Secretary-General of the Sudanese Islamic Movement Zubair Ahmed Hassan died Friday from a deteriorating health condition at the Police Hospital here in the capital, Khartoum. 

Hassan, 61, was transferred from the Kobar Prison in Khartoum after his condition worsened, according to his family.

He was buried in Khartoum with a ceremony attended by hundreds of mourners.

The prosecutor's office announced that Hassan died at the hospital from heart disease.

Having being Secretary-General of the Islamic Movement since 2012, Hassan and many leaders of the Movement were detained on July 24, 2019, following a military coup on April 11, 2019.

He was accused of being among the plotters of a 1989 coup in which Omar al-Bashir took office by overthrowing the country’s first elected prime minister.

In April 2019, Al-Bashir was forced from power by the military after mass protests against his three-decade rule.

A Sovereign Council was formed with an agreement between the army and opposition leaders to lead the country for a three-year transitional period./aa

US President Joe Biden has said he does not think the American people are racist, but maintained the country has a history of racism that must be confronted.

Biden pointed in particular to Black Americans, who he said, have been "left in a position where they are so far behind the eight ball in terms of education, health, in terms of opportunity."

"I don't think America is racist, but I think the overhang from all of the Jim Crow, and before that slavery, has had a cost, and we have to deal with it," he said during an interview with NBC News on Thursday.

Jim Crow refers to a series of laws enacted after the abolition of slavery intended to maintain racial segregation.

The comments come after congressman Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the House of Representatives, maintained the US is not a racist country in a rebuttal to the president's first address to a joint session of Congress.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold the office, said that while she does not think America is a racist nation the nation does "have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today."

"I applaud the President for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it," Harris said during a Thursday morning interview.

Biden during his congressional address maintained he would not turn a blind eye to what he said US intelligence agencies have determined to be the pre-eminent threat to the homeland: white supremacist terrorism, which former President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed.

"We’re not going to ignore that either," Biden said./aa

GRANADA, Spain

Spain's Muslim minority has said that the perception that Islam is only a religion for migrants should be done away with.

Umar del Pozo, the head of the Spanish Islamic Society Association, told Anadolu Agency that at least one person converts to Islam every Friday in the Great Mosque of Granada and that nearly 3,000 Muslim Spaniards live in Granada.

Del Pozo stated that he was the son of a Spanish family who converted to Islam.

Muhammed Jauiriddin, a Spaniard, who converted to Islam said: "Allah had knocked on his door 40 years ago."

"Nowadays there is misinformation about Islam. You always encounter anti-Islamic campaigns in newspapers, televisions, all kinds of media. This is very tragicomic because there is so much ignorance," Jauiriddin said.

Another Spanish citizen, Rosario, who was born and raised in Granada -- the last Islamic bastion in Spain during the Andalusian Islamic period (711-1492) -- converted to Islam 39 years ago. She changed her name to Saliha.

She said that it was very difficult to break down some prejudices about Islam and that the approach of the press was an important factor in this.

Saliha said that after the Francoist dictatorship ended in 1975, there was great anxiety among the young population.

"I found Islam in this search. Believing in one God, Allah, all of these have brought me closer to Islam. My friends were very surprised by this and there were those who did not understand me," she said.

Some 2.1 million Muslims live in Spain. Of these 880,000 are Spanish citizens and the vast majority are migrants who acquired citizenship./aa

Major indexes in the US stock market were down after opening bell on Friday with high volatility despite strong earnings from tech companies.

The Dow Jones shed 191 points to 34,868 with IBM and Morgan Stanley falling 2.4% and 1.2%, respectively. The S&P 500 declined 21, or 0.5%, to 4,190 at 10.20 a.m. EDT (1420GMT)

The Nasdaq was off 34 points to 14,045 with Twitter plummeting 12%. The VIX index was high above 18 level with a 2% daily increase.

While Amazon climbed to an all-time high of $3,554 per share with a 2% gain after strong earnings in the first quarter of the year, Facebook was down 0.6%.

Amazon's net sales rose 44% to $108.5 billion in January-March period of this year, up from $75.5 billion the same period of last year. Net income soared to $8.1 billion, more than tripling from $2.5 billion posted in the first three months of 2020.

About Amazon Web Services (AWS), the firm's on-demand cloud computing platforms, CEO Jeff Bezos said "Companies from Airbnb to McDonald’s to Volkswagen come to AWS because we offer what is by far the broadest set of tools and services available, and we continue to invent relentlessly on their behalf."

Bezos, 57, who founded Amazon in 1994 and turned the online bookstore into a major e-retailer, will leave his CEO position in the third quarter to the company’s top cloud executive, Andy Jassy, who joined Amazon in 1997 and has led AWS since its beginning.

While Bezos remains executive chairman of the board, and is involved in major Amazon projects, he will focus on the Bezos Earth Fund, his Blue Origin space firm, The Washington Post newspaper, and the Amazon Day 1 Fund./aa

Turkish security forces neutralized four PKK/YPG terrorists in northern Syria, near the Turkish border, the National Defense Ministry said on Friday.

The terrorists were neutralized as they “attempted to attack” in the Operation Euphrates Shield zone, the ministry said on Twitter.

Turkish authorities often use the word “neutralized” in statements to imply the terrorists in question surrendered or were killed or captured.

Since 2016, Turkey has launched a trio of successful anti-terror operations across its border in northern Syria to prevent the formation of a terror corridor and enable the peaceful settlement of residents: Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018), and Peace Spring (2019).

Though the terrorist presence in these areas was largely eradicated, terror groups have made periodic efforts to shatter the peace in the region.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU – has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian offshoot./aa

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged Nigerian authorities to thoroughly investigate the attack on journalist Frederick Olatunde Odimayo after he reported on the drug trade in Lokoja, Kogi State.
In a statement on Wednesday, the CPJ called on authorities to hold those responsible to account.

On April 16, Odimayo, a freelance reporter and editor lost consciousness after he was attacked by five men following his report on the drug trade.

Privately owned news website Wadata Media published a report by Odimayo on March 31 about the drug trade in Lokoja. He went undercover as a drug buyer to expose a local trafficking group, according to the CPJ.

“Authorities in Nigeria must identify those who assaulted journalist Frederick Olatunde Odimayo and ensure they are held to account – including those who planned the attack,” Angela Quintal, the CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, said.

“Journalists’ safety should be a top priority for Nigerian law enforcement, and that includes curbing impunity for violence against reporters.”

Police had confirmed the attack on Odimayo but did not identify the perpetrators.

On April 19, William Aya, the Kogi state police spokesperson, told CPJ that police had taken suspects into custody for questioning, but said they were not the suspected attackers themselves.

He declined to comment further and said additional details about the investigation would eventually be made public, the CPJ added./aa