Author: ifonge

LOWER SOUTH WAZIRISTAN: The death toll from rain-related incidents during the ongoing monsoon spell and flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has risen to 18, the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) said on Wednesday. According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), the current rain spell, which began on July 19, is expected to last till July 23 in KP. The latest rain-related fatalities in the province were reported from Upper South Waziristan, where four people were killed in a roof collapse incident, Additional Deputy Commissioner Fazal Wadood told Dawn. He said the incident occurred in the Bangiwala village on the outskirts…

President Donald Trump threatened Friday to add the cost of wildfire smoke pollution to existing tariffs on Canadian goods, prompting Ontario Premier Doug Ford to call the criticism coming from Trump and congressional Republicans “totally unacceptable” a day later. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Canada’s government had shown willful negligence and failed at basic forest management, blaming those failures for smoke that has blanketed parts of the Midwest and East Coast in recent days. “The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,” Trump wrote, estimating the pollution was costing the U.S. billions of dollars…

…Reps summon NSA, insist Foreign Affairs Minister appears before panel The Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday told the House of Representatives that it never recognised or engaged with the controversial Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), revealing that security checks had established that Adeniyi Adeyemi, the council’s alleged Director-General, was unknown to the Federal Government. The position was presented by Dunoma Ahmed, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, who represented Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the hearing of the House Ad-Hoc Committee probing the unestablished Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC), chaired by Yusuf Gagdi.…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed the country’s army commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.It comes just days after the removal of popular Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – a move that triggered street protests across the country.Initial rumours that the end of Fedorov’s tenure was related to a conflict between him and Syrskyi were soon confirmed.Fedorov, 35, has been widely praised for energising the ministry and transforming the armed forces, as well as leading a drive against corruption. Syrskyi, 60, is seen by many in Ukraine as a Soviet-school commander reluctant to implement radical changes in the army.He was replaced by Mykhailo Drapatyi,…

Viral Clip Shows Dispute Over Restaurant Bill After Unannounced Guests Join Dinner The woman invited him to dinner. He arrived expecting a date. What he found instead was a table full of people he didn’t know and a bill he never agreed to cover. The 100-second clip, posted July 20 by @LoudOutside, has racked up over 1.3 million views in less than 24 hours and ignited a familiar debate about money, dating, and unspoken expectations. A man is shown sitting at an outdoor P.F. Chang’s patio surrounded by several women and plates of food. As the meal winds down, the…

Larne manager Gary Haveron said he was “proud” of his players’ efforts in their 4-0 home defeat by Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League second qualifying round, first leg.The Inver Reds trailed at the break after Bruno Duarte converted from the spot, but the Serbian club would add another three in the second period as Duarte grabbed a second, while Vasilije Kostov and Muhammed Cham found the net to all but finish the tie off.Haveron felt his team can take a lot from the experience but accepts they were up against a “different level” of opposition.”I’m extremely proud,” Haveron…

The 69th ECOWAS summit was held on July 19th in Freetown, Sierra Leone.The outgoing Chair of the ECOWAS Conference of Heads of State and Government, Julius Maada Bio, set the tone by calling for “far-reaching changes” within the West African economic organisation.The meeting was also marked by the Senegalese Head of State taking up the rotating presidency of ECOWAS, as well as by strong criticism from Guinea, which condemned the sanctions imposed by the organisation in recent years.

Southeast Asia‘s AI moment is arriving, but not in English. Across Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, a quiet but consequential shift is under way: researchers, startups, and governments are building large language models trained on local languages, dialects, and cultural contexts, rather than waiting for Silicon Valley to localise its tools. The stakes are significant. English-centric models systematically underperform in Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, and Vietnamese — languages spoken by more than 400 million people. That gap is now attracting serious capital and policy attention. In Vietnam, homegrown LLM efforts are being backed by state-linked entities and private labs alike. In Indonesia,…

APO Group, the communications consultancy built for performance across Africa, has been recognised with five international industry awards in the first half of 2026, headlined by a Gold award at the Africa SABRE Awards, one of the most rigorously judged standards in global public relations. The Gold SABRE was awarded for APO Group’s campaign for GITEX Africa Morocco 2025. The campaign generated more than 3,600 media placements across African and international outlets and strengthened Morocco’s positioning as a leading emerging technology hub. The Africa SABRE Awards are judged by senior communications professionals from across the world and are widely regarded…

Pan African Towers Limited, a licensed Nigerian telecommunications infrastructure company, has filed a civil suit at the Federal High Court in Lagos with suit No: FHC/LAG/CS/ 917/2026 against its former Managing Director/ CEO, Azeez Olayode Amida, alleging breach of fiduciary duty and misappropriation of company funds during his roughly eleven-month tenure. According to the statement of claim, Amida was appointed to the role in December 2023 (actually Jan 2022 but Contract of Employment dated December 2023) and departed in November 2024. The company alleges that an internal audit — triggered by a whistleblower report received in July 2024 — uncovered a…