EU approaves £140m for countries affected by Ebola virus!

The European Commission has announced the sum of €140m of funding for the countries currently affected by the Ebola virus in West Africa. These countries include Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria.

According to report €38 million of the new package is specifically designed to help those governments bolster their health services (for example through reinforcing treatment centres or support for health workers), both during the crisis and in the recovery phase. It will also provide support in the areas of food security, water and sanitation, which are essential in terms of safeguarding the health of the population.

Announcing the support today during his official visit to Benin, European Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs, said "The ongoing Ebola crisis remains extremely concerning; not just because of its obvious impact on health services but also due to the wider challenges it brings to the region in terms of economic stability, food security, water and sanitation. Our package shows that the EU continues to be committed to a strong, coordinated international response and will do all it can to help governments in those countries affected in the areas where it is most needed."

Kristalina Georgieva, EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, said: "The situation is going from bad to worse, despite the brave efforts of humanitarian organisations and despite early and substantial assistance provided by the international community, including the EU. We are helping make a difference on the ground, but the needs are outpacing the international community's capacity to react. We need to pool our efforts and provide adequate air transportation and medical equipment to our partners in order to fight this menace."

The total package of €140 million will be split as follows:

• €38m to strengthen healthcare systems, including in the areas of healthcare provision, food security, water and sanitation.
• €5 million towards providing mobile laboratories for the detection of the virus and training health workers (as part of the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace, or IcSP).
• €97.5 million will be spent in Budget Support (BS) operations to Liberia and Sierra Leone, to reinforce governments' capacity to deliver public services – in particular health care - and macro-economic stability.

This initiative was ran against the background fact that affected West African countries have seen a spiralling of Ebola cases reveals, among other things, the inadequacies of their current health systems. Contagion can be controlled with adequate measures and gear, but through active engagement of local and international partners. Any measures aimed at isolating these countries would only exacerbate the situation.

Several European specialist teams of the European Mobile Laboratory project for dangerous infectious diseases have been dispatched to Guinea and Nigeria (and one will arrive in Liberia next week), with mobile laboratories to support with viral haemorrhagic fever diagnostics, rapid analyses of samples and confirmation of cases.

The European Commission has been scaling up its response to the epidemic since March 2014 and has pledged a total of €11.9 million in humanitarian aid (including €8 million from the €38million mentioned above to strengthen healthcare systems). Humanitarian experts have been deployed in the region, monitoring the situation and liaising with partner organisations and local authorities.

This is the first Ebola virus outbreak registered in the region. Highly contagious, human to human transmission of Ebola occurs by contact with blood and body fluids.

The European Commission is also working closely with the EU Member States within the Health Security Committee to keep them informed about the latest developments and secure the synchronisation of measures. A travel advice leaflet has been endorsed by the Health Security Committee and is available in all EU languages.

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Congo Edge Nigeria in Five-Goal Thriller!

Congo pulled off a major upset by edging reigning champions, Nigeria 3-2 in their Group A clash on Saturday away in Calabar.

A brace from dangerman Bifouma Thievy and the other from Prince Oniangue powered the Diables Rouges to victory whilst Efe Ambrose and substitute Gbolahan Salami scored for the Super Eagles.

The Congolese led 2-1 at half time after coming from behind to cancel Ambrose’s opener on 13 minutes. Oniangue leveled three minutes later before Thievy finished off a one-two with Dore Ferebory and put the visitors in the lead on 40 minutes.

There was more misery for the Nigerians early in the second half when Thievy, who was a constant threat for the hosts backline was felled by Ogenyi Onazi in the vital area for a penalty. 

Thievy elected himself for the spot kick which he fired past Nigeria goalie Austin Ejide for his side’s third goal on 55 minutes.

With defeat staring at them, Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi brought on striking duo Emmanuel Emenike and Nosa Igiebor as he varied his tactics. The changes almost paid result on 82 minutes when Emenike back-heeled nicely to Igiebor, only for the Israeli-based forward to fire wide from close range.

A minute from time, Gbolahan pulled one back for the Super Eagles but it was little enough to change their fortunes.

The Nigerians next travel to Cape Town to face South Africa on Wednesday, 10 September 2014. South Africa thumped Niger 3-0 in the other Group A match on Friday in Omdurman.

Elsewhere in Ndola, Zambia were held to a barren draw by Mozambique in a Group F clash whilst Cape Verde silenced Niger 3-1 at their backyard in Niamey in the same group.

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Joan Rivers Revealed She Had A Heart Condition – Did It Cause Her Death?

News has it that Joan was fully open to the Good Morning America co-host in 1985 about her heart arrhythmias. The comedianne explained that every so often she would hear a “tha-thump” on stage that made her worry. 

When Joan Lunden asked if the condition scared her, she first remarked with a joke before getting serious. “Well, that I hear anything from my chest scares me because there’s nothing down there,” she joked. 

After a pause, she continued, “It scares the hell out of me.” Joan also revealed that going under for plastic surgery or something similar could cause the heart to “go out of kilter,” but she stressed that she’s always “very careful.” 

This interview definitely sheds some light on what may or may not have caused Joan’s untimely death. The New York City medical examiner’s office announced on September  5th that the Fashion Police co-host’s autopsy results were “inconclusive,” and that more tests needed to be run.

Before her death, Joan reportedly outlined exactly what she wanted for her funeral in her 2012 book,  I Hate Everyone…Starting with Me. In the book, she detailed that she wanted lights, cameras, action and Meryl Stree.   she wrote, according to E! “I want Craft services, I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way.” Joan continued, ”I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents.”I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag.” 

Well, Joan may be getting her wish. Melissa wants to make it all happen and she will have a red carpet at her funeral in New York City on September 7th, at Temple Emanu-El. 

Joan’s friends and family will walk the carpet before it is buried alongside Joan.

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Truly, she is simply Irreplaceable....R.I.P Joan.

Hulk Hogan in Lagos!

American professional wrestler, actor, television personality, entrepreneur, and musician, Terry Gene Bollea, populary known as Hulk Hogan, was spotted in Lagos Island this afternoon, as he and some other popular American Wrestlers embarked on a "Wrestling for Global Peace and Unity".

The publicity attracted many traders and shoppers, as they all thronged around the truck to get a closer look at the wrestlers.

Some Photos Below:

Gennie Rocks in Fitted Blue Denim!

Our very own Genevieve Nnaji is obviously having fun, as she shared this photo where she rocked a fitted blue denim....



Go Girl.....

Woman beheaded in North London!

A woman was reportedly found beheaded by a man witnesses says wielded a machete in a back garden on Nighttingale road in Edmonton- North London.



Confirming this incident, Scotland Yard said the suspect, a 25 year-old man has been taken into custody, they however say there is no suggestion the killing had any terrorist motives. 

The Metropolitan Police said a Fire Arm officer sustained a broken wrist from the suspect during the course of the arrest.

Estranged ex- French First Madame, Trierweiler Tells All!

Eght months after President François Hollande rode into the tabloids on the back of a bodyguard's scooter, the bedroom farce at the Elysée Palace is getting a provocative second act. 

Valerie Trierweiler, France’s erstwhile first lady, returns to the spotlight with a top-secret tell-all set to hit French bookstores en masse. 

Spoiler: she’s not happy. And her memoir’s timing couldn’t be worse for Hollande’s flailing presidency.

Flash back eight months, Paparazzi snap the 60 year-old French President, obscured under a motorcycle helmet, being dropped off in the night on a Piaggio three-wheeler at an apartment just steps from the Elysée Palace. The same bodyguard, apparently bearing croissants, returns to fetch the never-married philandering leader the next morning.

The escapade, splashed across seven pages in the tabloid weekly Closer on Jan. 10 as “The President’s Secret Love,” provided an ogling nation with headline gossip for weeks. The Presidential paramour was 42 year-old French film star Julie Gayet, confirming months of behind-the-scenes innuendo. 

Trierweiler, a journalist for the glossy weekly Paris Match, was hospitalized for a week, ostensibly under the strain of events.

On Jan. 25, in a succinct 18-word statement, Hollande, made the couple's split official. This week, Trierweiler,  matches that public affront with a statement of her own—in 320 unforgiving pages.

Paris Match devotes its cover and a 12-page spread Wednesday to Trierweiler’s Thank You for This Moment, including short, dramatic excerpts.

In one snippet, Trierweiler recounts the morning news broke of the president’s liaison. Paris Match calls it “the most horrible moment of her life.” Pursued by Hollande into the couple’s Elysée Palace bathroom, Trierweiler writes, she grabs a bagful of sleeping pills and runs into their bedroom. Hollande snatches at the bag. It rips. Pills spill across the bed and floor. “I swallow what I can,” she writes. “I want to sleep. I don’t want to live the hours to come.” Then, she says, she lost consciousness.

The shock memoir’s very existence was kept secret until Tuesday in an operation worthy of Edward Snowden. An independent Paris publishing house, Les Arènes, is said to have had a skeleton staff working on the project to thwart leaks. An exceptionally large first run of 200,000 copies was reportedly printed in Germany for the same reason. 

Le Monde reports Trierweiler drafted the manuscript “in the greatest secrecy over the course of six months, on a computer that she took care to not connect to a network.”

Even Trierweiler’s own children were kept in the dark, Olivier Royant, Trierweiler’s boss at Paris Match told French radio Wednesday. He likened the process to “a spy novel.” 

Trierweiler is pictured on the cover of her own magazine this week, under the headline “My Life with François.”

The excerpts published ahead of Thursday’s release suggest a melodramatic, navel-gazing romp. Trierweiler tells of the couple’s early “enchanted years,” the “electromagnetic field between us,” before their relationship is slowly ravaged by resentment.

Trierweiler lays out her crippling jealousy of Ségolène Royal, the mother of Hollande’s four children and a Socialist Party heavyweight in her own right. 

Hollande officially left Royal for Trierweiler in 2007, although their liaison began in 2005. Trierweiler recounts breaking down in tears, “devastated,” backstage at a 2012 presidential campaign event in Rennes, where Hollande broke a promise not to appear on stage with Royal and the crowd cheered wildly.

She tells of posting the fateful tweet that would precipitate the couple’s downfall after Hollande broke a new promise not to back Royal in June 2012 legislative elections. “I press the detonator and I am the only one responsible,” 

Trierweiler writes of the tweet, as excerpted Wednesday in Le Monde. “But the time-bomb was built by François Hollande and Ségolène Royal,” 

Trierweiler writes, painting the political pair as a House of Cards-style powerhouse constantly using one another for political gain. (Long left out of Hollande’s administration, Royal has served in his cabinet since April.)

The president grew cold, she writes. In an excerpt published by Le Monde, Trierweiler claims she “became a lightning rod for everything that happens. For every cabinet minister gaffe, for every factory closing, I felt the aftershock.” She says Hollande proposed marriage in September 2012, only to withdraw his proposal a month later. After their break-up, she expresses disappointment that Hollande’s interior and finance ministers don’t call her up in sympathy.

Since France’s first couple met its spectacularly public end, the president has become desperate to get back together, Trierweiler snipes, his desperation growing the more his approval ratings fell. She claims Hollande has bombarded her with text messages, as many as 29 a day.

“Does he believe what he writes?” she asks. “Or am I the last whim of a man who can’t stand to lose? He tells me he will win me back, as if I were an election.”

The book’s surprise release is in itself a setback for Hollande. Under fire politically from all quarters, the perilously unpopular Socialist president tried to stop the bleeding with a cabinet shuffle last week, further angering leftists who charge his government is shifting rightward. With unemployment at a record high and the economy stagnant, a new public jaunt through Hollande’s bedroom is yet another frivolous distraction.

Still, a generous reading—presuming there are any voters feeling generous about a president whose approval ratings have dipped into the teens—might dismiss many of Trierweiler’s sideswipes as commonplace sour grapes. 

Queried for comment on French television Wednesday, a Hollande ally, Socialist Speaker of the House Claude Bartolone, responded, “Do you know of any break-ups that go well? Everyone has their own suffering and their little story, but not everybody has the possibility of writing a book.”

But Trierweiler’s parting shot might do its most lasting damage with one devastating characterization of Hollande, questioning his Socialist chops.

Raised in rent-controlled social housing, Trierweiler was the fifth child of six. Her father was a war amputee on benefits; her mother a cashier at a skating rink. In Thank You For This Moment, she alleges Hollande mocked her modest roots and suggests that, privately, he ridicules the poor as unwashed masses. “He presented himself as the man who doesn’t like the rich. In reality, the president doesn’t like the poor,” she writes. “This man, the man of the left, says in private ‘the toothless,’ proud of his quip.”

If Trierweiler can make that evocative image stick, she’ll have done more damage to Hollande’s image in France than so many love-nest scooter rides.

In her new book, as she describes her relationship disintegrating within the confines of Elysée Palace, Trierweiler complains, “How many times did I have to ask [Hollande’s security] to give us a bit of space when we walked together?” But between that one devastating tweet and this poison pen, perhaps the bodyguard was on to something.

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