₦airaland Forum

Flooding and heavy rains in Kenya have killed at least 70 people since mid-March, a government spokesperson said, twice as many as were reported earlier this week.

The East African country has seen weeks of heavy rains and severe flooding in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, as well as in the country's western and central regions.

Kenya's government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura on Friday refuted claims that hundreds of people have died in the ongoing flooding and said the official tally now stands at 70.

Five bodies were retrieved Friday from a river in Makueni county, east of the country, after a lorry they were traveling in was swept off a submerged bridge, local station Citizen TV reported. Another 11 were rescued.


Damaged infrastructure

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua said Friday at a news briefing that the government had set aside 4 bil lion Kenya shillings ($29 million) for emergency relief efforts, but did not provide further details.

More than 130,000 people are currently affected with thousands of houses washed away and others flooded. Some 64 public schools in the capital were flooded and had to shut down. Roads and bridges have been damaged or destroyed.

The Kenya Meteorological Department on Friday issued a heavy rainfall advisory for the weekend and urged residents to be vigilant.

Other East African countries have reported flooding with 155 people reported to have died in neighboring Tanzania and more than 200,000 people affected in Burundi.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) A premature Palestinian infant, rescued from her mother’s womb shortly after the woman was killed in an Israeli airstrike, has died, her uncle said Friday.

Sabreen Jouda died in a Gaza hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her, said her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh.

Sabreen’s home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight Saturday. Her parents and 4-year-old sister were killed.

First responders took the bodies to a nearby hospital, where medical workers performed an emergency cesarean section on her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, who was 30 weeks’ pregnant. The infant was kept in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit at another hospital until she died five days later.

Al-Sheikh told The Associated Press that Sabreen was buried next to her father on Thursday.

“We were attached to this baby in a crazy way,” he said, speaking near Sabreen’s grave in a cemetery in Rafah.

“God had taken something from us but given us something in return” with the baby surviving after her family died, he said. “But (now) he has taken them all. My brother’s family is completely wiped out. It’s been deleted from the civil registry. There is no trace of him left behind.”

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war, according to local health officials, who say about two-thirds of the dead are women and children. The health officials don’t differentiate among combatants and civilians in their count.

Israel declared war on Hamas and unleashed a pulverizing air and ground offensive in Gaza in response to the militants’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took another 250 hostage.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for a possible offensive in the city.

Princess Halimat Tajudeen was last seen at 5:20pm on Wednesday, 24th of April 2024, after her mother sent her to the bank to withdraw money.

According to a family member who spoke to LIB, the money was successfully withdrawn as a debit alert was received by her mother at 5:35pm.

However, Halimat didn't return home and hasn't been heard from since then.

If you have any information about her whereabouts, Kindly contact her mother on 08033818240, or Shokodile Aguda police station, Surulere Lagos, on O8164330416

Below are more details of the missing young lady.

DATE OF BIRTH: 03-07-2008

COMPLEXION: FAIR

SECONDARY SCHOOL: MURITALA AJADI ANIMASHAUN COMMUNITY SENIOR GRAMMAR SCHOOL SURULERE LAGOS

MOTHER'S NAME: STELLA TIMOTHY

Police in the United States have arrested dozens of protesters at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and the University of Southern California (USC) as student-led demonstrations against Israel’s war on Gaza intensified across the country and House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested calling in the National Guard.

The arrests on Wednesday in cities of Austin and Los Angeles came as students at Harvard University and Brown University on the east coast also defied threats of action and set up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

The movement, which began at Columbia University in New York last week, is calling on universities to cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling its brutal war in Gaza. At least 34,262 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the besieged enclave since October 7, when fighters from Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking dozens of people captive.

The student-led protests have been peaceful and largely respectful, but have been met by heavy-handed action from many universities amid allegations of anti-Semitism.

The biggest rally on Wednesday took place at UT Austin where hundreds of students staged a walkout and marched to the campus’s main lawn, where they planned to set up an encampment. But the university said it would “not tolerate disruptions” and called in local and state police to disperse the crowds.

Hundreds of officers arrived at the scene, some on horseback. Holding batons, they charged at the crowds and forcefully arrested several students.

At least 34 were taken into custody, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, said the protesters “belong in jail” and that any students joining in what he called “hate-filled, anti-Semitic protests” should be expelled.

Jeremi Suri, who is Jewish and a professor of history at UT Austin, told Al Jazeera there was “nothing anti-Semitic” about the protests.

“These students were shouting ‘free Palestine’, that’s all,” he said. “They were saying nothing that was threatening. And as they were standing and shouting, I witnessed the police – the state police, the campus police, the city police – an army of police almost the size as the student group … many were carrying guns, many were carrying rifles, and then, within a few minutes, this group of police stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students.”

At the USC campus in Los Angeles, efforts by students to set up an encampment were also met with force.

Campus security scuffled with students as they took down tents, and dozens of police officers holding batons and wearing helmets later moved in to arrest the protesters as helicopters hovered overhead. The crackdown came after USC Provost Andrew Guzman sent a campus-wide email, saying protesters had “threatened the safety of our offices and campus community”.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from the university, however, said that “this protest against the war on Gaza was entirely peaceful”.

“We did not see any confrontations or harassment among the students,” he said.

Reynolds said some of the students later staged a sit-in with their arms linked.

“One by one, protesting students are being handcuffed with zip ties and led away by Los Angeles police officers, under arrest and taken away to a vehicle on the campus. They did not resist arrest and we did not see any violence on the part of the police,” he added.

The Los Angeles Police Department said some 93 people were arrested in and around the USC campus.

Jody Armour, a law professor at the university, said officials were using claims of anti-Semitism to try and silence the protests.

“We have lots of Jewish, and Muslim, and Palestinian, and Catholic like I am, Protestants too, intergenerational, coming together. Everybody should hate anti-Semitism and fight anti-Semitism, but being opposed to Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that the UN has said may plausibly be genocide, does not mean that you’re anti-Semitic, and we need to stop allowing people to weaponise anti-Semitism against real valid protests.”

On the other side of the country, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hundreds of students at Harvard University set up their own encampment at Harvard Yard, despite the university closing the space and threatening “disciplinary action” against students for setting up tents without prior permission. The protesting students were calling for the institution to divest from Israel and also lift the suspension of a pro-Palestine group called the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.

Similar scenes played out at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The New York Times said students there had erected some 40 tents by Wednesday afternoon, despite the university threatening “proceedings” against the students if they did not clear out.

At Columbia University in New York, meanwhile, there was an uneasy truce between students and officials.

The university, which called in police to clear an encampment last week resulting in the arrest of more than 100 students, is currently in talks with the students to dismantle the protest camp and averted another confrontation by extending a deadline for dispersal by another 48 hours.

Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House, also visited the campus to support Jewish students amid concerns of anti-Semitism, and called on Columbia President Nemat Shafik to resign “if she cannot bring order to this chaos”. Johnson, who addressed the media on the library steps near the encampment, said that “if this is not contained quickly and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard”.

He said he intended to demand US President Joe Biden “take action”, and warned that the demonstrations “place a target on the backs of Jewish students in the United States”.

Protesters nearby appeared to pay little attention.

“We regret that there’s no attention on this peaceful movement and politicians are diverting attention from the real issues,” said Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia who was part of the negotiations with the university’s administration about the protests although he was not staying at the camp. “This is academic freedom, this is freedom of speech.”

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, meanwhile, said Biden backed free speech.

“The president believes that free speech, debate and nondiscrimination on college campuses are important,” she told reporters.

tctrills:
How does the war in Ukraine serve US interest.
The US lost over a trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only a few people benefit from wars.

German police said Wednesday they had arrested 11 suspected members of a Nigerian mafia group behind a large-scale dating scam.

The gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on dating scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said

Righteousness2:
In other words , the apple of God's Eyes, ISRAEL is weeks away from Striking the Foremost Strength of Iran.

Iran is “weeks rather than months” away from having enough enriched uranium to develop a nuclear bomb, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said in a report published on Tuesday.

“But that does not mean that Iran has or would have a nuclear weapon in that space of time,” he added in an interview with German news TV program DW.

Iran’s uranium enrichment levels being at near weapons-grade levels may cause alarm, but there is no direct proof that Tehran now has a nuclear weapon, the IAEA chief said.

A functional nuclear warhead requires many other things independently from the production of the fissile material, according to Grossi, who said that Iran’s objectives are “a matter of speculation.”

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program “only serves peaceful purposes.”

On Monday, the country’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said that nuclear weapons have no place in Iran’s nuclear doctrine.

“Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program only serves peaceful purposes. Nuclear weapons have no place in our nuclear doctrine,” he said during a press conference in Tehran.

Grossi has urged Iran to allow the agency more access in the country, which he said would decrease the speculation around Tehran’s nuclear program.

“I have been telling my Iranian counterparts time and again… This activity raises eyebrows and compounded with the fact that we are not getting the necessary degree of access and visibility that I believe should be necessary,” he said.

“When you put all of that together, then, of course, you end up with lots of question marks.”

The IAEA chief also highlighted unresolved IAEA findings, including traces of enriched uranium in unexpected locations, exacerbating doubts about Iran’s transparency when it comes to its nuclear program.

“This has been at the center of this dialogue that I have been and I am still trying to conduct with Iran.

A Russian deputy defence minister has been accused of taking bribes and remanded in custody by a court in Moscow.

Timur Ivanov, who denies the charges, is accused of accepting bribes "on a particularly large scale".

Appointed to the defence ministry in 2016, Mr Ivanov, 47, has been responsible for Russia's military infrastructure projects.

Activists have long criticised the levels of alleged corruption in Russia.

However, such high profile cases have been rare since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Mr Ivanov is considered an ally of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and has worked with him for many years. He was previously deputy prime minister of the Moscow region, where Mr Shoigu briefly served as governor.

In 2022, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), the group founded by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, accused Mr Ivanov of participating in "corruption schemes during construction in the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia".

In particular, it said he had profited from construction projects in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, much of which was destroyed by Russian bombing in the months following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.


Basmanny district court in Moscow remanded him in jail for two months on charges of entering into a criminal conspiracy with third parties in his role of supervising the construction and overhaul of defence ministry facilities.

If found guilty he could face up to 15 years in jail. A second man, Sergei Borodin, who was described as a friend of the Mr Ivanov, also appeared in court on Moscow on similar charges.

Mr Ivanov denied the allegations made against him by Russia's Investigative Committee. The section of Russia's criminal code under which Mr Ivanov was detained - Part 6 of article 290 - applies when a suspected bribe exceeds one million roubles (£8,620; $10,700).

His arrest marks a rare move against a member of Russia's governing elite, many of whom are believed to have used their positions to amass vast personal fortunes.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that President Vladimir Putin had been notified of the detention in advance.

Mr Ivanov has been sanctioned by the US and UK and is the subject of a travel ban and asset freeze imposed by the European Union, which describes him as being "tenth in the overall hierarchy of the Russian military leadership

Urheadmaster:
Okay, is a shit-hole

Urheadmaster:
You can't compare the shit-hole i mean the zoo to the great America the land of opportunities

The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to provide a USD 95.3 billion aid package to Ukraine and Israel and to strengthen the security of America and its allies in the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan.

The final approval on Tuesday night by the Senate ends months of uncertainty and delays about whether the US would continue to back Kyiv in its fight against Russian aggression.

The bill was passed in a bipartisan vote of 79-18.

The bill passed on Tuesday by the House of Representatives earlier now heads to the White House for President Joe Biden to sign it into law.

I will sign this bill into law and address the American people as soon as it reaches my desk tomorrow so we can begin sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine this week,” Biden said in a statement.

“The need is urgent: for Ukraine, facing unrelenting bombardment from Russia; for Israel, which just faced unprecedented attacks from Iran; for refugees and those impacted by conflicts and natural disasters around the world, including in Gaza, Sudan, and Haiti; and for our partners seeking security and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

The bill broadly has four parts: First, a USD 60.8 billion Ukraine aid measure, a USD 26.4 billion bill for Israel and humanitarian relief, a USD 8.1 billion package for Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific region allies and a "sidecar" bill dealing with issues ranging from TikTok to frozen Russian assets.

The bill gives USD 23.2 billion to replenish stocks of US weapons and equipment sent to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority and to expand defence industrial base and it allocates USD 13.8 billion in direct support for the Ukrainian military. It directs the president to transfer long-range tactical missiles, known as ATACMS, to the Ukrainian Army, unless the president determines that doing so would be detrimental to US security interests.

The bill gives USD 5.4 billion to replenish stocks of US weapons and equipment delivered to Israel and to expand the defence industrial base, USD 5.2 billion for Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Iron Beam defence systems and USD2.4 billion for US Central Command operations in the Middle East.

It also allocates USD 9.2 billion for humanitarian assistance in Gaza, Haiti, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo and other conflict zones. However, no funds can be transferred to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency; certification is required that no funding is diverted to Hamas.

On the Indo-Pacific the bill allocates USD 3.3 billion to develop US submarine infrastructure, including dry dock construction; USD2 billion in assistance for Taiwan, the Philippines and other regional allies to purchase US weapons and equipment.

To replenish US stocks of weapons and equipment sent to the region and expand the defence industrial base USD 2 billion was allocated; USD 542 million for US Indo-Pacific Command operations and USD 250 million for World Bank International Development Association loans and grants.

Among other things, the bill requires Chinese-owned ByteDance Ltd. to divest its stake in TikTok within one year of enactment or US app stores and internet hosting services would be barred from carrying the product.

It bans data brokers from selling Americans’ personal information to countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea or organisations controlled by those governments.

The bill authorises the seizure of frozen Russian assets in the US for transfer to a “Ukraine Support Fund” for economic assistance and creates an international fund to receive frozen Russian assets from foreign partners to compensate Ukraine.

It also imposes sanctions on Iranian oil exports and ballistic-missile technology as well as Iranian leaders; on Hamas and affiliated organizations; and on individuals involved in the trafficking of Captagon.

The components of the bill are nearly identical to one that passed the Senate with bipartisan support in February. It includes USD 60.8 billion for Ukraine; USD 26.4 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and USD 8.1 billion for the Indo-Pacific region.

Nine Republicans who opposed the Senate-passed aid legislation in February supported the bill this time.

When Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma changed his vote on Tuesday, this time agreeing to advance the legislation, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, gave him a thumbs-up on the Senate floor.

“Seventy-five per cent of the bill, the total funding, stays within the United States,” Mullin said on Newsmax, explaining his support for the bill.

“That’s what a lot of people don’t realise. This goes to our defence industry; this goes to replenishing our munitions.”

People rush to get humanitarian aid packages dropped by a United Arab Emirates Air Force C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft over the northern Gaza Strip, April 23, 2024.