A new Russian intercontinental ballistic missile is capable of carrying several hypersonic weapons, a senior Russian military officer said Sunday. Col. Gen. Sergei Karakayev, the commander of the Russian military's Strategic Missile Forces, said in televised remarks that the new Sarmat ICBM is designed to carry several Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the Sarmat was test-fired for the first time Wednesday from the Plesetsk launch facility in northern Russia and its practice warheads have successfully reached mock targets on the Kura firing range on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula. The test launch came amid soaring tensions between…

Federal Ministry of Works and Housing has shortlisted 18 firms from among 75 bidders seeking to operate and toll 12 economically viable highways on a concession basis. The ministry has also concluded the evaluating proposals for phase one of the Value-Added Concession (VAC) under the Highway Development and Management Initiative (HDMI), revealed a statement from Hakeem Bello, spokesman of the minister of works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Monday. The 12 roads of 1,963 kilometres will be managed by technically and financially capable private sector firms/consortia. They are Benin-Asaba, Abuja-Lokoja, Kano-Katsina, Onitsha-Owerri-Aba, Sagamu-Benin and Abuja-Keffi-Akwanga. The rest are Kano-Maiduguri (Kano-Shuarin),…

Ukraine’s foreign minister on Monday urged the U.N. chief to press Russia for an evacuation of the besieged port of Mariupol, calling it something the world body is capable of achieving. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told The Associated Press in an interview he was concerned that by visiting Moscow on Tuesday before traveling to Kyiv, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres could be vulnerable to falling into a Kremlin “trap” in the war. Kuleba said Guterres “should focus primarily on one issue: evacuation of Mariupol. An estimated 100,000 people are trapped in the seaside city while a contingent of Ukrainian fighters hold…

PRESS RELEASE In 2005, a US National Intelligence Council paper “Mapping Sub-Saharan Africa’s Future” floated the idea there could be a military coup in Nigeria. At the time this was hardly an earth-shattering prediction: 2005 was only six years after the return of civilian democratic rule and just over a decade since the Abacha military coup of 1993 – the final of seven coups since independence. However, for the last 29 years – close to a generation – there have been none. Since the return of democracy in 1999 there have been six general elections, four elected presidents, four transfers…