Author: damazah@gmail.com

In late May, Neil Rimer said something during a sit-down I had with him in Athens that I haven’t been able to shake. At a vibrant new tech festival in the city, talking about the wealth piling up around AI, he said he has “a strong sense that there will be some sort of a redistribution.” He continued on. “It’ll either be voluntary or it’ll be involuntary, but it’ll happen, and I hope it’s voluntary,” he told me, adding that he thinks tech leaders “can play a leading role in seeing that through.” Coming from most people, that would sound…

File: Rotimi Amaechi (left) and Atiku Abubakar. The Federal High Court in Abuja on Friday struck out a pre-election dispute suit filed by the former governor of Rivers, Rotimi Amaechi, against former vice president Atiku Abubakar. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Amaechi had filed the suit challenging the emergence of Abubakar as the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). Jutsice Joyce Abdulmalik, in a ruling, struck out the suit after the former governor’s lawyer, Jibrin Okutepa, SAN, moved a motion for withdrawal. Okutepa informed the court that an application for the discontinuance of the case…

Integrated evidence helps triangulate the origins of African slaves buried on St Helena

In a game built on heartbreak, France and England will compete for a third-place finish in the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Saturday.There’s a strangeness to third-place games. It’s the game no one wanted to participate in toward the end of the biggest tournament, and yet it’s an opportunity to walk away with some bragging rights. Though these are two teams who already have plenty of that. France is the No. 3 FIFA-ranked team in the world, followed by England at four, and after falling just short in the semifinals, the two teams have to settle for a bittersweet place…

It’s a Friday afternoon, and Amber A’Lee Frost is scouring the large, colorful, laminated menu in a Greek diner in Silverlake, Los Angeles, talking about why she decided to move to L.A. It was 2020, she remembers, and the co-founder and at the time co-host of the mega-hit socialist podcast Chapo Trap House was just coming off tour with the pod. She’d already been considering a change of coasts — she’d been living in New York City for almost a decade — and when Covid hit, she realized it was time. “I was like, I don’t believe in the universe…

US strikes on Iran hit desalination pumps in the coastal village of Bunji, cutting water supply to about 10,000 people across 20 villages, as the US on Friday night continued strikes on Iran for the seventh consecutive night. The attack on a desalination plant is the latest US strike on civilian infrastructure in Iran. PREMIUM TIMES previously reported the destruction of bridges, power facilities and a train station by the US Central Command (CENTCOM). Al Jazeera reports that the attack earlier in the day targeted the central city of Yazd and the southern cities of Lar, Ahvaz, Sirik, Bushehr, Bandar…

The mystery surrounding the death of Mary Habila, a nurse attached to the office of the Minister of Works, David Umahi, deepened on Friday as legal advice revealed that authorities were still seeking answers to the circumstances surrounding her sudden demise. While Habila’s family intensified its demand for the release of her remains for burial, the Ebonyi State Ministry of Justice advised that a post-mortem examination was necessary to determine the cause of death. The ministry stated that available evidence did not indicate that she was suffering from any health challenge before the incident. The development came as the police…

The conflict has been escalating since US President Donald Trump declared 10 days ago that the peace deal with Iran is over.Published On 18 Jul 202618 Jul 2026A seventh consecutive night of attacks by United States forces on targets across Iran has left 10,000 people without water after a desalination plant was hit, with Iran retaliating by launching another wave of drones and missiles at US-allied Gulf states.Hamzeh Pour, chief executive of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company, was quoted by the Tasnim news agency on Saturday as saying that a seawater pumping station and a power transformer at the…

Additionally, vendors participating in the WISeR model, who were hired to carry out AI-driven prior authorization, earn a share of what CMS calls “averted expenditures.” This could entail revenues for rejecting care requests. In turn this points to a broader discussion about long-standing concerns regarding profit-making on the basis of discouraging patients from getting medically necessary care. Several lawmakers have introduced resolutions and amendments to block funding for the WISeR model, citing threats to patient access. Yet the Trump administration seems to be of two minds when it comes to prior authorization. As CMS expands its use in original Medicare…

As Europe faces repeated, dangerous heatwaves, the question is no longer whether rich countries need climate adaptation. It is whether they are willing to learn from places that have been adapting to climate instability for decades.Across the continent, record temperatures are straining hospitals, disrupting transport and turning ordinary public spaces into health risks. In the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the Balkans, extreme heat is only now becoming part of the social, economic and political reality of climate change.But in Africa, communities have lived with rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, drought, water stress and fragile public infrastructure for generations.…