Russian supermarket under fire for selling ‘monkey Obama’ chopping board

By AFP

Obama

An upscale Russian store chain apologised on Thursday for selling chopping boards with an image of US President Barack Obama as a monkey, after the US embassy reacted furiously.

The product features a family of monkeys, with an image of Obama’s face superimposed onto that of the smallest primate.

The store chain on Thursday announced it had pulled the item from its shelves, saying it had not been aware of Obama’s image.

“Sales of the chopping boards have been stopped,” Valentina Moiseyeva, a spokeswoman for the Bakhetle supermarket chain, TASS agency reported.

“We are sorry that such product was on our store shelves. For us it is unacceptable that a store is used as a place for political provocation,” Moiseyeva said, adding that the supermarket had lodged a formal complaint against the boards’ supplier.

The board is styled as a calendar for 2016, the year of the monkey according to the Chinese zodiac.

The Bakhetle chain is based in Russia’s traditionally Muslim region of Tatarstan but has stores throughout the country.

“Disgusting to see that such blatant racism has a place on Russian store shelves,” Will Stevens, the spokesman for the US Embassy in Moscow, wrote on Twitter.

Stevens later posted a picture of the chain’s apologetic comment, adding in a tweet: “Thank you to colleagues in Bakhetle for issuing an apology… We appreciate this.”

The scandal broke out after one customer purchased the chopping board in a store in Tatarstan’s main city Kazan and took pictures that went viral.

Racist outbursts against Obama — who is often demonised and ridiculed by pro-Kremlin figures — have grown common in Russia in recent years, even from public figures.

In 2013 Irina Rodnina, a former Olympic gold medallist and now a lawmaker with majority party United Russia, posted a collage on Twitter showing Barack and Michelle Obama looking at a banana.

She deleted the image later and claimed her account had been hacked.

Reps break record, present 130 bills in one day

By Terhemba Daka, Abuja

 

Speaker House of Representatives , Yakubu Dogara PHOTO: Ladidi Lucy Elukpo.

The House of Representatives on Thursday stunned National Assembly monitors when the chamber presented a total of 130 bills at a single session presided over by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara.

Some of the 130 bills include Corporate manslaughter bill, Medical and Dental Practitioners Act (amendment) bill, Psychiatric Hospitals Management Board Act (amendment) bill, Peoples Bank of Nigeria (repeal) bill, Marketing (breast milk substitute) Act (amendment) bill, National Mathematical Centre Act (amendment) bill, National Eye Centre Act (amendment) bill, Inland Fisheries Act (amendment) bill. Public private partnership Regulatory Commission bill and Food Drugs and Related Products (registration Act (amendment) bill.

Others are Loans (State Development Act (Repeal) bill, Medical Rehabilitation Therapists (Registration Act (amendment) bill, National Programme on Immunisation Act (Repeal) bill, Pre-Shipment Inspection of Exports Act (amendment) bill, Pharmacists Council of Nigeria Act (amendment), bill, Casino Taxation Act (amendment) bill, National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure Act (amendment) bill, extradition Act (amendment) bill, Treaty to establish the African Union (Ratification and Enforcement) bill and Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Pesticide in International Trade (Ratification and Enforcement Act (amendment) bill.

It was learnt that no chamber in either Senate, the House or any state House of Assembly in the country has ever presented such number of bills at a single plenary.

Court orders detention of Dokpesi till Dec.14

By NAN

 

A Federal High Court, Abuja has again, ordered that Raymond Dokpesi be detained in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) pending ruling in his bail application on Dec. 14.

Dokpesi, the former chairman of DAAR Investment and Holdings Ltd., is standing trial on a six-count-charge bordering on money laundering and contract fraud to the tune of N2.1billion.

Justice Gabriel Kolawole gave the order for the remand of the defendant, after lawyers in the trial had argued for and against his bail application.

“The court cannot deliver ruling immediately because all the processes filed by the parties are not before the court.

“I will need time to assimilate all the facts and the authorities cited by both counsel to the prosecution and the defense,’’ he said.

Earlier, Dokpesi’s lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), had urged the court......

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Sydney police arrest teenager, man over ‘terror plans'

Police in Sydney have arrested a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old in a counter-terror operation.

They have been charged with “conspiracy to conduct an act in preparation for a terrorist act”, Federal Police said.

The arrests are linked to a plot outlined in material seized last year as part of Operation Appleby.

That operation, in September 2014, was sparked by intelligence reports that Islamist extremists were planning random killings in Australia, reports the BBC.

Then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at the time a senior Australian Islamic State militant had called for “demonstration killings”, reportedly including a public beheading.

Again, CBN suspends BDCs from dollar sales Again, CBN suspends BDCs from dollar sales

Naira slumps to 251/$ on parallel market

Just like it did last Wednesday, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) yesterday shut out Bureaux De Change (BDC) from its weekly dollar sales on the grounds that they did not comply with documentation requirements. Forex dealers said the development led to a scarcity of the greenback and the subsequent depreciation of the local currency in the parallel market. The naira fell 2 per cent to a low of N251 to the dollar from the N249 it traded at the previous day. According to dealers, the apex bank sold $30.5 million to 1,017 BDC operators, excluding around 1,801 others.

Wednesday’s sale was lower from the $84.5 million it offered two weeks ago. A Lagos-based BDC operator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the New Telegraph that the regulator sold dollars to 670 out of about 1800 based in the state. According to him, the reduced supplies of dollars to BDCs resultedin a sharp increase in demand for the United States currency and the consequent depreciation of the naira.

He said, “Although I am happy that my firm was among those that the CBN sold dollars to,but at the same time it is very hard for us to meet the high demand for dollars in the market now. Already, I have exhausted the stock of dollars that I bought and many of my customers are still calling me asking for more.”

The BDC operator said that dealers were not clear about the criteria that the CBN was using to determine firms that are eligible to buy forex and those that are not, adding that the apex bank should increase dollar supply to the market to prevent the naira from sliding further. He disclosed that travelers were currently passing through a tough time as they were finding it difficult procuring foreign exchange for Personal Travel Allowance (PTA) and Business Travel Allowance (BTA).

Reacting to the CBN’s decision not to sell dollars to BDCs that failed to submit complete documentation last week, the acting President of the Association of Bureaux De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, predicted that the naira would weaken further weaken unless the CBN relaxes its tough stance.

Financial analysts point out that most BDCs have not been able to comply with the CBN’s directive last month to include the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) of forex end users in the returns that they are required to submit to the regulator. ABCON’s boss, Gwadabe, had at a recent press briefing appealed to the CBN to increase the level of awareness on the BVN policy.

He stressed that the main challenge of implementing the BVN as a criterion for foreign exchange transactions at the BDC segment was ignorance on the part of customers. He said, “Though the BVN policy applies to both banks and BDCs, the reality is that, an individual would willingly supply his or her BVN to a bank, and be reluctant to do so to a BDC, except, he has been adequately informed that it is a CBN policy.”