What Jonathan told Buhari on phone

A recording of the telephone call by President Goodluck Jonathan to Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) on March 31, congratulating him on his victory at the last Saturday’s presidential election hit the Internet on Thursday. The recording revealed what transpired between the two leaders.

President Jonathan had reportedly called Buhari hours before the official declaration of the presidential election results by the Independent National Electoral Commission that Buhari had won the March 28 presidential poll.

The audio of the conversation credited to one ENDS.ng @EveryNigerian was titled, “Historic congratulatory call from President Goodluck Jonathan to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on March 31, 2015.”

This gesture by President Jonathan had been praised in many quarters with Nigerians and world leaders hailing him for his demonstration of what they described as rare humility and spirit of sportsmanship.

Many said it was this gesture by Jonathan that put paid to the fear that violence might erupt across the country in the event that the result of the election was rejected by whoever was declared the loser by INEC.

According to the audio, the following conversation ensued between Jonathan and Buhari:

Jonathan’s aide: Your Excellency, Sir.

Buhari’s aide: Good evening.

Jonathan’s aide: Hope I’m speaking with General Buhari, sir.

Buhari’s aide: Yes.

Jonathan’s aide: Ok, President Goodluck Jonathan will like to speak with you, sir.

Buhari’s aide: Ok, ok, I’m connecting you, sir.

Jonathan: Your Excellency.

Buhari’s aide: Hold on …I’ll connect you, sir.

The phone rings for a moment.

Jonathan: Your Excellency.

Buhari’s aide: Hold on, sir.

Buhari: Your Excellency.

Jonathan: Your Excellency, how are you?

Buhari: I’m alright, thank you very much, Your Excellency.

Jonathan: (laughs) Congratulations.

Buhari: Thank you very much, your Excellency (laughs).

Jonathan: Yeah, so how are things?

Buhari: (laughs) Well…

Jonathan: So, you’d find time to come one of these days so that we can sort out how to plan the transition period.

Buhari: Thank you very much, your Excellency.

Jonathan: Congratulations.

Buhari: Thank you.

Jonathan: Ok.

Buhari: My respect, Your Excellency.

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ISIL re-enters refugee camp in Syria

Palestinian officials and activists say fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant battling armed groups inside a refugee camp in the Syrian capital, Damascus, have taken control of most of the camp.

Members of the ISIL stormed the Yarmouk camp on Wednesday but were expelled on Thursday before re-entering the camp on Friday.

Palestinian official Khaled Abdul-Majid said the group was in control of half of the camp.The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict through a network of activists, also reported new advances by the group in the camp, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Abdul-Majid and another official, Anwar Raja, said ISIL members were fighting a Palestinian faction called Aknaf Bait al-Maqdis. Activists said Bait al-Maqdis was now besieged by ISIL and confined to a few streets.

Residents of Yarmouk said the ISIL advance followed the arrest of group members accused of assassinating a leading figure of Bait al Maqdis.

Palestinian factions and Syrian armed groups are among groups fighting for the control of the camp. Others include the Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and Free Syrian Army brigades.

Yarmouk was once a thriving area home to 160,000 Palestinian refugees and Syrians but has been caught up in the country’s fighting and besieged by regime forces for more than a year.

About 18,000 residents are estimated to in the camp after many fled the fighting. The siege has caused significant shortages of food, water and medicine inside the camp.

ISIL’s rapid advance across Syrian and Iraqi territory has stagnated since an American-led coalition began an air campaign to stop the group’s.

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China’s ex-security chief arrested for corruption

China’s former security chief Zhou Yongkang has been charged with bribery, abuse of power and disclosing state secrets, making him the most senior official being prosecuted in decades.
Zhou is the most prominent victim of President Xi Jinping’s much-publicised anti-corruption drive, which has targeted high-level “tigers” as well as low-level “flies”.
“The defendant Zhou Yongkang… took advantage of his posts to seek gains for others and illegally took huge property and assets from others, abused his power, causing huge losses to public property and the interests of the State and the people,” said the indictment, posted online by prosecutors.
“The social impact is vile and the circumstances were extraordinarily severe,” it said, adding that he also “intentionally leaked state secrets”.
The document was filed with a court in the northern port of Tianjin, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate added.
He had a background in the oil industry and accumulated vast power as he rose through the ranks to become a member of the Communist Party’s elite Politburo Standing Committee, the most powerful body in China.

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Garissa attack: Bodies still on ground; victims face down, shot in back of head

The ambulances come and go through the gates of Garissa University College, as townspeople strain from a distance to see what's going on.

Soldiers shoo and drag them away, but they keep coming back.

In this small town, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the Somali border, nothing much usually happens.

But not so Thursday, when Al-Shabaab militants raided the Kenyan campus, leaving 147 dead.

A day later, there are still bodies on the school grounds waiting to be transported off.

A medic said most of the victims had been shot from behind, in the back of the head.

"They're facing down, always," a worker with St. John's ambulance service said Friday. "They're always facing down, and they're shot in the heads, around the back."


Raging gunfire
On Thursday, a detonation and nattering gunfire cut through the morning quiet, tearing many students in dormitories out of their sleep. "Never heard anything like this," journalist Dennis Okari from CNN affiliate NTV said in a tweet, as he watched smoke rising over a student hostel.

Al-Shabaab gunmen had first stormed a Christian prayer service, where they killed some and took others hostage. Then they went across campus with them, shooting non-Muslims and sparing Muslims, a witness said.

They headed for the hostels.

Student Japhet Mwala lay in her bed. "We were sleeping when we heard a loud explosion that was followed by gunshots, and everyone started running for safety," she told Agence France-Presse.

Awaking to terror: 'I am lucky to be alive'


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"There are those who were not able to leave the hostels where the gunmen headed and started firing. I am lucky to be alive because I jumped through the fence with other students," she said.

Students ran -- some crawled -- away from the gunfire, Okari said. At one point, the gunmen pinned down a building where 360 students lived, Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said.

Okari took cover outside the campus and listened to explosions and gunfire for four hours. Kenyan security forces moved in and killed four gunmen.

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Jerusalem seminary defaced with anti-Christian slurs, torched

A seminary belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church was torched and defaced in Jerusalem on Thursday, and police suspect it may be the work of radical right wing Israelis.

A day earlier, a mosque in the West Bank was set on fire.

In both cases, the buildings were defaced with anti-Christian and anti-Arab slurs.

In the Wednesday incident, words denigrating Jesus and the phrase "redemption of Zion" were written on the wall in Hebrew, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

"There is no room for such deplorable activity in Jerusalem," Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said Thursday. "We must eradicate this behavior and bring those responsible to justice."

Shortly after the incident, a Jerusalem district court issued a gag order that covered all details of the investigation and anything that identifies suspects.

In the mosque attack, anti-Arab slurs and the word "revenge" were painted in Hebrew.

Officials suspect the Tuesday act may be a "price tag" attacks, a term frequently used by radical Israeli settlers to denote reprisal attacks against Palestinians in response to moves by the Israeli government to evacuate illegal West Bank outposts.

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