Author: Editor

LIONEL Messi scored a screamer and won his first trophy in North American soccer as Inter Miami beat Nashville on penalties (10-9) after their final ended 1-1 in 90 minutes. The Argentine World Cup winner had put Miami ahead in the 24th minute with a wonder strike into the top corner but Fafa Picault levelled for Nashville in the second half. After Messi hit the post and Leonardo Campana missed a last second chance to win the game in regulation for Miami, the game went to a shoot-out which ended in a duel between the two keepers and Elliot Panicco’s…

SAUDI border guards are accused of the mass killing of migrants along the Yemeni border in a new report by Human Rights Watch. The report says hundreds of people, many of them Ethiopians who cross war-torn Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia, have been shot dead. Migrants have told the BBC they had limbs severed by gunfire and saw bodies left on the trails. Saudi Arabia has previously rejected allegations of systematic killings. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, titled They Fired On Us Like Rain, contains graphic testimony from migrants who say they were shot at and sometimes targeted with…

ECUADORANS headed to the polls Sunday in a presidential election tarnished by the murder of a top candidate, which cast a spotlight on the violence ravaging a once-peaceful nation caught up in the illicit global drug trade. Polls opened at 7:00 am local (1200 GMT) and voting was to go on until 5:00 pm as Ecuadorans picked a successor to Guillermo Lasso, who called a snap election to avoid an impeachment trial just two years after his election. Soldiers have been deployed across the small South American country to secure the vote following a tense campaign in which the eight…

GHANAIAN TV presenter and journalist Paa Kwesi Asare has won the 2023 BBC News Komla Dumor Award. The 36-year-old is the eighth recipient of the award and the first to come from Ghana, like the late Komla Dumor. Asare is currently the head of business news at Ghana’s private TV3 channel, where he has worked for seven years as one of its main news anchors. The award was created to honour Dumor, a presenter for BBC World News, who died suddenly aged 41 in 2014. He had worked tirelessly to bring a more nuanced African narrative to the world, representing…

A FIRE at a camp for hundreds of displaced families in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has killed at least seven children. The camp houses families from Bushushu, a village on Lake Kivu that was destroyed by deadly floods and landslides in May. The blaze is said to have started in the middle of the camp before spreading, destroying hundreds of huts. Several adults are being treated for burns. The UN estimates around 3,000 families were left homeless after the floods in the Kalehe region of eastern DR Congo, an area already plagued by armed insurgencies.

SPAIN defeated European champions England 1-0 in an action-packed Women’s World Cup final at Stadium Australia in Sydney on Sunday. Captain Olga Carmona fired Spain ahead in the 29th minute, coolly finishing in the right-hand corner after a rapid counter-attack. The Lionesses, looking to become the first England senior side since the men’s team in 1966 to win the World Cup, were outplayed by a Spanish side full of flair and creativity. England’s players fell to their knees in tears at the final whistle as Spain celebrated inside their area after dealing with a final corner kick in the 14th…

NEW arrival Jude Bellingham struck twice for Real Madrid to help them come from behind to beat Almeria 3-1 in La Liga on Saturday. After netting on his debut last weekend, Bellingham again played a key role for Carlo Ancelotti’s side as they maintained their 100 per cent start to the season. Vinicius Junior added the third after being teed up by Bellingham to wrap up Los Blancos’ victory at the Power Horse Stadium on Spain’s east coast, after Sergio Arribas had sent the hosts ahead early on. Without talisman and Ballon d’Or holder Karim Benzema, who left the club…

THE mayor of an Ecuadorian city said Saturday he was the victim of an attempted assassination, a day before the country goes to the polls in general elections. Francisco Tamariz, the mayor of the coastal town of La Libertad, said he escaped unharmed from the Friday evening attack, in which gunmen fired 30 shots at his vehicle. “They tried to kill me,” Tamariz said on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that more than eight people had witnessed the shooting. Ecuador will hold a presidential election Sunday after a campaign marked by the murder of a top candidate and vows…

TWO men who allege they were sexually abused as children by Michael Jackson can revive a lawsuit against his companies, judges at a US court ruled. Wade Robson and James Safechuck, both in their 40s, claim Jackson abused them for years while they were boys. They can now pursue previously blocked lawsuits against the singer’s companies. They say these companies had a responsibility to protect them. Lawyers for Jackson, who died in 2009, maintain his innocence. Mr Robson and Mr Safechuck claim they were abused by Jackson in the late 1980s and early 1990s while staying at his Neverland ranch.…

THE price of an AK-47 assault rifle, one of the most-recognisable weapons of war, has fallen over the last few months by 50% on the black market in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum – now costing only around $830 (£650). A long-time arms dealer attributed the sharp drop in price to the fact that the black market has become saturated with the Russian-invented Kalashnikov – colloquially known as “the Clash” – after Sudan plunged into a civil war in April. Battles between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rage daily on the streets of Khartoum and the two other…

GAMBIA’s President Adama Barrow has suspended all foreign travel by officials, including himself, to reduce public spending, a government spokesman announced Saturday. Barrow signed an executive order “suspending all overseas travels by the president, the vice-president, cabinet ministers, senior government officials, civil servants and employees across all government institutions and agencies,” for the rest of the fiscal year, presidential spokesman Ebrima Sankareh said in a statement. Meetings where Gambian participation is compulsory and foreign trips entirely financed by external sources will be exempt. The Gambia, continental Africa’s smallest country with just over two million inhabitants, ranks 174th out of 191…

CHRIS Wood clinched Nottingham Forest’s first Premier League win this season as the New Zealand striker’s last-gasp header sealed a 2-1 win against Sheffield United on Friday. Wood netted in the 89th minute at the City Ground to ensure Forest bounced back from their 2-1 defeat at Arsenal in their season opener last weekend. Steve Cooper’s side had taken the lead early in the first half thanks to Taiwo Awoniyi’s header. Gustavo Hamer equalised before the break on his Blades debut. The midfielder arrived last week from second tier Coventry. Wood’s dramatic late contribution made it successive defeats for United…

ENGLAND captain Harry Kane scored and set up a goal on his Bundesliga debut as champions Bayern Munich recorded a thumping win at Werder Bremen. Kane swept a low right-footed effort past home goalkeeper Jiri Pavlenka from 15 yards to double Bayern’s lead. He had earlier assisted the first of Leroy Sane’s two goals with a deft clip over the top inside four minutes. Mathys Tel rounded off a comfortable victory for Thomas Tuchel’s side late on. “I was a little bit nervous [and] excited to play the game of course,” Kane told broadcaster DAZN after the match. “We started…

RUSSIA has banned 54 British nationals and people working for UK organisations from entering the country in retaliation for UK sanctions on its citizens, its foreign ministry says. They include Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer and International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan. A number of journalists from the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian are also on the list. The BBC said it would “continue to report independently and fairly”. The Russian foreign ministry said the move was in response to “the aggressive implementation by London of a hostile anti-Russian course”. Ms Frazer was sanctioned for “actively lobbying for…

THE blocking feature will be removed for users of X, formerly Twitter, Elon Musk has announced, claiming the feature “makes no sense”. The X boss said users will still be able to block people from directly messaging them, however. But many people on social media said it will make it hard for people to remove abusive posts from their timeline. It is the latest in a series of changes Mr Musk has made since taking over the site in a $44bn deal last year. Currently, when users “block” an account, it stops that account’s posts from appearing in the blocker’s…

UNICEF on Friday sounded the alarm on child cholera in DR Congo’s troubled North-Kivu province, estimating more than 8,000 under-fives had been infected this year. The eastern province has been ravaged by conflict for almost three decades, resulting in widespread population displacement. UNICEF put at 31,342 nationwide cases contracted to date in 2023 with many children among the sufferers and North-Kivu the worst-hit province accounting for some 21,400 cases alone, the organisation said, quoting a health ministry tally. “The size of the cholera outbreak and the devastation it threatens should ring alarm bells,” said Shameza Abdulla, UNICEF DRC senior emergency…

VIOLENCE erupted this week in a string of villages in remote southwest Niger leaving at least 28 civilians dead, sources told AFP on Friday. “For now we have recorded at least 28 dead, but the toll could go up,” a senior official in the Tillaberi region close to Mali, told AFP. Some of the bodies had been “carried off” by the Niger river, he added. The violence started at sunset on Tuesday and ended midday Wednesday, the official said. In Ayorou, one of four departments affected, four people were killed and 26 injured by bullets and knives, according to a…

THE Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, on Thursday evening, joined Bendel Insurance training session at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin City, ahead of Saturday’s CAF Confederation Cup clash with ASO Chief of Algeria. The governor, who was at the club’s training ground with his entourage, encouraged the players to play their part by winning the match convincingly as the government will do its part by providing an enabling environment. Obaseki also assured the team that the government has made provisions to ensure that they fly to all their match destinations across the continent during the tournament. “I want to encourage…

MANCHESTER City duo Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland are among the three finalists for the men’s UEFA player of the year award alongside Lionel Messi, European football’s governing body announced Thursday. The trio emerged as the leading vote-getters from a jury comprised of coaches of clubs in UEFA competitions, those in charge of European national teams and a select group of journalists. The winner of the prize will be revealed on August 31 in Monaco at the Champions League group stage draw ceremony. Haaland finished as the Champions League’s top scorer last season with 12 goals, while De Bruyne…

A CANADIAN woman has been jailed for 22 years in the US for sending letters laced with ricin poison, including to Donald Trump when he was president. Pascale Ferrier, 56, agreed to the sentence in January after pleading guilty to biological weapons charges. The deadly envelope addressed to Mr Trump was intercepted in September 2020 before delivery to the White House. Ferrier told the court that she regretted that her plan had failed and that she “couldn’t stop Trump”. In a long-winded address to the court, she also said that she saw herself as an activist not a terrorist. “I…