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Worldnews

LIVE: Israel Bombs Gaza School-turned-shelter, Sparking Fire And Killing 10

Israeli air strike hits El Dorra Pediatric Hospital in Gaza City as health officials raise alarm over the suspension of a UN-backed polio vaccination campaign. Israeli blockade on Gaza: Food and aid supplies running out across the strip Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Futbol

Sheff Wed Players Not Paid Due To Chansiri Cashflow Issues

Sheffield Wednesday have failed to pay their players' wages for March due to cashflow problems suffered by owner Dejphon Chansiri. The club said it was a "temporary issue" due to debts owed to the 56-year-old Thai businessman, whose family control the Thai Union Group, the world's largest producer of canned tuna. Wednesday are 12th in the Championship - five points outside the play-off places - and face Hull City at home on Saturday. "Sheffield Wednesday can confirm a temporary issue with the payment of player salaries for the month of March," said a club statement. "This has occurred as a result of significant sums of money owed to the chairman's businesses which has in turn impacted on the club's immediate cashflow. "The chairman is working hard to resolve this situation at the earliest possible opportunity and in the meantime thanks everyone for their patience and understanding." The Professional Footballers' Association are aware of the Owls' issues and are in touch with the club's players. Chansiri headed up a Thai consortium which bought Wednesday from Milan Mandaric in January 2015, but his time in charge of the club has seen a number of financial challenges. In July 2019, Wednesday sold their Hillsborough stadium to Chansiri for about £60m in ensure they did not breach spending rules. Then in October 2023, Chansiri asked fans to raise £2m to help the club pay an outstanding debt to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and cover wages. Last November, the Owls were placed under a registration embargo by the EFL over amounts owed to HMRC. Chansiri's stewardship of the club has been criticised by fans, who have protested at matches this season, while his relationship with manager Danny Rohl has become strained. A growing number of fans are angry and demanding answers after it emerged that, not for the first time during Chansiri's reign as Sheffield Wednesday owner, the Owls players have not been paid on time. Many are asking why the club sells season tickets in an early-bird window before Christmas yet by March, there isn't enough money to even pay wages? A statement claims it's down to "significant sums of money" being owed to Chansiri's other businesses, "impacting immediate cashflow". However, you get the sense patience for a lot of people has run out. The club was placed under a second registration embargo in 12 months by the EFL last November over amounts owed to HM Revenue and Customs. Now this. How financially sustainable is this club? What exactly is the future of Sheffield Wednesday? These are questions that need to be answered with more than just a statement. Fans are worried and some will feel embarrassed. They deserve answers. This latest admittance will lead to growing calls for Chansiri to sell the club. The Owls might be five points off the play-offs but they lack the solid base that typically accompanies teams challenging for the top flight. Fans dream of a Premier League return after 25 years but it's not realistic in this environment. The club is a long way off in terms of infrastructure and finances. It's the latest reason why a talented young manager in Danny Rohl, the club's greatest asset, may leave amid reported interest from elsewhere.

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Worldnews

Away From The Global Spotlight, Eritreans Are Trapped In A Garrison State

The world must act to end Isaias Afwerki’s reign of perpetual war. American writer and security analyst Paul B Henze, who served in the Carter administration as a deputy to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, once made a very astute observation about Eritrea’s current president, Isaias Afwerki. In his 2007 book, Ethiopia in Mengistu’s Final Years: Until the Last Bullet, he noted “Isaias impressed me as remarkably similar in temperament and attitudes to Mengistu [Haile Mariam, Eritrea’s former dictator who has overseen the killings of tens of thousands of opposition figures and civilians]. He has many of the same mannerisms, a rather bulldoggish seriousness, a defensiveness behind a facade of feigned reasonableness that is not really convincing. One senses a stubborn, fundamentally authoritarian personality.” The similarities Henze saw between Mengistu and Isaias have proven correct and highly consequential over the last three decades. After declaring victory against the Mengsitu regime in 1991, Isaias was able to oversee the emergence of an independent, sovereign Eritrea. For a brief moment, Eritreans were full of hope. They assumed independence would bring more freedom and better economic prospects. There was talk of turning Eritrea into Africa’s Singapore. However, the euphoria of independence was short-lived. The dream of transforming Eritrea into a prosperous liberal democracy did not appeal to Isaias. He wanted his country to resemble not Singapore, but Sparta. He rejected the democratic constitution drafted by the pre-eminent Eritrean jurist Bereket Habte Selassie and ruled Eritrea with an iron fist. In no time, he turned Eritrea into a garrison state. He transformed Eritrean institutions and society at large into tools to fulfil his geo-political fantasies. Eritreans became unwilling pawns in the president’s many military schemes, with no space left for their personal dreams and aspirations. Isaias ruthlessly dealt with even his closest colleagues and allies who dared to suggest that Eritreans enjoy some basic liberties that people elsewhere in the world often take for granted. In May 2001, 15 senior Eritrean officials, many of whom had been on the president’s side throughout the independence war, issued an open letter urging him to reconsider his autocratic mode of governance and hold free and fair elections. At the time, three of the 15 officials were living abroad, and one eventually changed his position and rejoined the Isaias government. The remaining 11, however, were swiftly arrested on unspecified charges. More than 20 years later, the fates of these 11 men are still unknown. No one knows for sure if they are alive or dead. No legal or religious counsel or family member has been granted access to them. There have been no charges, no trials, no conviction and no sentence. Though these senior officials are among the most prominent in Eritrea to be meted such treatment, their fate is hardly unique. Anyone in Eritrea who dares to question the great wisdom of the infallible President Isaias meets the same fate. In the nightmarish gulag state that President Isaias created, no one is free to study, work, worship, run a business or engage in any other normal activities. There is a mandatory and indefinite military service which keeps every Eritrean citizen in servitude to the supreme leader for their entire lives. While everyone in Eritrea suffers from Isaias’s institutionalised tyranny, religious and ethnic minorities suffer the most. Religious persecution in the country is so extreme that in 2004 the US Department of State designated Eritrea as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. There is also significant ethnic persecution in Isaias’s Eritrea. In a May 2023 report, for example, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, underlined the harsh conditions faced by the Afar community who inhabit the Dankalia area of the country. Babiker wrote: “The Afar are one of the most disenfranchised communities in Eritrea. For several decades, they have been subjected to discrimination, harassment, arbitrary arrests, disappearance, violence, and widespread persecution.” In the end, Paul Henze’s insight about the fundamentally autocratic personality of Isaias proved not only right, but also an understatement. The oppression and violence of Isaias’s rule in the past three decades matched and at times surpassed that of Mengitsu. Regrettably, the world rarely acknowledges the plight of Eritreans, who are forced to live their lives as unwilling servants and soldiers of their authoritarian president. The toll of Isais’s endless war schemes on Eritreans is still rarely mentioned in discussions about the region. Eritrea under Isaias is a country always on a war footing. Right now, it is not only agitating against Ethiopia, but also actively involved in the civil war in Sudan. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find a period in Eritrea’s post-independence history that it was not at war with one of its neighbours, or involved in some regional conflict or civil war. War is the modus vivendi of President Isaias. The world is now paying some attention to Eritrea, because of the looming risk of conflict with Ethiopia. But even if conflict between the two neighbours is somehow prevented, the misery of Eritreans stuck in Isaias’s garrison state will continue. Forgotten and left to their own devices, Eritreans will continue to suffer in a brutal dictatorship where the individual is seen just as fodder for the mighty Eritrean Defence Forces. This must not be allowed to continue. The world must not avert its gaze and forget about the plight of Eritreans once their country is no longer mentioned in the news. The world needs to act before more Eritreans lose their lives and dreams fighting in Isaias’s forever wars. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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News_Naija

Reduce Housing Sector Taxes, Operators Urge Govt

Stakeholders in the housing sector have said that the multiple taxes levied on the private sector were stifling the industry. The President, Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria, Bisi Adedire, identified multiple taxation/levies on land across the ministry and agencies of government as issues affecting private sector operators in the built industry. He disclosed this at a two-day workshop in Ogun State themed, “The impact of emerging technologies on urban and regional planning: challenges and opportunities.” He said, “While the levies are necessary to enhance the capacity of the government to provide essential services to drive development, the burden hurts property developers, especially when they’re compelled to pay everything upfront while construction has not started on their plots of land. The Federal Government should look into it and adopt a system that would be beneficial to all stakeholders.” In a similar vein, an estate surveyor, Olorunyomi Alatise, said the multiplicity of taxation in the housing sector was one of the reasons people were reluctant to regularise their landed property. He said, “You just acquired a property and you are trying to process your Certificate of Occupancy, but at the point of doing this, part of the things you need is a tax clearance, and tax clearance is evidence that you do not owe the state. Also, you will pay capital gains tax, the tenement rate, which has been harmonised into the land use charge, and other taxes. By the time they itemise the different taxes you are to pay, you find out that it is a lot for someone that just acquired a property.” Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, Lagos State, Oluwole Sotire, said the government has a responsibility to render service to the people it serves, but also noted that citizens, too, are expected to pay land taxes/levies. “We must first of all understand that citizens have to pay taxes or levies to the government. Whether it is equitable is another question. However, efforts should be made to involve proper stakeholders and the rest of the citizens to ensure beneficial planning and good governance,” he said. Speaking on planning regulations as something beneficial to everyone, he lamented that citizens, including individuals in government, sometimes latch onto the weak end of government to cut corners and contravene the planning regulations.. He added, “There is a case now even in Ogun State, just like a Certificate of Occupancy has been granted to a gentleman. They issued a C-of-O to one person for about 4.5 hectares of land at Otta. Before you know it, those we say are government officials at the land went ahead and cut part of it simply because the land has been lying fallow for a good number of years. “They believe it may be that the person is dead. They cut about half of the 2.2 hectares and issued another C-of-O. The case is still on the ground. We wrote a letter to the ministry stating that this C-of-O has been issued for the past 15 years by the government, and it is the same government that has issued another one that cuts across that portion of the land. “So, the fact that people know that I’m working on that site, they have to call to my attention that somebody has started constructing a fence around that place. We have submitted our letter to the government, the governor, the lands commissioner, and every other agency. Up till today, nothing has come out of it, and the guy(encroacher) is still developing that site. So, at times, the government can be a problem to society.” The Chief Executive Officer, Pelican Valley, Babatunde Adeyemo, advised the government to be more practical and realistic with land acquisition by always following due process as well as provide basic services or infrastructure necessary to ignite development in the acquired areas, warning that development would remain elusive in the estate until the right things are put in place. He said, “The rules are there. I think what we need to do is a strategic orientation. There should be proper orientation and enforcement for people to follow laid down rules and regulations because they are coined by people, the intellectuals, and the regulations didn’t fall from the sky, and once we are able to enforce that I believe we will be able to better the lives of people and the government. “The problem in Nigeria is not about policy formulation.  It is all about implementation. When formulating the policies, I always believe that people in authority – the President, governors, and ministers have advisers before they go into acquisition..Let me talk about the Muhammad Buhari Estate in Kobape. The problem here wasn’t all about acquisition, I believe it is the wrong implementation of acquisition. “We need to be more practical and strategic when we are doing land acquisitions. You don’t just go to clear villages when you can’t put infrastructure in place to ignite the development. Who is going to be the first person to live there?”