COGO Int'l News

 The family of Democratic Republic of Congo’s murdered independence hero Patrice Lumumba has buried his only known remains, a tooth, in the capital Kinshasa, 61 years after his death at the hands of Belgian-backed secessionist rebels. Hundreds gathered in a vast square for the occasion on Thursday, waving flags and looking upon a large photo of Lumumba, with his trademark horn-rimmed glasses and side-swept hair, framed by white flowers. Lumumba was killed by a firing squad on January 16, 1961, in the southeastern province of Katanga after being deposed as prime minister the previous year, all within months of DRC’s independence from Belgium. A banner with the words “Many thanks, National Hero” was suspended over the crowd, which included the president of neighbouring Congo Republic, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Belgium’s foreign minister and several African ambassadors. “Finally, the Congolese people can have the honour of offering a burial to their illustrious prime minister,” President ...

 Gunmen attacked a local mining site in central Nigeria, killing “many security personnel” and abducting some workers including four Chinese nationals, authorities said on Thursday. The State Commissioner for Internal Security Emmanuel Umar said security forces had responded to a distress call on Wednesday after gunmen invaded a mining site at Ajata Aboki village in Niger state’s Shiroro area. In a statement made, Umar said “Consequently, the joint security team engaged the terrorists and there were yet to be determined number of casualties from both sides,”  “However, a yet to be ascertained number of workers in the mining site, including four Chinese nationals, were reported to have been abducted.” Authorities did not disclose the name of the company, the latest affected in attacks targeting foreigners over the years in Nigeria though not as frequent as they used to be. Three Chinese nationals were abducted in an attack in Niger state earlier this year while working at a hyd...

  There was confusion in the early hours on Tuesday, when fire gutted a room in a warehouse, located at 118 Broad Street, Lagos Island. According to eyewitness the incident occurred at about 8am with several items, mostly shoes burnt to ashes. Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA, Dr. Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu, who confirmed the incident said no casualty recorded.

  Russia is believed to be in debt for the first time since 1998  after missing a key deadline. Russia has the money to make a $100m payment, which was due on Sunday, but sanctions made it impossible to get the sum to international creditors. The country had been determined to avoid the default, which is a major blow to the nation's prestige. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, said "statements of a default were absolutely unjustified". He added that an intermediary bank had withheld the money and that the reserves were blocked "unlawfully". The White House said that Russia had defaulted on paying yields on its international bonds, crediting sanctions for effectively cutting Russia off from the global financial system. Russia's finance minister called the situation "a farce" and said the situation is not expected to have short-term impact. This is because Russia does not need to raise money internationally as it is reaping revenue from high-priced ...

The Federal Government has threatened to sanction any fuel stations or depot selling above the stipulated approved pump price of of petrol also know as Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). The threat followed the persistent fuel scarcity being witnessed in the FCT and its environs as well as in other parts of the country. Mr Farouk Ahmed, Authority Chief Executive, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) gave the warning on Monday during an inspection on fuel stations in Abuja. The exercise was carried out in with some top officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), Petroleum Pipeline and Marketing Company (PPMC) and the NMDPRA. He said the inspection is focused at taking action to enforce the regulations given to the oil marketing companies, particularly those selling over the official price of N148 kobo. He explained that the pump price of PMS was still N165 per litre and remained sacrosanct, adding that nothing had changed and govern...

Lil Tjay, 21, was shot in Edgewater, New Jersey on June 22. The New York rapper suffered multiple gun shot wounds in an attempted robbery last Wednesday. The suspect, Mohamed Konate, was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree attempted murder. The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office shared a tweet that day claiming the incident "does not appear to be [a] random act." They also added that one victim was in good condition, while another – believed to be Tjay – was "upgraded from critical to stable condition." TMZ reported Thursday that the rapper was in the hospital unconscious: "We're told he's scheduled for a CAT Scan and outside of moving his legs yesterday, he's made no other bodily movements." An unsubstantiated post shared over the weekend on both Twitter and Instagram claims that Tjay "will be paralyzed for the rest of his life" and that "he also has only a 15% chance to survive the attack." The claims...

The Nigerian government on Wednesday approved a proposal for the construction of a gas pipeline connecting Nigeria and Morocco. Africa's gas reserves have come under consistent survey. Since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as the European Union seeks replacements to its gas supplies from Russia. A gas pipeline passing through a community in southern Nigeria Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum Timipre Sylva announced on Wednesday that the federal government had given "its approval for the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) to enter into an agreement with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the construction" of this gas pipeline. The minister said the project was still "at the initial technical design stage", which should determine its cost. "It is at this point that we will talk about financing," he said. The pipeline would be an extension of a gas pipeline that has been carrying gas from southern Nigeria to...

  Tensions between Russia and the West have escalated, following President Putin's decision to invade Ukraine on 24 February. Mr Putin has made several references to nuclear weapons since then, which some have interpreted as a warning to Western countries not to intervene. Speaking in St Petersburg, Mr Putin also said Russia would help to modify Belarusian SU-25 warplanes so that they could carry nuclear weapons, in response to a query from Mr Lukashenko. In a separate development on Saturday, Ukraine said Russian forces "have fully occupied" the key eastern city of Severodonetsk, following weeks of fierce fighting. Taking the city means Russia now controls nearly all of Luhansk region and much of neighbouring Donetsk - the two regions that form the vast industrial Donbas. In his video address late on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged to take back "all our cities" occupied by Russia. But he said the war with Russia had entered an emotional...

British police are keeping a stolen statue worth millions of dollars in their custody as a dispute rages between a Belgian antique dealer and a Nigerian museum over its ownership, writes Barnaby Phillips. The 24th of January 2017 was a cold, foggy day in London. At midday John Axford, of the auctioneers Woolley and Wallis, was in his office in upmarket Mayfair, waiting to meet a visitor from Belgium who wanted to show him a sculpture. "He produced this particularly beautiful piece," said Mr. Axford. It was a bronze cast head, which Mr. Axford recognised as coming from Ife, a Yoruba kingdom in what is today south-western Nigeria. Original Ife bronze heads, of which only some 20 survive, are thought to be about 700 years old. They are cast in thin metal with great skill and are strikingly lifelike, amongst the most magnificent sculptures ever made in sub-Saharan Africa. "This kind just does not turn up commercially," said Mr. Axford. But the sculpture had a hole by th...

 Megan Rapinoe has speaks out after the U.S Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, ending the ending the constitutional right to abortion.  USWNT star Megan Rapinoe After the court overturned the constitutional rights to abortion USWNT star expressed her displeasure, she said "You've been silent to us. And you are allowing a violent and consistent onslaught on the autonomy of women's bodies. …We live in a country that forever tries to chip away at what you have enabled, at what you have been privileged enough to feel your entire life. I should not be the loudest voice in the room. This is what ally ship looks like. If not for men, we would have none of these laws. And you also have the opportunity to show up, make your voices heard. It is not a women's issues. It is everyone's issue. This is a call-out but it's also a call-in. We clearly cannot do this on our own, with the composition of the power structure in our country. And frankly, that falls on you. Pro-life ...

  Burkina Faso’s army has given civilians two weeks to evacuate vast areas in northern and southeastern regions of the country in advance of military operations against rebel fighters. The military evacuation order follows after a major attack by rebels on June 11 that left at least 100 civilians dead and displaced thousands more. The West African country’s army this week ordered civilians to leave two large “military interest zones” to protect them, but did not specify how long they would have to evacuate or where they should go. One of the military zones is a rural area of approximately 2,000sq kilometres (772sq miles) bordering Mali in the northern province of Soum. The other military zone covers about 11,000sq km (4247sq miles) on the southern border with Benin and is mostly national park land. “A delay of 14 days will be accorded to resident populations to join safer zones,” army spokesperson Yves Didier Bamouni said at a news briefing on Friday. “It is very important to be ab...

 The US Supreme Court has reversed Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that granted the right to abortion for nearly five decades in the United States, in what President Joe Biden has described as a “sad day” for the country. In a decision released on Friday, the country’s top court ruled in a Mississippi case that “the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion”. The justices voted 6-3, powered by the court’s conservative supermajority. “The authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” the ruling reads. The decision follows the leak last month of a draft opinion indicating that Roe v Wade would be overturned. That sparked widespread protests and condemnation across the US, with reproductive rights advocates saying millions of women would no longer have access to abortion services. More than two dozen US states are likely to ban abortion now that the 1973 legal precedent has been overturned, according to the reproductive rights grou...