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Showing posts from August, 2019

Iran's Rouhani Rules Out Trump Meeting Until US Lifts Sanctions

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Image copyright REUTERS Image caption Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said the US sanctions were illegal, unjust and unfair Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has urged the United States to take the first step towards dialogue by lifting sanctions against Iran. "Without this step, this lock will not be unlocked," Mr Rouhani said. He spoke a day after President Donald Trump said he was open to a meeting if the circumstances were right. Tensions between the US and Iran have escalated since Mr Trump abandoned a deal limiting Iran's nuclear activities last year and reinstated sanctions. He wants a new agreement that would place indefinite curbs on Iran's nuclear programme and also halt its development of ballistic missiles. Iran has refused. Other world powers party to the 2015 deal - the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia - have tried to keep it alive. But the sanctions have caused Iran's oil exports to collapse, the value of it...

Man Who Kills Gay Men Executed In US

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Share Image copyright FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS Image caption Bowles admitted to killing six men in 1994 from Florida to Maryland A serial killer who preyed on gay men along the US east coast has been executed in Florida. Gary Ray Bowles was executed by lethal injection after the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal. Bowles admitted to killing six men in 1994 from Florida to Maryland but was only convicted of three deaths. Sometimes dubbed the "I-95 killer", most of his victims were found near the interstate corridor that spans the entire eastern seaboard of the US. Investigators say the 57-year-old West Virginia native left an abusive household as a child and worked as a prostitute to gay men for a number of years before beginning his killing spree. After two jail sentences for grand theft, robbery, assault and rape, he moved to Daytona Beach in 1993. During this time he continued to work as a prostitute, and was living with a gir...

Nigeria Goes Three Years Without A Case Of Polio

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Share Image copyright AFP Image caption Polio can only be prevented through immunisation Nigeria has gone three years without a case of polio, putting it on the brink of being declared free of the disease. This is a dramatic change from  2012 when the country accounted for more than half of all polio cases worldwide, the World Health Organization has said . The head of the primary health care agency, Dr Faisal Shuaib, said Nigeria had reached a "historic milestone". But it will be several months before the country can officially be labelled polio-free. The first criteria, no case for three years, has been achieved. But now the WHO needs to make sure there is a robust surveillance system in Nigeria to be certain that there are no further cases of the wild polio virus, chairman of Nigeria's polio committee, Dr Tunji Funsho, told BBC Newsday. Image copyright GETTY IMAGES Image caption Health workers have been vaccinating people against polio acr...

The Journey To My Hometown ...In search for my father's family

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By Suleiman Ugbokhe Abdulrazzaq is a product of inter-tribal marriage and is therefore a much sought-after unifying factor in the checkered history of Nigeria. His late father, Ahmed, was from Imiegba in the northern axis of Edo state, southsouth Nigeria; while the mother is of the Yoruba ethnic group, southwest Nigeria. AbdulRazzaq's first visit to the country home of his father was at the age of ten and it wasn't made under pleasant conditions - he had accompanied his father, who had to go to the village to receive treatment for an ailment. He did not go there again before his father died. Fourteen years after his first visit to his village, AbdulRazzaq, now an adult, embarked on his second voyage, as it were, to visit his extended paternal family. Ordinarily, there is nothing unusual about this visit, but viewed from certain perspectives, the journey is worth commending. In this part of the clime, cases of mothers disappearing with their childr...