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President Obama To Help Track Billions Of Stolen Nigerian Assets
President Barack Obama and President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria shake hands before an Oval Office meeting, facing the Press.
President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following indi- viduals to key Administration posts:
• Robert Porter Jackson – Ambassador to the Republic of Ghana, Department of State
• Michael Michaud – As- sistant Secretary for Veterans’ Employment and Training, De- partment of Labor
• John E. Sparks – Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces
President Obama said, “These fine public servants
PRES. BARACK OBAMA
bring a depth of experience and tremendous dedication to their important roles. I look forward to working with them.”
With a dangerous insur- gency spreading within his borders, the visit to Wash- ington last week by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was certainly going to touch on increased mili- tary support against Boko Haram.
But it also encompassed a discussion of stolen assets – namely billions of dollars si- phoned away by bankers, ministers, and in some cases newly-minted millionaires.
According to the new pres- ident, over $150 billion has been stolen in the past
decade and held in foreign bank accounts by former cor- rupt officials. It could have been used on education and healthcare, among other spheres of national life, he said.
Adetolunbo Mumuni,
Director of the Socio-Eco- nomic Rights and Accounta- bility Project (SERAP), praised the agenda: “We wel- come the commitment by President Obama to assist the Buhari government in tracking down billions of dol- lars stolen from the country. However, greater efforts are
required by the Obama gov- ernment to follow through its commitment if it is to secure a measure of justice for Nigerian victims of corrup- tion and money laundering.”
The Nigeria-based organi- zation asked President Obama to “establish a Pres- idential Advisory Committee and facilitate a Congres- sional Hearing on stolen as- sets from Nigeria. These initiatives would be tremen- dously important in bringing renewed attention to repatri- ation of stolen assets to Nige- ria.”
Pres. Obama To Unveil
Tougher Environmental Plan
With His Legacy In Mind
WASHINGTON — In the strongest ac- tion ever taken in the United States to com- bat climate change, President Obama will unveiled on Mon- day a set of environ- mental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emis- sions from the na- tion’s power plants and ultimately trans- form America’s elec- tricity industry.
If rules survive legal challenges, they could help shut down coal-fired plants like the Ghent Generating Sta- tion in Kentucky.
The rules are the
final, tougher ver-
sions of proposed reg- ulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in mo- tion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hun- dreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources.
The most aggressive of the regulations requires the na- tion’s existing power plants to cut emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, an increase from the 30 percent target proposed in the draft regulation.
That new rule also de- mands that power plants use more renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power. While the proposed rule would have allowed states to lower emissions by transitioning from plants fired by coal to plants fired by natural gas, which produces about half the carbon pollu- tion of coal, the final rule is intended to push electric util- ities to invest more quickly in renewable sources, raising to 28 percent from 22 percent the share of generating ca- pacity that would come from such sources.
In its final version, the rule retains the same basic struc- ture as the draft proposal: It assigns each state a target for reducing its carbon pollution from power plants, but allows states to create their own cus- tom plans for doing so. States have to submit an initial ver- sion of their plans by 2016 and final versions by 2018.
As the President came to see the fight against climate change as central to his legacy, as important as the Affordable Care Act, he moved to strengthen the en- ergy proposals, advisers said. The health law became the dominant political issue of the 2010 congressional elec- tions and faced dozens of leg- islative assaults before surviving two Supreme Court challenges largely intact.
“Climate change is not a problem for another genera- tion, not anymore,” Pres. Obama said in a video posted on Facebook at mid- night Saturday. He called the new rules “the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change.”
Presidential/Government News
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