Michael Ojuroye Initiative (Ngo)

The US has imposed sanctions against separatists in eastern Ukraine, as the crisis there shows no sign of easing. The sanctions include asset freezes against seven pro-Russian leaders. The move was announced as Western leaders threatened additional sanctions against Russia, which they accuse of stoking tension in Ukraine. Both Russia and the separatists have dismissed a unilateral ceasefire called by Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko, the first step of his peace plan. The US and European Union (EU) leaders have previously imposed sanctions after Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March. On Friday, the US Treasury Department said it had blacklisted seven rebel leaders, including self-proclaimed mayors, governors and commanders in chief of cities under siege by Ukrainian forces. Their assets in the US will be frozen and US firms will be banned from dealing with them. US officials also said “scalpel” sanctions against Russia’s defence, finance and high-tech industrie...

Thirteen assailants have been killed in an attack on a police station in China’s restive western province of Xinjiang, officials say. The attackers drove a car into the station and set off explosives on Saturday morning, the local government said on its website. Three police suffered minor injuries but no civilians were hurt, it added. The Chinese authorities blame Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang for an increasing number of attacks in the province. “On the morning of 21 June, a group of thugs drove a car into a police building in Yecheng County, Kashgar province and detonated explosives,” the local government website said. “Police shot dead the 13 attackers,” it reported. It provided no further details. Verifying reports from the Xinjiang region is difficult because access for journalists is restricted and the flow of information is tightly controlled. The authorities have tightened security in Xinjiang in recent months. On Monday, China executed 13 people in Xinji...

From the headlines of June 18th: “hundreds of thousands of Iraqi volunteers have responded to calls by the country’s highest religious authority to fight militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”  This importantly highlights the failure of Nigeria’s executive leadership, ultimately and northern leadership in combating Boko Haram, a senseless menace that has plagued Nigeria’s north, largely unabated for four straight years. In the four years of Boko Haram’s worst carnage, the terror sect has operated with minimal impedance from the Nigerian military and next to none so-ever from the communities where it rampages, rapes, abducts, kills and sets everything on fire. Over 80,000 have been killed, 3 million displaced and billions worth of farm lands rendered abandoned, potentially putting millions of Nigerians out of work and at risk of and dying of hunger. The Nigerian government placed the north east under a prolonged state of emergency and de...

A Lagos School Students were dressed in their neat uniforms and looking prim for school, children are adorable and most parents don’t know what theirs are capable of behind their backs. A few weeks ago, while a science class was going on in a public secondary school in Ikeja, Lagos, a pupil was sighted at the back of the class completely engrossed. The teacher, noticing that the source of the pupil’s attraction was hidden under the desk, she moved closer to the pupil, who was still lost in another world. Upon closer inspection, the teacher found out that the centre of the pupil’s attraction was his smart phone, on which two objects were locked in steamy sex. “I seized the phone and what I saw shocked me. He was watching a sex video while class was going on. He was later suspended for two weeks,” the teacher said, with a note of anger. Our source shows how pornography has become popular among public secondary school pupils in Lagos, thanks to internet-enabled phones. Mobile ...

Cameras in the cockpit. Real-time streaming of communications and flight information. Increased capacity flight data and voice recorders. Transponders that detach on impact and float. Once the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is solved, there are changes in air safety that might result from the lessons of the disappearance of a jumbo jetliner in the age of instant communications. The technologies -- each of which has its supporters and its detractors -- come into question as the search for Flight 370 enters its third week. Here's a look at some possible technological changes: Camera images beamed from cockpit to ground Investigators would be able to see and hear all that transpires in the cockpit. Former American Airlines pilot Mark Weiss and other experts agree that images could prove highly important during investigations. The National Transportation Safety Board has for years campaigned for cockpit video, arguing that images would have helped it solve what happened in ...

A car bomb at a military base has killed at least 10 people in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, in the latest violence to wrack the cradle of the North African country's uprising. The blast occurred as new graduates left a technical school at the base, Libya's state news agency LANA reported, quoting a military source in the city. The car was loaded with a large amount of explosives, it added. Speaking on Libyan television, Ammar Mohammed, a spokesman for the Libyan Health Ministry, said the bombing killed at least 10 people and wounded 23. LANA said at least seven soldiers were killed and nine people were wounded. Benghazi is where the 2011 uprising against longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi began. Three years later, it is the scene of almost daily attacks and targeted assassinations, specifically against security officials. While no one has claimed responsibility for the violence that has gripped the city for more than a year, many residents and officials blame it on I...

Gunmen killed two Egyptian military personnel and injured a third when security forces raided a militant hideout on Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said. Two army explosives experts, a general and a colonel, and five members of the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis were killed in the shootout in Qalyubia province, north of Cairo, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website. Four other members of the group, one of Egypt's most active militant organizations, were wounded, as was a special forces officer. Intelligence had indicated the group was using a wood manufacturing workshop as a base and to store weapons and ammunition, the Interior Ministry said. The clashes lasted several hours, the statement added. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which the United States has designated a terrorist group, has been blamed for attacks in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula as well as on a security forces headquarters in the town of Mansoura last year. It claimed responsibility in January for four blasts tha...