Rivals rip Trump but promise support if he is the nominee

Source: REUTERS


Chief rivals to U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump assailed him for shifting positions on the issues at a debate, but said in the end they would reluctantly support him if he were their party's nominee.
Under questioning by Fox News Channel moderators on Thursday, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich made the promise despite efforts by party elders to build an anti-Trump coalition of Republican voters to pick someone other than the incendiary New York billionaire.
Hours earlier 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney in a speech blasted Trump, a former reality TV show host, as an unelectable fraud whose nomination would ensure victory for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.
Tempers escalated quickly at the two-hour debate and, as in previous encounters, the battle descended into schoolyard taunts between Trump, Rubio and Cruz with accusations of lying and even a reference to male genitalia.

Which African countries are battling the biggest food shortages?

Source: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

Africa is facing its worst food crisis in years, as El Nino rages across the continent; new analysis fromMail & Guardian Africa collating data from the UN, IRIN, the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) and various news agencies reveals that more than 40 million people in Africa are facing food insecurity – and some, outright starvation.

The continent needs at least $4.5 billion for emergency relief, but just a fraction of that has been raised so far, even as analysis from Oxfam shows that an early response is far cheaper than a late one.

The Horn of Africa – particularly Ethiopia – and much of southern Africa is in bad straits; and the weather is not the only factor at play. A country’s ability to cope depends partly on its public finances and ability to mobilise resources; for some, weakening currencies is making food imports more expensive, and conflict is making it difficult to move supplies around.

ABUJA, Nigeria: Court Orders FG to Account Fully for Recovered Loot

THISDAYLIVE

The Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has held that successive governments since the return of democracy in 1999 “breached the fundamental principles of transparency and accountability for failing to disclose details about the spending of recovered stolen public funds”.
The court then ordered the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to “ensure that his government, and the governments of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and former President Goodluck Jonathan account fully for all recovered loot”.
The judgment was delivered on Friday by Justice Mohammed Idris following a Freedom of Information suit no: FHC/IKJ/CS/248/2011 brought by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP).
The details ordered by the court to be disclosed include: information on the total amount of recovered stolen public assets by each government; the amount of recovered stolen public assets spent by each government as well as the objects of such spending and the projects on which such funds were spent.
Justice Idris dismissed all the objections raised by the federal government and upheld SERAP’s arguments. Consequently, the court entered judgment in favour of SERAP against the federal government as follows:

NATO Concerned About Russian Actions in Syria Amid Cease-Fire

Source: THE MOSCOW TIMES

The cease-fire in Syria is holding, but NATO is concerned about Russia's military build-up in the country, NATO's secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said, the Reuters news agency reported Monday.
"We are concerned about the significant Russian military build-up we have seen in Syria with the ground troops, with the naval forces in eastern Mediterranean and with air forces conducting air strikes," Stoltenberg said.
The cease-fire in Syria began on Feb. 27.

Osama Bin Laden 'left $29m inheritance' for al-Qaeda

Source: ALJAZEERA

The United States has released what appears to be a hand-written will of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
In it, Bin Laden asked that the majority of his $29m fortune be spent on continuing al-Qaeda's operations.
The letter was part of a cache of 113 documents taken in the 2011 US Special Forces raid that killed Bin Laden in Pakistan.
The documents were translated from Arabic and declassified by US intelligence agencies.
They were part of a second tranche of documents seized in the operation and have been declassified since May 2015. A large number have yet to be released.
One document, a hand-written note that US intelligence officials believe the late al-Qaeda leader composed in the late 1990s, laid out how he wanted to distribute about $29m he had in Sudan.

Shell being sued in two claims over oil spills in Nigeria

Source: BBC

Oil giant Shell is being sued in London for the second time in five years over spills in the Niger Delta.

Two communities are claiming compensation and want Shell to clean up their land.
Shell said it is at an "early stage" in reviewing the claims and that the case should be heard in Nigeria.
The Ogale community of about 40,000 people in Rivers State, on the coast of Nigeria, who are mainly farmers or fishermen, are some of the claimants.
Their case is being handled by law firm Leigh Day.
Spills since 1989 have meant they don't have clean drinking water, farmland or rivers, their claim says.

Trump, Clinton capture key wins on U.S. Super Tuesday

Source: REUTERS

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' presidential nominations on Tuesday with a series of state-by-state victories, but their rivals vowed to keep on fighting.
On Super Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of nominating contests, Trump, 69, and Clinton, 68, proved themselves the undisputed front-runners. 
Now they are under pressure to show they can unify voters in their respective parties and avoid a potentially disastrous split in their ranks that could hurt them in the November 8 election.
U.S. networks projected Trump won seven states with victories stretching into the deep South and as far north as Massachusetts, adding to a sense of momentum he had built last month by winning three of the first four contests.