The Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, has dismissed the planned coalition by some political heavyweights, including ex-Vice President Atiku Abubakar, to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 election, saying it is bound to fail.
Wike said this on Wednesday during the commissioning of the Arterial Road N16 (Shehu Shagari Way) from Ring Road 1 (Nnamdi Azikiwe Way) to Arterial Road N20 (Wole Soyinka Way) and other roads in the Katampe district of the nation’s capital.
German sculptor and installation artist Guenther Uecker, best known for his mesmerising artworks using thousands of nails, has died at age 95.
His works, created from the 1950s saw him hammer nails into furniture, TV sets, canvases and a tree trunk, creating undulating patterns, the illusion of movement and intricate shadow plays.
While he became famous for using a hammer instead of a brush to “paint with nails”, Uecker, considered one of Germany’s most influential artists, later also used other materials, from sand to stones and ash.
Uecker was born on March 13, 1930, in Wendorf in what is now the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. He grew up on Wustrow, a peninsula north of the Baltic Sea port of Wismar, experiencing the horrors of World War II.
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A few days before the German surrender, the ship “Cap Arcona” sank near his hometown, with 4,500 concentration camp prisoners on board.
Uecker helped bury the dead who washed up on shore, a traumatic experience he addressed decades later in his work “New Wustrow Cloths”.
Fearing the advance of the Russian Red Army, a young Uecker nailed shut the door of his family home from the inside to protect his mother and sisters.
Uecker remembered that “panicked, instinctive act” in a 2015 TV documentary with public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk.
“That had a profound impact on me and was perhaps a key experience for my later artistic work.”
Even as a child, Uecker was constantly drawing.
This displeased his father, a farmer, who thought his son was “a failure and not quite normal”, Uecker recalled in a 2010 interview with the Rheinische Post daily.
As a young man in East Germany, Uecker in 1949 began an apprenticeship as a painter and advertising designer, then studied fine art.
But Uecker, who wanted to study under his artistic idol Otto Pankok, fled East Germany in 1953 and transferred to the University of Dusseldorf.
Uecker, who created his first nail paintings in the late 1950s, later said that the nail attracted him for its “intrusiveness, coupled with a strong potential for aggression”, something he said he also carried within himself.
READ ALSO: China Has ‘Responsibility For Global Peace,’ Germany Says
In 1961, he joined the art group Zero of Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, who sought to counter the devastation of World War II with a spirit of optimism and lightness.
Zero aimed to return art to its absolute basics, they wrote in their manifesto: “Zero is the beginning.”
Uecker’s work often addressed contemporary issues. His ash paintings, for example, were a response to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.
After xenophobic riots targeted migrants in a suburb of Rostock in 1992, he created a series called “The Tortured Man” which was exhibited in 57 countries.
Uecker’s works are exhibited in museums and galleries, but he also designed cathedral church windows and the prayer room of Berlin’s Reichstag building housing the lower house of parliament.
Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson has pulled out of Sunday’s Stockholm Diamond League event after suffering a setback in her recovery from a hamstring injury.
The 23-year-old was ruled out of the Keely Klassic – a new athletics event she founded – in February after tearing her hamstring.
She had been due to return on Sunday in Sweden for her first competitive outing of 2025.
The race would have seen Hodgkinson come up against Olympic rivals Tsige Duguma of Ethopia and Mary Moraa of Kenya, who won silver and bronze in Paris respectively.
However, BBC Sport has been told that Hodgkinson’s return has been further delayed after a setback in her recovery from the hamstring issue that ended her indoor season.
Hodgkinson, who was awarded an MBE last month, won 800m gold in Paris last summer with a stunning one minute 56.72 seconds run.
The UK, Australia, Canada, Norway and New Zealand imposed sanctions on Israeli far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, over their incitement of violence against Palestinians. The US criticised the move as “unhelpful” to Gaza ceasefire efforts.
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) administration is commissioning the Arterial Road N16 (Shehu Shagari Way) from Ring Road 1 (Nnamdi Azikiwe Way) to Arterial Road N20 (Wole Soyinka Way) and other roads in the Katampe district of the nation’s capital.
President Bola Tinubu and the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, were part of the dignitaries at the event.
Watch the event below:
Prince Harry’s former girlfriend has given birth to her second child – and is said to have given her newborn a very poignant name. Cressida Bonas, who dated the Duke of Sussex for two years before they split, revealed earlier this year she was expecting a a second child with her husband, Harry Wentworth-Stanley.
She opened up about how she had used an embryo she had frozen following struggles to conceive her first child, two-year-old son Wilbur. And now it has been reported that Cressida has given birth to a daughter and given her a name that is a fitting tribute to her half-sister, Pandora Cooper-Key, who passed away last year.
According to the Daily Mail, the model and actress has named the newborn Delphina Pandora Wentworth-Stanley, with her middle name a sweet nod to Cressida’s late half-sister.
Pandora died last year aged 51 after being diagnosed with cancer as well as an inoperable brain tumour. Throughout Pandora’s life, she had always lived with the risk of developing certain types of cancer, due to being affected by a condition called Li-Fraumeni, a rare genetic disorder, according to The Times.
Cressida shared her pregnancy news in January and told the Spectator: “I am now well into my second pregnancy. Having conceived through IVF the first time, we were fortunate to have another embryo stored away in a freezer… I’ve been battling morning sickness. I’ve never had it before, and now feel like I’ve been swaying on a boat for months.”
She previously shared how she felt her “body was failing” her when she struggled to get pregnant. Yet, it is understood a specialist told the couple “there was nothing fundamentally wrong”.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Cressida had said: “I spent time and money on reflexology, nutritionists, acupuncture and psychics…Even a German healer who speaks to angels. I heard nothing, not a squeak.
“My mind was on a constant worry loop and my obsession with getting pregnant became overwhelming, No matter how many Mystic Megs I saw or expensive supplements I took, nothing was working, and I felt as if my body was failing me.”
But in July 2022, Cressida confirmed she was pregnant after undergoing IVF, and she gave birth to Wilbur in November of that year.
Cressida had dated Harry for around two years until they split amicably in April 2014. Harry had been introduced to Cressida, who has been in several West End plays including The Great Gatsby, by his cousin Princess Eugenie. Cressida was a guest at Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018.
They split when Cressida reportedly became overwhelmed with the spotlight that came with dating a royal.