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ON THE evening of February 2nd a tunnel beneath Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip collapsed, burying under it two members of Hamas, a Palestinian militant group. This followed a similar incident the previous week beneath Gaza City in which seven Hamas members died. And on February 3rd a third tunnel collapsed. In a rare public recognition of the movement’s efforts to build a web of tunnels on Gaza’s border with Israel, Hamas’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has paid tribute to the buried fighters. He said the tunnels were “to defend Gaza and become a jumping-off point to all Palestine” (by which he means: a way to attack Israel). He boasted that Hamas has dug twice the number of tunnels the North Vietnamese had in their long war with America.  Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, responded by saying “if we are attacked through tunnels by Hamas, we will react with great force”. Underlying the war of words between Gaza and Jerusalem is a growing concern that the...

IT IS hard to see what might deflect North Korea from becoming a fully-fledged nuclear power. On February 7th it fired an Unha-3 satellite launch rocket into space, just one month after the test of a nuclear device that the North claimed, somewhat unconvincingly, was a hydrogen bomb. The expressions of outrage from the international community and regional neighbours, particularly Japan and South Korea, were the same then as now. The UN Security Council duly held an emergency meeting. America’s secretary of state, John Kerry, repeated his calls for additional international sanctions against North Korea, which were rejected by the rogue state’s only supposed ally, China. The launch of the three-stage rocket, the second since December 2012, is widely seen as part of a programme to develop an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). Experts believe that if modified to carry a 2,200-pound (1,000-kg) warhead instead of a satellite, the Unha-3 could reach Alaska and possibly Hawaii....

THE dust seemed to have settled at least for now over whom eventually became the governor of Kogi State with Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello firmly on the driver’s seat in the confluence state. But his emergence was another record in the midst of oddities that has now been associated with the state. The Inauguration of the governor without a deputy was an absurdity that was alien to the constitution. Ordinarily the oath taking ceremony of the Deputy Governor should have been done before that of the Governor. The Chief Judge of the State, Justice Nasiru Ajana administered the oath of office on Governor Bello but his supposed Deputy; James Abiodun Faleke was conspicuously absent. Besides, with the ascendancy of Bello to the exalted office of Governor, history was made; being the first time a minority in the State was taking the mantle of leadership. This may have explained the enthusiasm that brought the unprecedented crowd to the stadium. This has also given the Ebira speaking ...

The Department of State Service on Tuesday announced the arrest of a 400-level student of Federal University of Technology, Minna, for being the operational arrowhead of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Nigeria. Abdussalam Enesi Yunusa, studying Information and Media Technology, was arrested in Kano. His arrest was sequel to available intelligence which indicated his terrorist antecedents and covert drive to indoctrinate and recruit susceptible youths in the country, Tony Opuiyo said in statement on behalf of DSS. The DSS said that “prior to his arrest, Yunusa had completed arrangements to embark on a journey to join an ISIS terrorist training camp in Libya, with other Nigerians whom he recruited for the ‘Islamic State’. These recruits include the trio of one Muhammed Rabi’u, Yahaya Momoh Jimoh and Zainab Sunday.” The DSS statement further reads: “He was subsequently radicalized and became a member of an extremist cell, comprising of one Ibrahim and Abubakar Lig...

Nine people are dead, two are assumed missing and 50 seriously injured after a head-on collision between two trains in Germany's southern state of Bavaria, police said Tuesday. Altogether, 100 to 150 people suffered injuries in the collision, police say. The crash occurred shortly before 7 a.m. Tuesday local time near the spa town of Bad Aibling, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of the Bavarian capital of Munich. Speaking at a news conference, German Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said one of the trains had "drilled" into the other, leaving a carriage "totally dismantled." He described the scene as a "horrible picture," saying it was estimated the trains had been traveling about 100 kph (62 mph) at the moment of impact. The crash occurred on the Mangfall Valley Railway, a single-track regional rail line between the towns of Rosenheim and Holzkirchen, according to train company Meridian.