Author: damazah@gmail.com

These may be the last days of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. An announcement on the Mechanical Turk website says that on July 30, 2026, the crowdsourcing service will close to new customers. Amazon Web Services says the decision was made after “careful consideration,” adding, “Existing customers can continue to use the service as normal. AWS continues to invest in security and availability improvements for Mechanical Turk, but we do not plan to introduce new features.” In other words, Amazon isn’t completely pulling the plug, but the service is very much on life support. First launched in 2005, Mechanical Turk was a…

•ActionAid report: Politicians’ appetite for litigations raised number  of election cases from 2 in 1999 to 1,996 in 2023 •‘If we cannot get it right at the polls, if we cannot trust INEC, should we still be apprehensive of the judiciary?’ By Nnamdi Ojiego and Kennedy Mbele The judgment of the Federal High Court Lokoja reversing itself on the order it gave to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is expectedly stoking controversy, especially since it affects the ambitions of two key opposition figures in the country in the 2027 polls. NDC is the platform on…

Mink numbers in Kent could be cut by 90% within two years under a new project aimed at protecting wildlife.The Waterlife Recovery Trust (WRT) has received a £20,000 grant from the BASC Wildlife Fund to expand trapping and monitoring across Kent, which once had one of Britain’s highest densities of invasive American mink.Conservationists say mink have a devastating impact on other wildlife, with the water vole, the UK’s fastest-declining mammal, their main targets.Minks also prey on ground-nesting birds such as snipe, lapwing and waterfowl, as well as kingfishers and sand martins.The project in Kent follows a similar one in east…

Belgium’s football association said Sunday it was “astonished” at FIFA’s decision to suspend USA forward Folarin Balogun’s red card, allowing him to play against Belgium in the World Cup last-16 game. “The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) is astonished by FIFA’s decision to declare suspended United States player Folarin Balogun eligible to play in the USA-Belgium match on Monday,” it said in a statement. The RBFA added it was “investigating all potential options”. Balogun had been set to miss the game in Seattle after controversially being shown a straight red card following a VAR review in the last-32 victory against…

Pick of the weekSpeaking in TonguesThis official Rolling Stones podcast is hosted by Norah Jones and released across six weeks, with each chapter charting the making of the band’s upcoming studio album, Foreign Tongues. Unsurprisingly, it’s a polished exercise in PR for one of the world’s biggest acts. Its first episode is also something of a tribute, as it considers how Mick, Keith and Ronnie returned to the studio following the death of drummer Charlie Watt in 2021. Hannah J DaviesWidely available, episodes weeklyOMMM: Our Museum Mindfulness MeditationLA’s Getty Museum may have reverse engineered the title to get that acronym…

Today’s puzzle imagines a TV game show.The compere announces that at the end of the show two people will be chosen and each placed in a separate booth.In the booth, each of them will flip a fair coin, out of sight of the other person but visible to the audience.Then each of them must guess what the other person flipped – heads or tails. If they both guess correctly, they receive a prize.The chance of each person guessing correctly is 50 per cent. So the chance of both of them guessing correctly is 25 per cent.Or is it?You’re in the…

England booked their place in the FIFA World Cup quarter-finals after edging hosts Mexico 3-2 in a dramatic Round of 16 contest in Mexico City. The fiercely contested encounter followed a weather delay before a passionate home crowd created a hostile atmosphere inside the famous Azteca Stadium. Mexico began brightly, pressing aggressively and forcing England to withstand sustained early pressure without creating many clear opportunities. England struck first in the 36th minute when Jude Bellingham headed home from Bukayo Saka’s inviting cross after a swift attacking move. The Three Lions scored three goals against Mexico (PHOTO CREDIT: FIFA World Cup…

China has conducted a long-range missile test in the Pacific, in a move the Australian government has condemned as “destabilising to the region”.A ⁠test missile topped with ‌a ‌dummy warhead landed ‌in “designated waters” of the Pacific, China’s state news agency Xinhua ‌reported on Monday. The missile test was a “routine arrangement” of China’s annual ⁠military training, with prior notification to relevant countries, Xinhua said.The exact location of the test was, at time of writing, unknown.Australia’s acting prime minister Richard Marles said China had only informed his country today of its plans to conduct a long-range missile test in the…

A super El Niño risks straining India’s power grid more than any other electricity network globally and would slow the country’s shift away from coal, according to a new study.

The humanoid robotics market is awash in money right now. Last week, AI2 Robotics, a Shenzhen-based startup that makes wheeled humanoid robots, raised nearly $735 million at a nearly $3 billion valuation. Earlier this year, Apptronik, an Austin-based maker of humanoid robots for manufacturing and logistics, closed a $935 million funding round valuing the company at more than $5.5 billion, backed by Google, Mercedes-Benz, and John Deere, among others. Last fall, Figure AI, a San Jose-based startup developing general-purpose humanoid robots, self-reported that it closed on $1 billion in Series C funding at an eye-popping $39 billion valuation. By comparison,…