Author: damazah@gmail.com

I accept this honour this morning not for myself alone, but for every quiet peace support operation official, every mediator, every civil society worker, every ordinary citizen who does the unglamorous work of holding a country together while nobody is watching or applauding. I accept the Order of Timor-Leste with my wife, Adejumoke, beside me. She has, over decades, survived my travel schedule, and never once complained that a plane once shook so hard over the Atlantic that her husband nearly did not return home. Your Excellency, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen Let me say it plainly before I get…

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) have introduced new legislation that would ban anyone from developing artificial superintelligence — a technology the bill describes as capable of the “destruction or disempowerment of humanity,” including by overthrowing the government. Under the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, AI leaders would face up to 20 years in prison for violating the law.The bill doesn’t just take aim at the more powerful superintelligence, a term President Donald Trump said the US will use in place of “AI” in official documents. It would also pause the development of advanced AI systems, which lawmakers…

In November 2020, Barack Obama warned of an “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies. Polarisation and radicalisation were corroding trust in established information sources. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” the former US president said.That vulnerability has grown since then. Democracy’s enemies have become more determined to exploit it. This is the threat that Andy Burnham highlighted in a speech at the United Nations this week. The prime minister accused Russia of waging an “industrial-scale assault” on the UK’s information environment using bot armies…

Cell cultureCOLO320DM, COLO320HSR and SNU-16 cells (ATCC CCL-220, CCL-220.1 and CRL-5974, respectively) were maintained in RPMI-1640 medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), 100 U ml−1 penicillin-streptomycin, 1% non-essential amino acids, and 2 mM l-glutamine. HEK293T cells (ATCC CRL-3216), PC3-DM, and PC3-HSR (gifts from the P. Mischel laboratory) were cultured in Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% bovine calf serum, 100 U ml−1 penicillin-streptomycin, 1% non-essential amino acids, and 2 mM l-glutamine. NCI-H716 cells (ATCC CCL-251) were cultured in RPMI-1640 with the same supplements. All cells were incubated at 37 °C in a humidified atmosphere containing 5% CO2. All cells were tested for Mycoplasma…

I do hope you are wearing your zebra stripe trousers today. Anyone who is anyone is wearing zebra stripes this month, you know. If you haven’t yet got with the programme, I suggest you nip to the shops and snap some up before they are all gone. It would be mortifying to be the last one without a pair. Hurry!Only teasing. Fashion doesn’t work like that any more. The days when people like me bullied everyone else into wearing banana yellow one season and puffball sleeves the next are over. Looking trendy is over. Timeless chic is the only show…

On June 22, 2026, China’s Ministry of Commerce put 10 US companies on its export control list. Neither Chinese nor foreign firms can sell those companies any goods that have both civilian and military uses. Most of them build drones, radar, aerospace systems, and military vehicles. Two of them—MP Materials and USA Rare Earth—are the federally backed American companies furthest along in building a mine-to-magnet chain. Beijing said its move was a response to a similar move by the Pentagon. My interpretation is that China picked MP Materials and USA Rare Earth because they are best placed to reduce America’s…

By Adegboyega Adeleye Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has responded to Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) presidential candidate Donald Duke after the former Cross River State governor said he was unsure whether Sowore was running for office in the 2027 presidential election. Duke described Sowore as a “voice of conscience,” saying the activist says things some politicians avoid because of political civility. “Let me talk about Sowore. I like him. I’m not sure Sowore is running for office, with due respect to him, but I see him as a voice of conscience,” Duke said in an…

President Bola Tinubu has welcomed the $800 million Final Investment Decision (FID) on the Ima Gas Development Project by AMNI International, an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, in partnership with TotalEnergies. In a statement issued on Wednesday by Bayo Onanuga, the president’s spokesperson, Mr Tinubu said the investment marked another major milestone in his administration’s efforts to unlock Nigeria’s vast gas resources for investment, industrialisation, job creation and economic growth. The Ima Gas Project, located offshore in Oil Mining Leases (OMLs) 112 and 117, was discovered in 1973 but remained undeveloped for more than five decades. According…

Buying a flagship phone in 2026 makes little sense unless you’re really going to use all the features at hand. By comparison, the budget smartphone market has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and you can now get most of the features you’d want, including a high-quality OLED screen and a well-performing chipset, all for a reasonable price.There’s more choice than ever for shoppers who don’t want to spend too much on their next upgrade, but many models simply aren’t worth your time. That’s where this guide comes into play. I’ve tested the latest models and…

Aftermarket devices that can boost or augment a vehicle’s native advanced driver assistance systems are the target of a new federal investigation this week. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation says it knows of five crashes in which drivers using devices from comma.ai crashed into stopped or slow-moving cars. Two of the crashes resulted in three deaths, and 11 people were injured in four of the five crashes, some seriously. Comma.ai was the brainchild of George Hotz, who rose to prominence at the start of the last decade by jailbreaking iOS and hacking Sony PlayStations. In…