Cairo — The Super Eagles of Nigeria and Warriors of Zimbabwe extended their friendly meeting beyond the pitch by flying together to Ismailia, Egypt on Sunday evening, Completesports.com reports.

According to thenff.com, Super Eagles and the Zimbabweans flew a chartered Max Air plane from Asaba to Ismailia on Sunday. The two aides clashed in an international friendly match at the Stephen Keshi Stadium on Saturday which ended goalless.

The Max Air plane stopped at the Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano, to refuel before continuing flight to Ismailia.

The Nigerian and Zimbabwean contingents went their separate ways in Ismailia, to continue their final preparation for the 32nd Africa Cup of Nations which kicks off on June 21.

The Super Eagles have already moved into the posh Hotel Mercure in Ismailia along with their technical and administrative crews.

Super Eagles will clash with Burundi on June 22, face Guinea on June 26 before rounding off their group games against Madagascar on June 30.

Zimbabwe are in Group A of AFCON 2019 alongside hosts Egypt, Uganda and DR Congo.

The Warriors will face the Pharaohs in the tournament’s opening game on Friday June 21.

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BY FORTUNE MBELE

HARARE City coach Mark Harrison reckons his team’s win against table-toppers Chicken Inn in a league match at Luveve Stadium in Bulawayo on Saturday marks good things to come for the local authority side.

Harrison said he told his boys prior to the game that victory against the Gamecocks would be a turning point for Harare City as they look forward to the upcoming games, full of optimism.

Harare City dominated Chicken Inn, especially in the first half where they got their goals through Ishmael Wadi and Kudakwashe Musharu.

Marlvin Gaki scored the consolation for Chicken Inn, with Innocent Mucheneka raising the bar in midfield.

Harrison is buoyed by that win.

“It is a big win for us. They (Chicken Inn) were on top of the league today before the game kicked off. They are a very good team. They had a big win last week in Harare against Caps and they were full of it. But we knew we were as good as them, if not better. We have been inconsistent since kick (of the season), which has been a problem for us, but I am hoping now
we might want some consistency. I spoke to the players last night (Friday) and said this could be a defining moment in our season. If we come here (Luveve) and win the game, potentially
we can be a threat and get back on the rail,” Harrison said.

He, however, said there was still a lot of work to do as he looked ahead to his next assignment against Herentals. Herentals overcame another championship favourites, Caps United, at
the National Sports Stadium on Saturday.

“Two back-to-back WINS and now we have to push on. We have another game next week in Harare. We have to try and get another three points and move on,” Harrison said.

Harare City are on 16 points from 11 games, six points behind pacesetters Chicken Inn and Caps.
Chicken Inn are away to Triangle in their next game, while FC Platinum,on 21 points, will be at home to Bulawayo Chiefs following their a goalless draw against Ngezi Platinum at Baobab
on Saturday.

Caps United host TelOne, while in-form Black Rhinos will also be at home against ZPC Kariba.

The biggest game of the weekend pits strugglers Highlanders and Dynamos at Barbourfields Stadium.

BY Kevin Mapasure

The Zimbabwe national polo team is targeting silverware at the Africa Cup that will be staged in South Africa this weekend following their success against Kenya in a Titan Law Polo International played at Thorne Park Polo Ground at the weekend.

Zimbabwe claimed the main prize following a 6-4 win on Friday, which was followed with a 10-6 triumph draw on Saturday.

Captain Corey Meikle and Richard Brown both scored hat tricks on Friday to give Zimbabwe the win before the former hit another treble on Saturday, but overall, he finished one goal behind Kenya’s Archie Voorspuy who had seven goals over the tournament.

Zimbabwe’s team also had Paul Johnson and Thomas Weed, while Kenya had a mixture of two ladies and two men in their team.

The Saturday match was fiercely contested and Zimbabwe felt it was good preparation for the Africa Cup where they will encounter hosts Nigeria and Zambia

Last year, Zimbabwe finished second at the event, but Polo Association of Zimbabwe president Bob Crossely feels that this time they could go all the way go and bring back the trophy.
“The game was very exciting. We had quite a strong Zimbabwean side. I think it was a very hard and well fought game. I am pleased that Zimbabwe managed to win,” he said. “Now, we are
looking ahead to the Africa Cup. Last year, we finished second following a bad start because we were not used to the horses. But once we sorted our issues with the horses, we played
well. This time, we are looking to try and win the trophy.”

He paid tribute to their sponsors, Titan law, owned by prominent lawyer Gerald Mlotshwa.

”Gerald has been a great supporter of ours. He is taking the team down to South Africa at the weekend. Titan Law is a great sponsor in sport. They do rugby and Polo. Mhlotshwa likes to
entertain big his clients in sport.”
Polo Association of Zimbabwe is looking to incorporate more blacks into the sport.

“We are bringing in a lot of indigenous people into the game. We have a lot of good black players coming through. It’s a new sport to them, but they have a good eye for the ball. We are just teaching some of them how to ride the horses. It’s not a cheap sport. That’s the problem so we are lending horses to guys that have interest in the sport.”

The Zimbabwe polo captain said he was pleased with the performance against Kenya as they look ahead to the weekend challenge.

“It was a good game against the Kenyans. They were fierce competition. They were very physical and marked us well. But towards the end, we managed to make use of home advantage and ran away with it in the end,” he said. “The strategy was to nullify their best players. We didn’t manage to do that at the start, but towards the end we managed. Next is the Africa Cup, and hopefully we can do well in South Africa. So, this tournament against Kenya has prepared us for what’s coming next.

BY STEPHEN CHADENGA

GWERU provincial magistrate Phathekile Msipa last week sentenced to four years in prison a 17-year-old Form 3 student for raping a two-year-old toddler.

The juvenile, who is a repeat offender, will serve seven years after Msipa added three years which were suspended in 2015 when he was convicted of a similar offence.

In passing sentence, Msipa said the teenager deserved a custodial sentence as he had shown no remorse committing another rape barely four years after the courts had suspended a portion of his sentence for a similar offence.

The State’s case was that on April 21 this year, the complainant was playing with the accused’s siblings.

The accused called the toddler into his room, where he raped her once.

When the mother of the girl was bathing her, the toddler complained of some pain on her private parts.

The complainant’s mother examined her and noticed bruises on her private parts.

She reported the matter to the police, leading to the arrest of the accused. Talent Tadenyika prosecuted.

BY CNN

Three men have been jailed for life for the rape, torture and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Three police officers were found guilty of destroying evidence and sentenced to five years in prison.

The victim, who belonged to a Muslim nomadic tribe, was found in a forest near Kathua city in January 2018.

The case sparked widespread anger and made headlines when Hindu right-wing groups protested over the men’s arrest.

Eight people, including a former government official, four policemen and a minor, were charged in connection with the crime. One of them has been acquitted and the minor is set to be tried separately.

All of them had pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.

The case became one among many high-profile ones that prompted India to pass a new law which introduced death penalty for anyone convicted of raping a child under 12.

But it is still left to the judge’s discretion to decide whether or not to hand out a death sentence.

What happened?

The eight-year-old girl went missing in the new year of 2018 and her battered body was discovered almost three weeks later.

According to investigators, the child was confined to a local temple for several days and given sedatives that kept her unconscious. The charge sheet alleged that she was “raped for days, tortured and then finally murdered”.

They added that the child was targeted because the men wished to terrorise the tribe – known as Gujjars – into leaving.

A child is sexually abused every 15 minutes in India, according to government crime figures up to 2016, and there has been a steady rise in offences against children.

The BBC’s Geeta Pandey in Delhi says India is home to the largest number of sexually abused children in the world, but there is a reluctance to talk about the topic so the real number of cases could be much higher.

Who are the convicted men?

Seven men were tried in a specially convened fast-track court on Monday and six were found guilty.

Investigators said that Sanjhi Ram, a 60-year-old retired government officer, allegedly planned the crime with the help of police officers Surinder Verma, Anand Dutta, Tilak Raj and Deepak Khajuria.

Ram’s son, Vishal, his nephew, a juvenile, and his friend, Parvesh Kumar, were also accused over the rape and murder.

While Vishal was acquitted, Ram, Khajuria and Kumar have been sentenced for life. The remaining three have been handed five-year sentences.

After the verdict, the lawyer representing the child’s family told BBC Punjabi that it was a “victory of constitutional spirit”. He added that “the whole country fought this case, irrespective of religious affiliations”.

The lawyer representing the accused said that despite the conviction, the case was based on “circumstantial evidence” and has pleaded for minimum punishment for the six men. He added that there were mitigating circumstances, including the fact that the men were the sole breadwinners in their families.

‘We will get justice for our daughter’

Divya Arya, BBC News, Anantnag

When I met the girl’s mother, she was on a hilltop alongside her elder daughter and several other members of the family.

They were surrounded by their sheep and goats, which were grazing, and they did not know that this verdict had come out.

When I informed the girl’s mother that six of the accused had been convicted, she began to cry and blessed me for being the bearer of good news.

She said the family could not afford to travel to Pathankot to hear the verdict because selling livestock was their only source of income.

“I have always believed in justice and God gave me strength to fight for it,” she said.

She added that if the two main accused were not sentenced to death, she and her husband would challenge the sentence. “We will not eat or drink but we will get justice for our daughter,” she said.

The girl’s elder sister, who is 15, says she and other girls her age now live in “constant fear of Hindu men” and never leave the house unless they are accompanied by an older family member.

What was the response to the case?

Although promptly reported in Indian-administered Kashmir, it only made headlines in the rest of the country in April after Hindu groups marched in support of the accused.

But as details of the injuries inflicted on the child became public, horrified Indians protested across the country.

Outrage grew after two ministers from India’s governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attended a rally in support of the accused men, whose community was involved in a land dispute with the nomadic tribe the girl belonged to.

The child’s mother has demanded capital punishment for two of those convicted – retired government officer Sanji Ram and police officer Deepak Khajuria – claiming that they were the “masterminds” behind the crime.

“My daughter’s face still haunts me and that pain will never leave me. When I see other children of her age playing around me, it breaks my heart,” she told the BBC.

Despite the outrage, the victim’s parents said they felt threatened in Kathua, where the community is predominantly Hindu.

The sentiment around the case prompted the top court to move the trial out of Jammu and Kashmir to a court in Pathankot in the northern state of Punjab and start the trial afresh.

BY BBC

Poor infrastructure is currently holding back the growth of Africa’s logistics markets.

Industries can make a variety of goods, but they struggle to transport them safely and quickly to customers without established networks.

According to global property consultancy Knight Frank, the cost of transport takes up 50-75% of the retail price of goods.

But there is hope, from both foreign investment and home-grown solutions.

For example, in Nigeria, digital start-up Kobo360 developed an app that revolutionises cargo delivery by making sure that everyone in the supply chain is connected to ensure the safety and accountability of cargo in transit.

A call centre of staff is able to monitor truck deliveries enroute in real-time and communicate directly with drivers, manufacturers and distributors, aided by GPS satellite positioning.

Kobo360 has only existed for three years, but such is the problem of getting goods safely delivered to distributors that many of the continent’s conglomerates are now signed up as clients.

Logistics expert Olufemi Ransome-Kuti says that solutions like Kobo360 have a knock-on effect of benefiting other industries as well, such as agriculture.

At the moment, farmers in Nigeria only expect about 50% of their produce to be delivered to distributors or buyers in a sellable condition.

“When they are able to get similar spoilage from source to destination, it will encourage them for the next season to build more capacity into their farm,” Mr Ransome-Kuti told the BBC.

In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, more and more people are shopping online, and getting goods delivered to your front door is a growing trend amongst shoppers.

Quicarry is a service that delivers packages in Senegal from international ecommerce websites, particularly targeting young adults.

“We were looking to start a classic logistics company but then we realised after a few months that there were a lot of people looking to buy products from [countries like] the US and France,” Quicarry’s co-founder Olabissi Ojohui told the BBC.

“Online shopping is available here, but these big websites – they don’t ship to Africa often.”

There are other start-ups in Senegal also trying to offer new solutions, such as delivery app Paps, which aims to deliver anything you want to your front door in half an hour.

But technology isn’t enough to fix Africa’s logistics problems – more support is also needed to help new businesses get off the ground.

Start-ups say they struggle to raise the money they need, no matter where they are on the continent – according to the African Development Bank, business loans are granted at interest rates of between 12-20%.

This means that one in four businesses are likely to fail in their first year.

However, people still want to try.

In Nigeria, three-wheeled motortaxis called Kekes are popular with customers.

When Samuel Ogundare completed his education and went out into the world of work, he couldn’t find a job.

Eventually he decided to go into business for himself, running a Keke taxi firm called Corporate Keke Guy, where all the drivers are dressed smartly.

He told the BBC: “I want people to see me and not believe I am a tricycle rider.

“I want to change the look of transportation. Some people think they can’t be successful – I want people to see me and know you can start something.

“You can start small and go places.”

BY BBC

Sudanese workers are refusing to go to work in an attempt to pressurise the ruling military government to make way for civilian rule.

The opposition called for a campaign of civil disobedience including a national strike, which began on Sunday.

Four people were killed after security forces fired tear gas and live ammunitions.

Monday remained quiet in Khartoum although some businesses started to reopen and a few buses were running.

Most shops, markets and banks in the capital, as well as in several other cities, remained closed as staff followed instructions from the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), the pro-democracy opposition, to not attend work.

The SPA called the strike after more than 100 peaceful protesters were killed by a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), on 3 June.

“The civil disobedience movement will begin Sunday and end only when a civilian government announces itself in power on state television,” the SPA said in a statement.

“Disobedience is a peaceful act capable of bringing to its knees the most powerful weapons arsenal in the world.”

Protesters have set up roadblocks across the capital. Social media users with access to a connection reported that the country’s internet was blocked by the ruling military government.

What’s the background?

The military took over Sudan after persistent protests led to the ousting of long-time President Omar al-Bashir in April. A military council promised a transition to civilian rule.

But pro-democracy campaigners say the military council cannot be trusted after Monday’s crackdown against a sit-in demonstration in Khartoum – and they have rejected an offer of talks.

In a separate development, three prominent opposition figures involved in mediation efforts were arrested after they met the Ethiopian prime minister, who was in Khartoum to try to restart peace talks.

BY BBC

Nearly 100 people have been killed in attack in a village in central Mali inhabited by the Dogon ethnic group, reports say.

The attack happened in Sobane-Kou, close to Sanga town, according to French-language news outlet RFI.

The bodies of the dead have been burned, says a local official, and the search for more bodies is ongoing.

There have been numerous attacks in Mali in recent months, some ethnic, some carried out by jihadist groups.

Clashes between Dogon hunters and semi-nomadic Fulani herders are frequent.

The mayor of nearby Bankass, Moulaye Guindo, told Reuters news agency that Fulanis from that district had attacked Sobane-Kou after nightfall.

A local official in the Koundou area, where the village is located, told the AFP agency: “Right now we have 95 dead civilians. The bodies are burned, we are continuing to look for others.”

In the same region in March, more than 130 Fulani villagers were killed by armed men wearing traditional Dogon hunters’ clothing.

Clashes between the two groups have increased since a militant Islamist uprising in northern Mali in 2012.

The Dogon people have lived in central Mali for centuries, and live a largely traditional way of life as settled farmers. The Fulani, on the other hand, are semi-nomadic herders who move across large distances in West Africa.

Friction between farmers and the roaming herders over resources is long-standing.

Previously, disagreements between the Fulani and Dogon had often been settled through negotiation, but the uprising – which spread to the centre of Mali by 2015 – decreased government control and increased the availability of weapons.

Both sides accuse the other of carrying out attacks amid the unrest.

The Fulani, a largely Muslim ethnic group, have been accused of having links with the Islamist uprising. But for their part, the Fulani accuse a Dogon self-defence association, Dan Na Ambassagou, of attacks on their villages.