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RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Al-Hamdallah has tendered his resignation and that of his unity government to President Mahmoud Abbas, he said on Tuesday, dealing a blow to faltering reconciliation efforts with Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers. The government will continue to carry out its duties until a new one is formed, it said in a statement issued after a weekly cabinet meeting. There was no immediate comment from Abbas, but his…

R Kelly is reportedly being investigated by the FBI over a claim the singer committed a federal crime by arranging transportation to fly an underage girl across state lines in 2015. According to TMZ, R Kelly arranged the coast-to-coast flights for Azriel Clary, who was 17 at the time. Clary, who was featured in the Lifetime documentary Surviving R Kelly, flew from Palm Springs to Phoenix to Orlando on May 25 2015. The flights were reportedly booked by a…

FIFA says a former African player of the year and Confederation of African Football executive committee member had his ban for taking cash payments cut on appeal. FIFA’s appeal panel reduced Kalusha Bwalya’s ban from soccer to the time he already served. His fine was reduced to 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,090) from 100,000 Swiss francs ($100,900). FIFA ethics judges banned Bwalya, the former Zambia soccer federation president, for two years last August. He took payments…

Former First Lady Grace Mugabe has been ordered to pay $278 304 to a local law firm which represented her in several court cases involving a botched $1,4 million diamond ring deal. Manase and Manase Legal Practitioners represented Grace in cases where she claimed to have been duped by Lebanese businessman Jamal Ahmed. In a bid to recover the money, Grace is alleged to have “grabbed” three properties, namely No 409 Harare Drive, Pomona, No…

The US Justice Department on Monday unveiled sweeping charges against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in two cases likely to ratchet up tensions between the two superpowers — including that of a top executive arrested in Canada on a US warrant. The department unveiled 13 charges against Huawei Technologies, its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou — the daughter of the company’s founder who is currently out on bail in Canada — and two affiliates related to…

Brazilian firefighters and Israeli rescue workers poked sticks into treacherous mud Monday looking for bodies as pressure mounted on the mining company responsible for a dam that burst and spilled a flood of iron ore waste. By late in the day, the death toll rose to 65, with 279 people still missing, said Lt. Col. Flavio Godinho of the civil defense department in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais. In a sign of the risks…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday invited President Trump to give his State of the Union address on Feb. 5, putting the president on track to deliver his prime-time speech to a nation still reeling from the longest federal shutdown in history and facing the prospect of a second one next month. Trump sent a letter to Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday evening saying it was his “great honor” to accept her invitation to deliver the…

Growing mental health services for children who have survived Nigeria’s Islamist insurgency can help prevent future violence, aid agencies said on Monday, although huge needs remain unmet. In Niger’s Diffa region, about 250,000 people have fled fighting around Lake Chad where Islamist group Boko Haram has been waging attacks since 2009, according to the United Nations. Two-thirds are children, many of whom have witnessed extreme violence and have no way to process their anger and…

Cameroon opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who claims to have been cheated out of the presidency in elections last year, was arrested in the country’s economic capital Douala on Monday, a senior party member said. The arrest is the latest political turbulence to hit the West African country and comes after several recent eruptions of violence over the October vote, which saw Kamto come second behind Paul Biya, who has ruled for more than three decades….