Author: damazah@gmail.com

Chuks Okocha in Abuja The African Democratic Congress (ADC), has warned that opposition members were nearing the limits of their restraint over alleged attacks and intimidation, saying continued failure by security agencies to protect them could push the situation towards self-help and imperil the 2027 general election. The party said it was not asking for special treatment, but demanding that existing laws be enforced so that its members and other Nigerians could organise, campaign and participate in politics without fear of violence. It also demanded that the police publicly account for investigations into attacks allegedly carried out against opposition members…

PAT ONUKWULI urges the governor to allow evidence to shape the record There is something increasingly difficult to understand about Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s fixation with Peter Obi. Disagreement is legitimate; scrutiny is indispensable. But when a sitting governor repeatedly reaches twelve years back to interrogate one predecessor, especially whenever that predecessor approaches a national election, the exercise begins to look less like historical accounting and more like contemporary politics conducted through yesterday’s ledger. The latest controversy concerns loans allegedly inherited from Obi’s administration. Anambra officials say eight external facilities from his tenure remain partially outstanding. Obi disputes this characterisation. Yet…

A federal judge on Monday refused to block the Trump administration from giving SpaceX more than 700 acres of wildlife refuge as part of a land swap in Texas, while environmental groups vowed to continue their legal challenge.US district judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr declined the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the parcel exchange, saying they failed to prove it would worsen ecological risks to a Gulf coast region already transformed by billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket operations.In June, the US Fish and Wildlife Service approved moving forward with the deal with SpaceX, which would surrender 683 acres the…

IRGC warns it will ‘change the geography of the war’ if US escalates the conflictIran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps warned it would “change the geography of the war” if the US escalates the conflict, after Donald Trump issued fresh threats against the Islamic Republic.In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump said “very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future”, adding that the options he was considering were “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically or making a deal”.A spokesperson for the IRGC, Hossein Mohebbi, responded with a warning that if the US were to launch…

Dozens of Black employees at Tesla’s flagship plant in California said they were subject to racist slurs, unequal pay and promotions, and bullying by supervisors on a daily basis, a situation management did little to nothing to fix.Their complaints form the basis of a lawsuit brought against the Elon Musk-owned electric car company by the state of California, which began trial with opening statements on Monday.Brett Watson, a lawyer for the California Civil Rights Department, started by showing the court a series of photographs taken throughout Tesla’s Fremont factory. There was the N-word scratched on to a grey-blue metal surface…

Former Senate President Pius Anyim Pius has said the All Progressives Congress, APC, should not be blamed for the failure of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to zone its presidential ticket to the South-East in previous election cycles. Anyim said the decision was informed partly by his belief that the South-East could only produce a president through alliances with other regions. He spoke on Arise TV’s Prime Time on Monday while discussing the zoning arrangement that has eluded the South-East since the return to democratic rule in 1999. The former Senate president said his political experience had convinced him that…

Antarctica’s four-foot-tall Emperor penguin may be the best-known member of the penguin family, but it is far from alone. Seventeen other penguin species live across the Southern Hemisphere, and many inhabit isolated islands that are difficult for scientists to reach and study. That remoteness may help explain how an entire species of gentoo penguin escaped recognition for so long. The birds live on the Kerguelen Islands, known in French as the Desolation Islands, nearly 2,000 miles from any permanently inhabited landmass. An international team led by researchers in Chile and at the University of California, Berkeley has now identified the…

An Australian government snapshot of life in 40 years has been sharply criticised for underplaying the economic and social damage expected due to the worsening climate crisis.The government’s seventh intergenerational report, which projects out to 2066, finds the effects of global heating four decades from now are “highly uncertain”, pointing to the pace of the global energy transition as a key source of unpredictability.The report finds sea level rise from global heating will have the greatest effects on coastal and low-lying areas, while hotter temperatures could reduce productivity of workers, affect agricultural crop yields and damage tourism. “Over the next…

A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where…

It’s no news that there is no love lost between the presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress, Mr Peter Obi and Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State as they have continually been at political war. David-Chyddy Eleke reports that this time, the contention is Obi’s financial record when he served as two-time governor of the state. What started as an innocent podcast appearance by the commissioner for Finance in Anambra State, under the Prof. Chukwuma Soludo administration, Mr. Izuchukwu Okafor, has turned out a major cause of disagreement between two of Anambra’s most powerful political figures; Mr Peter Obi,…