Dozens kidnapped in northwest Nigeria after bandits invite them to talks

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By Reuters and Posted by TOE Armed bandits in northwest Nigeria abducted dozens of villagers whom they invited to a meeting ‌about potential peace negotiations, authorities and residents said on ‌Monday, highlighting the region’s worsening security. Police said 39 people were seized on Sunday ​when they went to a meeting in the forest near Magamin Diddi village in the Maradun municipality of northwest Zamfara State. Some local residents and officials said the number could be as ‌high as 50. According to ⁠a Zamfara State Police Command statement, the victims were meeting relatives of a bandit leader in ⁠an attempt to broker peace and ease restrictions on movement imposed on the community. Zamfara is at the centre of a long-running security ​crisis in ​which armed groups, locally referred ​to as bandits, carry ‌out mass kidnappings, killings and village raids. The violence has disrupted farming and displaced thousands. Security forces have deployed personnel and...
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Moscow records heaviest snowfall in over 200 years

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Russia’s capital Moscow has this month seen the largest snowfall in more than 200 years, Moscow State University meteorologists said on Thursday.

AFP images from the city of around 13 million people showed residents struggling to make their way through heavy piles of snow on the streets in its central district.

Commuter trains in the Moscow area were delayed, AFP reporters witnessed, and cars were stuck in long traffic jams on Thursday evening.

“January was a cold and unusually snowy month in Moscow,” the university said on social media.

“By January 29, the Moscow State University Meteorological Observatory had recorded almost 92 mm of precipitation, which is already the highest value in the last 203 years,” it added.

Snow piles on the ground reached as high as 60 centimetres (24 inches) in some parts of the capital on Thursday.

Snow is mostly air, meaning the level of settled snow far surpasses scientific measurements of precipitation — which measures the amount of water that has fallen.

The record snowfall was “caused by deep and extensive cyclones with sharp atmospheric fronts passing over the Moscow region”, the observatory said.

“There was much more (snow) when I was a kid, but now we practically don’t have any snow at all, there used to be much more,” Pavel, a 35-year-old bartender and Moscow resident, told AFP, grumbling about a feeling of “emptiness” in the dark, snowy winter.

Earlier this month, Russia’s far east Kamchatka region declared an emergency situation due to a massive snowstorm that left its major city partially paralysed.

Images, widely circulated online, showed huge snow piles reaching up to the second storey of buildings and people digging their way through roads as snow blanketed cars on either side.

SOURCE: AFP AND AGENCIES



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/2HqUTkj

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