Akinlabi Olatunde John

Rapidly growing consumer electronics industry firms from around the world have maintained an interest in production in Turkey. A technology giant that specializes in mobile devices, TCL has joined forces with Turkish electronics maker Arçelik and started smartphone production in the country. Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank, commenting on the development, said Sunday that the phones produced in TCL’s Turkey factory came off the production line. He was speaking during a visit to the facility that started production with the TCL brand in the Çerkezköy organized industrial zone (OSB), located in the Kapaklı district of northwestern Tekirdağ province. Varank stated that global brands in the smartphone market have started to invest in Turkey and that the market continues to grow gradually in the world and within the country. “TCL has launched cooperation with Arçelik, and they are producing together. The annual production capacity of this place is 450,000 units,” he said. Var...

An armed gang abducted dozens of students from an Islamic school in the northcentral Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday, police and state government officials said. Some 200 children were at the school at the time of Sunday’s attack, the Niger state government said on Twitter, adding that “an unconfirmed number” had been taken. The abduction came a day after 14 students from a university in northwestern Nigeria were freed, having spent 40 days in captivity. A spokesman for Niger state’s police said in a statement that gunmen on motorcycles attacked the town of Tegina, in the Rafi local government area of the state, at approximately 3pm (14:00 GMT) on Sunday. He said the attackers were “shooting indiscriminately and abducted a yet to be ascertained number of children at Salihu Tanko Islamic school”. One person was shot dead during the attack and a second person was seriously injured, the state governor’s spokeswoman said. Armed groups carrying out kidnapping for ransom have been blam...