Headline

Help! US Police After My Life – US-Based Nigerian Cries Out

Published

2 years ago

August 26, 2023

Thirty-two-year-old Adaeze Eluka, a Nigerian based in California, the United States of America, has raised the alarm over alleged threat to her life by some American policemen from Oakland Police Department , California City.

Popularly known as Tiana Ada, the Gospel Recording Artist who has worked as a private guard and a social media influencer, alleged that five policemen had been intimidating and harassing her for some months now. She traced the genesis of her predicament to February 2023, when two of the policemen , one of them a white and the other an Indian, hit her car that was parked in front of her house in Hayward city, California.

She however lamented that all efforts to get them repair her car had proved abortive, alleging that the cops always tried to be steps ahead of her, in their bid to frustrate and cow her into giving up.

Not giving in to the intimidation, Eluka posted her accounts on her Instagram page about four times, in order to get the response of the US government or a concerned law firm that would come to her rescue,yet, the needed help was far from reach, according g to her.

At the moment, Eluka said she could not be reached via whats-app, or reach out via same platform and others, as the policemen had allegedly disconnected her gallery and microphone from all her social media accounts.

More worrisome is the fact that she further alleged that they had attempted to poison her food after breaking into her house,apparently to end her life.

She therefore, reached out to Vanguard to raise the alarm, with a view to getting prompt help before her case is recorded among blacks killed by policemen in the United States of America.

My story

Recalling one of her numerous video posts on the matter, on her Instagram page: tianaada 2, she said “I have been trying to get the government to investigate and nobody has actually seen my videos and my evidence. It’s because they are Police and of course I’m black.

“On February 19, 2023, the guy in the picture(on her instagrame page)Pang Ying Le , intentionally hit my vehicle at the back. I mean ,I literally saw him accelerate to intentionally hit my car. Shortly after an insurance agent, a Lady, named Brenda, called me, asking me to sign some documents for compensation which included that I had bodily injuries, but I did not , because I never told her that I had.

“I believe they were trying to frame me for insurance crime or something. These cops are busy trying to influence people with public funds. Because I rejected to sign the document for compensation, my car has not been fixed till date.

Drugged food

“They did a lot of things to me, they took it too personal to the point of coming into my house to drug my food and damage my wigs. I have videos I posted on Instagram already on Tianaada2”.

Asked how they got into her house, she responded, “they got in through my bedroom window, because it was opened and the spare key of my house was in my car so I believe that was how they got into my car.

And the crazy thing is that the more I screw the lock of my door , the more they spoil it.

“One time I unscrewed it totally and I saw some brown stuffs inside the lock.

“They messed up my wigs , my medication got swapped and all of a sudden I started growing mustache and I’m not a hairy person. I hardly even grow hair in my armpit. I’m scared to eat my food because recently when I eat my food I sleep off.

“Before I knew it, they started coming into my house to plant Cameras and they started with the narrative that I’m crazy.

”These are police officers, and the crazy thing is that they are lying to everyone so that people don’t know the true story. I don’t know if someone gave out an information about me to them. I believe every policeman has a guideline on how he should operate. And I’m very sure they don’t give police the authority to hit your car in front of your house and walk away.

Botched attempts

”As I was trying to look for a law firm to sue them, they intercepted my calls and hindered me from getting legal help. When I called the FBI, they intercepted the calls and hindered me from reaching out.

”When I eventually found one firm, they went there to compromise the receptionist, named Guerero( other name witheld).

”The craziest part was one of the days I went searching for a law firm, a girl stopped me from getting into the building. When I did, the girl threatened she was going to press charges, that I assaulted her and a manager in the building.

“One of the policemen came dressed in San Francisco Police uniform. He dragged me to the psychiatric clinic at Saint Francis hospital at San Francisco over the allegation by the law firm girl. Again they wanted to drug me there, by insisting I must eat, but I refused.

At the end of the day, after all the tests were conducted on me, the doctors said I was fine and could go.

“When they saw I was posting evidence, they disconnected my gallery and phone microphone completely from all social media. They even bugged my line, so that when I tried reaching the authorities, they would intercept the calls, because the Police have the privilege of intercepting calls being government officials.

“The video evidence I have posted so far can be watched on TikTok:tiana_ada or instagram: tianaada2. However, at the moment I am unable to post more evidence because my gallery and microphone got completely disconnected from all my social media accounts .

“ I have not been able to go out anymore because each time I do, they would be stalking me. And I have not worked through out this year 2023. I feed off the rent I receive from my tenant (roommate) because I own the place”.

I am appealing to the US government to come to my help”, she stated.

Efforts to get the reaction of the Oakland Police Department Chief, California, failed, as the email sent was returned undelivered.

VANGUARD

Headline

Hiroshima Marks 80 Years As US-Russia Nuclear Tensions Rise

Published

6 hours ago

August 7, 2025

Editor

Japan marked 80 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Wednesday with a ceremony reminding the world of the horrors unleashed, as sabre-rattling between the United States and Russia keeps the nuclear “Doomsday Clock” close to midnight.

A silent prayer was held at 8:15 am (2315 GMT), the moment when US aircraft Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” over the western Japanese city on August 6, 1945.

On a sweltering morning, hundreds of black-clad officials, students and survivors laid flowers at the memorial cenotaph, with the ruins of a domed building in the background, a stark reminder of the horrors that unfolded.

In a speech, Hiroshima mayor Kazumi Matsui warned of “an accelerating trend toward military buildup around the world”, against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the chaos in the Middle East.

“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” he said.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said it was Japan’s mission “to take the lead… toward a world without nuclear weapons”.

The final death toll of the Hiroshima attack would hit around 140,000 people, killed not just by the colossal blast and the ball of fire, but also later by the radiation.

Three days after “Little Boy”, on August 9, another atomic bomb killed 74,000 people in Nagasaki. Imperial Japan surrendered on August 15, bringing an end to World War II.

Today, Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis of 1.2 million but the attacks live on in the memories of many.

On the eve of the ceremony, people began lining up to pay their respects to the victims in front of the cenotaph.

Before dawn on Wednesday, families who lost loved ones in the attack also came to pray.

Yoshie Yokoyama, 96, who arrived in a wheelchair with her grandson, told reporters that her parents and grandparents were bomb victims.

“My grandfather died soon after the bombing, while my father and mother both died after developing cancer. My parents-in-law also died, so my husband couldn’t see them again when he came back from battlefields after the war.

“People are still suffering,” she added.

Wednesday’s ceremony was set to include a record of around 120 countries and regions including, for the first time, Taiwanese and Palestinian representatives.

The United States — which has never formally apologised for the bombings — was represented by its ambassador to Japan. Russia and China were absent.

Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots organisation that last year won the Nobel Peace Prize, is representing the dwindling number of survivors, known as hibakusha.

As of March, there were 99,130 hibakusha, according to the Japanese health ministry, with the average age of 86.

“I want foreign envoys to visit the peace memorial museum and understand what happened,” the group’s co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki told local media ahead of the commemorations.

Pope Leo XIV said in a statement that “in our time of mounting global tensions and conflicts”, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained “living reminders of the profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion”.

– Younger generation –
The attacks remain the only time atomic bombs have been used in wartime.

Kunihiko Sakuma, 80, who survived the blasts as a baby, told AFP he was hopeful that there could eventually be a nuclear-free world.

“The younger generation is working hard for that end,” he said ahead of the ceremony.

But in January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” shifted to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest in its 78-year history.

The clock symbolising humanity’s distance from destruction was last moved to 90 seconds to midnight over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia and the United States account for around 90 percent of the world’s over 12,000 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

SIPRI warned in June that “a dangerous new nuclear arms race is emerging at a time when arms control regimes are severely weakened,” with nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states modernising their arsenals.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump said that he had ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines following an online spat with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Headline

Rare 1937 ‘Hobbit’ Discovered In House Clearance Sells For $57,000

Published

7 hours ago

August 7, 2025

Editor

A rare first-edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” sold for 43,000 pounds ($57,000) at auction on Wednesday, after it was found during a house clearance in South-West England.

Purchased by a private collector in the United Kingdom, the book is one of 1,500 original copies of the British author’s seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937.

Of those, only “a few hundred are believed to still remain”, according to the auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the book on a bookcase at a home in Bristol.

Bidders from around the world drove the price up by more than four times what the auction house expected for the manuscript.

“It’s a wonderful result for a very special book,” said Auctioneum rare books specialist Caitlin Riley.

“The surviving books from the initial print run are now considered some of the most sought-after books in modern literature,” Auctioneum said in a statement.

Auctioneum unearthed the book during a routine house clearance after its owner passed away.

“Nobody knew it was there,” Riley said. “It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase.”

“It was clearly an early Hobbit at first glance, so I just pulled it out and began to flick through it, never expecting it to be a true first edition,” she said.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she added, calling it an “unimaginably rare find”.

The copy is bound in light green cloth and features rare black-and-white illustrations by Tolkien, who created his beloved Middle-earth universe while he was a professor at the University of Oxford.

The book was passed down in the family library of Hubert Priestley, a botanist connected to the university.

“It is likely that both men knew each other,” according to Auctioneum, which said Priestley and Tolkien shared mutual correspondence with author C.S. Lewis, who was also at Oxford.

“The Hobbit”, which was followed by the epic series “The Lord of the Rings”, has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide.

The sagas were turned into a hit movie franchise in the 2000s.

A first edition of “The Hobbit” with a handwritten note in Elvish by the author sold for £137,000 at Sotheby’s in June 2015.

AFP

Headline

Relief For Applicants As Germany Eases Visa Process, Opens Visa Centres In Nigeria, Others

Published

8 hours ago

August 6, 2025

Editor

Germany has expanded its Schengen visa services by launching four new application centres in Africa and the Middle East, including two in Nigeria.

The centres, located in Abuja, Lagos (Nigeria), Yaoundé (Cameroon), and Nicosia (Cyprus), are part of a new seven-year partnership between Germany’s Federal Foreign Office and VFS Global, the international visa processing firm.

Until now, Nigerians applying for German Schengen visas had to go through the German Embassy in Abuja or the Consulate General in Lagos, where limited capacity and high demand often caused delays and long appointment wait times.

The new visa centres are expected to significantly ease the process, cut down on waiting periods, and improve overall access for applicants.

Germany continues to be a major destination for Africans and Middle Easterners pursuing education, healthcare, tourism, and job opportunities.

Meanwhile, VFS Global has issued a warning to the public about fake websites and individuals offering fraudulent visa appointments for a fee.

Recent figures indicate Nigeria had a 45.9% Schengen visa rejection rate in 2024—the third-highest globally after Bangladesh.