Two suspects were detained on suspicion of terrorism-related crimes and inciting the government’s overthrow on Thursday in Abuja before two separate Federal High Courts.
Hussaini Ismaila, the leader of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), was sentenced to 20 years in prison for terrorism, just 48 hours after the organization received the news.
The alleged mastermind of the 2012 attack on Deeper Life Bible Church in Okene, Kogi State, was Abdulmalik Abdulazeez Obadaki, who was arraigned in the first case, according to the DSS.
He faces a six-count charge that includes escaping lawful custody, being a member of a terrorist organization, conspiracy, providing assistance to terrorist acts, concealing information, and participating in terrorist organization activities.
Read more about Niger CP’s police and military deployments to forests in search of kidnapped schoolchildren.
Obadaki entered not-guilty pleas on the remaining five charges after entering guilty on the sixth count and escaping custody.
In order for the court to review the facts of the charge to which he pleaded guilty and to provide evidence on the counts he denied, the presiding judge, Justice Joyce Obehi, adjourned the case until January 26, 2026.
Innocent Chukwuemeka, a social media user accused of using his X (previously Twitter) handle to organize a coup in Nigeria, was detained by the DSS on Thursday.
He was accused of cyberstalking and six counts that allegedly involved the publication of false information that could raise public concern.
Chukwuemeka entered a not-guilty plea, and the court also decided to hold him in DSS custody until January 26, 2026.
Background
Obadaki allegedly led a gang that defrauded five commercial banks in Uromi, Edo State, killing several people and stealing significant sums of money following the Okene church attack.
He was detained and detained at Kuje Prison, but he escaped during the Kuje Custodial Center’s jailbreak in July 2022.
After fracturing a toe, Chelsea and England’s Cole Palmer will miss two Premier League games and their Champions League clash with Barcelona next week, according to coach Enzo Maresca.
Palmer, 23, who had just returned from two months of a groin injury, was alleged to have suffered the injury at home.
He allegedly smacked his toe on a nighttime door.
Palmer will miss Saturday’s trip to Burnley, Tuesday’s home game against Barcelona, and Arsenal’s Premier League opener against the top team next weekend.
READ MORE: Guardiola Says “Season Starts Now” As Man City Hunt Arsenal
Maresca predicted that “he is probably not available for tomorrow, Barcelona, or Arsenal.”
He hit his toe at home, which was unfortunate, but it is unimportant, and he won’t be returning in the following week.
Palmer will play for England in the World Cup squad the following year after scoring twice in the club world championship final against Paris Saint-Germain in July.
As Manchester City search for an answer to Arsenal’s top Premier League title, Pep Guardiola said on Friday that the “real season begins now.”
Prior to the recent international break, City thumped champions Liverpool 3-0 after Arsenal lost at Sunderland to earn a point with a draw of 2-2. City then closed the gap on the Gunners to four points.
Prior to his side’s Saturday game against Newcastle, Guardiola was questioned about the significance of a potential reversal in momentum.
The City manager stressed that it was crucial to not allow an “impeccable” Arsenal to grow to a leadership position while also advising that the season was still young.
When we used to battle so hard against Liverpool, I once believed that we wouldn’t lose many points and that it would be difficult to catch up,” he said.
He claimed that Liverpool last season had a similar outcome, winning the league with four games left.
INCLUDE Chebbak, beaten by Hakimi, and Ajibade to the 2025 CAF Awards
Nothing will be decided in November, according to Guardiola, who has six Premier League titles won with City.
He said there are two seasons during which the transfer window is closed in the summer and the international break is completed.
We will be (together) until March, and we will see each other every three days or four days after the international break is over. The actual season begins now.
The key is to be present, to be close, and then to arrive at the end of the season with a chance to fight for it, she said.
That is the goal, and we must succeed in the future, of course. ”
The defeat of Eddie Howe’s struggling Newcastle would leave City one point behind Arsenal, who play Tottenham in London the following day.
For the visit to St James’ Park, Guardiola will miss Mateo Kovacic and Rodri.
Kova and Rodri are the only ones who are in good health, he claimed. Rodriguez is making progress, and his most recent setback was almost three weeks away.
He is aware that it will take time for him to recover physically, mentally, and psychologically, and remain consistent until the end. ”
The TV designer has turned his hand to a new project, adding a bit of colour and joy to the UK’s motorways.
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, the designer renowned for transforming dull homes into dazzling spaces, is now focusing his creative energies on the UK’s motorways. He’s teamed up with EV charging network GRIDSERVE to make Britain’s electric vehicle ‘charging rooms’ impossible to ignore.
Laurence has taken on the role of ‘ Chief Visibility Officer ‘ to make charging points as visible as possible. It comes after research revealed that drivers underestimate the size of the UK’s electric charging network by half, largely due to outdated motorway signage rules. Donning a fluorescent suit of highlighter yellow, Laurence used his artistic flair to design new mobile signs, complete with bold colours and a flattering self-portrait.
Unlike traditional petrol stations which can be signposted on major roads, current regulations only allow EV charges to be signposted on certain roads if they meet restricted criteria.
This leaves electric vehicle drivers in the dark about where to charge. Consequently, thousands of charging locations are often overlooked despite being scattered along key routes, retail parks, and service areas across the country.
Laurence took to the road in a digital, electric ad-van to showcase the new design before stopping to speak to motorists at GRIDSERVE’s Electric Forecourt in Stevenage.
He said: “The rules around signage for EV chargers are outdated – it should be as natural and visible as a petrol pump. Together with GRIDSERVE, I want to spark a little joy into the process of powering up and make the UK’s charging network a design icon in its own right with bright and beautiful signage”.
“These are the new pit stops of modern Britain”, he added, “why wouldn’t we want to celebrate infrastructure like this? Your charging experience can be just as vibrant as your journey, especially when you’re filling up with clean, sustainable energy”.
GRIDSERVE’s award-winning Electric Forecourts feature round-the-clock charging bays, coffee shops, convenience stores and complimentary WiFi for motorists – but remain difficult to locate due to outdated signage regulations.
Daniel Kunkel, the company’s CEO, said: “We know that lots of petrol and diesel drivers have concerns about switching to electric and finding charge points on their journeys.
However, the UK has one of Europe’s fastest-growing charging networks, and we at GRIDSERVE are proud to be a part of a rollout that concentrates on the most powerful chargers at the most convenient “on the go” locations.
Washington, DC – Yuli Novak, the executive director of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, has a warning for politicians in the United States and across the world: The situation in Israel-Palestine is “disastrous”.
Despite the US-brokered ceasefire that scaled back the Israeli attacks in Gaza, Novak told Al Jazeera this week that the conditions are more dangerous than ever.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“Our warning is that we haven’t seen the worst,” she said, stressing that Israel must be held accountable for its abuses in Gaza.
Over the past two years, numerous human rights groups have released reports accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza — a campaign to destroy the Palestinian people.
United Nations investigators, for instance, determined that Israel’s actions in the territory matched the definition of genocide under international law.
But B’Tselem provided another layer of analysis with its landmark report, called Our Genocide, in July.
It dissected the decades-long history of Israeli policies that laid the groundwork for the carnage in Gaza, including the apartheid system, demographic engineering, the systemic dehumanisation of Palestinians, and a culture of impunity for abuses.
Those conditions, Novak said, have been further entrenched since the war began.
“As long as these things are still in place, we are very concerned that the violence that we’ve seen is not over,” she said.
B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak and field research director Kareem Jubran speak to Al Jazeera in Washington, DC, on November 20 [Ali Harb/Al Jazeera]
Killings continue
Since the ceasefire started, Israel has killed at least 360 Palestinians in Gaza, including 32 in a wave of air strikes across the territory earlier this week.
The Israeli government has also continued to impose restrictions on humanitarian aid to the enclave, including on temporary shelters needed to replace tents for tens of thousands of Palestinians who faced flooding earlier this month.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians and turned most of Gaza into rubble.
In the occupied West Bank, conditions have been worsening, with intensifying settlement expansion and deadly Israeli military raids.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting that Israeli forces forcibly displaced 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams.
Israeli settlers have also increased their attacks, regularly descending on Palestinian villages to torch homes and vehicles and at times kill civilians — often with the protection of the Israeli military.
Novak stressed that settler attacks are a form of Israeli state violence.
“They are Israeli civilians living in the West Bank being armed by the state. Sometimes, many of them wear [army] uniforms. Sometimes these are soldiers on reserve duty that are on a break,” she said.
Some Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have condemned settler violence, but Novak dismissed the move as a ploy to blame Israel’s policies on a “small group of crazy settlers”.
Novak also highlighted that most of the killing and destruction in the West Bank is carried out by official Israeli forces, not settlers. “So this is another arm of the violence that Israel inflicts on Palestinians,” she said.
Meeting US lawmakers
Novak and her B’Tselem colleague Kareem Jubran have been in Washington, DC, this week, where they met with US lawmakers, including Democratic Senators Peter Welch, Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen, as well as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
Novak said the group wants to stress the need for accountability for the genocide in Gaza.
“We are talking about a governing system, the Israeli system, that conducted genocide for two years — war crimes on a daily basis — and got away with it with no accountability,” she said.
“The current situation is probably the most dangerous that we’ve ever been in because not only this violence and this criminality took place, it was also normalised, and in any moment, it can start again, go back to the same scale.”
US President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that there is peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years because of the truce he helped broker in Gaza.
And earlier this week, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution backing the US president’s 20-point plan for Gaza, which calls for an end to the fighting, gradual Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of an international force to the territory.
The plan would also see Hamas disarm and Gaza’s governance handed over to an international commission, dubbed “the Board of Peace”.
It has no accountability or compensation mechanism for the horrors that Israel unleashed on Gaza for two years.
Novak said Trump’s plan is disconnected from the reality on the ground.
“It just allows everybody to move on, instead of dealing with the situation and demanding Israel not only to be held accountable but also stop this kind of systematic oppression over the Palestinians,” she said.
Trump’s plan
Since the Security Council embraced the ceasefire deal, Israel has faced less international pressure. Even the push for measures like suspending the country from the Eurovision singing contest and European football have lost momentum.
On Monday, Germany announced it was lifting restrictions on weapons exports to Israel, citing the truce.
“That is probably what scares us the most because we see regression here,” Novak said.
Jubran, B’Tselem’s field research director, also stressed the need for accountability, saying that the previous rounds of wars on Gaza from 2006 onwards enabled the genocide.
“That’s what allowed the genocide system to be more brazen in order to do its crime against the Palestinians in Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera.
Despite the lack of political or legal accountability, Novak hailed the growing international public awareness of Israel’s atrocities, which she said politicians are choosing to ignore.
“If there is something that gives us hope in this really, really terrible moment, it is the fact that many people around the world are able to see through the Israeli propaganda and just to make sense of what their eyes saw, and some of the voices of the victims were able to come out from Gaza and from the West Bank,” she said.
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Stephan Shemilt
Chief Cricket Reporter in Perth
140 Comments
What a day, but only one day in England’s quest to win back the Ashes.
Then again, when the past 14 years have almost exclusively contained hammerings in every corner of Australia, one day is worth celebrating.
In 2013, England thought they had a good first day of the series, so much so that Stuart Broad arrived to see the media with a copy of the Brisbane Courier Mail – the newspaper that refused to print his name – tucked under his arm.
England were subsequently destroyed by Mitchell Johnson and lost 5-0.
Broad and Johnson provide key context to Friday’s events at Perth Stadium and the opening to the Ashes of 2025-26. Two Ashes legends, two different kinds of bowler.
Broad is one of the greatest to pull on an England shirt, yet his attributes of accuracy and movement did not always lend themselves to success down under. Johnson went from figure of fun in 2010-11 to destroyer in 2013-14 thanks largely to terrifying pace. In this part of the world, pace is not the only thing, but it certainly helps.
After an opening day when 19 wickets fell – the most on a single day of Ashes cricket since 1909 – England sleep in Perth with a 49-run lead, one more Australian tailender to rip out and the opportunity to set a match-winning target.
England and Ashes planning have not always gone well. Four years ago, an XI England appeared to have planned in London was not suitable for the conditions they encountered in the first Test in Brisbane. England stuck to their blueprint and were chasing their tails for the remainder of a 4-0 series defeat.
This time, a scheme to hit Australia with pace has been in the works since the last home Ashes in 2023. It is the reason why James Anderson was pensioned off in 2024.
England have plotted to assemble their fastest group of bowlers for an Ashes tour in more than 50 years. The first sight of them in action was shock and awe.
The blood and thunder that would be splattered all over Perth Stadium was nothing like the carnival atmosphere on the bank of the Swan River on a glorious Friday morning.
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
What followed was an England rollercoaster ride that threatened to come off the rails.
Being bowled out for 172 in 32.5 overs – the shortest first innings of an Ashes Test in this country for 123 years – had elements of Bazball at its worst.
At least England faced the challenge of a marauding Mitchell Starc head on and attempted to get the runs quickly. The scoreboard was always moving.
When Australia were hit by the fastest day of England bowling in Test cricket – a collective average of 87.6mph – there were times when the numbers on the big screen were paralysed.
Stokes, Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Mark Wood and Brydon Carse were collectively hostile, accurate and relentless. Former captain Michael Vaughan, who handled the attack that famously won the 2005 Ashes, said it was among the highest-quality fast bowling he had seen from an England team.
Some of the wickets were spectacular. Jake Weatherald was left flat on his face by the Archer delivery that pinned him leg before. Carse produced a lifter to Usman Khawaja so venomous it could have been a spitting cobra.
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Time and again, Australia were put on the back foot – figuratively and literally. Two-thirds of deliveries were played from the back foot – their most in an innings since such data was first collected almost 20 years ago. In the same timeframe, the Aussies have not been forced into as high a false-shot percentage of the 35% in Perth.
Most impressive was the way England worked over Steve Smith, the stand-in Australia captain and the most prolific Ashes batter since Don Bradman.
Smith had to delay watching Mastermind repeats long enough to face 49 balls for his 17. A false-shot percentage of 49% was the highest of his career.
Each time Australia looked like they might weather a storm, England had another option up their sleeve – the beauty of fielding five pace options, the first time they have done so in a red-ball Test in Australia since 1998.
Beyond the performance, the assembly of this England quintet is made more remarkable by the obstacles each man has had to overcome to be on the field.
How many seriously gave Archer a chance of playing Test cricket after four years of injury hell? He is only three games into a comeback that began in the summer, yet already looks like one of the premier fast bowlers in the world.
Ditto for Wood, playing in the same Test as Archer for just the second time in their careers. The Durham man has made his own comeback after 15 months away from Test cricket a couple of months shy of his 36th birthday. True to his word, he was best when fresh, slipping straight back into bowling thunderbolts.
Carse was serving a ban for historic betting offences little more than a year ago. Atkinson began his professional career against the backdrop of the unbearable tragedy of his mother dying in a road traffic accident.
And then there is Stokes, back in the city where his legend was born.
Twelve years ago, as a 22-year-old, Stokes announced his arrival as an England cricketer with a back-to-the-wall century against Johnson on a Waca pitch with cracks wide enough to swallow a small child.
Australia has not seen the best of him since then, with Stokes’ magic Ashes moments mainly coming at home. In that first tour of 2013-14 he was the shining light in a team that fell apart. In 2017-18 he was exiled because of the Bristol incident. Four years ago he was still feeling his way back from a mental health break.
In this first Test, Stokes made his return to Perth and his return to the England team after a shoulder injury kept him out of the final Test of the home summer. He registered his second five-wicket haul in as many Tests and best away figures in 11 years.
Fast bowling has been at the heart of some of England’s most famous Ashes triumphs in Australia and there is so much more to do before Stokes can get his hands on the urn in Sydney in January.
This Test is far from over, and a good position could be wasted if the batters do not pull their weight. Australia have Pat Cummins due back for the second Test. Twelve months ago, India were bowled out for 150 in Perth, won the Test, yet still lost the series 3-1.
