super six casino game Gov Aliyu restates commitment to new SokotoAmid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers. The hacking campaign, nicknamed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, is one of the largest intelligence compromises in U.S. history, and not yet fully remediated. Officials in a press call Tuesday refused to set a timetable for declaring the country’s telecommunications systems free of interlopers. Officials had previously told NBC News that China hacked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to spy on customers. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In the call Tuesday, two officials — a senior FBI official who requested to not be named and Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — both recommended using encrypted messaging apps to Americans who wanted to minimize the chances of China intercepting their communications. “Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: encryption is your friend, whether it’s on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication. Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible,” Greene said. “People looking to further protect their mobile device communications would benefit from considering using a cellphone that automatically receives timely operating system updates, responsibly managed encryption and phishing resistant” multi-factor authentication for email, social media and collaboration tool accounts, the FBI official said. The scope of the telecom compromise is so significant that Greene said it was “impossible” for the agencies “to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full eviction.” The hackers generally accessed three types of information, the FBI official said. One type has been call records, or metadata, showing the time and numbers that phone calls were made. The hackers focused on records around the Washington, D.C., area, and the FBI does not plan to alert people whose phone metadata was accessed. The second type has been live phone calls of some specific targets. The FBI official declined to say how many alerts it had sent out to targets of that campaign, but the presidential campaigns of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as well as the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told NBC News in October that they had been informed by the FBI that they had been targeted. The third has been systems that telecommunications companies use in compliance with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), which allows law enforcement and intelligence agencies with court orders to track individuals’ communications. CALEA systems can include classified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which processes some U.S. intelligence court orders. The FBI official declined to say if any classified material was accessed. Privacy advocates have long advocated for the use of end-to-end encrypted apps. Signal and WhatsApp both automatically implement end-to-end encryption in both calls and messages. Google Messages and iMessage also can encrypt both calls and texts end to end. The FBI and other federal law enforcement have a complicated relationship with encryption technology, historically advocating against full end-to-end encryption that does not allow law enforcement access to digital material even with a warrant. But the FBI has also supported forms of encryption that do allow for some law enforcement access in certain circumstances. Despite the fact that the hacking campaign was first publicly disclosed in the lead-up to the election, the United States does not believe it was an attempt to sway results, the FBI official said, and is instead a massive but traditional espionage operation by China to gather intelligence on American politics and government. “We see this as a cyber espionage campaign, not dissimilar to any other approaches. Certainly the way they went about it was very, very specific about the telcos and the ISPs, but it fits into the cyber espionage bucket,” the FBI official said. In a statement to NBC News, Ron Wyden, D-Ore, one of the Senate’s fiercest privacy advocates, criticized America’s reliance on CALEA as it leaves such sensitive information unencrypted. “Whether it’s AT&T, Verizon, or Microsoft and Google, when those companies are inevitably hacked, China and other adversaries can steal those communications,” he said.Trump’s Attorney General Pick Matt Gaetz Withdraws From Consideration

The controversial Australian has played only one match in more than two years because of injury but that has not stopped him being an outspoken presence on social media during a difficult few months for the sport. First it was announced in August that Sinner had failed two doping tests in March but was cleared of fault, while in November Swiatek was handed a one-month ban for a failed test caused by contaminated medication. Feels good getting these consecutive days training in the bank man.... Wrist re construction and back out here... blessed..................Without failing any drug tests 🙂‍↕️🙏🏽 be proud kygs doing it the right way 😩😂 — Nicholas Kyrgios (@NickKyrgios) Kyrgios has been particularly vociferous in his criticism of Sinner, who could yet face a ban after the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed the finding of no fault or negligence in his case. At a press conference ahead of the Brisbane International, Kyrgios told reporters: “I have to be outspoken about it because I don’t think there’s enough people that are speaking about it. I think people are trying to sweep it under the rug. “I just think that it’s been handled horrifically in our sport. Two world number ones both getting done for doping is disgusting for our sport. It’s a horrible look. “The tennis integrity right now – and everyone knows it, but no one wants to speak about it – it’s awful. It’s actually awful. And it’s not OK.” Kyrgios initially underwent knee surgery in January 2023, returning to action in June of that year, but he played only one match before pulling out of Wimbledon due to a torn ligament in his right wrist. He has not played a competitive match since, and it appeared doubtful that he would be able to return, but the 29-year-old will make his comeback in Brisbane this week. Kyrgios will take on France’s Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in singles, while he will also team up with Novak Djokovic in a blockbuster doubles pairing. “It’s good to be back,” said Kyrgios. “I honestly never thought I’d be back playing at this level. Even entering an event like this, preparing, doing all the right things. “I’m really excited to just go out there and play, just play tennis. I saw Novak in the gym, playing doubles with him, a lot to be excited about that I’m able to get out there and compete again.” Asked whether he could get back to the same level that saw him reach the Wimbledon final in 2022, Kyrgios said: “I still believe I can, whether or not that’s factual or not. There was another player who was like, ‘You have to be realistic’. That’s not how I am. I always back my ability.” The new tennis season is already under way, with the United Cup team event beginning on Friday. Great Britain, who are weakened by the absence of Jack Draper through injury, begin their campaign against Argentina in Sydney on Monday before facing hosts Australia on Wednesday. That could pit Katie Boulter against fiance Alex De Minaur, with the pair having announced their engagement last week. “Obviously some incredible news from our side, but I think we kind of wanted it to die down a little bit before matches started,” said Boulter of the timing. “My private life is out in the public a little bit at the moment. But, in terms of the stuff that I’m doing on the court, I’ll be doing the best I can every single day to stay in my own little bubble.” Billy Harris has taken Draper’s place, with the British number one facing a race against time to be fit for the Australian Open because of a hip problem. Emma Raducanu is the sixth seed at the ASB Classic in Auckland and will begin her season with a match against Robin Montgomery, while Cameron Norrie takes on another American, Learner Tien, at the Hong Kong Open.Post-election violence claims over 21 lives in Mozambique

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The very close election for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat heads next to a hand recount even as election officials announced a machine recount of over 5.5 million ballots resulted in no margin change between the candidates. — in which ballots were run again through tabulators — that wrapped up this week showed Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs with a 734-vote lead over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin, who is a Court of Appeals judge. Most county election boards reported minor vote changes from the machine recount requested by Griffin. But State Board of Elections data showed the post-recount lead as what Riggs held after all 100 counties fully completed their ballot canvass in November. Griffin led Riggs by about 10,000 votes on election night, and flipped to Riggs as tens of thousands of qualifying provisional and absentee ballots were added to the totals through the canvass. Griffin, who already has pending election protests challenging the validity of more than 60,000 ballots counted statewide, has asked for a partial hand-to-eye recount, which county boards will start Wednesday or Thursday. The partial hand recount applies to ballots in 3% of the voting sites in all 100 counties, chosen at random Tuesday by the state board. Once the partial recount is complete, a statewide hand recount would be ordered if the sample results differ enough from the machine recount that the result would be reversed if the difference were extrapolated to all ballots. Riggs, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2023 and now seeks an eight-year term, again claimed victory Tuesday. In a campaign news release, spokesperson Embry Owen said Griffin “needs to immediately concede – losing candidates must respect the will of voters and not needlessly waste state resources.” Riggs is one of two Democrats on the seven-member court. Through attorneys, Griffin has challenged ballots that he says may not qualify for several reasons and cast doubt on the election result. Among them: voter registration records of some voters casting ballots lack driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers, and overseas voters never living in North Carolina may run afoul of state residency requirements. State and county boards are considering the protests. Griffin’s attorneys on Monday asked the state board to accelerate the matters before it and make a final ruling early next week. “Our priority remains ensuring that every legal vote is counted and that the public can trust the integrity of this election,” state Republican Party spokesperson Matt Mercer said in a news release. Final rulings by the state board can be appealed to state court. Joining Griffin in protests are three Republican legislative candidates who still trailed narrowly in their respective races after the machine recounts. The Supreme Court race and two of these three legislative races have not been called by The Associated Press. The key pending legislative race is for a House seat covering Granville County and parts of Vance County. Republican Rep. Frank Sossamon trails Democratic challenger Bryan Cohn by 228 votes, down from 233 votes before the recount. Sossamon also asked for a partial hard recount in his race, which was to begin Tuesday. Should Cohn win, Republicans will fall one seat short of the 72 needed in the 120-member House to retain its veto-proof majority — giving more Senate Republicans already have won 30 of the 50 seats needed to retain its supermajority in their chamber. The AP on Tuesday did call another legislative race not subject to a protest, as Mecklenburg County GOP Rep. Tricia Cotham won her reelection bid over Democrat Nicole Sidman. A machine recount showed Cotham ahead of Sidman by 213 votes, compared to 216 after the county canvass. Cotham’s to the Republicans in April 2023 secured the Republicans’ 72-seat veto-proof majority so that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes could be overridden by relying solely on GOP lawmakers.

The Detroit Lions have equaled the franchise record for most consecutive victories and stand alone atop the NFC standings. They still have plenty of obstacles to clear to remain at that perch. Even the NFC North remains up for grabs and they'll try to create a little more separation when they host the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night. The Lions (11-1), who have won 10 straight, haven't been able to shake free from Minnesota (10-2) or Green Bay (9-3). Detroit will host Minnesota, which has won five straight, in the regular-season finale next month. The Packers have remained in contention by winning seven of their last eight, with the only loss coming at the hands of the Lions. Detroit opened up a 21-point lead early in the third quarter and held on for a 24-14 victory. Lions coach Dan Campbell says the fun really begins now. "The best part of all of this -- we're in playoff football right now, that's where we're at," he said. "We're in December, and our schedule says that. Man, we play tough opponent after tough opponent -- we've got plenty coming up. So, man, this is the type of stuff that you live for and it's also the type of stuff that gets you ready for the tournament. "So, yeah, we're a resilient bunch and nothing's going to change that. We've just got to worry about the one in front of us." Detroit is coming off a 23-20 win over Chicago on Thanksgiving Day in which it nearly blew a 16-point lead. The Bears' poor clock management cost them an opportunity to send the game into overtime and led to coach Matt Eberflus' firing. The Lions have been hit with a wave of injuries, particularly on the defensive side. They signed four players over the past week to fortify their depth. "I know the elephant in the room is all the injuries that have happened with us on the defensive side," defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn said. "Our personnel staff does a really good job of acquiring players that fit exactly who we are. I would say this, it's not the playbook that's the most important thing for these guys to come in and learn. It's the style of play that we have and that's easy to learn." Jared Goff has thrown for six touchdowns and zero interceptions in the past three games after tossing five picks against the Houston Texans on Nov. 10. The Packers also played on Thanksgiving, defeating Miami 30-17. Green Bay opened up a 24-3 halftime lead as Jordan Love threw two touchdown passes to Jayden Reed. Now the Packers face a Detroit team that has defeated them in five of the last six meetings. "With most good teams, they play the game the right way," Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur said. "Certainly, Detroit's been doing that for a couple years now. That's who they are and that's who we are as well. It should be a great game on Thursday night." The Packers might have to win via a shootout, considering the Lions are averaging a league-best 31.9 points per game (Green Bay ranks eighth at 26.5). Stopping the running game will be key, according to LaFleur. "They're two very dynamic backs. (David) Montgomery, he's going to beat you up physically and the other guy (Jahmyr Gibbs), you've got to try to corral because he can take it the distance," he said. "Jared (Goff) is playing at an MVP level, so they've got a really potent offense." Lions offensive tackle Taylor Decker (knee) and three defensive linemen -- DJ Reader (shoulder), Josh Paschal (knee) and Levi Onwezurike (hamstring) -- didn't practice on Tuesday. Offensive guard Elgton Jenkins (knee), Linebacker Edgerrin Cooper (hamstring) and cornerback Corey Ballentine (knee) missed the Packers' practice. --Field Level Media

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Brazilian police indict former President Bolsonaro and aides over alleged 2022 coup attemptChicano Art Patron Cheech Marin Gets Life-Sized Bronze StatuePHILADELPHIA — Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he was “shocked” by President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of anti-vaccine activist and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Calling Kennedy an “agent of chaos in the vaccination world,” Offit asserted that under Kennedy, a vaccine denier , “children could suffer that chaos.” Trump announced Kennedy’s selection last week. The move follows Kennedy’s decision in August to endorse Trump and withdraw his own independent candidacy in key states, including Pennsylvania. “I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said of Kennedy at an October rally in New York. “I’m going to let him go wild on food. I’m going to let him go wild on medicines.” For years, Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist, has said that vaccines cause autism , a falsehood that has been disproven multiple times by dozens of scientists around the world. “RFK Jr. is a dangerous man,” Offit said. “This decision is completely and utterly depressing.” Offit and Kennedy connected 20 years ago when Kennedy called to ask whether thimerosal , a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines, caused cancer. “I assured him it was untrue — that it had been removed from all vaccines by 2001,” said Offit, coinventor of the rotavirus vaccine, which attacks the virus that can lead to fatal diarrhea in children. But Kennedy disregarded Offit’s expertise, and has been blaming vaccines for autism ever since. “RFK Jr. has become a science denialist,” Offit said. “If you present him with science, he’ll ignore it if it goes against a bias he has.” Kennedy’s team did not comment after receiving a list of questions, as well as Offit’s statements. As head of HHS, Kennedy wouldn’t have direct authority to ban vaccines, according to reporting by The Hill . But Offit and others say he’ll stay have powerful influence over the agencies that regulate vaccines, with the authority to reduce funding, or remove protections vaccine makers usually have. Kennedy has promised to “ Make America Healthy Again ,” imitating Trump’s slogan. Aside from his pledge to “expose the flaws in vaccine science,” Kennedy said he’d battle chronic disease in America by “breaking the stranglehold of the processed food lobby,” and working to “clear out corruption” at America’s health agencies, which could involve eliminating entire departments. Kennedy has also proposed combating the chronic disease epidemic by addressing the root causes such as poor diet, environmental toxins, and inadequate healthcare. He’s also called to reduce harmful chemicals and toxins from America’s food, water, and air. In October, Kennedy said in a post on the social platform X the he won’t “take anyone’s vaccines away from them. I just want to be sure every American knows the safety profile, the risk profile, and the efficacy of each vaccine. That’s it.” Offit doesn’t find reassurance in this promise, arguing that Kennedy’s selection will help amplify anti-vaccine rhetoric. “Just the mere fact he’s being considered for this job will validate some parents’ fears about vaccinations. Even now in kindergarten, measles and whooping cough vaccines are being refused by parents in some cases.” Kennedy has spread other health misinformation , saying: the use of vaccinations is akin to the Holocaust ; the coronavirus vaccine is the “ deadliest” created by man; drinking water can change children’s gender identity ; fluoride in water can lower IQ ; the coronavirus was “ethnically targeted” to prevent Jews and Chinese people from succumbing to COVID-19; WiFi causes cancer; drinking raw milk, which can contain E. coli and listeria, should be encouraged ; and antidepressants are to blame for school shootings. Kennedy will sometimes further confuse people by denying saying things he has. For example, he recently said he’s “never been anti-vaccine,” and that “no vaccine” is safe and effective. But last November, FactCheck.org , part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that’s incorrect . The nonprofit discovered a Lex Fridman podcast Kennedy had done in July 2023 in which he said, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” Offit said he can’t understand Kennedy’s nomination. “Why would you put this person in charge of agencies based on science? He makes things up. He’s just a liar.” ©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust Un stock falls Tuesday, underperforms marketFRO stock touches 52-week low at $18.26 amid market shifts'It's actually going to be easy to cure ageing and cancer," insists David Sinclair, a researcher on ageing at Harvard University. Similarly, Elon Musk continues to claim that he will soon land humans on Mars and deploy robotaxis en masse. Major corporations have set carbon-neutrality targets based on highly optimistic forecasts about the potential of carbon-removal technologies. And, of course, many commentators now insist that "AI changes everything". Amid such a confounding mix of hype and genuine technological marvels, are entrepreneurs, scientists, and other experts getting ahead of themselves? At the very least, they betray a strong preference for technological solutions to complex problems, as well as an abiding belief that technological progress will make us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. "Give us a real world problem," writes Silicon Valley doyen Marc Andreesen in "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto", "and we can invent a technology that will solve it". But, as we note in our book How to Think About Progress, this attitude is heavily influenced by what we call the "horizon bias": the propensity to believe that anything experts can envisage accomplishing with technology is imminently within reach. We owe this optimism to technology's past successes: eradicating smallpox, landing a man on the moon, creating machines that can outperform chess grandmasters and radiologists. While these highlights dwell permanently in our collective memory, offering strong inductive evidence for the power of human ingenuity, we forget (or are oblivious to) all the times that technology promised to solve some problem but didn't. Just as history is written by the victors, the story of technological progress features mainly the breakthroughs that panned out, creating the impression that Technological Man consistently accomplishes whatever he sets out to achieve. The horizon bias affects us all, but it is most consequential in those with enough expertise to be able to offer scientific and technological solutions to big challenges in the first place -- especially if they are trying to sell us something. The hazard lies in convincing yourself that you can anticipate every discrete step needed to reach an ambitious goal like "curing" cancer or colonising Mars. Such "knowing" instils confidence in the speaker as much as it inspires hope in the non-expert listener. Moreover, it is one thing to promise tourist trips to Mars and quite another thing to claim that you will invent a time-travel machine. The first ambition at least seems doable, and that is more than enough for any optimist to run with. Mere possibility can be a powerful force in forecasting and decision-making because we usually fail to recognise that our sense of possibility expands with ignorance. The less you know about biology or space travel, the more you believe can be achieved in those fields. For all we know, anti-ageing research really will allow people who are alive today to live for hundreds of years. This is the blind spot that Silicon Valley hype artists love to exploit, especially after breakthrough moments like the release of ChatGPT or the success of mRNA vaccines against Covid-19. It is on such occasions that we look to the horizon and embrace or revise our ambitions. Perhaps the science behind the vaccines will also offer "the cure" for cancer? When even the experts are saying "For all we know, this latest advance could swiftly lead to X, Y, and Z," that is a legitimate reason for the lay public to get excited. But this is a facile mode of thinking: because we can only speculate about the later stages of the sequence needed to reach a hoped-for destination, we have a license to gloss over the messy contingencies that are inevitable in the course of research and development. Succumbing to the horizon bias, we can say things like, "All we would need to do to address climate change is ramp up R&D in carbon-capture technologies until we have found a way to make them affordable and viable at scale." Precisely because we don't yet know what technical and scientific advances this would require, we can imagine it as eminently feasible. Moreover, we should be wary of a psychological tendency that leads us systematically to overestimate our ability to solve big, generation-defining problems with technology. As the bibliographer of science fiction I F Clarke put it almost 50 years ago, we harbour an "eternal desire that the power of man over nature shall always be as instant and as absolute as his will". Modernity has made it both easy and exciting to imagine technological solutions appearing out of nowhere. Though we know we should not bet everything on such expectations, it is all too tempting to envision solutions that would make problems like climate change, pandemics, and cancer just go away. This tendency can hamper our ability to prepare for an intrinsically uncertain future. Proper preparation demands that we not rely on a grievously biased sample of past experiences. As we confront big global problems, we must avoid acting like gamblers who remember only those rare occasions when they hit it big, not the more numerous occasions when the house swallowed their money. To be sure, the horizon bias does not imply that technological solutions to civilisational problems won't emerge soon. Some lone genius could crack the problem of cancer or climate change tomorrow, falsifying pessimistic claims about the future. Nonetheless, claims about what our rational expectations ought to be will remain valid. If you announce that you have just bought a lottery ticket and simultaneously bid on a mansion that you cannot afford, no one will commend you for your financial judgement, even if you win. ©2024 Project Syndicate Nicholas Agar is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Stuart Whatley is Senior Editor at Project Syndicate and co-author, with Nicholas Agar and Dan Weijers, of 'How to Think about Progress'.Daily Post Nigeria CHAN 2024Q: Home Eagles land in Uyo for Ghana Black Galaxies clash Home News Politics Metro Entertainment Sport Sport CHAN 2024Q: Home Eagles land in Uyo for Ghana Black Galaxies clash Published on December 24, 2024 By Mike Oyebola The home-based Super Eagles arrived in Uyo on Tuesday ahead of the second leg of their 2024 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying tie against the Black Galaxies of Ghana. The Eagles will host Didi Dramani’s side in the second leg at the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium, Uyo on Saturday. The first leg ended in a goalless draw. Daniel Ogunmodede and his players arrived in Nigeria for the reverse fixture on Monday. They observed their first training session in Uyo at the practice pitch of the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium on Tuesday night. The Eagles need a win in the second leg to secure a place at CHAN 2024. Related Topics: CHAN 2024Q Ghana Black Galaxies Home Eagles Uyo Don't Miss EPL: I’m really frustrated – Man Utd manager, Amorim You may like CHAN 2024Q: Agyemang-Badu urges Black Galaxies to go all out for win against Nigeria CHAN 2024Q: Ghana coach reveals plan to stop Home Eagles CHAN 2024Q: My players were wasteful against Nigeria – Ghana coach, Dramani CHAN 2024Q: Ogunmodede satisfied with Home Eagles draw against Ghana CHAN 2024Q: Ghana not thinking about rivalry with Nigeria – Coach Dramani CHAN 2024Q: Ghana coach lists 26 players for Home Eagles clash Advertise About Us Contact Us Privacy-Policy Terms Copyright © Daily Post Media Ltd

Mozambique death toll rises to 21 amid post-election protests Unrest spread to several cities in the northern part of Mozambique, reports local media Pedestrians walk past a burning barricade in Maputo, Mozambique on December 24, 2024. — AFP At least 21 individuals, including two police officers, have lost their lives in Mozambique over the past 24 hours due to unrest following the confirmation of the ruling Frelimo party's victory in the recent elections, the interior minister stated on Tuesday. The Portuguese-speaking African country’s highest court had confirmed on Monday that the Frelimo party, in power since 1975, won the October 9 presidential election that had already triggered weeks of unrest. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1700472799616-0'); }); A total of "236 acts of serious violence were reported" across the country, leaving at least 25 people wounded including 13 police officers, Interior Minister Pascoal Ronda told a press conference late Tuesday. "Groups of armed men using bladed weapons and firearms have carried out attacks against police stations, penitentiary establishments, and other infrastructure," Ronda said. More than 70 people have been arrested, he added. The largely deserted capital Maputo was earlier hit by skirmishes between protesters and police, AFP reporters said. Police in armoured vehicles patrolled the centre of the city, where hundreds of protesters in small, scattered groups threw objects and started fires. Makeshift roadblocks on major thoroughfares were set alight on Monday evening, covering the city with thick smoke, soon after the court confirmed the victory of Frelimo’s presidential candidate Daniel Chapo. Chapo’s main challenger, exiled opposition leader Venancio Mondlane, has claimed the election was rigged, sparking fears of violence between rival party supporters. Shops, banks, supermarkets, petrol stations and public buildings meanwhile were ransacked, with their windows smashed and contents looted. Some were set on fire and reduced to smouldering rubble. "Maputo Central Hospital is operating in critical conditions, more than 200 employees have not been able to reach the site," its director Mouzinho Saide told AFP, adding that nearly 90 people had been admitted with injuries. Forty were injured by firearms and four by knives, he added. Main roads leading to Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola were blocked by barricades and burning tyres, while the road leading to Maputo airport was largely impassable. Most local residents stayed at home, with the few who ventured out doing so to look at the damage or do last-minute Christmas shopping. Christmas Eve is normally a busy time, with large crowds in central Maputo but shops and even small neighbourhood grocery stores were closed, making petrol and bread unavailable. Public transport was also paralysed, with only ambulances and funeral vehicles running. ‘Humiliation’ The unrest spread to several cities in the northern part of Mozambique, local media reported, with violence and vandalism in the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Zambezia and Tete, where opposition support is strong. More than 100 people have already died in the unprecedented post-election violence, with fears that the toll could increase after Mondlane’s claim of victory. Mozambicans are demanding "electoral truth", he said in a Facebook post. "We must continue the fight, remain united and strong." Monday’s confirmation of the election result came despite claims of irregularities from many observers. Chapo won 65.17 percent of the vote, more than five points less than the initial results declared by the country’s electoral commission. In the National Assembly, Frelimo has a majority of 171 seats out of 250, down 24 from the announcement in October. "Venancio", as Mondlane is called on the street, repeated his assertion in a social media message on Tuesday that the constitutional court was "legalising fraud" and "the humiliation of the people". "We want to create a People’s Constitutional Court, which will confirm Venancio Mondlane as president," he said of himself. "I will be sworn in and invested," he added. Chapo, who is due to take office in mid-January, struck a conciliatory tone in his victory speech on Monday, promising to "talk to everyone", including his main opponent.