Author: Editor

IRAN’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says the United States’ offer to hold talks on its nuclear programme is an attempt to deceive global public opinion, as a letter arrived from US President Donald Trump urging negotiations. Trump said last week that he had sent a letter to the Iranian leadership seeking negotiations over a new deal with Tehran to restrain its rapidly advancing nuclear programme. The letter was handed over to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday by Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates. While the two officials were meeting, the supreme leader told…

PORTUGAL looks likely to go to the polls for the third time in three years, outgoing prime minister Luis Montenegro indicated on Wednesday, after talks with the country’s president. Montenegro stepped down on Tuesday in the wake of a parliamentary no-confidence vote that his government lost. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on Wednesday morning held preliminary talks with political leaders, including Montenegro and his Social Democratic Party (SPD), to plot a way to avert a political crisis. Afterwards, Montenegro, who called for elections “as soon as possible” to avoid instability, said: “All the conditions are in place for (elections) to…

THE African Development Bank (AfDB) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, signed a $27 million agreement to finance the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) Phase II programme. Dr Abdul Kamara, the Director-General, Nigeria AfDB Group, who said this at the signing ceremony, reaffirmed the AfDB’s commitment to advancing agricultural transformation across Africa. Kamara said the agreement aligns with its Feed Africa strategy, which seeks to boost smallholder farmers’ productivity and enhance food security. He said the additional financing built on the $40 million provided for Phase I of TAAT would focus on expanding…

MOROCCO has been unanimously elected to preside over the 57th session of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development. The election took place on Wednesday at the headquarters of the ECA in Addis Ababa. This appointment reflects African countries’ confidence in Morocco’s ability to contribute to shaping a more integrated and prosperous economic landscape. Morocco has been an influential player in regional economic integration in recent years, with the kingdom being a prime policy mover towards inclusive development and growth. The 57th session centers on leading the implementation…

Q – My parents want me to get married to someone of their choice and I’m not interested in her at all. My father is very educated and my mother isn’t and so they fight all the time, but my father compromises and always made my mother smile in the end. However, I don’t want to live like them. I have met a girl on Facebook. She is residing in UK and is a striving Muslimah. She regularly posted Islamic articles which impressed me a lot since I also do Dawah work. I want to marry her because she is…

LIVERPOOL’s Champions League ambitions were ended after they lost on penalties to an outstanding Paris St-Germain side after a night of drama at Anfield. PSG, needing to claw back a 1-0 deficit from the first leg at home, demonstrated how they have matured under coach Luis Enrique as they knocked out a Liverpool side touted as favourites to win the tournament. Ousmane Dembele’s early goal provided the platform for the turnaround, with Liverpool unable to break the French visitors down, while PSG were a constant threat. PSG’s victory over two legs was thoroughly deserved, with keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma emerging as…

LEBANON says it has received four hostages taken by Israel during its war with Hezbollah, as Israel said it has agreed to hold talks to demarcate its border with Lebanon. The office of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that it had received the four captives, with a fifth expected to be handed over the following day. Lebanese media, including the state news agency NNA, reported that the released Lebanese captives had arrived in a hospital in southern Lebanon’s Tyre. The handover occurred after Israel said on Tuesday that it had agreed to hold talks to…

A PLANE carrying former Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte left Manila bound for The Hague on Tuesday night following his arrest on an International Criminal Court warrant tied to his deadly war on drugs, President Ferdinand Marcos said. The 79-year-old faces a charge of “the crime against humanity of murder”, according to the ICC, for a crackdown that rights groups estimate killed tens of thousands of mostly poor men, often without proof they were linked to drugs. “Former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte took off at 11:03 pm this evening and exited Philippine airspace,” Marcos told a press briefing shortly after takeoff.…

SOUTH Sudan’s government has denied earlier reports that Uganda had deployed special forces to its capital, Juba. Uganda’s military chief Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba said the soldiers had gone to the neighbouring country to help South Sudanese President Salva Kiir “secure” the city. The statement came amid escalating tensions between Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar, raising fears that their fragile peace deal could collapse and a conflict could resume. “We shall protect the entire territory of South Sudan like it was our own,” Gen Kainerugaba had written on the social media platform X. Uganda’s army spokesperson Felix Felix Kulayigye also…

ARMED Militants have stormed a hotel in the city of Beledweyne in central Somalia, and a siege is ongoing, police and witnesses have said. The attack by al-Shabab began with a car bomb exploding, followed by gunmen entering the hotel, leading to intense clashes with security forces. Police said at least four people had been killed, but witnesses told the BBC the death toll had risen to 10, with the security forces still battling the gunmen at the Qahira Hotel. Al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda, has been waging a brutal insurgency in Somalia for more than two decades. The…

Q – What is the food that is permissible to give for Zakatul-Fitr? Nura Jamilu, Hadejia A – It is reported in the hadith that it is to be given from five things. They are wheat, barley, dried dates , raisins and cottage cheese. However, some of the research scholars have mentioned that specifying these five things was done because they were used at that time. Therefore, they permit giving it from whatever is the common food of the land like rice for example, and corn in the land where it is used as food and so forth. = Q…

SOME Manchester United players are “not good enough” and some are “overpaid”, the club’s co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe says. Midfielder Casemiro, striker Rasmus Hojlund, goalkeeper Andre Onana, and wingers Antony and Jadon Sancho – who are on loan at other clubs – were namechecked by the billionaire in an interview with BBC Sport as players his regime had “inherited”. Ratcliffe, a lifelong Manchester United fan, is the chairman of petrochemicals company Ineos, which has a strong sport investment arm. The 72-year-old last year spent £1.3bn for a 28.94% stake in the club in a deal which saw Ineos take control…

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric says Israel is not allowing anything to enter Gaza, including humanitarian aid and fuel, and calls for the restoration of electricity to the territory. Also, Israeli negotiators are due in Doha today as mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US try to revive the Gaza ceasefire. As Hamas condemns Israel’s cut-off of electricity to a key desalination plant that provides drinking water to residents in central and southern Gaza, accusing the Israeli government of “cheap and unacceptable blackmail”. Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed 48,467 Palestinian deaths in Israel’s war on Gaza with 111,913 people wounded. Gaza’s…

FIVE years ago on Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced Covid-19 had become a pandemic — a moment when the world finally woke up to the unfolding disaster. The WHO had already sounded its own highest alarm five weeks earlier. But that warning — which does not mention the “p” word — had gone unheeded. At a press conference on March 11, 2020, the head of the United Nations’ health agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, finally said the worsening outbreak could be “characterised as a pandemic”. Only then did many countries grasp the severity of the situation and — way too…

PETROL station attendant Amadou Sani gesticulated to approaching motorists in Niamey to keep going because the garage had no more fuel. Niger has been grappling since the start of the month with an unprecedented shortage of the most widely used petrol in the west African country. “Our tanks have been dry for three days. No-one can say when we’ll be resupplied,” grumbled Mohamed, manager of another petrol station on the capital’s outskirts. “You see that taxi over there? The driver went around town and finally ran out of fuel here,” the manager, who did not want to give his full…

THREE journalists have been remanded in custody pending trial in Chad after being accused of colluding with a Russian paramilitary group, the public prosecutor and one of their lawyers said Monday. “They are suspected of working with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner,” public prosecutor Omar Mahamat Kedelaye told AFP. One of their lawyers, Allahtaroum Amos, said the journalists had been “charged with espionage for the enemy, attacking institutions and conspiracy”. The public prosecutor said the journalists were Olivier Mbaindinguim Monodji, director of the weekly newspaper “Le Pays” and Chadian correspondent for Radio France Internationale (RFI), and another editor from “Le…

Q – If a man did the marriage contract at a time when he was not praying, and the husband and wife, the wife’s father, and the two witnesses also were not praying, and the one who did the marriage contract did not do it in the correct manner, rather he did it in a language other than Arabic and he did not recite the Shahaadatayn (twin declaration of faith) or say the words of the marriage contract, what is the ruling on this marriage? Is this marriage regarded as legitimate or not? If they have repented from not praying…

MANCHESTER United head coach Ruben Amorim feels the club would not be in their current mess if they had more players like Bruno Fernandes. The United captain led from the front in the 1-1 draw with Arsenal at Old Trafford. Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta admitted the Portuguese was “too clever for us and the referee” for the way he manipulated the positioning of his first-half free-kick to give him a better chance to put United in front. Former United skipper Roy Keane might not be a fan given the manner in which the Irishman spoke of Fernandes on The Overlap…

ISRAEL’s Energy Minister Eli Cohen has ordered an immediate halt to electricity supply to Gaza, threatening the functioning of the enclave’s desalination plants amid an ongoing aid shortage in the holy month of Ramadan. In a post on X, Cohen said he has signed an order to “cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip immediately”. “Enough with the talk, it’s time for action!” he added. Sunday’s announcement comes more than a week after Israel cut off all supplies of goods to the territory to over two million people after reneging on the ceasefire deal that ended the 15-month-long Gaza war.…

US Secret Service agents shot an armed man near the White House during the night, an agency spokesman said early Sunday, while President Donald Trump was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. The man had been hospitalized and his condition was “unknown,” the spokesman said in a statement that did not specify whether the White House or Trump may have been the intended target. No injuries to Secret Service agents were reported, according to the statement posted by spokesman Anthony Guglielmi on social media platform X. The agents had been warned by local police of a “suicidal”…