Anyone who wants to do such reconciliation must know that our terms are clear: recognize Israel, deploy Hamas military arm and cut ties with Iran, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Pentagon chief Jim Mattis has tried to clear up doubts about the US administration’s North Korea strategy, backing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear stand-off. Defence Secretary Mattis was speaking two days after US President Donald Trump appeared to undermine his top diplomat by saying Tillerson was “wasting his time” by maintaining contacts with Kim Jong-un’s regime. State Department officials insist Trump was not criticising Tillerson, but pressuring North to agree to discuss its disarmament while a diplomatic option remains on the table. Jim Mattis said: “The Defence Department supports fully Secretary Tillerson’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution but remains focused on defence of the United States and our allies”. Tillerson has explained the strategy as one of using United Nations and US sanctions and diplomatic pressure to convince Kim of his isolation and force him to negotiate nuclear disarmament. Trump wrote: “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man”.
A former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, has urged the Federal High Court in Lagos to compel the Attorney-General of the Federation to bring her back to Nigeria from the United Kingdom to defend corruption allegations levelled against her. Mrs. Alison-Madueke has been in the UK where she travelled to shortly after leaving office in 2015. She is believed to have been barred from leaving the UK where she is also being investigated for money laundering.On Tuesday, her lawyer said that she would like to appear in court in Nigeria to defend the multiple allegations of crime bordering on money laundering of over N450 million, wherein her name was mentioned. Obinna Onya, Mrs. Alison Madueke’s lawyer, stated these at a court case instituted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, that $115 million was doled out by the former minister in an attempt to compromise the 2015 general elections.
A major attack on the court buildings in Misrata this morning is reported to have killed four people and seriously injured 15.At least a further 25 are said to have been wounded in what appears to have been a coordinated assault for which the so-called Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility. The court was in session when it was attacked around 11.30 am by three men who started shooting.It was initially suggested that the assault may have been an attempt to free IS members who were on trial.However, the mayor of Misrata, Mohamed Eshtewi, has said that no IS trial was taking place.The shootout lasted for over half an hour during which the judicial police and support units that arrived to help them managed to kill one of the attackers. Reports of a car bomb outside the court were not true. Defence ministry and formerly Bunyan Marsous spokesman Mohamed al-Ghasri has said that the attack targeted the head of the court, Assadik Badi, saying it was in revenge for statements he had made about IS.
Iraqi forces invaded on Wednesday the center of Hawija town, Islamic State’s major bastion in southwestern Kirkuk, the Iraqi military command said. The Popular Mobilization Forces’ media outlet had said earlier on Wednesday that Iraqi forces fully recaptured the town, but a later statement by the Joint Operations Command suggested that the invasion of the town’s center was just beginning. It said army, Federal Police, Rapid Response Forces, and PMF caused “serious losses” for IS militants with the invasion. JOC field commander, Abdul-Amir Yarallah, said operations have so far seized back 98 villages and left 196 militants dead. The decisive onslaught came as part of a second stage of operations launched last Friday to seize the town held by Islamic State militants since 2014. The first phase of operations launched on September 24th, and managed to retake eastern Shirqat, an Islamic State haven in neighboring Salahuddin province.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, has reported the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru, to President Muhammadu Buhari, urging him to take urgent actions on matters ranging from alleged illegal practices to insubordination. Mr. Kachikwu said he found it pertinent to call the attention of the president to his misgivings because they’re capable of hindering progress in the country’s petroleum sector or even reverse recorded strides. Mr. Kachikwu said he wrote the August 30 letter to Mr. Buhari after concerted efforts to have a one-on-one appointment with the president at the State House fell through. The letter, which emerged on the Internet Tuesday, was widely circulated on Twitter. It is not immediately clear how it made it to the public domain. The minister said he suffered “disrespectful and humiliating conducts” from Mr. Baru.
Authorities in the restive Chinese region of Xinjiang have abruptly cancelled the week-long National Day holiday “to prepare” for the Communist Party congress later this month, residents say. Local government officials, academics and students told the South China Morning Post they had also been called back to work. “This is the first time the whole National Day holiday has been cancelled”, a nurse from southern Xinjiang said. Those working in the private sector were apparently not affected by the cancellation. Arrangements for students varied but one university employee said academics had been ordered this week to study a collection of confessions made by corrupt officials. The snap decision comes a year after rising political star Chen Quanguo took over as party boss of Xinjiang, introducing a series of security measures including asking residents to hand over their passports and beefed up police patrols. James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic minorities at La Trobe University in Australia, said the move appeared to be an effort by Chen to “demonstrate his utmost loyalty to Xi and that he is a safe pair of hands”. The State Council, China’s cabinet, said late last year that the National Day holiday would run from October 1 to 8 and those who had to work during the period would be paid up to three times their regular rate, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid has denied a report by the Washington Post claiming that a shipment of weapons from North Korea seized by Egyptian authorities in 2016 was in fact destined for the Egyptian military. The US newspaper reported that the Egyptian military was the actual undisclosed buyer of $23 million worth of rocket-propelled grenades seized by the Egyptian customs authority in August 2016 in Egyptian national waters after a receiving a tip from US intelligence. In a detailed statement sent to AFP on Monday, Abu Zeid “entirely dismissed” the claim that Egypt was the final destination for the shipment. He insists that “the shipment that was confiscated was not destined for Egypt”. “Egyptian authorities confiscated and destroyed the shipment in the presence of a team of experts from the 1718 committee overseeing the UNSC sanctions on North Korea”, Abu-Zeid told AFP.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has praised the Egyptian government’s efforts to achieve national reconciliation between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas, stating that Egypt is the only country allowed to intervene in Palestinian internal affairs. Abbas made the comments on Monday in an interview in Ramallah with anchor Lamis El-Hadidi on the Egyptian CBC TV show Hona El-Asama. “We do not accept any interference from any country in our internal Palestinian affairs, except for Egypt, because its interference is accepted by all parties involved, whether us [Fatah] or Hamas”, he said. The comments follow the arrival on Sunday of a delegation of Fatah and Palestinian unity government officials in Gaza for the first time in three years to launch a unity government, a development resulting from talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo over several months. Two weeks ago, Hamas dissolved its administrative committee running Gaza, making way for a Hamas-Fatah unity government in Gaza.
Last night, the inhabitants of Baboua (100 km far from Bouar) were woken up by gunfire. It seems that an Anti-Balaka group assaulted the police station of the city and that the population fled in the direction of bushes.
