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MALI has revoked Air France’s permit to fly between Paris and Bamako after the carrier suspended operations to and from the country over regional instability. Air France on Monday suspended flights to Mali and Burkina Faso after the airspace in neighbouring Niger was closed by the coup leaders who seized power on July 26. The measure was due to end on Friday, but the company extended it to August 18, citing the coup in Niger and the “geopolitical situation” in the Sahel region. The Malian authorities said the suspension breached the terms of its permit to operate the route. In…

ISRAEL has announced it’s evacuated in a special flight over 200 of its citizens and Ethiopian Jews from two cities in the Amhara region affected by recent violence and moved them to the country’s capital Addis Ababa. Amhara is home to thousands of members of the Jewish community. In a statement Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he’d directed the evacuees to be moved out of combat areas and that they would leave for Israel. Relative calm continues to be reported in the biggest cities in the Amhara region amid recent intense clashes between the army and local militias. The army…

SAUDI Arabia has emerged as a force in the football transfer market this year, offering eye-watering salaries that have lured a host of big names to the oil-rich Gulf kingdom. Here, News Point Nigeria Sport takes a look at some of the biggest names to make the move: Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival in January to play for Riyadh-based Al-Nassr is what first drew global attention to ongoing efforts to boost the Saudi Pro League. He was followed by his former Real Madrid teammate Karim Benzema, the 2022 Ballon d’Or winner who signed a three-year contract with Al-Ittihad in June. Just a…

TEENAGE winger Salma Paralluelo came off the bench to score a 111th-minute winner as Spain beat the Netherlands to reach the semi-finals of the Women’s World Cup for the first time. Mariona Caldentey had appeared to give Spain the win in normal time when she slammed home an 80th-minute penalty via the post after Stefanie van der Gragt handled in the box. Van der Gragt went from villain to hero by smashing home a stoppage-time equaliser – but Paralluelo found space in the area in extra time to put Spain into their first major semi-final for 26 years. The Netherlands,…

PRESIDENT Biden has signed off on a politically charged agreement with Iran to bring home five American citizens in exchange for the regime gaining access in the coming weeks to billions of dollars in blocked funds sitting outside the heavily sanctioned country, CBS News has learned. Some $6 billion of that money currently sits in a restricted bank account in South Korea that is inaccessible to the heavily sanctioned Iranian regime. The prisoners involved in the agreement include Siamak Namazi, who has been held in Iran for nearly eight years; Emad Shargi, a Washington, D.C., resident; and Morad Tahbaz, a…

DUTCH authorities seized over eight tonnes of cocaine discovered in a container ship from Ecuador, the nation’s largest ever seizure of the drug, prosecutors said Thursday. The drugs, valued at an estimated 600 million euros ($661 million), were concealed in a container carrying bananas that had arrived in Rotterdam via Panama, prosecutors said. “On July 13, customs carried out the largest ever drug seizure in the port of Rotterdam,” the prosecutors said in a statement. “A total of 8,064 one-kilo packets of cocaine were extracted from twelve pallets of bananas,” the statement added. The seizure had not been announced previously…

WOMEN on the minimum wage in Ghana have to spend one in every seven dollars they earn on sanitary pads, research by the BBC has found. The BBC surveyed nine countries around Africa to see how affordable period products are. We compared the minimum wage to the local cost of the cheapest sanitary pads and found they were beyond the reach of many women. While Ghana was the country with the least affordable menstrual products of those we surveyed, women across Africa are struggling with “period poverty” – something activists are trying to change. Joyce, a 22-year-old Ghanaian, cannot afford…

SERGE Brammertz, the chief prosecutor at the Arusha-based International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, has warned that the international justice system needs to invest more in tracking suspects. He was speaking to BBC Focus on Africa TV after a UN court ordered the indefinite suspension of the war crimes trial of Rwandan genocide suspect Félicien Kabuga due to his dementia, and that he be considered for release. Mr Kabuga was arrested in 2020, after being on the run for two decades. The prosecutor also challenged countries that do not want to extradite suspects to urgently set up mechanisms to prosecute…

THE World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has showcased the strides made in women’s football on the field in recent years — while exposing the lack of woman coaches at all levels of the sport. As the tournament heads into the quarter-finals, England boss Sarina Wiegman is the only woman left on the touchline. The first 32-team Women’s World Cup began with 12 woman coaches. That’s 37.5 percent, exactly the same as at the World Cup in 2019, when nine of the 24 teams in France had a woman at the helm. “It is a problem not only on…

WEST Ham United have agreed deals for Manchester United’s Harry Maguire and Southampton’s James Ward-Prowse worth about £60m in total. Each deal is thought to be worth in the region of £30m. Maguire, 30, struggled for first-team opportunities at Old Trafford last season and has been stripped of the captaincy this season. He is understood to be keen on the move with personal terms yet to be agreed but not expected to be a problem. Maguire joined United in August 2019 for a world record £80m for a defender. West Ham have been trying to sign Ward-Prowse for much of…

A FRONTRUNNER candidate in Ecuador’s forthcoming presidential election has been shot dead at a campaign rally. Fernando Villavicencio, a member of the country’s national assembly, was attacked as he left the event in the northern city of Quito on Wednesday. A member of his campaign team told local media Mr Villavicencio was getting into a car when a man stepped forward and shot him in the head. Current president Guillermo Lasso vowed the “crime will not go unpunished”. Witnesses said Mr Villavicencio, 59, was shot three times. The suspect was also shot in an exchange of bullets with security and…

A MAN who posted violent threats against President Joe Biden and other officials online was shot dead during an FBI raid on Wednesday. Agents were attempting to serve an arrest warrant on Craig Robertson at his home in Utah, just hours ahead of a planned visit to the state by Mr Biden. A criminal complaint said Robertson posted threats on Facebook against Mr Biden and a prosecutor pursuing criminal charges against Donald Trump. The FBI declined to give more details. The raid happened at about 06:15 local time in Provo, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Salt Lake City.…

A ROMANIAN national kidnapped by an Al-Qaeda affiliate in 2015 in Burkina Faso, has been released after eight years in captivity, the Romanian government announced on Wednesday. Iulian Ghergut, now 47, was taken on April 4, 2015, while working in a manganese mine in northeast Burkina Faso, near the border with Mali and Niger. “He has been released and is currently safe on Romanian territory,” Romania’s foreign ministry said in a press release, thanking Morocco for its “important support”. Romanian president Klaus Iohannis on X, formerly known as Twitter, welcomed the release of Ghergut and thanked the Romanian institutions and…

RESIDENTS of Omdurman, the twin city to Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, have had to live through massive aerial bombardments and heavy fighting over the past three days as the conflict between the army and a paramilitary force intensifies as it approaches its fifth month. A call went out on social media on Tuesday to see if anyone knew any gravediggers. News had spread that the bodies were mounting up as the bombs from above, as well as shrapnel and bullets from ground level, were hitting civilians. It is hard to find individual plots for people as the fighting is blocking access…

NIGERIA’s women’s football team fresh from an impressive run to the last 16 of the World Cup are demanding with the support of FIFPRO their national federation “honour their commitments” and pay them outstanding bonuses and expenses. The Super Falcons resumed their battle with the federation after they bowed out of the World Cup losing on penalties to European champions England on Monday. Their build-up to this year’s tournament was overshadowed by a row with their national federation over bonuses. They had even threatened to boycott their opening game but put that behind them to draw with Olympic champions Canada…

FRANCE issued a Women’s World Cup warning on Tuesday to set up a tasty quarter-final clash against Australia, with Colombia joining them in the last eight and facing England. A rampant France scored three times in eight minutes in a first-half blitz as they won 4-0 to bring Morocco’s fairytale run to a brutal end. Veteran striker Eugenie Le Sommer scored twice, once in each half, and Kadidiatou Diani and Kenza Dali were also on the scoresheet in Adelaide. Herve Renard’s side will now play co-hosts Australia in Brisbane on Saturday, with the winners of that going on to play…

DAIRO Antonio Usuga, one of Colombia’s most notorious drug lords, was sentenced to 45 years in prison Tuesday by a US federal judge. Usuga, 51, who pleaded guilty to cocaine smuggling charges earlier this year, was the leader of Colombia’s largest narco-trafficking gang, the Clan del Golfo, or Gulf Clan. Known as “Otoniel,” Usuga was extradited to the United States from Colombia last year. He pleaded guilty in January to running a criminal enterprise, engaging in a maritime narcotics conspiracy, and engaging in a narcotics importation conspiracy. US District Court Judge Dora Irizarry sentenced Usuga to 45 years in prison…

A TEXAS woman was attacked by a hawk and a snake at the same time after the bird – which eats snakes – accidentally dropped the wriggling serpent on her. Peggy Jones, 64, was mowing her lawn last month when a passing hawk dropped a snake on her before swooping down to angrily try to reclaim its meal. The snake wrapped itself around her arm and began striking her face as the bird sunk its talons deep into her flesh. The terrifying ordeal left her with cuts and bruising to her arm and face. The bizarre incident took place on…

FIVE people have died in violent protests relating to a taxi strike in Cape Town, South Africa, officials say. The victims include a 40-year-old British national whose family is being supported by the UK Foreign Office. The week-long strike was called in response to what drivers said was “heavy-handed tactics” by law enforcement authorities. The taxi drivers and owners said their vehicles were being targeted and impounded for minor offences. Infringements included not wearing a seatbelt and illegally driving in the emergency lane, drivers said. They claimed others doing the same only faced fines. Minibus taxi operators across Cape Town…

RUSSIA’s Wagner mercenary group is “taking advantage” of instability in Niger, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told the BBC. The country has been ruled by a junta following the ousting of President Mohamed Bazoum nearly two weeks ago. There have been suggestions the coup leaders have asked for help from Wagner, which is known to be present in neighbouring Mali. Mr Blinken said he did not think Russia or Wagner instigated Niger’s coup. However the US was worried about the group “possibly manifesting itself” in parts of the Sahel region, he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme…