Author: damazah@gmail.com

President Bola Tinubu has mourned the death of Peter Onwubuariri, an assistant director of information and public relations at the Presidential Villa, describing his passing as a major loss to the presidency and the State House media department. The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, conveyed the president’s condolences on Monday when he led presidential media aides and members of the Media and Public Relations Department on a condolence visit to the family of the late official in Abuja. Other members of the delegation included the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and…

BEIJING — China on Monday pushed back on calls by U.S. AI executives for companies to slow down the development of the cutting-edge technology.”Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance,” Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, said on Monday, per an English translation published by Reuters. He was responding to a question about U.S. CEOs, including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk, calling for the industry to slow down because of the dangers rapid advances in the technology pose.China’s Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin, published an article on…

OpenAI has bought smartphone camera maker Glass Imaging in a deal worth over $300 million, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The company, founded in 2019 and based in Los Altos, California, had previously raised about $30 million in funding from investors. Glass Imaging was founded by Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, a pair of former Apple engineers who previously led the team that developed Apple’s Portrait Mode. This background directly informs the work they now do at Glass Imaging, where they use AI to overcome the physical size constraints of smartphone cameras. Rather than using AI…

Andy Burnham’s government could thwart Reform’s unprecedented £72m donations with retrospective restrictions on political donors that will include tough new residency requirements, ministers have announced.In a move that is likely to set off furious complaints from Nigel Farage’s party, the government will table amendments to legislation going through the House of Lords within weeks that puts the legality of Reform’s latest donations in doubt.Senior Labour and union figures had urged ministers to look again at party funding rules after Reform announced at the weekend that two cryptocurrency billionaires, Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, who have both previously been based overseas,…

A chemistry concept taught to generations of students may need to be explained very differently, according to an international team of researchers who say a long-accepted textbook description does not match modern evidence. The issue centers on the inductive effect, a fundamental idea in structural organic chemistry used to describe how atoms influence the distribution of electrons within molecules. The researchers’ 2024 research concluded that textbooks had been describing this effect incorrectly for almost 100 years. That work has already begun to influence chemistry education. Two A-level exam boards have since announced reviews of how they teach the inductive effect…

Saudi Arabian football authorities promised to take action and Cristiano Ronaldo called for life bans after rival fans taunted Al-Hilal’s Ruben Neves about the death of Diogo Jota, his friend and former Portugal team-mate. Chants about Jota, the Liverpool and Portugal forward who died in a car crash last year, rang out during Al-Hilal’s 6-0 away win over Al-Taawoun on Saturday. “The league must take action and punish this kind of fan behaviour,” Saudi-based Portugal captain Ronaldo wrote on Instagram on Sunday. “People who behave like this should never be allowed to enter a stadium again,” he added. Midfielder Neves,…

Comedian and actress Anita Alaire Afoke Asuoha, popularly known as Real Warri Pikin, has apologised to her husband following the backlash over a viral video showing singer Timaya lifting her during a performance in the United States. The incident occurred on Saturday at the African Muzik Magazine Awards (AFRIMMA) festival in Dallas, Texas, where Real Warri Pikin won the Best Stand-Up Comedian award and Timaya performed among the Nigerian artistes. A video from the event showed the comedian joining Timaya on stage during his performance of his hit song, Ukwu, before the singer lifted her as part of his performance.…

Women account for only 11.7 per cent of the 77 candidates cleared to contest the 2027 National Assembly elections in Edo State, while youth participation remains below four per cent. An analysis of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) final list for the 16 January 2027 elections shows that 68 men and nine women are competing for federal legislative seats in the state. The candidates contesting Senate and House of Representatives seats range in age from 33 to 75, with an average age of about 48.7 years. The Senate has 26 candidates, comprising 21 men and 5 women, giving women…

The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Ipalibo Banigo, has called for increased investment in Nigeria’s health sector, saying the country remains below its commitments to healthcare financing. Ms Banigo made the call on Monday in Abuja after she was recognised as the Health Champion 2026 at the Health Sector Reform Coalition (HSRC)/Nigeria Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Civil Society Organisations-Media Mid-Year Review of Nigeria’s Health Sector Reforms. The event brought together government representatives, civil society organisations, development partners and media professionals to review progress on health-sector reforms and efforts to improve health outcomes in Nigeria. Increased health investment Receiving…

Mahmoud Khalil announced on Monday that he’s sued Columbia University, accusing the New York City school he attended of a years-long history of anti-Palestinian discrimination, indifference to harassment, and retaliation.Khalil, a US green card holder of Palestinian descent, was a graduate student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) when he was arrested at his university apartment by federal immigration agents in March 2025, the first of a number of foreign nationals that the Trump administration has detained and sought to deport over their pro-Palestinian advocacy.In a lawsuit filed in the southern district of New York, Khalil and…