A retired Nigerian army general who had been kidnapped by gunmen in the country’s north-west has died while being held captive, the military has said. Maj Gen Rabe Abubakar, who had a high-profile job as military spokesman between 2015 and 2017, was abducted with his wife while travelling in Katsina state last month. No group has said it was behind the kidnappings. The abduction and death of Abubakar highlights the continuing security challenges facing parts of north-west Nigeria, where criminal gangs known locally as “bandits” frequently carry out kidnappings for ransom, as well as cattle rustling and attacks on rural…
Author: Oki Bin Oki
Residents of Gikomba and surrounding areas can now access maternity services closer to home following the launch of a fully operational 36 bed capacity maternity wing at Pumwani Majengo Health Centre. The move expected to ease pressure on larger referral hospitals and improve maternal healthcare outcomes in Nairobi. The health centre, which is accredited by the Social Health Authority (SHA), has already welcomed its first mothers and newborns, marking a significant milestone in the county government’s efforts to expand access to quality healthcare services. Located within the densely populated Majengo-Gikomba area, the facility now offers safe delivery services alongside antenatal…
Elon Musk’s SpaceX made its highly anticipated stock market debut Friday morning, establishing him as the first person to ever be worth $1 trillion. The spacecraft and satellite communications company began trading on the Nasdaq with shares opening at $150, about 11 percent above the initial public offering (IPO) price of $135. It is expected to be the largest IPO ever, with SpaceX aiming to raise $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation. “It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever,”…
About a dozen people were shot Friday morning in the west Texas city of Midland, the mayor said, and the suspect is still holed up hours later. “We do have 11 known victims at this time,” Mayor Lori Blong said at a news conference Friday. “There’s at least one victim that is dead on the scene.” Officers heard gunfire coming from a building in the 4600 block of West Wall Street and “worked quickly to secure and clear the area,” Police Chief Greg Snow said in a statement posted on Facebook. “Efforts to bring the standoff with the shooter to…
Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has established an Ebola Simulation Centre for healthcare workers in Nairobi, Kenya, to reinforce regional emergency response capacity for the ongoing Ebola disease outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This temporary facility will prioritise training for MSF medical responders and frontline workers who will support Ebola disease response operations in the DRC. The initial participants will be experienced MSF staff who will support the response in DRC, and the training will eventually be rolled out to Kenya’s Ministry of Health and other organisations to support outbreak responses. “Preparedness saves…
British painter David Hockney, whose vibrant portraits and sun-drenched depictions of the everyday made him one of contemporary art’s most beloved figures, has died at 88. The artist died “peacefully at home” on Thursday, one month short of his 89th birthday, according to a statement provided to CNN by his longtime publicist Erica Bolton. Born in Bradford, UK, in 1937, Hockney attended his local art school before studying at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London. Successful from the earliest stages of his career, he soon relocated to Los Angeles, where he would spend much of the 1960s and…
Armed groups operating in Nigeria must “surrender or face the full force” of the state, the country’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has warned. Speaking during a national broadcast marking Nigeria’s Democracy Day, he said that although the year’s celebrations had been “dampened” by the recent kidnappings of school children, security remained at the heart of the government. Nigeria has long battled with an economic crisis and insecurity. Public fear has been reignited as attacks on schools and villages as well as mass abductions for ransom have increased, largely in the country’s northern and central regions. Referring specifically to the abduction…
Facebook went down Friday in what appears to be a huge outage. The problems took down FacebookMessenger as well as the main app and website. Other Meta services such as Instagram and WhatsApp appeared to stay largely online, despite using shared systems behind the scenes, though some products such as Instagram’s website also suffered from issues. Users were automatically logged out and found themselves unable to log back in. Instead, they were shown an error message indicating that “an unexpected error occurred”. The main Facebook website also showed a similar error. Visitors were told that “something went wrong” and that…
The normal display of African unity in the early stages of a football World Cup was notably absent from social media as many fans from across the continent backed Mexico in the tournament’s opening match against South Africa. The memes were light-hearted – including sombreros, mariachi bands and tacos – but they pointed to a dark underbelly. The banter reflected anger over the reports of xenophobic violence in South Africa. A poor South African performance on the pitch led to a 2-0 defeat against the World Cup co-hosts. As the final whistle blew, social media lit up with a flood…
Taylor Swift made an emotional 21-minute speech in which she tearfully thanked her family as she made history by becoming the youngest woman to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her family uprooted from Pennsylvania to Nashville when she was 14 “so that I could hone my craft in the songwriting capital of the world”, she said at the New York ceremony. “It couldn’t have been easy for my parents and my brother to just pick up and move our entire family,” she said. “Even though words are supposed to kind of be my thing, I will never…
Deputy President Kithure Kindiki Friday expressed the government’s unwavering commitment to elevate the marginalized communities and groups to critical contributors of national development and advancement. Prof. Kindiki said the government is keen to bring everyone on board without focusing on their identity nor gender, highlighting every Kenyan’s constitutional right to equal treatment. “The government is committed to creating an inclusive and just society where somebody’s gender or identity is not seen as a source of exclusion but a source of national strength. A society’s strength is measured on how it handles the marginalized, weak and vulnerable,” DP noted. The Deputy…
SpaceX has raised $75bn (£56bn) from financial firms ahead of it becoming a publicly traded company on Friday, in what is expected to be the highest-value stock listing in history. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the space exploration and artificial intelligence (AI) company said it had sold $75bn in shares priced at $135 each. The share price matches the estimate SpaceX gave last week, leaving the firm’s expected initial stock market value to be nearly $1.8tn. At that value, chief executive Elon Musk – already the richest man in the world – is set to…
A South Korean court has sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in jail for sending drones into North Korea. Prosecutors argued that Yoon ordered the operation in October 2024 to provoke Pyongyang and create a pretext for his failed martial law bid later that year. When Yoon declared martial law on 3 December, he had claimed he was protecting the country from “anti-state” forces that sympathised with North Korea. But it soon became clear he was driven by domestic troubles and he rolled back the order in the face of mass protests. Yoon was impeached and is…
China’s foreign ministry has confirmed the arrest of a US scholar, accusing him of spying and endangering Chinese national security. U Min Zin, a director at a think tank focused on Myanmar, was arrested in early June, sources had earlier told the New York Times. He allegedly disappeared while in the Chinese city of Kunming, which borders Myanmar, said the report. Further details about the arrest – which is unusual, as it is uncommon for China to arrest US citizens on national security charges – are not known. The detention comes just weeks after US President Donald Trump’s visit to…
Buying TikTok likes can make a video appear more active, credible, and appealing, especially during the early stage after posting. Even a strong TikTok video can struggle if the first viewers pass by without liking, commenting, or engaging with it. Paid likes are not a replacement for creative content, smart ideas, or regular posting, but they can help improve how a video looks when someone finds it for the first time or checks the creator’s profile. The real challenge is choosing a service that feels trustworthy. Some platforms make the process simple with clear packages, easy checkout, and steady delivery.…