Author: Editor

UEFA has named Asisat Oshoala’s strike in Barcelona’s game against Benfica as the Goal of the Season in the Women’s Champions League. “The top ten goals of the 2023/24 UEFA Women’s Champions League campaign have been selected by UEFA’s Technical Observer panel, with Nigerian forward Asisat Oshoala taking the prize for Goal of the Season thanks to her stunning bicycle kick for Barcelona against Benfica on Matchday 1,” the football body wrote. The Nigerian netted the last goal with a stunning bicycle kick in the game Barcelona won 5-0 en route to claiming the UEFA Women’s Champions League. The reigning…

ISRAEL faced a wave of international condemnation Monday over a strike that Gaza officials said killed 45 people when it set off a fire that ripped through a tent city for displaced Palestinians. Israel said it was looking into the “tragic accident” and its impact on civilians after the latest mass casualty event in the Gaza war which has raged since October 7. Adding to already heightened tensions since Israel launched a ground operation in Rafah in early May, the Israeli and Egyptian militaries reported a “shooting incident” Monday that killed one Egyptian guard in the border area between Egypt…

RUSSIA will remove the Taliban from a list of banned terrorist organisations, three years after they returned to power in Afghanistan, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency said Monday. Moscow has for years fostered relations with the Taliban, holding multiple rounds of talks and boosting trade with Afghanistan despite international sanctions. “Kazakhstan has recently taken the decision, which we are also going to take, to remove them from the list of terrorist organisations,” RIA Novosti quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. Kazakhstan removed the Taliban from its list of banned organisations at the end of 2023. The move could…

CHAD’s new Prime Minister Allamaye Halina announced his first government on Monday marking an end to three years of military rule in the desert nation. Senior ministers, mostly allies of President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, were kept on in the cabinet decree read out on public television. The former ambassador to China was appointed on Thursday just before junta leader Deby, an army general, was sworn in as president after an election victory contested by the opposition. The government will have 35 ministers, 23 of whom served in the previous administration. Halina’s predecessor Succes Masra resigned last Wednesday after his…

KENYA’s President William Ruto has come in for widespread criticism after saying the private jet he used to fly to the US last week was cheaper than using the national airline. He did not, however, say how much the jet had cost, or how much it would have cost on Kenya Airways. “The facts that are out in the public do not seem to bear him out,” political analyst Prof Herman Manyora told the BBC. Senior opposition figure Eugene Wamalwa told local media that the president’s remarks were “unpatriotic”. He said the president should instead have used the opportunity to…

EDO Queens have been crowned champions of the Nigeria Women’s Football League (NWFL), the first time the club has achieved the feat. The Benin-based side battled to a 1-1 draw against Bayelsa Queens in their last match of the NWFL Super Six playoff, taking their total points tally to 10 from five matches. They won four games and lost one. With Rivers Angels unable to defeat Heartland Queens – the game ended 1-1 – on the final day, Moses Aduku’s girls clinched their maiden title at the Samson Siasia Stadium in Bayelsa State. Edo Queens took the lead in the…

SOUTHAMPTON beat Leeds in the Championship play-off final to secure an immediate return to the Premier League and the £140m to go with it. Saints’ 11-year spell in the top flight came to an end after a wretched campaign last time out but, despite finishing one place and three points behind Leeds in fourth, it is they who join Leicester and Ipswich in going up. Adam Armstrong scored the decisive goal with a clinical finish after being put clear by Will Smallbone. Leeds substitute Dan James clattered a bouncing ball against the crossbar late on as they pushed for an…

HAMAS says it has launched rockets at Tel Aviv, prompting sirens to sound in the Israeli city for the first time in several months. The Israeli military said on Sunday that eight rockets were launched from the Rafah area in southern Gaza, where its forces have continued a ground assault despite an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt operations there. Israel’s air defence system intercepted several of them, the military said. Rafah is located around 100km (62 miles) south of Tel Aviv. According to local media reports, sirens sounded in about 30 areas across central Israel…

THE International Organization for Migration has increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea (PNG) to more than 670. Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the United Nations agency’s mission in the South Pacific island nation, said on Sunday the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday’s landslide. The previous estimate had been 60 homes. “They are estimating that more than 670 people [are] under the soil at the moment,” Aktoprak said. “The situation is terrible with…

OVER 130 people have died at a single hospital in Sudan’s besieged city of El Fasher, in the Darfur region, according to medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Fighting between rival groups in Sudan’s civil war in the battle for control of the city has recently intensified. The situation was “terrible,” one resident told the BBC, with hospitals and markets experiencing “violent artillery shelling”. El Fasher is the last major urban centre in Darfur that remains in the hands of Sudan’s army. The army has been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for more than a year, in a…

SUSPECTED insurgents killed at least 18 civilians in central Mali, numerous sources told AFP on Sunday, the latest attack in a region roiled by violence for years. “The insurgents fired at villagers three kilometres (less than two miles) from Diallassagou. The provisional toll is 18 dead and 21 wounded”, three residents of the village told AFP. A police source and a regional official confirmed the attack, but gave the death toll of 19 and blamed “terrorists” and “armed men”. “We confirm. The terrorists killed civilians in Diallassagou in cold blood,” the police source said, adding “there are 19 dead and…

ERIK ten Hag warned Manchester United’s owners that he will carry on winning trophies elsewhere if they decide to sack him in the aftermath of Saturday’s 2-1 victory against Manchester City in the FA Cup final. Ten Hag went into the final rocked by reports that he would be dismissed regardless of the result at Wembley. But United’s beleaguered manager made a convincing case to remain in charge as he out-witted City boss Pep Guardiola to deliver the second trophy of his turbulent two-year reign. Now Ten Hag must wait to discover his fate after insisting he had not been…

ISRAEL has continued its relentless attacks on Rafah despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering it to put an end to the military operation there, and multiple deaths were reported from central and northern Gaza, which have been subjected to renewed attacks. The Shaboura camp and areas close to the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah on Saturday were targeted, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said. Several people who have been injured in the bombardment have been transferred to the hospital, he said. The hospital renewed its appeal for fuel deliveries “to ensure its continued operation”, saying it…

ESCALATING violence in conflict-torn Myanmar’s Rakhine State has forced another 45,000 minority Rohingya to flee, the United Nations warned, amid allegations of beheadings, killings and burnings of property. Clashes have rocked Rakhine State since the Arakan Army (AA) rebels attacked forces of the ruling military government in November, ending a ceasefire that had largely held since a military coup in 2021. The fighting has caught in the middle the Muslim minority group, long considered outsiders by the majority Buddhist residents, either from the government or the rebel side. The AA says it is fighting for more autonomy for the ethnic…

DOZENS of civilians and soldiers were killed in the latest bout of violence in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher on Friday, the local governor has said, as fighting in the country shows no sign of abating more than one year after the start of the conflict. At least 30 civilians and 17 soldiers were killed in attacks in the city, Minni Minnawi said on Saturday. “This shows that the goal of those attacking el-Fasher is to exterminate the city.” War in Sudan erupted in mid-April last year when a simmering feud between the leaders of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)…

ELEVEN workers of a sugar factory have been killed following an explosion at the factory which is located in Tanzania. The victims included three foreign nationals, police said. The explosion which occurred on Thursday, May 23 was a result of an electrical fault that caused a steam pipe to burst as a technical team was readying machines to start production for the day at the privately owned Mtibwa Sugar Factory in the Morogoro region in eastern Tanzania, regional police chief Alex Mkama told the media. All the deceased were electrical and machine staff who were working in the control room…

MANCHESTER United manager Erik ten Hag hopes to bolster his chances of avoiding the sack by ruining Manchester City’s history bid in the FA Cup final on Saturday. For the second successive season, Wembley will stage a Manchester derby in the showpiece fixture. Last year, City beat United 2-1 in the final on route to an incredible treble-winning campaign that included Premier League and Champions League glory. City remain England’s pre-eminent force, as they showed by clinching an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title last weekend. United left Wembley still optimistic about the future despite that defeat 12 months ago…

JUDGES at the top United Nations court ordered Israel to halt its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and withdraw from the enclave, in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide, citing “immense risk” to the Palestinian population. Friday’s decision marked the third time this year the 15-judge panel has issued preliminary orders seeking to rein in the death toll and alleviate humanitarian suffering in Gaza. While orders are legally binding, the court has no police to enforce them. Reading out a ruling by the International Court of Justice or World Court, the body’s president,…

AT least seven people have been killed and more than a dozen injured in a Russian missile attack on Kharkiv, north-eastern Ukraine, according to the regional head. A further two people remain missing after the attack, which saw Russian forces strike Ukraine’s second-largest city at least 15 times, Oleg Sinegubov said. He advised people in the city to remain in shelters. Ukraine’s state railway company said several of its facilities had been damaged in the attack and a number of its employees had been injured. Earlier this month, Russian forces began a renewed offensive in the region in an attempt…

SUDAN’s Darfur region is facing a growing risk of genocide as the world’s attention is focused on conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, a UN expert warns. “We do have circumstances in which a genocide could be occurring or has occurred,” the UN Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, told BBC’s Newsday programme. She said many civilians were targeted based on their ethnicity in Sudan’s besieged city of El Fasher, where fierce fighting has intensified in recent days. More than 700 deaths have been reported in 10 days by a medical charity in the…