Thousands in Egypt attacked by stray dogs: Ministry

CAIRO: There have been 6,241 cases of people being hospitalized after being attacked by stray dogs in Egypt’s Menoufia governorate during the past four months, the Ministry of Health and Population said in a report.

Ahmed Kamel, one of those injured, said the dogs are everywhere, but no action has been taken by the authorities despite complaints from residents.

“We fear street dogs for our children. They’re attacking us ferociously. A dog attacked me after I left my house,” he added.

“I defended myself and tried to hit him with a stone, but he sank his teeth into my feet. I had to go to the health center and they gave me a vaccine.”
 

Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad has said the ministry is ready to address the crisis of stray dogs.

Meanwhile, a report by the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Directorate of Health Affairs in Menoufia revealed that 759 people have been hospitalized due to rat bites so far this year.

Dr. Hassan Shafiq, deputy head of the Egyptian Veterinary Service, said rat bites can transmit deadly diseases.

Rats “live next to ponds, marshes and plantations, and feed mainly on … grains, fruits and vegetables, so they are often responsible for crop damage,” he added.

Egypt in $500m settlement with Israel Electric Corp

Egypt has signed a $500m settlement with state-owned Israel Electric Corp over a defunct natural gas deal, the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation (EGPC) and Egyptian Natural Gas (EGAS) said in a statement.

The statement said that under the agreement signed on Sunday, Egypt will pay the amount over a period of eight-and-a-half years in exchange for the Israeli company dropping all other claims resulting from a 2015 arbitration decision.

The International Chamber of Commerce in 2015 ordered Egypt to pay Israel Electric about $1.8bn in compensation after a deal to export gas to Israel via a pipeline collapsed in 2012 after attacks by fighters in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt appealed the decision and began discussions on a settlement. The EGPC and EGAS statement said the agreement was reached with government support and as part of efforts to ensure a "conducive investment environment".

Israel's Delek Drilling and its partner Noble Energy signed a landmark deal early last year to export $15bn in natural gas from Israeli offshore fields Tamar and Leviathan to a customer in Egypt.

A Delek Drilling executive said on June 2 that the company hopes to begin commercial sales of natural gas to Egypt by the end of this month. Israeli officials called it the most significant deal to emerge since the neighbours made peace in 1979. 

New beginning that is different from the immediate past - Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari congratulate the newly elected leaders of the 9th National Assembly.

The president describe the election by lawmakers as "new beginning that is different from the immediate past." He also encouraged people that lose the election to join hands with the winners and not to be attacking themselves.

 

Who is Femi Gbajabiamila?

On Tuesday, lawmakers for Nigeria House of Representatives elect Femi Gbajabiamila as their speaker from 2019 to 2023.

Abdulmumin Jibrin, nominated the former Majority Leader of the eight House of Representatives that represents Surulere constituency and go up against Umar Bago who also is in APC.

The candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC) get 281 votes to defeat Umaru Bago who contested against him.  Bago get 76 votes.

Gbajabiamila declared his intention to be speaker in March with the support of his party.

Profile of Femi Gbajabiamila?

He was born on 25 June 1962 and a lawyer from Lagos State.

He was called to Nigerian bar in 1984, after he graduated from University of Lagos in 1983 with law degree.

He worked for Bentley Edu & Co, which is the first law firm in Nigeria before he open his own;  Femi Gbaja and Co. He attended John Marshall Law School, Atlanta, Georgia in America, and he got degree to practice law.

Political Career

Femi Gbajabiamila enter politics under the platform of Alliance for Democracy (AD).

He has been in the House of Representatives since 2003 representing Surulere Federal Constituency of Lagos State.

He was nominated for National Honour in 2011 but turned the nomination down.  He has pushed major bills for the house like the Employee Rights Bill, Central Bank of Nigeria (Amendment) Bill and the Bill for Electric Power Reform Act which will stop and criminalise estimated billing by Electricity Distribution Companies. He has also head the House of Representatives Committee on Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited.

Congratulations to him.

Mexico 'has 45 days to curb migrant flow to US SOIL'

The foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard said if troop reinforcements on its southern borders did not work, "additional measures" would need to be discussed.

He also
said this might mean a "regional solution" involving other nations.
But the US is also likely to require Mexico to process the asylum claims of migrants on its own soil.
He held a press conference which seemed to suggest a difference of opinion about what was actually in the deal announced between the US and Mexico last Friday.

In a tweet, US President Donald Trump said there was a "very important part" of the deal that had been "fully signed and documented" but not yet announced that would give the US what it had been asking for "for many years".
"It will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico's legislative body", the president tweeted, adding that if the vote failed "tariffs will be reinstated".
Commentators suggest this is the "safe third country" arrangement, under which migrants would have to apply first for asylum in Mexico, rather than the US, and be turned away if they do not.
Mr Ebrard said the US had been insistent on this measure.
But he said: "We told them - I think it was the most important achievement of the negotiations - 'let's set a time period to see if what Mexico is proposing will work, and if not, we'll sit down and see what additional measures'" are needed.
"They wanted something else totally different to be signed. But that is what there is here. There is no other thing," he said.
Mr Ebrard also said US negotiators had wanted Mexico to commit to "zero migrants" crossing its territory, but that was "mission impossible".
President Trump has also said Mexico will soon make "large" agricultural purchases from the US.

But Mr Ebrard said there had been no additional agreement with the US and that the American president was probably referring to expected growth in trade following the migration deal.

Mexico leader regrets US embassy car shooting

Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, has voiced regret for the federal police shooting of a US embassy car that wounded two US government employees.
In his first public remarks about Friday's shooting, Calderon told the US ambassador to Mexico that the attorney general's office was thoroughly investigating the incident.

"I want to express, ambassador, deep regret over the events from a few days ago," Calderon said on Tuesday, during a forum on security attended by the US envoy, Anthony Wayne.
"Whether it was negligence, lack of training, lack of trust, or complicity, this cannot be tolerated," he said. Wayne said the US and Mexican governments were "working hard" to prepare the investigation. "We will see the results," he added.
A judge on Monday placed 12 police officers under 40-day detention as prosecutors mull charges against them for the shooting, which the US embassy has described as an "ambush".
The US State Department has not identified the two government employees or the nature of their work in Mexico.
The pair were heading to a military training facility south of Mexico City with a Mexican navy captain when their sport-utility vehicle with embassy plates was barraged with bullets from four cars chasing them, according to the Mexican navy and public security ministry.
A State Department spokesperson said the two US government employees were stable enough to be evacuated to the US on Saturday and they are still receiving medical treatment in their home country.

Relatives outraged
The shooting incident took place on a highway on the southern outskirts of Mexico City close to the city o
f Cuernavaca, which has been ravaged by criminal gangs during the government's conflict with drug cartels.

Relatives and supporters of the detained officers gathered on Monday outside prosecutors' offices in the city of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City, to protest their detention.
"All I ask for is justice, and they [prosecutors] act according to law, and they don't treat them as criminals, because they are not criminals," said Georgina Segobia, the sister of a detained federal police officer.
The relatives claimed the officers were simply doing their jobs in setting up a dragnet for criminals.
The US Embassy in Mexico City said on Monday that two US government employees and a Mexican Navy captain were heading to a training facility outside the city of Cuernavaca when they were ambushed by a group of gunmen that included federal police.
The Mexican government said federal police were conducting unspecified law-enforcement activities in the rural, mountainous area known for criminal activity when they came upon the car, which attempted to flee and came under fire from gunmen in four vehicles including federal police.
Battling drug cartels
Roadside shootings have been a feature of the violence linked to drug gangs. Gangs have been known to set up fake military checkpoints to ambush rivals.

Earlier this month, all 348 federal police officers at Mexico's international airport were replaced after police there shot dead three fellow officers in an alleged drug related killing. Three officers have been charged.
Last year, two US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were shot by hitmen on a major Mexican highway.

One of the agents died.
Since 2008, the US government has given 243 million US dollars in equipment and 25 million US dollars in technical assistance and training to the federal police under the drug-war aid program known as the Merida Initiative.
Under Merida, the State Department says more than 4,300 federal police have completed training at Mexico's Federal Police Academy in San Luis Potosi.
Taught by law enforcement professionals from the US, Colombia, Spain, Canada, and the Czech Republic, the program includes criminal investigative techniques, evidence collection, crime scene preservation, and ethics.

New Jersey shooting leaves three dead

At least three people, including a gunman, have been killed in a shooting in New Jersey, US, police and law enforcement officials say.
Friday's incident happened inside Pathmark supermarket in Old Bridge, a suburb 30km from New York, officials said.
According to New York's WABC television, the shooting took place around 4:00 am local time (0800 GMT) inside a Pathmark store.
Several employees were inside the store, which was preparing to open at 6am. Two windows near the entrance to the Pathmark have been shot out, officials said.
The Asbury Park Press, a local newspaper, quoted Old Bridge Mayor Owen Henry saying that the killer was an ex-marine who arrived at the supermarket wearing camouflage and carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a pistol.
He shot a young man and a young woman dead, then himself, the mayor was quoted as saying. The shooter had been working at the store for about two weeks, according to the report.
Store employees were stocking shelves when the gunman entered, WABC television reported

US to decide on Haqqani 'terrorist' status

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has said she will meet an obligation to decide in the coming days whether the Pakistan-linked Haqqani network should be considered "terrorist".
American lawmakers have pressed Clinton to blacklist the group, which is blamed for grisly attacks in Afghanistan, but some US officials have warned such a step could dramatically set back already fraught ties with Pakistan.
Clinton, visiting the Cook Islands for a Pacific island summit, said that she would abide by legislation by Congress that requires her to state by September 9 whether the Haqqani network met the criteria of a "terrorist group".
"I'm aware that I have an obligation to report to Congress," Clinton told a joint news conference with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. "Of course we will meet that commitment."
Clinton declined comment on which way she is leaning but said that the US was already "putting steady pressure" on the Haqqani network.
"That is part of what our military does every single day along with our ISAF partners," she said, referring to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.
"We are drying up their resources, we are targetting their military and intelligence personnel, we are pressing the Pakistanis to step up their own efforts," she said.
'Veritable arm' of ISI
Before stepping down as the top US military officer last year, Admiral Mike Mullen said that the Haqqani network had become a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Ayesha Siddiqa, an Islamabad-based military analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Pakistani military was increasingly beginning to see the Haqqani network as a threat.
"It's not an issue of a change of heart, but it's about political realism. Perhaps, and I'm not sure about it, but perhaps one part of the Pakistani military leadership might agree to join hands with the Americans. And one of the reasons being that some of the intelligence reports that have been coming ... they indicate that Sirajuddin Haqqani is now in some sort of co-operation with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the TTP, which is hitting at the state," she said.
The State Department has designated certain members of the Haqqani network as "terrorists" but has resisted blacklisting the entire group.
The US has slowly been rebuilding co-operation with Pakistan, which was severely set back after US forces found and killed Osama bin Laden living last year near the military's main academy.
The Senate and House of Representatives have both urged the State Department in resolutions to blacklist the group, which would make it a crime in the US to provide any financial or other support to the Haqqani network.
Technically, however, Clinton is only asked to declare whether the Haqqani network meets the criteria of a terrorist group and is not being forced to make an actual decision on the designation.
US officials have linked the Haqqani network to some of the most sensational attacks in Afghanistan, including a June assault on a hotel near Kabul that killed 18 people and a siege last year of the US embassy.