Author: Editor

SUPER Eagles and Leicester City midfielder Wilfred Ndidi was left stunned after inspecting facilities at the remodelled Maracana Stadium in Ajegunle, Lagos on Wednesday. The 19-pitch sports facility, which has a 192-bed space hostel, basketball and lawn tennis courts, table tennis hall, canteen and restaurant under construction, 24-hour power and solar backup, treated water supply and top-notch shower and changing rooms, upon completion, will perhaps become the biggest sporting arena for school-age children in Nigeria. The facility is courtesy, Chairman, Nathaniel Idowu Foundation, Yemi Idowu. Ndidi, who along with Borussia Dortmund forward of Nigerian descent Karim Adeyemi donated to the…

PARIS Saint-Germain have not paid Kylian Mbappe his wages for April as well as a mega-bucks bonus amid a financial dispute between the club and the player as he prepares to leave the French champions, sources close to the talks told AFP on Wednesday. PSG’s decision to withhold Mbappe’s salary is related to an agreement between the two parties made last year, at the start of the season, when the player accepted to waive part of a bonus due to him, the source said. However, the source stated the talks between the club and the France captain were “relaxed” and…

ISRAELI shelling and airstrikes killed dozens of people, most of them sheltering in tents, outside the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight and on Wednesday — pummeling the same area where strikes triggered a deadly fire days earlier in a camp for displaced Palestinians — according to witnesses, emergency workers and hospital officials. The tent camp inferno has drawn widespread international outrage, including from some of Israel’s closest allies, over the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah. And in a sign of Israel’s growing isolation on the world stage, Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognized a Palestinian state on Tuesday. The…

NORTH Korea has sent balloons full of trash, toilet paper and suspected animal faeces into the South, local media reports said Wednesday, with Seoul’s military slamming Pyongyang for their “low class” actions. Photographs showing white balloons bearing garbage bags full of trash and what appeared to be excrement were shared widely by South Korean media, after the North warned this weekend it would shower border areas in “mounds of wastepaper and filth” to punish Seoul. Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that “unidentified objects believed to be North Korean propaganda leaflets have been identified in the Gyeonggi-Gangwon border area and…

VOTES are being counted after what is seen as South Africa’s most closely fought elections since the African National Congress (ANC) came to power 30 years ago. Long lines snaked outside polling stations across the country. One electoral official in Johannesburg told the BBC the queues were reminiscent of the historic 1994 election, when black people could vote for the first time, and which saw Nelson Mandela become president. Many people were still waiting to vote when polls officially closed at 2100 local time (1900 GMT) but the electoral commission said they would all be allowed to cast their ballots.…

ACTION must be taken immediately to address the humanitarian crisis in the Sahel or other countries will be drawn in and it will “become a problem for the world”, a UNHCR official warned Wednesday. The volatile situation in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso risks overflowing into neighbouring countries, the UN refugee agency’s director for west and central Africa, Abdouraouf Gnon-Konde told AFP in an interview in Brussels. “The Gulf of Guinea, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire are already suffering because of the spiral of insecurity and the humanitarian situation — the same with Mauritania, the same with Algeria,” he said.…

CRISTIANO Ronaldo broke the record for the most goals in a Saudi Pro League season when he struck for the 34th and 35th time in Al Nassr’s final game of the campaign. “I don’t follow the records, the records follow me,” the 39-year-old Portuguese forward tweeted afterwards. The former Real Madrid and Manchester United star struck in first-half stoppage time and again in the 69th minute with a header as Al Nassr defeated Al Ittihad 4-2 at home on Monday. The previous record for most goals in a single season was the 34 scored by the Moroccan Abderrazak Hamdallah in…

SPAIN, Ireland and Norway formally recognised a Palestinian state on Tuesday in a coordinated decision slammed by Israel as a “reward” for Hamas, more than seven months into the devastating Gaza war. The three European countries believe their initiative has a strong symbolic impact that could encourage others to follow suit. After Ireland’s government formally approved the measure, Prime Minister Simon Harris said the aim was to keep Middle East peace hopes alive. “We had wanted to recognise Palestine at the end of a peace process. However, we have made this move alongside Spain and Norway to keep the miracle…

MELINDA French Gates has announced that she will donate $1bn over the next two years to people and organisations working on behalf of women and families, including on reproductive rights. In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Tuesday, French Gates said she felt “compelled” to support abortion rights in the United States after the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade. “For too long, a lack of money has forced organisations fighting for women’s rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offence. I want to help even the match,” French…

KENYA’s President William Ruto has reversed a contentious ban imposed in parts of the country on muguka, a variety of the popular stimulant known as khat or miraa. The consumption of the freshly plucked buds and soft leaves has been blamed for a rise in mental health issues and increased social ills, including crime. Three county governors from the coastal region banned its sale and use last week, sparking anger in the areas where the crop is grown. President Ruto on Monday said the muguka crop was legal and its sale should not be prevented. Muguka, a cheaper, more potent…

SOUTH Africans are set to vote in the most pivotal election since the racist system of apartheid ended in 1994. More than 27 million people are registered to cast their ballots in a poll that highlights growing political fragmentation after 30 years of democracy. A record 70 parties and 11 independents are contesting an election that will see South Africans vote for a new parliament, and nine provincial legislatures. “The huge growth in parties shows disillusionment with the old big parties or, cynics would say, people are looking for an opportunity to get into parliament and earn a pension,” political…

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…