China's top infectious disease control official said his comments on the effectiveness of his country's vaccines over the weekend were misinterpreted.
The director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said it was a "complete misunderstanding'' that he had said Chinese vaccines offer a low level of protection, in comments to state newspaper the Global Times on Monday.
He had been presenting a "scientific vision'' that adapting vaccine sequences or administering different jabs on after the other could also be options for increasing protection, he said.
"The protection rates of all vaccines in the world are sometimes high, and sometimes low. How to improve their efficacy is a question that needs to be considered by scientists around the world,'' Gao said.
Gao Fu was talking at a conference in Chengdu on Saturday on the topic of how to solve the insufficient protection of current vaccines, Chinese news outlet Pengpai Xinwen (The Paper) reported.
"It is also necessary to consider ways to address the low protection rate of existing vaccines,'' he was cited as saying.
His comments prompted a reaction because there is far less data available on Chinese vaccines than those being produced in many other countries.
Critics have complained of a lack of transparency when it comes to Chinese jabs, which have not been authorized in many European nations.
Data from the third phase of clinical studies was particularly sought after.
Because China has the Coronavirus pandemic largely under control and was reporting hardly any local infections, studies so far have only been published from other countries where vaccines were being used.
The National Primary Health Care Development Agency, NPHCDA, on Friday disclosed that 52 Nigerians have experienced moderate to severe reactions after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, NPHCDA, Dr. Faisal Shuaib disclosed this at a news conference in Abuja.
He also said 8,439 Nigerians experienced mild Adverse events following immunization (AEFI) after taking the vaccine.
Shuaib stated that the 52 Nigerians that experienced moderate to severe reactions to the vaccine were brought down with fever, vomiting, diarrhea headaches, dizziness and allergic reactions
“In Nigeria, since the vaccination program was officially rolled out on 15th of April 2021, a total of 8,439 mild Adverse events following immunization (AEFI) have been reported. These range from pain, swelling at the site of the inoculation, to body pains and nausea.
“Similarly, 52 cases of moderate to severe incidents of AEFI have been reported. These presented as fever, vomiting, diarrhea headaches, dizziness and allergic reactions.
“Five states have the highest records of the AEFI namely: Kaduna (970) Cross River (859), Yobe (541), Kebbi (511), and Lagos (448),” he disclosed.
According to Shuaib, as of today, April 16th, 1,071,346, representing 53.2% of the eligible persons targeted with the AstraZeneca vaccine had been administered their first dose in this vaccination phase.
He said the data were based on reports received from states through the Electronic Management of Immunization Data (EMID) system only and did not take into account vaccinations that were not yet captured in the system.
“What this number means is that these are the people who have their information already uploaded on our data base, while others are awaiting upload, potentially due to network problems and the high traffic of those coming in to take their shots at the same time.
“While we continue to optimize our registration and immunization data system, we also encourage the state teams to deploy the most suitable internet service for their locations in order to speed up the data entry process, so that we can have the actual number of vaccinated people at any given time,” he said.
Shuaib added that in many states, the inoculation of frontline health workers had been completed and that they had begun offering vaccination to the elderly, particularly those that were 65 years and above.
“We are glad to be able to progress quickly offer immunization to more members of the community.
“Our rollout has been marked by safety, efficiency, best practice, and speed. The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and its development partners, have a platform of Senior Supervisors that engage in daily evening review meetings to determine the status of the COVID-19 vaccine implementation in all States & the FCT.”
The National Leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, has called for unity and decisiveness to tackle the unabated farmer-herders’ crisis in the country.
Tinubu said in a statement on Saturday that the herder-farmer dispute had taken an acute and violent dimensions and had cost too many innocent lives while destroying the property and livelihoods of many others.
According to him, “as vital as security is to the resolution of this matter, the nation must realise security measures alone will not suffice.”
He said that enhanced security might be the necessary first step, but it could not be the only step.
“This matter is not ethnic in factual origin or actual causation although in the minds and hearts of too many it has become ethnic in recrimination and impulsive action.
“There have been sporadic disputes in the past but this one is more severe. The reasons for the greater violence of this current dispute are myriad, “Tinubu said.
According to him, farmers have a right to farm their land unmolested and herders have a right to raise their livestock without undue interference.
He, however, explained that when conflict between these groups arises to such an extent, the nation must set forth clear principles and policies to remove the tension, in order to allow both to proceed toward their stated goals, to live in harmony and according to their respective rights.
“To destroy the crops or seize the property of the innocent farmer or herder is nothing if not an act of criminality,” he said.
Tinubu noted that unoccupied public land could be fenced into grazing areas or ranches and leased to herders on a very low-cost, nominal basis.
He said the leasing was not intended to penalise herders, rather the nominal fee should be intended to ensure the herders were invested in the project and incentivized to use the land provided.
Tinubu said this aspect would also mitigate any resentment over herders being given land for free.
He urged the government to also assist farmers increase productivity by providing subvention for their acquisition of fertilizer, equipment and machinery.
He said this could be done by establishing commodity boards to guarantee minimum prices for important crops.
Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja has been awarded the Airport Services Quality Award 2020 as judged by their customers as the Best Airport by Size and Region (five million to 15 million passengers per year in Africa). This is coming barely two weeks after receipt of the accreditation of the Airport Council International (ACI) health accreditation certificate tothe Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja,the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, and the Port-Harcourt International Airport, the Abuja airport has again been given recognition for its quality service.
This time, it is for providing a superior customer experience despite the difficult circumstances occasioned by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A letter sighted by AirInsightfrom the office of the Director-General of ACI, dated Feb. 15, 2021, and directed to Capt. Rabiu Yadudu, the Managing Director, Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) said that the airport was bestowed with the award based on the recommendations by users of the facilities, especially the passengers. “During this most difficult and challenging of years, your customers have spoken and recognised the successful efforts of your team in providing a superior customer experience under trying circumstances.”
ACI also said that Amadeus, the global travel technology company, which it recently renewed its partnership with would deliver the ASQ Awards to the agency. It said that Amadeus supports airports in improving travel experiences for passengers all over the world and its continuing strategic partnership came at a time when it had never been more important for airports to listen to the voice of customers.
A spokeswoman for FAAN, Mrs. Henrietta Yakubu said the award represents the FAAN’s commitment to continuously improving customer experience across all our airports. “The recognition comes at a time when we are geared towards ensuring seamless airport facilitation with the opening of new terminals and upgrading of our current infrastructures across the board. Despite a turbulent year plagued by COVID-19 induced financial struggles, the authority has endeavored to prioritize customer satisfaction while ensuring that health and safety remain topmost. FAAN MD/CEO Captain Rabiu Yadudu accepted the award on behalf of the Authority and restated FAAN’s commitment to ensuring the safety, security, and comfort of passengers at all airports across the country,” she added.
It would be recalled that in the penultimate week, the Abuja, Port-Harcourt, and Lagos airports were accredited by ACI on its health accredited programme, after it said the airports satisfied the safe airport environment requirements as set by ACI. This, it said, was in line with the ACI Aviation Business Restart and Recovery guidelines and the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council Aviation Restart Task Force recommendations along with industry best practices.
“The Abuja Airport is judged by their customers as the Best Airport by Size and Region (5 to 15 million passengers per year in Africa)”. Yakubu also described the feat as huge and underscored the organisation’s relentlessness amid the difficult year occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic which led to financial struggle by the authority.
SpaceX's internet connectivity service has started shipping out equipment to beta testers.....
Over the weekend, participants in the "Better Than Nothing" beta test shared photos and videos of the setup box. The package is designed to get the early testers connected to SpaceX's growing collection of satellites, which will offer high speed and low latency internet access to people living in remote and underserved areas. Included in the package is a ground terminal, router, and other components to get connected.
"The router looks so clean and beautiful," wrote a Reddit user called "bigskyreleaf," who shared a photo of the new box. While many internet providers offer bland, curved wifi routers, SpaceX appears to be going for a distinctly angular white and silver design.
It bears more than a passing resemblance to the upcoming Tesla Cybertruck electric pickup truck – both firms are run by CEO Elon Musk.
Reddit-shared images also show the shiny dish – affectionately dubbed "Dishy Mcflatface" by SpaceX.
The beta test is another step toward SpaceX's goal of satellite internet at gigabit speeds, with latency fast enough to play video games. SpaceX first started launching batches of SpaceX satellites in May 2020, and has applied for permission to launch a staggering 42,000 satellites. SpaceX achieves its lower latencies by placing the craft closer to the Earth's surface, around 550 kilometers high.
The company warns beta testers that they can expect speeds of around 50 to 150 megabits per second – for context, a megabit is an eighth of a megabyte, and the measurement is common when discussing internet speeds. But Business Insider reported Monday that some users were seeing higher speeds of up to 174 megabits per second.
The beta test doesn't come free. Users are asked to pay $99 per month for the connection itself, plus $499 for the Starlink Kit containing the ground terminal. One tester on Reddit found their order came to nearly $600 after $50 shipping and Washington state taxes. They then paid a further $100 for a ridgeline mount, an alternative to the tripod mount that comes with the Starlink Kit.
Although it all sounds rather expensive and slow, it's still impressive for satellite internet. Unlike fiber optic and other technologies, satellite doesn't depend on local infrastructure to get online – just point at the sky. The United States is served by satellite operators Viasat and HughesNet, but users end up paying similar prices to Starlink for speeds in the tens of megabits. Latency also runs into the hundreds of milliseconds, around 20 times slower than wired.
SpaceX began offering services to customers in the northern United States and Canada in 2020. It plans to offer "near global coverage of the populated world" by 2021.
The company is inviting fans that are interested in Starlink to register with their name and physical address via the website.
THE INVERSE ANALYSIS – SpaceX's setup looks impressive, and the design is sleek. Company-provided routers tend to be rather drab affairs, so it's nice to see a bit of design flair from the new service's first outing.
Of course, the most technically minded may opt to switch the router for their own box when it comes to filling the house with wifi. Mesh networking setups like Google and Eero allow users to place access points in various parts of the house, ensuring there's no blind spots for service.
Fiber is likely to remain the best option where it's available, but for rural and underserved areas, flaky internet could soon be a thing of the past. As more people work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, could this ultimately change the conversation about where people can live?
Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of “pampering” Boko Haram and Fulani Herdsmen terrorists in Nigeria.
Kanu stated this in reaction to the graduation and reintegration of hundreds of so-called repentant Boko Haram members into the society.
Reports that the ex-Boko Haram killers reintegrated into the society included those from Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic have infuriated many Nigerians.
The Coordinator, Operation Safe Corridor, Major General Bamidele Shafa made the announcement recently.
Reacting, the IPOB leader lamented that Nigeria was rewarding terrorism.
In a tweet, Kanu wrote: “No nation ever PAMPERS terrorists. @MBuhari’s Nigeria not only pampers terrorists but it gives them scholarships and sends them to mix with those they’ve terrorized and slaughtered.
“There’s no other way of looking at this than that Nigeria is the ONLY nation that rewards TERRORISM.”
The Fulani Herdsmen and Boko Haram have been classified as being among the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world by the requisite global organizations, including the United Nations.
But the Buhari administration has repeatedly used the organs of power, the military and the police, to in the case of the Fulani Herdsmen, force the murderous group on the Nigerian people by way of its clandestine grazing program, especially in the Middle-Belt and Southern parts of the country which are predominantly Christian.
Buhari, a retired Army General, had campaigned on a pledge to rid the nation of the Boko Haram scourge using his military background as a talking point, as he wrested power from President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 elections.
His administration has however falling woefully short on his campaign promise as not only has Boko Haram become even more menacing, the dynamic of the Fulani Herdsmen terrorists was added under Buhari's watch and the president, who is also Fulani, has been accused of being complicit, at least through inaction, in the murderous activities of the Fulani terrorists.
Nigeria is a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and there is ample evidence of ethno-religious cleansing that has gone on since the inception of the Buhari administration.
CC™ Opinion - By John Smith Lately, there has been much fuss over the Trump administration's stringent policy regarding the H1-B visa program.Here are some hard facts about the H1-B visa program as it relates to how it actually works. A corporation will pay say $60.00 per hour for a temporary worker. The $60.00 per hour goes to a consulting firm. For an H1-B visa, it is normally an Indian consulting firm. For an American, it is maybe a local
consulting firm. If it is an Indian consulting firm, they may take 40 percent and give 60
percent to the H1-B visa consultant of that hourly pay. Or maybe there will be two
consulting firms involved, and the consultant may get 40-50 percent. For an American, the split may be a 34/66 split with 66 percent going to the consultant and 34 percent to the consulting firm. In either case, it doesn't make much difference. The big winners of the H1-B visa program are the consulting firms. For the corporations, it is also a win since they don't have to provide any benefits to the consultant(s) and they can end the contract at any time. The H1-B visa
program helps East Indians migrate to America and subsequently take control of the IT industry with
help from International Corporations. I have worked with H1-B visa consultants and for the most part, they are at best average and are definitely no better than American trained consultants. The truth is that most of these India-trained consultants can easily be replaced by American workers. The usual routine is an H1-B comes to the United States and gets a contract, thus displacing, in most cases, a better trained US worker. Then within 6 months they have to go back to India for a month and marry someone they will meet for the first time when they are face-to-face during the marriage ceremony. Then nine months after they've gotten back to the US with their new wife under their H1-B visa, they have what is known within immigration circles as an "anchor baby." You'd be surprised how many Indians who have been married in the US for ten years and have only one child. And that child is a year less than
when they first came to the US. Thus, in addition to circumventing the economic system, the process also serves to do the same to the immigration system and it is rather unfair to those folks who work hard and do it by the book, especially immigrants from other parts of the world, who come to the United States legally. It is no secret that the Indian H1-B workers have a big advantage. The international
corporations
have spent probably a quarter of a trillion dollars building Training Centers, aka Technology Centers in India. I'd say about 15 years ago,
Corporations like Intel, Microsoft and GE spent upwards of $10 billion each to build Training Centers in India. In IT, you learn by doing. Either you use it or lose it.
As soon as someone graduates from college in
India (where cheating is rampant by the way) they are hired by a Training Center and go to work.
Conversely, a US graduate, that is, a US citizen finds it harder to get a job and starts learning on the job, mainly because the jobs they would have
gotten to start their careers are being filled by an H1-B visa. When I worked for EDS as a consultant, an old timer told me how it used to be. They would train
people to be programmers. There were secretaries who the company let take programming
classes and EDS taught them. A lot of workers ended up becoming programmers and
bettering themselves.
But over time, corporations decided to purchase an Indian Consulting firm and ship jobs
to
India and also ship Indians to the US through the H1-B visa program to displace American workers for one reason alone, MONEY! It is all about cost savings or should I say, greed!
In the end, the fact remains that the India-trained consultant is no better than the US trained one. The former is however a lot cheaper and also a lot easier to get rid off, with less complications.
On January 9, 1943, two days after Nikola Tesla died destitute in a New York City hotel, the FBI called MIT professor and esteemed electrical engineer, John G. Trump, to determine if any of the belongings in the inventor’s estate—which included a purported weapon of mass destruction Tesla called the death ray—would be dangerous if they fell into enemy hands.
After a three day investigation, Trump – in fact the late uncle of Donald J. Trump – determined there was no risk. (It turned out Tesla never actually made his death ray.) Still the mystery and exaggerated claims, along with the soaring success and failures associated with Tesla, an eccentric Serbian-American polymath futurist continue to be played out today on a scale that only he could have imagined.
That two high-profile electric vehicle companies, one named after the inventor’s last name, ‘Tesla,’ headed up by Elon Musk—very much an intellectual descendent of the inventor, and another ‘Nikola,’ after his first name, would both be creating huge waves and headlines—though for very different reasons—80 years later, seems to be beyond. Yet for those who’ve believed in the man and his vision, maybe it isn’t so surprising. It’s also the case that Tesla, brash and successful and Nikola, speculative and troubled both reflect facets of their namesake. (It’s perhaps poetic that Tesla’s Musk, sometimes spars with and sometimes emulates Professor Trump’s nephew, the President of the United States.)
In this Thursday, March 7, 2019 file photo, a shadow of Milica Kesler, curator and archivist is cast onto a poster of Nikola Tesla at the Nikola Tesla museum in Belgrade, Serbia. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)
Here’s a bit more on Nikola Tesla: A visionary who among countless other inventions and ideas helped develop and commercialize the AC or the alternating current electricity supply system, Tesla was a tall, reed-thin vegetarian who dined at Delmonico's restaurant nearly every night. Possessing an eidetic memory, Tesla was prone to fantastic claims and forever tapping Wall Street, including J.P. Morgan himself, for vast sums of money in part because of his lavish spending. (Trivia alert: Tesla was played by David Bowie in Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige,” while Ethan Hawke has the lead role in this year’s “Tesla.” Also see “The Current War.”) Tesla also battled powerful rivals (including Marconi and Edison) and endured a love/hate relationship with the press, who called some of his work a hoax.
Any of that sound familiar?
Let’s now flash forward to September of 2020. It would be an understatement to say that Tesla and Nikola, (the two EV companies that is) had a crazy week, yet in a way that’s pretty much normal for both of them.
Tesla is more than a car
Let’s start with Tesla’s week: The company was following a court case involving a Russian ransomware attack. It sued the U.S. government over Chinese import tariffs. And in a court document filed this week, Tesla accused Nikola of itself stealing a truck design, a filing it made in response “to a lawsuit in which Nikola alleges that Tesla stole Nikola's design of its electric truck— the Nikola One — for the Tesla Semi…” (Got that?) Oh and California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he was banning gas powered cars in his state by 2035, which would certainly benefit Tesla (and Nikola.)
But all that was just a sideshow (if you can imagine) for Tesla’s main event, the company’s first “Battery Day,” where the company introduced a battery that it says has six times more power and five times more energy than its previous batteries. Musk also indicated that the company could produce an EV for some $25K in three years. (The fact btw, that Tesla can hold a Battery Day—capital B, capital D—speaks both the company’s incredible marketing machine and to the actual import of these batteries going forward.)
“From someone working in the battery research field for two decades, I give them an A+,” says Shirley Meng, a professor of energy technology at the University of California San Diego. “They are doing this incredible vertical integration so they can ensure cost and performance control, and also meet a sustainability goal. In the battery field there were so many claims based on dollar per watt hour, energy density, watt hour per kilogram. There was a lot of fatigue in terms of those claims. But when the Tesla team announced this kind of very holistic approach to look at this entire supply chain of the batteries, I think it’s very forward looking. I’m impressed.”
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk reveals a Tesla Energy battery for businesses and utility companies during an event in Hawthorne, California April 30, 2015. (REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon)
And yet the announcement underwhelmed Wall Street and Tesla’s share price fell some 10% (which happens with this volatile stock, and it has since recovered a bit.) But that drop produced agita and even outrage among Tesla’s sometimes maniacal customer base and Musk’s nearly 39 million Twitter followers.
In fact, one Tesla bull got into a kerfuffle this week with a Yahoo Finance reporter who was questioning some of Musk’s claims, causing the Tesla bull to Tweet his displeasure which prompted Musk to Tweet that “Yahoo Finance is as dumb as it sounds.”
Musk’s Twittering and his dust-ups with the media are predictable and Trump-like and I say unnecessary too, as they detract from his accomplishments and are beneath him. But maybe I’m old school. The fact is, (and it is a fact), Tesla is the real deal. If you’ve never driven a Tesla, you may not get it. These babies are super cool and more importantly really what cars will be. Tesla is more than a car though, its software and charging stations make it a network. Tesla is miles ahead of its competitors, EV or legacy car company. In just a few short years Musk has built a world-changing product and brand. He’s driving the vehicle business forward in a way no one else is, or has since maybe Henry Ford.
“First Tesla and electric vehicles were largely dismissed as a fad,” says Joseph Osha, an equity analyst at JMP. “After that, automotive manufacturers started saying ‘this is real but we’ll just do it.’ Expectations were that a big company — Ford, GM, Volkswagen —would show up and that would be the end of Tesla. What you saw — was a whole series of basically blown launches, from the Audi e-tron to Mercedes EQC to Jaguar I-PACE to numerous promises from GM. All of those cars were supposedly going to run right up against Tesla. Now you’re seeing a scramble because the original manufacturers dramatically underestimated how hard this is. It’s quite something. I’m curious about which one is going to make big company decisions to drop $5, $10, $15, $20 billion into catching up.”
Does Musk sometimes make outlandish claims and fall short? Sure, but I don’t think you can say this is all about fake-it-to-you-make-it. With apologies to Marty McFly and Jeff Bridges, Tesla—with a reported million plus EVs sold worldwide and 48,00 employees—is no DeLorean or Tucker.
The one giant question about Tesla, is its stock price, which has climbed by 10X this year. 10X! In other words, yes, Tesla is a revolutionary company, but is it worth $377 billion—more than Ford, GM, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota combined ($278 billion)?
It’s a sky-high valuation, but is it justified? Of course no one really knows.
Can Nikola make hydrogen work?
Let’s shift gears now, (actually an inappropriate cliche when talking about EVs) and delve into Nikola, which has a market cap of some $7 billion—though four months ago it was five times higher.
Have you not been following the Nikola saga? An EV truck company founded in Utah six years ago (the name must have driven Musk crazy), founded by one Trevor Milton, Nikola went public this June through a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company—the Wall Street entity of the moment) run by former GM exec Steve Girsky. Nikola has a number of trucks in design phase, using battery-electric and hydrogen-electric fuel cells, but has yet to deliver any vehicles. Nonetheless Nikola’s stock soared this summer, powered at least in part by young, so-called Robinhood investors.
A mere two days later, Hindenburg Research, which “specializes in forensic financial research,” published a damning 67-page report, “Nikola: How to Parlay An Ocean of Lies Into a Partnership With the Largest Auto OEM in America” stating that “we believe Nikola is an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies over the course of its Founder and Executive Chairman Trevor Milton’s career.”
Nikola did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Finance regarding the Hindenburg report but issued this statement on Sept. 14 (partial excerpt): “Nikola believes that the Hindenburg report, and the opportunistic timing of its publication shortly after announcement of Nikola's partnership with General Motors Co. and the resulting positive share price reaction, was designed to provide a false impression to investors and to negatively manipulate the market in order to financially benefit short sellers, including Hindenburg itself.”
Founder of U.S. Nikola Trevor Milton speaks during presentation of its new full-electric and hydrogen fuel-cell battery trucks in partnership with CNH Industrial, at an event in Turin, Italy, December 2, 2019. REUTERS/Massimo Pinca
“Having studied the Hindenburg report pretty closely, there’s nothing in there that points to Nikola’s ability or inability to execute on the plan. 90+ percent of the argument made is that the founder of Nikola has made untruthful statements or promised things that haven’t played out. And he resigned on the back of those,” says Emmanuel Rosner, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. “But if you go back to the arguments, there’s nothing in there that gives investors clarity on whether Nikola can make hydrogen work or not work. Nothing has changed from that point of view.”
That’s the company though. As for the man, Milton, who still owns 25% of the company worth some $2 billion, things could get worse. Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan reports that many of Milton’s hyped-up claims along with Hindenburg’s charges are “...likely at the heart of inquiries now undertaken by federal agencies tasked with deciding whether legal action against the short seller, Milton, or Nikola is warranted.”
But wait, Elon Musk has made claims that haven’t come true, right? “Overall no question in our mind that Elon has a track record of setting bold targets and [the new battery strategy] is certainly a bold target as it relates to improvement and cost reduction” says Rosner. “...even achieving a piece of it, let’s say there’s a smaller cost reduction, would still have enormous implications.”
So is that wrong to do?
Steve Jobs too made bold, sometimes outlandish promises. And by extension, so has Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. In fact, this has essentially been her defense, which is to say that forward-thinking entrepreneurs need to put out stretch goals and challenge conventional thinking. But somehow Milton and Holmes aren’t Musk and Jobs. Is it because the latter two were more successful? Or is it a question of degree? Certainly it’s a matter of intent.
So just what is a promise in business—and in politics too? Where do we draw the line between hyperbole and fraud?
Those are questions Nikola Tesla faced 100 years ago, and today, Nikola, Tesla and Donald Trump face them too.
This article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on September 26, 2020. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe
Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @serwer.
The forum also condemned the jailing of Adeniyi's assistant for 28 days with hard labor.
In a statement yesterday, the spokespersons of the group, Chief Guy Ikokwu (South East), Senator Bassey Henshaw (South South), Dr. Isuwa Dogo (Middle Belt), and Mr. Yinka Odumakin (South West), said it was unfortunate Adeniyi's ordeal started with his complaints about those who sent him to lead troops to fight Boko Haram insurgencies with bare knuckles.
The forum described the embattled general as a combatant who has won so many awards and commendations for his command of Operation Lafiya Dole but has now lost many troops in combat recently, raising questions on what happened to the last $1billion released for armed forces to buy weapons.
The statement read in part: "The Theatre Commander of Operation Lafiya Dole, General Olusegun Adeniyi, who once led the country's onslaught against Boko Haram, was found guilty of violating some sections of the rules of engagement.
"Section 15 (g) of the policy specifically forbids personnel from 'posting any video, audio, materials pictures during exercises/operations.'"
The forum noted that the court-martial, however, found Adeniyi guilty of producing and publicizing a video on the counter-insurgency operation in the North East in a manner that embarrassed and ridiculed the armed forces and was demoted while his orderly, Tokunbo Obanla, a private, was also found guilty and sentenced to 28 days in jail with hard labor."
The forum lamented that the Nigerian Army had in July ordered Gen. Adeniyi to face court-martial, four months after he was seen in a rare video confessing that Nigerian troops were being killed by Boko Haram terrorists.
The forum queried: while it might be said that the army was only enforcing its rule, why was the rule mute against northern Muslim officers who were accused of giving out the routes of our soldiers, who were brutally murdered over two years ago, to Boko Haram?
And what has the Air Force done to date over the controversial killing of Tolulope Arotile in Kaduna last year, an officer renowned for deadly exploits against Boko Haram?
According to the leaders, "It is an officer commended for conducting the good fight against Boko Haram who is being promptly court-martialled because he says he now lacks weapons.
According to what he taught his master, the inoculation worked by extracting the juice of small pox, from an infected person and then cutting the skin of an uninfected and putting a drop of the juice.
It worked.
Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who Onesimus told about this African therapy used this knowledge to advocate for inoculation in the population, a practice which eventually spread to other colonies.
According to Wikipedia, Mather's advocacy met resistance from those suspicious of African medicine.
Doctors, ministers, laymen, and Boston city officials argued that the practice of inoculating healthy individuals would spread the disease and that it was immoral to interfere with the working of divine providence.
Mather was also publicly ridiculed for relying on the testimony of a slave.
Nonetheless, a physician, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, carried out the method Onesimus had described, which involved sticking a needle into a pustule from an infected person's body and scraping the infected needle across a healthy person's skin.
Dr. Boylston first inoculated his 6-year-old son and two of his slaves.
A total of 280 individuals were inoculated during the 1721-22 Boston smallpox epidemic.
The population of 280 inoculated patients experienced only 6 deaths (approx. 2.2 percent), compared to 844 deaths among the 5,889 non-inoculated smallpox patients (approx. 14.3 percent
Boston and London in 1726 and 1722, respectively, performed trials on citizens and, on average, decreased the mortality rate from 17% to 2% of the infected population.
In a 2016 Boston Magazine survey, Onesimus was declared number 52 on a list of the "Best Bostonians of All Time".
Onesimus's name cropped up recently on MSNBC in this Twitter post shared by a certain Osaretin Victor Asemota:
As the world searches for a vaccine to curb Coronavirus and its accompanying COVID-19 disease, let the world remember that an African pioneered a solution for health crisis of this nature ahead of western medicine.
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