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Russia said Tuesday the latest report on Ukraine released by the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR, was "biased and even hypocritical," reports Xinhua. "Its key message is that the government of Ukraine is permitted to legitimately use force to restore law and order in the east of the country," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement, adding that it "de facto justifies the punitive operation."

About 27 Ukrainian border guards were killed in hostilities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the press service of Ukrainian state border service reported on Tuesday. According to available United Nations reports, at least 1,129 people have been killed and 3,442 have been wounded in a military operation in east Ukraine since April 15.

Military actions in Ukraine’s southeastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions killed 22 civilians over the last 24 hours, municipal authorities said on Tuesday, reports Itar-Tass. The people became victims to artillery shelling by the Ukrainian army. Press office of the mayor’s office in the town of Gorlovka, Donetsk Region, confirmed the shelling had claimed 17 lives in the area, including three children, and injured 43.

A bus with tourists flipped over in the north of Norway on route E6 near Trones settlement (Namsskogan community).  Police directorate of the Nord-Trondelag county told Itar-Tass that the bus belonged to a Swiss travel company.  The identities and nationality of the 16 passengers and the driver are currently being specified.

Nigeria 's Blessing Okagbare won women's 100m gold at the Commonwealth Games on Monday. Okagbare, who won long jump silver and 200m bronze at the 2013 world championships, clocked a Games record of 10.85sec. Jamaican duo Veronica Campbell-Brown and Kerron Stewart took silver and bronze at Hampden Park in 11.03 and 11.07sec respectively.

The French, United States, British, German and Italian leaders are in favour of new sanctions against Russia, the press service of the French president said on Monday. Its statement came after French President Francois Hollande’s telephone conversations on Monday with US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the prime ministers of Great Britain and Italy, David Cameron and Matteo Renzi.

( Nigeria ) President Goodluck Jonathan has condemns the recent terrorist attacks in Kano and Adamawa States as well as the kidnap of the Lamido of Kolofata in Northern Cameroon , Lamido Seini Lamine and the wife of the Vice Prime Minister of Cameroon. Jonathan in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr Reuben Abati, said The President describes as shocking, callous and reprehensible the multiple bomb blasts that occurred in Kano within 24 hours, and the unrelenting attacks by the Boko Haram at a time the Muslim faithful are observing the holy festival of Eid el Fitri. 

( Nigeria ) No Nigerian has so far been infected with the Ebola Virus Disease, EVD, while about 59 persons have been identified to have had contact with the late Liberian, Mr Patrick Sawyer, who died of Ebola virus in Lagos State . Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide idris, who spoke in Lagos on Monday, said "Airline manifest has not been provided by the airline at the time of this report and therefore the precise number of passenger contacts is yet to be ascertained, especially as two flights were involved Monrovia - Lome and Lome- Lagos. There was no report of medical incident filed and the General Declaration report of the flight.

Three children were among 10 people killed in Israeli raids across Gaza late on Monday, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. Five people, including three children, were killed when a tank shell slammed into a house in the northern town of Jabaliya , said Qudra.

The Israeli army said five of its soldiers have been killed in and around the war-torn Gaza Strip on Monday. The number included four soldiers killed by a mortar shell in southern Israel who media reports had initially identified as civilians. "Over the course of the day, five IDF soldiers were killed," a statement said, indicating that four of them "were killed along the border of the Gaza Strip as a result of mortar fire".

Egypt on Monday condemned Israel for using what it said was "excessive force" against civilians in the Gaza Strip. It also urged Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian movement that dominates the Gaza Strip, to abide by the "humanitarian truce" proposed by Cairo and backed by the United Nations to end the 21-day conflict, reports AFP. " Egypt condemns the excessive use of force from the Israeli side against civilians" in the coastal enclave, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Ukrainian army is advancing against militias in the eastern Donetsk region within the 40-km area around the MH17 crash site, where President Petro Poroshenko earlier ordered a ceasefire, reports Itar-Tass. The National Security and Defense Council said “the Ukrainian army has come close to the crash site but there is no fighting in the area.” It said a group of international experts and officials from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE had been given access to the scene by the local militia.

Large-scale surveillance programs pursued by the United States National Security Agency threatened freedom of speech in the country, goes the report compiled by two international human rights organisations Human Rights Watch and American Civil Liberties Union. “Officials are substantially less willing to be in contact with the press, even with regard to unclassified matters or personal opinions, than they were even a few years ago,” goes the joint report compiled based on the poll among more than 90 journalists, lawyers and former and current US officials.

(Nigeria) Gunmen on Monday, kidnapped a 86 year old Chief Benson Adigio-Eseni, a retired major, said to be an uncle to former governor of Bayelsa Sate, Chief Timipre Sylva. Chief Adigio-Eseni was abducted in the early hours of the day from  his country home, Okpoama in Brass Local Government Area of the state.

Ukraine’s president on Monday urged the parliament to approve the deployment of an international unarmed police mission on the site of the Malaysian Boeing plane crash, reports Itar-Tass. “A transparent international investigation into the Boeing 777 tragedy is a common priority for Ukraine, Australia and the Netherlands,” President Petro Poroshenko said. The parliament will discuss the issue at an extraordinary session on July 31. The Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the conflict zone in east Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Thursday, July 17. All 298 people aboard the plane died in the air crash.

Pyongyang on Monday denied western media reports alleging that it was planning to supply hundreds of thousands of US dollars’ worth of missiles and communication equipment to Hamas, reports Itar-Tass. The North Korean Foreign Ministry dismissed these reports as “a pure concoction.”

Israeli jets have struck several sites in Gaza , including a refugee camp and a building inside the compound housing the strip's largest hospital, disrupting a relative lull at the start of a major Muslim holiday. Monday’s airstrikes followed an almost 12-hour pause in fighting and came as international efforts intensified to end the three-week war between Israel and Hamas, reports Aljazeera.

The Liberian government has closed most of the West African nation's border crossings and introduced stringent health measures to curb the spread of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed at least 660 people across the region, reports Aljazeera. The new measures, announced by the government on Sunday, came as Guinea , Liberia and Sierra Leone struggle to contain the worst outbreak yet of the virus.

Data from recovered flight recorders shows that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine because of an explosive loss of pressure after being punctured multiple times by shrapnel, a Ukrainian security spokesman says, reports Aljazeera. Andrei Lysenko said on Monday the plane suffered "massive explosive decompression" after it was hit by fragments he said came from a missile.

( Nigeria ) A second attack by a female suicide bomber outside a shopping centre in Kano city, Kano State injured six people on Monday after a similar blast killed three people at a petrol station, police said. "It was the same modus operandi," Kano State Police Commissioner, Mr Aderele Shinaba, said referring to the earlier attack targeting women buying kerosene. "She was stopped at the gate of the shopping centre and blew herself up.... Six people were injured, including two officers."

(Nigeria) The All Progressives Congress, APC, has challenged  President Goodluck Jonathan to walk his talk as far as the organisation of free and fair elections in the country was concerned, saying all the assurances so far given by the President have not translated into credible elections. APC in a statement in Lagos by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, urged the President to go beyond mere rhetoric and take concrete actions to ensure that the elections in the country are not marred by the intimidation and harassment of opposition party members and supporters as well as the deliberate disenfranchisement of voters, which hallmarked the Anambra and Ekiti State gubernatorial elections, among others.

Militias in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, LNR, have killed 23 Ukrainian army troops over the past 24 hours, the UNIAN news agency said on Monday. The Ukrainian army’s territorial battalion Aidar was taking part in three different operations in the south-east of the country and each of its groups sustained losses, 23 troops in all, the news agency quoted the battalion’s social network account as saying.

  Iran has proposed to Egypt to jointly deliver humanitarian cargoes to Gaza, Iranian radio reported on Monday. The radio, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, IRIB, said that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a telephone conversation with his Egyptian colleague last Sunday stressed the importance of co-operation with Egypt for the earliest dispatch of food and humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.

The flight recorders of the Air Algerie passenger plane that crashed in Mali last week have been brought to France. This was confirmed by the national Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety that will engage in decoding the ‘black boxes,’ reports Itar-Tass. “At present, our experts are working on extracting the information from the flight recordings,” a Bureau representative said. So far, there are no additional reports on the contents of the ‘black boxes.’

Pictures placed on Twitter by United States ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt, claiming to show weapons being fired on Ukrainian troops from Russian territory, are fake, a Russian official told Itar-Tass. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said it was not accidental that the materials appeared on Twitter since it was impossible to establish whether they were authentic.

Since early April, the Ukrainian military operation in the east of the country has caused the death of 1,129 people and 3,500 were injured, says a report of the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, HRMMU, of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, OHCHR, published on Monday, reports Itar-Tass More than half of the fatalities are peaceful civilians.  The number of displaced persons who stay in the country has reached 101,600 - 86 percent of them fled violence in the country’s east, the reports says.

Ukrainian parliament-appointed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his resignation on Thursday, reports Itar-Tass. “In connection with the breakup of the parliamentary coalition, as well as non-adoption of a number of important bills, I announce my resignation,” Yatsenyuk said from the Verkhovna Rada’s rostrum. “What happened today in parliament will have very complicated, if not dramatic, consequences for the country,” he said. “It is good if I am mistaken.”

The wife of Cameroon 's Vice-Prime Minister, Amadou Ali, was kidnapped on Sunday in an attack by Boko Haram militants in the northern town of Kolofata , a government official has said. According to Issa Bakary , Cameroon 's Minister of Information and spokesman of the government, the Islamic group attacked the Vice PM’s home close to the Nigerian border and abducted his wife.

( Nigeria ) The Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC on Sunday in Lokoja confirmed the death of seven persons in a multiple road accident which occurred on the Ankpa-Anyingba road in Kogi State . The commission’s Kogi Sector Commander, Mr Godwin Omiko who confirmed this to NAN , said three other persons were critically injured in the crash.

Nigeria 's Olauwatoyin Adesanmi won the Commonwealth Games women's 63kg weightlifting gold medal on Sunday. The African championship silver medallist pushed Commonwealth number one and compatriot Obioma Okoli into the silver position. "I respect her so much, but she was carrying an injury," said Adesanmi who had finished on a total of 207kg at the Clyde Auditorium, the same as Okoli.

(Nigeria ) Workers in the Nigerian airports under the aegis of Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, ATSSSAN, have given the Federal Government a fresh 14-day ultimatum to appoint a substantive Director-General for the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA.  A copy of the ultimatum by the Deputy National Secretary of the association, Mr Captain Tarnongu was obtained in Lagos on Sunday.

Inside Ashraf al-Qudra's cramped office in Shifa hospital, the phone never stops ringing, with news flooding in of the latest victims of Israel 's devastating 20-day military operation. With over 1,060 people killed and more than 6,000 wounded, counting the dead is a full-time occupation for the 41-year-old spokesman for Gaza 's emergency services, reports AFP.

( Nigeria ) The police have arrested Idris Saidu, an operative of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, in Niger over alleged involvement in illegal arms deal. A statement issued by the force spokesman, Mr Frank Mba, on Sunday in Abuja said that Saidu was arrested on July 22 by police detectives in the state.

Kiev is seeking to evade exposure of truth over a Malaysian MH17 crash near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine by intensifying combat operations around the crash site, the press centre of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, DNR, said on Sunday, quoting DPR Prime Minister Alexander Borodai, reports Itar-Tass. Earlier, the mass media reported that the Ukrainian military planned to take control over the Malaysian jet crash area, for which ends they were shelling Gorlovka and other settlements controlled by the DPR forces.

No fewer than  five people were killed and eight were injured Sunday in a bomb attack on a Catholic church in a mainly Christian area of Kano State ,  police said. The attack came shortly after the end of mass, police spokesman Frank Mba told AFP: "We suspect an IED (improvised explosive device) that was thrown from across the road" at the Saint Charles Catholic church in Kano's Sabon Gari district, which has suffered previous attacks by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

An American doctor battling West Africa's Ebola epidemic has himself fallen sick with the disease in Liberia , his aid agency said. Samaritan's Purse, a Christian charity, said Dr Kent Brantly had been isolated at the group's Ebola treatment center at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia, reports AFP. "Dr Brantly is married with two children," the group said, in a statement posted to its website on Saturday. "Samaritan's Purse is committed to doing everything possible to help Dr Brantly during this time of crisis. We ask everyone to please pray for him and his family."

(Nigeria) The Minister of Niger Delta, Dr Steve Oru, has re-assured Nigerians that the East-West Road will be completed this year, saying the project was a top priority to the ministry. Oru gave the assurance at Owot Uta in Ibesikpo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State while speaking with NAN , on Sunday.

The statement by United States Ambassador to  North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO,  Douglas Lute and spokeswoman of the U.S. Department of State Marie Harf on the concentration of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border does not reflect reality, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday, reports Itar-Tass. According to the Vienna Document of 2011 and the Treaty on Open Skies, 18 international inspections have been carried out over Russia’s territory.

The radical Palestinian movement Hamas has agreed to the United Nations proposal on a 24-hour humanitarian truce, Palestinian media reported on Sunday, reports Itar-Tass. According to the media, Hamas will halt fire for 24 hours from 3:00 p.m. Moscow time (11:00 a.m. GMT) on Sunday. Israel has not yet commented on the Islamic movement’s statement. But Israel and Palestine have accused each other of violating the truce, with Israel accusing Hamas of firing rockets into Israel, while Hamas accused Israel of killing a Nurse and other civilians in fresh shelling and air-raids  despite the truce.

Several dozen civilians were killed in the Ukrainian military’s rocket and mortar fire on the center of the east Ukrainian town of Gorlovka, the local media reported on Sunday, reports Itar-Tass.  The number of deaths varies between 20 and 30 people, the media reported. Information on casualties is being specified.

( Nigeria ) The All Progressives Congress, APC, has called for an international inquiry into Wednesday's assassination attempt on its leader, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, to unravel the motive and the perpetrators of the dastardly act that could have plunged the country into a deep turmoil, had it succeeded. APC in a statement in Benin , Edo State on Sunday by its National Chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, the party said it does not have the confidence that the Nigerian security agencies can carry out an impartial investigation, because they work for the government instead of the nation.

About 45 Ukrainian shells hit a village in the Rostov Region, southern Russia, damaging houses and electric wires, a spokesman for the border guard service said on Friday, reports Itra-Tass. At least 50 local residents were evacuated from the village of Primiussky, the spokesman said adding that no one was injured. The shells came from the combat area in the embattled Donetsk Region where the Ukrainian army is conducting a military operation against local militia. The conflict in eastern Ukraine has turned into a civil war involving tanks, aviation and incendiary bombs. A team of Russian investigators inspecting the area near Primiussky came under mortar fire from the Ukrainian territory, said Vladimir Markin, the spokesman for the Russian Investigative Committee said. "During the inspection, the investigators who were wearing clothes with insignia and inscriptions came under intensive mortar fire," he said. Markin added that the attack on the Russian team was targeted

An independent and unbiased investigation into the crash of Malaysia’s Boeing 777 in Ukraine’s east should be carried out, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said in a telephone conversation on Thursday, reports Itar-Tass. The conversation was held on the Finnish initiative.

Israel’s Air Force delivered a missile strike on the Salakh-ad-Din Mosque in the Jabaliya refugee camp following an attack on a United Nations-funded school in Beit Hanoun in Gaza’s north, reports Itar-Tass. Earlier in the day, at least ten people were killed and 159 wounded when Israeli Air Forces delivered a missile strike on a school of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, the Al Mayadeen TV channel said citing Palestine medical sources.

An explosion has rocked Kano, the northern commercial capital, barely 24 hour after a twin suicide bomb attack killed at least 39 persons (official figure) in neighbouring Kaduna State. The explosion took place Thursday afternoon at the motor park located on New Kano Road in Sabon Gari, the part of the state capital dominated by non-natives.

A passenger plane carrying 116 people is feared to have crashed in Mali.  The plane was flying from Burkina Faso to the Algerian capital Algiers when it went down . It has earlier gone missing for over six hours. Contact with the Air Algerie flight was lost over the Sahara as it crossed Mali in bad weather, officials said. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the plane, which has 51 French citizens aboard, "probably crashed," reports BBC. French media reported that soldiers had found wreckage in Tilemsi, central Mali , but this was not confirmed. Reuters quoted Mali 's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita as saying that wreckage had been found much further east, between Aguelhoc and Kidal.

( Nigeria ) Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has sworn in the former Chief Press Secretary to Professor Oserheimen Osunbor, Mr Dan Aigbavbua and 17 others as Permanent Secretaries in the state Civil Service. He did not  swear-in two others who arrived late for the inauguration. The late-comers, both of them women, arrived the venue while the relevant oaths were already being administered on their colleagues. One is a Director in the Ministry of Justice while the other is in the Ministry of Education.

The Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, announced on Thursday they are set to begin talks with coach Stephen Keshi over a new contract. Keshi took over as coach in 2011 and his first contract ended after the World Cup in Brazil . He has since been linked with the vacant South Africa post. The 52-year-old led Nigeria to the round of 16 in Brazil after guiding the Super Eagles to a third Africa Cup of Nations title in South Africa last year.

More than 60 Palestinians have been killed over the past day since escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian enclave’s media reported Thursday, reports Itar-Tass. Ma'an News Agency said at least 15 Palestinians were killed and about 70 wounded in the Israeli army’s strike on a school in Gaza's northeastern city of Beit Hanoun, operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA.

 The Luhansk People’s Republic announced full voluntary mobilization on Thursday as fierce fighting continued between local self-defense fighters and the Ukrainian military in the east Ukrainian region, reports Itar-Tass. “The treacherous military attack by fascist Ukraine on our Motherland is continuing,” says a mobilization decree signed by Luhansk People’s Republic head Valery Bolotov.