Author: damazah@gmail.com

By Emma Ujah, Abuja Bureau Chief The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, yesterday opened applications for the second cohort of its Regulatory Sandbox Programme, introducing dedicated tracks for virtual assets and data-enabled financial services. Applications open today and close August 31, 2026, with the programme providing a controlled environment for innovators to test new financial products, services, business models and technologies under CBN supervision. The CBN, in a statement signed by Acting Director, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Department, Mrs. Hakama Sidi Ali, said the second cohort would operate under two tracks – the Virtual Asset Service Provider, VASP, Track and…

The AI jobs apocalypse never showed up. Still, jobs are changing and economists expect more to come.The prediction was stark: artificial intelligence advancements would wipe out jobs en masse. “Half” of all entry-level white collar jobs would vanish, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said in May 2025. A month later, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, went further, foreseeing the end of “certain job categories”. Companies began citing AI in their layoffs. Workers organized. And students reconsidered their future careers.But a year later, the mass carnage hasn’t shown up. Continue reading…

The Cobra meeting will be attended by ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Home Office, and Department for Health, as well as the Environment Agency.A No 10 spokesperson said the government understood firefighters, farmers and NHS staff were all facing challenges connected to the weather.There has already been one Cobra meeting on heatwaves this year chaired by officials, but this will be the first such emergency session chaired by Burnham.In June, the government under previous prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced that specialist firefighters would be positioned in key locations across England in response to wildfire…

The video opens with a man in his 80s slumped in a hospital bed, his face hollow as he scrunches his eyes. A jump cut advances the scene three days: the man is alert now, words gathering as he identifies his son.Six months later, he is pictured sitting upright, engaged in conversation. His gaze is animated. At eight months, the man walks briskly down a hospital corridor. He recites a near-century-old Maoist military anthem from memory. He is practically unrecognizable from the withered figure in the opening frame.China is waging war on Alzheimer’s. What can its approach teach the rest…

The 2026 FedEx Cup Playoffs begin Thursday at 8:10 a.m. ET with the 2026 FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tenn. The top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings are in the field, with the top 50 from this no-cut event advancing to the BMW Championship. The purse is $20 million and points are quadrupled compared to standard PGA events, so the standings can shift dramatically based on the outcome. Visit our DraftKings promo code review and get $150 in bonus bets instantly when you bet $5:Scottie Scheffler is the favorite this week at +480 (risk $100 to win…

Spotify is introducing a new feature that will highlight if an artist has been generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The streaming service says the AI Persona badge, that will start appearing on some profiles from mid-September, will flag to listeners if an “artist’s identity may be AI-generated and does not represent a real person”. The changes are being introduced to give listeners “more transparency” about what they’re hearing, Spotify says. It comes after some music fans made it “clear” to the streamer they don’t like seeing a profile that seems to be a human, to then realise it’s AI-generated.AI-generated music…

One June day in 2015, I stood outside Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre near Bedford and heard the women inside singing. “Set her free,” said the graffiti on the walls. “Shut it down.” I had often visited the centre and heard the desperate stories of women who were held inside it. But that day felt hopeful rather than despairing, as hundreds of women – refugees, campaigners, lawyers, members of parliament, actors, writers – gathered around the centre to demand freedom for the women locked up.When I set up the organisation Women for Refugee Women, I was driven by my faith…

The Federal Government has commenced the distribution of starter packs to 18,510 Nigerians trained under the first batch of the Renewed Hope Vocational and Skills Training Programme, an initiative of the National Social Investment Programme Agency aimed at equipping beneficiaries with the tools needed to start businesses and become self-reliant. The beneficiaries, drawn from the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, underwent two weeks of intensive vocational training at more than 230 accredited centres across the country. Speaking at the closing ceremony of the programme in Abuja on Wednesday, the National Programme Manager, N-POWER, Dr Nsikak…

Legislation that would modernize federal labor law began with a handful of lawyers meeting, of all places, in an ice-cream shop.“We wrote for hours what we would do to amend the National Labor Relations Act,” said Marni von Wilpert, a member of the San Diego city council who was then an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Bringing together “our collective experience as labor lawyers over the years, really trying to unrig the rules so that working people could have a fair shot”.Though that meeting in Washington DC took place over a decade ago, the plan to reform…

Morgan Durrant, a Delta spokesperson, confirmed the details to Ars. “One initial finding is an unauthorized WiFi network, which was not provided, operated, or supplied by Delta, was present onboard the aircraft for a short time during the flight,” Durrant told Ars via email. Delta further noted that the flight’s safety was “never in question and no aircraft operating systems were affected,” and that no emergency was declared. The actual onboard Wi-Fi was disabled for 30 minutes. The Atlanta Police Department referred all inquiries to the FBI. Atlanta’s FBI bureau told Ars that it is looking into the matter. Officials…