Author: damazah@gmail.com

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has described Saturday’s by-elections in Gombe, Kano, Bauchi and Delta states as a critical test of Nigeria’s electoral systems ahead of the 2027 general elections. Joash Amupitan, INEC Chairman, said the four legislative polls offered the commission an opportunity to assess its logistics, technology and field operations while identifying areas requiring improvement ahead of the nationwide elections. Amupitan spoke while monitoring the elections from INEC’s National Situation Room at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja. The elections covered the Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye Federal Constituency in Gombe State; Dawakin Kudu State Constituency in Kano; Sakwa and Disina State…

Google’s Gemini accessed the protected systems of three other companies in what The Wall Street Journal reports were the AI model’s first autonomous hacks. Similar to OpenAI’s breach of Hugging Face, the Gemini hacks were less noteworthy for being particularly sophisticated and more for the fact that they were conducted by an AI model. These breaches took place during cybersecurity testing by a company called Irregular. In one case, Gemini simply guessed passwords until it gained access; in the other two, it found credentials in a public repository. Irregular reportedly notified Google about the hacks in late July, but the…

Asylum seekers who arrive on small boats across the Channel are “wealthy men” who do not deserve the help of the British state, according to the Reform UK MP Danny Kruger.The former Conservative, who defected last year, said the fact that some migrants were paying people smugglers thousands of pounds – often using their life savings or borrowed money – made them well off. The claim was immediately dismissed by charities who support refugees.Speaking at the Big Brue festival in Bruton, Somerset, Kruger said: “By the way, most of them [are] comparatively wealthy and fit young men who’ve crossed safe…

A routine check of NASA lunar data unexpectedly led to a major discovery. Robert Wagner, a scientist who works with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), was examining a large map of the Moon when something unusual stood out on his computer screen. He noticed an unusually bright patch surrounded by a dark halo, a pattern suggesting that material on the lunar surface had recently been disturbed. “I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was,” said Wagner, an image-processing specialist from Intuitive Machines who works with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) system. When…

The Ibiono Ibom Local Government Council, Akwa Ibom State, has warned heads of its 64 public primary schools against using pupils for manual labour, including cutting grass and working on private farms, as schools reopen for a new academic term. The Chairman of the council, Asuakak Umoh, issued the warning at a meeting with the headteachers of the 64 public primary schools in the council area on 23 July before the close of the term. In the meeting, he reiterated his administration’s commitment to protecting pupils’ learning time and improving the conditions under which children receive education. According to its…

President Bola Tinubu says the federal government and state governments are working to reduce transportation costs through the National Affordable CNG Transit Programme, with the target of delivering measurable fare reductions from 1 October. In a statement on Saturday, Mr Tinubu said an implementation committee had been established under the Nigeria Governors’ Forum following his 27 August meeting with the 36 state governors. He cited existing CNG and electric transport initiatives across several states as evidence that cheaper energy can translate into lower fares. In Borno, the Nigerian leader said CNG and electric buses charge between N50 and N100 on…

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the tarmac before boarding Air Force One. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) | Getty Images On Friday, the president threatened to ban CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House. It could have just been another one of his Truth Social fever dreams, but it turns out it’s very real. All three publications were turned away from the White House this morning, NPR reports, marking an escalation in the administration’s war on the First Amendment. Politico tried to get to the bottom of it, asking why now? It reports that “many senior…

Sir Ed Davey said the Liberal Democrats are “a firewall against Nigel Farage and Reform” as the party’s conference began in Brighton.The Lib Dem leader sought to strike a more combative stance as he faced down criticism from his own MPs that the party was struggling for relevance and being too polite about problems.On the first day of the autumn conference, Sir Ed warned an “unholy alliance” between Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Farage could turn the UK into a “Trump satellite state”.Addressing speculation about a possible snap election, he said the party was ready to fight and would build…

Only one confirmed living member of the species is known – a cat in a rescue sanctuary in Bolivia – but scientists believe others exist.It was this 10-year-old cat, nicknamed ‘Tigrino’, that set scientists on the path to discovery. Bolivian scientist Dr Nogales-Ascarrunz was volunteering at the sanctuary when she noticed the cat looked unusual.It had been found in the forest by a local resident, who initially thought it was a domestic kitten. As it grew older, however, it became clear that it did not behave like a house cat.Dr Nogales-Ascarrunz had heard of other sightings of small wild cats…

The streets of Calabar came alive on Saturday as a mammoth crowd of youths, women, elders and political supporters poured into the city for a solidarity walk organised by the Evidence Group, signalling an intensifying grassroots mobilisation ahead of the 2027 general election. From the early hours of the day, the atmosphere around the procession was charged with music, colourful displays, dancing and political chants, as participants marched through major routes of the Cross River capital in an emphatic show of solidarity with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Bassey Edet Otu. At intervals, the crowd erupted into chants of…