Nigerian-born, Brampton-raised physician Chika Stacy Oriuwa has been named as one of Canada’s 50 most influential people.

Oriuwa, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who grew up in Brampton, Canada came in 37th on the Macleans Power List, which is a ranking of the 50 influential Canadians.

No mean feat? Certainly. Oriuwa’s achievement is not coming as a surprise.  She is a serial achiever. She is not just a psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto, she graduated in 2020 and was the sole valedictorian of her class. She was also the only Black woman to receive the honour in the school’s 179-year history according to the Power List.

Oriuwa is also an accomplished spoken-word artist who has competed nationally as a slam poet, and a video of her 2017 poem Woman, Black has been viewed more than 12,000 times on YouTube.

Oriuwa has also been an inspiration to black women in Canada. She said she spoke at her old high school in Brampton and had a young Black woman tell her that she wanted to be a doctor “because you did it, and you’re just like us’.”

“To be able to inspire them is so incredible for me,” Oriuwa said.

In August 2021, toymaker Mattel selected Oriuwa for its Barbie Role Models program as one of six women working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic to be immortalised as a Barbie doll.

“It was such a full-circle moment for me, as a young girl who played with Barbies and always really wanted to see myself reflected,” Oriuwa said in an interview. “Not only as a child who wanted to be a physician but as a young Black girl.”

The psychiatry resident, whose parents emigrated to Canada in the 1980s,  says she chose the field because it has “some of the most marginalised patient demographics in medicine.”

In 2017, the University of Toronto created the Black Student Application Program (BSAP), an optional application process that requires the same standards and includes an interview process conducted by members of the Black community, faculty, and students, and Oriuwa became an ambassador and public face of the program.

In medical school, Oriuwa co-founded the Black Interprofessional Students’ Association (BIPSA) to network students across graduate programs. She also served as a strategic advisor and contributing writer to Healthy Debate, a healthcare journalism platform.

In 2018, she delivered the keynote speech at Women’s College Hospital for International Women’s Day, entitled “Thriving at the Intersections: Being a Black Woman in Medicine.” She was a speaker at the 2018 International Women and Children’s Health Conference at McMaster University. In 2019, she was a workshop speaker at the Canadian Conference on Physician Leadership.

 She has said she uses poetry both as an outlet for her struggles with encountering racism and as a form of advocacy against it, and during her second year of medical school, created a spoken word video titled, “Woman, Black.

Some of the awards and honours she has received include: the 2018 African Scholars Emerging Academic Award – University of Toronto, 2020 Valedictorian of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and 2021 Barbie Role Model Program honoree.

The US has alleged that Russia is preparing to "fabricate a pretext for an invasion" of Ukraine, using a "graphic" video that would depict a fake attack carried out by Ukraine against Russia.

According to the CIA, the US has intelligence suggesting that the Russian government, with the help of Russia's intelligence services, has been planning to produce a propaganda video depicting graphic scenes of a "staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations and military equipment," the official said. 

The US says it believes Russia has already recruited actors to be involved in the video production of the alleged fake attack. It also alleged that the military equipment used in the video of the fabricated attack would be made to look like it is Ukrainian or from a nation allied to Ukraine. 

The US said the video could include images of Bayraktar drones, which NATO ally Turkey has provided to Ukraine, "as a means to implicate NATO in the attack."

The fake attack in the video would be aimed against Russian sovereign territory or against Russian-speaking people, US officials said, and would "be released to underscore a threat to Russia's security and to underpin military operations," the official said.

"This video, if released, could provide Putin the spark he needs to initiate and justify military operations against Ukraine."'

"It shows the level of cynicism, frankly, that is on the other side of this conflict," Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told MSNBC on Thursday, February 3.

 "We're not saying definitively this is what they're going to do. We are saying that this is an option under consideration, and that they have used these sorts of pretext in the past to justify military action."

Finer said the US is making the accusation public in order to "make it much more difficult for [Russia] after the fact to claim that they had to do whatever they decided to do."

This comes as Russia continues building up forces and military equipment along Ukraine's borders, despite diplomatic efforts by the US and allies to de-escalate the situation.

In January, the US revealed it had information indicating Russia had prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine in an attempt to create a pretext for an invasion.

A Texas woman has been charged with manslaughter after she allegedly sat on her roommate until she suffocated to death, according to police.

Gloria Ann Jordan, 41, was arrested on Tuesday, Feb. 1, in connection with the death of her roommate, Gloria Farmer, in Wichita Falls on Nov. 21, cops said.

Police responded to a call of a medical emergency at Las Cruces Lane, which Jordan and Farmer shared with another woman.

Police began investigating Farmer’s death as criminal after a family friend approached them days later with concerns about her death, according to an affidavit obtained by KAUZ.

The third roommate later told detectives that Jordan could have been responsible for Farmer’s death and that she had been too afraid to say anything when it first happened.

The roommate told police that Jordan put her hand on Farmer’s forehead while praying, and pushed her backward in an office chair until Farmer and the chair fell over, according to the affidavit.

Jordan then straddled Farmer’s chest, according to court documents.

Farmer told Jordan to get off because she could not breathe.

An autopsy determined Farmer’s death was the result of mechanical asphyxiation and was ruled a homicide.

Jordan was questioned by police while she was admitted to the hospital on Nov. 24 where she had been admitted for an unrelated medical condition three days after the death. She told police that she had pushed Farmer over and sat on top of her in a "prayer position" with her hand on her forehead, but declined to comment further, according to New York Post.

She is also facing criminal charges for an incident that occurred on Nov. 25, in which she allegedly slammed a woman’s head into a wall several times while shouting "I rebuke you in the name of the Lord," KAUZ reported.

Jordan was lodged in the Wichita County Jail, and her bond has been set at $150,000, according to KAUZ.

The United States of America has condemned as unacceptable and out of vogue, any change of government in Africa except as constitutionally enshrined through elections and popular ballot as coups undermine democracy and development.

The US, apparently responding to the four recent coups in the continent, assured therefore that any regime which gains power through coups would not enjoy the support and recognition of the United States seen as the bastion of democracy.

This was disclosed by the Commander of the United States Africa Command, AFRICOM, General Stephen Townsend who while expressing surprise at the recent upsurge in spate of military coups in Africa, opined that bad governance and corruption may have been responsible for the putsches.
In the last 18 months, the military has seized power in Mali, Chad, Sudan and Burkina Faso.

Townsend had in a virtual briefing on Thursday, where he took questions from journalists, explained that the United States frowns at irregular or unconstitutional change in government as they do not agree with their understanding of governance which has to be democratic and the free choice of the people.

He added that it was difficult to state emphatically why nearly after 20 years of democratic governance with low military interventions, there suddenly has been an upsurge.
“So I don’t know why all that is, but my guess is that it has to do with insufficient governance, a lack of good governance, and corruption. I think that’s probably the most of it. And so as you know, as I said in my opening statement, the U.S. does not support or condone these unconstitutional changes of government and the broader effect they have on democracy and the progress of democracy. But I think that corruption and a lack of good governance is probably behind much of that,” he explained.

The Africom Commander deflected insinuations that a contest of super powers for influence in Africa was responsible for the coups and insisted that neither China nor Russia was largely responsible for the coups except where Russia was mentioned in Sudan. Russia and China appear to be contending for influences in the continent.

He said, “You asked about the involvement of the Russians and the Chinese in these coups generally. We have not seen that – have not seen any involvement by the Chinese in any of these coups. I don’t think they’re doing that, furthering that or promoting those. With Russia, I think it’s a little less clear. I think I have received reports of Russian involvement at least in Sudan in the not too distant past.”

On the rising cases of violent crimes mostly tagged banditry by some governments, the AFRICOM boss said: “So I would use a different term. I think the term ‘bandits’ is the wrong term. That makes it sound like a criminal problem. And my assessment is what’s expanding and causing the majority of the problem are terrorists. So I use a different term than bandits. Terrorists are expanding. We’ve seen ISIS and al-Qaida affiliates expanding in West Africa from Mali into Burkina Faso, and now we’re starting to see attacks in the neighbours of Ghana, Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire. So, I’m very concerned about that.”

Townsend assured that collaboration by member countries in affiliation with the United States, added to consistent dialogue and information, as well as strategy sharing would yield better and faster results in taming the spread of terrorism.

On the rising influence of China in Africa and the concerns of the United States of America, he admitted that they were expanding into West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea where he suspects they want to have a naval base. He said they had some positive influences in development in the region but assured that where traps or exploitation of African partners were seen, they would raise the red flag.

According to him, the plan to have a naval base in the Gulf of Guinea was to check piracy and illegal fishing but alleged that most of the illegal fishing activities were carried out by Chinese vessels.

“Another topic that we discussed is China’s role in the world. And they’re a power on the rise, and I don’t think I’d begrudge them their ability to rise as a power in the world. But they also have a view to expand into Africa, particularly into West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. And where they’re – where they’re helping African partners in a useful and positive way, I’m happy to see that and happy to see our African partners benefit from that.

“But where they’re exploiting our African partners, I think we ought to shine a spotlight on that. And there are some places where that is going on. And one area that concerns me is the Gulf of Guinea. The Chinese, I think, aspire to have a naval base in that area. And I think they aspire to have a maritime task force in that area, all for the purpose of preventing piracy and illegal fishing. But all the studies that I have seen say that the number one purveyor of illegal fishing in the Gulf of Guinea are Chinese fishing fleets. So, I think we ought to keep shining a spotlight on that kind of unhelpful involvement in the African continent,” he explained.