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Unknown gunmen, suspected to be militants, have reportedly killed four soldiers and a civilian in Bayelsa State. The suspects were said to have laid an ambush for the soldiers along the waterways of Letugbene, Ekeremor Local Government Area of the state. Some security sources confirmed that a team of soldiers returning from Letugbene community on Monday became victims of an ambush laid by armed youths believed to be militants. It was learnt that the militants allegedly overpowered the soldiers, seized their arms, moved them to a location in the creeks and shot them dead. While one of the civilians, a boat driver, allegedly escaped, the only survivor of the attack was said to have jumped into the river before he was shot by the criminals. An Ijaw youth leader and Chairman of the Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide, Central Zone, Mr. Tare Porri, who confirmed the development, condemned the killing of the soldiers. He described the attack as ‘’bizarre and unprovoked.’...

Governors of the South-East states, on Wednesday, held talks with leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, in Enugu, the Enugu State capital. The meeting held at the Enugu State Government House. It was the first time the governors are meeting Kanu, who is championing the pro-Biafran agitation in the South-East and parts of the South-South. One of our correspondents learnt that issues surrounding the ongoing agitation, including IPOB’s call for a boycott of the November 18 governorship election in Anambra State and the group’s recent establishment of a ‘Biafra Secret Service’, topped the agenda of the meeting. The meeting had the Enugu State governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi; and the Ebonyi State governor, Dave Umahi, in attendance. Nkem Okeke, deputy governor of Anambra State, represented Governor Willie Obiano. Rochas Okorocha and Okezie Ikpeazu of Imo and Abia states respectively were absent and were not represented. A source at the meeting sa...

Nigeria goalkeeper Daniel Akpeyi will miss Friday’s World Cup qualifier against Cameroon in Uyo with injury, coach Gernot Rohr said on Wednesday. Ikechukwu Ezenwa from Nigerian club FC Ifeanyi Ubah will now start the game, while Dele Ajiboye from Plateau United has been handed a late invitation to the squad in the absence of South-Africa based Akpeyi. Ezenwa is skipper of the home-based Eagles and his penalty save helped the country qualify for a third straight African Nations Championship at the expense of Benin in Kano earlier this month. “This boy (Ezenwa) who plays in Nigeria will now start the game,” Rohr said. “He did well with the home-based national team and he will do well (against Cameroon), we will protect him and give him confidence. The home fans will also give him confidence.” Arsenal forward Alex Iwobi also withdrew from the squad on Sunday with a thigh problem, but captain Mikel John Obi is set to play after four months out due to an ...

Brazil have already qualified for the 2018 World Cup but all eyes will be on superstar Neymar playing Ecuador on Thursday in his first international since a record transfer to Paris Saint-Germain. The Selecao are on the fast track to Russia, with a good chance of ending the qualifiers as South America’s top team. Ecuador are only sixth and in danger of missing out on the finals in Russia. For Brazil coach Tite, who has overseen eight out of eight victories in competitive matches since taking over, the priority for the clash in Porto Alegre is to maintain the high standards. “The World Cup is now properly underway,” he told journalists at the training facility. Tite has available his full stable of stars, led by Neymar who became the world’s most expensive player with a 222 million euro ($261 million) transfer to PSG from Barcelona. With 52 goals in 77 international games, he is currently Brazil’s fourth most prolific scorer in history, with the legen...

Liverpool have agreed a £35 million ($46 million, 38 million euros) deal with Arsenal to sign England midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, according to reports on Wednesday. Oxlade-Chamberlain appeared set to join Chelsea earlier this week after the Premier League champions had a bid accepted for the 24-year-old. But Liverpool appear to have won the race for Oxlade-Chamberlain’s signature ahead of Thursday’s deadline. It is believed Liverpool was always Oxlade-Chamberlain’s preferred destination and he never entered into contract talks with the Blues while he waited to see if Jurgen Klopp’s side would make an acceptable offer. Oxlade-Chamberlain is currently on England duty and is expected to undergo a medical at St George’s Park on Wednesday evening before signing a reported six-year contract with Liverpool. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger opted to sell Oxlade-Chamberlain because the former Southampton player would have been out of contract and el...

Newcastle striker Aleksandar Mitrovic has been given a three-match ban after admitting a Football Association charge of violent conduct. Mitrovic appeared to catch West Ham’s Manuel Lanzini with an elbow during Newcastle’s 3-0 win on Saturday in an incident that was not seen by referee Neil Swarbrick or his assistants. The FA’s disciplinary committee reviewed the clash on video and Mitrovic was hit with the charge. The Serbia international will miss Newcastle’s Premier League games with Swansea, Stoke and Brighton and will be eligible to return for the home clash with Liverpool on October 1.

Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis said on Wednesday he had rebuffed an offer from Paris Saint-Germain for Spanish goalkeeper Pepe Reina. “Paris Saint-Germain offered me five million euros ($6 million) plus two million in add-ons. I said to them ‘Thanks and goodbye’,” De Laurentiis told Sky on the sidelines of the Venice Film Festival. “Pepe Reina has a contract that runs out next season. We respect contracts (at Napoli). Now they’re writing to say that they want to talk to me. But about what? We’re not here to serve as a sparring partner,” he added. Reina, who turns 35 on Thursday, initially joined Napoli from Liverpool on loan in 2013. He moved to Bayern for the 2014-15 season but then returned to Italy on a permanent deal. He has been capped 35 times at international level and was part of Spain’s World Cup-winning squad in 2010, as well as the sides that won the European Championship in 2008 and 2012. Reina made a tearf...

Germany’s World Cup winner Benedikt Hoewedes completed a hastily arranged transfer to Italian champions Juventus on Wednesday after being stripped of the captaincy at Schalke. “Juventus Football Club announces that Benedikt Hoewedes has signed on a season-long loan deal with an option to buy,” the Italian giants announced on their website. Juve had earlier confirmed the centre-back’s arrival in Turin for a medical check ahead of finalising a deal that will cost Juventus an initial 3.5 million euros ($4.2m). The transfer includes an option to buy Hoewedes outright for 13 million euros which will be automatically activated if he makes 25 appearances for his new club. After ten years and 240 appearances for Schalke, Hoewedes’ departure was extremely hasty. Having been Schalke’s club skipper since 2011, the 29-year-old was suddenly stripped of the captaincy by new coach Domenico Tedesco and left on the bench for the Royal Blues’ first two lea...

Libya seized a foreign oil tanker and trawler Wednesday off the country’s western coast and detained their crews for questioning in Tripoli, the navy and coast guard said. “The Rex, a Tanzanian-flagged tanker registered in Zanzibar, was intercepted” loaded with a suspected illegal cargo of Libyan diesel, navy spokesman General Ayoub Kacem told AFP. A coastguard official in Tripoli, Colonel Abu Ajila Abdelbarri, said the vessel had been under surveillance for several days. He said a Maltese trawler was also seized for fishing in Libyan waters without authorisation. The two vessels were diverted to Tripoli, where their crews were to be questioned. On Monday, the navy said it had seized a Greek-owned oil tanker near the maritime border with Tunisia and detained its crew on suspicion of fuel smuggling. Plunged into conflict and political chaos since a 2011 revolution that ousted and killed Libya’s longtime leader Colonel Moamer Gadhafi, oil smuggling to Tunis...

North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un has promised more missile flights over Japan, insisting his nuclear-armed nation’s provocative launch was a mere “curtain-raiser”, in the face of UN condemnation and US warnings of severe repercussions. The Hwasong-12 intermediate-range missile that Pyongyang unleashed on Tuesday represented a major escalation of tensions over its weapons programmes. In recent weeks it has threatened to send a salvo of missiles towards the US territory of Guam, while President Donald Trump has warned of raining “fire and fury” on the North. After the latest launch Trump said that “all options” were on the table, reviving his implied threat of pre-emptive US military action just days after congratulating himself that Kim appeared to be “starting to respect us”. The UN Security Council — which has already imposed seven sets of sanctions on Pyongyang — said in a unanimous statement the North’s ...

Some suspected Fulani herdsmen on Monday attacked the farm of a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief Olu Falae, at Ilado village in the Akure North Local Government Area of Ondo State, destroying some crops worth millions of naira.  The Publicity Secretary of the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Mr. Yinka Odumakin, disclosed this to journalists in Akure after the monthly meeting of the association, held at the residence of the leader of the group, Chief Reuben Fasoranti on Tuesday.  The Personal Assistant to Chief Falae, Captain Moshood Raji (rtd.), confirmed the incident, saying many crops were destroyed. He added that it was the police escorts of the elder statesman who shot continuously into the air that sent the herdsmen out of the farm.  Raji said, “They attacked baba’s (Falae) farm and destroyed the crops there but immediately we reported to the police.”  Odumakin, who read the communique of the group to...

Police in Houston said Wednesday they have recovered the bodies of six family members whose van was swept away in flooding unleashed by Harvey over the weekend. “We have a total confirmed six dead here at the scene inside this van,” Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez told a press conference after receding floodwaters allowed them to locate the vehicle. Manuel and Belia Saldivar and four of their great-grandchildren ranging from six to 16 years in age went missing Sunday as they were attempting to escape rising waters.

Researchers have discovered that the oldest wine in the world may have been Italian, after finding traces of 6,000-year-old fermented grapes off the west coast of Sicily. A team of researchers studied residue in terracotta jars found in a cave on Mount Kronio near Agrigento, Italy. The site was “probably a holy site where offerings were made to the gods”, Enrico Greco, a chemist at the University of Catania, told AFP. “The fact that the jars were found in a cave saved them from being buried and allowed the contents to be preserved, even though it has solidified over the centuries,” Greco said. Several analysis techniques, including nuclear magnetic resonance, revealed the presence of tartaric acid, the primary acid in grapes. “We ruled out fatty residues from meat or oil, and as there were no traces of grape seeds or skins, we concluded it was from fermented grapes,” he said. The archaeologists then dated the residue by comparing the pottery wit...

The Pentagon sharply raised its estimate of the number of US troops currently in Afghanistan Wednesday, ahead of a decision on adding thousands more under President Donald Trump’s new strategy for the war-ridden country. Pentagon Joint Staff Director Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said a comprehensive review showed there were approximately 11,000 uniformed US servicemen and women in Afghanistan, compared to the 8,400 number used since last year. The new count, which includes temporary and covert units as well as regular forces, was made to establish the basis for an increase in troops — possibly by around 4,000 — under Trump’s revised strategy to better support Afghan troops in the fight against the Taliban.

A 25-year-old man, Mustakeem Ahmad killed his colleague from Myanmar for allegedly introducing him to smoking that led to throat cancer later. Ahmad, a cook at a west Delhi restaurant shot his colleague on Thursday and was arrested on Friday. The unforgiving cancer patient told his interrogators that he was so consumed with hate towards the victim that he purchased a pistol and practiced firing to ensure that he did not miss his target. The victim, 25-year-old Inayat, had been working as a cook at a restaurant in Uttam Nagar, Delhi in India for the last 18 months. Ahmad too had been offered a chef’s job at the restaurant that was owned by Ahmad’s brother-in-law,  Hindustani Times reported . “Though Ahmad and Inayat were friends at the workplace, Inayat was reportedly better at his job and well-behaved and soon became the favourite of the restaurant owner,” said Shibesh Singh, DCP (southwest). This frustrated Ahmad and he developed an enmity against Ina...