Russia was slapped Monday with a four-year ban from international sports events, including next summer’s Tokyo Olympics, over a longstanding doping scandal, although its athletes will still be able to compete if they can show they are clean competitors. The ruling by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive committee means that Russia’s flag, name and anthem will not appear at the Tokyo Games, and the country also could be stripped of hosting world championships in Olympic sports. The sanctions are the harshest punishment yet for Russian state authorities who were accused of tampering with a Moscow laboratory database. Russia’s anti-doping agency…

Oluwatosin Adesokan It is 2019 and the Nigeria Scrabble national team has won the World English Scrabble Players Association Championship [WESPAC] title a third time. Since the inception of WESPAC in 1991, no other African nation has won the championship until Nigeria did in 2015 and then in 2017. In the finals held in Goa, India, thirty countries were represented with Nigeria featuring eleven players and officials. Two Nigerians were ranked in the top ten in the competition while others were ranked in the top thirty. The coach of the Nigeria Scrabble team—Prince Anthony Ikolo also won the title in…