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There is no doubt that Temitope Balogun Joshua, popularly known as TB Joshua, was one of Africa’s most influential televangelists, A Nigerian pastor who founded the Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos was also surrounded by controversy.

Al Jazeera reports that the 57-year-old Joshua, who died on Saturday, was popular not only across Africa but also in South America, where he held many religious campaigns. He often toured the UK as well.

“God has taken His servant Prophet TB Joshua home – as it should be by divine will,” the church posted on its Facebook page.

 “His last moments on earth were spent in the service of God. This is what he was born for, lived for and died for,” read the post.

Joshua rose to prominence in the 1990s and was known for his claims to cure various diseases and perform miracles.

One of his most notable controversies took place in 2014 when one of his churches collapsed, killing 116 people, of whom 84 were South Africans who had travelled to Lagos to attend the service.

The BBC reported that a court in Lagos said, “The church was culpable because of criminal negligence.” However, Joshua never faced any charges.

A report attributed the disaster to structural failures and found that the building had not received planning approval from the authorities.

Critics questioned his claims and accused him of profiting from people in search of hope, and that some of the “miracles” he had brought about were performed by actors.

In 2004, the National Broadcasting Commission in the United States banned TV stations from screening programmes of pastors performing unverified miracles. However, televangelists were still able to broadcast in most of Africa through dedicated channels on free-to-air satellite.

Joshua was a tech-savvy pastor and became a social media influencer with millions of followers across his social channels.

In April this year, his YouTube channel with more than 1.8 million subscribers was shut down following allegations of hate speech and a complaint filed on videos showing Joshua conducting prayers to “cure” gay people.

Homosexuality remains illegal in Nigeria and homosexual acts can lead to a 14-year prison sentence.

At least 40 people have been killed and more than 120 injured after the Sir Syed Express train collided with the Millat Express, which had derailed and slid onto the adjoining track, in Pakistan before dawn on Monday.

Aljazeera reports that the collision took place near the town of Dharki, about 440km (273 miles) north of Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi.

Rescuers and villagers have been working throughout the day to pull survivors and the dead out of the crumpled train cars.

Cries for help pierced the pre-dawn as passengers climbed out of overturned or crushed rail cars.

Heavy machinery arrived later in the day to cut open some cars in the hopes of rescuing several people still believed to be trapped. The military deployed troops and helicopters to assist.

 “The challenge for us is to quickly rescue those passengers who are still trapped in the wreckage,” said Umar Tufail, a police chief in the district.

Taliban says people who worked for foreign forces in Afghanistan will be safe as long as they show “remorse” and should not leave the war-ravaged country.

“They shall not be in any danger on our part… None should currently, desert the country,” a statement released by the armed group said on Monday.

“The Islamic Emirate would like to inform all the above people that they should show remorse for their past actions and must not engage in such activities in the future that amount to treason against Islam and the country.”

The statement, according to AFP, came as the United States and NATO forces are continuing to pull out after US President Joe Biden set September 11 as the deadline to end Washington’s 20-year military involvement in the country.

Thousands of Afghans worked with the international forces in the past 20 years as interpreters, security guards, and helpers in other capacities.

They fear retaliation from the Taliban once the foreign forces have left. Many have applied for special visas to leave the country.

Several countries – including the US, Germany and Britain – have programmes to resettle their local staff.

The applications of about 18,000 Afghans seeking a special immigration visa is currently pending at the US embassy in Kabul, according to embassy data.

Thousands of others have already been resettled to the countries they have worked with.

Last week, the Taliban also tried to calm foreign embassies after the Australian mission shut down in Kabul.

The group said it would provide a “safe environment” for these missions to work even after foreign forces leave the country.

According to No One Left Behind, a US non-governmental organisation, about 300 people who worked as local staff for the US military or their family members have been killed since 2016.

In the past, the Taliban said Afghans working with the “invaders” are “traitors” or “slaves”.

The group called on these Afghans to “show remorse for their past actions” and says they should not engage in such activities in the future.

“We viewed them as our foes when they were directly standing in the ranks of our enemies,” the statement added.

“But when they abandon enemy ranks and opt to live as ordinary Afghans in their homeland, they will not face any issues.”

It is questionable whether the local staff will trust these statements.

Twitter users who support the Taliban also routinely express ideas about how the local staff should be dealt with after the troops have withdrawn.

Many of those are not in line with Monday’s statement. They say, among other things, that one can never forgive those who used to work for the foreigners.

Over the past two decades, dozens of Afghan translators have been killed and tortured in targeted assaults by the Taliban.

In recent weeks, many of these Afghans have staged demonstrations in Kabul, demanding that the foreign forces and embassies that they worked with should relocate them outside of Afghanistan.

“They are tracking us,” Omid Mahmoodi, an interpreter who worked with US forces between 2018 and 2020, told the AFP news agency last week.

“The Taliban will not pardon us. They will kill us and they will behead us.”

Another interpreter, Omar, who worked with the US embassy for about 10 years, feared that without leaving the country he would not evade the Taliban for long.

“I regret working for the US. It was the biggest mistake of my life,” said Omar, who asked AFP not to use his full name. “My own uncle and cousins call me an agent of America.”

At least 36 people have been killed and dozens wounded after clashes between Arab and non-Arab tribes in South Darfur over the weekend.

The fighting broke out on Saturday between the Arab Taisha and ethnic African Fallata tribes in the remote Um Dafuq area of South Darfur, witnesses said.

“Military forces were deployed to the areas of clashes to resolve the conflict between Fallata and Taisha tribes which left 36 killed and 32 wounded,” SUNA reported late on Sunday quoting South Darfur officials.

AFP reports that it was not immediately clear what triggered the clashes but similar fighting often erupts in the Darfur region overland and access to water.

Um Dafuq resident Eissa Omar told AFP news agency “we heard the sound of heavy weapons throughout the fighting” which broke out Saturday and continued on Sunday.

The vast Darfur region, located in western Sudan, has been the scene of similar bouts of violence in recent months.

In April, at least 132 people were killed in West Darfur fighting between members of the Massalit tribe and Arab communities, forcing authorities to impose a state of emergency.

In January, renewed clashes between Arab and non-Arab tribes in the West and South Darfur regions killed more than 250 people.

The violence came as Sudan navigates a rocky transition following the toppling of longtime President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, after mass protests against his rule.

The transitional government installed after Bashir’s removal has been pushing to end long-running conflicts including in Darfur.

It signed a landmark peace agreement with multiple key rebels groups in October, and it is currently in talks to forge peace with the remaining two holdout groups.

The recent violence in Darfur appeared not to involve any signatories to the October peace deal.

On December 31, a hybrid United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission ended its operations in Darfur.

Darfur was the site of a bitter 2003 conflict pitting African ethnic minority rebels against Arab nomads backed by the Khartoum government under Bashir.

The deadly conflict – which killed some 300,000 people and displaced 2.5 million – subsided over the years but inter-ethnic clashes still occasionally erupt.

The death toll from a recent boat accident in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi has risen to 97, with no more hope for survivors, an official said late on Sunday.

Babale Umar-Yauri, secretary of the Kebbi State Government, said search and rescue operation teams have so far retrieved 97 bodies from the boat mishap on May 26.

“The bodies had been buried while 22 people were rescued,” Umar-Yauri said on Monday.

The boat was believed to be overloaded with passengers who were on their way to a market in Kebbi from a village in neighbouring Niger state on May 26.

Boat accidents in the West African country are frequently reported due to overloading, bad weather and faulty operations.

Godfrey Onyema, the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister, has assured the countrymen that banning Twitter was for national interest, particularly in terms of security.

Onyeama made the announcement on Monday in a closed-door meeting with ambassadors and representatives of the US, the UK, Canada, Ireland and the European Union, reports Xinhua news agency.

He told reporters that President Muhammadu Buhari was keen on ensuring the peace and security of Nigerians and Nigeria and that the government advocates responsible use of social media platforms that would not destabilise the country’s peace and unity.

“Unfortunately, the bad that social media is often used to commit have very dire consequences on human lives and in our case also threatening the unity of the country,” the minister added.

Recall that the Nigerian government on June 4 said it was indefinitely suspending Twitter’s operations in the country, two days after the social media network removed a post from President Buhari where made a reference to the country’s 30-month civil war in 1967-1970, warning “those who wanted the government to fail” to desist from fomenting trouble.

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigeria civil war. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” he said in the tweet which was deleted on June 2.

Twitter said it had deleted the Buhari tweet because it violated the site’s rules against abusive behaviour.

The US technology giant also suspended his account for 12 hours.

The death toll in a train crash in southern Pakistan rose to 56 on Tuesday, a railway spokeswoman said, the latest accident to highlight a broken railway system that dates back to the 19th century.

The toll rose to 56 after bodies were retrieved overnight from mangled coaches strewn across the tracks, Pakistan Railways spokeswoman Nazia Jabeen told Reuters.

Another 23 injured passengers are still under treatment, she said, adding the rest of them were sent to their destinations.

Rescue operations have been completed, said statements from the railway and Pakistani military, which worked at the site along with police and other rescuers.

One side of the two rail tracks have been cleared and work was in progress to clear the other one to help restore traffic.

Several carriages of a train derailed and fell across the adjacent track in the Ghotki district on Monday. Within minutes, a second train, coming from the other direction, smashed into them.

“The driver tried to apply emergency brakes but the locomotive hit the infringing coaches,” Pakistan Railways said in an initial report.

“We saw a terrifying scene here,” a resident Sher Mohammad told Reuters TV. “We brought water, picked up children. Passengers who were coming out of the train were mostly in agony,” he said.

The trains were carrying a total of 1,388 passengers.

Accidents on the decaying rail system are common.

In 2005, in the same district, about 130 people were killed when a crowded passenger train rammed into another at a station and a third train struck the wreckage.

Successive governments have for years been trying to secure funds to upgrade the system, including a planned new rail track called ML-1 as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative of energy and infrastructure projects.

A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.

The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred to by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the WSJ report said.

Lawrence Livermore’s assessment drew on genomic analysis of the COVID-19 virus, the Journal said. Lawrence Livermore declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.

President Joe Biden said last month he had ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus. 

U.S. intelligence agencies are considering two likely scenarios – that the virus resulted from a laboratory accident or that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal – but they have not come to a conclusion, Biden said.

A still-classified U.S. intelligence report circulated during former President Donald Trump’s administration alleged that three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became so ill in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, U.S. government sources have said.

U.S. officials have accused China of not being transparent about the virus’ origins, a charge Beijing has denied.

Separately, Mike Ryan, a top World Health Organization official said on Monday the WHO cannot compel China to divulge more data on COVID-19’s origins, while adding it will propose studies needed to take understanding of where the virus emerged to the “next level”. 

Earlier this month, U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether COVID-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak.

Eighteen people were killed in a fire on Monday at a chemical factory in the western Indian city of Pune, police said.

The police said 20 people had survived the blaze and the charred bodies of all those killed had been recovered. An inquiry has been ordered by the district administration.

The fire was at a plant where chemical manufacturer SVS Aqua Technologies makes products including hand sanitisers, local media reported.

Footage shared on social media showed a thick plume of smoke billowing out as fire crews fought the blaze.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences on Twitter. His office said the next of kin of these killed would receive 200,000 Indian rupees ($2,750) from a relief fund, and people who were injured would receive 50,000 Indian rupees.

SVS Aqua Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military leader, has lost an appeal against his convictions for masterminding genocide and other atrocities throughout Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.

Tuesday’s verdict by five judges at the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals at The Hague is final and cannot be appealed any further.

Twenty-six years after the Srebrenica massacre, the decision brings to a close the last Bosnian genocide trial before the court.

The decision to uphold the charges means the 78-year-old will continue to serve out a life sentence in prison.

Known as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, Mladic played a significant role in deadly campaigns, including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia.

Srebrenica, which saw more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed, remains the only episode of genocide on European soil after World War II.

Mladic was convicted in 2017 on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.

His lawyers had appealed his conviction, arguing the former general could not be held responsible for possible crimes committed by his subordinates.

They asked for an acquittal or a retrial.

But prosecutors wanted Mladic’s conviction to be upheld, along with his life sentence.

Tuesday’s verdict was delivered by a five-judge panel led by Zambian Presiding Judge Prisca Matimba Nyambe.

Widows and mothers of victims were in court to hear the judgment.

It comes after 25 years of trials at the now-closed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which convicted 90 people.