Author: Elizabeth Jenrola Oso

Two British nationals convicted of drug offences in Indonesia, including death row prisoner Lindsay Sandiford, have been repatriated to the United Kingdom under a bilateral agreement reached on humanitarian grounds. Sandiford, 69, was sentenced to death in 2013 after being found guilty of trafficking cocaine into Bali. She was transferred alongside Shahab Shahabadi, 36, who had been serving a life sentence for drug offences following his arrest in 2014. Both departed Bali on Friday aboard a Qatar Airways flight bound for London via Doha, Indonesian officials confirmed. The pair were formally handed over to British authorities at a ceremony held…

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has declared a state of national calamity after Typhoon Kalmaegi left at least 114 people dead and nearly 130 missing in the country’s central provinces, in what officials have described as the deadliest natural disaster to strike the Philippines this year. The majority of fatalities were caused by drowning in flash floods, with Cebu province suffering the heaviest toll. At least 71 people died there, while 65 remain missing and 69 were injured, according to the Office of Civil Defence. In neighbouring Negros Occidental, 62 people were reported missing. The typhoon, which exited the archipelago on…

A United Parcel Service (UPS) cargo aircraft crashed shortly after take‑off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky on Tuesday evening, erupting into a massive fireball and igniting several buildings in a nearby industrial corridor. At least seven people have been confirmed dead and 11 others injured, though officials warned that the toll is expected to rise as emergency crews continue to search the wreckage. The aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas MD‑11 freighter, came down at approximately 5.15pm local time. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the plane had three crew members on board and was bound for Honolulu.…

Zohran Mamdani has been elected as the 111th mayor of New York City, defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in a closely watched contest. The 34-year-old Democratic nominee, a state assembly member from Queens, secured more than half of the vote, becoming the city’s first Muslim mayor, its first South Asian mayor, and the youngest to hold the office in over a century.   Cuomo, 67, finished second with just over 40 per cent, while Sliwa received slightly more than 7 per cent. The result was announced on Tuesday evening, prompting celebrations at Mamdani’s election night gathering…

A powerful earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck northern Afghanistan overnight, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 300, officials confirmed on Monday. The tremor, which struck shortly before 1am local time, caused widespread damage in the provinces of Balkh and Samangan, where most of the casualties were recorded. Sharafat Zaman, a spokesperson for the health ministry, said in a video message that the preliminary toll stood at 20 dead and around 320 injured. The United States Geological Survey reported that the quake’s epicentre was located 22 kilometres west-southwest of Khulm, at a depth of 28…

The mayor of Uruapan, a municipality in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán, was shot dead on Saturday evening in front of dozens of residents and visitors who had gathered in the town’s historic centre to mark the Day of the Dead. Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez, who had been in office for just over a year, was attacked by an unidentified gunman who fired seven shots at close range. The mayor was rushed to hospital but later died of his injuries, according to the state prosecutor, Carlos Torres Piña. A city council member and one of the mayor’s bodyguards were also…

The result, announced by the national electoral commission, grants Ms Hassan a five‑year mandate to govern the east African nation of 68 million people. She first assumed office in 2021 after the death of her predecessor, John Magufuli.

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has confirmed that he apologised to the United States president, Donald Trump, over a political advertisement attacking tariffs, while also revealing that he had urged Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, not to broadcast the controversial campaign. Speaking to reporters on Saturday following an Asia‑Pacific summit in South Korea, Carney said he had delivered the apology privately during a dinner hosted by South Korea’s president earlier in the week. “I did apologise to the president,” he told journalists, echoing remarks made by  Trump the previous day.   The advertisement in question, commissioned by Ford, featured a clip…

Two men lost their lives in New York City on Thursday after torrential rainfall overwhelmed drainage systems, flooded streets, and left parts of the city paralysed. The storm, which brought record-breaking downpours to several boroughs, caused widespread disruption to transport and renewed concerns about the vulnerability of basement dwellings during extreme weather. Emergency services were called to a townhouse in Brooklyn at approximately 4.30pm after reports of a man trapped in a flooded basement. A scuba team recovered the body of a 39-year-old, who was carried away by firefighters through water that had risen to calf height on the street…

“Tanzanians should expect great change from our party, which is committed to transforming the country.”