s genre of popular music was Apala. Almost sharing same cadence and pattern of singing with the mellifluous-voice of Epe, Lagos State-born Ligali Mukaiba who sang similar variety of music, Idofian stood in his own right. He was widely credited with having made those public executions of armed robbers the thematic preoccupation of his music. As he dramatized these harvests of executions, you would almost feel the pain, agony and sense of finality that the robbers felt as they were matched to the stakes.

One of such songs from Idofian was his 1971 album entitled K’ehin S’okun – literally translated to mean, Execution by the sea. April 24, 1971, the song goes, was the D-day of the execution of some condemned robbers. It was a Saturday and the crowd that gathered at the bar beach was massive. To Idofian, the public execution could be explained in the context of propitiation. Nigeria had offered the bodies of the condemned robbers to the goddess of the sea called Olokun, in exchange for her concession to spare the lives of the righteous. Since creation, the Olokun had never had such bounty of human flesh for the celebration of her annual festivity in the belly of the sea. However, this Saturday, the Olokun was lucky as three robbers’ bodies were offered to her by the military government, in lieu of her ceaseless swallowing of innocent citizens who strayed to its beach. This, Idofian, in that song, expressed thus – “Ni’jo alaye ti daye, eti Olokun o gba ore ri; a’i pa’niyan kale si eti okun pe ko ri’un mu sodun ri; ni’jo Satide, o s’ori re, a ti f’omo jaguda meta rubo si okun ko ye gbe wa l’omo mo; jaguda kekeke to nt’owo b’apo la o fi bo’ya alaro.”

The condemned robbers had been found guilty by the Armed Robbery and Firearms Tribunal for having robbed an Alhaja at the Surulere area of Lagos. Williams Oyasima and Joseph Ilogbo were the robbers in that brutal encounter. Babatunde Folorunso, Idofian’s narration continued, had robbed a man of his car and Ten pounds. As ricochet of bullets tore through the bodies of these robbers, their heads lost their hold and bowed in magisterial surrender. Brutal epilogue of promising lives, Idofian warned, awaited parents who condoned stealing by stealth by their wards: “Nigba t’ota at’etu ndun mo barawo lara, won nsori ko… omo yin o s’agbafo, o nk’aso wo’lu, ki le ti lo ma ri?”

Since the menace of armed robbery went full throttle in the immediate post-petrodollar Nigeria of the early 1970s, it has grown further into becoming a social pandemic today. Rivaling it as another menace that spreads like the metastasis of cancer, the way armed robbery has, is corruption. The spirit of acquisitiveness, the centrality and preferencing that wealth enjoys today in Nigeria is mind-boggling. This spirit has pounced upon the heart of virtually all Nigerians. Mammon today enjoys a pride of place as the reigning god of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Mammon didn’t get here in a day. Its reign began with the fad of bribery which was common in private and government offices in pre and post-colonial Nigeria. Polish-British sociologist, Stanislav Andreski, who lived in Ibadan in the 1960s, saw the menace and coined the word “kleptocracy” for its description. This variant of corruption so galled the coupists of 1966, led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who held the back of his tongue for its perpetrators, who he labeled ten-percenters. This appellation was got from the tradition of demanding ten percent kickbacks from every government contract. Today, Nzeogwu would turn in his grave to find out that awarded contracts running into billions of Naira are most times not executed at all and its total proceeds pocketed. In cases where they are executed at all, heavy shellacking of bribery and kickbacks ensure that they are so peremptorily and haphazardly executed. The result is that the projects last only in the now.

Last week in Port-Harcourt, Tinubu woke up the ghost of judicial corruption, an albatross that hovers over Nigeria like the Swords of Damocles. If the Nigerian democracy suffers spiritual legitimacy, the Nigerian judiciary is complicit. By the way, some scholars have reasoned that the lack of legitimacy, of perverted electoral justice, may be why Nigeria is this stunted and stymied.

In theory, we all know that the fundamental principle of the independence of the judiciary and the courts underpin the Nigerian legal system. This fundamental principle is predicated on the belief that the courts are independent as an organ of government. Embedded in this assumption is the philosophy of the centrality of the judiciary. This is what the concept of justice and the rule of law in Nigeria are based upon. With the role of the judiciary as central to global concept of justice, built-in and implicated in it is the need to maintain the pride of place of judicial ethics. 

There is no doubt that since its inception in 1999 till now, the National Judicial Council (NJC) has brought some measure of sanity into judicial practice in general and operations of judicial officers in particular. However, there are still a lot of patent doubts about the impartiality of Nigerian judicial officers. There are flying allegations of judges’ availability to lend themselves to the whims of politicians. There have also been cogent and seemingly irrefutable allegations that the top echelon of judicial offices in Nigeria are not totally insulated from the activities and the personal caprices of politicians. The influence of money in the determination of cases is also high.

One very potent case to back this up is the recent controversy on the Supreme Court judgment affirming the victory of Senate President Ahmed Lawan as the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the senatorial contest for Yobe North. In a majority judgment, the apex court allowed the appeal filed by the APC against Bashir Machina’s candidature. The court had pronounced Lawan victorious against Machina simply because it held that, where there is an allegation of fraud, it should not be commenced by an originating summons. Arguments are weighty to back up Machina’s allegations. However, legal technicalities prevailed. While technicalities cannot be discountenanced in law, fastidious sticking to them, at the expense of substantive arguments, can continue to impugn the judiciary, especially when decided cases have spoken vehemently on the need to face substantive matters of law and urging judicial officers not to be bound wholesale by technicalities. Though perceptions may not be real and could be misleading after all, conversely, perception is everything, especially when these judicial officers are dealing with Nigerians who are not abreast of the rules of technicalities. 

To combat this epidemic of corruption in the judiciary, Tinubu’s submission to tackle the epidemic is through what he called “the right incentives.” It will seem that Tinubu was just being simplistic, or at worst minimalist in his conception of judicial corruption. It is laughable that his proffer to deal with the octopodal dragons of judicial corruption is merely to throw money and comfort at judicial officers. This definitely cannot work. First is that, corrupt Nigerians today have not succeeded in drawing a line on when enough is actually enough. They amass sickening wealth that fails logic and common sense. So, if you incentivize judges, it is enough to deter them from corruption? Tinubu is apparently seeking judicial officers who live in a sequestered world, pampered so well that they are insulated from the vermin of corruption, away from the rest of the world. This can only exist in a dream world.

The Tinubu intervention on corruption provoked cynicism of the Nigerian media the second day of his Rivers State epistle. Newspapers that led their next day editions with that thrust did so out of an amalgam of mockery and cynicism. Whether real or imagined, global perception is that, a Tinubu presidency would battle everything but corruption. His pedigree is that of an insider-outsider in the sewage of corruption. Only during the week, the Premium Times reported the linkage of the president-elect with twenty high net-worth properties in the United Kingdom, which allegedly belong to him and his close associates and which were mostly acquired when Tinubu was governor of Lagos State. As we match into May 29, the day of inauguration of the new president, Nigeria will be transiting from the general perception (which is very likely unreal) of an austere and incorruptible president who is passing the baton of power, to another general perception of a robustly corrupt president (which is likely real). While the former perception didn’t keep corruption at bay in Nigeria, the latter perception may likely make the atmosphere free for corruption to luxuriate, flower and flourish.

What can keep corruption at bay in Nigeria is leadership by example. Which Nigeria may not have from May 29. In spite of general global perception that Nigerians cavort with maggots in the sewage, a stern leadership that is ready to make example of malefactors will scare corrupt people off their perfidy. That leadership must advertise itself as ready to throw anyone, including itself, under the bus if it is caught having saturnalia with corruption. It does not appear to me that Tinubu presidency, Nigeria will have this. Only a few days ago, Bloomberg reported that Tinubu’s son, Oluwaseyi, is the main shareholder in Aranda Overseas Corporation, an offshore company which bought a controversial US$10.8 million U.K. property in 2017. In the two reported damaging stories, mum was the word from Bourdillon.

If you now compare these two stories with how Nigerian petty thieves get jailed for minor offences as shoplifting and larceny, an empire will seem to be on the verge of being constructed for corruption to reign in at least the next four years. It is comparable to the Yoruba conception of injustice and unfairness. This was aptly depicted in a short fable that talks of a sick hired hand who is disdained for his temerity to fall sick, in comparison with a sick son of the taskmaster who is pleaded with to sip a broth of peppery soup - Ojojo nse iwofa, won ni alakori gbe’se e de; bo ba s’omo olowo, won a ni ko roju f’ata s’enu.

In my estimation, corruption will no longer strike Nicodemusly in Nigeria in the next four years, either in the judiciary or Nigeria in general. This is because the vultures that will surround power will fertilize the ground for corruption to luxuriate. The corruption to come will share same template with the legion demons in that famous story of the Madman of Gadarene, told in the three synoptic gospels of the bible. This story is about a demon-possessed madman with a thousand maddening spirits. When the mad spirits were commanded out of him, they begged to be sent, not out of the country, but into a herd of swine. If corruption played under the cover in the last few years under Buhari, going forward, swine with similar demonic spirit of corruption will be openly possessed by that spirit in years to come. They will however not perish in the sea like the swine of Gadarene.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh ~ Genesis 2:24. 

Introduction

The words — marriage, homes and heaven — are some of the most beautiful words in the human diction. Yet, not much is known or taught about them; hence, they are much abused and this provokes untold agony in the human society today.

Marriage is very central to life, and to our assignments on earth in many ways. Undoubtedly, enduring success in life begins in the home, which is the primary place where positive values that attract good success are formed, nurtured, shared and imparted.

Besides, some major promises of God, which unarguably define the success of our sojourn on earth, easily find their truest identities and fulfillment only within the marriage union (Matthew 18:19). Marriage produces successors for our successes.

A normal godly marriage makes one better (Ecclesiastes 4:9; 1Corinthians 7:9); stronger (Ecclesiastes 4:12); complete (Genesis 2:18); fulfilled (Genesis 2:23); responsible and healthier; matured and honorable (Hebrews 13:3-5).

The positive image people have about you in the significant districts of your life, including your marital status, matters to your overall success on earth. And, for these reasons and many more, the devil incessantly launches his vicious attacks against homes.

Now, much free advice is given by “professionals” as well as “armchair marriage counselors” today on how to make marriage happy and successful. Some of their guidelines are good, but some are rather funny, frivolous and merely incidental along a broad spectrum of cultural divide.

For example, some “counselors” insist that husbands must give flowers to their wives on daily basis, and some others curiously command that the wife should always kneel to serve her husband’s food, even if the man is not present at the table.

Meanwhile, marriage is not a product of the world, so the opinions, views and philosophies of the world cannot sustain it. Albeit, a successful and happy marriage doesn’t just happen. It has to be built, though not on human philosophies or cultural inclinations, but rather on the platform of God’s Word, the Bible, with divine virtues and ingredients of love, submission, loyalty, truth and sincerity.

Origin and History of Family Life

Biblical marriage is the union of one man and one woman in holy wedlock, whereby they both become one flesh (Matthew 19:5). “Holy wedlock” bespeaks the legal and spiritual union of the man and woman for life. Hence, marriage is a contract, both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death separates them.

Marriage was instituted by God Himself in Paradise when man was in innocence (Genesis 2:18-25). It is articulated  as a solemn, lifelong covenant union between the husband and his wife under the watchful eye of the Almighty God (Genesis 2:24). Evidently, monogamy was the original law of marriage (Matthew 19:5; 1 Corinthians 6:16).

The Lord Jesus Christ personally honoured the marriage institution, and dignified it by performing His first recorded miracle at a marriage ceremony in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1-11). He described marriage as a relationship so intimate that "the two become one flesh", emphasizing unequivocally that it is God-made and lifelong (Matthew 19:4–6).

Godly, Yet Happy Homes

Now, the question often arises in view of the various contemporary human experiences regarding marital unions and homes: can we still have godly, yet happy marriages today? Yes indeed, homes can be godly, and happy once the necessary Bible ingredients are cherished within their walls.

Examples of godly, blessed and happy marital unions abound in the Word of God: Adam and Eve (before the fall), Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Aquilla & Priscilla (Acts 18:1-3).

Even today, marriage and family life can still be happy and beautiful ventures. They were originally designed to be happy and sweet (Proverbs 18:22). However, the marriage union tends to be happy only when a good man marries a good woman (Proverbs 19:14; 31:10-12).

Albeit, the adjective “good” as used here above does not necessarily connote a sense of being perfect, but rather being wise, honest, forgiving, straightforward, noble-hearted, teachable, trustworthy, believing, abiding in the marital covenant and sincere in the marital relationship.

For the avoidance of doubt, we all need a honest, intelligent and practical understanding of the Word of God on how to make our homes a foretaste of heaven on earth. And for heaven’s sake, we ought to act, and not react when such teachings come.

Quite evidently, marriages do flounder here and there, not necessarily for major naughty issues like infidelity, financial problems and third-party interference, but mostly on lack of basic necessary information. Where there is no proper Biblical information on marriage, deformation and reckless abuse become inevitable.

The good news here is that anyone can still enjoy a successful, happy, and blissful marriage, if they apply themselves to it by taking heed to Biblical guidelines.

Fundamental Requirements for Happy Homes

A careful study of Genesis 2:18-25 reveals some underlining laws of marital bliss, which are: the law of identification (v23), the law of unification (v24) and the law of communication (v25). Couples ought to discover, and be excited about God’s plan for marriage. They should be united in spirit, soul and body, and should be able to tell each other the truth without shame.

Fundamentally, to make your marriage strong, healthy, happy and successful, it’s quintessential that you keep God first, always. Yes, don’t allow people or things to come between you and your spouse, no matter their status or apparent positions. However, God is the One Person you cannot and should never do without in your home.

Friends, this holy union can be fulfilling only when and where God's primary purposes and principles are fully tracked, clearly understood and lovingly embraced. Unarguably, godliness is a must in every home that cherishes joy and marital success.

Jesus Christ must be the Lord indeed over your family, if you desire to make a success of it. Joshua said: ‘as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15). Moreover, in planning to keep and be happy together, God’s standards of love, submission, faithfulness and forgiveness should never become outdated in your home (Ephesians 5:20-27; Hosea 2:19-20).

Brethren, let’s depend implicitly upon God to make a success of our marital unions. We cannot afford to imitate the world, but rather embrace the standards of God’s Holy Word. Christian couples must determine to fully serve the Lord together, and love each other till death. Then, we will surely enjoy together the pure bliss of heaven on the earth, in Jesus Name. You won’t miss it. Amen. Happy Sunday!

** Bishop Taiwo Akinola,

Rhema Christian Church,

Otta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

Connect with Bishop Akinola via these channels:

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Jesus asks: “What man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:9-11).  

According to Jesus, evil earthly fathers give good gifts to their children, and the heavenly Father also does likewise. However, the good gifts that men give are fundamentally different from the good and the perfect gifts of God.

While God can give, and sometimes gives, what men give, men cannot give what God gives. The earthly father gives bread and fish, which God also gives. But only the heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit.

This critical distinction between the gifts of men and those of God is revealed in Luke. There, Jesus says: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:13).

God’s Gift

There is one vital thing that God gives exclusively, and it is the only thing that is truly good. That one good thing is God Himself. God is so gracious and loving; He gives Himself to us. Jesus says: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16).

Since God the Father and Jesus the Son are one, in giving Jesus to us God gives Himself to us. So, when Jesus says: Ask, and it will be given to you; (Matthew 7:7), He is telling us to ask for God and not for bread and fish.

But virtually all our prayers are for bread and fish. Our prayers are disproportionately for temporal things. We pray for our children’s school fees, for our house rent, for the money to buy groceries. We pray to buy cars, to build houses, to have children, and to get married.

Our problem is that, like Peter, we are mindful of the things of men and not of the things of God. (Matthew 16:23). That is why James says: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:3).

Jesus fed the people with bread and fish, the good things of men. So, they concluded He was the person they had been looking for all their lives. But when they went to great lengths to come after Him, He said to them: “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John t6:27).

What food could Jesus be talking about here, they wondered. He told them to eat His flesh and drink His blood. As a result, they lost all interest in Him and departed from Him. They were not interested in the blessings of goodness. (Psalms 21:3). Their god was their belly. (Philippians 3:19).

Goodness only comes from God. It is the fruit of His Spirit. If God were to give anything good, it can only be Himself, for only God is good. Goodness does not exist outside of God.

Perfect gift

God does not only give good gifts, but He also gives the perfect gift. James says: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (James 1:17).

That perfect gift is God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ. This means God Himself is our glorious possession. We are heirs of God and not just of what belongs to Him. (Romans 8:17).

In Canaan, God gave most of the Israelites the good gift of lands. But He reserved the perfect gift for the Levites. He did not give them any land. Instead, He gave them Himself. The Bible records that: “To the tribe of Levi Moses had given no inheritance; the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as He had said to them.” (Joshua 13:33).

In effect, those who got lands obtained the good things of men. But those who received God obtained the perfect thing of God. Moreover, those who got God insist they got the better deal. The psalmist says:

“O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You maintain my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.” (Psalm 16:5-6).

God’s perfect gift is Himself. For this reason, God’s good gifts are simply appetisers and inducements for His perfect gift. God knows we are carnal, and that, in ignorance, we have little or no appreciation for the perfect. We are sold out on the good. Therefore, instead of giving us good things, He first promises us good things. 

He will tell us He is going to do something good for us. Then He will make us wait for it. While we are waiting for the good gift, He will reveal to us the perfect gift of Himself. Indeed, by the time He finally gives you the good gift He promised, we might no longer be interested, having discovered while waiting the perfect gift of God Himself.

Abram’s gift

God offered Himself to Abram. He told him: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” (Genesis 15:1).  

But Abram did not want God. What he wanted was a child. When God finally gave Abram a son, He asked him to sacrifice his son. But by then God had become Abram’s portion. He said to Isaac: “God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:8).

“Therefore will the LORD wait, that He may be gracious unto (us), and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon us: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him.” (Isaiah 30:18).

When we receive a gift, we can leave the giver immediately. But when we receive a promise, we stay. We get to know the promiser. We discover that the perfect gift of God is God Himself. God only uses the good things of this world to bring us to Himself.

These good gifts are temporal, while the perfect gift of God is eternal.

The Lord came to me once and asked me a characteristically loaded question. He said: “Femi, what do you own?”

While I was pondering what he meant exactly and how to answer, He decided to help me out. He said to me: “If what you have can be lost, then it does not belong to you. If it can be stolen, then it has no value. If it can be burnt or destroyed, then it is illusory.”

Then He asked me: “So what do you have left?” The Holy Spirit helped me out. He said: “The only ‘thing’ you have left is Jesus.”

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; www.femiaribisala.com

In molecular biologist David Sinclair’s lab at Harvard Medical School, old mice are growing young again.

Using proteins that can turn an adult cell into a stem cell, Sinclair and his team have reset aging cells in mice to earlier versions of themselves. In his team’s first breakthrough, published in late 2020, old mice with poor eyesight and damaged retinas could suddenly see again, with vision that at times rivaled their offspring’s.

David Sinclair has reversed aging in mice and believes the same can be done for people. - Courtesy Richard Groleau

“It’s a permanent reset, as far as we can tell, and we think it may be a universal process that could be applied across the body to reset our age,” said Sinclair, who has spent the last 20 years studying ways to reverse the ravages of time.

“If we reverse aging, these diseases should not happen. We have the technology today to be able to go into your hundreds without worrying about getting cancer in your 70s, heart disease in your 80s and Alzheimer’s in your 90s.” Sinclair told an audience at Life Itself, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

“This is the world that is coming. It’s literally a question of when and for most of us, it’s going to happen in our lifetimes,” Sinclair told the audience.

“His research shows you can change aging to make lives younger for longer. Now he wants to change the world and make aging a disease,” said Whitney Casey, an investor who is partnering with Sinclair to create a do-it-yourself biological age test.

While modern medicine addresses sickness, it doesn’t address the underlying cause, “which for most diseases, is aging itself,” Sinclair said. “We know that when we reverse the age of an organ like the brain in a mouse, the diseases of aging then go away. Memory comes back; there is no more dementia.

“I believe that in the future, delaying and reversing aging will be the best way to treat the diseases that plague most of us.”

A reset button

In Sinclair’s lab, two mice sit side by side. One is the picture of youth, the other gray and feeble. Yet they are brother and sister, born from the same litter – only one has been genetically altered to age faster.

If that could be done, Sinclair asked his team, could the reverse be accomplished as well? Japanese biomedical researcher Dr. Shinya Yamanaka had already reprogrammed human adult skin cells to behave like embryonic or pluripotent stem cells, capable of developing into any cell in the body. The 2007 discovery won the scientist a Nobel Prize, and his “induced pluripotent stem cells,” soon became known as “Yamanaka factors.”

However, adult cells fully switched back to stem cells via Yamanaka factors lose their identity. They forget they are blood, heart and skin cells, making them perfect for rebirth as “cell du jour,” but lousy at rejuvenation. You don’t want Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to become a baby all at once; you want him to age backward while still remembering who he is.

Labs around the world jumped on the problem. A study published in 2016 by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, showed signs of aging could be expunged in genetically aged mice, exposed for a short time to four main Yamanaka factors, without erasing the cells’ identity.

But there was a downside in all this research: In certain situations, the altered mice developed cancerous tumors.

Looking for a safer alternative, Sinclair lab geneticist Yuancheng Lu chose three of the four factors and genetically added them to a harmless virus. The virus was designed to deliver the rejuvenating Yamanaka factors to damaged retinal ganglion cells at the back of an aged mouse’s eye. After injecting the virus into the eye, the pluripotent genes were then switched on by feeding the mouse an antibiotic.

“The antibiotic is just a tool. It could be any chemical really, just a way to be sure the three genes are switched on,” Sinclair said. “Normally they are only on in very young developing embryos and then turn off as we age.”

Amazingly, damaged neurons in the eyes of mice injected with the three cells rejuvenated, even growing new axons, or projections from the eye into the brain. Since that original study, Sinclair said his lab has reversed aging in the muscles and brains of mice and is now working on rejuvenating a mouse’s entire body.

“Somehow the cells know the body can reset itself, and they still know which genes should be on when they were young,” Sinclair said. “We think we’re tapping into an ancient regeneration system that some animals use – when you cut the limb off a salamander, it regrows the limb. The tail of a fish will grow back; a finger of a mouse will grow back.”

That discovery indicates there is a “backup copy” of youthfulness information stored in the body, he added.

“I call it the information theory of aging,” he said. “It’s a loss of information that drives aging cells to forget how to function, to forget what type of cell they are. And now we can tap into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”

While the changes have lasted for months in mice, renewed cells don’t freeze in time and never age (like, say, vampires or superheroes), Sinclair said. “It’s as permanent as aging is. It’s a reset, and then we see the mice age out again, so then we just repeat the process.

“We believe we have found the master control switch, a way to rewind the clock,” he added. “The body will then wake up, remember how to behave, remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness.”

Studies on whether the genetic intervention that revitalized mice will do the same for people are in early stages, Sinclair said. It will be years before human trials are finished, analyzed and, if safe and successful, scaled to the mass needed for a federal stamp of approval.

Science already knows how to slow human aging

While we wait for science to determine if we too can reset our genes, there are many other ways to slow the aging process and reset our biological clocks, Sinclair said.

“The top tips are simply: Focus on plants for food, eat less often, get sufficient sleep, lose your breath for 10 minutes three times a week by exercising to maintain your muscle mass, don’t sweat the small stuff and have a good social group,” Sinclair said.

All these behaviors affect our epigenome, proteins and chemicals that sit like freckles on each gene, waiting to tell the gene “what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute. The epigenome literally turns genes on and off.

What controls the epigenome? Human behavior and one’s environment play a key role. Let’s say you were born with a genetic predisposition for heart disease and diabetes. But because you exercised, ate a plant-focused diet, slept well and managed your stress during most of your life, it’s possible those genes would never be activated. That, experts say, is how we can take some of our genetic fate into our own hands.

The positive impact on our health from eating a plant-based diet, having close, loving relationships and getting adequate exercise and sleep are well documented. Calorie restriction, however, is a more controversial way of adding years to life, experts say.

Cutting back on food – without inducing malnutrition – has been a scientifically known way to lengthen life for nearly a century. Studies on worms, crabs, snails, fruit flies and rodents have found restricting calories “delay the onset of age-related disorders” such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, according to the National Institute on Aging. Some studies have also found extensions in life span: In a 1986 study, mice fed only a third of a typical day’s calories lived to 53 months – a mouse kept as a pet may live to about 24 months.

Studies in people, however, have been less enlightening, partly because many have focused on weight loss instead of longevity. For Sinclair, however, cutting back on meals was a significant factor in resetting his personal clock: Recent tests show he has a biological age of 42 in a body born 53 years ago.

“I’ve been doing a biological test for 10 years now, and I’ve been getting steadily younger for the last decade,” Sinclair said. “The biggest change in my biological clock occurred when I ate less often – I only eat one meal a day now. That made the biggest difference to my biochemistry.”

Additional ways to turn back the clock

Sinclair incorporates other tools into his life, based on research from his lab and others. In his book “Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To,” he writes that little of what he does has undergone the sort of “rigorous long-term clinical testing” needed to have a “complete understanding of the wide range of potential outcomes.” In fact, he added, “I have no idea if this is even the right thing for me to be doing.”

With that caveat, Sinclair is willing to share his tips: He keeps his starches and sugars to a minimum and gave up desserts at age 40 (although he does admit to stealing a taste on occasion). He eats a good amount of plants, avoids eating other mammals and keeps his body weight at the low end of optimal.

He exercises by taking a lot of steps each day, walks upstairs instead of taking an elevator and visits the gym with his son to lift weights and jog before taking a sauna and a dip in an ice-cold pool. “I’ve got my 20-year-old body back,” he said with a smile.

Speaking of cold, science has long thought lower temperatures increased longevity in many species, but whether it is true or not may come down to one’s genome, according to a 2018 study. Regardless, it appears cold can increase brown fat in humans, which is the type of fat bears use to stay warm during hibernation. Brown fat has been shown to improve metabolism and combat obesity.

Sinclair takes vitamins D and K2 and baby aspirin daily, along with supplements that have shown promise in extending longevity in yeast, mice and human cells in test tubes.

One supplement he takes after discovering its benefits is 1 gram of resveratrol, the antioxidant-like substance found in the skin of grapes, blueberries, raspberries, mulberries and peanuts.

He also takes 1 gram of metformin, a staple in the arsenal of drugs used to lower blood sugars in people with diabetes. He added it after studies showed it might reduce inflammation, oxidative damage and cellular senescence, in which cells are damaged but refuse to die, remaining in the body as a type of malfunctioning “zombie cell.”

However, some scientists quibble about the use of metformin, pointing to rare cases of lactic acid buildup and a lack of knowledge on how it functions in the body.

Sinclair also takes 1 gram of NMN, or nicotinamide mononucleotide, which in the body turns into NAD+, or nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. A coenzyme that exists in all living cells, NAD+ plays a central role in the body’s biological processes, such as regulating cellular energy, increasing insulin sensitivity and reversing mitochondrial dysfunction.

When the body ages, NAD+ levels significantly decrease, dropping by middle age to about half the levels of youth, contributing to age-related metabolic diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. Numerous studies have shown restoring NAD+ levels safely improves overall health and increases life span in yeast, mice and dogs. Clinical trials testing the molecule in humans have been underway for three years, Sinclair said.

“These supplements, and the lifestyle that I am doing, is designed to turn on our defenses against aging,” he said. “Now, if you do that, you don’t necessarily turn back the clock. These are just things that slow down epigenetic damage and these other horrible hallmarks of aging.

“But the real advance, in my view, was the ability to just tell the body, ‘Forget all that. Just be young again,’ by just flipping a switch. Now I’m not saying that we’re going to all be 20 years old again,” Sinclair said.

“But I’m optimistic that we can duplicate this very fundamental process that exists in everything from a bat to a sheep to a whale to a human. We’ve done it in a mouse. There’s no reason I can think of why it shouldn’t work in a person, too.”

 

CNN

Nigeria U-17 team, the Golden Eaglets have booked their place in the quarter-final stage of the ongoing U-17 Africa Cup of Nations in Algeria.

The Eaglets showed great tenacity in their final group game on Saturday as they came from behind twice before beating South Africa 3-2 in an entertaining clash at the Stade Mohamed-Hamlaou.

The victory sees the Eaglets secure six points (two wins and a loss) and thus qualify for the quarter-final.

Shaky start

The final group game between fierce rivals South Africa and Nigeria kicked off with a bang as Vicky Mkhawana netted the opening goal for the Amajimbos just six minutes into the match.

Nigeria’s Golden Eaglets were quick to respond but saw Abubakar Abdullahi miss a golden opportunity from close range.

The Eaglets believed they had equalised in the 10th minute when Charles Agada found the back of the net, but the goal was disallowed due to an offside call.

The first half continued as a tense, back-and-forth battle, with Nigeria relentlessly searching for an equaliser but unable to break through South Africa’s solid defence.

In the 34th minute, the pressure finally paid off, with Charles Agada levelling the score for the Eaglets, heading the ball into the net with pinpoint accuracy.

However, just before the halftime whistle, Mabena fired South Africa back in front with a thunderous strike that rattled the crossbar before crossing the line.

Second half

Nigeria began the second half with renewed determination, and Light Eke found the equaliser within the first minute of play, finishing off a brilliant run by Agada.

The Golden Eaglets maintained the pressure on their opponents, and their efforts were rewarded in the 65th minute when Emmanuel Michael set up Abubakar Abdullahi for a clinical finish, giving Nigeria a well-deserved 3-2 lead.

Despite creating numerous chances in the remaining minutes, Nigeria could not extend their lead, either due to the South African goalkeeper’s heroics or their own lack of finishing prowess.

Nonetheless, the Golden Eaglets held on to their one-goal advantage, securing a thrilling 3-2 victory that has taken them closer to their first target of qualifying for the U-17 World Cup.

In the other Group B clash, Zambia secured a shock 2-1 win over Morocco.

 

PT

Fidelity Bank Plc, Nigeria’s best-performing bank share this year, plans to expand in at least five African countries after finalizing the acquisition of the London unit of rival Union Bank of Nigeria Plc.

The 35-year-old institution is negotiating a second purchase, Chief Executive Officer Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe said, without identifying the target. The lender expects to complete the transaction this year, she said. 

“The strategy is for us to move footprint outside Nigeria and be able to compete favorably with our peers,” Onyeali-Ikpe said in a phone interview from Lagos, the country’s commercial hub. “In the next three years, we should be able to be in six countries by doing at least two every year.”

Fidelity is racing to expand and avoid losing out on fees from facilitating trade and corresponding banking roles to larger rivals. Trade within the continent, which stands at more than $350 billion a year, is expected to grow by 52% in the next decade according to the African Trade Policy Centre at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

 

The Nigerian lender is interested in countries within west, east and southern Africa, Onyeali-Ikpe said. The company’s shares have risen 32% this year making it the nation’s best-performing bank. They rose 0.7% on Friday.

Fidelity Bank in 2022 paid about $15 million in fees to international correspondence banks that handled trade transactions for its customers, Samuel Obioha, head of investor relations said separately.  

Nigeria’s large lenders have been expanding overseas even after taking a hit from Ghana’s debt swap deal. Access Bank Plc set a target this year to expand to 26 countries by 2026 from 16, citing the need to better manage risks and diversify earnings.

The lender plans to use the 13.8 billion naira it raised in a private placement earlier this year for the acquisitions, Onyeali-Ikpe said. The bank, which expects capital adequacy ratio at 19.1% this year, will also use retained earnings to expand, she said. 

Slow economic recovery in Africa’s biggest economy after two recessions in 2016 and 2020, currency devaluations and acute dollar shortages are forcing lenders to look outside to curb their risks and widen opportunities.

Onyeali-Ikpe, who took over the role two years ago, set a target for Fidelity to become one of the country’s top five banks by 2025, in earnings and assets. It’s the country’s sixth-largest lender, with 4 trillion naira in assets.

Fidelity’s private banking customers “want to do business and acquire properties in the UK and its environs and need our support,” Onyeali-Ikpe said. “We’re expecting a lot of growth from the business opportunities, for ourselves and our customers.”             

Bloomberg