Swansea – Access to solar panels and a home battery has reduced energy bill worries for Nikita Harris on one of Europe’s largest green retrofit projects.

“Where I used to worry going to bed, I don’t have to worry now,” said Nikita, 26, whose home in Swansea now runs partially on a battery.

Some 644 properties are being connected to a unique energy-sharing scheme, social housing provider Pobl said.

Housing Minister Julie James has called the scheme “transformational”.

Power from linked solar panels on roofs across the Penderi estate is used to charge batteries in homes.

Nikita’s battery is fitted to a wall just inside the entrance of her terraced property.

By limiting the use of her big appliances to when the sun is up, the mother-of-two said she had cut her electricity bills significantly.

“I used to spend £20 a week on my electric,” she said, “now with the solar panels and battery I’m putting in £10 a week.

“By having the battery in my home… I feel calmer,” she said, explaining how sad she is for other people faced with having to limit their electricity use.

With energy storage and smart energy management technology now installed in 200 homes, Pobl said the estate had already started to cut the amount of power being drawn from the national grid.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Swansea estate cuts bills by generating energy
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The Nigerian technology firm Online Integrated Solutions (OIS), founded by Mr. Mahmood Ahmadu opened its newest office in Cairo, Egypt, to facilitate important administrative tasks relating to visa and passport applications, Bank Verification Number (BVN), and national identity enrolment services for Nigerians living in Egypt and the neighbouring Arab countries.

The Centre was opened as part of activities of the Nigeria–Egypt Trade Conference and Exhibition organised by the newly formed Nigeria Egypt Cultural & Socio-Economic Forum (NECSEF), which took place in Cairo, Egypt, on the 10th – 12th October 2022.

The office was formally opened by Nigeria’s Minister of State for Works and Housing, Umar Ibrahim El-Yakub and Senator Zaki Abas of the Egyptian Parliament and Ambassador Nura Rimi, the Nigerian Ambassador to Egypt, alongside many other dignitaries.  

The new building is situated at 51 Michel Bakom Street Dokki, Cairo, and serves as the Secretariat of the Nigeria-Egypt Cultural and Socio-Economic Forum (NECSEF), co-locates OIS, which provides services for Nigerian Foreign missions and Nigerians in the Diaspora.

Mr. Mahmood Ahmadu, who is also the chairman of NECSEF, explained that the building is an important symbol in promoting Nigeria-Egypt economic and business relations.

He said with the presence of OIS in Egypt, Nigerians in the country can now enroll and obtain BVN and National Identity Number (NIN) without having to travel to Nigeria.

The firm, he said, also provides administrative and payment support for Nigeria passport applications.

According to the founder of the leading software solutions provider, established in 2012, the company also supports and facilitates a wide range of online applications across 34 major cities around the world.

Read Also – Mahmood Ahmadu and Robert Jreissati Signs MOU to Boost Trade Opportunities Between Nigeria and Poland

‘‘Our services also include the provision of biometric visa administrative services, financial services, bank verification number, account opening services (for Nigerian banks), national ID biometric capture, and medical tourism,’’ he said.

On NECSEF, Ahmadu explained that it is a model business association devoted to promoting successful economic relations and business relationships between Nigeria and Egypt.

He said that the Forum aims to promote its members in Nigeria and Egypt and facilitates the establishment of mutually beneficial partnerships between Nigerian and Egyptian businesses.

According to Ahmadu, the objectives of the Forum is to organize conferences, lectures, seminars, exhibitions, and other business activities while also encouraging economic development and trade relations between citizens living in both countries.

High-level Egyptian business executives and officials were also present at the inauguration of the building.

Source – https://www.vanguardngr.com/

<strong>Nigerian tech company OIS opens latest offices in Cairo to offer Visa, Passport, BVN, NIN services in Egypt.</strong>
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Facebook-owned WhatsApp, a messaging service used by billions of people around the world, isn’t as private as Facebook says it is.

The service touts privacy at its core, and Facebook says it can’t read messages sent between users. But Facebook is reportedly paying teams of contractors around the world to read through WhatsApp messages and moderate the content therein — reading and moderating their supposedly private messages.

As a new ProPublica investigation highlights, Facebook employs, “more than 1,000 contract workers filling floors of office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin and Singapore, where they examine millions of pieces of users’ content.” 

Those contractors, which Facebook acknowledges, reportedly spend their days sifting through content that WhatsApp users and the service’s own algorithms flag.

A Facebook representative told Insider that it allows users to report abuse, and those reports are then reviewed by contractors. When a user reports abuse, WhatsApp moderators are sent “the most recent messages sent to you by the reported user or group,” according to WhatsApp’s FAQ.

Read Also – Mahmood Ahmadu Wins Big in Forbes 2021 Awards

Facebook is still unable to listen to personal calls or read messages sent through WhatsApp, according to Facebook, due to the service’s use of encryption.

WhatsApp is founded on so-called “end-to-end” encryption, which means that messages are scrambled before being sent and only unscrambled when they’re received by the intended user. But when a user reports abuse, unencrypted versions of the message are sent to WhatsApp’s moderation contractors, ProPublica reports.

“Every day WhatsApp protects over 100 billion messages with end-to-end encryption to help people communicate safely. We’ve built our service in a manner that limits the data we collect while providing us the ability to prevent spam, investigate threats, and ban those engaged in the worst kind of abuse,” a WhatsApp spokesperson at Facebook said in a statement sent to Insider. “We value our trust and safety team who work tirelessly to provide over two billion users with the ability to communicate privately.” 

Facebook has owned WhatsApp since 2014, when the social media giant purchased the then-nascent messaging app for $19 billion.

Source – https://www.businessinsider.com/

Facebook reads WhatsApp messages, an investigation found
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Breast Cancer – A twice-daily pill can dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence in women who are genetically prone to the disease, researchers report.

The pill — olaparib (Lynparza) — works by blocking a natural enzyme called PARP that normally fixes DNA damage in healthy cells, but in these women actually promotes the growth of cancerous cells.

Early high-risk breast cancer patients taking olaparib for a year had a 42% reduced risk of cancer recurrence or death compared to those given a placebo, said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Tutt, director of the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

“Patients who received olaparib after surgery and chemotherapy were more likely to be alive without cancer and avoid metastasis than the patients who received placebo,” he said.

These results were presented Thursday at an online meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Findings presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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Olaparib already is approved to treat patients with metastatic breast cancer who have mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. These genes typically suppress cancer, but mutations actually increase cancer risk for some people.

About 5% of breast cancers are associated with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, Tutt noted.

Breast cancers that occur due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations rely on the PARP enzyme to remain alive, grow and divide. Drugs called PARP inhibitors take advantage of this fact to block the enzyme and prevent the cancer from coming back.

In this clinical trial, more than 1,800 patients with stage 2 to 3 breast cancers treated with surgery and chemotherapy were randomly assigned to take either 300 milligrams of olaparib or a placebo twice a day for a year.

Patients on olaparib had a three-year invasive disease-free survival rate — no recurring breast cancer or other new cancers — of about 86%, compared with 77% for those taking a placebo, the findings showed.

Source – https://www.newsmax.com/

Breast Cancer – Drug Helps Fight Early-Stage
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Radiation Drugs – Doctors are reporting improved survival in men with advanced prostate cancer from an experimental drug that delivers radiation directly to tumor cells.

Few such drugs are approved now, but the approach may become a new way to treat patients with other hard-to-reach or inoperable cancers.

The study tested an emerging class of medicine called radiopharmaceuticals, drugs that deliver radiation directly to cancer cells. The drug in this case is a molecule that contains two parts: a tracker and a cancer-killing payload.

Trillions of these molecules hunt down cancer cells, latching onto protein receptors on the cell membrane. The payload emits radiation, which hits the tumor cells within its range.

“You can treat tumors that you cannot see. Anywhere the drug can go, the drug can reach tumor cells,” said Dr. Frank Lin, who had no role in the study but heads a division at the National Cancer Institute that helps develop such medicine.

Results were released Thursday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology ahead of its annual meeting this weekend. The study was funded by Novartis, the drug’s maker, which plans to seek approvals in the United States and Europe later this year.

Read Also – Mahmood Ahmadu Bags EuroKnowledge Award

When cancer is confined to the prostate, radiation can be beamed onto the body or implanted in pellets.

But those methods don’t work well in more advanced prostate cancer. About 43,000 men in the United States each year are diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread and is no longer responding to hormone-blocking treatment.

The study tested a new way to get radiation treatment to such patients.

It involved 831 men with advanced prostate cancer. Two-thirds were given the radiation drug and the rest served as a comparison group. Patients got the drug through an IV every six weeks, up to six times.

Source – https://www.newsmax.com/

Radiation Drugs Track and Kill Cancer Cells
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China has successfully launched the first building block of its upcoming space station into low Earth orbit in its attempt to rival the ISS. 

The 22-tonne module, named ‘Tianhe’, or ‘Harmony of the Heavens’, will become living quarters for three crew on its upcoming Chinese Space Station.  

China aims to complete its Chinese Space Station by the end of 2022, state media reported, after several further modules are launched.  

Tianhe was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre on the southern island of Hainan, China on the Long March 5B, China’s largest carrier rocket, at 11:23 am on Thursday (04:23 BST). 

‘[Tianhe] is an important pilot project in the building of a powerful nation in both technology and in space,’ state media quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping as saying in a congratulatory speech. 

Tianhe is one of three main components of what would be China’s first self-developed space station, rivalling the ISS (the International Space Station), which is the only other station in service. 

It will form the main living quarters for three crew members in the Chinese Space Station, which will have a life span of at least 10 years. 

The Tianhe launch was the first of 11 missions needed to complete the space station, which will orbit Earth at an altitude of 340 to 450 km (211 to 280 miles).    

Chinese Space Station, or Tiangong Space Station as it’s also known, is expected to have a mass between 180,000 and 220,000 pounds (80 and 100 metric tonnes) – roughly one-fifth the mass of the ISS, which is 925,335 pounds.   

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In later missions planned for 2021 and 2022, China will launch the two other core modules, four manned spacecraft and four cargo spacecraft.

Work on the space station programme began a decade ago with the launch of a space lab Tiangong-1 in 2011, and later, Tiangong-2 in 2016.

Both helped China test the programme’s space rendezvous and docking capabilities.

China aims to become a major space power by 2030 to keep up with rivals, including the US, Russia and the European Space Agency, and create the most advanced space station orbiting Earth.  

Source – https://www.dailymail.co.uk/

China launches the core module of space station ‘Heavenly Palace’
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Covid – 345 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday as new cases continued to fall. Over the past week there have been 2,496 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test giving a UK total of 122,415.

Deaths have plummeted 31.3 per cent compared to the previous week in a sign that the vaccine rollout and lockdown measures are working.

Government figures also show that 8,523 people had a confirmed positive test on Friday.

However, the UK coronavirus reproduction rate remains unchanged from last week at between 0.6 and 0.9, according to health officials.

It suggests that the country’s Covid-19 outbreak is still shrinking, but at a slower speed than before following a month of weekly decline. 

People aged 40-49 are next in line for a Covid-19 vaccine after Government advisers concluded that vaccinating on the basis of age remained the quickest way to cut deaths.

The number of people who have had a least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine is 19,177,555.

The figures came as the Queen spoke publicly for the first time about getting her Covid-19 jab, saying, “It didn’t hurt at all.”

The 94-year-old monarch told health leaders that she had felt “protected” since getting her first dose in January, and described speed of the national rollout as “remarkable”. 

Addressing vaccine hesitancy, she added: “It is obviously difficult for people if they’ve never had a vaccine…but they ought to think about other people rather than themselves.”

Read Also – Mahmood Ahmadu Shares Lessons Learnt in 2020

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it will be hard for society to open up and “be comfortable” without a vaccine passport system in place.

He said: “I think you are going to find that venues where large numbers of people are going to congregate close to each other, people will want to have some rules around it and I think other people will feel more comfortable if they know there has been at least some requirement, even if it isn’t someone’s been vaccinated, that they have at least been tested before they go.

“Otherwise I think it is hard to see how people have the confidence to go back to life as normal.

“Life as normal is not just about government saying, ‘We allow you to do this’. It is also about people feeling safe to do it – that’s the balance.”

Source – https://www.standard.co.uk/

Covid deaths plunge by a third
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Covid – Boxing Day sales are expected to plummet after Covid-19 restrictions meant shops in many areas were forced to stay closed.

By midday, footfall was down 60% across the UK compared with last year, according to experts Springboard.

Stricter measures have been introduced in much of the UK with 40% of England’s population now under tier four rules, meaning non-essential shops must shut.

Analysts said footfall had dropped even where other retailers could open.

National lockdowns in Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as most of mainland Scotland being placed into its own level four restrictions, meant non-essential stores are forced to be closed on what is traditionally a big day in the retail calendar.

Footfall in tier four regions of England fell by 77.3% compared with last year, and even in tier two and three areas where shops are open, footfall was down by 38.2% and 42.4% respectively, according to Springboard, which analyses customer activity in stores.

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An estimated £2.7bn will be spent by UK shoppers by the end of 26 December, with each consumer planning to spend an average of £162 online, according to research from Barclaycard, down from last year’s projection of spending an average of £186 each and a total of £3.7bn.

Jace Tyrrell, chief executive of the New West End Company which represents 600 retail and leisure businesses in the capital, described the scenes as “heartbreaking”, with the London district empty on Boxing Day for the first time since 1871.

Mr Tyrrell said the days around Christmas are usually “the key golden period” for sales but tier four restrictions have had a “huge impact”.

He said coronavirus had cost the West End 80% of its usual year-on-year sales, with £2bn forecast to be lost during the Christmas period.

Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said while the losses from reduced footfall will be offset a little by virtual “comfort-buying”, for the majority of retailers “the sales they get online are much smaller than what they get in-store”.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Covid – Boxing Day sales expected to plummet amid pandemic
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UK government’s long-awaited test to release scheme, designed to allow travellers to cut quarantine, was embroiled in chaos on its first day of operation after the last-minute publication of 11 private providers, most of whom appeared unable to offer the service on Tuesday morning.

Airports, many of which have had testing centers in place for weeks or months, were perplexed at being left off the Department for Transport’s approved list, as they reported a surge in bookings in the run-up to the festive season.

Meanwhile, approved providers advised travellers that tests would have to be posted and results given within 48 hours of receipt – likely cutting the period of self-isolation from 10 days to eight, rather than the five days the scheme promised.

The DfT was understood to be attempting to speed through approval of airport testing centres on Tuesday to rectify the lack of availability.

One airport source said: “The rapid test is not yet approved, but would cut self-isolation to five days – that’s what we hoped would be the situation from today. Unfortunately, the government hasn’t even managed to get a list who could do it in eight days. Given the small numbers of passengers travelling now, you’ve got to question the procurement.”

Among the 11 companies published at 7.11pm on the eve of the scheme, Same Day Doctor said it had been overwhelmed and could no longer take bookings or respond to emails. Another, Halo Verify, said test kits were out of stock. Some other providers’ websites appeared to have crashed on Tuesday.

Read Also – Covid: ‘Rash’ Christmas rules ‘will cost many live

The test to release scheme was first announced by the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, in October, when a taskforce was set up to address the concerns of the travel industry and attempt to cut the then 14-day quarantine period.

Michael Smith, a UK citizen residing in the Netherlands, arrived in England on Monday via Eurotunnel after testing negative two days earlier, hoping to take advantage of the new regime to visit his mother, who has dementia.

Instead, he found himself waiting to discover the identity of approved providers – and then unable to book a test after contacting them all.

“It looks like a fiasco,” Smith said. “I’m stuck in a Travelodge near London. I thought five days, and I’ll be out. But of these providers, most are not ready, and they are all by post – it’s going to be almost 10 days anyway.”

Source – https://www.theguardian.com/

UK government’s Covid scheme for travellers gets off to chaotic start
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Covid – The plan to ease Covid rules over Christmas in the UK is a “rash decision” that will “cost many lives”, two leading medical journals have said.

The Health Service Journal and British Medical Journal said people might see the lifting of restrictions “as permission to drop their guard”.

Cabinet minister Michael Gove will call officials in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to discuss the issue later.

Labour has called on ministers to hold an emergency review of the plans.

No 10 said the rules were “under constant review” but it still intended to allow families to meet up.

The prime minister’s spokesman said the government had been clear that people needed to “remain cautious and vigilant” during the five days of relaxed rules from 23 to 27 December.

The BBC’s Nick Eardley said one possible change being discussed was a limit on how far people can travel, but he stressed that no decisions had been taken.

It comes as millions of people in London and parts of Hertfordshire and Essex prepare to move into England’s toughest tier of coronavirus rules at 00:01 GMT on Wednesday.

In a joint editorial criticizing the UK’s Christmas rules, the editors of HSJ and BMJ wrote: “We believe the government is about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives.

“If our political leaders fail to take swift and decisive action, they can no longer claim to be ‘protecting the NHS’.”

They stressed that demand on the NHS was increasing, and added that a new strain of coronavirus “has introduced further potential jeopardy”.

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Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to convene an emergency Cobra meeting to review the Christmas rules.

In a letter, he acknowledged that people “want to spend time with their families after this awful year”, but said “the situation has clearly taken a turn for the worse since the decision about Christmas was taken”.

At the end of November, the leaders of the four UK nations agreed to allow some covid rules to be temporarily relaxed over the festive period.

Travel restrictions will be eased to allow up to three households to form a bubble and stay overnight at each other’s homes.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Covid: ‘Rash’ Christmas rules ‘will cost many live
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