Child Refugee To Play For The Gambia At Africa Cup of Nations Finals

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December 23, 2021

AS Roma midfielder Ebrima Darboe, who made a perilous journey as a child migrant from Africa across the Mediterranean by boat, has been included in Gambia’s squad for next month’s Africa Cup of Nations.

Darboe, 20, debuted in Serie A last season after arriving as a 14-year-old boat refugee in Sicily, and is among four players from top flight Italian clubs who headline the 28-man squad for Gambia’s debut appearance at the continental championship.

Bologna’s Musa Barrow, Omar Colley of Sampdoria and Spezia winger Ebrima Colley are also all expected to be starters at the tournament in Cameroon.

Coach Tom Saintfiet on Wednesday named an eclectic mix of players, including several from clubs in the lower leagues in England, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.

There are two English-born players in the squad — Ebou Adams (Forest Green Rovers) and Ibou Touray (Salford City) – plus Swiss-born Saidy Janko, who was at Manchester United and Celtic but now plays for Real Valladolid, and made his Gambia debut last month.

The squad also includes Dembo Darboe, top scorer in Belarus this year for new champions Shakhtyor Soligorsk, and Modou Barrow, who played in the Premier League while at Swansea City but is now in South Korea.

Gambia have been drawn in Group F at the Cup of Nations finals and start against Mauritania on Jan. 12. They also have Mali and Tunisia in their group.

Late Drama As Al Ahly Lift CAF Super Cup For Eighth Time In History

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Emenike Agu

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December 23, 2021

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CAF Champions League champions, Al Ahly, have beaten Raja Casablanca on penalties to win their second consecutive CAF Super Cup under Pitso Mosimane.

The 2022 CAF Super Cup took place between Champions League winners Al Ahly and Moroccan giants Raja Casablanca, who were crowned as Confederation Cup champions, in Doha, Qatar.

Entering the game as favourites, Mosimane’s men were dealt a heavy blow just before the start of the game after their key midfielder Amr El-Sulya picked up an injury and had to be replaced with Yasser Ibrahim.

This changed Al Ahly’s starting XI to be as follows:

Mohamed El-Shennawy; Badr Benoun, Ayman Ashraf, Hamdy Fathi Ali Maaloul; Amr El-Sulya, Aliou Dieng, Akram Tawfik; Mohamed Magdy Afsha, Hussein El-Shahat, Percy Tau.

Raja’s XI: Anas Zniti; Abdelilah Madkour, Marouane Hadhoudi, Jamal Harkass, Abdeljalil Jbira; Fabrice Ngoma, Zakaria El Wardi, Mohsen Metwally, Abdelilah Hafidi, Mahmoud Benhalib; Hamid Ahadad.

The Red Devils entered the game on the strong foot, dominating the first 10 minutes of the game; however, it was the Moroccans who managed to break the deadlock through Zamalek loanee Hamid Ahdaad.

In the 13th minute, right back Abdelilah Madkour led Raja Casablanca’s counter-attack, before his cross inside the penalty area couldn’t be cleared by Yasser Ibrahim for Ahaddad to tap it in to give Raja an early lead.

Al Ahly tried to respond quickly, and just three minutes later Maaloul sent a cross inside the penalty area, which was cleared away by the keeper before the rebound was met by El-Shahat, but the keeper was there once again to deny the Reds a quick equaliser.

Apart from these two chances, neither side created any more clear-cut chances in the remaining minutes of the first half as Raja parked the bus and watched the Reds passing the ball around.

It was after the half-time when Al Ahly became more aggressive towards the goal, especially after Mosimane brought on striker Mohamed Sherif for defender Ayman Ashraf.

The Reds, therefore, imposed their pressure and style of play to try and snatch a quick equalizer after the break and this became even more clear when El-Shahat was brought off for Ahmed Abdelkader.

Sherif and Abdelkader changed the pace of the game and this resulted in Al Ahly’s first real chance of the game when Mohamed Magdy Afsha found the ball on the edge of the box, but his long-range effort was caught by Zniti.

Al Ahly then had a penalty shout after Percy Tau’s cross clearly hit Marouane Hadhoudi’s hand, but the referee refused to go consult the VAR.

In the 77th minute, Mosimane made his last substitution when he brought on Taher Mohamed Taher for Yasser Ibrahim, before Percy Tau going through on goal after a ball from Mohamed Sherif, but the South African’s effort went wide.

And as Raja thought they clinched the title, the Red Devils’ pressure proved to be fruitful as they finally managed to score the equalizer in the 90th minute through Taher Mohamed.

Mohamed Sherif found Afsha inside the penalty box but the latter’s shot was parried away by the keeper, but Tau was there for the follow-up, but instead of shooting, he took a more unselfish route and passed it to the open Taher Mohamed Taher, who made it 1-1.

Al Ahly tried to find the winner in the remaining few minutes, but there wasn’t enough time as the game was sent to penalty shootouts.

Al Ahly scored their five initial attempts through Ali Maaloul, Badr Benoun, Percy Tau, Mohamed Abdelkader, and Taher Mohamed, and the same happened for Raja, who scored through Mohamed Zrida, Zakaria El-Wardi, Marouane Hadhoudi, Mahmoud Benhalib, and Mohsen Metwally.

This meant that the cup will be decided with sudden death, in which Akram Tawfik stepped up to take the sixth penalty and sent the goalkeeper the wrong way to give his side an advantage.

Raja’s left-back Abdelilah Madkour was the one to take Raja’s final penalty but his shot went way wide and was unable to hit the target, handing Al Ahly their eighth Super Cup.

Not only Al Ahly have lifted the Super Cup for a record eighth time, but they have reached their 25th international trophy, sitting just one behind European giants Real Madrid.

Moreover, Pitso Mosimane has become the first Al Ahly manager to win the CAF Champions League and the CAF Super Cup for two successive times since Manuel Jose in 2007.

Abducted Haiti Missionaries Describe Daring Escape

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Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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Twelve missionaries who were abducted in Haiti have described how they managed to get away on their own, escaping their captors at night and using the stars for navigation to trek through dense bush for hours.

Christian Aid Ministries announced the group were finally free last week, after being held captive since October when the gang that seized them had demanded a ransom of $1m per hostage.

It is not clear if any money was paid.

In total, 17 missionaries and their families were abducted, after they had visited an orphanage in the town of Ganthier, east of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Five others had already been released.

Their ordeal brought international attention to Haiti’s growing problem of gang abductions.

Addressing a news conference in Ohio, spokesman Weston Showalter said, “When they sensed the timing was right, they found a way to open the door that was closed and blocked, filed silently to the path they [had] chosen to follow and left the place that they were held at.

Evading “numerous guards”, the group travelled in the direction of a mountain that they had seen days earlier, using constellations to guide them. It was not immediately clear how they managed to escape the guards.

The group included a married couple, a 10-month old baby, and children aged three, 14 and 15. There were also four adult men and two women.

Around dawn they found a person with a phone who helped them call authorities.

The group was later flown back to Florida on a US Coast Guard flight, Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) said. Most have now returned to their families.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban To Defy EU Over Immigration Law

By

Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban says his government will defy a European Union ruling and stick by its controversial immigration laws.

Last month the EU’s top court ruled that Hungary’s law criminalising lawyers and activists who help asylum seekers was in breach of European law.

A long-running row over Hungary’s migrant rules means it could miss out on billions of euros in EU cash. But Mr Orban said Hungary had no plans to change the controversial laws.

Dubbed the “Stop Soros law”, after the billionaire philanthropist the government accuses of supporting Muslim migrants, the 2018 bill outlaws people and organisations from helping migrants apply for asylum.

It also prevents people from applying for asylum if they arrived from a country where their life was not at risk.

In November the EU’s Court of Justice said that by passing the law, Mr Orban’s nationalist government had “failed to fulfil its obligations” under EU law.

But at his end-of-year news conference on Tuesday, Mr Orban said the EU’s rules were “obsolete” in the face of “massive migration” since 2015.

The right-wing prime minister also accused the EU of “the most brutal sabotage” by withholding pandemic funds.

Top EU officials have said Hungary, along with Poland, is unlikely to see a first instalment of pandemic cash this year unless it commits to reforms to bolster democratic values and a free judiciary.

But Mr Orban said the EU was withholding the funds to try to unseat him.

Harvard Professor Found Guilty Of Hiding Ties To China

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Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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A Harvard University professor Charles Lieber, charged with hiding his ties to a Chinese-run recruitment program has been found guilty on all counts.

The 62-year old former chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry and chemical biology, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of making false statements, and two counts of failing to file reports for a foreign bank account in China.

The jury deliberated for about two hours and 45 minutes before announcing the verdict following five days of testimony in Boston federal court.

Lieber’s defense attorney Marc Mukasey had argued that prosecutors lacked proof of the charges and maintained that investigators didn’t keep any record of their interviews with Lieber prior to his arrest.

He argued that prosecutors would be unable to prove that Lieber acted “knowingly, intentionally, or willfully, or that he made any material false statement.”.

Prosecutors argued that Lieber, who was arrested in January, knowingly hid his involvement in China’s Thousand Talents Plan to protect his career and reputation.

Lieber also concealed his income from the Chinese program, including $50,000 a month from the Wuhan University of Technology, up to $158,000 in living expenses and more than $1.5 million in grants, according to prosecutors.

In exchange, they say, Lieber agreed to publish articles, organize international conferences and apply for patents on behalf of the Chinese university.

The case is among the highest profile to come from the U.S. Department of Justice’s so-called “China Initiative.”

Dutch Prosecutors Demand Life Sentences In MH17 Downing

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Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday demanded life sentences for four suspects in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Prosecutors said the four recklessly used a Russian missile to bring down the passenger jet, killing all 298 passengers and crew, adding that they caused “deep and irreversible suffering” to relatives of the 298 people killed.

Public prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks made the sentence demand on the third day of a presentation of evidence supporting the indictment. The suspects are being tried in absentia.

Life sentences are rare in the Netherlands, where the sentence means the convicted person spending the rest of their life in prison.

But Ridderbeks said it was a necessary in the MH17 downing because of the extreme nature of the crime and to act as a deterrent.

Prosecutors accuse Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Igor Pulatov as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, who were separatist rebels fighting Ukrainian government forces in 2014, of forming a team that aimed to bring down Ukrainian planes using a missile system trucked in from a Russian military base.

Prosecutor Thijs Berger told judges earlier Wednesday that it’s legally irrelevant that the suspects wanted to shoot down military and not civilian aircraft.

The trial is being held in the Netherlands at a high security courtroom near Schiphol Airport because nearly 200 of those on board were Dutch citizens. Victims came from a total of 16 different nations.

Turkey Arrests US Diplomat For Allegedly Selling Fake Passport

By

Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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Turkish authorities have arrested an American diplomat working for the U.S. Consulate in Lebanon for allegedly providing a fake passport to a Syrian man.

Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu on Wednesday, reported that the suspect, identified by his initials D.J.K., was detained at Istanbul Airport on Nov. 11, and was later formally arrested on suspicion of selling the forged passport for $10,000.

Anadolu said the Syrian was detained for questioning after he attempted to travel to Germany on the false passport, which was in D.J.K.’s name.

Police later determined through an examination of security camera footage, that D.J.K. gave him the passport at the airport and the two also exchanged clothes. Police also seized an envelope containing $10,000 from the diplomat, the report said.

The American was jailed while the Syrian was released pending possible proceedings for falsifying documents.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara would not comment on the report. The U.S. Embassy in Beirut did not respond to a request for comment.

Death Toll From Madagascar Boat Sinking Climbs To 83

By

Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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Boat that sank off the coast of northeastern Madagascar on Monday is pulled to the beach — The wreck of the boat 'Francia', that sank off the coast on Monday, is pulled to the beach in northeastern Madagascar, December 22, 2021 in this picture obtained from social media. Madagascar Ministry of National Defence/via REUTERS

The death toll from the sinking of a cargo ship off the coast of northeastern Madagascar has risen to 83 as bad weather ended the search for five missing passengers.

Maritime and River Port Agency (APMF), said the ship, which was not authorised to take passengers, was overloaded and water flooded the engine before it sank on Monday.

Mamy Randrianavony, director of operations at sea added that fifty survivors have been found, while the search for the five remaining missing passengers would resume on Thursday.

One of the search helicopters carrying General Serge Gellé, who heads the national Gendarmerie, crashed at sea late on Monday. Gellé was found alive on Tuesday morning after 13 hours, during which time he used the pilot’s seat as a float.

In a video posted by the Gendarmerie Gellé said, “Since I couldn’t fight the waves, I knew I wouldn’t make it to dry land. Yet I was very close. I arrived within 500 meters, but the waves sent me back because I was getting tired.”

He said, “I thank heaven that there was a fisherman. But the fisherman’s canoe was too small. So he had to come back for a bigger canoe. So I stayed two more hours in the sea.

Another passenger from the helicopter, a mechanic, was also found alive. Two other passengers are unaccounted for.

Kwara State To Commence School Feeding Programme In January

By

Rhoda Onuzulike

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December 22, 2021

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The Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq says the National Home-grown School Feeding Programme will commence in January.

The Governor spoke in Ilorin at the hand-over ceremony of the feeding utensils to the state focal person Bashirah AbdulRazaq by officials of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development that coordinates the scheme.

AbdulRazaq said the project represents another milestone in the administration’s catalogue of achievements.

“Today again represents a milestone in the strides of the Otoge administration. Since coming on board, we have worked hard to enlist Kwara in this laudable and hugely beneficial programme,” he said.

“The school feeding programme began a few years ago. Until today, only Kwara and another state were absent from the list.”

Represented at the event by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Prof. Mamman Saba Jibril, AbdulRazaq said his government had to relaunch the implementation committee for the programme in 2019 because the former administration failed to do it.

He said the programme will reduce malnutrition, improve school enrollment and boost the state’s economy.

The Governor commended the Federal government especially the Minister and the state agencies for their commitment.

At the ceremony were the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiyyah Umar Faruq, represented by Sefiyat Sanni; representative of the Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Poverty Alleviation, Muhammad Bawa; representative of the Kwara First Lady and Commissioner for Communications Abosede Buraimoh; Special Adviser to the Governor on Strategy Sa’ad Salau; Special Adviser on Political Abdullateef Alakawa; Special Adviser Political Communication Bashir Adigun; and Chairman Kwara SUBEB Prof Raheem Adaramaja.

Sefiyat Sanni, who stood in for the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, said the programme is designed to address poverty, boost school enrollment, nutrition and economic activities across the nation.

She said the Ministry has deployed technology-supported monitoring systems to enable it to know how the programme is being implemented and the areas that need intervention and amendment.

Libyan Election Collapses With No Plan Out Of Crisis

By

Zoe Maven

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December 22, 2021

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Libya’s parliament said Friday’s planned presidential election will not be going ahead.

This latest development is leaving the internationally-backed peace process in chaos and the fate of the interim government in doubt.

The electoral commission proposed pushing back the voting date by a month, confirming a delay that had been widely expected amid disputes over the rules, including the eligibility of several divisive candidates.

There have been various disagreements involving candidates viewed as unacceptable in large parts of the country, including the son of the late ruler Muammar Gaddafi and a military leader who assaulted Tripoli.

Analysts say at this rate, the peace process which is seen as the best hope in years of bringing an end to the decade of chaos and violence in the country, will be jeopardized.

Large numbers of Libyans had already registered for voting cards for the election in what politicians on all sides in Libya have said is a sign of strong popular desire for a vote.

The U.S. ambassador on Wednesday said work towards elections should remain a priority.

However, with mobilisations in Tripoli and other western areas by armed groups, the collapse of the electoral process risks aggravating local disputes and triggering a new round of fighting.

Renewed conflict could also lead to more frequent or extensive shutdowns in oil output by armed groups, hitting state finances. A group this week closed down three major fields.