• Vessel with 100+ aboard struck submerged tree stump.
• Incident occurred near Gausawa in Borgu district.
• Dozens rescued, 10 in serious condition.

At least 60 people have died and dozens were rescued after a boat carrying over 100 passengers capsized in Nigeria’s north-central Niger State, local officials said on Wednesday.

The vessel departed from Tungan Sule in Malale district on Tuesday morning, heading to Dugga for a condolence visit, when it struck a submerged tree stump near Gausawa community in Borgu Local Government Area.

Abdullahi Baba Ara, chair of Borgu Local Government Area, said the casualty figure was rising.

“The death toll of the boat incident has risen to 60,” Baba Ara told Reuters. “Ten people have been found in serious condition, and many are still being sought.”

The incident occurred around 11am (1000 GMT).

Sa’adu Inuwa Muhammad, the district head of Shagumi, told Reuters he was at the scene shortly after the accident.

“I was at the scene yesterday, around 12pm until 4pm. The boat carried more than 100 people,” Muhammad said. “We were able to recover 31 corpses from the river. The boat was also recovered and removed.”

He added that four victims were buried on Tuesday in accordance with Islamic rites, and that women and children made up the majority of the deceased.

The Niger State Emergency Management Agency said emergency personnel and local divers were searching for the victims. It confirmed 29 deaths so far with 50 rescues, and two missing persons. The agency said the boat was overloaded and collided with a tree stump, causing it to capsize.

Boat accidents are frequent in Nigeria, especially during the rainy season, due to lax safety enforcement, overcrowding, and the use of poorly maintained vessels.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised his country’s full backing for Russia’s war effort, calling it a “fraternal duty”, the country’s state media KCNA reported on Thursday.

The North Korean leader made the pledge during talks with President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, where both leaders attended a grand military parade alongside China’s Xi Jinping.

Kim and Putin held a meeting on Wednesday on the sidelines of China’s celebrations to mark the formal surrender of Japan in World War Two in Beijing.

The pair joined Chinese President Xi Jinping at a massive military parade, marking the first such gathering of the three countries’ leaders since the early days of the Cold War.

Kim’s Beijing trip gave him his first chance to meet Putin and Xi together, as well as mingle with more than two dozen other national leaders who attended the events.

State media photos showed Kim standing or walking with Putin and Xi side by side, smiling.

“Comrade Kim Jong Un and President Putin exchanged candid opinions on important international and regional issues,” KCNA said.

Putin “highly praised” North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine and said relations between the two countries were “special ones of trust, friendship and alliance”, according to KCNA.

North Korea has sent soldiers, artillery ammunition and missiles to Russia to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine.

South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated this week that some 2,000 North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia have been killed.

It believes North Korea plans to send another 6,000 troops, with about 1,000 combat soldiers already in Russia.

Kim and Putin discussed in detail their long-term partnership plans and reaffirmed their “steadfast will” to strengthen bilateral relations, KCNA said.

Last year, the two leaders signed a mutual defence treaty, which calls for each side to assist the other in the event of an armed attack.

NEW YORK: A US judge has struck down President Donald Trump’s decision to slash $2 billion in funding to Harvard University, calling the move a political attack dressed up as a fight against anti-Semitism and bias at the Ivy League institution.

Harvard had sued in April to restore more than $2 billion in frozen funds. The administration argued its move was legally justified due to Harvard’s alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, particularly during campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The cuts to Harvard’s funding stream forced it to freeze hiring and pause major research programmes, especially in public health and medical fields — delays that experts warned risked American lives.

“The Court vacates and sets aside the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters as violative of the First Amendment,” Boston federal judge Allison Burroughs said in her ruling.

“All freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters on or after April 14, 2025 are vacated and set aside.”

Burroughs noted Harvard’s own admissions in court filings that there was an issue of anti-Semitism on campus — but said the administration’s cuts had little relevance to the problem.

‘Smokescreen’ for university ‘assault’

“It is clear, even based solely on Harvard’s own admissions, that Harvard has been plagued by anti-Semitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue,” she wrote.

“That said, there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and anti-Semitism.”

The judge, appointed by Democratic former president Barack Obama, said the evidence suggested Trump “used anti-Semitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”

Cases brought by both Harvard and the American Association of University Professors against the Trump administration’s measures were combined.

Trump has sought to move the case to the Court of Federal Claims rather than leave it in the federal court in Boston, just miles from Harvard’s Cambridge campus.

The Ivy League institution has been a key target in Trump’s campaign against elite universities after it resisted his demands to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.”

Trump and his allies accuse Harvard and other top universities of being unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism, particularly around protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The government has also gone after Harvard’s ability to host international students, a vital source of income, who made up 27 percent of total enrolment in the 2024-2025 academic year.