The Hong Kong Government has proposed to ban E-cigarettes
and may impose a maximum penalty of a fine of $6,370 and six months’
imprisonment on anyone who sells or promotes E-cigarettes.
E-cigarette: An alternative to cigarette smoking
The government has prohibited bringing in, making, selling, distributing,
or promoting alternative smoking products including E-cigarettes in China’s
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).
A bill to amend the Smoking Ordinance targeting alternative
cigarettes was submitted to the Legislative Council of HKSAR on Wednesday,
February 13, 2019.
The bill is proposed by the Food and Health Bureau of the
HKSAR government and will have its first reading on Feb. 20.
Safeguarding the health of the public is the primary concern
of the government although the bill may raise different opinions under expected
paramount discussion, said Sophia Chan, secretary for the Food and Health
Bureau, on her official blog.
The government hopes to nip the problem in the bud, Amy
Yuen, deputy secretary for the Food and Health Bureau, told reporters.
As these products are still relatively new in Hong Kong,
they’re not as entrenched as conventional smoking products.
It is the responsibility of the government to
prevent these products from taking root in Hong Kong, said Yuen.
The Federal Government on Monday, February 11, 2019
commissioned a N146 million national grid connected 60 KiloWatt (KW) solar
mini-grid electricity plant to supply power to 350 households in Torankawa
community in Sokoto State.
An impression of a mini-grid solar system
The project was initiated by the Department of Renewable and
Rural Access (RRD), Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, under the
Renewable Energy Micro Utility Programme.
The project, commissioned by the Minister of Women Affairs
and Social Development, Hajia Aisha Abubakar, was funded with proceeds from the
Nigerian Sovereign Green Bond (SGB) issued by the Federal Government in
2017.
The project, which is Public Private Partnership
(PPP) driven, was developed by Messers News Engineering Nigeria Ltd and
Protogy Global Services Ltd, indigenous companies operating in the
country.
The acting Director, RRD in the ministry, Alhaji Faruk Yusuf
said the project would provide electricity to 350 households and 20 Small and
Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
According to him, the plant will supply power to ultimately
1,750 people in the community.
Yusuf said the project would also power 50 100watt LED
street lights, Mosques, and the community’s irrigation farm among others.
He said the project could operate both in grid connected
model or non-grid connected environment like an island.
The acting director said the grid connected hybrid solar
voltaic mini grid, completed within three months had 99 per cent assurances of
supplying 24 hours, seven days high voltage electricity to the
community all year round.
According to him, the plant comprises 125KVADC/ AC Inverter,
60KW Solar Photophotics (PV) Modules, 216 kilowatt hours (kWh) battery bank ,
and 100KVA diesel generator as redundant back up.
Yusuf said the project also included rehabilitation of four
kilometers Town Distribution Network (TDN) and installation of 100 smart meters
and local electronic vending system.
The minister in her remarks said the project was unique as
it was the first grid connected solar mini project implemented in Nigeria by
the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing.
She said the project was a demonstration of President
Muhammadu Buhari’s administration’s commitment to providing Nigerians with
incremental stable and reliable power supply.
Abubakar said implementation of the project was also part of
Nigeria’s contribution toward promoting and archiving sustainable energy for
all.
“This project is a demonstration of the viability of
deploying alternative energy in technology to provide rural
communities 24/7 reliable power supply.
“The electricity will improve the life of rural dwellers
through improved health care, education and agricultural production.’’
She said Buhari in his efforts to rapidly provide access to
electricity had developed policies and regulations to attract private
sector participation in the power industry.
She said the polices were in financing, developing,
operation and maintenance of rural electrification projects using renewable
sources.
“The mini-grid approved by the Nigerian Electricity
Regulatory Commission (NERC), provides opportunity for private investors and
has started yielding results, as 20 mini-grid projects have been commissioned
across the country in 2017 and 2018.
Abubakar said the commissioned mini-grids power projects was
providing reliable power supply to more than 20,000 people in off-grid project
areas of the country.
“This project in Torankawa has been developed to demonstrate
economic viability and sustainability and will be concessioned to a private
operator that will be responsible for operation and maintenance.
“It is necessary therefore, that the electricity users pay
for the use of the electricity to ensure that the project keeps delivering
power over its life span.’’
The minister commended Torankawa people for their
cooperation, not only in providing the land for the project but for also
committing to purchasing the electricity generated from the project.
She called on other communities to emulate the peaceful and
dynamic attitude of the Torankawa community.
Abubakar also called on states, local governments and
the private sector to take advantage of Federal Government’s policies on
electricity and initiate Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to provide
electricity to rural communities across the country.By Kingsley Okoye
Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, has called for strengthened investment in innovation in key areas so
that related industries can continue to develop without worsening climate
change.
Bill Gates of the the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Gates said this on New York in the Bill and Melinda Gates
2019 annual letter released on Tuesday, February 12, 2019.
To solve climate change, people need to get to near-zero
emissions on all the things that drive it — agriculture, electricity,
manufacturing, transportation and buildings.
“We need breakthrough inventions in each of the grand
challenges,” he said.
As renewable gets cheaper, some progress has been made on
electricity. But electricity accounts for only a quarter of all the greenhouse
gases emitted around the world.
Manufacturing is not far behind, at 21 per cent, according
to the letter.
When most people think of manufacturing, they picture widgets on assembly
lines, but it also includes the materials used in buildings.
Making cement and steel requires lots of energy from fossil
fuels, and the processes involved release of carbon as a byproduct.
As the urban population continues to grow in the coming
decades, the world’s building stock is expected to double by 2060 — the
equivalent of adding another New York City monthly between now and then.
That’s a lot of cement and steel.
“We need to find a way to make it all without worsening
climate change,” he said.
Manufacturing is not the only big emitter. Agriculture
accounts for 24 per cent of greenhouse gases. That includes cattle, which give
off methane when they belch and pass gas.
He said it’s not realistic to think that people will simply
stop using fertiliser, running cargo ships, building offices, or flying
airplanes.
Nor is it fair to ask developing countries to curtail their
growth for the sake of everyone else. For example, for many people in low- and
middle-income countries, cattle are an essential source of income and
nutrients.
“Part of the solution is to invest in innovation in all five
sectors so we can do these things without destroying the climate,” he said.
He said some progress has been made in this respect, but “we
need to do a much better job of informing people about the challenges.”
“It would help if media coverage matched the breadth of the
problem. Solar panels are great, but we should be hearing about trucks, cement
and cow farts too,” he added.
Similarly, Gates said that toilets of the future might not
be the “sexiest” innovations in the world, but they will save millions of
lives.
Gates said that more than two billion people around the
world lack access to a decent toilet.
Their waste often ends up in the environment, untreated,
killing nearly 800 children every day.
And exporting rich world sanitation solutions isn’t an
option, because they require sewer systems that are too expensive to build and
need a lot of water.
“Nearly eight years ago, Melinda and I challenged engineers
and scientists around the world to reinvent the toilet,” Gates said in the
letter.
“In 2018, we organised a toilet fair in Beijing, where I got
to check out a number of next-gen toilets in person and even shared the stage
with a beaker of human feces.”
He said several companies are business-ready.
Their inventions check almost all the boxes: They kill
pathogens, can keep pace with the needs of fast-growing urban areas, and don’t
require sewer infrastructure, external water sources, or continuous electricity
to operate.
“The only area where they currently fall short is cost – which
is why our foundation is investing in more R&D to help make them affordable
for the poor,” he said.
He said at first glance the next generation of toilets are
not that different from traditional ones, they don’t exactly look like
something out of a sci-fi novel.
The real magic happens out of sight. Unlike today’s
commodes, the toilets of the future are self-contained. They’re essentially
tiny treatment plants capable of killing pathogens and rendering waste safe on
their own.
Many of them even turn human feces and urine into useful
byproducts, like fertiliser for crops and water for handwashing.
Melinda Gates said that they also improve lives – especially
for women and girls.
Life without a toilet is hard for anyone, but it tends to be
women and girls, who suffer most.
“Bill and I have both met women, who have suffered kidney
damage from holding in urine all night to avoid a risky trip to dangerous
public facilities.
“We’ve met others whose only place to defecate is in an open
field, so they restrict their food intake all day and wait for cover of
darkness to relieve themselves in relative privacy,” she said.
She said that one in 10 girls in sub-Saharan Africa and one
in four girls in India miss school during their periods, most often because
their schools don’t have anywhere, they can go to change or dispose of
menstrual hygiene products.
“If you’re anything like me, I’m guessing toilets aren’t
your favorite topic of conversation.
But if you care about keeping girls in school, expanding
women’s economic participation, and protecting them against violence, then we
have to be willing to talk about toilets,” she said.
“I am a hunter, I supply fresh wild animals like pangolins,
big snakes, antelopes, wild cats, etc.”
This tweet on January 15, 2019, by Onayemi Temitope
(@trotsky27), generated a massive online buzz, especially on Twitter where it
had over 5,000 engagements. Many called out this young man and labelled his
action “wicked” and “punishable”, while others praised him highly for his
courage and bravery.
The Pangolin
No doubt, wildlife trade remains a very controversial
subject on the African continent, perhaps across the world. World Economic
Forum asserts that with an annual upper income of $23 billion, wildlife trade
is the fourth most lucrative global crime after drugs, humans and arms. While
the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and
Flora (CITES) is clear about international trade, with emphasis on
sustainability, we must further accept that poaching of wildlife resources in
Nigeria is largely unchecked, contributing to Nigeria’s rapid biodiversity
loss.
While some very wealthy folks and greedy businessmen are
keen on exploiting these resources at the expense of sustainability, the
hunters – mostly stack illiterate in local communities – are paid only 3% of
the total income, just enough to keep them poor and fuel their thirst to hunt
more fauna.
Having carried out numerous wildlife field studies,
first-hand interviews with hunters and with a few publications about wildlife –
education, trade and conservation in Nigeria, I found Mr. Onayemi Temitope’s
case completely different. Onayemi Temitope Timothy is a graduate of Sociology
and Anthropology from the University of Benin, with a second degree (Masters)
in Sociology (Major – Criminology) from the University of Ibadan. Four years
after his graduation, having remained unemployed, Temitope took to wildlife
hunting and trading, first as a recreative activity, then as a source of financial
stability.
I asked Temitope how often he hunts and what his average
kill rate is. “Presently, I don’t really live in Sagamu (the hunting location)
but any time I am around, I’ll go hunting with other people. I can’t put a
figure to an average kill rate, especially because I don’t hunt every day. The
truth is that the recent kill rate has greatly declined and is now typically
very low. Sometimes we can get just one snake, sometimes, one Pangolin or just
one grass cutter. There are times we don’t even come across any at all,” he
replied.
Education is the bedrock of human actions and it snowballs
into our actions and inactions. At Wildlife of Africa Conservation Initiative,
my team and I have always laid emphasis on Wildlife Education and Conservation
using various platforms, formal (schools and universities), informal
(communities, social and religious groups) and online advocacy.
My chat with Temitope was very insightful, I was least
surprised when Mr. Temitope truthfully confided that, before now, it never felt
awkward hunting wild animals – endangered species inclusive.
“Till recently, I never knew most of those animals are
endangered, threatened or vulnerable. I used to believe that if humans don’t
kill them, higher mammals will or they will just die a natural death and since
they procreate more than humans, we cannot exhaust them. It was the Twitter
response after my tweet that made me know Pangolins are endangered species. I
also got to know some wild animals were of concern to the Federal Ministry of
Environment, the Nigerian National Park and State Governments,” he said.
Mr. Felix Abayomi of Wildlife of Africa Conservation
Initiative also explained the roles of CITES and IUCN list. His words: “Now, I
see things in a different light. Ever since, I have tried to protect Pangolins,
as well as other wildlife species. Today, I can tell the difference between
conserving and hunting and I am able to create a balance and educate others
too.”
In Nigeria, as with other developing countries, the present
needs of the people come first and “availability is affordability”. Hence,
prioritising the conservation of Nigeria’s wildlife resource would mean a
series of inputs.
As a member state, Nigeria would have to revisit and adopt
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) guidelines;
interest stakeholders, development partners and private sectors will
consistently have to lobby and influence the government’s political will at all
levels; most importantly, there is a striking need to provide lots of other
environmental-friendly economic options/job opportunities that could convert
poachers and hunters to conservationists and researchers.
The Director General/CEO, National Biosafety Management
Agency (NBMA), Dr. Rufus Ebegba, has reiterated the agency’s commitment to put
safety first in the regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in
Nigeria.
Staff of the National Biosafety Management Agency at the workshop
He stated this while declaring open a one-day training
workshop organised for the staff of the NBMA.
Dr. Ebegba stressed that government deemed it fit to
establish NBMA to save Nigeria from becoming a dumping ground for unregulated
GMOs and their by-products with the state-of-the-art GMO Detection and Analysis
Laboratory of the NBMA ensuring that proper safety analysis is carried on GMOs.
He described the Nigerian biosafety system as the best in
Africa as, according to him, government has resolved to exploit the potentials
of modern technology with a proper regulatory mechanism in place to safeguard
human health, environment and biodiversity from potential adverse impact.
Director, Environmental Biosafety and General Release of the
Agency, Ms. Nzeduru Chinyere, in her presentation titled “Biosafety and
Biotechnology in Nigeria”, noted that biotechnology is as old as man. She
states that, prior to modern biotechnology, humans modified plants
traditionally.
“Modern biotechnology is an improvement on the traditional
modification of organisms and there is need to regulate this practice,” she
stressed, noting that no commercial release can be done without proper risk
assessment of the genetically modified product to guarantee its safety.
Head of Planning Research and Statistics, NBMA, Mrs. Bello
Scholastica, reaffirmed that Nigeria is ranked high in GM regulation in Africa.
She noted that government has put in place the necessary legal framework to
regulate modern biotechnology and that, with this, the agency will not condone
breach of law by individuals or organisations to trade in GMOs without a
Biosafety Permit from NBMA.
Head of the Legal Unit of the agency, Mrs. Onyilofor-Aja
Nkiruka, in a paper presentation titled “The Cartagena Protocol and the NBMA
Act 2015”, stated that the Cartagena Protocol signed by Nigeria, as well as 194
other countries, aims to safeguard human health and environment from any
unintended risks that could result from the practice of modern biotechnology.
She also added that Nigeria has made great strides in the domestication of the
protocol.
The daylong forum, it was gathered, was organised as part of
government’s efforts to strengthen the Nigerian biosafety system to ensure
proper regulation in the field of safe transfer, handling and use of GMOs.
The African Union Commission, the African Development Bank
and global partners on Monday, February 11, 2019 launched the Continental
Nutrition Accountability Scorecard to raise awareness and reinforce commitments
by African governments to help end malnutrition.
King Letsie III of the Kingdom of Lesotho
King Letsie III of the Kingdom of Lesotho and African Union
Champion for Nutrition, and Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, President of the African
Development Bank (AfDB) co-hosted the scorecard launch on the sidelines of the
32nd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the
African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“The nutrition accountability scorecard offers an
opportunity to lay a solid foundation to aid African leaders to act
strategically and deliberately in implementing policies and investing in
nutrition programmes that tackle malnutrition in our respective countries,”
King Letsie III told attendees.
“As responsible leaders, the onus is on us to take action
for the wellbeing of the African people. We need to take appropriate and
decisive actions now rather than later,” he added.
In attendance were Dr. Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi,
President of the Republic of Botswana, members of the diplomatic corps, health
ministers from Malawi, Botswana, Kenya, Senegal, Gambia, Ghana, and development
partners including FAO, WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF.
In his remarks, President Masisi commended the bank for the
initiative. “I am so proud about the African Development Bank’s involvement…
the scorecard is an extremely useful tool. It is important to get a continental
picture of the state of our nutrition so that we ask ourselves the right
questions to make sure we get our priorities right and fix them,” he noted.
The Continental Nutrition Accountability Scorecard is
produced by the African Leaders for Nutrition Initiative (ALN), headquartered
at the African Development Bank, in collaboration with ALN’s partners including
the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, and the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“We must change how we look at the problem of malnutrition.
The greatest contributor to economic growth is not physical infrastructure but
brainpower, what I refer to as “grey matter infrastructure”. While it is
obvious that a road and a port can add to improved trade and economic growth,
it is often not recognized that stunting shrinks the size of the brain and
therefore compromises the current and future economic growth of nations,” said Adesina.
Africa remains the only continent with high levels of malnutrition
and suffers slow progress to reverse the situation in comparison to the rest of
the world. United Nations data indicate the number of stunted children in
Africa increased sharply from 50.6 million in the year 2000 to 58.7 million in
2017. A growing body of evidence recognizes that malnutrition and economic
development are closely interlinked.
Poor nutrition is responsible for stunting children’s
growth, harming children’s educational development and future economic
prospects.
The scorecard launch presented key findings and recommendations,
including calls for governments to increase budgetary allocations for
multi-sectoral nutrition plans. The scorecard also calls for the enhanced
empowerment of women and adolescent girls and the provision of nutritional
support at the most critical time of a child’s life – during pregnancy and
early childhood.
The nutrition assessment tool provides a snapshot of the
status of key nutrition indicators, including internationally agreed nutrition
targets, specific interventions, sensitive interventions, policy and legal
provisions, nutrition financing, and socio-economic impacts.
“Over time, the Continental Nutrition Accountability
Scorecard will expand in depth, data and usefulness, and will help to identify
solutions to mitigate the burden of malnutrition that has impeded the continent
for the past few decades,” said Jennifer Blanke, Vice President for
Agriculture, Human and Social Development at the African Development Bank.
ALN targets the highest levels of African governments to
build advocacy for improving nutrition across the continent.
“Let us rise and do the right thing for Africa’s
children: secure their future with better nutrition. Let us turn the red
colours on these scorecards to green. Let us score goals for nutrition in
Africa,” Adesina concluded.
A prior research had categorised Americans into six groups
– Global Warming’s Six Americas – based on their climate
change beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. The “alarmed” are the most worried
about global warming and most supportive of aggressive action to reduce carbon
pollution. In contrast, the “dismissive” do not believe global warming is
happening or human-caused and strongly oppose climate action.
A survey conducted in December 2018 finds that the Alarmed
segment is at an all-time high (29%) – which is double that segment’s
size in 2013 and an 8-point increase since March 2018. Conversely,
the Dismissive (9%) and Doubtful (9%) segments have both decreased over the
last five years. The percentage of Americans in these two segments has declined
by 12 points since 2013.
Global warming’s six Americas
Although the size of the Concerned segment has remained
relatively consistent since 2013, this doesn’t mean that those who were
previously Concerned did not change their minds. Rather, it is likely that many
who were previously Concerned became Alarmed, and many who were previously
Cautious or Disengaged became Concerned. Over the past five years, the U.S.
population as a whole has moved away from the Doubtful and Dismissive segments
and toward the Alarmed and Concerned segments.
In 2013, the Alarmed and Dismissive were an equal size at
14% of U.S. adults. As of the end of 2018, however, the Alarmed now outnumber
the Dismissive more than 3 to 1 (29% vs. 9%), representing a major shift in
these two “issue publics” most engaged in the issue of climate change.
These trends indicate that the political climate of climate
change is shifting toward action.
The Government of Germany has endorsed “KlimaTeller”,
a new app that enables restaurateurs to estimate the CO2 emissions
of their food as well as put together and label climate-friendly menus on this
basis.
Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter
The starting signal for the app is given on Tuesday,
February 12, 2019 by the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal
Environment Ministry, Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter.
The KlimaTeller project, in which the app was developed, is
funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment via the National Climate
Initiative (NKI) with around €160,000.
Schwarzelühr-Sutter said: “The KlimaTeller app helps
restaurateurs to cook sustainable menus and make this visible to their
guests. If you like, you can also cook climate consciously at
home. About 15 to 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in Germany
can be attributed to our diet. The use of regional and seasonal products
is therefore an important building block for climate protection.”
Using the KlimaTeller app, restaurateurs can label their
food as a KlimaTeller if the ingredients of a dish in total cause less than 50
percent of the emissions of an average dish. An
average dish causes around 1,600 g of CO2 emissions.
With the “KlimaTeller”, every guest knows that
with his choice of food, he saves at least 800g CO2 emissions,
which is about a five-kilometre drive.
“The KlimaTeller plate helps guests who value seasonal, regional and predominantly vegetarian food to find their way around. This will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions,” a source said, adding:
“Around one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions in Germany are caused by nutrition. These include, above all, agriculture, processing, trade (including transport) and consumption. With the KlimaTeller we can significantly reduce these emissions and do something actively for climate protection.”
The 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties
(COP24) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held December
2018 in Katowice, Poland marked the half way point of the two-year UNFCCC Gender Action
Plan (GAP) adopted by countries in November 2017. To mark the occasion
and to highlight action taken to implement the GAP in 2018, the call to #ActOnTheGAP was
launched during COP24 in Katowice.
Momentum is said to be building in support of the Gender Action Plan
From the #ActOnTheGap Action
List, which highlighted side-events that had achieved their
commitment to ensuring a gender balanced panel, to the video
messages of support and calls for more action – including from
incoming COP25 president-designate, Chile’s Environment Minister Carolina
Schmidt, Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Convey, First
Minister of Scotland Nicola
Sturgeon, among others – it is clear that momentum is building in
support of the Gender Action Plan.
A new format for the annual Gender Day included a dynamic
set of events throughout
the afternoon in the Action Hub, a Market Place and Exhibition showcasing how
countries and organisations are implementing the plan.
A High-Level
Event explored the issue of access for women in the tech industry,
before Momentum
for Change Women for Results winners kicked off Gender Day activities
at the Action Hub by providing insights into their projects and motivations for
their various climate
initiatives. Projects ranged from a replantation project in Sri Lanka
to a bike project aimed at fighting discrimination against women in Syria.
Discussions continued throughout the afternoon, including
a debate on
integrating gender into National Adaptation Plans. Gender Day at the Action Hub
closed with a poem titled “Rise”
by Aka Niviâna and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner that was a call to action to take
environmental responsibility.
A clear message from these activities and exhibits is that
when climate solutions are inclusive, women and girls are catalysts of change,
delivering more sustainable and effective climate action. A message supported
by the Executive Security in her #ActOnTheGAP video “women and girls
must be empowered to be agents and leaders of climate action”.
COP24 also saw the first capacity building workshop for National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points, which was held in the inaugural Capacity-Building Hub with over 50 national representatives participating. The capacity building workshop provided delegates with the opportunity to exchange experiences as well as gain knowledge about the policy work that is being carried out on gender and climate change.
The discussions surrounding gender and climate change will not pause after the conference in Katowice, says the UNFCCC, adding that activities at COP24 demonstrated that many countries, organisations and individuals remain committed to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls through climate action.
Namibia on Monday, February 11, 2019 joined South Africa,
Zimbabwe and Botswana in calling for the removal of a ban on ivory trade, the
country’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism said.
CITES Secretary-General, Ivonne Higuero
The three countries that account for 61 per cent of the
elephant population in Africa prepared a joint petition to be presented at the
forthcoming Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in
Sri Lanka in four months.
“CITES has acted as an inhibitor and not an enabler of
progress.
“The conference of the parties has repeatedly discounted the
importance of the southern African elephant population and its conservation
needs against other regions in Africa.
“An end to the ban on ivory sale will give the three
countries an opportunity to offload their ivory stockpiles that have been
shelved for more than five years,’’ they said.
The countries also argued that they had laid strong
modalities through establishment of conservancies that ensure that proceeds of
sales from ivory benefit inhabitants in the conservancies financially and also
through developmental projects.
“The proponents can no longer accept that their working
conservation models are undermined by an international organisation that
ostensibly recognises that people and states are.
“They should be the best protectors of their wild life,’’
the petition said.
