Author: damazah@gmail.com

Segun James The National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) has dismissed allegations of diversion of 5,000 Hajj slots for the 2027 pilgrimage, describing the claims as unsubstantiated and urging stakeholders to distinguish between verifiable facts and commercial grievances. The commission’s position followed a report published by THISDAY Newspaper titled, “Hajj 2027: Private Operators Demand Probe of Diverted 5,000 Slots,” as well as what it described as a broader campaign of misinformation by some licensed private Hajj tour operators over the allocation of slots for the 2027 pilgrimage. Head of Information and Communications Division, Shafii Sani Mohammed,  said stakeholders were free to…

We’re seeing a big debate over AI safety and a potential slowdown, as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently published a plan to “pace the frontier,” while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has publicly echoed President Donald Trump’s claims that the AI backlash is a hoax and regulation is unnecessary. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed whether executives like Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are serious about wanting to slow down. While I was surprised at how many industry leaders seemed to throw their support behind Amodei’s plan, Sean noted that the…

Suzanne Morgan will never forget the day her mother died. It was nine months after she had gone into hospital with gallstones, where she received a routine blood transfusion.“She went downhill rapidly,” Morgan recalled. Her mother haemorrhaged in her liver, and the next day she was dead.The family were astonished to be told that she had Hepatitis C, and doubly shocked to learn that they couldn’t see her because her body was sealed due to contagion risk, leading them to suspect she was HIV positive.Morgan, who was pregnant at the time, said: “I went into full-blown miscarriage. I was in…

Calcium and vitamin D supplements are widely taken to support bone health, especially by older adults. But a large review published in The BMJ suggests that, for most older people, these supplements provide little to no meaningful protection against falls or broken bones. Falls are a major health concern as people age. Nearly one in three adults aged 65 and older falls each year, and those falls can lead to fractures, chronic pain, loss of independence, reduced quality of life, and in some cases a move into residential care. Finding effective ways to prevent falls and fractures is therefore an…

Yinka Olatunbosun Oluseyi Albert’s Flaming Ice is a slow-burning crime thriller, its suspense punctuated by romance and a succession of unsettling incidents that keep the reader guessing until the final page. Set in Onyx, a fictional African country governed by a form of aristocracy, the novel follows the unlikely relationship between Ava Woods, a brown-skinned structural engineer, and Lord Clay Aster, an aristocrat and member of the Upper House of Parliament. What begins as a tentative romance gradually develops into a friendship that crosses the front lines of Onyx’s entrenched class divisions. At the heart of the novel is a…

CNN, Politico and MS NOW have said they will sue the Trump administration after the three US media outlets were barred from the White House.President Donald Trump announced the ban on Friday, accusing the three organisations of writing “fiction or lies” about his government.The companies said their reporters were denied access and had their badges seized when attempting to access the building on Saturday.In a joint statement on Monday, they said they were pursuing legal action to “protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes”.The First Amendment…

For most of the last century, T. rex was pictured as a sluggish, tail-dragging reptile that had to warm up in the sun before it could go anywhere. Then, further research changed that view, replacing it with the active, bird-like animal shown in the movie Jurassic Park. But whether T. rex used warm blood to power that activity remained a question. Now we might have gotten closer to an answer. A team of researchers led by Randon J. Flores and Robert A. Eagle, geochemists at the University of California, Los Angeles, has measured the T. rex body temperature by analyzing…

Former Anambra State Governor and presidential candidate of the NDC, Peter Obi, has said he and his running mate, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, used a town hall meeting in Kaduna to engage directly with citizens on the challenges confronting Nigeria. Obi disclosed this in a post on his Facebook page following the meeting, which he said was organised by the party as part of its series of engagements with citizens. According to him, the Kaduna town hall followed a similar engagement recently held in Port Harcourt. Obi said he attended the meeting with Kwankwaso and other party candidates after visiting the…

Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, will host the 5th Agribusiness Roundtable International Conference from 25 to 28 October, with organisers expecting global investors, policymakers, farmers and industry executives to explore opportunities in Nigeria’s agricultural value chains. The conference is organised by the Nigeria Agribusiness and Agro-Industry Development Initiative, South-South Region, and the Federation of Agricultural Commodity Associations of Nigeria, in collaboration with federal ministries and the Akwa Ibom State Government. The organisers announced the event in a 14 September statement, saying it would focus on attracting private capital, developing agro-industrial value chains and creating opportunities for farmers and agribusinesses. The conference…

A Christian missionary, Afri-mission and Evangelical Network, has enrolled 178 out-of-school children in Abuja as part of its efforts to bring succour to women and children displaced by insecurity in parts of the country. The group which recently rented apartments for over 70 displaced families in Abuja also enrolled 60 displaced women in adult literacy classes as a means of empowering them. The group, which launched the back to school and adult literacy project in Abuja on Sunday said the enrolees were the first batch as the project would be sustained as more funds become available for the project. The…