Russia moved from fifth to fourth place among India’s largest trading partners, India’s ministry of commerce and industry said.

According to the Indian ministry, trade turnover between Russia and India from January to April 2023 increased by 3.8 times and reached 21.8 billion U.S. dollars.

During this period, India increased imports from Russia by 4.2 times, up to 20.5 billion U.S. dollars.

Indian exports to Russia grew by 1.6 times and reached 1.3 billion U.S. dollars.India’s main trading partners remained China and the United States.

Ruslan Davydov, acting head of the Russian Federal Customs Service, said earlier that China, India, Türkiye and Azerbaijan had replaced the European Union in Russia’s foreign trade.

A California resident on Wednesday was found guilty of illegally importing to the U.S., a mosaic believed to be 2,000 years old from Syria, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

According to U.S. authorities, 56-year-old Mohammed Yassin Alcharihi illegally imported the mosaic depicting the Roman demigod Hercules in August 2015.

He claimed he was importing ceramic tiles from Turkey valued less than 600 dollars.

The U.S. government’s appraisal expert valued the artwork, dated from the Roman Empire era and was of Syrian origin, at 450,000 dollars.

Mr Alcharihi had paid about 12,000 dollars for it and a further 40,000 dollars to restore it.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, the mosaic was about 5.5 metres long and 2.4 metres tall.

It depicted a Greek mythology scene showing Hercules rescuing Prometheus, who had been chained to a rock by his fellow gods for stealing fire for humanity.

Mr Alcharihi was convicted on a count of entry of falsely classified goods and faced up to two years in prison.

His sentencing was scheduled to take place on Aug. 31.

Buildings are on fire after a gas explosion rocked a Paris district in France, known as the fifth arrondissement of Paris.

Paris police department said they were making checks on the incident and warned people to avoid the area, Daily Mail reported on Wednesday.

French Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, said the fire pushed flames and smoke into the air at the Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris’ fifth arrondissement, close to the Jardin Du Luxembourg and Sorbonne University.

Germany plans to provide Ukraine with an additional €381 million ($416 million) in humanitarian support this year, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London.

This will be used, for example, to provide generators, food and tents, she said. Since the beginning of the Russian war in February 2022, German aid to Kiev has amounted to €16.8 billion.

In the long term, however, money is not enough, the foreign minister added. “We are helping Ukraine to invest in renewable energies and energy efficiency,” she said.

In this way, she said, Ukraine’s reconstruction could be shaped in a green and thus lasting and sustainable way.

Earlier at the conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $1.3 billion in additional funding for Ukraine, of which $520 million alone is earmarked for repairing Ukraine’s energy grid to make it cleaner and more resilient, the Democratic politician said.

Together with energy market reforms, this could make Ukraine a major energy exporter, Mr Blinken said.

The federal government has set a new deadline of July 15 to complete repairs and reopen Eko and Apongbon bridges to traffic.

The federal controller of works in Lagos, Olukorede Kesha, gave a hint in a Tuesday interview after a meeting with the contractors on the project.

Ms Kesha, rising from the meeting with Buildwell Plants and Equipment Industries Ltd, contractors handling both projects, said the firm gave expert advice on the need to complete some critical aspects.

She said some underlying repairs must be completed before reopening to ensure the infrastructure’s durability while appealing for the patience and understanding of road users.

“We had an extensive meeting today, so we all agreed that we will open the two bridges finally mid-July,” Ms Kesha said.

“We are doing everything possible to ensure that the contractor finishes on or before July 15.”

The bridges were razed by fire caused by human activities in 2022.

Apongbon bridge was affected by fire in March 2022, and efforts for its December completion were stalled by another fire that affected the Ijora Olopa section of the Eko Bridge on November 4.

The delivery date for the Apongbon bridge was extended to May 2023 because some materials for its repairs were used to start the emergency repair of the Ijora Olopa section.

The 4.1km Eko bridge links Lagos Island with the Mainland. It directly links Apongbon on the Island side.

The Eko bridge had been undergoing phased rehabilitation, but the contract for its comprehensive maintenance was awarded in February 2022.

Oluwasheun Akorede, a Nigerian-American, has been declared wanted for drug trafficking in the United States of America.

The DEA called Mr Akorede “fugitive of the week.”

The U.S Department of Drug Enforcement Administration first declared Mr Akorede wanted for trafficking heroin on June 16 via its official Twitter page.

“@DEAHQ #FugitiveFriday: @DEADETROITDiv is looking for Oluwasheun Akorede; wanted for Heroin Trafficking,” DEA tweeted, sharing Mr Akorede’s photo and bio data.

An official statement by the DEA declared Mr Akorede ‘Fugitive of the Week’, was released on Tuesday, further informing the public on how to “anonymously report tips about fugitives and other criminal activity” to the agency.

Mr Akorede, 69, who was last seen Brooklyn, NY, is 5’11 tall, with black hair and brown eyes.

A KLM flight headed for the Netherlands made an emergency landing in Spain with an additional passenger on board after a woman unexpectedly went into labour.

According to Aviation24 on Tuesday, the incident happened early Monday morning when one of the passengers on KLM Flight 588, a Boeing 777, suddenly went into labour while flying from Lagos to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The woman, whose name has not been released, was reportedly taken to the front galley where she gave birth to a premature baby girl.

The plane then made an emergency landing in Barcelona where medical staff were waiting.Both mother and daughter were said to be doing well.

KLM spokeswoman, Marjan Rozemeijer, on Tuesday, said, “I can confirm that a baby was born on the KL 588 on its way from Lagos to Amsterdam, Due to privacy reasons I cannot make any further statements on the birth.”

American singer, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, has selected a popular Nigerian-owned restaurant in North London as one of ten winners to receive a grant.

According to ITV news on Tuesday, the Black Parade Small Business Impact Luncheon was created by Beyoncé’s BeyGood Foundation to “celebrate people, communities, and small businesses impacted by economic inequities worldwide”, with Beyoncé committing £806,400 to support businesses.

The restaurant, Chuku’s, which is located in Tottenham was selected to receive £8,000 by Beyoncé’s foundation.Emeka Frederick, co-founder of Chuku’s, expressing his happiness said,

“This grant couldn’t be more welcome. Chuku’s, like other restaurants that don’t have a financial reserve, has been battered by lockdowns and the cost of living crisis.

“Every day, we’re fighting to stay open to make it to our fourth birthday. This money will make that fight a little easier and allow us to continue celebrating Nigerian culture on Tottenham’s High Road for the time being.

“The luncheon was held at the Four Seasons in Tower Hill where over 100 entrepreneurs gathered at the event with the chance to win £806,000 in prizes.

Customs officers found no fewer than 90 reptiles in the luggage of a passenger at Vienna Airport, Austria.

The 85 geckos, two snakes, and two scorpions had a total retail value of 47,000 euros (51,400 US dollars), the Ministry of Finance reported on Tuesday.

The 50-year-old had flown from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to Vienna. He was checked when he wanted to use the exit for travelers without goods to declare.

To their shock, the officials found an initially unmanageable amount of reptiles in three transport boxes, the ministry added.

The animals, none of which were considered protected species, were handed over to Schönbrunn Zoo, some of them already in visibly poor health.

The man explained during his interrogation that the animals were worthless to him, saying he had only taken the geckos to feed them to his snakes.

A Dutch court sentenced former Netherlands international footballer Quincy Promes to 18 months in jail Monday for stabbing his cousin at a family party.

The Spartak Moscow forward, 31, who pleaded not guilty, was not in court in Amsterdam for the sentencing as he currently lives in Russia.

His lawyer said the “disappointed” Promes would appeal.

Promes stabbed his cousin in the leg at the end of a family birthday party in 2020 in a row over a stolen necklace, the court found.

Anyone convicted of the offence would normally get a sentence of at least a year but Promes got a heavier jail term because of his public profile, it said.

“The court took into account that the suspect is a professional football player and well-known Dutchman, and therefore has an exemplary function,” the court said in a statement.

“The court also blames the suspect for not taking any responsibility for his act.

“Promes has been capped 50 times, scoring seven goals, and was part of the national team at the Euro 2020 championships, played in 2021 due to COVID-19 but has not worn the orange jersey since.

He joined Amsterdam’s Ajax in 2019 from Sevilla in a 15 million-euro ($16.4 million) transfer, before going back to Spartak in 2021, where he was named Russia’s footballer of the year in 2017 during a previous spell.

UK charity IA-Foundation is to establish skills acquisition centres in the six geo-political zones in Nigeria to empower millions of out-of-school children in the country.

The initiative is the latest effort by the foundation to add value to the lives of some 20.2 million Nigerian kids currently out of school in Africa’s most populous nation.

The founder and chief executive officer of IA-Foundation, Ibironke Adeagbo, disclosed this in a telephone interview in Abuja on Sunday.

She said the plan to build the entrepreneurial centres was part of the outcome of her working visit to the newly-elected Mayor of the London Borough of Southwark, Michael Situ.

Ms Adeagbo said she discussed the global issue of out-of-school children, especially in Nigeria, with the mayor, expressing her optimism that the time had come for the international community to step into the out-of-school crisis worldwide.

India, Nigeria and Pakistan are the countries with the highest number of out-of-school children, according to records by the UN agency UNESCO.

Ms Adeagbo said her visit to Mr Situ was to persuade the mayor to stimulate the consciousness of the British political and business establishments to get involved in tackling the out-of-school menace frontally.

She said the foundation would also host a summit in Lagos in October to discuss Nigeria’s out-of-school issues with an international audience.

Ms Adeagbo said all eyes were on President Bola Tinubu to make a difference in Nigeria’s education sector to ensure a better future.

A report released late last year by a research company, SBM Intelligence, listed Kebbi, Zamfara and Bauchi States as having the highest numbers of out-of-school children in Nigeria’s 36 states.

Analysts also posit that the problem is exacerbated by an endemic insurgency by the deadly Boko Haram group, which has forced millions of children out of classrooms.

Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who made the historic decision to reveal the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of American lies and deceit in Vietnam, in 1971 passed away on Friday at his home in Kensington, California at 92.

Announcing the development in a statement, his wife and children revealed that the former military expert died of pancreatic cancer.

In an email to his friends and supporters in March, Mr Ellsberg disclosed that he had learned he had pancreatic cancer that was incurable and that his prognosis was three to six months.

In 1971, Mr Ellsberg made thousands of papers available to U.S. media, exposing successive U.S. governments’ deception of the public regarding the Vietnam War.

Contrary to what U.S. authorities claimed publicly, the 7,000 classified papers concluded that the fight could not be won.

However, Mr Ellsberg was put on trial in federal court in Los Angeles on charges of espionage, conspiracy, and other offenses.

However, the judge dismissed the case on the eve of the jury’s deliberations due to government wrongdoing.

He enlisted in the Marines in 1954, breezed through officer candidate training, and then extended his enlistment so he could travel to the Middle East with his battalion in 1956 for the Suez crisis.

He didn’t participate in any combat, but he mustered out as a first lieutenant with strong opinions about using the military to resolve international issues.

After receiving his doctorate at Harvard, he joined the RAND Corporation and started researching the use of game theory in nuclear conflict and crisis circumstances.

He discussed with others Washington’s responses to the attacks on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s.

Mr. Ellsberg was an adviser to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara by 1964.

As the United States’ participation in Vietnam expanded, he traveled to Saigon in 1965 to assess civilian pacification initiatives.

He joined General Edward Lansdale’s counterinsurgency team and followed combat patrols into the forests and villages for 18 months.