The All Progressives Congress Presidential Support Committee has suspended its National Coordinator, Senator Godswill Akpabio over what it describes as poor leadership.
The committee is an umbrella body of President Buhari support groups.
It had a mandate to galvanise support for President Buhari’s re-election in 2019.
Addressing journalists after a meeting of the group’s National Executive Committee in Abuja on Saturday, spokesperson Kailani Muhamad said the group decided to suspend Senator Akpabio because he abandoned the organisation after his ministerial appointment.
Senator Akpabio, a former Akwa Ibom state Governor, is the current Minister of Niger-Delta
He was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari in July 2019.
Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, Major-General Farouk Yahaya on Saturday said the army is committed to ending the insurgency in the North-East.
The army chief made the comment while on an operation visit to frontline troops of Sector 2, Joint Taskforce of the Nigeria Army ‘Operation Hadin Kai’ in Damaturu, Yobe State.
Major-General Yahaya said ending the insurgency will allow the army move on to other things.
The North-East insurgency has rolled on for over a decade, spearheaded by terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and now ISWAP.
“We want to conclude this operation in the North-East,” Major-General Yahaya said, “so that we can do other things; and that is the drive now.”
After inspecting the Quarter Guard in his honour, the Chief of Army Staff was received by the Commander of the Sector 2, Brigadier-General Adamu Nura, alongside other senior officers of the command.
Addressing the troops, the Chief of Army Staff said the purpose of his visit was to familiarise himself with the challenges faced by the troops and ensure those challenges are tackled.
He pledged to work with other military branches, host communities, and sister agencies to restore peace in the region.
“We have been recording some modest success in all areas and we intend to sustain that drive,” he said.
Major-General Yahaya was last at the command on the entourage of the immediate past late Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Ibrahim Attahiru on March 14.
A helicopter carrying Colombia’s President Ivan Duque and others was struck by multiple bullets in an attack on Friday, he said in a video message. Libby Hogan reports.
A helicopter carrying Colombia’s President Ivan Duque and others was struck by multiple bullets in an attack on Friday, he said in a video message.
The incident took place while the president’s helicopter was flying through Colombia’s Catatumbo region.
No one was injured in the incident, a spokesman for the presidency said.
“What’s clear is that this is a cowardly attack where bullet holes can be seen in the presidential aircraft,” Duque said.
The troubled Catatumbo region, on Colombia’s border with Venezuela, is home to extensive coca crops, the main ingredient of cocaine.
It is where guerrillas of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) operate, former FARC fighters who reject a 2016 peace deal with the government, along with armed criminal groups involved in drug trafficking.
Security personnel have been given clear instructions to find those behind the attack on the helicopter, the president added.
The ‘Korea Fashion Market’ kicked off on Friday, offering clothes at discounts of up to 90%.
South Korean retailers are offering big bargains right now as part of a nationwide retail event aimed at reviving the economy.
Discount on lots of items, from clothes to furniture.
“Taking part in this event are 14 department stores, four online platforms and 241 brands selling products at affordable prices.”
It’s attracting customers for South Korean retail giants like Shinsegae, Hyundai, Lotte and other online sellers.
“With more vaccinated people coming out to shop for the summer, retail businesses see this as a great opportunity to sell more of their products.”
“Because it’s so hot, I came out to look for some light and cool clothes. I think I’ll get some because it’s so cheap here.”
This is the third edition of the Korea Fashion Market and it’ll be held until July 1st.
In the meantime, South Korea on Thursday kicked off another, bigger nationwide retail campaign dubbed the “Korea Donghaeng Sale” which will run until July 11th.
The Korean word ‘Donghaeng’ means to go along together.
And with thousands of retailers taking part across the country, from conglomerates to local stores, it certainly lives up to its name.
There are big discounts on home appliances, cars, furniture, food and more.
A private secondary school in the northern Nigeria city of Kano has adopted cryptocurrency as a means of payment for school fees.
There has been controversy over the use of cryptocurrencies in the West African nation, as in February the country’s banks were banned from dealing in them.
But the proprietor of the school, Sabi’u Musa Haruna, told journalists that the school had decided to collect school fees using cryptocurrencies because of their growing acceptance around the world.
The Proprietor said this while addressing journalists in Kano, stating that the school management took the decision after consulting parents and guardians.
He said paying school fees with digital money was not compulsory.
He further explained that the decision was aimed at easing the strain of payment of school fees for parents, citing that countries like El Salvador and Tanzania had expanded payment options for cryptocurrency users.
He did not give specifics as to which tokens the school will accept for payment.
Asylum campaigners have marked the first anniversary of a knife attack at a Glasgow hotel which left six people injured, including a police officer.
Attacker Badreddin Abadlla Adam, aged 28, from Sudan, was shot dead by police in the incident at the Park Inn.
Campaign group Refugees For Justice called for an inquiry into the decision to house asylum seekers in the hotel.
It said the tragedy was a “direct result of the problematic UK asylum support and accommodation system.
The Home Office said it was necessary to use the Park Inn as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers during the Covid fiasco.
Refugees For Justice gathered in the city’s George Square where they laid flowers, lit candles and read poems.
Concerns had previously been raised over living conditions. Migrant charity Positive Action in Housing said that many people claimed to have no windows or fresh air in rooms.
Glasgow City Council is the only local authority in the country to take in asylum seekers through the UK government’s dispersal scheme.
Earlier this month, UK media reported that there were still 200 asylum seekers living in hotels across the city.
Council leader Susan Aitken said a ban on accepting new asylum seekers would continue while the asylum-housing scheme was run “on the cheap” by the housing firm Mears Group, which runs a reported £1 billion a year refugee housing contract for the UK government.
United States President Joe Biden said Friday that the future of Afghanistan was in its own hands, but he promised its president, Ashraf Ghani, that the United States would continue to support the country even after American forces withdraw following nearly 20 years of war.
During a visit to Washington by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation, President Biden said the United States would continue to offer security assistance, as well as diplomatic and humanitarian aid.
His decision to pull out American troops by September 11 is one of the most consequential of his presidency so far, a deeply personal calculation.
The meeting came the day after the US announced plans to evacuate thousands of Afghans who worked for the US military ahead of the withdrawal.
However there are concerns of reprisals from the Taliban which the US and Nato officials recently said have so far failed to live up to commitments to reduce violence in Afghanistan.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Friday, President Biden said the partnership between the US and Afghanistan would continue but he stressed that it was up to Afghans to decide “what they want”, adding that the senseless violence has to stop.
Meanwhile, President Ghani expressed support for the Us President’s historic decision to withdraw US troops, saying he was there to respect it and support it.
He also announced that Afghan security forces had recaptured six districts, reversing some recent Taliban gains.
The two Koreas still technically remains at war following the armistice agreement.
To remind people of that tragic past while showing how tensions can be blurred through art the world’s second art hotel is getting ready to open near the DMZ.
Right on Myeongpa Beach, just ten kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, is “Re:maker”, a hotel that doubles as an art gallery.
It is the world’s second art hotel in a border region, following British artist Banksy’s “Walled Off Hotel” in the Palestinian West Bank.
A total of eight rooms each have their own concept and the artist’s interpretation of the two Koreas’ separated reality.
“The room’s designer, Omyo Cho named it ‘Weird Tension’. While she was working on the room, she constantly felt discomfort from the fact that it was too peaceful even though the two Koreas are still at war. Through many elements including a wire fence drawn on a mirror, she gives a stark reminder of inter-Korean division.”
The artist made all the objects in the room difficult to use from a TV attached to the ceiling to a bathroom door with 12 doorknobs, to alert the guests to the tense reality we are in.
Another room uses metal the foundation of civilization but also a material used to make weapons.
“We couldn’t overlook its function as an accommodation site, so we put much thought into it when placing furniture and items all thoroughly calculated. It was tough to have art and daily life fused together but fortunately, the outcome is extraordinary.”
Built as part of the Culture Ministry’s project to transform the border area’s tense image to one of peace and art, the organizers hope it can become a major tourist spot.
“Tourism in Goseong county has declined after the overland tours to the DMZ and Geumgangsan Mountain stopped. We would like to welcome more tourists with the art hotel ‘Re:maker’ as centerpiece.”
“We hope at least one tenth of the people who come here think about how conflict could be turned into harmony and how the boundary could wane and we hope those thoughts could be the basis of action.”
The hotel will officially open in July, and those who visit might also want to take a look at the nearby Unification observatory and DMZ Museum.
Satellite imagery shows a thermal plant in North Korea’s Yeongbyeon nuclear facilities appears to have been operating since late February this year.
That’s according to the U.S.-based North Korea monitoring website 38 North.
It could indicate some nuclear activity by the regime because the plant is used to provide steam when reprocessing spent fuel for plutonium extraction.
The operation period is reportedly longer than previous maintenance efforts and more consistent when compared to earlier reprocessing campaigns.
But the website said it could not confirm what is happening without further visual signatures or on-the-ground inspection.
Lawyers for investors in a cryptocurrency exchange in South Africa, which told clients in April their accounts had been hacked, say $3.6 billion has disappeared from the platform and that the two brothers who ran it cannot be traced.
If confirmed, Africrypt’s losses would rank among the biggest crypto losses yet. For the whole of 2020, losses in the crypto sector through fraud and other crime were $1.9 billion, down from a record of $4.5 billion in 2019, according to crypto intelligence company CipherTrace.
Africrypt COO Ameer Cajee said in a letter to clients, dated April 13, that client accounts had all been compromised due to a recent breach in its system. The letter, reviewed by Reuters, said Africrypt had halted operations and had “begun the process of attempting to retrieve stolen funds.”
It gave no details of how much money was missing and warned clients that trying to get their money back using lawyers would “only delay the recovery process.”
Hanekom Attorneys, a law firm hired by some of those who say they have lost money, told Reuters in a statement their investigations had so far found a total of $3.6 billion had vanished from Africrypt. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how it reached that figure.
Reuters could not reach Africrypt for comment. Calls to Cajee’s mobile phone went to voicemail and he did not respond to text messages. The exchanges’s website is offline.
Darren Hanekom, a lawyer representing the investors, said that Cajee and his brother and co-founder Raess had been untraceable since the April 13 letter and that he had referred the matter to South Africa’s specialist anti-corruption police, nicknamed the Hawks, on April 16.
Darren Hanekom, a lawyer representing investors in cryptocurrency exchange Africrypt, is seen in his office in Cape Town, South Africa, June 25, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings
Bitcoin reached a record high of almost $65,000 on April 14.
Philani Nkwalase, spokesman for the Hawks, said they had so far been unable to open the case because Hanekom Attorneys is based in Western Cape and those seeking to recover their money are in other provinces.
“We advised those individuals to please open cases where they are,” he said by telephone. “Go to the nearest police station.”
Zakira Laher, Cajee’s cousin, who said she was an Africrypt director until she quit in 2019, told Reuters the brothers had been missing since April.
“I say this on behalf of the whole family that we have no idea where they are,” she said by telephone. “Around about mid-April, they just stopped talking to us. They’re not responding to us in WhatsApp.”
Hanekom said he had alerted several other crypto exchanges of the case and that his firm had this month informed South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), but that it could not get involved as it does not regulate cryptocurrencies.
The FSCA’s head of enforcement, Gerhard van Deventer, told Reuters in response to questions about Africrypt that crypto currency is not defined as a financial product and that the FSCA did not have jurisdiction to investigate.
“We are in the process of bringing crypto into the regulatory fold,” he said.
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