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Nigerian anti-graft investigators have seized money raised by the head of the Nigerian Stock Exchange to support US presidential candidate Barack Obama. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said it would give the money back to those who attended a gala dinner in Lagos last month.

LAGOS, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Up to 500 people may have been killed in an explosion at a fuel pipeline in Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, the Nigerian Red Cross said. "It is a densely populated area. We are talking hundreds (dead). Sixty have been evacuated to hospital, badly burned. We are yet to confirm the death toll so we don't know if it is 300, 400 or 500," Red Cross secretary-general Abiodun Orebiyi said.

LAGOS, Nigeria -- It's eight hours into the service, and the congregation is still dancing. Shout, they're told. Yell out to the Lord. Their cries melt into a muggy night with the odor of sweating bodies, jasmine and the tropical musk of the Nigerian bush land. "Hallelujah," rumbles the head pastor as the church band kicks into a new number. "Hal-le-luuuuuuu-jah." Even from the heights of the pulpit, he can't see the far edges of the crowd. More than 300,000 people have come for the once-a-month, all-night, Pentecostal-style revival, led by a preacher most simply call "Daddy." Given the standards...

An airliner missing reported Nigerian LAGOS - an airliner Nigerian has been reported missing for more than eight hours and of the helicopters were launched to its research, announced to Sunday a spokesman of the airport authorities of Lagos, Adamu Abdullahi. "It acted of the flight of the company Bellview Airlines of Lagos with Abuja, which took off with 19H50 local, Saturday evening. Two helicopters of the police force left to its recherche', specified the spokesman.

Ritual murders spark lynchings 21/10/2005 09:10  - (SA)    Lagos - Avenging lynch mobs have seized and burnt alive more than 20 suspected kidnappers over the past month in and around the Nigerian city of Lagos where terrified residents have taken extreme measures to stamp out ritual child sacrifices, police and witnesses said. The mutilated corpses of the victims of black magic ceremonies - which turn up on an almost daily basis in the fields and on the roadsides of southwest Nigeria - have now been joined by piles of ash and blackened flesh where alleged gang-members were set ablaze. Police and...

Lagos - An Air France jet crashed into a stray cow as it landed in the southern Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt on Wednesday, an airport official said, adding no-one was injured in the incident. "The plane hit the cow on the runway. No-one was hurt, but the runway has been blocked," said the official, who asked not to be named. "The airport authorities have promised to clear the runway within two hours. Right now, flight operations are halted; no landing, no takeoff," she said. "It is a puzzle. We are trying to figure out how the animal got...

British troops raise the flag on the Falklands during the conflict A forthcoming book has revealed Chile's military intelligence helped Britain during the 1982 Falklands conflict.The book has threatened a possible diplomatic row between Chile and Argentina over the revelations of a secret alliance with the UK. Chilean president Ricardo Lagos has forwarded parts of the book to the Argentine foreign ministry. The book alleges Chile provided intelligence in return for half-price military aircraft. 'Cut-price deal'The book, The Official History of the Falklands War, details the deal between the governments of Margaret Thatcher and General Augusto Pinochet, said the...

LAGOS, Jan 23 (IPS) - Tonnes of garbage dot market places, bus stops and bridges, overwhelming efforts to clean up Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos. The residents of this sprawling city of over 10 million people dump refuse indiscriminately. Some defecate and urinate in open places. Last year alone, the Lagos state government spent more than 10 million dollars on clearing and disposing of refuse, and demolishing of illegal structures. Despite its efforts, the city still remains one of the dirtiest in the country. Lagos was regarded as the dirtiest capital in the world in the seventies, but the trend changed...

The son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, lobbied for business contacts at gatherings of UN officials on behalf of a company in the same year as it won an oil-for-food programme deal, it has emerged. The second disclosure in a week about Kojo Annan's role with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection Services, which secured the $4.8 million (£2.46 million) UN contract to monitor goods entering and leaving Iraq in 1998, has raised embarrassing questions for his father. The details were revealed in Cotecna company documents handed over under subpoena to US congressional scrutineers who are investigating the oil-for-food...

Lagos plane crash a hoax – Aviation Minister SOLA ADEKOLA, SADE AYODELE THE Federal Government on Tuesday dismissed claim of last Friday’s plane crash into Goshen Beach, Ajah, near Lekki, Lagos, describing it as a “hoax.” Addressing newsmen in Lagos, Aviation Minister, Alhaji Isa Yuguda, said though no laboratory test had been conducted on the oil found on the lagoon to determine whether there was really a plane crash, reports of all relevant agencies that investigated the matter were negative. Yuguda, flanked by the Director, Accident Investi-gation Bureau (AIB), Mr. Angus Azoka and Managing Director, Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA),...

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- An aircraft believed to be a 25- to 30-seat passenger plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, on Friday, disappearing beneath the waves, witnesses and aviation officials said. Hours after the reported crash, search plans collapsed over lack of diving equipment and a dispute over pay for any rescue teams. The craft went down along a busy east-west commercial West African flight path that is also used by multinational oil companies to fly workers to and from facilities in Nigeria's oil delta. Air traffic control workers were trying to determine the...

The Gubernatorial candidate of the All Nigerian People's Party (ANPP) in Edo State, Senator Rowland Owie, has vowed to wage war against abortion and all forms of destruction of life if he wins the state goverorship elections, even as he argued that moral education was an effective remedy against campus cultism. In a chat with City Diary in Benin City, the Edo State capital last weekend, the ANPP candidate decried the notorious image the state has come to be associated with, regarding such acts as trafficking in young women, stating that he would prove that the moral decay often painted...

Scores Killed As Blast Rocks Nigeria By DULUE MBACHU, Associated Press WriterLAGOS, Nigeria - A blast rocked the heart of Nigeria's commercial capital Sunday, killing as many as 50 people, witnesses and local radio reported. The explosion occurred about 12:30 p.m. on Lagos Island, the center of the business district of this city of 12 million. It tore through a three-story building, in a blast that could be heard for miles. Resident Omololu Kassim, who was helping carry the victims, told The Associated Press he saw 40 dead and as many injured. Radio stations reported up to 50 killed. Crowds...

Gravity waves analysis opens 'completely new sense' PRESS RELEASE Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO. -- Sometime within the next two years, researchers will detect the first signals of gravity waves -- those weak blips from the far edges of the universe passing through our bodies every second. Predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity waves are expected to reveal, ultimately, previously unattainable mysteries of the universe. Wai-Mo Suen, Ph.D., professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis is collaborating with researchers nationwide to develop waveform templates to comprehend the signals to be analyzed. In...