A HUGE heavy metal band has announced their first UK show in over a decade, after they retired from touring.
The 70s band, who who are best known for We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock, are heading back on the road – and they are heading to the UK.
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A huge heavy metal band are coming out of tour retirement and heading to the UKCredit: Getty70s rockers Twisted Sister are set to perform live againCredit: GettyLead singer Dee Snider confirmed they were touring to celebrate 50 years of the bandCredit: Getty
Formed in New Jersey in the 70s, American rockers Twisted Sister are coming out of tour retirement and making a stop in Wales.
The much-loved band revealed in September they were heading back out on the road again, after nearly a decade of not touring.
Twisted Sister, who are headed up by Dee Snider, have now announced their first UK show which will see them headline the Welsh festival Steelhouse.
Organisers have brought in the legendary heavy metal band to celebrate 15 years of the festival – which next year will take place from July 24 to 26.
They will take to the stage at the iconic Welsh festival, which is held at the mountainous Hafod-y-Dafal Farm, Aberbeeg, Ebbw Vale.
Speaking about booking Twisted Sister, Steelhouse promoters Max and Mike said: “We thought 15 years was worth celebrating in the biggest possible way.
“And what better way to do that with one of the most iconic names in metal – Twisted f***ing Sister!
“To have them come and celebrate their milestone 50 years with us is an absolute and unbelievable honour.”
The statement ended: “When Dee Snider came and laid waste to Steelhouse a decade ago – and more than any other headliner, fundamentally got what we were trying to do as an independent rock festival – we hoped that perhaps he would one day return with the band he made his name with… In our 15th year and their 50th, this is coming to pass… Twisted Sister on The Mountain is going to be huge!”
Other bands confirmed for Steelhouse 2026 include The Temperance Movement, plus Reef, Alien Ant Farm, Tyketto, Von Hertzen Brothers, Darren Wharton’s Renegade, Mason Hill, Dan Byrne, Luke Morley, Anthony Gomes, King Kraken, Blue Nation and more.
Twisted Sister have only played one live show since 2016, when they temporarily reunited for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2023.
But they announced in September that they would be heading back out on tour.
At the time, the band revealed that their line-up had changed, as longtime bassist Mark Mendoza won’t be on the tour.
Instead, Russell Pzütto, who has played with the band in the past, will be joining for the new shows.
They are going back on tour to celebrate a HUGE milestone in the band’s long career.
“If you’re lucky enough to be in a band that people still want to see after fifty years(!), how can you not answer the call?” lead singer Dee teased.
“In 2026, Twisted F***ing Sister will hit stages around the world because WE STILL WANNA ROCK!!”
Dee and the band haven’t played in the UK for a decadeCredit: Getty
A MAJOR new museum is opening and it will be the largest archaeology museum in the world.
The Grand Egyptian Museum based in the winter sun spot of Cairo, will officially open to the public this weekend, after a decade of set backs.
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The Grand Egyptian Museum based in Cairo, Egypt will open this weekendCredit: ReutersThe museum has experienced more than a decade of delayed openingsCredit: AFPInside, visitors can learn about ancient Egyptian civilisationCredit: AFP
The new museum traces the history of ancient Egyptian civilisation and cost around $1billion (£761million) to build.
One of the main attractions are the Tutankhamun Galleries, which are home to 5,000 objects that were discovered when the famous pharaoh’s tomb was back in 1922.
Visitors will even be able to see his golden coffin, discovered more than a century ago.
In another wing, visitors will find two of King Khufu’s (the pharaoh who commissioned the construction of the Pyramid of Giza) solar boats, which were found near the Pyramids.
And if you want a glimpse of the pyramids, just look out the building’s sprawling windows.
The galleries are split by eras of Egyptian civilisation and include Predynastic, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, the Late Kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Roman Period.
Throughout the museum, there are many interactive features such as pyramid building and papyrus making, and there is a children’s museum too.
According to Time Out, the museum features around 250,000 triangular stone pieces that make up its north facade.
There is then a pyramid-shaped entrance, with gold hieroglyphics.
As you enter, you will then see a huge atrium with an 11 metre tall statue of Ramses II – the pharaoh of Egypt between 1279 and 1213 BCE.
Also in the atrium, is a collection of restaurants and shops.
In total, the museum is the same size as 93 football pitches and once it is fully open, will house over 100,000 artefacts.
After exploring the museum, you can then head to the Pyramids of Giza which are just over a mile away.
Ahmed Youssel, CEO of the Egyptian Tourism Authority, told Time Out: “It’s not a museum, it’s a cultural hub.
“You don’t see history. You live history, you experience history.
This includes seeing 5,000 objects from Tutankhamun’s tombCredit: GettyThe museum also looks out to the Pyramids, which are just over a mile awayCredit: AFP
“That’s the idea. When we build new museums, we have this concept of virtual reality, augmented reality – electronic things everywhere.”
The museum was originally meant to open back in 2013, but it has been delayed several times due to a variety of reasons including politics, regional conflict, budget and the Covid-19 pandemic.
And last year it then opened for its soft launch, ahead of the official opening this weekend.
Tickets to the museum cost £23.36 per adult and £11.76 per child, and they can either be bought in advance online or at the museum.
Cairo has highs of 21C during the winter months, and lows of around 11C.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump’s comments Thursday suggesting the United States will restart its testing of nuclear weapons upends decades of American policy in regards to the bomb, but come as Washington’s rivals have been expanding and testing their nuclear-capable arsenals.
Nuclear weapons policy, once thought to be a relic of the Cold War, increasingly has come to the fore as Russia has made repeated atomic threats to both the U.S. and Europe during its war on Ukraine. Moscow also acknowledged this week testing a nuclear-powered-and-capable cruise missile called the Burevestnik, code-named Skyfall by NATO, and a nuclear-armed underwater drone.
China is building more ground-based nuclear missile silos. Meanwhile, North Korea just unveiled a new intercontinental ballistic missile it plans to test, part of a nuclear-capable arsenal likely able to reach the continental U.S.
The threat is starting to bleed into popular culture as well, most recently with director Kathryn Bigelow ‘s new film “A House of Dynamite.”
But what does Trump’s announcement mean and how would it affect what’s happening now with nuclear tensions? Here’s what to know.
Trump’s comments came in a post on his Truth Social website just before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In it, Trump noted other countries testing weapons and wrote: “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”
The president’s post raised immediate questions. America’s nuclear arsenal is maintained by the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within it — not the Defense Department. The Energy Department has overseen testing of nuclear weapons since its creation in 1977. Two other agencies before it — not the Defense Department — conducted tests.
Trump also claimed the U.S. “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country.” Russia is believed to have 5,580 nuclear warheads, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, while the U.S. has 5,225. Those figures include so-called “retired” warheads waiting to be dismantled.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute further breaks the warhead total down, with the U.S. having 1,770 deployed warheads with 1,930 in reserve. Russia has 1,718 deployed warheads and 2,591 in reserve.
The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s atomic warheads.
U.S. last carried out a nuclear test in 1992
From the time America conducted its “Trinity” nuclear bomb detonation in 1945 to 1992, the U.S. detonated 1,030 atomic bombs in tests — the most of any country. Those figures do not include the two nuclear weapons America used against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
The first American tests were atmospheric, but they were then moved underground to limit nuclear fallout. Scientists have come to refer to such tests as “shots.” The last such “shot,” called Divider as part of Operation Julin, took place Sept. 23, 1992, at the Nevada National Security Sites, a sprawling compound some 65 miles from Las Vegas.
America halted its tests for a couple of reasons. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. There have been tests since the treaty, however — by India, North Korea and Pakistan, the world’s newest nuclear powers. The United Kingdom and France also have nuclear weapons, while Israel long has been suspected of possessing atomic bombs.
But broadly speaking, the U.S. also had decades of data from tests, allowing it to use computer modeling and other techniques to determine whether a weapon would successfully detonate. Every president since Barack Obama has backed plans to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, whose maintenance and upgrading will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The U.S. relies on the so-called “nuclear triad” — ground-based silos, aircraft-carried bombs and nuclear-tipped missiles in submarines at sea — to deter others from launching their weapons against America.
Restarting testing raises additional questions
If the U.S. restarted nuclear weapons testing, it isn’t immediately clear what the goal would be. Nonproliferation experts have warned any scientific objective likely would be eclipsed by the backlash to a test — and possibly be a starting gun for other major nuclear powers to begin their own widespread testing.
“Restarting the U.S. nuclear testing program could be one of the most consequential policy actions the Trump administration undertakes — a U.S. test could set off an uncontrolled chain of events, with other countries possibly responding with their own nuclear tests, destabilizing global security, and accelerating a new arms race,” experts warned in a February article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
“The goal of conducting a fast-tracked nuclear test can only be political, not scientific. … It would give Russia, China and other nuclear powers free rein to restart their own nuclear testing programs, essentially without political and economic fallout.”
Any future U.S. test likely would take place in Nevada at the testing sites, but a lot of work likely would need to go into the sites to prepare them given it’s been over 30 years since the last test. A series of slides made for a presentation at Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2018 laid out the challenges, noting that in the 1960s the city of Mercury, Nevada — at the testing grounds — had been the second-largest city in Nevada.
On average, 20,000 people had been on site to organize and prepare for the tests. That capacity has waned in the decades since.
“One effects shot would require from two to four years to plan and execute,” the presentation reads. “These were massive undertakings.”
Consumer confidence is dropping. The national debt is $38 trillion and climbing like the yodeling mountain climber in that “The Price is Right” game. Donald Trump’s approval ratings are falling and the U.S. is getting more and more restless as 2025 comes to a close.
What’s a wannabe strongman to do to prop up his regime?
Attack Latin America, of course!
U.S. war planes have bombed small ships in international waters off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia since September with extrajudicial zeal. The Trump administration has claimed those vessels were packed with drugs manned by “narco-terrorists” and have released videos for each of the 10 boats-and-counting it has incinerated to make the actions seem as normal as a mission in “Call of Duty.”
“Narco-terrorists intending to bring poison to our shores, will find no safe harbor anywhere in our hemisphere,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media and who just ordered an aircraft carrier currently stationed in the Mediterranean to set up shop in the Caribbean. It’ll meet up with 10,000 troops stationed there as part of one of the area’s biggest U.S. deployments in decades, all in the name of stopping a drug epidemic that has ravaged red America for the past quarter century.
This week, Trump authorized covert CIA actions in Venezuela and revealed he wants to launch strikes against land targets where his people say Latin American cartels operate. Who cares whether the host countries will give permission? Who cares about American laws that state only Congress — not the president — can declare war against our enemies?
It’s Latin America, after all.
The military buildup, bombing and threat of more in the name of liberty is one of the oldest moves in the American foreign policy playbook. For more than two centuries, the United States has treated Latin America as its personal piñata, bashing it silly for goods and not caring about the ugly aftermath.
“It is known to all that we derive [our blessings] from the excellence of our institutions,” James Monroe concluded in the 1823 speech that set forth what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, which essentially told the rest of the world to leave the Western Hemisphere to us. “Ought we not, then, to adopt every measure which may be necessary to perpetuate them?”
Our 19th century wars of expansion, official and not, won us territories where Latin Americans lived — Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, but especially Mexicans — that we ended up treating as little better than serfs. We have occupied nations for years and imposed sanctions on others. We have propped up puppets and despots and taken down democratically elected governments with the regularity of the seasons.
The culmination of all these actions were the mass migrations from Latin America that forever altered the demographics of the United States. And when those people — like my parents — came here, they were immediately subjected to a racism hard-wired into the American psyche, which then justified a Latin American foreign policy bent on domination, not friendship.
Nothing rallies this country historically like sticking it to Latinos, whether in their ancestral countries or here. We’re this country’s perpetual scapegoats and eternal invaders, with harming gringos — whether by stealing their jobs, moving into their neighborhoods, marrying their daughters or smuggling drugs — supposedly the only thing on our mind.
That’s why when Trump ran on an isolationist platform last year, he never meant the region — of course not. The border between the U.S. and Latin America has never been the fence that divides the U.S. from Mexico or our shores. It’s wherever the hell we say it is.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23 at U.N. headquarters.
(Pamela Smith / Associated Press)
That’s why the Trump administration is banking on the idea that it can get away with its boat bombings and is salivating to escalate. To them, the 43 people American missile strikes have slaughtered on the open sea so far aren’t humans — and anyone who might have an iota of sympathy or doubt deserves aggression as well.
That’s why when Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of murder because one of the strikes killed a Colombian fisherman with no ties to cartels, Trump went on social media to lambaste Petro’s “fresh mouth,” accuse him of being a “drug leader” and warn the head of a longtime American ally he “better close up these killing fields [cartel bases] immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”
The only person who can turn down the proverbial temperature on this issue is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who should know all the bad that American imperialism has wrought on Latin America. The U.S. treated his parents’ homeland of Cuba like a playground for decades, propping up one dictator after another until Cubans revolted and Fidel Castro took power. A decades-long embargo that Trump tightened upon assuming office the second time has done nothing to free the Cuban people and instead made things worse.
Instead, Rubio is the instigator. He’s pushing for regime change in Venezuela, chumming it up with self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and cheering on Trump’s missile attacks.
“Bottom line, these are drug boats,” Rubio told reporters recently with Trump by his side. “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.”
You might ask: Who cares? Cartels are bad, drugs are bad, aren’t they? Of course. But every American should oppose every time a suspected drug boat launching from Latin America is destroyed with no questions asked and no proof offered. Because every time Trump violates yet another law or norm in the name of defending the U.S. and no one stops him, democracy erodes just a little bit more.
This is a president, after all, who seems to dream of treating his enemies, including American cities, like drug boats.
Few will care, alas. It’s Latin America, after all.
Food Network announced Monday that its long-running weekend culinary talk show “The Kitchen” is coming to an end. The final episode of the series, co-hosted by network favorites Sunny Anderson, Katie Lee Biegel, Jeff Mauro, Geoffrey Zakarian and recurring guest Alex Guarnaschelli, will air Dec. 13.
“It’s the end of an era,” Biegel said in her Instagram story sharing the news. “Thank you so much to all of our fans. The Kitchen was the greatest professional honor of my life and I will be forever grateful.” Biegel has served as one of the show’s co-hosts since its 2014 premiere.
Mauro, who has also been with the show since the beginning, echoed her sentiments on his own Instagram post.
“I always knew what we had was special — rare, a unicorn, an anomaly,” Mauro said in a lengthy caption thanking fans and colleagues. “I got to spend a dozen years with my best friends — cooking, laughing, and eating life-changing bites from some of the world’s greatest chefs and cooks.”
Currently in its 40th season, the Daytime Emmy-nominated cooking-themed talk show featured its hosts and guests sharing recipes, discussing food trends and offering other food tips. In addition to celebrated chefs and culinary personalities, “The Kitchen” opened its doors to various actors, musicians and celebrities.
“For over a decade Sunny, Katie, Jeff, Geoffrey and more recently Alex have engaged audiences with their individual and distinct food sensibilities and sense of humor that together make ‘The Kitchen’ a delicious way to spend an hour,” Warner Bros. Discovery head of food content Betsy Ayala said in a statement.
“Everyone knows all good parties end up in ‘The Kitchen,’ where the conversation, laughs and food flow; the best parties probably end a little bit earlier than some guests would like, but we’ve got twelve years of memories and wanted to celebrate this team’s hard work during one final holiday season.”
Food Network titan Bobby Flay congratulated the show’s team for “an iconic run” in the comments on Food Network’s Instagram post sharing the news.
“Thank you to the Kitchen and its fabulous chefs and hosts for holding it down in daytime on [Food Network] for the last decade,” Flay wrote.
Other Food Network stars also chimed in with tributes in the comments responding to the announcement.
“I loved this show because it reminded me of why I fell in love with cooking in the first place,” wrote Aarti Sequeira, Season 6 winner of “The Next Food Network Star,” “lots of voices and hands working together in a kitchen with equal servings of love and sass!!!!”
“[C]ongrats on an incredible show — one of my favorites to watch and to be part of,” “Chopped” judge Marc Murphy wrote. “You’re all legends.”
Fellow “Chopped” judge Tiffani Faison also congratulated the show’s staff for “a run worthy only of this team.”
After terrorists chased her from her home in Lungu village of Sokoto State, Saratu now sits in Jabo town, devastated after losing three of her own and two orphaned grandchildren who never made it out. The terrorists stormed their village in Sabon Birni, North West Nigeria. She ran barefoot to the bush, clutching a small wrapper, and never returned. For Saratu and countless others across the region, the statistics of killings, kidnappings, and cattle rustling are not just numbers. They are ruptured families, stolen futures, and a daily struggle to live with dignity in the reported violence.
Amidst shattered livelihoods and decades-long insecurity, people in Katsina, Zamfara, Kebbi, and Sokoto states have continued to push back with resilience that helps them survive, facing the violence that pushes them out of their houses and farmlands.
HumAngle interviewed locals across the states, documenting what drives the violence, how the communities struggle to cope, and what a credible path to peace might look like. Those interviewed included traditional rulers, religious leaders, women’s associations, vigilante groups, civil society activists, and members of both herding and farming communities who shared experiences, human costs, and grassroots resilience.
For about one and a half decades, these people have been engulfed in a violence that ravaged many parts of the northwestern region. What began as disputes between farmers and herders has mutated into cattle rustling, mass killing and the scourge of kidnapping for ransom. These conflicts have seeped into every facet of their lives, displacing families, crippling agriculture, eroding trust, and gnawing at the very fabric of society.
Taxed by fear
Sokoto’s geographical misfortune is evident on a map. Nestled against the volatile Zamfara State and sharing a porous frontier with the Niger Republic, the state’s rural local government areas (LGAs) have become easy targets for well-armed groups.
Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, the worst affected, live under the shadow of Bello Turji, a notorious non-state armed group leader imposing “taxes” on villages, a perverse form of governance enforced through violence.
In Tangaza, Gudu, Binji, and Silami, locals now face an even deadlier menace. Their ungoverned frontiers with the Niger Republic have opened the door to the Lakurawa, a transnational terror group turning the borderland into its strongest foothold. Exploiting weak state security and the grinding poverty that traps many young men, the Lakurawa has embedded itself in local communities, luring recruits with promises of power, protection, or survival.
What began as a shadowy infiltration has evolved into a full-blown insurgency. Today, the group wages a campaign of killings, livestock raids, and mass intimidation on both sides of the border, leaving residents of Sokoto and neighbouring Nigerien villages in constant fear.
The human toll is staggering. Farming, the lifeline of most families, has been disrupted. Thousands of cattle have been stolen. In Sabon Birni alone, an estimated 600,000 cattle and five million small ruminants were rustled between 2019 and 2024, while vast tracts of farmland remain in accessible. For those farmers who manage to reach their fields, access often comes at a heavy price.
Kidnappings have become routine. In the same Sabon Birni, reports suggest that more than ₦160 billion was paid in ransoms and so-called protection levies over the same five-year period.
According to Shu’aibu Gwanda Gobir, a community leader, about 528 villages were once under the control of armed groups. A day after the brutal killing of the Sarkin Gobir of Gatawa District, Isa Bawa, in August 2024, gunmen kidnapped 192 people in the Sabon Birnin area. At the time, over 600 people were already being held captive.
Children have been driven out of classrooms; many are now in displacement camps, while countless others roam the streets, begging in the city of Sokoto.
Women recount harrowing tales of sexual violence, their trauma lingering long after the attacks, and hunger and malnutrition stalk villages already stripped of livelihoods, leaving communities in a state of protracted vulnerability.
For farming and herding families, the cost is measured not only in stolen cattle and abandoned fields but also in fractured trust, deepening poverty, and a sense of being abandoned by the state.
Beneath this devastation, communities are not merely passive victims; they also fight back for survival. According to Magajin Balle, the village head of Balle in Gudu LGA, “in some areas, youths patrol their own streets with locally purchased weapons. Vigilante networks such as the Vigilante Group of Nigeria and ‘Yansakai’ militias provide a semblance of security. Communities pool money to support local defenders.”
Elsewhere, however, resilience takes different forms. In rural parts of Isa LGA, attempts are made to negotiate fragile truces (Sulhu) with gang leaders. In rural areas of Balle, where Lakurawa terrorists have entrenched a stronghold, residents have been forced to submit to the directives of the group.
Armed groups continue to unleash relentless violence across Sokoto State, defying local resilience efforts. In recent weeks, waves of attacks have swept through Shagari, Isa, Sabon Birni, and Raba LGAs, with outlying villages in Dange-Shuni now also under siege. Entire communities have been uprooted, with women and children bearing the brunt.
Many families are forced into a cycle of displacement, seeking safety in nearby towns before returning to their homes by day, while others have fled entirely. Thousands are now sheltering in Jabo, Dange-Shuni, and Rara, or across the border in Guidan Roumdji of the Niger Republic, highlighting the deepening humanitarian crisis.
Tension has also heightened in Shagari LGA’s rural areas after a series of attacks in Aske Dodo, Tungar Barke, Jandutse, Lungu, and Ayeri by armed groups, leaving several dead, scores abducted, and hundreds displaced to Jabo, Kajiji, and Shagari in search of refuge. According to a BBC report, this led to women seeking shelter in Shagari town to stage a protest against the government.
In Raba LGA, over 500 people were forced to flee from their homes across six communities on August 26. Most of them are women and children, now crowded into a school and market square in Rara village, where they seek safety and shelter.
Women and children from the villages of Kwaren Lohwa and Dabagi wait for a lift to Dange, where they will spend the night to escape violent armed groups before returning to their villages in the morning. Photo: Labbo Abdullahi/HumAngle.
In Sabon Birni and Isa LGAs, communities remain trapped between violence and hunger. This September, armed groups unleashed deadly assaults like never before, while floods destroyed roads, bridges and crops, cutting residents off from aid. With no safe passage and livelihoods washed away, many fled across the border into Niger in search of refuge. “People are being squeezed from both sides by the gunmen and by the floods,” says Sa’idu Bargaja, a lawmaker representing the Isa-Sabon Birni constituency. It is, he says, a crisis that leaves no room for escape.
In Shagari LGA, the anguish of displacement is written into women’s lives like Saratu Sode of the Lungu community. Now taking refuge in Jabo, she describes how violence has torn apart her family and her village.
“We fled when word spread that gunmen were coming. Those who could not escape that night were caught. Two of our neighbours were attacked; one was hacked with a machete and is in hospital, and the other was shot dead. Three of my relatives were seized before they could run, and they are still in captivity,” she recounts.
“Three of my children and two of my orphaned grandchildren, whose father was killed during an earlier attack, are not with me. I don’t know where they are. They might have been killed, or they may be in the hands of armed groups.”
Her neighbour, Hadiza from the Aske Dodo community, shares a similar story. Forced from her home three times, she now shelters in an abandoned building in Jabo. “On the last occasion, we woke in the night to the news that someone nearby had been slaughtered. At dawn, we fled. Our children no longer go to school. Our husbands have abandoned their farms, fleeing to save their lives. I do not sleep at night,” she says.
Their voices echo a broader crisis in Sokoto’s rural communities, where waves of armed violence have left families fractured, livelihoods destroyed, and children robbed of education. Beyond the numbers of the dead and displaced, the stories of women like Saratu and Hadiza lay bare the daily reality: survival in a landscape where the state is absent, safety is fragile, and tomorrow is uncertain.
Hadiza from the Aske Dodo community shelters in an abandoned building in Jabo. Photo: Labbo Abdullahi/HumAngle.
Magajin Tsamaye, a village head in Sabon Birni, told HumAngle that peace deals and levies payments are not the best strategies. He urges the government to reform the social justice system and tackle root causes like illiteracy and youth unemployment. “People should be less fearful of death,” Magaji bluntly added, “so they can boldly repel attacks.”
Fighting without surrender
Kebbi’s experience mirrors Sokoto’s in many ways, but with one critical difference: communities here largely reject paying taxes to armed groups. While the LGAs of Fakai, Danko Wasagu, Zuru, Augie, and Yauri, which border the dens of armed groups in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Niger, face sporadic raids and kidnappings, an ethos of resistance endures.
In Augie, Arewa, and, to a lesser extent, Dandi, Bunza, Bagudo, Maiyama, Koko, and Fakai, the shadow of the Lakurawa looms large. Their presence causes sudden waves of violence that leave communities unsettled, never knowing when the next strike might come.
These unpredictable and ruthless raids have turned daily life into a gamble of survival. Farmers abandon fields, traders fear the open road, and entire villages, especially in Arewa and Augie, live with the gnawing uncertainty that their relative calm could be shattered at any moment. This unpredictability, the incessant rhythm of violence, cements Lakurawa’s grip.
In this year’s rainy season, vast tracts of land in Kebbi State have not been tilted because the Lakurawa declared them no-go zones. In the remote areas of Augie and Arewa LGAs, the group has marked out areas as “buffer zones,” warning through local agents that any farmer seen nearby would be punished.
“In the remote villages of Garu, Kunchin Baba, Gumki, and Gumundai, farmers now live under these restrictions,” said a man known as Bello Manager, the Commandant of the Vigilante Group of Niger in the Arewa LGA.
“Farmers are forbidden not only from cultivating their land but also from adapting to change. The militants have blocked the sale of farming bulls for power tillers; machines many had hoped would ease labour shortages, and in some cases seized and destroyed the tillers outright,” the Bello added.
A resident of Goru, speaking to BBC Hausa on condition of anonymity, said: “The majority of communities where the Lakurawa have established a stronghold are living in fear and uncertainty. These include Goru, Malam Yauro, Goru Babba, Goru Karama, Gorun Bagiga, Gumki and Faske. In these places, the Lakurawa force herders to pay ₦10,000 per cow; they have banned women from farming, and traditional rulers are forbidden from wearing turbans. Across all these areas, there is no visible sign of state presence.”
This ban is devastating for communities already struggling with the steady depletion of oxen used for ploughing and harrowing. What should have been a season of renewal is turning instead into a season of fear and enforced stagnation.
In Bunza LGA, the Lakurawa have tightened their grip, launching repeated assaults and livestock raids that have crippled livelihoods and deepened fear. In just the past seven months, more than 1,000 head of cattle have been rustled beyond several cattle they extort as so-called zakat.
“The scale of the theft underscores the vulnerability of even the most prominent figures. Victims include retired Deputy Inspector General of Police Abubakar Tilli, who lost 110 cattle; Bello Mamuda, former chairman of Bunza, who lost 67; and a former member of the House of Assembly representing Bunza, whose herd of 49 was stolen. Altogether, over 1,000 cattle have been stolen by the Lakurawa in Bunza over the past seven months,” Yau Gumundai, a local in the area, told HumAngle.
But the damage goes beyond statistics. Markets have emptied, families have scattered, and fear has become part of daily life. “Recently, there has been an intensification of Lakurawa assaults in Bunza and neighbouring Dandi,” Gumundai explains.
“Their last attack in Bunza was on Friday, Sept. 19, when they opened fire at a security checkpoint. People fled the market in panic, leaving behind their belongings. Many were injured. They keep us in constant fear.”
The attacks illustrate a grim pattern: armed groups now challenge not only ordinary citizens but also security forces and political elites. As livestock raiding evolves from economic plunder into a tool of terror, communities in not only Bunza but also many other LGAs of Kebbi State are left with dwindling livelihoods, deepening insecurity, and a gnawing uncertainty about whether the state can protect them.
Local security has become a sophisticated patchwork of formal and informal alliances. Security outfits work hand-in-hand with trade unions; from motor transport workers to petroleum marketers to monitor public spaces, track suspicious movements, and alert communities. In every LGA, from ward level upwards, volunteer patrols are organised. Wealthy residents and the poor pool resources to fund the patrols in shifts from dawn to dusk.
While the rural communities of Tangaza and Gudu in Sokoto State have succumbed and remain defenceless, an investigation by HumAngle found that, in the face of Lakurawa incursions and raids, the people of Augie in Kebbi refuse to stand idle.
Until recently, as Lakurawa incursions continue, particularly in Arewa, Augie, and Bunza LGAs, locals argued that collaborative vigilance in Kebbi was what prevented the violence of armed groups from reaching the scale seen in Zamfara, Sokoto, and Katsina. But it is also draining; financially, psychologically, and militarily, particularly now that communities face mobile insurgents armed with military-grade weapons, including PKTs, RPGs, GPMGs, AAs, and AK-49s.
Living and negotiating with the enemy
While Sokoto is taxed by fear, some of the most striking community-led peace deals have emerged in Zamfara.
In Kaura Namoda, Maru, Bungudu, and elsewhere, communities have brokered localised truces with armed groups. The terms vary; in some cases, farmers pay “levies” to cultivate land; in others, both sides settle for a “peace” that often turns cold. When such agreements hold, people return to their fields, markets reopen, and a fragile semblance of regular life returns.
But peace is never absolute. A deal with one gang does not protect against another, and breaches, whether through real provocations or whispered rumours, collapse months of careful dialogue. The Yansakai’s actions, sometimes indiscriminate and retaliatory, also undermine trust.
A resident of Nasarawa Burkulu and a member of Miyetti Allah, speaking to HumAngle on condition of anonymity, paints a chilling picture of life under sustained attack in Bukkuyum LGA. He says that from the first assault in 2019 through to September 2025, thousands have been kidnapped, tens of thousands of ruminants rustled, and hundreds killed, while whole villages have at times fallen under the control of armed groups.
“Between 2019 and today, over 3,000 people have been taken, 30,000 livestock stolen, and more than 1,000 people brutally killed in Bukkuyum LGA,” the local told HumAngle. “Several settlements towards the Anka-Bukkuyum boundary: Ruwan Rani, Yashi, Zauna, Bardi, Kwali, Bunkasau, Kamaru, Gasa Hula, and Rafin Maiki are flooded with armed men, some of whom appear to be recent arrivals. Many villages are effectively under siege.”
The human consequences are stark. “In these communities, most men have fled their homes,” the source added. “Women and children run into the bush when armed men arrive at night.” The testimony underlines how insecurity has hollowed out normal life: farms lie untended, markets are disrupted, and entire families live in constant fear.
Another local source described the trauma of abduction, detailing how unarmed citizens were held captive for more than four months. Also a victim of abduction, the source was released only after her parents paid ₦430,000 in ransom.
“In captivity we were dehumanised,” she recalled. “I watched people being murdered in front of me. Returning home brought stigma; I often wished for death because I felt my life was worthless.”
These accounts expose a sustained campaign that is not merely criminal theft and occasional violence but a strategy that displaces communities, destroys livelihoods and inflicts deep psychological wounds. They also raise urgent questions about the state’s capacity to protect civilians in areas where armed groups can operate with impunity.
Armed groups continue to ravage communities, where killings and kidnappings for ransom have become routine. The crisis, analysts and statesmen say, has worsened under the so-called Sulhu dialogue strategy in Kaduna’s Birnin Gwari and Katsina, pushing armed groups into Zamfara in unprecedented numbers.
“Dialogue in Birnin Gwari has led to the intensification of violence in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kebbi, as many members of armed groups move into areas not under the Sulhu regime,” says Murtala Rufa’i, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.
“The truces struck with armed groups in Kaduna displaced hundreds of armed groups’ members into rural Zamfara and adjacent Sokoto, leaving villages under relentless assault while towns such as Gummi, Bukkuyum, and Garin Gaura in Zamfara, and Kebbe and Shagari in Sokoto, are overwhelmed by displaced families,” says Hon. Suleman Muhammad Abubakar, lawmaker representing the Gummi-Bukkuyum constituency.
The human toll is devastating. “Recently, a canoe carrying people fleeing Gummi and nearby villages capsized, killing 15,” Abubakar recounts. “They were escaping the siege of armed groups who had poured into Gummi and Bukkuyum after leaving Birnin Gwari, a direct consequence of the dialogue policy.”
Despite this, there is an undercurrent of hope, as locals express the readiness of many communities to reintegrate repentant members of armed groups, provided the process is genuine and inclusive. Traditional authorities still hold moral sway, and even some armed groups’ leaders enforce discipline within their ranks to preserve deals.
Locals recommend empowering these traditional and religious actors, strengthening rural education, and ensuring government services reach neglected areas. “Peace is possible,” says village head of Birnin Magaji, “but only if we all talk honestly, and to everyone who holds a gun.”
Conflict on the city’s edge
Katsina’s pain is sharpened by geography. Not only does it border Zamfara and Sokoto, but its northern frontier touches the Niger Republic, a corridor for illicit arms. Some of the region’s most feared warlords, such as Dogo Gide and Ado Aleru, frequent the state, and in specific communities, non-state armed groups effectively govern in place of the state.
Rural violence’s evolution in Katsina follows a now-familiar pattern: resource conflict between herders and farmers, worsened by climate change and land encroachment, spiralling into cattle rustling, then into the kidnapping economy. Today, it is a fully fledged industry, drawing in disenfranchised youth as foot soldiers.
In Kankara District, Ibro Gwani and Rabi Usman Mani of Dannakwabo account for an unending ordeal of violence in Katsina State.
From 2011 to 2025, the district was scarred by killings, abductions and violent attacks that have left families shattered and entire communities traumatised.
Since the devastating blow of Dec. 11, 2020, which left over 300 boys kidnapped, waves of killings, abductions, and displacements have continued.
Ibro Gwani, for instance, was kidnapped three times for which he paid a ransom of ₦10 million. “I know that one of our community leaders, Mai Unguwa Babangida Lauwal, was kidnapped and had to pay ₦4 million,” Gwani adds.
Rabi Usman Dannakwabo was also abducted alongside her husband, Usman Mani Dannakwabo, who is a police officer.
“Residents have been murdered in their homes, on their farms, on village roads and even on playgrounds. I know of dozens of men, women and children who have been shot dead,” she says. “Some of our relatives had also been gunned down, hacked with machetes, and some, including myself and my husband, have been dragged into captivity, many of us never return.”
The state government’s measures, from negotiations to fuel sales bans to military offensives, have had mixed results. While initial gains were sometimes significant, armed groups adapted swiftly, exploiting sophisticated communications technology and local networks and even controlling the sale of scarce commodities in some areas.
Communities often choose confrontation over negotiation. Informal militias are armed and funded by locals, and private gun ownership for self-defence is widespread. But there are costs: accusations of abuses by community militias against innocent Fulani have driven some into the arms of the very armed groups they once feared.
Past state-led dialogues faltered, partly due to the exclusion of affected communities from the process. A local tells HumAngle that effective dialogue should emphasise the need for inclusive engagement, economic empowerment, better governance, and border control to stem the flow of weapons.
Despite earlier peace deals, armed groups shatter the calm with fresh and increasingly brutal assaults. One of the most recent was on August 19, when gunmen stormed Unguwan Mantau in Malumfashi LGA. At dawn, they attacked a village mosque filled with worshippers. Young and old men were bowed in prayer when the shooting began, leaving many dead and others injured and rushed to the hospital.
From December, as new coat of arms will appear on the front, designed by Prince Charles.
The British passport already changed back in 2020 from burgundy to blue, as well as to be signed in His Majesty’s name after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Burgundy passports and old blue design passports are still valid for use until they expire.
Just make sure to check the start date as a number of people have been caught out by confusing rules introduced post-Brexit.
When Diane Keaton was 11, her father told her she was growing into a pretty young woman and someday, a boy would make her happy. She was horrified. One boy? Keaton — then going by her birth name of Diane Hall — needed to be loved by everyone. It was an early sign that she was meant to be an actor.
“Intimacy meant only one person loved you, not thousands, not millions,” Keaton wrote decades later in her 2011 memoir “Then Again.” Like drinking and smoking, she added, intimacy should be handled with caution.
“I wanted to be Warren Beatty, not date him,” Keaton confessed, romancing fellow artists as long as their relationship was mutually stimulating and then after that, remaining friends. “I collect men,” she jokingly told me when I interviewed her a decade ago, referring to a photo wall in her Los Angeles home of fellows she admired, including Morgan Freeman, Abraham Lincoln, Gary Cooper and John Wayne. She wanted an excuse to add Ryan Gosling and Channing Tatum, so I suggested a love-triangle comedy as a twofer. “No! Not one movie!” Keaton exclaimed. “I want to keep my career going.”
Just as she hoped, millions of us did fall in love with Keaton, who died Saturday at age 79. She captivated us for over 50 years, from awards heavy-hitters to a late-career string of hangout comedies that weren’t about anything more than the joy of spending time with Diane Keaton, or in the case of her 2022 body swap movie “Mack & Rita,” the thrill of becoming Diane Keaton.
In her final films, including “Summer Camp” and the “Book Club” franchise, Keaton pretty much only played variations of herself, providing reason enough to watch. I looked forward to the moment her character fully embraced looking like Diane Keaton, writing in my otherwise middling review of “Mack & Rita” that the sequence in which she “picks up a kooky blazer and wide belt is presented with the anticipation of Bruce Wayne reaching for his cowl.”
I wanted to be Diane Keaton, even if she wanted to be Warren Beatty.
The contradiction of her career is that the things we in the audience loved about her — the breezy humor, the self-deprecating charm, the iconic threads — were Keaton’s attempts to mask her own insecurities. She struggled to love herself. Even after success, Keaton remained iffy about her looks, her talent and her achievements. In interviews, she openly admitted to feeling inadequate in her signature halting, circular stammers. That is, when she’d consent to be interviewed at all, which in the first decade of her career was so rare that Keaton, loping across Central Park in baggy pants to the white-on-white apartment where she lived alone, was essentially a movie star Sasquatch.
Journalists described her as a modern Garbo. “Her habit is to clutch privacy about her like a shawl,” Time Magazine wrote in 1977, the year that “Annie Hall” and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” established Keaton as a kooky sweetheart with serious range. I love that simile because she did refer to her wardrobe as an “impenetrable fortress.” The more bizarre the ensemble — jackets over skirts over pants over boots — the less anyone would notice the person wearing it.
Odd ducks like myself adored the whole package, including her relatable candor. She showed us how to charge through the world with aplomb, even when you’re nervous as heck.
Once young Keaton decided she wanted to perform, she set about auditioning for everything from the church choir and the cheerleading squad to the class play. But her school had a traditionally beautiful ingenue who landed the leads. This was Orange County, after all. Keaton would go home, stare at the mirror and feel disappointed by her reflection. She dreamed of looking like perky, platinum blond Doris Day. Instead, she saw a miniature Amelia Earhart. (She’d eventually get a Golden Globe nomination for playing Earhart on television in 1994.)
Keaton stuck a clothespin on the tip of her nose to make it smaller, and acted the part of an extrovert: big laugh, big hair and, when she stopped liking her hair, big hats. By age 15, she was assembling the bold, black and white wardrobe she’d wear forever and her taste for monochrome clothes was already so entrenched that she wrote Judy Garland a fan letter wondering why Dorothy had to leave Kansas for garish Oz. She might have been the only person to ever ask that question.
Not too long after that, Keaton flew across the country to New York where several things happened in short succession that would have puffed up anyone else’s ego. The drama coach Sanford Meisner gave her his blessing. The Broadway hit “Hair” gave her the main part (and agreed she could stay fully clothed). And “The Godfather,” the No. 1 box office hit of 1972, plucked Keaton from stage obscurity to give the fledgling screen actor its crucial final shot, a close-up.
Keaton made $6,000 for “The Godfather,” less than a quarter of her salary for the national deodorant commercial she’d shot a year earlier. Her memories from the set of the first film were uncharacteristically terse. Her wig was heavy, her part was “background music” and the one time Marlon Brando spoke to her, he said, “Nice tits.”
Nevertheless, Keaton’s Kay is so soft, friendly and assured when she first meets the Corleone clan at a wedding, sweetly refusing to let her boyfriend Michael dodge how the family knows the pop singer Johnny Fontane, that it’s heartbreaking (and impressive) to watch her become smaller and harder across her few scenes. But Keaton says she never saw the finished movie. “I couldn’t stand looking at myself,” she wrote in “Then Again.”
Woody Allen put the Keaton he adored front and center when he wrote “Annie Hall.” He wanted audiences to fall in love with the singular daffiness of his former girlfriend and it worked like gangbusters. It’s my favorite of his movies and my favorite of hers, and there’s just no use in pretending otherwise, as obvious of a pick as it is. Even now that I know the Annie Hall I worship is a shy woman putting on a show of being herself, the “la-di-dah” confidence she projects makes her the most precious of screen presences: the icon who feels like friend.
But I wonder if Allen also made “Annie Hall” so that Diane Keaton could fall in love with Diane Keaton just as he had. Maybe if she saw herself through his eyes, it could convince her that she really was sexy, sparkling and hilarious. But Keaton only watched “Annie Hall” once, in an ordinary theater well after it opened, and she found the experience of staring at herself miserable. She never absorbed her lead actress Oscar win. “I knew I didn’t deserve it,” she said. “I’d won an Academy Award for playing an affable version of myself.”
Nearly herself, that is. The onscreen version of Keaton is stumped when Alvy Singer brings her a copy of the philosophical tome “Death and Western Thought.” But a decade later, Keaton directed “Heaven,” an entire documentary about the subject, in which she asked street preachers and Don King and her 94-year-old grandmother how they imagined the afterlife. (As in Allen’s movie, her grandmother actually was named Grammy Hall.)
“Heaven” is an experimental film that’s heavy on dramatic shadows and surreal old movie footage, the sort of thing that would play best on an art gallery wall. It flopped, as test screenings warned it would, cautioning Keaton that her directorial debut only appealed to female weirdos — people like her. Keaton isn’t a voice in the film. Yet, that she made it at all makes every frame feel personal, and you hear her affection for the cadence of her occasionally tongue-tied subjects. Her first interviewee stutters, “Uh, heaven, heaven is, uh, um, let me see.” Exactly how Annie Hall would have put it.
Today more than ever, I’m wishing Keaton had been comfortable turning her camera on herself. I’d have liked to watch her explain where she thinks she’s gone, however adorably flustered the answer. But in her four memoirs, she safely bared all in print, openly confronting her harsh inner critic, her battle with bulimia, and — yes, Alvy — her musings on death.
“I don’t know if I have the courage to stare into the spectacle of the great unknown,” Keaton wrote in 2014’s “Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty,” sounding as apprehensive as ever. “I don’t know if I will make bold mistakes, go out on a blaze of glory unbroken by my losses, defy complacency, and refuse to face the unknown like the coward I know myself to be.”
At last, a sliver of confidence peeks out. “But I hope so.”
