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Supermajors Shell and Italian Eni could be facing the loss of one of the biggest offshore oil exploration blocks in Nigeria, putting an estimated 9 billion barrels of crude oil at risk. As the new Nigerian government launches a rampaging anticorruption campaign, local media are reporting government recommendations to reclaim block OPL 245 from oil giants Shell and Eni. Nigerian Justice Minister and Attorney General Abubakar Malami is behind the recommendation, and is a key figure advising the government on the case. At issue is how Shell and Eni landed the block in the first place—a controversial deal that is...

12 Nigerian woman attacked a worker at the refugee camp in Bavaria. They cornered him and demanded an apartment. They then put a scarf around his neck and tried to suffocate him. He said that he didn't fight back because they held up their babies as shields, and said they would drop them if they wouldn't get to move into apartments. Merkel's Trojan horse. Google translate: A Nigerian woman should have tried to strangle an employee of the Inner Mission. (thanks to BJ): A group of women attacked on Tuesday afternoon an employee of the Inner Mission (IM) Munich...

A statement from the U.S. Consulate in Lagos said the MRAP vehicles, valued at $11 million, were being handed over on Thursday to assist the West African country with both technical and military hardware to enable it to combat the rising challenges of regional extremism. Temitayo Famutimi of the U.S. Department of State said: "The equipment donation represents part of the continuing U.S. commitment to Nigeria and its neighbors to counter Boko Haram's senseless acts of terror and promote regional security." The United States also provides advisers, intelligence, training and logistical support to Nigerian military fighting Boko Haram as well...

Egypt’s Al-Azhar issued a statement Dec. 11, 2014, refusing to declare the Islamic State (IS) apostates. “No believer can be declared an apostate, regardless of his sins,” it read. Al-Azhar's statement came as a Nigerian mufti seemingly declared IS apostates at a Dec. 4, 2014, Al-Azhar conference. Al-Azhar stated that various media outlets had misrepresented the mufti's speech. The sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, repeated his rejection of declaring IS apostates on Jan. 1, during a meeting with editors-in-chief of Egyptian newspapers. This sparked criticism from a number of religious, political and media parties, especially since Al-Azhar could have renounced...

The Nigerian Boko Haram terrorist group was responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, compared to 6,073 attributed to ISIS, making it the deadliest terrorist group in the world last year. And, in what has become a disturbingly familiar pattern in the rise of terrorist organizations, Boko Haram's growing strength is a direct consequence of NATO's war on Libya.

Geneva (AFP) - Many of the young girls Boko Haram sends out as suicide bombers in Nigeria and neighbouring countries are probably unaware that they will be blown up, a UN expert said Tuesday. Boko Haram jihadists have in recent months increasingly used young women and girls as suicide bombers in northeast Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad and Niger, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative on children and armed conflict, suggested Tuesday that especially the children used in this way were in many cases not aware of what they were about to do....

The Cameroon army claimed Wednesday to have dealt a major blow to Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists, killing around 100 fighters and freeing 900 hostages in a three-day operation last week. ... The sweep enabled troops "to release almost 900 hostages, seize large supplies of arms and munitions as well as black-and-white Islamic State flags", the statement added, without providing details on the identities of those freed. Boko Haram swore allegiance to IS in March 2015. The minister attributed the success of the raid to cooperation between Cameroon security forces, a new multinational force being set up to fight Boko Haram...

Radison Blu hotel under attack by jihadists armed with AK-47s and hand grenades in Malian capital of Bamako Up to 10 gunmen have taken dozens of hostages inside the Radisson hotel while 80 people have escaped unharmed Gunmen spoke in English and tested hostages' knowledge of the Koran before allowing Muslim hostages to leave Pentagon confirms that all 22 American nationals were rescued and unhurt following the hotel crisis US Special Forces led elite operation to clear the building one floor at a time amid deadly hostage crisis At least 27 people have been killed including a Belgian diplomat and...

When a rubber dinghy carrying around 100 African refugees across the Mediterranean began to sink, a Nigerian Christian prayed for his life in an innocent act that would end in the deaths of 12 fellow migrants. One of the Muslims on board the rickety craft ordered him to stop, saying: 'Here, we only pray to Allah.' When he refused, a violent fight ensued and 12 Christians drowned when they were thrown overboard by the Muslim refugees. The tragic news comes amid reports that an unprecedented 10,000 refugees fleeing war and persecution in Africa have been rescued by Italian ships in...

Agence France-Presse in Kano Wednesday 18 November 2015 15.37 EST Last modified on Thursday 19 November 2015 04.02 EST Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 4,576 Save for later At least 15 people have been killed after two female suicide bombers, one said to be aged as young as 11, blew themselves up at a busy mobile phone market in north-east Nigeria, a day after more than 30 were killed in a bomb blast. Two explosions ripped through the Farm Centre market in northern Nigeria’s biggest city, Kano, shortly after 4pm on Wednesday. One of the...

Two bomb attacks in 24 hours -- one of them involving an 11-year-old female suicide bomber -- killed dozens of people and wounded more than 120 others in the Nigerian cities of Yola and Kano, authorities said. At least 31 people were killed and 72 others injured in a bomb blast Tuesday evening in the northeastern city of Yola, Aliyu Maikano, a local Red Cross official, said. -excerpt- The two bombers, who Katsina said were females ages 11 and 18, blew themselves up at about 4 p.m. local time, during the peak of trading, he said. A minivan carrying four...

The devastating toll of terror attacks is laid bare today with a shocking study revealing the number of people slaughtered worldwide has risen by 80 per cent in a year. A total of 32,658 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2014 - an 80 per cent increase on the previous year, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Researchers said that while Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria bore the brunt of deaths last year, the attacks in Paris on Friday mark a 'watershed within Europe'.

You can’t make this sh*t up. Hillary Clinton lists the reasons why thousands of people are fleeing Syria:”Because of terrible governance, because of corruption, because of conflict, because of climate change.” On Wednesday, a Clinton aide confirmed that the candidate meant what she said on the connections between climate change and refugee crises. “As experts have noted,” the aide said, “climate change is one of the factors that can contribute to displacement and exacerbate refugee situations.” Hillary Clinton, echoing the Marxist agitator Obama who has also said: “Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world,...

While most of the press has focused on Obama's military machinations in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, the administration has also been quietly expanding its secret wars and assassination programs across Africa. From training the militaries of various unsavory regimes and boosting the military capabilities of the so-called African Union, to establishing drone bases to facilitate espionage and extrajudicial killings, the White House is literally treating the continent as a vast battlefield in need of perpetual U.S. "intervention." And the consequences have been deadly.

The number of Africans trapped in poverty has surged by around 100 million over the past quarter century, the World Bank said on Friday, despite years of economic growth and multi-million dollar aid programs. The report's figures, described as "staggering" by the bank's Africa head Makhtar Diop, showed widespread malnutrition, and rising violence against civilians, particularly in central regions and the Horn of Africa. "It is projected that the world's extreme poor will be increasingly concentrated in Africa," Diop added in a foreword. A surge in population meant the proportion of Africans in poverty had actually fallen since 1990, but...

The U.K. and U.S. have thrown their muscle behind Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s bid to recover billions of dollars he says his compatriots embezzled and stashed abroad. At stake is whether courtrooms thousands of miles from Africa can help the continent track down stolen money, seize it, try the culprits and return the funds in timely fashion.

Pope Francis’s speech to the UN called for a coordinated international response to the plight of Christians in the Middle East and Africa: “Christians, together with other cultural or ethnic groups,… have been forced to witness the destruction of their places of worship, their cultural and religious heritage, their houses and property, and have faced the alternative either of fleeing or of paying for their adhesion to good and to peace by their own lives, or by enslavement. “There are individual persons, our brothers and sisters, men and women, young and old, boys and girls who weep, suffer and die....

Qaddafi's latest gambit: Convince the European public that they really want him to stick around, with all the stability that entails. "There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it's "not even a contest". Trump mentioned the countries in comparison to current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power. "You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it's a mess," Trump said on NBC. "If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there, it's a mess. It's going to be...

When Venezuelan Oil Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso resigned in 1963, he blasted the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, at the time torn by internal rivalries, for failing to produce any benefits for his country. Half a century later, OPEC is still split and Venezuela is again unhappy, this time at the unwillingness of the organization’s top producer, Saudi Arabia, to rescue oil prices from a six-year low that’s dragging the battered Venezuelan economy into an even deeper crisis. On Sept. 10, Venezuela’s oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, tweeted appeals for OPEC and non-OPEC countries “to have a discussion on...