Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has announced her intention to seek a second four-year term as Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This was revealed on Monday, September 16, 2024, by WTO spokesperson Ismaila Dieng.

“We can confirm that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has officially announced her intention to seek a second term as Director-General of the WTO,” Dieng said in a statement.

Okonjo-Iweala, who is the first woman and first African to head the WTO, will seek a second four-year term when her mandate expires in August 2025.

Her decision to seek another term was officially communicated to WTO Chair and Norwegian Ambassador Petter Olberg on Monday.

According to Dieng, Okonjo-Iweala had taken into account the overwhelming and broad-based support expressed by members.

The WTO’s African Group formally requested that she make herself available for a second term at that same meeting and proposed that the process to re-nominate her should begin as soon as possible.

It is gathered that so far no other candidates have come forward.

Okonjo-Iweala, who took over in March 2021 as WTO DG, was the first Nigerian woman to serve two terms as Finance Minister of Nigeria—initially under President Olusegun Obasanjo from 2003 to 2006, and secondly under President Goodluck Jonathan from 2011 to 2015.

From June to August 2006, she served as Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nigeria.

In 2005, Euromoney named her Global Finance Minister of the Year.

Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and “onto the footy fields”.

Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a “scourge”.

The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said.

The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16.

Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the centre-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it was technically possible to enforce an online age limit.

“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts,” Albanese said.

“We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

“This is a scourge. We know that there is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with,” he said.

Australia’s conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton said he would support an age limit.

“Every day of delay leaves young kids vulnerable to the harms of social media and the time for relying on tech companies to enforce age limits,” he said.

– ‘Easy to circumvent’ –

But it is not clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne’s associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray.

“We already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy,” he said.

Analysts warned that an age limit may not in any case help troubled children.

It “threatens to create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world,” said Daniel Angus, who leads the digital media research centre at Queensland University of Technology.

“There is logic in establishing boundaries that limit young people’s access,” said Samantha Schulz, senior sociologist of education at the University of Adelaide.

“However, young people are not the problem and regulating youth misses the more urgent task of regulating irresponsible social media platforms. Social media is an unavoidable part of young people’s lives.”

The prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and harmful material present on social media.

“These social media companies think they’re above everyone,” he told a radio interviewer.

“Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they’re not exercising it. And we’re determined to make sure that they do,” he said.

Australia has been at the forefront of global efforts to regulate social media platforms, with its online safety watchdog bumping heads notably with Elon Musk’s X over the content it carries.

A French appeals court Tuesday upheld an involuntary homicide and injuries verdict against Yemenia Airways over a 2009 crash that killed nearly everyone onboard except a 12-year-old girl who miraculously survived.

The Paris court confirmed the September 2022 ruling, which had demanded Yemenia Airways pay a fine of 225,000 euros ($248,000), the maximum allowed at the time by law.

Flight Yemenia 626 was on approach to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros islands that lie between Mozambique and Madagascar, on June 29, 2009, after departing from the airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

Among the 142 passengers and 11 crew were 66 French citizens heading to France’s overseas territory of Mayotte, part of the Comoros archipelago.

Just before 11:00 pm, the Airbus A310 plunged into the Indian Ocean with its engines running at full throttle, killing everyone on board except Bahia Bakari, then just 12 years old.

Investigators and experts found there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, blaming instead “inappropriate actions by the crew during the approach to Moroni airport, leading to them losing control”.

Prosecutors accused the company of pilot training programmes “riddled with gaps” and of continuing to fly to Moroni at night despite several non-functioning landing lights.

The presiding judge in 2022 found that, even though the airline had complied with all regulations, there were “two cases of carelessness directly linked to the accident”.

She faulted the continued night flights to Moroni despite the light outages, and the assignment of a co-pilot with “weak spots” in his training.

Around 560 people had joined the suit as plaintiffs, many of them from the region around Marseille in southern France, home to many of the victims.

The presiding judge of the appeals court on Tuesday confirmed the 2022 verdict.

She added as a sanction that the ruling should be publicly displayed at the airports of Paris Charles de Gaulle and Marseille for two months.

The sole survivor of the crash, Bahia Bakari, was en route from Paris to attend a wedding in the Comoros with her mother, who died in the crash.

After blacking out following the plane’s impact with the water, she found herself surrounded by wreckage in the sea, where she drifted for 12 hours before being rescued.

Thousands of prisoners in British jails were due to be released early on Tuesday, as part of government moves to ease overcrowding.

Recently released figures showed that the prison population in England and Wales was at its highest-ever level.

But with concern about released prisoners reoffending, the government insisted that no violent offenders or domestic abusers would be eligible for early release.

Business minister Jonathan Reynolds told Sky News that it was “a difficult decision” to release the 1,700 prisoners.

Downing Street has said the policy was required to avoid “unchecked criminality”, where recently convicted criminals have been spared jail sentences because there were no places available.

Reynolds placed the blame on the last Conservative government, which was voted out in July, saying the decision “should have been made prior to the election” but that it “had given up on governing”.

“Of all the scandals we inherited, I think the prison system, the justice system, is probably the worst of all,” he added.

Chief Inspector of Probation Martin Jones told BBC radio that the pressure on prisons was “extreme”.

“It’s the highest population we’ve ever seen in this country. Prisons are absolutely close to 100 percent capacity.

“My understanding, as of yesterday there is a couple of 100 spaces remaining.”

Jones warned that it was a “certainty that some will reoffend”, highlighting that around a third of people released from prison each year go on to commit further offences within a year.

Reynolds insisted that “no violent offenders, no domestic abusers will be eligible” for early release, adding that “we’ve put those greater protections in place”.

The prison population has swollen in recent months by those convicted of taking part in  anti-immigration riots across England.

The government has said those involved in the unrest would not be excluded from the early release plans.

The Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has explained why Nigeria lost its Category 1 Status that disqualified Nigerian airlines to fly into U.S. as required.

This is contained in a statement signed by the Acting Director General, of Civil Aviation, Nigeria, Capt. Chris Najomo, on Tuesday in Abuja.

According to him, Nigeria like most countries must satisfactorily pass the International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) Programme and attain Category 1 status in order to operate in the U.S.

“The attention of the NCAA has again been drawn to a publication about the purported ban on Nigerian airlines by the United States.

“Due to the wrong impression such news could create, it has become expedient that we put this report in its proper perspective.

“Upon attaining Category 1, Nigerian airlines would be permitted to operate Nigerian registered aircraft and dry-leased foreign registered aircraft into the United States, in line with the existing Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA),” he said.

Najomo recalled that the first time Nigeria attained Category 1 was in August 2010, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted another safety assessment on Nigeria in 2014.

He said a further safety assessment was conducted on Nigeria in 2017, after which Nigeria retained her Category 1 status.

The NCAA boss said that with effect from Sept. 2022, the U.S. FAA de-listed Category 1 countries who, after a 2-year period, had no indigenous operator to provide service to the U.S. or carrying airline code of a U.S. operator.

“Also removed from the Category 1 list were countries, who the FAA was not providing technical assistance to, based on identified areas of non-compliance to international standards for safety oversight.

“No Nigerian operator has provided service into the United States using a Nigerian registered aircraft within the 2-year period preceding September, 2022.

“So, it was expected that Nigeria would be de-listed as were other countries who fell within this category. Nigeria was, therefore, de-listed since 2022 and was duly informed of this action in 2022,” he said.

According to him, the de-listing of Nigeria has absolutely nothing to do with any safety or security deficiency in the nation’s oversight system.

Ojomo said Nigeria had undergone comprehensive International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Safety and Security Audits and recorded no Significant Safety Concern (SSC) or Significant Security Concern (SSeC) respectively.

“It is furthermore necessary to add that a Nigerian operator can still operate into the U.S. using an aircraft wet-leased from a country who has a current Category 1 status.

“The NCAA continues to adhere strictly to international safety and security standards and respects the sovereignty of states, including the United States of America, as enshrined in Article 1 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation.

“This provision gives states complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above their territories,” he added.

NCAA boss said the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr Festus Keyamo, had embarked on an aggressive international campaign to empower local operators to access the dry-lease market around the world.

“Which culminated in the visit to AIRBUS in France earlier this year and the MOU signed with BOEING in Seattle, Washington just last week.

“The Honourable Minister has also done a lot of work to make Nigeria comply fully with the Cape Town Convention, which will bring back the confidence of international lessors in the Nigerian aviation market.

“We are confident that with these steps of the Honourable Minister, it is only a matter of time that Nigeria, not only regains, but can sustain its U.S. Category 1 status,” Ojomo said.

A school bus ploughed into a crowd of people outside a middle school in eastern China on Tuesday, killing 11 parents and students, state media reported.

State broadcaster CCTV said the driver “lost control” of the vehicle as it approached the school in Shandong province’s Tai’an city at 7:27 am (2327 GMT Monday).

The bus ran into a group of parents and children on the side of the road, according to CCTV.

“As of now, (the incident) has caused the deaths of 11 people, of whom six were parents and five were students,” the broadcaster reported in an update just after 11:30 am.

It said one other person was in a “critical” condition, while the vital signs of another 12 people were “stable”.

Photos and videos circulating on social media showed people in blood-soaked clothes lying in the road near a hulking grey bus.

Several adults knelt over children sprawled unmoving on the ground, while other people could be heard screaming in the background.

“They’re all dead, it’s so heartbreaking,” a woman’s voice could be heard saying off-camera in one clip of the aftermath of the crash.

“I’d have been killed too if I’d stood there, but luckily I ran away fast,” she said.

AFP was able to geolocate several of the social media photos and videos to the school in Shandong where the crash took place.

The driver was being held by local police and the cause of the incident was “under investigation”, CCTV said.

Many public schools in China reopened for the new academic year this week.

Deadly traffic accidents occur frequently in the country due to lax safety standards and widespread disorderly driving.

In July, police said a vehicle crashed into pedestrians in the central city of Changsha, killing eight people and injuring five.

A 55-year-old suspect living in the area was detained pending an investigation, but it was not clear if the incident was intentional or not.