Author: damazah@gmail.com

Flutterwave, Africa’s leading payments technology company, is enabling Nigerians at home and abroad to participate in the initial public offering (IPO) of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals, providing digital payment infrastructure for retail and diaspora investors to fund their share subscriptions.A statement explained that Flutterwave’s role in facilitating access to the Dangote IPO builds on its experience supporting public offerings in Nigeria, including facilitating payments for MTN Nigeria’s public offering in 2021. The experience highlights Flutterwave’s role in using digital payment infrastructure to make participation in public offerings more accessible to investors.The Dangote IPO allows investors to purchase shares in…

Platnova has rolled out a suite of tools under Platnova Business aimed at helping companies manage collections, payments, and international transactions from one platform. The move addresses a common challenge for growing businesses. As transaction volumes rise, manual processes and disconnected tools become harder to manage. The company said its collection tools are built for businesses handling high transaction volumes, including online merchants, marketplaces, and investment platforms. The offering includes: NGN virtual accounts for receiving customer payments Payment links for quick collection without a full checkout setup A checkout tool for website and app payments A payment gateway for accepting…

Shortly after 7am last Saturday in the English coastal town of Dover, livestreamed footage distributed by Britain’s newest anti-migrant movement showed dozens of men in paramilitary outfits jumping out from the backs of vehicles, their faces covered beneath balaclavas, their hands in black gloves.Within an hour, hundreds more masked agitators, dressed head to toe in black, some wearing silver crosses around their necks, were marching through the town’s streets, clapping and chanting “Stop the boats” and “Christ is king”, blockading the busy port for hours.Anti-immigration protests have become a familiar sight in Britain over the past five years, with demonstrators…

People who regularly drink very hot tea or coffee may face a significantly higher risk of developing oesophageal cancer, a study has found. The researchers found that people who preferred their beverages very hot had more than three times the risk of developing oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) compared with those who preferred warm drinks. The study, involving nearly 980,000 middle-aged adults in the United Kingdom, was published in the International Journal of Cancer. Oesophageal cancer affects the tube that carries food and drinks from the mouth to the stomach. Oesophageal SCC is the most common form of the disease…

Greg Schiano didn’t come into the 2026 season on the hot seat, but he quickly found himself on it after Rutgers got dominated in their home opener by lowly UMass — which hadn’t beaten a Power Four team since joining FBS in 2012 and hadn’t won against any FBS opponent since 2023. The Scarlet Knights looked hapless on defense and weren’t much sharper on offense, and while Schiano is comfortably the most accomplished coach at Rutgers since Frank Burns in the 1970s, a loss like that to UMass is enough to raise questions about one’s job security. A slow start on…

More than a year after her American Eagle ad controversy, Sydney Sweeney is facing backlash for another campaign: her sexualized promotion for sports trading app Novig. The Euphoria actress partnered up with Novig on Wednesday to support the new platform, which launched last month. She not only starred in the ad but also joined Novig as a strategic partner and equity holder. Novig’s “platform combines the mechanics of modern financial exchanges with a sports-first experience, creating a more efficient and transparent way for fans to trade on sports outcomes,” per a release. It’s also dubbed “the only prediction market to…

Boniface Okoro in Umuahia Travel journalist, Mr. Charles Ajunwa, has been named ‘Top Travel Communicator in Nigeria’ for 2025/2026 by the Board of ATQ News/Travellers Magazine. Ajunwa, who doubles as News Editor, THISDAY (Saturday), was selected following a public voting process as one of the Top 100 Travel and Tourism Icons in Nigeria for 2025/2026. The award will be presented to him tomorrow, during the 22nd Akwaaba African Travel Market at Eko Hotels and Suites, Lagos. In a letter signed by Ikechi Uko, Publisher of ATQ News/Travellers Magazine, the board said the award recognises Ajunwa’s “outstanding contribution to the country’s travel…

Reform UK has been given a record £36m donation by Ben Delo, a British cryptocurrency billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering controls.The businessman, who has moved back to the UK from Hong Kong, is now the biggest UK political donor by far, dwarfing the £15m contribution to Reform UK from Thailand-based Christopher Harborne.The huge donation will be a boost for party leader Nigel Farage at a time when he is facing a police investigation into overseas funding for Reform, plus a standards inquiry into a £5m undeclared personal gift from Harborne.It had been thought…

Empty venuesFlower availability has also changed. A bouquet may seem like a small and easily accessible part of a wedding, but in Gaza, even acquiring flowers can be difficult.Fresh flowers are rare finds, and the price of artificial flowers has risen sharply amid the shortage. It’s so expensive now, in fact, that many brides resort to borrowing or renting artificial bouquets — just to hold them for a few hours.There’s also a shortage of wedding halls. Before the war, these venues provided large spaces for families and friends to decorate, fill with music and celebrate.But the war destroyed many of…

Using AI personas to explore mindfulness and task-based creativity.gettyIn today’s column, I continue my ongoing series on the topic of mindfulness and do so with another AI-based mini-experiment. Readers might recall that I previously explored the Langerian Mindfulness Scale (LMS) via the use of 1,000 AI personas; see the link here. Doing so revealed that the AI personas were skewed toward the higher end of the LMS distribution and displayed heightened aspects of mindfulness, which, upon further inspection, reflected how the generative AI had been foundationally tuned via RLHF (reinforcement learning with human feedback). The AI had essentially been tilted…