Terrorists attacked Nigeria’s Presidential Guards Brigade Monday, wounding three military personnel.
The attack occurred along Bwari-Kubwa road in the capital Abuja while the guards were on routine patrol.
The brigade provides security for the presidential villa, the nation’s capital and neighboring communities.
Three soldiers were wounded during the attack and have been evacuated for medical attention.
The spokesman for the brigade, Captain Godfrey Anebi Abakpa, confirmed the attack.
He noted that the ambush occurred within the general area of Bwari.
He said the wounded soldiers were immediately evacuated to the military hospital for immediate medical attention.
“Yes, they were attacked, and the attack was successfully repelled. We had a few wounded in action who have been taken to the hospital and are receiving treatment.
“At the moment, our troops are still combing the general area to get rid of the criminals that have been threatening the general area. It is advised that residents go about their lawful business and keep cooperating with us by giving us timely information to enable us to win the fight against the criminals,” he added.
The attack came barely 24 hours after terrorists in a video on Sunday named President Muhammadu Buhari, Malam Nasir Rufai and other government officials as the next targets.
At least two soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in a terrorist attack on a military base in the West African country of Burkina Faso’s Sahel region on Monday, the army said.
The army base was shelled, followed by an attempted infiltration, according to a military statement.
“The soldiers of the detachment of Kelbo in Soum province repelled a terrorist attack that targeted their base on Monday morning,” it said, adding that the army chased out the attackers, who also suffered numerous casualties.
“Operations are underway, which will help ascertain an accurate number of casualties on the enemy side,” it added.
Burkina Faso has been battling an insurgency that has spread in the landlocked country from neighboring Mali over the past decade.
Last month, a large-scale massacre killed about 100 people and displaced thousands in the Sahel region’s Seytenga commune, a town 15 kilometers (27 miles) from the border with Niger.
The same month, Burkina Faso’s army ordered the evacuation of residents from areas designated as “military interest zones” in the Soum province to launch a military offensive against extremists who have refused to engage in dialogue offered by the junta leader Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.
THIS is the shocking moment an Uber Eats driver was thrown from a bridge in a sickening road rage attack in Mexico.
Video shows a confrontation taking place on the side of the road with a man and a woman facing off against a delivery app worker.
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An food delivery driver who was riding his motorbike is lucky to be aliveCredit: Not known, clear with picture desk
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Footage shows a couple argue with the delivery app worker, named as GuillermoCredit: Not known, clear with picture desk
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He was shoved off a bridge during the road rage incident in central MexicoCredit: Not known, clear with picture desk
The man, named as Guillermo, 26, was still wearing his helmet when he got into an argument with a motorist on a bridge in Cuautitlán Izcalli, last Wednesday.
As the conflict escalated, the driver of the vehicle turned violent and a shoving match ensues.
Guillermo is shoved by the motorist’s female companion before the two men appear to exchange words back and fourth.
As the delivery driver turns to leave, he is provoked into continuing the show-down and throws a punch at the man’s chest.
The pair then tussle back and fourth, before the man pushes the food delivery employee over the side of the bridge.
Guillermo is seen being tossed from the roadside over the metal barrier and disappearing out of the camera’s sight.
The Attorney General’s Office for the State of Mexico saw the video on social media and is investigating.
Guillermo was taken in an ambulance to hospital in Naucalpan where he was treated for a fractured left leg.
The driver who pushed him has not yet been found by local police.
Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former U.S. president Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Bannon, 68, was convicted after a four-day trial in federal court in Washington on two counts: one for refusing to appear for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents in response to the committee’s subpoena. The jury of eight men and four women deliberated just under three hours.
He faces up to two years in federal prison when he’s sentenced on Oct. 21. Each count carries a minimum sentence of 30 days in jail.
David Schoen, one of Bannon’s lawyers, said outside the courthouse that the verdict would not stand. “This is round one,” he said. “You will see this case reversed on appeal.”
Likewise, Bannon himself said, “We may have lost the battle here today; we’re not going to lose this war.”
He thanked the jurors for their service and said he had only one disappointment — “and that is the gutless members of that show trial committee, the J-6 committee didn’t have the guts to come down here and testify.”
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon waves to the crowd as he departs federal court on Friday. (Alex Brandon/The Associated Press)
Prosecutors were just as firm on the other side of the verdict.
“The subpoena to Stephen Bannon was not an invitation that could be rejected or ignored,” Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, said in a statement. “Mr. Bannon had an obligation to appear before the House Select Committee to give testimony and provide documents. His refusal to do so was deliberate, and now a jury has found that he must pay the consequences.”
The committee sought Bannon’s testimony over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by Trump’s claim of executive privilege.
But the House panel and the Justice Department contend that such a claim is dubious because Trump had fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the time leading up to the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Bannon’s lawyers tried to argue during the trial that he didn’t refuse to co-operate and that the dates “were in flux.” They pointed to the fact that Bannon had reversed course shortly before the trial kicked off — after Trump waived his objection — and had offered to testify before the committee.
WATCH | Trump refuses to admit election is over day after riot:
Trump on Jan. 7: ‘I don’t want to say the election’s over’
The U.S. congressional committee reveals outtakes from Donald Trump’s address to the nation the day after the Jan, 6, 2021 riots in never-before-seen footage, in which the president says, ‘I don’t want to say the election’s over.’
Prosecution says Bannon ignored deadlines
In closing arguments Friday morning, both sides re-emphasized their primary positions from the trial. The prosecution maintained that Bannon willfully ignored clear and explicit deadlines, and the defence claimed Bannon believed those deadlines were flexible and subject to negotiation.
Bannon was served with a subpoena on Sept. 23 last year ordering him to provide requested documents to the committee by Oct. 7 and appear in person by Oct. 14. Bannon was indicted in November on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, a month after the Justice Department received the House panel’s referral.
Bannon’s attorney, Evan Corcoran, told jurors Friday in his closing arguments that those deadlines were mere “placeholders” while lawyers on each side negotiated terms.
Corcoran said the committee “rushed to judgment” because it “wanted to make an example of Steve Bannon.”
He also hinted that the government’s main witness, Jan. 6 committee chief counsel Kristin Amerling, was personally biased. Amerling admitted on the stand that she is a lifelong Democrat and has been friends with one of the prosecutors for years.
Corcoran also vaguely hinted that the signature of Jan. 6 committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, looked different on the subpoena than on other letters but dropped that topic when the prosecution objected.
Prosecutors focused on the series of letters exchanged between the Jan. 6 committee and Bannon’s lawyers. The correspondence shows Thompson immediately dismissing Bannon’s claim that he was exempted by Trump’s claim of executive privilege and explicitly threatening Bannon with criminal prosecution.
“The defence wants to make this hard, difficult and confusing,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Vaughn in her closing statement. “This is not difficult. This is not hard. There were only two witnesses because it’s as simple as it seems.”
The defence Thursday motioned for an acquittal, saying the prosecution had not proved its case. In making his motion for acquittal before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, Corcoran said that “no reasonable juror could conclude that Mr. Bannon refused to comply.”
Once the motion was made the defence rested its case without putting on any witnesses, telling Nichols that Bannon saw no point in testifying since the judge’s previous rulings had gutted his planned avenues of defence.
Among other things, Bannon’s team was barred from calling as witnesses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or members of the House panel.
Some Nigerians on Twitter have called out a former presidential aspirant of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Adamu Garba, for alleged blasphemy. Garba had while reacting to the news of fake Bishops attending the unveiling of Kashim Shettima as APC candidate’s running mate tweeted an edited photo of him wearing a bishop’s cap.
“Ladies and gentlemen it appears I have a new title,” he said in a now deleted tweet. The tweet before being deleted was condemned by both Christians and Muslims who accused him of blasphemy.
Below are some reactions from Nigeria;
Adamu Garba can post this photoshop, make funny excuses & getaway with it. But when a cartoon was drawn in faraway Denmark, 30 churches were razed, & more than 17 people were killed in Maiduguri. Adamu & Bashir twerk for death for blasphemy. But Christians should just endure? OK! pic.twitter.com/kWcoZZA8BH
Itâs commendable that Adamu Garba took down that senseless tweet. But thatâs not yet enough, he should come out and apologize to the Christian community.
Had it been Adamu knows the implication of what he did in Islam, he wouldnât even dream of doing it.
APC members and Adamu Garba mocked the body of Christ without being remorseful about it. The God I serve is a living God and He does His things His own way. When God starts dealing with APC and the evil men in it, we’ll all be witnesses to that by His Grace.
30 churches were burned and more than 17 people were k1lled in Maiduguri when Muslims protested because a man in a Denmark drew a cartoon of prophet Muhammad.
People like Adamu Garba can make and reshare jokes like this because??? https://t.co/HU2esPcJzV
Adamu Garba’s statement when Deborah was lynched in sokoto Vs. His statement when Fake Bishops were employed to mock the Christian faith. Let’s be wise!
Let us learn to respect each other’s believe and religion. I condemn inviting of fake bishops at the unveiling of @OfficialAPCNg Vice Presidential candidate and I condemn what Adamu Garba tweeted. I am really ashamed and disappointed in both APC and @adamugarba
Adamu Garba has made an open mockery of the Christian community. This is blasphemy but we donât know how to burn people like they did to Deborah. pic.twitter.com/Vqz24foEZE
30 churches were burned and more than 17 people were k1lled in Maiduguri when Muslims protested because a man in a Denmark drew a cartoon of prophet Muhammad.
People like Adamu Garba can make and reshare jokes like this because??? https://t.co/HU2esPcJzV
The US gun lobby on Monday seized on the “heroic” acts of a civilian who used a pistol to shoot dead a young man who had opened fire in a shopping mall, pushing its case in the midst of a fierce debate over the regulation of firearms.
On Sunday evening, Jonathan Sapriman, a 20-year-old white man whose motives remain unknown, opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in an Indiana shopping mall.
He killed a 30-year-old man and a couple seated in a restaurant space, and injured two more, before being shot dead by Elisjsha Dicken, a 22-year-old customer who was carrying an unlicensed pistol, as recently authorized under local laws.
“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsibly armed citizen that took action very quickly within the first two minutes of the shooting,” said Greenwood police chief James Ison during a press briefing.
Ison said the shooter appeared to have prepared for his deadly assault by dropping his cell phone in a toilet and burning his computer in an oven before he set out. He also had a second assault rifle, a pistol and a large amount of ammunition, the police official said.
The powerful lobby group, the National Rifle Association (NRA), immediately seized on the tragedy to reassert its line that an armed public is good for public security.
“We will say it again: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the NRA said on Twitter.
Another group pushing against any restrictions on firearms ownership, the CCRKBA, echoed the NRA line.
“We carry guns to defend ourselves and others from criminals and crazy people in sudden emergencies,” its chief, Alan Gottlieb, said in a statement.
“That courageous young man is rightfully being hailed as a hero,” he said.
Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign, which is pushing for stricter gun-control laws, hit back on Twitter. “Let me be clear: If more guns made us safer, America would be the safest country in the WORLD,” he said.
In the same vein, Shannon Watts, founder of the organization Moms Demand Action, shared graphs placing the United States at the head of the developed countries in terms of weapons per capita but also for deaths by firearms.
Nearly 400 million guns were in circulation among the civilian population in the United States in 2017, or 120 guns for every 100 people, according to the Small Arms Survey project.
More than 24,000 people have been shot dead since the start of the year, including 13,000 by suicide, according to the Gun Violence Archives site.
Several of the recent gun rampages, including the shooting in a school in Texas and a supermarket frequented by African-Americans in Buffalo, caused particular shock across the country, prompting lawmakers to agree in June, for the first time in 30 years, to pass modest reform of gun laws.
Ukraine says it is preparing for a southern counterattack in the coming weeks.
Both sides describe progress on lifting blockade on Ukrainian grain exports.
Russia’s invasion dominates meeting of G20 finance ministers in Indonesia.
A Ukrainian city far from the front line grieved on Friday for its dead, including a four-year-old girl, a day after a Russian missile attack killed at least 23 people and wounded scores.
Ukraine said Thursday’s strike on an office building in Vinnytsia, a city of 370,000 people about 200 kilometres southwest of Kyiv, had been carried out with Kalibr cruise missiles launched from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea.
The attack was the latest in recent weeks of a series of Russian hits using long-range missiles on crowded buildings in cities far from the front, each killing dozens of people.
Residents placed teddy bears and flowers at a makeshift memorial.
Flowers and toys left by people on Friday are seen at the place where 4-year-old Liza was killed by a Russian missile strike in Vinnytsia. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
Among the dead was Liza, a four-year-old girl with Down syndrome, found in the debris next to a pram. Images of her pushing the same pram, posted by her mother on a blog less than two hours before the attack, quickly went viral.
Her severely injured mother, Iryna Dmitrieva, was being kept in an information blackout at a hospital for fear that finding out about her daughter would kill her, doctors said.
“She is suffering from burns, chest injuries, abdominal injuries, liver and spleen injuries. We have stitched the organs together; the bones were crushed as if she went through a meat grinder,” Oleksandr Fomin, chief doctor at the Vinnytsia Emergency Hospital, said. Were she told of her daughter’s death, “we would lose her.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s wife, Olena, tweeted that she recognized the girl, who had once been among a group of disabled children who painted Christmas ornaments with the first lady in a holiday video.
“Look at her, alive, please,” Olena Zelenska wrote.
Liza is pictured in Vinnytsia in this undated handout image. (LogoClub Children’s Center/Reuters)
The building housed an officers’ club, which Russia’s defence ministry said was being used for a meeting between military officials and foreign arms suppliers. It added: “The attack resulted in the elimination of the participants.”
Ukraine said the club functioned as a cultural centre. The building also housed shops, commercial offices and a concert hall, where musicians were rehearsing for a pop concert planned for that night. A nearby medical centre was destroyed.
A security camera captured debris flying at the moment of the blast, with two cyclists diving for cover before a cloud of dust darkens the sky.
WATCH | Zelenskyy calls attack ‘Russian terror’:
At least 23 dead after Russian missile strike on central Ukrainian city
Russian missiles struck the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia Thursday, far from the front lines of the conflict. Ukrainian officials say at least 23 people were killed.
Zelenskyy called Russia a terrorist state, urged more sanctions and said the death toll could rise.
“Unfortunately, this is not the final number,” he said in a video address to an international conference aimed at prosecuting war crimes in Ukraine. An official in Zelenskyy’s office said 11 people were missing, and 197 people had sought medical treatment.
Ukraine preparing counteroffensive
Authorities in the southern city of Mykolaiv, closer to the front lines, reported fresh strikes on Friday that wounded at least two people. They released video pictures of firefighters battling the blaze in the rubble.
“This time, they hit Mykolaiv around 7:50 a.m., knowing full well that there were already many people on the streets at that time. Real terrorists!” Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych posted on social media.
The stepped-up Russian attacks on cities far from the front come at a time when momentum appears to be shifting after weeks of Russian gains.
Since capturing the eastern industrial cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in battles that killed thousands of troops on both sides, Russia has paused in its advance. A Ukrainian general said Kyiv had not lost “a single metre” of territory in a week.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has unleashed new HIMARS rocket systems received from the United States, striking targets deep in Russian-held territory. It appears to have blown up depots of ammunition that Moscow relies on for massive artillery barrages.
The first M270 systems that will give Ukraine additional multi-rocket firepower have arrived in the country, Ukraine’s defence minister said on Friday. Russia fired its own multi-launch rocket system at Slovyansk on Friday, the eastern city’s mayor said.
Ukraine says it is preparing for a counterattack in the coming weeks to recapture a swath of southern territory near the Black Sea coast.
Progress on grain exports
Despite the bloodshed, both sides have described progress towards an agreement to lift a blockade restricting the export of Ukrainian grain. Mediator Turkey has said a deal could be signed next week.
When asked if that timeline was realistic, a senior Ukrainian official told Reuters, “We really hope so. We’re hurrying as fast as we can.” The source asked not to be identified.
A farmer harvests wheat near Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on Friday. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)
Russia’s defence ministry said an agreement was close. Russia’s negotiator, however, cautioned that a grains deal will not lead to a resumption of peace talks.
A deal would probably involve inspections of vessels to ensure Ukraine was not bringing in arms, and guarantees from Western countries that Russia’s own food exports are exempt from sanctions.
Moscow welcomed a written clarification by Washington on Thursday that banks, insurers and shippers would not be targeted by sanctions for facilitating shipments of Russian grain and fertilizer.
Tensions at G20
The war dominated a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Indonesia on Friday. The conflict involving two of the world’s top grain exporters and one of its main oil and gas producers is causing inflation, financial crisis, global shortages of food and energy, and, potentially, hunger.
“By starting this war, Russia is solely responsible for negative spillovers to the global economy, particularly higher commodity prices,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet at a summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Friday. (Made Nagi/Pool Photo via AP)
Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told Russian officials at the meeting that she held them personally responsible for “war crimes,” a Western official told Reuters.
Russia calls its Feb. 24 intervention a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and root out nationalists. Kyiv and its allies call it an attempt to reconquer a country that broke free of Moscow’s rule in 1991.
Britain summoned Russia’s ambassador after Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine said a British man in their custody had died of health problems. The separatists, who captured Paul Urey, 45, in April, had accused him of being a mercenary. A British relief group, Presidium Network, described him as a humanitarian volunteer.
