Author: damazah@gmail.com

We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about exercise. There’s a fitness community obsessed with constant optimisation and hacks: how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before.It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress. Or people are overly concerned with what’s secretly holding them back, from sleep to “I…

For about an hour on Monday night, the biggest trade of the NBA offseason to date involved Julius Randle. The Minnesota Timberwolves have agreed to trade Randle and the No. 28 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft to the Brooklyn Nets as part of a three-team deal that will route Nic Claxton to the Chicago Bulls, according to ESPN. As part of the deal, the Timberwolves will receive the No. 33 pick (the third pick in the second round) from the Nets. The deal came shortly before the Heat won the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade sweepstakes. Still, moving off Randle — acquired…

The co-director of Cinderella reimagining Steps has welcomed Netflix’s decision to take it straight to streaming. Netflix’s theatrical vs streaming dilemma is always a hot topic – even moreso late last year when it nearly bought Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) – but John Ripa said there are benefits in going direct to the small screen. “Netflix can reach so many people at once and for this to be available after six years [of production], well you want it to be seen by as many as possible,” Ripa told an Annecy work in progress session, as he responded to a question…

Crusoe Osagie peeps into the productivity engendered by the University of Oxford’s recent vice-chancellor’s award and wonders why Nigerian Universities struggling to survive cannot pick up the challenge that can lead to ultimate self-sufficiency In an age dominated by technology, social media trends, celebrity culture, and entertainment-driven conversations, academic achievement rarely commands the spotlight. Universities are often perceived as slow-moving institutions whose greatest accomplishments remain hidden within lecture halls, research laboratories, and scholarly journals. Against this backdrop, the University of Oxford’s 2026 Vice-Chancellor’s Awards offered a refreshing reminder of what universities can achieve when knowledge, innovation, and societal impact become…

In the constellation of French honors, being laid to rest in the Panthéon is the ultimate gesture of respect by France’s president. But several of the roughly 80 people interred in the hallowed monument over two centuries — a list that includes Victor Hugo, Émile Zola and Simone Veil — have proven to be divisive choices.On Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron is to elevate Marc Bloch, a pioneering French historian and Jewish World War II resistance fighter who was executed by the Gestapo in 1944, to that exalted company. In this case, it is Bloch’s remarkably unifying nature that has made…

Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation of the killing of a teacher and mother of five by a mob in Kaduna State, on Sunday. The teacher, identified as Ummulkhairi, was lynched in Mararaban Jos, a community along the Kaduna-Zaria highway, after being falsely accused of attempting to kidnap children. Witnesses said the victim had left her home in New Mararaban Jos to attend an Islamic lecture at Madrasat Tashiyhul Iman, a school founded by Islamic scholar Malama Mardiyya in the old Mararaba area. According to the accounts, Ms Ummulkhairi had stopped to ask some children for directions to…

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja The Dangote Petroleum Refinery supplied about 5.84 billion litres of petrol to the Nigerian market in the first five months of 2026, accounting for about 81.4 per cent of total supply, a THISDAY trend analysis of statistics from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) for the period has shown. This is as the legal battle instituted by the Dangote Refinery over the continued importation of the product into the country gathers momentum in Nigerian courts. A review of supply data for January to May showed that while the refinery supplied approximately 5.836 billion…

A fatal crash in which a Tesla plowed through a brick home in Katy, Texas, killing a 76-year-old woman, set off alarms about the company’s driver-assistance technology. By Monday afternoon, Tesla was fighting back against the framing. The crash occurred Friday night when a Tesla Model 3, driven by Michael Butler, left the road and slammed into the home of Martha Avila, who was airlifted to a hospital and later pronounced dead. Butler told Harris County sheriff’s deputies that the vehicle was on Autopilot at the time. That detail spread quickly, and by the weekend the story had become the…

Murrell was first arrested in April 2023, a few weeks after resigning due to a row about membership figures.The Glasgow home he shared with Sturgeon was searched as part of the police operation, as was the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh.Murrell’s largest single purchase, in 2020, was a £124,550 luxury motorhome, paid for entirely with party funds. When it was seized by police three years later, it had only ever been driven four miles.Murrell used party funds to buy further items including a £3,223 coffee machine, a £3,000 robotic lawn mower, £2,600 salt and pepper grinders and a £425 gold pendant…

Nature, Published online: 22 June 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01801-4The first demonstration of superconductivity at 35 kelvin drove decades of materials research and introduced a puzzle about this strange state of matter.