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The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Muhammad Bello has disclosed that over 789 prostitutes and other destitutes have been repatriated to their various states of origin within the last two years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Bello disclosed this to newsmen at a media parley in Abuja. According to him: “Majority of these numbers were repatriated back to their respective neighbouring states after proper profiling and rehabilitation.” He stated that government was determined to ensure that “women, youths, children and the vulnerable in FCT are adequately catered for.” Acting secretary of the Social Development Secretariat (SDS), Irene Adebola Elegbede, who spoke on behalf of the minister, said it was almost impossible to eradicate the world’s oldest profession from the FCT. She said: “You cannot eradicate the profession; you can only try to contain it. It is the oldest profession. We are trying to discourage commercial sex workers in FCT, bu...

Governor Abubakar Bello of Niger State has stated he no longer has confidence in Nigeria’s security agencies. He, therefore, proposed that traditional rulers should be given security votes to help in curtailing the increasing rate of crime in the country. According to him, “Despite the huge amounts voted and given to security agencies monthly, they have failed in making the state and nation safer as crime seems to have become the order of the day.” He opined that if N100m was given to traditional rulers monthly, the nation would fare better in the aspect of security. “I suggest that we go back to the traditional ways of securing our communities, the traditional system performed better in the past and they can do better now if more powers are given to them. I recommend that we give powers to traditional rulers for security.

Four suspected fraudsters, who are Nigerian natives, are currently being prosecuted for allegedly using the identities of civil servants to commit a £10million scam in the United Kingdom. The accused were said to have stolen personal details from the Civil Service Sports Council (CSSC), to make fraudulent claims over a four-year period. The gang, which reportedly made about £2,500,000, would have got away with £10,260,525 if staff at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs had not discovered the high rate of claims being made by civil servants. Adedamola Oyebisi, 30, a CSSC events manager, was accused of stealing membership lists and passing them on to her brothers-in-law Oluwatobe Emmanuel Odeyemi, 34, and Oluwagbenga Stephen Odeyemi, 39, who allegedly ran the fraud with Kayode Sanni, 38.

Three European nations, Sweden, Norway and Spain, have deported 29 Nigerians and two Togolese nationals. The deportees, 27 Nigerian males, two females and two Togolese males, arrived Nigeria early Tuesday morning in leg chains. Their flight, which landed at the Murtala Muhammad Airport, Lagos, at 6.45 a.m., was operated by Privilege Style aircraft, with registration number EC-IZO. An airport official said the 29 males were chained at the ankles because they were considered huge and could pose a threat to the immigration and police officials in the aircraft.

The 220 police from Berlin were spotted at a barracks indulging in a variety of outdoor antics such as having sex and urinating in a group against a fence. Their Berlin bosses cringed with embarrassment and said more officers would be sent out to replace them. The G20 summit is expected to attract big anti-globalisation protests. Berlin is providing 1,000 police as part of an overall force of 20,000 brought in to secure the event on 7 and 8 July. Spokesman Thomas Neuendorf said it was "simply embarrassing how colleagues have behaved". The partying appears to have begun soon after 500 Berlin officers arrived on Sunday evening at a barracks near Bad Segeberg north of Hamburg. The "unfortunate and over-the-top behaviour" involved off-duty officers in a closed area, according to Berlin police president Klaus Kandt.

Those who had their phones on the desk recorded a 10 per cent lower score than those who left them in a different room on operational span tasks, which measures working memory and focus. Those who kept their phones further out of sight in their pockets or their bags scored only slightly better than when phones were placed on desks.

CurveUps are flat materials that transform themselves through material forces into the desired 3-D object. Credit: IST Austria 3D printers have been around since the 1980s, but we are still far from maximizing their potential. One active area of research and development is "self-actuating" objects: flat materials that transform themselves through material forces into the desired 3D object. Previously, however, the range of objects was limited to those with sharp edges and little, if any, curvature, and the transformation methods were based primarily on folding or processes that could not be controlled very precisely (e.g. chemical reactions or inflation). Now, for the first time, a group of current and former IST Austria computer scientists have made it possible to create self-actuating, smooth, free-form objects. In so doing, they developed both an ingenious material design and a new method of self-transformation—they call the fruits of their innovation "CurveUps...

Earlier this month, Microsoft gave the world .NET Framework 4.7 and urged users to install it for the usual reasons: more fun bits to play with and a security improvements. But two days later the company urged Exchange users not to install it ASAP, because it hadn't validated it yet. Last Friday - 10 days after the launch of the new code - it reminded users of Lync and Skype for Business not to install it either. The original advice came on June 13, the same day as .NET Framework 4.7 landed in Windows Update with the “Recommended” tag. Redmond's Exchange Team needed treatment for chronic eyeroll, writing: “We are in the process of validating Exchange Server on the .NET Framework 4.7, but the work is not yet complete”.

As part of Facebook’s promise to answer “hard questions,” the company has published a long explanation of how it finds and removes hate speech — or at least, why it’s often not very good at it. The post runs through the difficulties of defining hate speech across different countries, teaching AI to handle its nuances, and separating intentionally hateful posts from ones that describe hate speech to critique it. Facebook lays out ambiguous scenarios that could flummox automated tools, including insulting terms that communities have reclaimed. It also describes some cases where it clearly got things wrong: it removed a piece of hate mail that activist Shaun King had posted in order to condemn, for example, a mistake Facebook acknowledges can be “deeply upsetting.” (It later restored the post.) It also lists occasions where it thinks it made the right call on a difficult issue. But it doesn’t delve into some of the thorniest hate speech questions, like semantic tweaks that turn ugly sent...

A popular Kodi box has been recalled due to electric shock risk A set-top box that can run the popular Kodi software has been recalled by the EU over fears it could give users an electric shock. The Chinese-made OTT TV Box has been found to have issues with its power supply which could means users are able to inadvertently touch live parts. A warning has now been posted on the EU Consumer page which states, "The creepage and clearance distances are too small and the insulation of the power supply unit is inadequate. The user can touch live parts.

Taking pictures of your partner with cute animals could significantly improve your relationship, a new study suggests. Researchers have found that seeing pictures of your other half cuddling an adorable puppy or bunny rabbit helps to cement the idea of their goodness, which strengthens your bond with them.

Social media can be an invaluable source of information for police when managing major disruptive events, new research from Cardiff University has shown. An analysis of data taken from the London riots in 2011 showed that computer systems could automatically scan through Twitter and detect serious incidents, such as shops being broken in to and cars being set alight, before they were reported to the Metropolitan Police Service. The computer system could also discern information about where the riots were rumoured to take place and where groups of youths were gathering.

The plight of a female artist who was refused a hotel room in the southern city of Hyderabad as she was a solo traveller has gone viral in India. Nupur Saraswat, a spoken word artist, told the BBC she was in the city for a performance but was told by her hotel that "single ladies" were not allowed. The hotel has argued that the area it is in "is not [the] right place" for single women. Under the hotel policies, "locals and unmarried couples" are also forbidden.

A plane travelling from Los Angeles to Houston was diverted after a woman tried to open an emergency exit near the end of the flight, passengers say. The woman, who police have not named, was subdued by a police officer who had joined the force two weeks earlier. A passenger on Southwest Airlines Flight 4519 told KHOU-TV that the woman was behaving erratically throughout Sunday's morning flight. "She wrote 'Help me' and her name" on napkins, the traveller said.

For the first time, Google is set to stop its algorithms from scanning the content of its consumer email service to serve targeted advertisements. In a blog post, the Silicon Valley tech giant outlined how the move will bring the service closer to its ad-free enterprise offering, G Suite. "Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads personalisation after this change," wrote Diana Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud, added the changes will come later this year. "This decision brings Gmail ads in line with how we personalise ads for other Google products."

Results of a new study from epidemiologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggest that long-term, high intake of vegetable protein from such foods as whole grains, soy and tofu, may protect women from early menopause and could prolong reproductive function. Consuming enriched pasta, dark bread and cold cereal were especially associated with lower risk, while they observed no similar relation to eating animal sources of protein. "A better understanding of how dietary vegetable protein intake is associated with ovarian aging may identify ways for women to modify their risk of early onset menopause and associated health conditions," write first author and then-graduate student Maegan Boutot, with her advisor, professor Elizabeth Bertone-Johnson. Details appear in the current early online edition of the American Journal of Epidemiology. Early menopause, the cessation of ovarian function before age 45, affects about 10 pe...

It’s been clear for some time now that  Facebook  is betting heavily on video; everything from live streaming to hosting coverage of news and sporting events. But in an effort to really compete with YouTube, the social media behemoth is attempting to lure original video creators with the announcement of a new mobile app that focuses on, well, video creation. The yet unnamed app was announced this weekend at VidCon, an annual event for video creators to promote their work among the community and meet fans, and will be released later this year. But instead of being an expansion of the live streaming tool available to everyone, this new app will be  tied to Facebook Mentions , which is limited to users with verified accounts, such as celebrities, journalists, and influencers. In addition to connecting to the existing Facebook Live feature, the social network says the app will include a new “creative kit” that gives users access to tools like special intros and outr...

Google is going to stop reading your Gmail in search of opportunities to sell ads. The change will end a practice that Google has embraced since the company introduced Gmail in 2004. The practice has raised concerns among privacy watchdogs and creeped out some users. To help finance the free service, Google has been scanning through what Gmail users were discussing and then showing ads connected to some of the topics. Someone writing about running, for instance, might see ads for Nike or Asics shoes. Google still plans to show ads within Gmail. But instead of scanning through email content, the company's software will rely on other signals to determine which ads are most likely to appeal to each of its 1.2 billion Gmail users. The Mountain View, California, company said it would stop the ad-driven scanning of Gmail later this year. Google says it's changing course so its free Gmail service operates more like the subscription version that it has sold to more than 3...

ONE OF THE headline features in the iPhone 8 is “still being worked out,” according to the latest reports about the upcoming flagship smartphone. As the release date approaches, Apple is due to make a final decision by the end of June. Apple has still not made a final decision on iPhone 8’s most controversial features iPhone 8 will purportedly ditch the iconic Home Button –  replacing it with an OLED display  that bleeds to the very edge of the chassis. But this radical redesign has left  Apple with a slight dilemma . The Cupertino company is purportedly looking to embed the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which was previously baked into the Home Button, beneath the OLED display. But relocating Touch ID is believed to have caused a series of delays and bottlenecks in the production of the iPhone 8. As a result,  the flagship feature is “still being worked out” inside Apple , Cowen and Company analyst Timothy Arcuri revealed in a memo. According to Cow...

  Many studies have explored the effects of light on the circadian rhythms of plants and animals, including humans. But few have looked at the direct effects of light on sleep. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology set out to determine how and why light directly impacts sleep. Scientists wanted to know why darkness is soporific, and why brightness can disrupt deep sleep. Testing in Caltech labs revealed a light-sensitive neural protein key in maintaining the proper balance between wakefulness and sleep. "Researchers had previously identified the photoreceptors in the eye that are required for the direct effect of light on wakefulness and sleep," researcher David Prober, a professor of biology at Caltech,  said in a news release . "But we wanted to know how the brain uses this visual information to affect sleep." In the lab, researchers tagged the brain protein prokineticin 2, or Prok2, with bioluminescent markers in zebrafish models. Zebr...

Everyone loves a lightning show: big bolts of electricity heading to Earth. But there’s an entire display above those billowing masses that you are probably missing. In 2001, researchers scanning the sky with a low-light camera at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory noticed something bizarre: Lightning exploding from a cloud’s top and heading straight for space. The trajectory was baffling. Thunderbolts form when a negative electrical charge—gathered from an incoming storm—builds up near the bottom of a cloud. If enough energy accumulates, it breaks free, sending the classic bolt to Earth. More often, however, the electrons stay in the cloud, traveling upward until they hit the positively charged top, where they cancel out.

Mozilla and the National Science Foundation want a new internet. One where it's free and accessible for everybody. And they'll pay $2 million for it. On Wednesday, the two organizations made a call to action for "big ideas that decentralize the web" in as part of the Wireless Innovation for a Networked Society challenges. The challenges include getting internet to communities off the grid, with proposals like a backpack with a computer and wifi router inside. A decentralized internet sounds like a wild fantasy, and is even a major plot in the latest season of HBO's Silicon Valley. Richard Hendricks, the stumbling genius founder of Pied Piper on the show, played by Thomas Middleditch, proposes using every phone on the planet to create a new internet. About 34 million people in the US don't have access to the internet, and even that pales in comparison to the digital divide in the rest of the world. Globally, 4.4 billion people don't have internet a...

Virgin Media has urged its customers to change their passwords, because they might be at risk of a cyber-attack. According to a BBC report, some 800,000 customers using the provider’s Super Hub 2 router could be at risk. The report claims that hackers could hijack a vulnerability in the hub to access smart appliances, such as a child’s toy and domestic CCTV cameras. Virgin Media said the chances of being attacked are quite small, but still warned its users to change the default usernames and passwords on their routers. "The security of our network and of our customers is of paramount importance to us. We continually upgrade our systems and equipment to ensure that we meet all current industry standards,” said a company spokesman. "We regularly support our customers through advice and updates and offer them the chance to upgrade to a Hub 3.0 which contains additional security provisions.” Virgin Media also said this was not a problem exclusive to their device, and that it h...

Is it OK for children to count on their fingers? Generations of pupils have been discouraged by their teachers from using their hands when learning maths. But a new research article, published in Frontiers in Education shows using fingers may be a much more important part of maths learning than previously thought. The article, by Professor Tim Jay of Sheffield Hallam University and independent researcher Dr Julie Betenson, confirms what parents have long felt instinctively - that the sorts of finger games children often play at home are central to their education. The researchers worked with 137 primary pupils aged between six and seven. All the children were given different combinations of counting and number games to play - but only some were given exercises which involved finger-training. Some pupils played games involving number symbols, such as dominoes, shut-the-box, or snakes and ladders. Other pupils were asked to play finger games: such being asked to hold up a given number o...

Ever wondered why some eggs are more rounded while others are more elliptical? Well, it appears scientists may finally have an answer to why eggs come in different shapes and, apparently, it is all down to the bird’s flying ability. According to researchers, the best fliers are the ones that lay more “pointy” or elliptical shaped eggs. The scientists believe egg shape and powered flight may have evolved together because of the need to keep an airborne body sleek and streamlined, thereby reducing the size of the abdominal cavity.

In early April, the Nigerian government ordered police to storm informal neighborhoods built on the shores of Lagos. They used tear gas and fired bullets to force almost 5,000 people from their homes in the fishing communities, and demolished their homes, likely for the lucrative waterfront properties. The government tried to justify this mass eviction in Otodo-Gbame, a combination of makeshift and low income housing, by saying the communities posed an environmental risk local waterways. But this week the 300,000 people impacted won back the rights to their homes when a Lagos High Court decided they had been unconstitutionally and illegally evicted.  Globally, this kind of sweeping displacement happens often, in the name of development and gentrification. It's all too common for communities living in shantytowns in countries like  Brazil  and  India  to be pushed off of their land, even if they've been there for generations. In the US, families are ...

Mosquitoes are some of the most adept bloodsuckers on Earth. With a quick jab, sharp mouthparts plunge into human skin in search of a juicy blood vessel. It’s no surprise, then, that bioengineers have used the pest as inspiration for a device to periodically and independently sample the blood of individuals with diabetes. Fingerpricking, the most common method used today, can be a tedious and painful process, and many companies have raced to develop alternative approaches, including glucose sensor  implants  and semi-automated monitoring  devices . Enter the “e-Mosquito.” Since 2007, a team at the University of Calgary in Canada has been developing a fully autonomous, minimally invasive device that is pre-programmed to “bite” one’s skin at various times during the day to monitor blood glucose levels. They recently premiered their  latest prototype , a watch-like device that taps into capillaries under the skin and deposits a drip of blood onto a g...

In 2009, Viacom, Lionsgate and MGM joined forces to  launch  a premium movie channel called Epix, with  Emil Rensing  as its Chief Digital Officer. Turns out hiring Rensing was a bad move: according to the  Justice Department , he has just pleaded guilty to defrauding the network $7 million over his five-year employment with the company. The former exec apparently used his position to forge contracts between the network and vendor companies he himself owned and controlled. He then used the names of business associates and acquaintances as vendor personnel, setting up fake email accounts for each one of them to make them look legit.

Three-quarters of the babies who die or are brain damaged during childbirth in the UK might have been saved by better medical care, an inquiry has concluded. The report blames staff for failing to recognise when a baby is in danger, for instance, by not continuously monitoring the baby’s heart rate during labour. Other problems include staff being overworked. Called  Each Baby Counts , the report is a result of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists investigating 1136 cases of babies born in the UK in 2015 who either suffered brain damage during birth, or died during delivery or in the next week. The report comes after a string of scandals over substandard care at UK hospitals. For instance, between 2003 and 2014, 11 babies and one mother died at a hospital run by the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust as a result of poor care. Failure to monitor babies’ heart rates has also been blamed for baby deaths at the Shrewsbury and Tel...

In a recent study, individuals with rheumatoid arthritis who consumed fish ?2 times/week had lower disease activity (swollen/tender joint counts along with other assessments) than those who ate fish never to <1/month. There was also a graded association, so that increasing servings of fish were linked with incrementally lower levels of disease activity.  In the study of 176 patients, frequency of fish consumption was assessed by a food frequency questionnaire assessing usual diet in the past year.  "If our finding holds up in other studies, it suggests that fish consumption may lower inflammation related to rheumatoid arthritis disease activity," said Dr. Sara Tedeschi, lead author of the  Arthritis Care & Research  study. "Fish consumption has been noted to have many beneficial health effects, and our findings may give patients with rheumatoid arthritis a strong reason to increase fish consumption."

Fathers are becoming more involved with raising children, but limited research has examined their association with childhood obesity. In a recent study, fathers' increased involvement with child caregiving was linked with a decreased likelihood that their children would become obese from age 2 to 4. In the study, which used data from a survey conducted in a nationally representative sample of children in the United States, increases in fathers' participation in physical child care (such as bathing and dressing children) and the frequency that they took children outside for walks and playtime were linked with a decreased likelihood of obesity in their young children. The findings suggest that encouraging fathers to increase their involvement with raising children and including fathers in childhood obesity prevention efforts may help reduce obesity risk among young children. "There is growing evidence of the importance of fathers' involvement in raising children ...

Want to help search for potentially habitable worlds around nearby alien suns? 'Course you do. Well, on Monday, the Pale Red Dot Campaign, the team behind last year's discovery of the closest known exoplanet to our own solar system—Proxima b—launched a new initiative, with a focus on citizen science.  Building on the public interest in Proxima b, which is approximately four light years away and orbits the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, scientists  led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé  from Queen Mary University of London are inviting volunteers to join the  Red Dots Campaign . Anyone can  download the software  needed to analyze raw findings from surveys of neighboring systems that may host undiscovered planets, and to present their interpretations in a professional-amateur collaborative forum.  As opposed to the campaign that spotted Proxima b, in which research was peer-reviewed before its public release, the Red Dots Campaign observations will be rele...

On the day that Washington was riveted by the testimony on Capitol Hill of former FBI director James Comey, President Trump made a speech to a group of religious conservatives during which raised the issue of religion and schools. Here is what he said on June 8, according to a White House transcript: So we want our pastors speaking out. We want their voices in our public discourse. And we want our children to know the blessings of God. (Applause.) Schools should not be a place that drive out faith and religion, but that should welcome faith and religion with wide, open, beautiful arms. (Applause.) Faith inspires us to be better, to be stronger, to be more caring and giving, and more determined to act in selfless and courageous defense of what is good and what is right. It is time to put a stop to the attacks on religion. (Applause.) Thank you. It’s no surprise that Trump would say this to the Faith and Freedom Coalition; 80 percent of white evangelicals who voted in the Novem...

Despite  swelling surveillance powers  creeping across Europe, a  European Parliament proposal  is actually calling for a ban on "backdoors" that allow law enforcement agencies and governments into encrypted communications such as WhatsApp messages. In amendments to proposals on personal data, the  Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs calls now says , "when encryption of electronic communications data is used, decryption, reverse engineering or monitoring of such communications shall be prohibited." But privacy experts have told Motherboard the proposals are unlikely to win the support of EU member countries, especially Britain, where the  Investigatory Powers Act  combined with Brexit makes such a privacy u-turns improbable. "I think we can safely say that the UK government won't accept them," Paul Bernal, law lecturer at the University of East Anglia, told Motherboard. "But given Brexit that's very unlikely to hav...

Highly exposed to global warming's climate-altering impacts, Portugal is likely to see more massive forest fires such as the one -- still raging -- that has killed at least 60 people this weekend, experts say. The Iberian peninsula encompassing Portugal and Spain is experiencing a warmer, drier June than usual, explains Thomas Curt, a researcher at France's Irstea climate and agriculture research institute. Added to that, the country has vast expanses of highly inflammable plants, including forests of pine and eucalyptus trees. "Hotter air is synonymous with drier and more inflammable vegetation," said Curt. "The more the mercury climbs, so does the risk of fires and their intensity." Temperatures in the region have warmed by more than the global average over the past half century, according to a 2014 review of climate change impacts on Portugal. Heat waves have become more frequent, and annual rainfall slightly less, said the review published in the jou...

Parenting  is not an easy task. One challenging area of parental involvement is the response to a child’s emotional state, particularly when a child is sad. New research suggests that when mothers support their children’s negative emotions, surprisingly, these same children appear less socially adjusted when rated by teachers. This finding is in contrast to the perceptions of mother’s who believe the support results in the child being more socially skilled. Researchers discovered mothers’ supportive reactions predicted fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors, according to children’s third-grade teachers. These contrasting patterns suggest a potential downside to mothers’ supportiveness of children’s negative emotions for third-grade children’s social adjustment in school. “It’s not clear if the parents are causing these problems by hovering or providing too much support when less support is needed” says Dr. Vanessa Castro, co-author of the Social Dev...

Activity trackers monitor your steps; this innovative sensor measures your blood alcohol level. Worn like a watch, this sensor picks up vapors from the skin and sends the data to a server. If the alcohol reading is high, via an app, a designated loved one gets an alert to check in on the user. This easy-to-wear gadget will help address issues with social drinking and addiction. "We wanted to create an unobtrusive sensor that would be easy to wear, and help people struggling with alcohol," said the inventor, Shekhar Bhansali, an Alcatel Lucent professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "This is one step toward active intervention that only requires the user wear the sensor." According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), excessive drinking cost the American economy $249 billion in 2010. Alcohol abuse is also known to kill about 88,000 people in the United States every year. Bhansali explains that people struggling wit...

Did you forget to pick up the milk?! We often curse our lack of recalling what we just heard, such as forgetting one of the items that a significant other told us to pick up at the grocery store. While our memory is crucial to the equation, so is our  expectation  about our memory. In the situation of the forgotten milk, we didn't write down the grocery items to buy because we wrongly assumed we would remember everything to buy. We overestimated our recall ability--falling for an illusion of how we remember. A  new study  by researchers from The Conversation looked into how our  expectations  as to what we'll remember impacts what we in fact recall. In particular, the researchers examined how subtle changes in delivery such as sound and font size may cause people to overestimate or underestimate their recall abilities.  The researchers found that people tend to use a combination of ease-of-processing and their beliefs about memory when m...

A cybersecurity incident involving a bank's online banking services costs the organization $1,754,000 on average, around double the price of recovering from a malware incident. This is among the findings of  Kaspersky Lab's  Financial Institutions Security Risks survey released today, which shows that 61 percent of cybersecurity incidents affecting online banking come with additional costs for the institution targeted. These include data loss, loss of brand or company reputation, confidential information leaks, and more. Recovering from a DDoS attack is also more expensive for banks ($1,172,000) to recover from than non-financial organizations ($952,000). The report shows that when organizations are attacked by DDoS, customer-facing resources suffer more in banking, than in any other sector. For example, 49 percent of banks that have suffered a DDoS attack have had their public website affected (compared to 41 percent of non-financial institutions) and 48 percen...