Abandonment, persecution, violence: Childhoods lost as young Nigerians are branded as witches.   From a distance, the children look like scarecrows as they slowly scour the waist-high piles of rubbish for plastic bottles. Their ragged clothing hangs loosely from their emaciated frames, their gaunt shrink-wrapped faces are deadened by the drugs they took at dawn. It is hard to believe that these children are "witches". And yet this is exactly why several hundred  skolombo  - or street children - are now living at the Lemna dumpsite on the outskirts of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria. "My grandmother was sick and her leg became very swollen," says Godbless. "She said I was the one responsible, that I was a witch." The 14-year-old boy is sat in the makeshift hut at Lemna that he now calls home. He shares this stuffy wooden hovel with half a dozen other boys who are now outside, smoking the cannabis that will get them through the day. ...

Former international referee Ibrahim Chaibou has been banned for life after being found guilty of taking bribes, global soccer body FIFA said on Thursday. Ibrahim Chaibou PCN: New rep promises equal treatment for female athletes FIFA also fined Chaibu €177,000 ($226,000) and barred the 52-year-old from all soccer-related activity for life. “Mr Chaibou has been banned for life from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at both national and international level,” FIFA’s independent Ethics Committee said in a statement on Thursday. Chaibou famously handed out several penalties in a 2010 friendly match between South Africa and Guatemala where gambling patterns sparked an official probe.

Anne Hathaway is on board for "Princess Diaries 3." The actress appeared Thursday on Bravo's "Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen" and had some positive news when a caller asked about the possible sequel. "There is a script," Hathaway confirmed. "I want to do it. Julie [Andrews] wants to do it. Debra Martin Chase, our producer, wants to do it. We all really want it to happen." But there's a caveat. "It's just we don't want to unless it's perfect because we love it just as much as you guys love it," Hathaway said. "It's as important to us as it is to you, and we don't want to deliver anything until it's ready, but we're working on it." The original 2001 film about an American teenager who finds out she is heir to a European throne is based on Meg Cabot's young adult novel of the same name. Both the original and its 2004 sequel "The Princess Diaries 2: Roy...

Jackie Evancho is 18 now and wants to share what life was like as a child star. The "America's Got Talent" star posted about the dark side of freedom Wednesday on her official Facebook page. Evancho wrote that "entering adulthood as a 18 year old moving to New York, I felt the need to put this out into the universe as a way of continuing the healing process I'm on. I no longer have the fear to stay silent." "A lot of people hear "10 year old singer" and immediately feel bad for me," she wrote. "There is a lot of stigma around being a child entertainer mainly because of the past experiences that have been thrust into the spot light by paparazzi and tabloids." The classical singer first found fame in 2010 as the young runner-up on season 5 of the NBC competition series "America's Got Talent." She recently returned to compete on "America's Got Talent: The Champions" and wrote on Face...

A bribe-seeking police inspector, identified as Mohammed Usman, has been arrested for allegedly shooting and injuring two drivers in Lokoja, the Kogi State capital. Our correspondent learnt that the incident happened at the Ibro Motor Park situated opposite the International Market, Lokoja. The Chairman, National Union of Road Transport Workers at the park, Ibrahim Yakubu, said trouble began when one of the drivers was stopped by a police team at a checkpoint in the Zango area on the Lokoja-Okene highway and was asked to part with a bribe. According to the driver, he told the policemen that he had nothing to give them at that point and thus continued his journey towards Lokoja. Dissatisfied with the driver’s action, the policemen reportedly gave his vehicle a chase down to the Ibro Motor Park area, where he stopped the vehicle and ran into the park for refuge. Yakubu said, “We were sitting in the park around 11am when we heard gunshots. The next thing we saw was one of ou...