Nigeria expects to get its first batch of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this month as part of its plan to inoculate 40% of the population this year and a further 30% next year, the head of the country’s primary healthcare agency, Faisal Shuaib, has said.

The first batch would contain 100,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, obtained through the global vaccine-sharing scheme known as Covax.

Nigeria will first inoculate frontline health workers, first responders, national leaders, people vulnerable to coronavirus and the elderly, Mr Shuaib said.

The country hopes to get 42 million vaccines to cover one-fifth of its population through the scheme, Mr Shuaib added.

The World Health Organization set up the Covax scheme to help poorer countries obtain Covid-19 vaccines amid widespread concerns that wealthier nations would snap them up.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said last week that the country expected to get vaccines through Covax scheme by the second quarter of 2021, following the initial payment of 283 million rand ($19.3; £14.1m).

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize subsequently said that the government was also in talks with private pharmaceutical companies to obtain vaccines by next month.

South Africa’s government has been under intense pressure to roll out an inoculation programme following the discovery of a faster spreading variant of the virus.

South Africa has recorded more than 1.1 million Covid-19 cases, the highest in Africa.

Nigeria has so far recorded close to 100,000 cases. More than 1,200 new cases were recorded on Monday, its highest ever.

Nigeria has a population of abut 200 million, the biggest in Africa.

Author Eric Jerome Dickey, whose novels of romance, mystery and adventure were best-selling page-turners over more than 20 years, has died aged 59.

The US writer wrote 30 novels about breathless relationships and thrilling adventures involving young African American characters.

They included Friends & Lovers, Milk In My Coffee, Cheaters and Finding Gideon.

He also wrote a series of Marvel comics about a love story between Storm from the X-Men and the Black Panther.

“His work has become a cultural touchstone over the course of his multi-decade writing career, earning him millions of dedicated readers around the world,” his publicist Becky Odell told USA Today in a statement.

Writer Roxane Gay was among those paying tribute, describing him as “a great storyteller”

RIP Eric Jerome.

The 2021 Grammy Awards has been postponed due to coronavirus concerns, say the organisers.

The ceremony, one of the music industry’s biggest awards, was due to take place on 31 January.

The event will now take place on 14 March, due to rising infection numbers in Los Angeles and the state of California.

Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa led the nominations for this years awards, which were announced in November.

“Nothing is more important than the health and safety of those in our music community and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly on producing the show,” said a statement from the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammys.

It is unclear whether comedian Trevor Noah, who was set to host the show, will still take part in this year’s ceremony.

The Grammys’ new date clashes with the previously-announced Screen Actors’ Guild awards. The actors union said it was “extremely disappointed” by the scheduling conflict.

“We announced the same date for the SAG Awards last July with the intent to give the greatest possible scheduling consideration for other awards shows,” it said in a statement. “We expect the same consideration from sister organizations throughout the industry.”

It said it was in conversation with the Recording Academy in an attempt to resolve the situation.

This year’s Grammys were already due to be a virtual event, in line with other recent award shows, such as the MTV VMAs and the Billboard Awards.

Other major ceremonies, including the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the Brit Awards have already been postponed.

Lovers of the music industry’s biggest award will exercise patience till March.

Justice Lateefat Okunnu of the Lagos High Court sitting in Igbosere yesterday convicted and sentenced a former Managing Director of the defunct Finbank Plc, Okey Nwosu, to three years imprisonment.

Justice Okunnu handed down the sentence after she found Nwosu and three other directors of the bank guilty of stealing over N18 billion from Finbank Plc, now First City Monument Bank (FCMB).

Nwosu was convicted alongside three former directors of the defunct bank, Dayo Famoroti, Danjuma Ocholi and Agnes Ebubedike.

The convicts were first arraigned in 2013 on 26 counts of stealing and illegal conversion to the tune of N10,934,704,402 before Justice Okunnu, but the Court of Appeal had on November 21, 2013, quashed the charges pressed against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and set them free.

The EFCC, however, appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the appeal and ordered Nwosu and others to return to the high court for trial.

Delivering her judgment on Tuesday, Justice Okunnu sentenced Nwosu and Famoroti to three years’ imprisonment and ordered them to make a refund.

The judge also sentenced Ocholi to 12 months’ imprisonment, while Ebubedike was sentenced to six months’ community service.

The former head of China’s state-owned Huarong Asset Management company was sentenced to death Tuesday for bribe-taking, in one of the harshest punishments for economic crimes in recent years.

Lai Xiaomin, 58, was also found guilty by the Second Intermediate People’s Court of Tianjin of lesser charges including corruption and bigamy.

Life sentences and suspended death sentences commuted to life after two years are frequently handed down in corruption cases, but death sentences without the chance of reprieve have become rare in recent years.

Such sentences are automatically appealed to China’s highest court.

Lai was placed under investigation by the ruling Communist Party’s corruption watchdog in 2018 and expelled from the party later the same year.

In its ruling, the Tianjin court cited the “especially enormous” size of the bribes Lai accepted, saying they exceeded 600 million yuan ($93 million) in one instance.

In total, it said Lai collected or sought to collect 1.79 billion yuan (US$260 million) over a decade in exchange for abusing his position to make investments, offer construction contracts, help with promotions and provide other favours.

He was also convicted of embezzling more than 25 million yuan (almost $4 million) in state assets and starting a second family while still married to his first wife.

Although Lai provided useful details about malfeasance by his subordinates, the seriousness of his bribe taking and “degree of harm caused to society” were not enough to win him leniency, the court said in its ruling.

“Lai Xiaomin is lawless and greedy in the extreme,” the ruling said. “His crimes are extremely serious and must be punished severely under law.”

Huarong is one of four entities created in the 1990s to buy non-performing loans from banks, helping to revive the state-owned finance industry. Such asset management companies expanded into banking, insurance, real estate finance and other fields.

Lai was accused of squandering public money, illegally organising banquets, engaging in sexual dealings with multiple women and taking bribes, the anti-corruption agency said in 2018.

Investigators seized hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of millions of dollars) in cash from Lai’s properties, the Chinese business news magazine Caixin reported in 2018.

Lai was one of hundreds of officials at government agencies, state companies and the military who have been detained in an anti-corruption crackdown launched in 2012

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, has approved over 50 per cent hike in electricity tariff payable by customers of the 11 Distribution Companies, DisCos.

This is coming just two months after it finally implemented a much opposed hike in November 2020.

According to a revised Multi Year Tariff Order (MYTO) signed by the new Chairman of NERC, Engr. Sanusi Garba, on December 30, 2020, and sighted Tuesday, the new tariff increase took effect on January 1, 2021, and supersedes the previous Order NERC/2028/2020.

In the new Order NERC/225/2020, the commission said it considered the 14.9% inflation rate rise in November 2020, foreign exchange of N379.4/$1 as of December 29, 2020, available generation capacity, US inflation rate of 1.22% and the Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) of the power firms to raise the tariff.

The revised Service Based Tariff (SBT) also saw increase in the rates payable by all classes of electricity users unlike the one of November 2020, that exempted low power getters.

This is effective till June 2021 while a Cost Reflective Tariff (CRT) expected to raise the new cost higher will be activated from June to December 2021, the NERC Order revealed.

Daily Trust had reported that in December, 2020, NERC notified that it had begun a review for another tariff, which has been completed and had taken effect from January 1, 2021.

NERC had raised tariff for the DisCos in September but that drew outrages from customers and the organised labour, prompting the federal government to suspend it while parties dialogued.

By November 1, 2020, the suspended tariff was implemented after some discounts were given for customers who get 12 hours and above power supply daily.

However, those with less than 12 hour supply did not get a tariff hike, according to the NERC order of November 2020.

Japan’s top-ranked sumo wrestler Hakuho has tested positive for coronavirus.

The Mongolian-born grand champion took a Covid-19 test after losing his sense of smell, the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) said.

The news comes as Japan considers declaring a state of emergency in and around Tokyo, where virus cases have surged.

It has imposed relatively relaxed restrictions so far, with a more contained outbreak than some countries.

Activities like sumo wrestling have continued despite the pandemic, but cases have emerged in the sport too. In May, a 28-year-old Japanese sumo wrestler died from organ failure caused by the virus.

Hakuho – the longest-serving yokozuna or top-ranked wrestler in Japan – had been preparing for the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament, due to start in Tokyo on Sunday.

He will now seek the advice of specialists while the other wrestlers in his stable will also be tested, JSA said.

Also on Tuesday, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said that a state of emergency declaration for Tokyo and the surrounding area would be decided on Thursday, according to local media reports.

Japan has recorded nearly 249,000 coronavirus cases and more than 3,500 deaths since the start of the pandemic. While the figures are vastly lower than countries like the UK and US, the Japanese government has been concerned by what it has described as a “very severe” third wave of infections.

South Korea is trying to secure the release of a tanker seized by Iran.

The MT Hankuk Chemi was seized by Iranian forces near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, and its crew of 20 detained. Iran said the ship had violated environmental rules.

The incident comes amid tensions over Iranian funds frozen in South Korean banks because of US sanctions.

A senior South Korean official was due in Iran in the coming days to discuss the issue.

But an official told Reuters news agency that “the plan is unclear” as to whether Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun’s visit would still go ahead.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told reporters that South Korea was making diplomatic efforts to try to secure the release of the tanker and its crew, which includes sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam.

“We have been trying to figure out what happened through the Iranian Embassy in South Korea and the South Korean Embassy in Iran and continuing to make efforts to address this situation,” she said, according to Yonhap news agency.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry on Tuesday said it had dispatched its anti-piracy unit to waters near the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping route in the Gulf region, to “ensure the safety” of South Korean nationals.

In a statement, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said the chemical tanker’s seizure was over a “purely technical issue and due to polluting the sea”.

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