Author: Chronicle Editor

Chelsea will begin their title defence at home to Burnley when the 2017-18 Premier League season kicks off on the weekend of 12-13 August. Newly promoted Newcastle host Tottenham, while Brighton welcome Manchester City and Huddersfield visit Crystal Palace. Spurs’ first game at Wembley will be against Antonio Conte’s champions on the second weekend of the season. Find all your team’s fixtures on the English Premier League website by clicking here. The precise date of games will be set once TV schedules have been decided. The league is set to finish on Sunday 13 May 2018, a week earlier than…

Legislative aides to lawmakers on Tuesday staged a wide protest in the National Assembly over delay in payment of their salaries and allowances. The protesters who carried placards and obituary pictures said they were protesting the death of a legislative aide to the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Rep. Yusuff Lasun. The protesters said that the aide, Hassan Abiodun died because he was unable to pay the sum of N165,000 as cost for surgery for appendicitis. Speaking to newsmen during the protest, one of the aides, Mr Dayo Faduba said that if the salary had not been delayed,…

A leading Indian non-governmental organization (NGO) on Tuesday announced plans to name a village in the country after President Donald Trump in an effort to boost US-India relations. The development comes ahead of Trump’s 71st birthday on Wednesday, which Hindu right-wing activists plan to celebrate in the Indian capital. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder and chief of NGO Sulabh International, is “to name one Indian village after President Trump, as part of efforts to further the India-US relationship” at a community event in Washington, a statement on the organization’s Facebook page said. “We are developing this village in the northern state of…

NASA scientists in a new study of climate change said the latest predictive climate models underestimate future levels of precipitation in Nigeria and other places in the tropics. The tropics are a region of the Earth surrounding the equator. The tropics are also referred to as the tropical zone and the torrid zone. NASA data suggests the tropics will host fewer tall, high-alittude clouds as global warming continues, boosting rainfall totals in the region. Under different circumstances, fewer clouds would likely translate to less precipitation. But tall tropical clouds help trap heat in the atmosphere. Without fewer of them around,…

OPEC said on Tuesday a long-awaited rebalancing of the oil market was under way at a “slower pace” and reported that its own output in May jumped due to gains in nations exempt from a pact to reduce supply. In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said its output rose by 336,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May to 32.14 million bpd led by a rebound in Nigeria and Libya, which were exempted from supply cuts because unrest had curbed their output. The boost means OPEC is pumping more than its forecast of average global demand…

A disgraced doctor who moonlighted on paid sick leave was today jailed after failing to pay back nearly £100,000 he fiddled from the NHS. Gynaecologist Dr Anthony Madu, 46, secretly carried out well-paid locum work at hospitals while getting sick pay from another hospital. Madu – who was described in court as ‘irresponsible and dishonest’ – sent £95,000 to a Nigerian bank account. He was spared immediate jail to be given a two-year suspended sentence as long as he paid back £98,000 to the NHS. But Madu failed to pay it back – and he was jailed for two years…

The Federal Government is making all necessary arrangements to extradite to Nigeria, former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, to face charges of fraud. Mr Johnson Ojogbane, counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the agency prosecuting Adoke, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja. The EFCC charged Adoke and two multinational oil companies to court on charges of alleged 1.1 billion dollars Malabu Oil scam. On the last adjourned date, the judge, Justice John Tsoho, fixed June 13, for arraignment of Adoke and the other co-defendants. Ojogbane, however, told the News Agency of Nigeria…

Antoine Griezmann has signed a contract extension to keep him at Atletico Madrid until 2022. Manchester United’s interest in Griezmman cooled earlier in June after Atletico had an appeal against their transfer ban rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The France international had said his chances of joining United were “six out of 10” earlier this summer but called any potential exit a “dirty move” after the ruling, which means Atletico will not be free to make any signings until January 2018. Griezmann, whose £87m release clause will remain the same in his new deal, has apologised for…

Spanish prosecutors have accused the Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo of defrauding the authorities of millions of euros in tax. The prosecutor’s office in Madrid says it has filed a lawsuit against the Portuguese player. He is accused of evading tax of 14.7m euros (£13m; $16m) from 2011 to 2014. The world’s highest-paid sports star had previously said he was not worried about tax investigations as he had nothing to hide. On this occasion he is accused of knowingly using a “business structure” to hide income made from his image rights. In December, leaked documents suggested that Ronaldo had avoided…

In Benin City, Nigeria’s capital of illegal migration, no one says the word “prostitution”. The word on the street for the young girls who leave for Italy or France is “hustling”. About 37,500 Nigerians arrived in Italy by boat in 2016, more than from any other African country, and most of them were from the southern city, the capital of Edo state. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has recorded an explosion in the number of Nigerian women trafficked into Europe. In 2013, there were 433 but the following year, it rose to nearly 5,000. There was a “substantial increase”…