The Nation Newspaper

Tag: AFP

  • News Central, AFP partner to strengthen journalism across Africa

    News Central, AFP partner to strengthen journalism across Africa

    News Central, Africa’s leading pan-African news broadcaster, and Agence France-Presse (AFP), a global leader in news and digital verification, have held high level talks to explore partnership opportunities aimed at enhancing news coverage, content sharing, and innovation across Africa and beyond.

    During a recent meeting, senior executives from both organizations discussed a broad range of potential collaborations. The discussions focused on leveraging AFP’s extensive international news gathering network and digital expertise, together with News Central’s robust regional presence and commitment to fearless journalism, to deliver high-quality, factual, and timely news to diverse audiences. In attendance were the Executive Director for Africa, Pierre Ausseill and the Sales Director for Africa, Joaquin Iturralde, as well as other representatives of AFP.

    Read Also: Tinubu’s reforms drive customs revenue to record ₦1.3tr in Q1 2025 – Adeniyi

    The Managing Director of News Central, Kayode Akintemi, received the guests at the headquarters in Lagos. He remarked that the meeting was “a significant step towards building a mutually beneficial relationship with AFP. We believe that by combining our strengths, we can set new standards for journalistic excellence and expand the reach of authentic African narratives.”

    Both parties expressed enthusiasm about the prospects of working together to strengthen news reporting, facilitate knowledge exchange, and drive innovation in multimedia content production. The leadership teams highlighted the importance of media partnerships in promoting transparency, fostering informed public discourse, and amplifying African stories on the global stage

    The meeting concluded with both organizations agreeing to establish a working group to identify specific areas for collaboration, including content syndication, joint multimedia projects, and professional development initiatives.

  • Barcelona attack: 11 die as van rams into crowd

    Barcelona attack: 11 die as van rams into crowd

    A driver was reported to have deliberately smashed a van into a crowd on Barcelona’s most popular street on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and several others injured before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said.

    Regional interior minister Joaquin Forn confirmed that at least 11 persons had been killed and 32 others were wounded.

    However, he warned that the toll could rise. A local government source earlier said two people had died.

    Vehicles have been used in several terror attacks in Europe in recent years, including a jihadist massacre that claimed 86 lives in the French Riviera city of Nice.

    The famous Las Ramblas is one of Barcelona’s busiest streets, lined with shops and restaurants and normally thronged with tourists and street performers until well into the night.

    Police said there had been a “huge collision” between a van and pedestrians on the thoroughfare and a police source said officers were seeking two suspects.

    AFP

     

     

  • 14 die in Indian Bridge collapse

    14 die in Indian Bridge collapse

    At least 14 people have been reportedly dead in the collapse of a flyover under construction in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta).

     

    According to reports, many people are feared trapped under the concrete and steel bridge, which fell on a busy road.

     

    The collapse of the flyover has been bas a result of substandard materials used in constructing the projects.

     

    However, the company in charge of the construction, IVRCL, said it would cooperate with investigators.

     

    At least 70 injured have been taken to hospitals, while emergency teams have been sent with sniffer dogs, concrete cutters, drilling machines and sensors to detect life, a rescue official told news agency.

     

    The 2km-long (1.2 mile) flyover has been under construction since 2009 and missed several deadlines for completion.

     

  • Kenyans welcomed Obama, rejected gayism

    Kenyans welcomed Obama, rejected gayism


    The people of Kenya last weekend welcomed President Barack Obama of the United States of America, who was visiting his fatherland first time since becoming American president, but he was not entirely welcomed.

    Kenyans in Nairobi, the capital and largest city in Kenya, on Sunday gave a muted and measured response to Obama’s firm support for gay rights during his visit.

    According to AFP in YahooNews, Obama answered a journalist’s question on gay rights by drawing equivalence between homophobia and racism while standing alongside President Uhuru Kenyatta outside State House on Saturday.

    “As an African-American in the United States I am painfully aware of what happens when people are treated differently under the law,” Obama said.

    The comparison is particularly stinging in Kenya, which, like other African countries, has a proud history of resisting and overcoming colonial rule by white foreigners.

    Edna Kendi, a 29-year old software developer was unimpressed by Obama publicly advocating gay rights. “He has to respect our culture,” she said. “People can be gay but they should do so in private and quietly.”

    Kendi urged Obama to “stick to issues that are pertinent to the visit,” for her, corruption and trade.

    Moses Abok, a 49-year old motorbike taxi driver waiting for customers beneath a shady jacaranda tree, echoed Kenyatta’s view.

    “To me, it doesn’t matter. The spirit of gayism is inside just a few people,” he said using a common Kenyan term for homosexuality. “It’s not a big deal for us.”

    But Abok also welcomed Obama’s words. “What he said is we should value all people, we shouldn’t alienate or eliminate those people, because they are part of us, they are human beings,” he said.

    Ruo Maina, a 50-year old businessman in the manufacturing industry who had popped out to buy the Sunday papers, said what you do at home is nobody’s business.

    “As long as you do it in private, we don’t care,” he said. Maina was not interested in public debates on gay rights, but added that Kenya’s vocal anti-gay extremists are equally indulging in unnecessary “provocation”.

    “We don’t need to be saying it is deviant,” he said.

    Deputy President William Ruto periodically addresses evangelical Christian churches to warn against homosexuality. There is “no room” for gays in Kenya he told worshippers in May, and in July railed against the US for allowing “gay relations and other dirty things.”

    Anti-gay firebrand Irungu Kangata leads a cross-party caucus seeking to have the country’s existing anti-homosexuality laws – which include a maximum 14-year sentence – to be strictly applied and makes frequent media appearances to explain that “gayism” is a lifestyle choice that can and should be unmade.

    Vincent Kadala, an aspiring politician whose Republican Liberty Party has no seats in parliament, threatened to rally 5,000 naked men and women in order to show Obama “the difference between a man and woman”.

    The promised protest attracted a lot of media attention but was never held.

  • Borno: Scores killed in Boko Haram attack

    Borno: Scores killed in Boko Haram attack

    Suspected Boko Haram gunmen opened fire on villagers and torched a number of buildings in a new attack in northeast Nigeria, witnesses said Monday.

    Resident Ahmad Ali told AFP that roughly two dozen assailants stormed the village of Kwajaffa on Sunday evening and ordered residents out of their homes.

    Residents thought the Islamist insurgents “were going to preach and leave”, but in fact they “opened fire on the crowd,” Ali said.

    Ali said the death toll likely passed two dozen but no other eye witnesses could be reached immediately to confirm the figures.

    “They then went on setting fire to homes, burning half of the village before they left,” he added.

    Kwajaffa lies in the southern part of Borno state, one the regions hit hardest during Boko Haram’s deadly six-year uprising.

    Details of attacks often take time to emerge, given the poor communications infrastructure in the embattled region.

    Babagana Mustapha said a relative who fled the attack in Kwajaffa arrived at his home in southern Borno’s commercial hub of Biu, 35 kilometres (22 miles) from Kwajaffa, at 11:30 pm on Sunday.

    This relative reported similar details concerning the attack, including a number of casualties, Mustapha told AFP.

    Nigeria’s military – backed by forces from Chad, Niger and Cameroon – has claimed huge victories over Boko Haram in the northeast over the last two months, retaking a series of towns and villages previously under rebel control.

    But experts have warned that hit-and-run attacks by the group could increase amid the added military pressure.

    The Islamist militants killed seven people going to a market in southern Chad on Friday, and then set improvised landmines on the road close to the Nigerian border.

     

  • Jealous man castrates, kills French mayor

    Jealous man castrates, kills French mayor

    A jealous man castrated and murdered the mayor of a hamlet in northern France whom he suspected of having an affair with his girlfriend, officials said at the weekend.

    Mayor Dominique Leboucher, 55, was brutally stabbed in the neck by a 39-year-old electrician, the prosecutor of the northern city of Caen told reporters.

    The attacker, according to AFP, had no previous police record and was “clearly very much in love” with his girlfriend, Catherine Denis said.

    He subsequently committed suicide.

    Denis said the mayor’s wife said she did not believe her husband was cheating.

  • Pakistani baby accused of attempted murder

    LAHORE (Pakistan) (AFP) – While many children his age are still learning how to crawl, a nine-month-old boy in Pakistan has been accused of attempted murder in a case observers say highlights endemic flaws in the country’s legal system.

    Baby Mohammad Musa along with his father and other family members was booked for throwing rocks at gas company officials in the working-class Ahata Thanedaran neighbourhood on February 1, the family’s lawyer Chaudhry Irfan Sadiq told AFP Friday.

    Inspector Kashif Muhammad, who attended the alleged crime scene and has since been suspended, wrote in his report that it was a case of attempted murder.

  • Bomb kills two outside Iranian consulate in Pakistan

    Suspected suicide bomb attack outside the Iranian consulate in the Pakistani city of Peshawar killed two paramilitary soldiers and wounded ten others yesterday, AFP reported, citing officials.

    The bombing took place in the upmarket University Town area of the northwestern city, where many non-government organizations are also based.

     

  • Boko Haram: 1,200 killed in seven months

    Boko Haram: 1,200 killed in seven months

    The United Nations (UN) yesterday said over 1,200 people have been killed as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast of Nigeria since a state of emergency was declared in the region in May.

    According to the World body in a statement, the figure is related to killings of civilians and the military by Boko Haram in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.

    It also includes insurgents killed by security forces repelling attacks.

    This is the first time independent casualty figures have been issued since emergency rule was declared.

    Thousands of people have been killed since 2009, when Boko Haram launched its campaign to install strict Islamic law in the north

    The figures do not include those killed during military operations, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) told French News Agency the (AFP)

    “The humanitarian situation in north-east Nigeria has been increasingly worrisome over the course of 2013,” the UN said.

    There have been 48 separate “Boko Haram-related” attacks in the region since emergency rule was declared, the statement added.

    “Information on the situation is scarce,” with figures of those displaced by the conflict and those who have fled to neighbouring states “hard to gauge”, Ocha said.

    Since the declaration of state of emergency in Borno state, of which Maiduguri is the capital, and Adamawa and Yobe, there has been a massive military deployment in the worst-affected areas.

    Attacks by Boko Haram are continuing despite the big military offensive.

    The military initially switched off the mobile network across the region, apparently to block Islamists from co-ordinating attacks but that has since been relaxed.