Hezbollah says it will escalate war with Israel after Hamas leader killed

Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group said on Friday it was moving to a new and escalating phase in its war against Israel while Iran said "the spirit of resistance will be strengthened" after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed during an operation by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday, a pivotal event in the year-long conflict.

Western leaders said his death offered an opportunity for the conflict to end, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war would go on until the hostages seized by Hamas militants were returned.

"Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow but our task has still not been completed," Netanyahu said in a recorded video statement after the death was confirmed on Thursday.

"To the dear hostage families, I say: This is an important moment in the war. We will continue full force until all your loved ones, our loved ones, are home."

Sinwar, who was named as Hamas' overall leader following the assassination of political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, was believed to have been hiding in the warren of tunnels Hamas has built under Gaza over the past two decades.

He was killed during a gun battle in southern Gaza on Wednesday by Israeli troops who were initially unaware that they had caught their country's number one enemy, Israeli officials said.

The military released drone video of what it said was Sinwar, sitting on an armchair and covered in dust inside a destroyed building.

Hamas has not made any comment itself, but sources within the group have said the indications they have seen suggest Sinwar was indeed killed by Israeli troops.

'CHIEF OBSTACLE'

Despite Western hopes of a ceasefire, Sinwar's death could dial up hostilities in the Middle East where the prospect of an even wider conflicthas grown.

Israel has launched a ground campaign in Lebanon over the past month and is now planning a response to an Oct. 1 missile attack carried out by Iran, ally of Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

But the demise of the man who planned the attack last year in which fighters killed 1,200 people in Israel and captured more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies, could also help push forward stalled efforts to end the war in which Israel has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who spoke to Netanyahu by phone to congratulate him, said Sinwar's death provided a chance for the conflict in Gaza to finally end and for Israeli hostages to be brought home.

The U.S. wants to kick-start talks on a proposal to achieve a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, calling Sinwar the "chief obstacle" to ending the war.

"That obstacle has obviously been removed. Can’t predict that that means whoever replaces (Sinwar) will agree to a ceasefire, but it does remove what has been in recent months the chief obstacle to getting one," he said. In recent weeks, Sinwar had refused to negotiate at all, Miller said.

Iran indicated no sign the killing would shift its support. "The spirit of resistance will be strengthened" following the death of Sinwar, its mission to the United Nations said.

Hezbollah was also defiant, announcing "the transition to a new and escalating phase in the confrontation with Israel".

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held separate phone calls on Thursday with leaders in Saudi Arabia and Qatar aimed at ending the conflict in the Middle East, the State Department said.

NO COMFORT, NO COMPROMISE

Families of Israeli hostages said that while the killing of Sinwar was a significant achievement, it would not be complete while hostages are still in Gaza.

Avi Marciano, the father of Noa Marciano, who was killed in captivity by Hamas, told Israeli broadcaster KAN that "the monster, the one who took her from me, who had the blood of all our daughters on his hands, finally met the gates of hell."

"A little justice, but no comfort," he said. "There will be comfort only when Naama, Liri, Agam, Daniela and Karina, our girls' friends, return home."

In Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip, a displaced Palestinian named Thabet Amour told Reuters the Palestinian fight would continue.

"This is resistance that does not disappear when men disappear," he said. "The assassination of Sinwar will not lead to the end of the resistance or to a compromise or surrender and raising the white flag."

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine's Zelenskiy says North Korean officers deployed alongside Russians

Ukraine's president accused North Korea on Thursday of deploying officers alongside Russia and preparing to send thousands of troops to help Moscow's war effort, although NATO's chief said there was no evidence of Pyongyang's presence at this stage.

Western countries have long accused North Korea of sending weapons to Russia, and in recent days President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said it was also sending personnel, a significant escalation of foreign assistance for Moscow's invasion.

"We have information from our intelligence that ... some officers of the North Korean army are already on Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied by the Russian enemies. So they joined the Russian army," Zelenskiy told a press conference in Brussels.

He said he could not give the exact number that were on the ground.

"We know about 10,000 soldiers of North Korea, that they are preparing to send to fight against us," he said, describing it as a "first step to the World War".

Ukraine's Western allies have yet to confirm Kyiv's assertion that Pyongyang is sending troops, though they say they are studying it.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in a press conference alongside the Ukrainian leader on Thursday that "we have no evidence that North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight".

"We do know that North Korea is supporting Russia in many ways – by weapon supplies, technological supplies, innovation – to support them in the war effort, and that is highly worrying," he said.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said on Tuesday any North Korean troop involvement in Ukraine, if true, would mark a significant increase in the Moscow-Pyongyang defence relationship.

Zelenskiy said Russia needs to fill a gap in mobilisation and cover its own personnel losses.

Ukraine and the West say hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed or wounded fighting in Ukraine, while Ukraine's own military losses, a closely guarded secret, are also high but smaller. Moscow's forces have advanced over the past several months in Ukraine's east.

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Ukraine has called on allies to respond firmly to North Korean aid for Russia, including by imposing new sanctions and further isolating Pyongyang.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Yearly plan for staffing of armed forces with contract servicemen 78% complete — Medvedev

The Russian Armed Forces’ yearly staffing plan for contract servicemen has been fulfilled by 78% by mid-October, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said, calling this rate "rather good."

"Today, we will continue our work on the staffing of the armed forces with contract servicemen. By mid-October of this year, the set yearly goal has been fulfilled by 78%. Overall, this rate is rather good," Medvedev said during a meeting. The video was published on his VK page.

He called to prevent delays and other staffing problems.

Medvedev disclosed that he visited a recruitment station in the Yaroslavl Region together with employees of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Security Service (FSB) on Tuesday.

"Compared to the previous year, the situation looks much better now. No systemic violations in the accounting of servicemen have been found, but individual problems are still there. We will talk about them, of course. We will definitely need to work to eliminate all problems," the official said.

Earlier in July, Medvedev said that 190,000 people signed up for the contract service in the Russian Armed Forces in the first six months of 2024.

Reuters/Tass

This was tough to write. My heart resisted it, but I yielded to my head. The petrol in my car, a 2.0-litre 2012 Tokunbo Camry, was at half-tank the day before writing.

When pump prices went from 195/litre to 617/litrebetween May and June 2023, I parked my SUV and, despite being occasionally mistaken for an Uber driver, opted for the saloon, which, as of the third fuel price increase by September this year, cost about 65k to fill up.

After petrol pump price went up again by about 15 percent last week, it would now cost about 80k to fill up the saloon, depending on where you bought petrol from and how badly the pump was rigged.

The changes in petrol price and energy costs have affected everything else, from the price of fish to milk and the cost of bread and grains. Essential medicines are a different thing altogether. Life was hard. But it’s been a nightmare for millions more since President Bola Tinubu’s government was inaugurated.

Generation crisis

In July, The Financial Times said the hardship under Tinubu has triggered “the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.” The newspaper gave the president credit for tackling two of the most malignant economic problems in decades – the petrol subsidy and fixed exchange rate – but said the shock therapy was so disjointed that calling it “Tinubunomics” would be a joke.

But Nigerians hardly need a foreign newspaper to render their misery in torrid colours. They know this was not the life promised. Tinubu pledged to prioritise security and jobs, tackle the mounting debt, and improve infrastructure when he took office. He came with a pro-business credential and a track record of success in Lagos that was difficult to ignore.

In the last year, however, with millions impoverished by the government’s economic policies and two major nationwide protests against hunger and bad governance, Tinubu’s reputation has taken such a severe beating that promises of light at the end of the tunnel have been brushed aside.

Turn of excuses?

His government has explained that the rot was worse than expected; that whereas previous governments since 1973 said oil money was not the problem, but how to spend it, President Muhammadu Buhari handed his successor an empty treasury, to which the response has been: yours is a continuation of the APC government, deal with it.

Complaints about post-Covid-19 supply chain problems, long-standing structural problems, the protracted legal challenge to his election, and a hostile opposition have also been dismissed as untenable for a man who said it was his turn to govern.

Temptation

Yet, I wouldn’t write off the government, however tempting. If Tinubu’s shock therapy has been disjointed, and his economic policies severely criticised by a despairing public, the tax-and-spend remedy by TheFinancial Times, the West’s standard response to budget deficits – apart from the added trope about transparency and corruption – is hardly the cure in Nigeria’s case for at least two reasons.

Apart from severe loopholes, rampant poverty makes it difficult to expand the tax net or improve the yield, except if the government wishes to levy taxes on blood. Poor industrialisation, even de-industrialisation, and heavy dependence on imports, especially food imports, compound the problem and further reduce wiggle room to raise badly needed cash.

For Tinubu to dig Nigeria out of its current hole – and I believe he still can – efforts to restructure government income, including taxes, by repurposing the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) must be matched by policies that create wealth.

Options for compound problems

The government should intentionally target industrialisation and food production, with reduced foreign input. Unfortunately, widespread floods have piled on insurgency and kidnapping to reduce farm supplies and worsen food inflation.

Yet, while elites like me complain the most and the loudest, the measure of Tinubu’s success is not how much petrol I’m able to buy in my car but the impact of government policies on the rural poor, mainly farmers, who make up the bulk of the country’s 220m population.

Tinubu must work with Nigeria’s state governors, who collect security votes monthly before thinking of what to do with it to fix the security problem so that farmers can return. The country needs a system to incentivise farming, one far better managed than the Anchor-borrowers’ scheme under which the Buhari government staged occasional shows of huge grain pyramids that disappeared as soon as the events were over.

Examples from elsewhere

There would be no easy options. Examples of countries that have turned things around show that their leaders defied the norm in pivotal moments. Deng Xiaoping reversed Zedong’s isolationism by introducing market reforms and imposing a one-child policy.

Lee Kuan Yew ignored Western prescriptions of democracy, even laying down markers for the foreign-owned Strait Times, limited protests, and restricted strikes and industrial actions.

Those who obsess about diversity and size would find India a good example. To the displeasure of the elite, Indira Gandhi focused on rural India. She achieved self-sufficiency in food production, reducing poverty and laying the groundwork for long-term national development.

One thing common to all three but lacking in Tinubu’s government is energy and speed of execution. For example, three months after he announced an interim measure to remove tariffs on grains and essential pharmaceuticals, the Customs have yet to get the memo – or perhaps they have, and it’s been washed up by red tape.

Sitting on the mines

Sadly, oil isn’t about to take the backstage soon. Yet, our assets, especially oil mining leases in seven blocks, including OML 111 and disputed Pan Ocean assets, have been poorly managed by NNPCL. The corporation that ought to be alarmed at divestments from the upstream and midstream is too busy piling on the government’s debt by brokering crude-for-loan deals to think of what to do with massive, fallow oil assets that it has cornered since 2009.

Experts estimate that prudent management of these assets could increase Nigeria’s production quota by between 500k bpd and 1m bpd and improve the pool of investible funds. How and why, despite his experience in the oil industry, Tinubu indulges NNPCL’s damaging and scandalous incompetence, only he can explain.  

Eat that frog!

But I’m not giving up on him yet. I’m hoping he was playing politics when the political pressure group, The Patriots, led by the statesman Emeka Anyaoku, visited him, and he said he needed to fix the economy before restructuring the country.

Except he prioritises that, the current system, which puts revenue sharing ahead of innovation, competition, production and reward, but instead creates a phantom of Abuja as Father Christmas, will continue to retard the country’s progress.

It's not Tinubu’s fault that the states are yoked to Abuja. However, he cannot make any lasting changes, keep his election promises on security, jobs, the economy, or infrastructure or even inspire the states to depart their waywardness without changing how the country is governed.

He starts to lose me, not when I pay a higher petrol price but when his actions show, irretrievably, that despite his solid credentials as an advocate of restructuring, he is determined to put the cart before the horse.

** Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the bookWriting for Media and Monetising It.

Brent Gleeson

In high-performance organizations, leaders often prioritize technical know-how and measurable metrics. But dismissing soft skills as unimportant is a critical mistake that can lead to team breakdowns, missed opportunities, and poor results. According to a 2023 Harvard Business report, 76% of respondents identified empathy, communication, and the ability to manage conflict as essential leadership skills for driving team effectiveness, especially in diverse and remote work environments. Leaders who lack these soft skills may struggle to build trust and create psychologically safe workplaces, which are essential for team cohesion and innovation in high-performance settings . But organizations must adopt a deliberate, strategic, and deeply integrated approach to developing soft skills in order to maximize ROI, ensuring that these efforts are aligned with the company’s culture, core values, and business objectives.

Additionally, leadership and talent development initiatives often fail when they are not tightly integrated with an organization’s culture, values, and strategic objectives. Without this alignment, development programs can seem disconnected, leaving leaders ill-equipped to embody the behaviors and skills necessary to drive the organization forward. When training is isolated from the core values of the company, it risks becoming theoretical and irrelevant, leading to disengagement and poor application.

Studies show that organizations that embed leadership development within their cultural and strategic framework experience greater success in building high-performing teams, as it fosters consistent behaviors aligned with long-term business goals (Harvard Business) (PMI). Simply put, development efforts that ignore culture miss the opportunity to reinforce the very principles that give an organization its unique identity and competitive edge.

Here are seven key reasons why ignoring soft skills will lead to failure, proving that mastering them is indispensable for effective leadership.

1. Communication is Overrated – Until You Misunderstand Everyone

Leaders who dismiss communication as a soft, secondary skill inevitably face misunderstandings, misaligned goals, and conflict. Without clear, effective communication, teams cannot collaborate, and projects spiral into confusion. The inability to articulate a vision or resolve conflicts through dialogue results in missed deadlines, frustrated teams, and costly mistakes.

2. Empathy is for Pushovers – Until Your Team Walks Out

A lack of empathy may seem like tough leadership, but it’s a fast track to high turnover and disengagement. Empathy helps leaders understand the needs, concerns, and motivations of their team members. When leaders fail to practice empathy, employees feel undervalued and unmotivated, which can lead to a toxic work environment and talent exodus.

3. Adaptability is a Buzzword – Until Change Disrupts Everything

In today’s fast-paced business world, leaders who can't adapt to changing circumstances or industry shifts are quickly left behind. Teams look to leaders for stability during disruption, and without adaptability, leaders will cling to outdated methods. The result? Loss of competitiveness, stagnation, and missed growth opportunities. PMI research emphasizes that leaders who develop soft skills like collaboration, influence, and motivating others drive higher engagement and better results. In fact, leaders without these skills risk poor team performance and disengagement, especially when managing cross-functional or geographically dispersed teams, as these soft skills ensure alignment and shared purpose.

4. Emotional Intelligence is for the Weak – Until You Lose Control

Leaders without emotional intelligence (EQ) struggle to manage their own emotions and fail to recognize the emotional dynamics within their teams. This lack of awareness can lead to poor decision-making, unproductive conflicts, and an inability to build strong relationships. Without EQ, leaders are unable to inspire trust or navigate team dynamics, ultimately undermining their influence and effectiveness.

5. Listening is a Waste of Time – Until No One Feels Heard

Great leaders know that listening is just as important as speaking. When leaders don’t actively listen, they miss out on valuable insights, feedback, and the opportunity to foster innovation. Teams that feel unheard are disengaged and less likely to contribute meaningfully. Ignoring this essential skill leads to a lack of creativity and collaboration, and eventually, organizational stagnation.

6. Conflict Resolution is for HR – Until Your Team Implodes

Conflict is inevitable in any workplace, but without effective conflict resolution, teams descend into chaos. Leaders who avoid dealing with conflicts create toxic environments where issues fester, morale plummets, and productivity suffers. The failure to navigate conflicts constructively leaves teams fractured and unable to move forward effectively.

7. Building Relationships is for Socialites – Until Your Network Crumbles

Relationships are the foundation of effective leadership, particularly in high-performance organizations. Leaders who dismiss relationship-building as unnecessary will find themselves isolated and lacking support from their peers, subordinates, and superiors. Failing to build strong professional networks limits collaboration, stifles innovation, and ultimately hampers leadership success.

Soft Skills Are the Backbone of Leadership Success

While it may be tempting to focus solely on hard skills and technical expertise, soft skills are what truly drive leadership success in high-performance organizations. Leaders who fail to invest in these critical areas - whether through in-person training, performance management SaaS platforms, or other resources - risk losing not only their teams but also their own ability to lead effectively. To be a successful leader, mastering communication, empathy, adaptability, emotional intelligence, listening, conflict resolution, and relationship-building is non-negotiable.

Forbes

Low and medium countries across the world, which are battling extreme poverty including Nigeria, may need upward of 100 years to end the scourge, the World Bank has suggested.

A person is defined as poor if he lives on less than N10,275 or $6.85 per day. However extreme poverty refers to those who live below $2.15 or N3,225 per day.
The latest projections are contained in the ‘Poverty, Prosperity and Planet Report’, which offers the first post-Covid assessment of global progress toward ending poverty and increasing prosperity.

The report also submitted that ending extreme poverty, which is prevalent in developing economies by 2030 is no longer achievable, saying achieving that target may take another three decades.

“The global goal of ending extreme poverty – defined as $2.15 per person per day – by 2030 is out of reach: it could take three decades or more to eliminate poverty at this threshold, which is relevant primarily for low-income countries,” the report stated.

Almost 700 million people or 8.5 per cent of the global population live on less than $2.15 per day, while 7.3 per cent of the population is projected to be trapped in extreme poverty by 2030.

Extreme poverty remains concentrated in countries with historically low economic growth, many of which are in sub-Saharan Africa. About 44 per cent of the world’s population live on less than $6.85 per day, which is considered the poverty line for upper-middle-income countries.

Assessing the scenario, the World Bank Senior Managing Director, Axel van Trotsenburg, said: “After decades of progress, the world is experiencing serious setbacks in the fight against global poverty, a result of intersecting challenges that include slow economic growth, the pandemic, high debt, conflict and fragility, and climate shocks.”

Also, the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, Indermit Gill, said low-income countries and emerging market economies should place a higher premium on sustained investments in education and health to provide higher poverty and prosperity-related payoffs than do tax-financed social assistance programmes.

In a related development, the October 2024 Fiscal Monitor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted that large spending pressures, optimism bias of debt projections and sizable unidentified debt are pushing national debts into a figure that is not known.

While the global public is above $100 trillion, which represents about 93 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) by the end of this year, may exceed 100 per cent of GDP by 2030.

The figure is 10 percentage points of GDP above the pre-pandemic period before 2019. While the picture is not homogeneous – public debt is expected to stabilise or decline for two-thirds of countries, the October 2024 Fiscal Monitor of the IMF shows that future debt levels could be even higher than projected.

Taming global debt, therefore, requires larger fiscal adjustments than currently projected to stabilise or reduce it with a high probability.The report argued that countries, especially developing ones such as Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Bangladesh, should confront debt risks now with carefully designed fiscal policies that protect growth and vulnerable households, while taking advantage of the monetary policy easing cycle.

While acknowledging that weaker growth, tighter financing conditions, fiscal slippages and greater economic and policy uncertainty, the report noted that countries are increasingly vulnerable to global factors affecting their borrowing costs.

The Guardian

Nigeria's oil regulator has rejected Shell's proposed $1.3 billion sale of its onshore oilfields to Renaissance group because the buyer is not qualified to manage the assets, ThisDay newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Shell, which owns the assets via Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), said it was providing the regulator with all the required information without directly confirming the newspaper report.

The regulator and Renaissance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shell on Jan. 16 announced its exit from Nigeria's onshore and shallow water operations after agreeing to sell the business to a consortium of five, mostly local, companies, opting to focus future investments in the potentially more lucrative deep offshore fields.

Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) declined to approve the sale on the grounds the Renaissance consortium could not show it could manage the assets.

The companies that make up the group have been unable to operate at least 50% of all existing assets under their control, ThisDay reported, citing unnamed persons familiar with the process.

According to the report, the NUPRC has communicated its decision to all the parties.

"Shell and the government are in ongoing communication as part of the approval process for the sale of SPDC. SPDC will continue to provide the regulator with all information needed to complete the approval process," a Shell spokesperson told Reuters.

Shell's exit from Nigeria's onshore operations is part of a broader retreat by the oil majors as they focus on newer, more profitable operations. Exxon Mobil, Italy's Eni and TotalEnergies have all struck deals to sell assets in the country in recent years.

Reuters

How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

The batteries inside the weaponised pagers that arrived in Lebanon at the start of the year, part of an Israeli plot to decimate Hezbollah, had powerfully deceptive features and an Achilles' heel.

The agents who built the pagers designed a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a novel detonator that was invisible to X-ray, according to a Lebanese source with first-hand knowledge of the pagers, and teardown photos of the battery pack seen by Reuters.

To overcome the weakness - the absence of a plausible backstory for the bulky new product - they created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a Reuters review of web archives shows.

The stealthy design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully constructed cover story, both described here for the first time, shed light on the execution of a years-long operation which has struck unprecedented blows against Israel's Iran-backed Lebanese foe and pushed the Middle East closer to a regional war.

Two lithium-ion cells sandwich a sheet of plastic explosive and a strip of highly flammable material

A thin, square sheet with six grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) plastic explosive was squeezed between two rectangular battery cells, according to the Lebanese source and photos.

The remaining space between the battery cells could not be seen in the photos but was occupied by a strip of highly flammable material that acted as the detonator, the source said.

This three-layer sandwich was inserted in a black plastic sleeve, and encapsulated in a metal casing roughly the size of a match box, the photos showed.

The assembly was unusual because it did not rely on a standard miniaturised detonator, typically a metallic cylinder, the source and two bomb experts said. All three spoke on conditions of anonymity.

Without any metal components, the material used to trigger detonation had an edge: like the plastic explosives, it was not detected by X-ray.

Upon receiving the pagers in February, Hezbollah looked for the presence of explosives, two people familiar with the matter said, putting them through airport security scanners to see if they triggered alarms. Nothing suspicious was reported.

The devices were likely set up to generate a spark within the battery pack, enough to light the detonating material, and trigger the sheet of PETN to explode, said the two bomb experts, to whom Reuters showed the pager-bomb design.

Since explosives and wrapping took about a third of the volume, the battery pack carried a fraction of the power consistent with its 35 gram weight, two battery experts said.

"There is a significant amount of unaccounted for mass," said Paul Christensen, an expert in lithium batteries at Britain’s Newcastle University.

Battery relative to size of pager

Battery power

A battery with a similar mass of 35g would have an expected energy capacity of around 8.75Wh, not 2.22Wh.

Note: Reuters has no indication the battery packs were actually made in China.

At some point, Hezbollah noticed the battery was draining faster than expected, the Lebanese source said. However, the issue did not appear to raise major security concerns - the group was still handing its members the pagers hours before the attack.

On Sept. 17, thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds, in most cases after the devices beeped, indicating an incoming message.

Among the victims rushed to hospital, many had eye injuries, missing fingers or gaping holes in their abdomens, Reuters witnesses saw, indicating their proximity to the devices at the time of detonation. In total, the pager attack, and a second on the following day that activated weaponised walkie-talkies, killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400.

Two Western security sources said Israeli intelligence agency Mossad spearheaded the pager and walkie-talkie attacks.

Reuters could not establish where the devices were manufactured. The office of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has authority over Mossad, did not respond to a request for comment.

Lebanon’s Information Ministry and a spokesperson for Hezbollah declined to comment for this article.

Israel has neither denied nor confirmed a role. The day after the attacks Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant praised Mossad's "very impressive" results in comments that were widely interpreted in Israel as a tacit acknowledgement of the agency's participation.

U.S. officials have said they were not informed of the operation in advance.

The weak link

From the outside, the pager’s power source looked like a standard lithium-ion battery pack used in thousands of consumer electronics goods.

And yet, the battery, labelled LI-BT783, had a problem: Like the pager, it did not exist on the market.

So Israel's agents created a backstory from scratch.

Hezbollah has serious procurement procedures to check what they buy, a former Israeli intelligence officer, who was not involved in the pager operation, told Reuters.

"You want to make sure that if they look, they find something," the former spy said, requesting not to be named. "Not finding anything is not good.”

Creating backstories, or “legends”, for undercover agents has long been a core skill of spy agencies. What made the pager plot unusual is that those skills appear to have been applied to ubiquitous consumer electronics products.

For the pagers, the agents deceived Hezbollah by selling the custom-created model, AR-924, under an existing, renowned Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo.

Gold Apollo’s chairman, Hsu Ching-kuang, told reporters a day after the pager attack that he was approached about three years ago by a former employee, Teresa Wu, and her “big boss, called Tom” to discuss a licence agreement.

Hsu said he had scant information about Wu’s superior, but he granted them the right to design their own products and market them under the widely distributed Gold Apollo brand. Reuters could not establish the identity of the manager, nor whether the person or Wu knowingly worked with Israeli intelligence.

The chairman said he was not impressed by the AR-924 when he saw it, but still added photos and a description of the product to his company’s website, helping give it both visibility and credibility. There was no way to directly buy the AR-924 from his website.

Hsu said he knew nothing about the pagers’ lethal capabilities or the broader operation to attack Hezbollah. He described his company as a victim of the plot.

Gold Apollo declined to provide further comment. Calls and messages sent to Wu went unanswered. She has not given a statement to the media since the attacks.

‘I know this product’

In September 2023, webpages and images featuring the AR-924 and its battery were added to apollosystemshk.com, a website that said it had a licence to distribute Gold Apollo products, as well as the rugged pager and its bulky power source, according to a Reuters review of internet records and metadata.

The website gave an address in Hong Kong for a company called Apollo Systems HK. No company by that name exists at the address or in Hong Kong Corporate records.

However, the website was listed by Wu, the Taiwanese businesswoman, on her Facebook page as well as in public incorporation records when she registered a company called Apollo Systems in Taipei earlier this year.

A section of the apollosystemshk.com site devoted to the LI-BT783 put emphasis on the battery’s outstanding performance. Unlike the disposable batteries that powered older generation pagers, it boasted 85 days of autonomy and could be recharged via a USB cable, according to the website and a 90-second promotional video on YouTube.

In late 2023, two battery stores came online with the LI-BT783 listed in their catalogues, Reuters found. And in two online forums devoted to batteries, participants discussed the power source, despite its lack of commercial availability: "I know this product," a user with the handle Mikevog wrote in April 2023. "It’s got a great datasheet and a great performance.

Reuters could not establish the identity of Mikevog.

The website, the online stores, and the forum discussions bear the hallmark of a deception effort, the former Israeli intelligence officer and two Western security officers told Reuters. The websites have been scrubbed from the web since the pager bombs wreaked havoc in Lebanon, but archived and cached copies are still viewable.

A video promoting the AR-924 pager posted to the Apollo Systems HK YouTube account on December 13, 2022.

Ruing the day they bought the pagers, Hezbollah leaders said they had launched internal investigations to understand how the security breach could happen and identify possible moles.

The group had shifted to pagers at the start of the year after realising that cellphone communications were compromised by Israeli eavesdropping, Reuters previously reported.

Hezbollah's investigations have helped uncover how Israeli agents used an aggressive sales tactic to make sure Hezbollah’s procurement manager chose the AR-924, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

The salesperson who conveyed the offer made a very inexpensive proposition for the pagers, “and kept bringing the price down until he was pulled in,” the person said.

Lebanese authorities have condemned the attacks as a serious violation of Lebanon's sovereignty. On Sept. 19, in his last public speech before he was killed by Israel, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the device blasts could amount to a "declaration of war" and vowed to punish Israel.

Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire since Oct. 8, 2023, when the militant group began launching rockets at Israeli military positions in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas.

In the wake of the device attacks, Israel has launched a full-on war on Hezbollah, including a ground invasion of southern Lebanon and airstrikes that have killed most of its top leadership.

The internal investigation, still under way, suffered a setback on Sept. 28: Eleven days after the pager attack, the senior Hezbollah official tasked with leading the procurement probe, Nabil Kaouk, was himself killed by an Israeli airstrike.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Biden announces $425 million in military aid for Ukraine

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday about efforts to surge security assistance to Ukraine and announced a new $425 million military aid package, the White House said.

The security package includes air defense capability, air-to-ground munitions, armored vehicles and critical munitions, the White House said in a statement.

Zelenskiy, writing on Telegram, expressed gratitude to Biden, both parties of Congress and the American people for the new package and said he spoke to Biden about Kyiv's five-point "victory plan," which he presented to parliament on Wednesday.

"I proposed considering the possibility of joint weapons production," he said. "We also discussed the importance of additional training for Ukrainian soldiers."

Ukraine, he said, thanked the United States "for its readiness to help Ukraine strengthen its positions to compel Russia towards honest diplomacy."

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Moscow responds to Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’

Moscow has dismissed Vladimir Zelensky’s much-touted eight-point ‘victory plan’ as nothing but a “plan for the misfortune of Ukraine,”Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said in a statement.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian leader unveiled his long-promised proposal to Western supporters during an extraordinary parliamentary session. Zelensky laid out five points, including an immediate invitation to join NATO, permission to use Western long-range weapons to strike targets deep in Russia, and continued incursions into the neighboring country’s territory. A further three points remain classified but have supposedly been shared with Kiev’s backers.

Spokeswoman Zakharova responded to the five points of Zelensky’s plan at a press conference, calling them nothing more than a “set of incoherent slogans” and “bloody foam on the lips of a neo-Nazi killer.”

Commenting on Kiev’s “hysteria” about being invited into NATO, she alleged that the only place the West sees for Ukraine in its “security architecture” is “in a coffin and Ukrainian citizens in graves.”

“That is why they brought this clown to power, who was supposed to finish off Ukraine as a state and kill as many Ukrainians as possible,” Zakharova said.

She also questioned Zelensky’s intent to strengthen Ukrainian defenses by “targeted operations in specific places.” The spokeswoman asked why the Ukrainian leader shied away from naming the places and said that Kiev has been “pushing NATO members towards a direct conflict”with Russia by insisting on obtaining permission to use long-range weapons on Russian territory.

“Taken together, all of those points and secret sub-points are not a ‘plan’ for Zelensky’s victory. This is a plan for the misfortune of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people,” Zakharova surmised, adding that it is aimed at “yet another extortion of money and a presentation of [Kiev’s] terrorist capabilities.”

“Today, Zelensky has finally proven to everyone that he hates Ukrainians to such an extent that can be described as Ukrainophobia,” Zakharova concluded.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has responded to Zelensky’s plan by calling it nothing more than a roadmap for the continuation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He insisted that the only way to achieve peace was for the Ukrainian leader to “sober up” and “reflect on the causes which have led to the Ukraine conflict.”

Reuters/RT

It was happenstance I least expected that Monday morning of 1999. I had dressed up to go to work as Editor of Nigerian  Tribune from my new home on the outskirts of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. Moments later, Emmanuel Ayoola, retired Justice of the Supreme Court, drove in, in his yellow 19th century Mercedes Benz car. He alighted to discuss heartily with one of my neighbours. He was obviously in an expansive mood that morning.

I greeted him with reverence he deserved as a man of his stature and standing in legal jurisprudence and society in general.

"Are you the Editor I was told has this imposing building?" he asked with a smile across his lips.

I chuckled, and nodded affirmatively. He shook my hands and started discussing with me as if we had met a decade before. He told me of his undeveloped land behind my house. We bantered a while, then, he drove off

It would take two solid years after that chanced engagement before we would meet again.

However, a divine intervention came in 2003 and shattered the lull in our relationship.

Then President Olusegun Obasanjo had nominated me as a member of the Presidential Action Committee on firearms and light weapons. And Justice Ayoola was named as Chairman of the committee.  His appointment as chairman marked the beginning of a bond that lasted till he passed on August 20, 2024, at the age of 90.

The chemistry  between us became stronger and solidified by the fact the we were both from Ibadan. Besides, I had more time to play with as I had just resigned my appointment with the Nigerian Tribune after 32 years of service to the company and my country. Leaving my job at Nigerian Tribune Newspapers without pension made my future look very bleak.

But God brought Ayoola as my guardian Angel as he used him to reassure me about the future, a future pregnant with opportunities. He took me not just as a member of his great Family but as a close one at that. He made sure I lacked nothing, always meeting me at every point of need throughout the two years that I served on the Committee.

The Committee's assignments took us to all the 36 states of the Federation. It afforded me another opportunity to know every nook and cranny of Nigeria. My first opportunity was with Obafemi Awolowo during the 1983 general elections.

I never travelled alone. I was always riding in the same vehicle with Ayoola. We were so close. As the assignment wound up, I began to have sense of foreboding, thinking that the Committee's assignment would be the last close tie that I would have with Ayoola.

How wrong I was. When he was appointed as Chairman of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission, he beckoned on me again. Though his stay on that beat was brief as Obasanjo appointed him as the second Chairman of Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offenses Commission, ICPC.

It was a tug of war between him and the presidency before Ayoola accepted the offer. He had just been offered a juicy and respectable appointment at the World Court in Hague. To discourage Obasanjo from looking his way, on the ICPC offer, he created some obstacles. He forwarded somewhat impossible conditions to the Presidency, including his acceptance of the job at The Hague. He told me that he didn't see how those prayers would be granted.

So, he waited. The response came the third day, and all the prayers were granted. Obasanjo was looking for a transparent and incorruptible person to take over from the late Justice Mustapha Akanbi, the pioneer Chairman of the ICPC, who rejected  a second term in office.

Ayoola became ICPC Chairman in  2005 and turned things around for better in the fight against corruption. The assignment was easy for him as he told me: "I wrote 80 percent of the charter for the establishment of ICPC." He said he did it pro bono because Akanbi was one of his closest friends.

There were many challenges in the task of fighting corruption. He witnessed many battles of how corruption was fighting back from every sector. But was undaunted. Most garrulous elements were firing from the corridors of power from the presidency and in the main the National Assembly, even to the point of blackmail. Ayoola stood like a rock. He was undaunted. He stood his ground. During the period he was on assignments at the Hague with operational seat in Sierra Leone, Ayoola ensured he put in place an iron cast structure at ICPC that made it easier for him to closely monitor activities at the headquarters in Abuja.

At the initial  stage, my position and duties at ICPC were not clearly defined. However, after few months of deliberations, the then Secretary to the Commission, Tukur Ingawa, came up with the designation of Resident Consultant on Media and Event. I became first occupant of that office.

Ayoola pampered me at ICPC to the extent that members of staff nicknamed  me 2ic. I rode in the same official car with him in the morning to the office and back home at the close of work. Our frequent traveling from Abuja to Ibadan was most pleasurable as we gisted and brainstormed on so many issues I could not disclose here. I'm saving that for my next memoirs,God willing.

Ayoola came up with a novel idea of fighting corruption  through preventive mechanism, using it in pari pasu  with arrest and prosecution of alleged  corrupt elements. As an offshoot of preventive mechanism, came the National Anti-Corruption  Volunteer Corps (NAVC) of which I became its grand commander.

Shortly after Obasanjo’s tenure ended, Ayoola made up his mind to quit. It was a tug of war between him and the late President Musa Yar'adua. Obasanjo told Yar'adua that Ayoola insisted on quitting at the end of his tenure so he could face his international assignments at The Hague squarely.

But Yar’Adua, like Obasanjo, refused to let him go. He, therefore, stayed on to complete his first term in office. Sadly, with six months left for him to quit, Yar’Adua passed on and President  Goodluck Jonathan came in.

I followed Ayoola to President Jonathan's office the day he was to submit his letter of resignation, having refused to seek second term. Jonathan refused to accept the letter, telling Ayoola that he had no one in mind to succeed him. So, Jonathan appealed to him to stay on. He gave Ayoola one week to go and sleep over it. I too chipped in, asking Baba Ayoola to reconsider his decision.   

But Baba appeared to have made up his mind. He told me: "Folu, it is better to quit the stage when the ovation is loudest. I have worked with three Presidents within five years and I have been able to convince myself that this is the time to go. Out there, there are more opportunities to render service to humanity and to serve God."

Indeed, he served God to the end. He was a committed and devout Christian. He authored a book of prayer which he distributed to many faithful and non-Christians free of charge. Myself and Godwin Adama are one of his many disciples. During his chairmanship at the ICPC, it was a daily ritual to pray before leaving his residence and another one as we stepped into his office. At the end of day at work, we prayed.

Ayoola was a workaholic. His daily schedule at work was to attend to various meetings and delegate officers to treat case files. Getting home, he would take his late lunch at 5 p.m. and thereafter retire to have a late siesta. He would wake up at 9 p.m. to take his late dinner and then move to his well stocked study room to work on case files he daily brought home. He would work till 4 a.m., leaving a little time for short snap, after which he would wake up to have his devotion, have his bath, dress up and have his breakfast.  He would wait for me and Adama to join him at breakfast.  It was our daily routine to plan for the day--a caucus meeting- for strategies, and chart new ideas in the fight against corruption. Thereafter, we would move in a convoy to the office.

Ayoola was an extraordinary and very humane person. No one that I knew that came across him that did not gain one thing or the other from him. He ensured that all drivers and house helps were house owners. He gave out personal cars to the needy. He just loved to give. As old as I was, and being one of  his confidants, each time I was leaving, Baba would fish out his cheque book to give me something to take care of my emergency needs. Even when I did not need it, he would say: "Never reject a gift however small  from an elderly friend.  Such gift is from his heart to show his fondness for you."

Baba Ayoola hated liars and lazy people. The other side I noticed of  him was his short temperament.  But his anger never linger. He might get angry with you now, the next moment, he would be welcoming you with a broad smile. He was such a kind-hearted man. As the remains of this highly intelligent and quintessential jurist will be laid to rest on 22 November 2024 in Ibadan Oyo State, I am confident that his soul is resting peacefully with the Lord. May his soul continue to find eternal rest. Adieu Baba. You came, saw and conquered.

** Folu Olamiti writes from Abuja

By now, you have probably seen Seyi, the president’s son, at presidential meetings and functions where he, ideally, has no business. Remember, his father had to ban him from attending the weekly meetings of the Federal Executive Council, saying his access was “undue.” Undeterred, Seyi still showed up at the swearing-in ceremony of Kudirat Kekere-Ekun as the Chief Justice of Nigeria. While his meddlesomeness has spurred some people to wonder if he has any other job besides being “daddy’s boy,” I have also wondered if he is just another self-unaware member of the Nigerian political class or is intentionally shaming his father.

Since his father got into office last year, Seyi has been doing public charity and ensuring he is seen doing so. Through his associates, he has given out relief items to people involved in a fire disaster in Nasarawa, gifted “palliatives” in Abuja, and sponsored some medical outreaches. In September, he donated N500m to victims of the Maiduguri flood. Seyi flew to Borno with a team of associate-sympathizers and was received by the state governor, Babagana Zulum. If Nigeria were not a place where even governors have been thoroughly emasculated into subservience, why would the governor set aside his official duties to host the president’s son? The president’s son is unrecognized by the constitution, and Seyi has no business interloping in official affairs.

Anyway, one of the striking parts about Seyi’s visit was not just the money he donated but the speech he gave. It was more thoughtful than the perfunctory one his father had delivered a week earlier when he too visited. Seyi also assured the victims of the flood that he—or his foundation―would be further intervening until they were back on their feet. But in what capacity would he be making this “further” intervention when, as the son of the president, he is neither a private individual nor possesses an official designation? He cannot claim to be a neutral observer who is merely concerned about people’s welfare because the basis on which he does what he does is his filial connection to the president. If he were not the president’s son, Zulum would not have rolled out the carpet to receive him in Borno. Yet, it was not his place to intervene in the Borno crisis. He has no business doing any of these things.

Just last week, Seyi announced that he would once again be saving Nigerians from a bad fate. A foundation he had founded said they would be alleviating the financial hardship Nigerians face while procuring prescribed medication by creating a drug bank that would serve over 10,000 indigent people in 60 hospitals around the country. Just like in Borno, Seyi’s speech, read by a representative, as the scheme launched was compassionate, better than the yawnfest his father reads on national television on the few days in a year he deigns to talk to people. Seyi’s speechwriter managed to throw in all the right phrases about the burden people face accessing life-saving medications. This drug bank, they say, is more than medicine but a “commitment to dignity, to equality, and to the fundamental human right to healthcare.”

Now, that is where the problem lies. It is not enough that the president’s son is taking up initiatives that should be carried out by designated government officials—and in the process spending a humongous amount of money no one knows where he gets it from—but he also subtly disrespects his father in the process. Because there is no way Seyi is talking about the necessity of his drug bank initiative and the “added weight of crushing financial hardship” people confront without indicting his father whose poorly wrought policies have so impoverished the populace that they now need the son’s charity.

A couple of days ago, Seyi also shared bags of rice branded with his visage to some poor women who were then pressed to pray for him for his generosity. You know that it was not those women’s prayers he needed; he just wanted to be seen as a benefactor. Look, if Seyi truly cared about those women, he would not give them rice. He would face his father and tell him to take his paws off their destiny.

One can, of course, argue that Seyi has a prior record of charity, but still doing it especially while his father’s administration is falling apart gives the impression that Seyi is trying too hard to be seen as the successful son of a failing man.

Seyi’s adult life has been tied to his father; everything he has ever achieved professionally was muscled for him through daddy’s totalitarian politics. Given how that same father is diminishing in value and therefore unlikely to hand over valuable political capital to his children as their inheritance, the hope of a dynasty on which politicians’ scions calibrate their future political ambitions is tanking. The son seems to have read the handwriting scribbled everywhere and wants to cut loose to build something apart from daddy. That is why he jumps from Maiduguri to Ibadan, trying to prove he has the compassion—even if not the capacity—his father sorely lacks.

Seyi’s struggle to win the hearts of the folk even as his father is losing them is not exactly a political patricide—it is doubtable if he is even gutsy enough to even dream of attempting that—but impressioneering a better image for himself and generating some social capital, that while can be related to Tinubu, is still not Tinubu. While the savviness is consistent with the character of high-stakes politics, Seyi is not doing anything excitingly different from the jeun sókè jeun sápò political calculations that made his father. One would think a man that young would depart from his father’s politics of orifice that swings back and forth between mouths and agbada pockets, to try something refreshingly new, but Seyi seems wedded to the old and, frankly, boring methods of giving people a mere 0.000000001 percent of what has been stolen from them.

His aspirations might be legitimate enough, but there are challenges ahead. There is a good reason dynasties hardly hold up in this part of the world. First is the issue of the competitors. Far too many people want what Seyi’s father has, but since they know they will not get it, they have settled for subordinate positions. While they may have submitted to Tinubu’s powerful grip after serially losing in the power game against him, they are somewhere seething, raging, and biding their time. When the time comes to bid for the throne, they will easily oust daddy’s boy. They are far more desperate and more practiced in the Game of Thrones, and he is no match for them. Besides, our people too get tired of serving successive generations. When that time comes, they will remind him that they cannot serve his father and still serve him. Whatever they owe their family patriarch must be considered paid off at some point.

Second is that money, the basis on which the public relates to the Tinubus is the flimsiest of all the grounds on which one can build a lasting relationship. Love that flows with the tide of money will ebb when it ebbs. The Tinubu family is one that nobody will love if not for their money. That, of course, includes Mrs Tinubu who needed to hand out huge sums of money just to stimulate interest in her farming and fabric projects. Even now that she has had a Nebuchadnezzar-sized statue carved for her, nobody who has not been pre-paid will bow before her graven image. So, yes, Seyi too can try his desperate best but the love he will get will come with a receipt.

Punch