GABINATION PERCUSSION��

(CNN) -- Two bombs struck a large military airport outside the Syrian capital of Damascus on Sunday night, the main rebel army said, with the explosions heard throughout the city. The first explosion was near a checkpoint near the main door of the al-Mazzeh airport, and the second was near an exterior wall, said Louay Mikdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army. It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the blasts. Source: CNN CNN's Fred Pleitgen in Damascus saw one of the explosions and described a white flash followed by a large plume of smoke and fire. It was not known how many people were hurt, but Mikdad said witnesses told of "many ambulances" taking away the wounded. After the explosions, mortar bombs were fired from inside the airport into surrounding neighborhoods, Mikdad said. The targets weren't known. Besides the military airport, the al-Mazzeh area is home to embassies, security buildings and the homes of some members of Syrian...

On Monday, June 10, at the third round of the 2013 ministerial platform in Abuja, Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, spoke glowingly about the Nigerian economy, saying the fundamentals were strong and that the economy was buoyant beyond danger. But a few hours later, on Tuesday, when all the doors were closed, the minister sang a different tune. She told her colleagues in government point blank that the Nigerian economy is shaky despite the official fundamentals and that drastic steps are needed to save it from collapse. Mrs Okonjo-Iweala spoke at the 50th meeting of the 15-member Federal Government Economic Implementation Team held behind closed-doors at the presidential villa. The implementation team is headed by the minister, and meets every week. It was established by President Goodluck Jonathan to oversee the effective implementation of decisions of the Economic Management Team chaired by the president. Other members of...

Unless there is a last minute rush for tickets, the group game on Monday between Africa champions, Nigeria, and their Oceania counterparts, Tahiti, is set to get the unenviable tag as the least watched match by soccer fans at the FIFA Confederations Cup which starts this weekend in Brazil. A breakdown of the tickets sold so far by the organisers shows that only a little over 17,000 tickets has been sold so far for the Monday game billed for the stadium while well over 30, 000 tickets remain unsold. Conversely, the other opening games that pairs Brazil against Japan, Italy against Mexico and Spain against Uruguay have all been sold out with no more tickets available for the respective fixtures, with the least of them commanding an expected crowd of 39,430. The relatively few tickets sold has been linked to their relatively unknown opponents, Tahiti, who are only debuting in a FIFA organised tournament as Nigeria has in the past been regarded as one o...