By Momodou Justice Darboe

A broad daylight fire at Tippa Garage in Bakoteh Monday gutted business materials worth thousands of Dalasis.

Items that perished in the inferno included motor bikes, kitchen wares, mattresses, clothing and the NAWEC transformer just near the bridge.

The cause of the fire could not be immediately ascertained but witnesses say it broke out at around 2pm and it took more than two hours before it could be put out.

When The Fatou Network visited the scene, some of the materials were smoldering and the extent of the damage could not be established. However, victims and witnesses put it into thousands of dalasis.

Speaking to this medium, Musa Gitteh, a Bakoteh resident and one of the volunteers in the fire fight, explained that today’s inferno was unprecedented in the history of fire outbreaks in the area.

“I can say with ease that we are just lucky that the fire had been controlled before it reached the Petro Gas filling station . However, thousands of valuables has been destroyed in the fire and we can say we’ve done a wonderful job in fighting it,” he said.

Ebrima Sallah and Mawdo Bah, both victims of the fire, lamented they’ve lost all their livelihoods as a result of the fire.

“I bought D38,000 worth of items three days ago and all have been destroyed today. My entire livelihood was destroyed. I’ve lost everything,” he added.

By Momodou Justice Darboe

The minister of tourism and culture has said sex tourism is not only unique to The Gambia as prostitution also exists in both Rome and Mecca.

“Yes, prostitution is all over the world. You go to Rome, yes there is. You go to Mecca, yes there is. It’s everywhere. It’s the oldest profession,” Hamat Bah told journalists at a press conference at the Gambia Tourism and Hospitality Institute in Kanifing on Friday.

There are claims of sex tourism in The Gambia and Bah addressing the issue said it was a section of the Gambian media who were peddling such claims.

“There is no sex tourism in The Gambia. Sex tourism is something that the government sanctions, that’s is well organized, that’s well managed, it’s not in this country,” he said.

“So when I see journalists writing Gambia, sex tourism, putting documentaries and you take them to court they will lose the case. But this government does not want to take any journalist to court. But I want to advise you please; when somebody comes to destroy your country, and want you to write evil… Let’s be cautious of what we write.”

By Lamin Njie

The Gambia government is set to abandon a policy imposing a 75 percent increase on tax on wine and beer as well as sugary drinks, sources have told The Fatu Network.

The Gambia government and Banjul Breweries Ltd are engaged in negotiations after the country’s only brewery threaten to quit The Gambia.

The government last year announced a 75% tax rise on wine and beer and sugary drinks.

A senior official of Banjul Breweries Ltd told The Fatu Network at the time that excise hike from 10% to 75% was found in no country in the whole of Africa. He also told the outlet the move will have a negative impact on the beverage manufacturing industry and the economy.

A finance ministry source told The Fatu Network on Monday the government ‘will most likely abandon the policy.’

The minister of finance spoke on the Banjul Breweries kerfuffle on Monday, saying ‘we’re working with them.’

“As at now, we are engaging them. The impact, they have now communicated to us through the ministry of trade with the national assembly select committee. We’re working with them,” Mamburay Njie told journalists at a press conference in Banjul.

The sales manager at Banjul Breweries Borri Darboe has confirmed that negotiation were ongoing.

“We are waiting for the government response but no production is taking place right now,” Darboe told The Fatu Network Monday.

By Momodou Justice Darboe and Omar Jallow

The minister of Tourism and Culture Hamat Bah has said that The Gambia has registered 28% increase in tourist arrivals last year.

The Tourism minister made this revelation at a press conference at the Gambia Tourism and Hospitality Institute (GTHI) on Friday.

Bah said: “As at 2017-2018 we had a remarkable increase of 28% increase in arrivals. We had 162,075 for the previous year and 209,000 in 2018 but we want to progress to meet our target within the NDP.”

Responding to questions on youth unemployment and illegal migration, minister Bah said efforts were being made to tackle the problems.

“In order to contribute in addressing the illegal migration and youth unemployment, the Gambia Tourism and hospitality institute in partnership with the European Union through the Youth Empowerment project (YEP) completed the selection and recruitment of 400 youths including 30% returnees and 40% women for a specially designed tactically professional training to meet the high demand for employment in food and beverages and rooms division services.

“We believed that once people are capacitise they should be able to deliver and be part of the process.”

The tourism minister also spoke on the country’s tourism decentralisation effort and said an expansion program in hospitality training is initiated in Janjangbureh in the Central River Region in partnership with YEP “with 60 young Gambians to build capacities and create employment opportunities.”

On tourism infrastructure, Bah said the number of hotels constructed in the country in the last two years has increased significantly, but that his ministry’s desire to build even more hotels is being militated by the lack of land in the Tourism Development Areas (TDA).

“We believed that one of the major challenges we have at the moment is building hotels. We started that but we were in trouble with ourselves. The trouble was the 34% of the entire TDA land was leased by the former president, and the commission took over these lands, we couldn’t get them back due to judicial process. Some of the investors left the country,” he said.

By Lamin Njie

The chief executive officer of Paradise TV Harona Drammeh has hit back at those savaging him regarding his interview with President Adama Barrow.

Drammeh had a lengthy interview with President Barrow last week but a raft of Gambians have blasted him after part one of the two-hours-long interview aired on Paradise TV on Sunday. They accuse him of blowing a once-in-a-lifetime chance of holding the president to account on pressing national issues.

But speaking to The Fatu Network on Monday, Drammeh said claims that he was on a propaganda mission to State House were flawed.

Drammeh said: “I went to State House without an agenda. I’m an independent person. I don’t have a specific agenda that I went to State House for.

“My job was asking the right questions. What he responds and what the public makes of that response is entirely up to the public. I was not there to protect him. I was not there to promote him.”

By Alhassan Darboe

A group of young Gambian brothers in the spirit of generosity in Ramadan Saturday organized Iftar for the Talibe Community in the village of Foni Wasadu, Western Region.

Writing on his Facebook, Alasan Gent Ceesay, a UK based Gambian behind the charitable endeavor said: “It cost nothing to be kind, generous and pleasant to each other, and the rewards are priceless especially in the Blessed month of Ramadan. Another opportunity to share Iftar with our beloved ‘talibè’ community in Foni Wassadu.”

Also writing on his Facebook, Sainey Marenah a prominent Gambian journalist and head of Communication at Constitutional review commission writes, “Caring and sharing in Ramadan. Glad to join this group of young people courtesy of AlaSan Gent CeeSay to provide Iftar to the community of Wasadu in Foni Jarrol district. May Allah accept our fast and prayers. May the sharing and caring continue after Ramadan. Amen”

Kemo Bojang, youth secretary of U.D.P and also member of the team when contacted by Gunjur News online was philosophical and humble about the charitable endeavors he and his team of young progressives undertake to feed the poor and needy.

He said: “It’s in the spirit of Ramadan and our culture to share with people especially the less privileged. We see this as a way of us to reflect on our blessing that God has showered on us.

By Lamin Njie

The Gambia is among at least 180 countries who have agreed on a legally binding framework to reduce the pollution from plastic waste.

A Gambia government delegation was last week in Geneva, Switzerland for a two-week meeting of UN-backed conventions on plastic waste and toxic, hazardous chemicals. The meeting has churned out an agreement on the tracking of thousands of types of plastic waste.

Environment minister Lamin Dibba told The Fatu Network on Saturday The Gambia forming part of the meeting ‘is quite obvious because Gambia is among the first African countries that banned plastics in their countries.”

Dibba said: “The executive director of the National Environment Agency and the technical service director represented The Gambia.

“It’s important because in this world where environmental hazards do not know boundaries we need to comply with the provisions of the Basel-Rotterdam-Stockholm convention in the safe movement of waste particularly electronic waste or radioactive waste which is very serious and dangerous for any environment.”

The Gambia government placed a ban on plastic bags in July 2015, with manufacturers or importers facing fines of up to D300,000. Individuals who flout the law could also be handed fines of up to D3,000.

“The Gambia government has taken several steps to enforce the ban on plastics. After the change of government, a lot of people thought that this was done by the previous government so the law has gone.

“But few months ago, we had a taskforce that comprises the National Environment Agency, all the other security outfits that went and they were arresting and confiscating plastic which fall under the bad category and sermon them to court. Right now, we have a backlog of cases at the Kanifing and Brikama magistrates’ courts,” Dibba said.

By Lamin Njie

The Gambia government and Banjul Breweries Ltd are negotiating a solution aimed at averting the closure of the country’s only brewery, it has been revealed.

The Gambia government last year announced a 75% tax rise on wine and beer, with the move affecting sugary drinks too.

A senior official of Banjul Breweries Ltd told The Fatu Network at the time that excise hike from 10% to 75% was found in no country in the whole of Africa. He also told the outlet the move will have a negative impact on the beverage manufacturing industry and the economy.

The brewery last week announced that it is heading for closure following the laying off of dozens of staff.

But on Saturday, the company’s sales manager Borri Darboe told The Fatu Network engagement with the Ministries of Finance and Trade ‘is finally in progress.’

“We are now waiting for them to make a move that meets the aspirations of all businesses in the sector,” Darboe said.

Tax contributions by Banjul Breweries Ltd averaged 120 million dalasis in 2017.

At least 70 migrants drowned when their boat capsized off the Tunisian coast after they left Libya hoping to reach Europe, reports suggest.

It is one of the deadliest shipwrecks involving migrants trying to reach Europe illegally this year.

The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said the sunken boat took to the sea from neighbouring Libya, where renewed warfare between rival factions has gripped the capital Tripoli in the past five weeks.

It put the number of victims at 50, with 16 survivors but the state-run Tunis Afrique Presse agency gave a death toll of at least 70 people.

The boat sank 40 miles off the coast of Sfax, south of the capital Tunis, the Tunisian agency said.

Fishing boats were said to have been scrambled to rescue the survivors.

The Tunisian Defence Ministry said the boat had left from the Libyan port of Zouara yesterday, aiming to reach Italy.

Navy units have recovered only three bodies so far, it said in a statement.

‘Another tragedy in the Mediterranean,’ the IOM said.

Libya’s western coast is a main departure point for migrants from across Africa hoping to reach Europe by paying human traffickers. (DailyMail)

By DailyMail

Penis enlargement surgery rarely works and should almost never be performed, doctors have warned.

Researchers found as many as 80 per cent of men who have the ops are unhappy with the results, and many are left with ‘disfigured’ or even smaller penises.

Private clinics are preying on men insecure about their bodies, one expert claimed, with the ‘vast majority’ of paying customers already having normal sized penises.

The most popular penis enlarging procedures are filler injections to make it thicker and surgery to snip a ligament at the top which makes it appear longer.

But both carry a high risk of complications, a study has warned, and are rarely worth the effort or the money – costs can rise as high as £40,000.

Researchers from King’s College London looked at past studies into the outcomes of 1,192 penis enlargement procedures done on men around the world.

‘Overall treatment outcomes were poor, with low satisfaction rates and significant risk of major complications,’ they said.

The major complications included ‘penile deformity, shortening, and erectile dysfunction’.

Others were left with penises which were permanently numb in places, scarring, psychological problems or regret.

Gordon Muir, a urological surgeon at London Bridge and Kings hospitals, helped to lead the research.

He told The Guardian: ‘These procedures should almost never be done.

‘They can cost up to £30,000 or even £40,000, often the man ends up with a penis that is disfigured and there is no more than 20 per cent satisfaction rates with these procedures.’

Trying to increase the penis size of men who are normally endowed is a procedure which has barely any evidence to back it up, the study said.

The procedures aren’t offered on the NHS except if someone’s penis is damaged in a traumatic accident – cosmetic operations are paid for privately.

Mr Muir warned some of those running the clinics were ‘charlatans’ and didn’t carry out due diligence before going ahead with the life-changing surgeries.

‘Many men who wish to undergo penis enlargement procedures have an average-sized penis but believe their size to be inadequate,’ he added.

‘Sadly, some clinics seem to ignore this. Surgeons in the private sector should not do this. It’s wrong on every level.’

The researchers said men should always be offered full counselling and a psychological assessment before they decide to have the therapy.

In the study they added: ‘These findings make recommending surgery for men with normal penile dimensions unscientific at best and unethical at worst.’

They argued having a bigger penis size has long been associated with being more masculine and better in bed – despite no evidence to prove either.

And, despite 85 per cent of women reportedly being happy with their partner’s penis size, around half of men wish theirs was bigger.

‘Nowadays, pornography is often used as a benchmark and reinforces the belief that sexual fulfilment depends largely on penis size,’ the researchers said.

‘These concerns can cause significant distress even in men with a normal-sized penis.’

In their study the scientists looked at men who had non-surgical procedures such as dermal fillers injected to make the penis thicker, or using vacuum pumps.

Fillers are becoming more common in the UK, with private clinics Moorgate Aesthetics and Androfill revealing in October that they received 700 calls per month – up from around 10 per month three years ago.

The procedure costs around £3,000 per session but the injections are only temporary.

And they studied surgeries including having a ligament at the top of the penis snipped to make it hang lower, or having tissue from elsewhere grafted onto the penis.

Surgery can sometimes actually make the penis shorter because scar tissue causes it to tighten up and shrink.

The research was published in the journal Sexual Medicine Reviews.

By AFP

Surrounded by erotic toys, half a dozen women of all ages sit in a central Moscow basement facing a whiteboard as a sex coach trains them in speaking openly about their sexual desires.

‘I finally want to know what it’s like to be a satisfied woman, what sexual pleasure is,’ one of the ‘students’, aged 45 and divorced, told AFP.

Barely spoken about publicly in Soviet times and with the Kremlin pushing conservative values in recent years, sex, as a subject, remains largely an unmentionable in Russia.

To help people overcome their shyness in talking about sexual pleasure, sexologist training courses, psychologists and so-called sex coaches are now appearing in Moscow, adding to TV shows and articles in women’s magazines.

Viktoria Ekaterina Frank, a psychologist and sexologist, said that her course at the Sex.rf school did not aim to teach sex techniques but rather ‘help women understand the psychological barriers ingrained in their heads’.

Many women are ‘so embarrassed to talk about sex, they can barely breathe’, she said.

Nearly three decades after the end of the USSR, Russian society remains deeply marked by the aura of taboo around the issue of sex in the Soviet Union, according to sociologists.

Soviet authorities primarily promoted the idea that ‘the sexual act should serve only for reproduction,’ sociologist Yelena Kochkina told AFP.

‘This means that sexuality was not talked about in the family or at school,’ she said.

A TV interview from the beginning of the Perestroika era immortalised the Soviet prudish and practical attitude to sex, even if it was far from true in practice.

During a 1986 talk show broadcast in the United States and the USSR, an American woman asked a Soviet woman if there was sex in adverts in the Soviet Union.

‘There is no sex back home, we are categorically against it,’ the Russian replied, in an exchange that has become a part of popular culture.

Although it was off limits in public discourse in the Soviet era, everyone was having sex and ‘maybe even too much’, said Dmitry Rogozin, a sociology professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Abortion at the time was often used as contraception due to the pill and condoms being unavailable and, as a result, the number of terminations was one of the highest in the world at the beginning of the 1990s.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, a sex industry burst on to the scene, with a wave of erotic films on video cassette or in cinemas, magazines with racy photos and adverts in the popular press.

Sex coach Yelena Rydkina said that after the initial ‘crazy boom in interest’, suddenly it became too much, causing fear and rejection, and people turned away.

Inspired by sex coaching classes she attended in San Francisco in the US, Rydkina began teaching courses in Moscow where ‘people can talk normally about sex’.

‘Politics in the last 10 years is moving away from open sexuality and propagates traditional family values,’ she said.

Nevertheless, there is now a ‘real demand’ for more coverage of sex-related issues, leading to a rise in sex blogging in Russia, added Rydkina.

One such blogger is Tatyana Dmitriyeva, who founded Sexprosvet, a popular website that aims to ‘develop sex culture in Russia’.

She set up the site three years ago because she said that there was nowhere to seriously discuss the subject.

‘I wanted to change that, I wanted to start a dialogue,’ she told AFP.

Dmitriyeva also organises burlesque shows and regular pop-up markets of erotic accessories in Moscow, all as part of efforts, she said, to promote ‘sex that is not boring’.

For sociologist Rogozin, a lack of open political debate in Russia has now made talking about sex more attractive.

With authorities increasing their control over the media and internet, often blocking content linked to the opposition, Rogozin said that Russians found freedom of expression in talking about sex.

‘Intimacy is seen as a form of escape from dangerous political activity,’ he told AFP. ‘People are more eager to talk about sex than politics.’

The appetite for open discussion, however, stops short at homosexuality – considered by the state as a mental illness until 1999, he said.

Authorities, citing ‘traditional’ values, have banned gay pride parades and clamped down on so-called homosexual propaganda among minors.

‘Being gay is ok for celebrities, but not for those who live next door,’ Rogozin said.