At least 32 people have been killed in a wave of Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, according to local authorities. The civil defence agency, which is operated by Hamas, says children and women were among those killed. It added that in one attack, helicopter gunships hit a tent sheltering displaced people in the southern city of Khan Younis. Palestinians have described these strikes as the heaviest since the second phase of the ceasefire, brokered by US President Trump last October, came into effect earlier this month. The Israeli military confirmed that a number of strikes were carried out in response to what it said was a Hamas violation of the agreement on Friday. Both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the truce since it came into effect last year. In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said “eight terrorists were identified exiting the underground terror infrastructure in eastern Rafah”, an area in Gaza where Israeli forces are deployed under the October agreement. The IDF said it had, together with the Israel Security Agency (ISA), struck targets in various locations including “four commanders and additional terrorists” as well as a weapons storage facility, a weapons manufacturing site and “two launch sites belonging to Hamas in the central Gaza Strip”. Hamas has condemned the strikes and urged the US to take immediate action, adding that “these ongoing violations” confirm that the Israeli government “continues its brutal war of genocide against the strip”. It said that seven of the victims were from one displaced family in Khan Younis, with a civil defence spokesman adding that the strikes hit residential apartments, tents, shelters and a police station. Officials at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital said an air strike on the city hit a residential apartment, killing three children and two women. “We found my three little nieces in the street. They say ‘ceasefire’ and all. What did those children do? What did we do?” said Samer al-Atbash, an uncle of the three dead children, according to Reuters news agency. Video footage and images from across Gaza showed several bodies being lifted out of rubble and a number of buildings destroyed. The strikes come as the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s border with Egypt, is due to reopen on Sunday after the IDF recovered the body of Israel’s last hostage earlier this week.Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned the strikes in a statement seen by AFP news agency, and urged all parties to “exercise the utmost restraint”. Qatar, one of the key mediators during ceasefire talks, also denounced the “repeated Israeli violations”, its foreign ministry said. In January, US special envoy Steve Witkoff announced the start of phase two of the ceasefire deal. Under phase one, Hamas and Israel agreed the ceasefire in October 2025, as well as a hostage-prisoner exchange, a partial Israeli withdrawal, and an aid surge. Witkoff said phase two would see a technocratic Palestinian government established in Gaza, the reconstruction and full demilitarisation of the territory, including the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian groups. The war between Israel and Hamas began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 71,660 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. It says at least 509 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began on 10 October 2025. Four Israeli soldiers have also been killed. Though Israel has previously disputed figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, a senior security source was reported by local media as saying that the military accepts that more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war in Gaza. The health ministry’s figures have been deemed reliable by the UN and other human rights groups and widely cited by international media. Israel does not allow news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza to report independently. Source: BBC

Israeli air strikes kill at least 32 Palestinians in Gaza

Prime Minister(PM) Harini Amarasuriya stated the education system must be transformed to develop quality human resources and meet the demands of the modern world. The PM made the remarks at the ‘EDCS Sisu Nena Pranama’ scholarship ceremony at Temple Trees on 31 January, where 2,292 students entering state universities received scholarships worth over Rs. 13.7 million. She noted the program recognises the efforts of students and parents and highlighted the need for students to become active participants in national development. The Education Co-operative Society, established in 1930, now has around 215,000 members, making it the largest cooperative society in South Asia.

PM urges education reform to meet modern world needs

India’s federal government will spend a record 12.2 trillion rupees ($133.08 billion) on infrastructure in the upcoming financial year that begins on April 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said during her annual budget presentation on Sunday. The spending plan is higher than the 11.21 trillion rupees budgeted for the current fiscal year, which was the highest on record. Source: Reuters&nbsp;

India raises infrastructure spending to record 12.2 trillion rupees for 2026-27

The State of Public Emergency in Sri Lanka has been extended from January 28, according to an extraordinary gazette signed by the Secretary to the President. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued the proclamation under the Public Security Ordinance, bringing Part II of the Ordinance into effect nationwide. The gazette noted the extension is aimed at ensuring public safety and maintaining essential services. The President also introduced amended regulations titled the Emergency (Miscellaneous Provisions and Powers) Regulations No. 1 of 2026.

State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) stated it will intensify its ongoing trade union action from Monday(02). The decision followed what the association noted as an inadequate response from the Ministry of Health to its demands. An emergency Executive Committee meeting on 31 January confirmed the move. From 8.00 a.m. on 2 February, doctors will stop issuing external prescriptions and laboratory recommendations, withdraw from political health camps, and avoid staffing new wards without approved doctors. Specialists will limit services to their attached hospitals only, and will not examine patients where facilities or support staff are inadequate.

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

Armed extremists in northeastern Nigeria killed dozens of people earlier this week in separate attacks targeting a construction site and a military installation, security officials said Saturday. Gunmen killed at least 25 construction workers during an ambush on Thursday in the town of Sabon Gari in Borno State, a senior officer of the Borno State Police Command told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. Authorities in Nigeria often decline to publicly confirm death tolls in attacks, citing security concerns. “It is a devastating loss, and the hallmarks point directly to Boko Haram insurgents who have long resisted developmental projects in these areas,” the police official said. Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis, took up arms in 2009 to fight Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law. The insurgency now includes an offshoot of the Islamic State group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP. It has spilled into Nigeria’s northern neighbors, including Niger, killing about 35,000 civilians and displacing more than 2 million people, according to the United Nations. Abdurrahman Buni, a senior officer of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a volunteer vigilante group helping the military fight extremist groups and armed gangs, confirmed that at least 25 construction workers were killed during the Thursday attack. Buni and the police officer said extremist fighters, backed by armed drones, had raided an army base in a separate attack in the same town hours earlier. The police officer said the dead were nine soldiers and two members of a civilian task force, while about 16 injured security personnel were evacuated for medical treatment following the heavy gunfire. He said it was unclear if the base attack was carried out by Boko Haram or the rival ISWAP, both of which are active in the region. Nigeria is in the grip of a complex security crisis, with an insurgency by Islamic militants in the northeast alongside a surge in kidnappings for ransom by gunmen across the northwest and north-central regions over the recent months,Last month, the U.S. launched airstrikes in northern Nigeria, targeting Islamic State fighters, after allegations that the West African country failed to rein in attacks on Christians. Source: AP

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

An ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has proposed a bill to ban social media for children, as the world’s biggest market for Meta and YouTube joins a global debate on the impact of social media on young people’s health and safety. “Not only are our children becoming addicted to social media, but India is also one of the world’s largest producers of data for foreign platforms,” lawmaker L.S.K. Devarayalu told Reuters on Friday. “Based on this data, these companies are creating advanced AI systems, effectively turning Indian users into unpaid data providers, while the strategic and economic benefits are reaped elsewhere,” he said. Australia last month became the first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking access in a move welcomed by many parents and child advocates but criticised by major technology companies and free-speech advocates. France’s National Assembly this week backed legislation to ban children under 15 from social media, while Britain, Denmark and Greece are studying the issue. Facebook operator Meta, YouTube-parent Alphabet&nbsp;and X did not respond on Saturday to emails seeking comment on the Indian legislation. Meta has said it backs laws for parental oversight but that “governments considering bans should be careful not to push teens toward less safe, unregulated sites.” India’s IT ministry did not respond to a request for comment. India, the world’s second-biggest smartphone market with 750 million devices and a billion internet users, is a key growth market for social media apps and does not set a minimum age for access. Devarayalu’s 15-page Social Media (Age Restrictions and Online Safety) Bill, which is not public but was seen by Reuters, says no one under 16 “shall be permitted to create, maintain, or hold” a social media account and those found to have one should have them disabled. “We are asking that the entire onus of ensuring users’ age be placed on the social media platforms,” Devarayalu said. The government’s chief economic adviser attracted attention on Thursday by saying India should draft policies on age-based access limits to tackle “digital addiction”. Devarayalu’s legislation is a private member’s bill - not proposed to parliament by a federal minister - but such bills often trigger debates in parliament and influence lawmaking. He is from the Telugu Desam Party, which governs the southern state Andhra Pradesh and is vital to Modi’s coalition government. Source: Reuters

Modi ally proposes social media ban for India’s teens as global debate grows

Long crowned by his legion of fans as the king of Afrobeat, the late Fela Kuti is finally being recognised by the global music industry. The Nigerian star will posthumously receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys - almost three decades after his death at the age of 58. “Fela has been in the hearts of the people for such a long time. Now the Grammys have acknowledged it, and it’s a double victory,” his musician son Seun Kuti tells the BBC. “It’s bringing balance to a Fela story,” he adds. Rikki Stein, a long-time friend and manager of the late musician, says the recognition by the Grammys is “better late than never”. “Africa hasn’t in the past rated very highly in their interests. I think that’s changing quite a bit of late,” Stein tells the BBC. Following the global success of Afrobeats, a genre inspired by Fela’s sound, the Grammys introduced the category of Best African Performance in 2024. This year, Nigerian superstar Burna Boy also has a nomination in the Best Global Music Album category. But Fela Kuti will be the first African to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, albeit posthumously. The award was first presented in 1963 to American singer and actor Bing Crosby. Other musicians who will receive the award this year include Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan, the American singer known as the Queen of Funk, and Paul Simon. Fela Kuti’s family, as well friends and colleagues, will be attending the Grammys to receive his award. “The global human tapestry needs this, not just because it’s my father,” Seun Kuti tells the BBC. Stein says it is important to recognise Fela as a man who championed the cause of people who had “drawn life’s short straw”, adding that he “castigated any form of social injustice, corruption [and] mismanagement” in government. ignore that aspect of Fela’s legacy,” he tells the BBC. For Fela Anikulapo Kuti was not simply a musician, but also a cultural theorist, political agitator and the undisputed architect of Afrobeat - which is distinct from, but ultimately led to, the modern sound of Afrobeats. He pioneered the Afrobeat genre alongside drummer Tony Allen, blending West African rhythms, jazz, funk, highlife, extended improvisation, call-and-response vocals and politically charged lyricism. Across a career spanning roughly three decades until his death in 1997, Fela Kuti released more than 50 albums and built a body of work that fused music with ideology, rhythm with resistance, and performance with protest. His music incurred the wrath of Nigeria’s then-military regimes.In 1977, after the release of the album Zombie, which satirised government soldiers as obedient, brainless enforcers, his compound in the main city, Lagos, was raided. Known as Kalakuta Republic, the property was burned, residents were brutalised, and his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, later died from injuries sustained during the assault. Rather than retreat, Fela Kuti responded through music and defiance. He took his mother’s coffin to government offices and released the song Coffin for Head of State, turning grief into protest. The musician’s ideology was a blend of pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism, and African-rooted socialism. Fela Kuti’s mother was hugely influential in his life, helping shape his political consciousness, while the US-born singer and activist Sandra Izsadore helped sharpen his revolutionary outlookHe was born Olufela Olusegun Oludoton Ransome-Kuti, but dropped Ransome because of its Western roots. In 1978, he married 27 women in a highly publicised ceremony, bringing together partners, performers, organisers and co-architects of the cultural and communal vision of Kalakuta Republic. Fela Kuti endured repeated arrests, beatings, censorship and surveillance by the security forces. Yet repression only amplified his influence.“He wasn’t doing what he was doing to win awards. He was interested in liberation. Freeing the mind,” Stein tells the BBC. “He was fearless. He was determined.” Fela Kuti’s musical evolution was shaped not only by Nigeria but also by Ghana. During the 1950s and 1960s, highlife music, pioneered by Ghanaian musicians such as ET Mensah, Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas, became a defining sound across West Africa. Its melodic guitar lines, horn sections, dance rhythms, and cosmopolitan identity deeply influenced Fela Kuti’s early musical direction. He spent time in Ghana absorbing highlife’s structure, horn phrasing, and dance-oriented arrangements before fusing it with jazz, funk, the rhythms of his own Yoruba people, and political storytelling. The DNA of highlife can be heard in Afrobeat’s melodic sensibility and its balance between groove and sophistication. In this sense, Afrobeat is not only Nigerian. It is West African, pan-African, and diasporic in origin, carrying Ghana’s musical imprint at its foundation. On stage, Fela Kuti cut an unmistakable figure. Often bare-chested or draped in the wax-printed fabric popular across West Africa, hair shaped into a crisp Afro, saxophone in hand, eyes alert with intensity, he commanded a large band of more than 20 musicians. His performances at the Afrika Shrine in Lagos were legendary, part concert, part political rally, part spiritual ceremony. Stein recalls that performances at the Shrine were immersive rather than conventional. “When Fela played, nobody applauded,” he tells the BBC. “The audience wasn’t separate. They were part of it.” Music was not spectacle. It was communion. Fela Kuti’s visual identity was shaped in part by artist and designer Lemi Ghariokwu, who created 26 of his album covers between 1974 and 1993.“Fela has been an ancestor for 28 years. His legacy is growing by the day. This is immortality,” Ghariokwu tells the BBC, welcoming the posthumous award. Today, Fela Kuti’s music is still popular with millions around the world, and his influence is audible in modern artists such as Burna Boy, Kendrick Lamar and Sir Idris Elba. Elba is a huge fan - the award-winning actor and DJ has curated an official vinyl box set, Fela Kuti Box Set 6, and has publicly compared him to icons such as Sade and Frank Sinatra to illustrate the point that Fela Kuti has his own unique sound. Fela Kuti performed at major international festivals in Europe and North America, introducing global audiences to a bold and politically charged version of modern Africa. Seun Kuti was just 14 when his father died. “Fela never made me feel like I was a child,” he recalls. “He didn’t hide anything from me. He talked about everything openly.” There was no myth-building. “I didn’t even realise my dad was famous,” he says. “That’s credit to him. He kept me grounded.” What stayed with him most was not spectacle, but discipline, clarity and humanity. “The human part of him, leadership, musicianship, fatherhood, that was the epitome of who he was.” One of Seun Kuti’s most revealing reflections speaks to independence and identity. “Fela was our dad, but you didn’t own him. Fela belonged to himself. But we all belonged to him.” Fela Kuti insisted on being addressed by name, not by title, even by his children. Seun recalls having his pocket money docked after calling him “Pops”, a moment that carried a lesson in respect. “He always reminded us that he was in service to others more than himself.” That ethic shaped Seun’s evolution from youthful ambition toward cultural responsibility. “I used to make music to make money. But as I’ve grown, I lean more toward working for my people as well as my art.” Fela Kuti led multiple ensembles, most famously Africa 70 and later Egypt 80, the latter now carried forward by his son. These were not conventional backing bands. They were musical militias, trained in discipline, endurance, and ideological purpose. Stein recalls Fela Kuti’s obsessive attention to detail. “He tuned every instrument personally. Music wasn’t entertainment to him. It was his mission.” Source: BBC

Israeli air strikes kill at least 32 Palestinians in Gaza

PM urges education reform to meet modern world needs

PM urges education reform to m ...

India raises infrastructure spending to record 12.2 trillion rupees fo ...

India raises infrastructure sp ...

State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

State of Public Emergency exte ...

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

GMOA to intensify strike from ...

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Armed extremists kill dozens i ...

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

Navy expands clean water missi ...

Modi ally proposes social media ban for India’s teens as global debate ...

Modi ally proposes social medi ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes first African to get Grammys Lifetime A ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes ...

PM urges education reform to meet modern world needs

PM urges education reform to m ...

India raises infrastructure spending to record 12.2 trillion rupees fo ...

India raises infrastructure sp ...

State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

State of Public Emergency exte ...

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

GMOA to intensify strike from ...

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Armed extremists kill dozens i ...

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

Navy expands clean water missi ...

Modi ally proposes social media ban for India’s teens as global debate ...

Modi ally proposes social medi ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes first African to get Grammys Lifetime A ...

Music legend Fela Kuti becomes ...

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State of Public Emergency extended in Sri Lanka

State of Public Emergency exte ...

GMOA to intensify strike from Monday

GMOA to intensify strike from ...

Armed extremists kill dozens in northeastern Nigeria

Armed extremists kill dozens i ...

Navy expands clean water mission with new RO plant

Navy expands clean water missi ...