Foreign
Niger: ECOWAS plans fresh sanctions on Burkina Faso, Mali, UN talks fail
•ECOWAS leaders meet Thursday after botched AU, UN, US planned visit to Niamey
•Over 100,000 IDPs stranded in Niger, businesses grounded in Sokoto, Katsina borders
The Economic Community of West African States has imposed heavier financial sanctions on the Niger junta and entities supporting them including the governments of Mali and Burkina Faso.
The development came after a diplomatic mission by the African Union, ECOWAS, United Nations and the United States to resolve the political impasse in Niger hit a brick wall on Tuesday as the military junta refused to grant audience to the delegations.
The military leaders also snubbed the Acting US Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and denied her access to the coup leader, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani and ousted President, Muhammed Bazoum, who was being held in the presidential palace.
Some military officers led by Tchiani overthrew Bazoum on July 26 leading to a flurry of sanctions imposed on Niger by ECOWAS to compel them to restore the ousted president to power.
On Tuesday, presidential spokesman, Ajuri Ngelale, told journalists in Abuja that more sanctions had been imposed on the individuals and entities relating with the military junta.
The joint AU, ECOWAS and UN delegation planned a trip to Niamey to negotiate with the junta ahead of the Thursday summit of ECOWAS but the military officers denied permission to enter Niger to the delegation, according to a letter circulated on social media whose authenticity was confirmed by a Niger army spokesman.
Announcing the latest round of sanctions in Abuja on Tuesday, Ngelale said the latest prohibition was targeted at individuals and entities relating with the military junta in Niger Republic.
Although he did not go into details, he said the restriction was carried out through the Central Bank of Nigeria.
He stated, “I can also report that following the expiration of the deadline of the ultimatum and standing on the pre-existing consensus position of financial sanctions meted out on the military junta in Niger Republic by the bloc of ECOWAS Heads of State, President Bola Tinubu has ordered an additional slew of financial sanctions through the Central Bank of Nigeria on entities and individuals related to or involved with the military junta in Niger Republic.
“The ECOWAS mandate and ultimatum is not a Nigerian ultimatum. It is not a Nigerian mandate and the office of the President, also serving as the chairman of ECOWAS, seeks to emphasise this point that due to certain domestic and international media coverage, tending toward personalisation of the ECOWAS sub-regional position to his person and our nation individually.
“It is because of this that Mr President has deemed it necessary to state unequivocally that the mandate and ultimatum issued by ECOWAS is that of ECOWAS position. While President Bola Tinubu has assumed the ECOWAS chairmanship, the position of ECOWAS conveys the consensus position of member Heads of State. And a coup will not occur in one’s backyard, without one being particularly aware of it.”
The fresh sanctions by ECOWAS on the Niger Republic apply to Mali and Burkina Faso, a presidency source revealed on Tuesday.
“They (Burkina Faso and Mali) are included in the ECOWAS sanction. It affects any and every entity that is doing business with the Niger Republic. There is no hidden meaning to that, it’s clear,” the source who didn’t want to be mentioned told our correspondent.
Meanwhile, Ngelale explained that Tinubu had consulted extensively in the past few days following the expiration of the one-week ultimatum issued to the junta to hand over power to the deposed president.
He added, “The President in recent days, particularly following the expiration of the ultimatum given by ECOWAS, has widened consultations internationally but most especially domestically, including interfaces with state governors in Nigeria, who govern states bordering Niger Republic on the various fallouts and outcomes of the unfortunate situation that has unfolded in Niger Republic.
“But President Bola Tinubu wishes to emphasise to this distinguished audience that the response of ECOWAS to the military coup in Niger has been and will remain devoid of ethnic and religious sentiments and considerations.
“The regional bloc is made up of all sub-regional ethnic groups, religious groups, and all other forms of human diversity. And the response of ECOWAS, therefore, represents all of these groups, and not any of these groups individually.”
Intervention snubbed
Reuters reports that the letter said popular anger among Niger’s citizens over sanctions imposed by ECOWAS in response to the coup made it impossible to host the envoys safely and denounced “a climate of threatened aggression against Niger.”
An AU spokesperson confirmed that the mission had been denied access, while ECOWAS declined to comment.
The junta had already snubbed meetings with a senior US envoy and another ECOWAS delegation.
Niger is the world’s seventh-biggest producer of uranium, the most widely used fuel for nuclear energy, adding to its strategic importance.
The UN said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly supported mediation efforts by ECOWAS, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told French radio station RFI that diplomacy was the best way to resolve the situation.
He declined to comment on the future of some 1,100 US troops in Niger, where French, German and Italian troops are also stationed.
Blinken later told the BBC he was worried that Russia’s Wagner mercenaries were taking advantage of the instability in Niger to strengthen their presence in the Sahel.
“I think what happened and what continues to happen in Niger was not instigated by Russia or by Wagner, but they tried to take advantage of it,” he was quoted as saying by the BBC.
Western allies fear that Niger could go the way of Mali, which threw out French troops and UN peacekeepers and invited in mercenaries from the Wagner group after a 2021 coup.
“Every single place that this Wagner group has gone, death, destruction and exploitation have followed,” Blinken told the BBC.
Nuland, who was denied permission to meet both Tchiani and Bazoum in Niamey, told reporters her talks with more junior officers were “frank and difficult” and they had shown little interest in exploring ways to restore democratic order.
Last week, ECOWAS sent a mission to Niamey led by former President Abdulsalami Abubakar, but the coup leaders also refused to see him.
In contrast, Tchiani on Monday met a joint delegation from Mali and Burkina Faso, both neighbouring countries where the military has seized power from civilians. The juntas there have pledged support for the coup in Niger.
Alongside the Malian army, fighters presumed to be from Wagner have reportedly carried out a brutal military offensive, executing hundreds of civilians last year, witnesses and rights groups say, charges the army and Wagner denied.
In a new report seen by Reuters on Monday, UN sanctions monitors said they had also used a campaign of sexual violence and other grave human rights abuses to terrorise the population.
However, in furtherance of its resolution, the ECOWAS under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu has imposed fresh sanctions on the junta in Niger.
The regional bloc had earlier given the coupists seven days to reinstate President Bazoum or risk sanctions, including possible military action.
But they called the bluff of ECOWAS and vowed to resist any foreign intervention on their soil.
They further severed ties with Nigeria, Togo, France and the US, and shut down Nigerien airspace indefinitely.
At the end of the ultimatum, the bloc scheduled a meeting for Thursday to review the situation in the West African nation.
Foreign
Putin ‘shuts down CCTV protecting him’ fearing assassination after Iran’s Ayatollah tracked via cameras and killed
The paranoid Russian tyrant is said to be shaking in his boots after the US and Israel used AI camera hacking to hunt down and kill Iran‘s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Putin is paranoid that his security cameras could be used against him.
It comes after the precise strike that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader on February 28.
The sophisticated operation has sparked fears in Russia that similar technology could be used to track top officials – or the despot himself.
The move underscores mounting Kremlin fears that widespread surveillance cameras could be used against Moscow – given the new powers of AI.
Israeli intelligence are reportedly harvesting huge amounts of data scraped from Tehran’s traffic camera network.
Putin’s surveillance system has since been turned back on – but was only reinstated after engineers tried to break it off from the internet, the Financial Times reported.
The Kremlin is terrified that its sprawling surveillance system could be turned against the regimeCredit: East2West
Israel are understood to be analysing these millions of hours of video using AI-powered software.
Methods like these were reportedly used in the operation to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei on February 28.
Terrified Russian security chiefs are now warning that the sprawling system of surveillance cameras around the country could be harnessed against them.
Head of Russia’s FSB security service Alexander Bortnikov warned that the deaths of senior Iranian figures should serve as a “clear warning sign” about the vulnerabilities of modern camera networks.
It comes amid the growing capabilities of AI – which can now track and flag certain types of behaviour rather than individual faces.
The technology has been described as the “holy grail of surveillance”, according to one European official who told the FT it lets security services to search for movements rather than simply objects or people.
Earlier this week, Putin ordered his two eldest daughters to move into his bunker palace with him.
Maria Vorontsova, 41, and Katerina Tikhonova, 39, have moved into Mad Vlad’s highly guarded forest palace complex.
The tyrant’s demand for his two daughters and three grandchildren to move in was revealed by a new investigation from We Can Explain.
It reported that Putin’s multi-millionaire daughter Maria and her two children moved to the Valdai palace complex.
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Katerina Tikhonova, 39, a rock n’ roll dancer, also moved in with her son.
The deranged dictator already shared the palace with his mistress Alina Kabaeva, 43, and their two sons, Ivan, 11, and Vladimir, six.
The Valdai complex is guarded by dozens of air defence systems making it one of the most secure locations in Russia.
Putin’s palace now has a total of 27 towers fitted with anti-aircraft systems, up from just seven two years ago.
A Nigerian-born Roman Catholic priest, Anthony Odiong, has been convicted by a jury in Texas, United States, for sexually assaulting women under his spiritual care, The Guardian reports.
Odiong, 57, was found guilty on one count of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree sexual assault after a trial in Waco, Texas.
The jury, made up of eight women and four men, delivered its verdict after about two hours of deliberation on Friday.
The court heard testimony from two women who said Odiong used his role as a priest to manipulate and pressure them into sexual relationships.
He was accused of exploiting his position as a Catholic priest to pursue sexual relationships with women he was providing spiritual direction.
Odiong, who pleaded not guilty, could face life imprisonment on the first-degree charge when sentencing begins on Monday.
Prosecutors said the offences involved two women who testified in court that the priest abused his clerical authority during periods of emotional vulnerability.
One of the women, identified in court documents as Mary Doe, told the jury that Odiong began a sexual relationship with her while providing spiritual counselling during a difficult divorce.
She also testified that her son once walked in on her and Odiong during intercourse at her home.
Another woman, Jane Doe, testified that he pressured her into sexual acts under the guise of spiritual guidance.
The case followed a 2024 report by The Guardian, which first documented allegations of sexual misconduct and coercion against the priest during his ministry in Texas and Louisiana.
Prosecutors said that report prompted one of the victims to come forward to police with further allegations.
Investigators later gathered additional evidence, including DNA linked to a child fathered by Odiong during his time in Louisiana.
Odiong, a naturalised US citizen, was ordained in Nigeria in 1993 and later served in Catholic parishes in Texas and Louisiana.
Authorities said he was suspended from the ministry in 2019 following earlier allegations of misconduct.
His lawyers argued during the trial that the relationships were consensual, but prosecutors maintained that he abused his position of authority as a clergy member.
A United States-based 23 year old tech-developer, Tony Kabilan Okeke, led a five-man team of Drexel University, Philadelphia, Penn., U.S. alumni and students to develop Xploit, an automated cybersecurity testing tool for AI agents, an ambitious concept that addresses a growing problem in AI landscape.
Beside Tony Okeke who is the Team Lead, other members of the team are Kamdi Okeke, Kiitan Fawole, Dalu Okonkwo and Michael Moemeke.
Speaking to our reporter on the development, Tony said, “As more businesses deploy AI agents that can take actions and use tools on behalf of customers, these systems become potential security risks. Unlike simple AI assistants, agents have access to tools and can perform real actions – meaning a security vulnerability isn’t just a PR problem, it could have serious real-world consequences.”
3rd from right, Team lead, Tony, Kamdi, Dalu, flanked by UEV partners
The team envisioned a tool that could automatically test an AI agent for vulnerabilities – essentially playing the role of a digital attacker to identify weaknesses before real threats could exploit them. This was the outcome of their brainstorming on November 21, 2025, when Tony led the group to build and pitch Xploit in the “Start-Up In a Weekend” Hackathon hosted on November 21 – 23, 2025 in Philadelphia, by The Foundry & Velric, a Philadelphia-based founder-first community that act as a startup ecosystem catalyst.
Tony designed the system’s architecture and created the initial prototype of the user interface (UI). The UI concept was crucial: it needed to visually show how their automated attacker was thinking, strategizing, and attempting different approaches in real-time, all displayed through interactive graph showing the attack process as it unfolded.
Responsibilities were strategically divided amongst the team. Some members created sample AI agents to serve as “victims” for testing. Tony developed the core attacking system. One person refined the user interface, and others handled the technical infrastructure connecting all the pieces together.
The attacking system itself works like a strategic game player. It would first choose an attack strategy, then create a detailed plan, execute that plan step-by-step by sending messages to the target AI agent, and analyze the responses to determine whether to continue or try a different approach. Throughout this process, the web interface displayed everything happening in real-time, allowing users to watch the automated tester work.
The team then integrated everything — making the attacker communicate with the victim AI agent systems, ensuring the automated testing loop ran smoothly, and polishing the final product. They recorded their demo video and submitted their project before the 9 am deadline on November 23, 2025.
During the afternoon judging session, the team delivered their pitch, framing their project around a massive, unaddressed market shift, highlighting a critical market gap: while the explosion of AI agents in 2025 has seen enterprises deploy them to manage everything from infrastructure to sensitive tasks like financial analysis and customer support, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are left vulnerable because they cannot afford to test them for security flaws. Unlike tech giants, SMBs lack the resources for dedicated AI security teams. Xploit, automated cybersecurity tool, directly addresses this need, positioning itself within a booming continuous automated red-teaming market projected to skyrocket from $495 million in 2024 to $4.9 billion by 2032. Xploit democratizes AI safety, levels the playing field, allowing any business to automatically test and secure their AI agents before deployment.
The judges were impressed enough that they took an unusual step — they asked to see the team’s code and development history to verify the project had actually been built during the hackathon weekend. This verification was necessary because the judges found it hard to believe such a polished product could be created in just one weekend.
The team won the “new project track” award and $1,500 in prize money.
“What made the achievement particularly remarkable” according to Kamdi Okeke, “wasn’t just that we built it over a weekend — it was that, competing amongst a diverse group of 100+ of Philadelphia’s most driven creators, we built Xploit in less than a day of actual development time, transforming an abstract idea into a working, polished prototype through focused collaboration and strategic planning.”
Speaking further, Tony said, “The experience at yet another hackathon, UEV’s Venture Building Weekend hosted in Philadelphia, March 12 – 14, 2026, was a turning point for us. The mentorship and feedback we received from industry operators helped sharpen how we think about the problem and where our approach fits in the market.”
United Effects Ventures (UEV) is a Philadelphia-based pre-seed venture studio. Through its Venture Building Weekend, a competitive hackathon, focused on problem validation and go-to-market strategy, teams refined their ideas with guidance from experienced operators and investors. After a grueling 48-hour sprint, Xploit came tops, outperformed 15 other competing teams, earning a cash award and two advisory sessions with partners at UEV; and most importantly, industry experts validated Xploit’s focus on continuous red-teaming as a strong approach to discovering vulnerabilities in AI-powered products.
Mentors at the hackathon validated both the team’s identification of the problem – the growing security risks posed by AI agents operating autonomously in enterprise environment – and their approach of framing the product as continuous red-teaming platform, which could support an ongoing service model.
The accusation comes after US Central Command said its forces had on Monday attacked missile sites and boats in southern Iran that were trying to lay mines in the Gulf, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it fired at US aircraft trying to enter its airspace.
“The US terrorist army, continuing its illegal and unjustified actions since the ceasefire… has, in the past 48 hours, committed a gross violation of the ceasefire in the Hormozgan region,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.
It added that Tehran “will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation,” without elaborating.
Tuesday’s statement came as a top Iranian delegation was in Qatar for talks as part of a “diplomatic process” aimed at ending the war with the United States, which broke out on February 28.
AFP
Iranian authorities held mass public weddings in Tehran for couples who signed up to a state-sponsored scheme declaring their readiness to sacrifice their lives in the war against the US and Israel.
The ceremonies conducted late on Monday involved hundreds of couples in several major squares in the capital, including more than 100 in the vast Imam Hossein square in central Tehran, according to reports in Iranian media.
They were broadcast on state TV in a bid to boost wartime morale, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly threatening new military action against Iran amid a shaky ceasefire which halted the fighting that began on February 28.
Those involved had signed up, according to Iranian media, for the so-called “self-sacrifice” scheme (janfada in Persian) where people pledged to put their lives on the line in the war by, for example, forming human chains outside power stations.
Iranian authorities say millions of people, including top figures such as the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and President Masoud Pezeshkian, have put their names forward.
Couples arrived at the Imam Hossein square in military jeeps with mounted machine guns and were married on a stage in a ceremony presided over by a cleric, AFP images showed.
The stage was festooned with balloons and with a giant image of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public since being elevated to the position after the killing of his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the war.
“Certainly, the country is at war, but young people also have the right to marry,” one young woman in a white Islamic bridal dress, who was not named, said beside her groom in footage published by the Mehr news agency.
A man in a dark suit, beside his bride-to-be, said they were happy the occasion marked the anniversary of the marriage of the Prophet Ali, revered by Shia Muslims, to Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.
“We received their blessings. Furthermore, we came to offer our best wishes to the people in the streets,” he said.
Mehr said 110 couples had taken part in the Imam Hossein Square ceremony alone. The AFP images showed crowds of well-wishers clasping roses and watching on.
Since the start of the war, Iranian authorities have held, on a near-daily basis, major pro-government gatherings in a bid to highlight popular mobilisation amid the conflict.
AFP
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