Author: Editor

THE Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s prime tourist attractions, was closed Wednesday after staff went on strike, the tower’s operator said. The strike on the 100th anniversary of the death of engineer Gustave Eiffel, who built the tower, was to protest about “the current way it is managed”, the hard-left CGT union said in a statement. The tower’s operator SETE was “headed for disaster”, it said. The CGT said management was running the Eiffel Tower according to a business model that was “too ambitious and unsustainable” and was based on an inflated estimate of future visitor numbers while under-estimating…

BURKINA Faso’s former foreign minister-turned-opposition-leader has been missing for three days after being taken away from his house by people who said they were police, his party said on Wednesday. Besides foreign minister, Ablasse Ouedraogo served as deputy director general of the World Trade Organization and has held positions at the African Development Bank. He is currently head of the opposition party Le Faso Autrement, and has been critical of the military regime that has ruled Burkina following a September 2022 coup. In early November, the Burkina military drafted the 70-year-old Ouedraogo intending to send him to the front to…

ZAMBIA’s Foreign Minister Stanley Kakubo resigned Tuesday, the president’s office announced, hours after he was embroiled in a social media frenzy over alleged dealings with a Chinese businessman. Kakubo, who had been foreign minister since September 2021, said in a letter he was quitting because of “malicious claims over a business transaction”. Earlier, a video showing two people counting wads of cash stacked on a table spread quickly on Zambian social media accounts. An image of a signed handwritten note, dated July 8, 2022, was also put online. The note named a Chinese mining firm and a Zambian mining firm…

PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu and the Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum and Governor of Gombe State, Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya have described the late Ondo state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu who moved Nigeria towards equity, fairness and justice in his strident advocacy against every form of injustice. According to Tinubu, “It is a difficult task to have to pen a tribute and sing a dirge for a departing soul. It is a more difficult job in our African culture when one is compelled to do so for a younger person. “Here am I having the difficult job of singing a dirge for…

A FORMER Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ghali Umar Na”Abba has reportedly died in the early hours of Wednesday in Abuja. A family source told this newspaper that the former lawmaker died in an Abuja hospital following a brief illness. Ghali Umar Na’Abba CFR was born into the family of Alhaji Umar Na’Abba, a businessman in Tudun Wada, Kano City, Kano Municipal Local Government on 27 September 1958. Na’Abba was a political scientist and a policy architect. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1979. His early education was at Jakara…

RASMUS Hojlund capped Manchester United’s thrilling fightback from two goals down as the Denmark striker netted for the first time in the Premier League to seal a dramatic 3-2 win against Aston Villa on Tuesday. Erik ten Hag’s side were in danger of another damaging defeat when goals from John McGinn and Leander Dendoncker put Villa in control by half-time at Old Trafford. United were booed off at the interval but they staged a much-needed revival, sparked by Alejandro Garnacho scoring their first goal in seven hours and twenty minutes. Garnacho struck again to equalise before Hojlund finally ended his…

GAZA’s health ministry has said at least 241 people were killed in the past 24 hours, as Israel’s military operation continues in the territory. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called the war a “grave crime” against his people. Israel’s army chief Herzi Halevi said the conflict with Hamas would continue for “many more months”. Israel says it hit more than 100 sites on Tuesday, amid reports of impending ground operations in central Gaza. Loud explosions could be heard from the Gaza Strip across the perimeter with Israel in the early hours of Wednesday. Gaza’s health ministry said 382 people had…

FRENCH police have arrested a 33-year-old man suspected of murdering his wife and four children. An investigation began after their five bodies were found in a flat in Meaux, 40km (25 miles) north-east of Paris. The victims are a woman and her four children aged between nine months and 10 years old. Prosecutor Jean-Baptiste Bladier described a scene of “extreme violence” when police reached the flat, with pools of blood at the scene. The flat showed no sign of break-in and the children’s father was not present, he told a press conference on Tuesday. The alarm was raised after a…

THE DR Congo government said Tuesday that it will outlaw an opposition-led demonstration planned for Wednesday to protest alleged “irregularities” in last week’s elections. Five opposition presidential candidates informed the governor of Kinshasa in a letter published Saturday of their intention to organise the march. But with definitive results still not announced, the government said the protests will be disruptive. “Tomorrow’s demonstrations are intended to undermine the electoral process — the government of the republic cannot accept this,” Interior Minister Peter Kazadi told journalists. “I can assure you that there will be no such march.” The opposition leaders who signed…

ARTIST Galal Yousif managed to flee Sudan when conflict erupted earlier this year with only a few belongings stuffed into a small backpack. The turmoil and bag, in which he had crammed his passport, two pairs of jeans, five shirts and a car key, is depicted in his painting Man With a Heavy Heart. He first created the work as a mural in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, which he reached after a harrowing journey in June. Having now found temporary refuge in Kenya, he has recreated it on canvas – a striking image of a man with a…

BURNLEY manager Vincent Kompany congratulated Rebecca Welch for a “milestone” achievement after she became the first woman to referee an English Premier League football match by taking charge of the Clarets’ 2-0 win at Fulham on Saturday. Welch, a 40-year-old from Washington in northeast England, was working for the National Health Service when she began her refereeing career in 2010. She rose through the officiating ranks and, in 2021, became the first woman appointed to referee a match in the English Football League when she took charge of the fourth-tier fixture between Harrogate and Port Vale. Welch was also the…

THE World Health Organization said it led missions to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza at the weekend, describing growing desperation and starving people stripping an aid truck of supplies. The UN health agency and its partners delivered aid, including fuel, to the devastated Al-Shifa hospital, once Gaza’s biggest and most advanced medical facility, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late Sunday on X, formerly Twitter. What the participants in the December 23 mission witnessed was “rising desperation due to acute hunger,” Tedros said. “Partners demand immediate scale-up of food and water to ensure population health and stability.” Residents of…

SRI Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe granted an amnesty to more than 1,000 convicts and released them from jails across the country to mark Christmas, a prisons official said Monday. Among the 1,004 freed on Monday were Sri Lankans jailed for not being able to pay outstanding fines, Prison Commissioner Gamini Dissanayake said. Sri Lanka is majority Buddhist and a similar number of convicts were freed in May to mark the holiday of Vesak, which celebrates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. The latest pardon came after police arrested nearly 15,000 people during a weeklong military-backed anti-narcotics drive that was halted…

ZAMBIAN President Hakainde Hichilema has pardoned 588 inmates in various correctional facilities across the country. The freed prisoners include 11 elderly and one mother with a baby, according to the Minister of Home Affairs and Internal Security Jack Mwiimb. On Mwimb on Sunday told journalists in the capital Lusaka, the life sentence of an inmate was commuted to 35 years while two inmates on death row have their sentences commuted to life. The pardoning of the inmates by President Hichilema was in line with Article 97 of the country’s Constitution which confers authority on the president to pardon or substitute…

AT least four people have died with another 20 feared missing after a river swept away a building in South Kivu, Sunday, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). The accident happened in the rural and mining territory of Mwenga, where local people sheltered from heavy rains under a hangar serving as a makeshift restaurant on the banks of a river. “The heavy rains triggered a landslide” according to Alexandre Ngandu, the deputy mayor of Kamituga, a major town in the eastern South Kivu region. The torrential rains also caused considerable property damage. Experts say extreme weather…

WITH just 19 days to the 34th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast, this newspaper takes a look at some of the continent’s biggest stars that will follow the performance of their national teams from the comfort of their homes rather than playing on the pitch Taiwo Awoniyi (Nigeria) Awoniyi is one of the top stars that will be missing at the Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast next year. Initially, there was never any doubt over the availability of the Nigerian for the 34th edition of the biennial African Association football tournament organised by…

BRITISH billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has agreed to buy a 25% stake in Manchester United for about $1.3bn (£1.03bn). Ratcliffe’s Ineos Group will take control of football operations. The 71-year-old will also provide $300m (£236m) for future investment into the club’s Old Trafford stadium. The announcement comes 13 months after the club’s owners, the Glazer family, stated they were considering selling to “explore strategic alternatives”. The American family bought the club for £790m in 2005. The only other publicly declared bidder, Qatari banker Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani, withdrew his offer to buy 100% of the club in October.…

GAZA’s health ministry says an Israeli air strike killed at least 70 people and 109 injured in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the strip. A spokesman said the death toll was likely to rise given the large number of families living in the area. The Israeli military told the BBC it was looking into reports of the strike. Israeli and Arab media say Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip, has put forward a new proposal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Dozens of injured people were rushed from Maghazi to nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital with footage showing…

AT least 13 people were killed and 38 injured in eastern Indonesia on Sunday in an explosion at a Chinese-funded nickel-processing plant, the owner of the industrial park that hosts the facility said. The island of Sulawesi is a hub for the mineral-rich country’s production of nickel, a base metal used for electric vehicle batteries and stainless steel, and Beijing’s growing investment has stoked unrest over working conditions at its facilities. The accident occurred around 5:30 am (2130 GMT Saturday) at a plant owned by PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel (ITSS) in the Morowali Industrial Park in Central Sulawesi province,…

THE Malian ambassador to Algiers was summoned to the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday to discuss “the latest developments in the situation in the sub-Saharan country”, the day after Bamako summoned the Algerian ambassador to Mali. The head of Algerian diplomacy, Ahmed Attaf, reminded the Malian ambassador, Mahamane Amadou Maiga, “in a forceful manner, that historically, all Algeria’s contributions to promoting peace, security and stability in Mali have always been based on three cardinal principles from which it has never deviated”, according to a press release from the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These principles are “Algeria’s intransgressible…