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L-R: Dr. Julius Odidi, Head, Lagos Office National Insurance Commission (NAICOM); Mrs. Ebere Nwoji, Chairperson Nigerian Association of Insurance and Pension Editors (NAIPE); Mrs. Bola Odukale, Director-General of the Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA); and Olusesan Ogunyooye, Head of Marketing, AXA Mansard Insurance Plc, during the inauguration of the newly elected executives of NAIPE in Lagos. By Rosemary Iwunze In the wake of the insurance industry recapitalization, AXA Mansard has called on insurance journalists to go beyond reporting industry developments and take on a more deliberate role in interpreting and translating complex insurance issues into relatable insights that help Nigerians understand…

Startup Groq has raised $350 million as it continues to pivot from an AI chipmaker to a neocloud company that provides powerful GPUs and AI infrastructure services.  The new capital, led by investment firm Disruptive with planned participation from Nvidia, values the company at $3.5 billion. That’s down from the $6.9 billion Groq was valued at last September, just a few months before Nvidia hired the startup’s founder and CEO, Jonathan Ross, and other top talent as part of a licensing deal.  A spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch that despite the difference in valuation, the company doesn’t see it…

Hawaii has been hit by flash floods and mudslides that have swept away homes after category one Hurricane Lala skirted Big Island over the weekend, leaving one person dead in a car accident.Heavy rains and winds were strong enough to sweep around 100 homes off their foundations on the Big Island, officials said. More than 200,000 households were without power.Officials say the tropical storm is predicted to progress west for the next couple of days.Read more about Hurricane Lala here.

The Premier League will permit audio of on-field conversations between players and referees during live broadcasts for the first time this season.The use of audio by the Premier League’s domestic rights holders, Sky Sports and TNT Sports, is part of an expansion of the RefCam system, which became a permanent feature of top-flight coverage last season after a six-week trial at the start of the campaign. The head-mounted RefCams were used by broadcasters to ­provide near‑instant replays of match ­incidents from a new angle in an attempt to enhance the viewer experience, but under the terms of their agreement with…

Jeff Nichols is not only one of cinema’s foremost chroniclers of the American South, but is doing his damnedest to revitalize the film scene in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. When he brought his acclaimed film “Loving” — about the landmark Loving v. Virginia case that legalized interracial marriage nationwide — to Little Rock back in 2016, he surveyed the scene and didn’t like what he saw. “I wanted to bring it to my hometown and show them what I’d done and there was no email list or any central grouping of anyone interested in film,” recalls Nichols. So,…

US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 21, 2026. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected for a second time President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn a jury judgment that he sexually assaulted and defamed writer E Jean Carroll. The Supreme Court did not give any reason for its decision not to hear the president’s challenge. The court in late June also refused to hear Trump’s appeal against the original May 2023 verdict. Carroll, 82,…

President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Oman – a US ally – if it “gets in the way” of his administration’s own talks with Iran, Fox News reports.A reporter for the network said the US president made the comment during a phone call on Monday, during which he also said the US had a direct backchannel with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).The IRGC later denied it was involved in talks with the US. But Iranian officials said on Monday they were close to finalising a deal with Oman on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.Meanwhile, the 60-day Memorandum…

Avishek Das | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesSynchrony Financial, the credit card issuer for brands including Amazon, Walmart and Lowe’s, is working with OpenAI to allow shoppers to buy products directly inside ChatGPT using their store cards.The deal is one of the first major moves by a U.S. consumer lender to bring financing, payments and rewards directly into an AI chatbot.While agentic commerce has become a catchphrase for the next phase of online shopping, consumers who discover items in an AI agent are typically still routed to a brand’s website to complete the purchase. To change that, OpenAI has signed deals…

Nvidia said on Monday that it will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, a data center linked to SoftBank and OpenAI. The investment ensures that Nvidia will be the sole supplier of compute infrastructure at OpenAI’s Ports-Pike data center near Cincinnati, Ohio. Nvidia will also provide up to $105 billion in credit to help build the facility, which could scale from an initial 4.25 gigawatts to 8 gigawatts in size, according to documents the company filed with the SEC. SB Energy’s existing investors include SoftBank and OpenAI. SoftBank had previously held $5.8 billion worth of Nvidia stock, which it sold…

A Cabinet Office press release about the alert, posted to its website at about 18:45 on Friday, was missed by many in the media, which meant there was little warning to the public.Some campaigners have said this potentially jeopardised domestic abuse victims trying to hide secret phones they use to seek support and try to escape abusers.Women’s Aid, the national charity aiming to end domestic abuse, is calling for more forewarning of alerts wherever possible.Veronica Oakeshott, the charity’s head of external affairs, told BBC News: “Survivors of domestic abuse frequently turn to second phones to help them access lifesaving support…