Having paid a ransom three times to secure the freedom of his loved ones, Nigerian businessman Lawal Ado is not impressed by moves to outlaw payments to kidnappers.
A controversial bill to criminalize ransom payments is the latest attempt to curb the country's spiralling and lucrative kidnapping industry.
It proposes a jail sentence of up to 15 years for anyone who pays a ransom.
Ado said his two daughters were travelling in a police convoy along the...
In a study published today in the journal Science, a team from Cardiff University has been able to pinpoint how the tilting and wobbling of the Earth as it orbits the Sun has influenced the melting of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2 million years or so.
Scientists have long been aware that the waxing and waning of massive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets result from changes in the geometry of Earth's orbit...
Longer breastfeeding duration is associated with improved cognitive scores at ages 5 through 14, even after controlling for socioeconomic position and maternal cognitive ability, according to a study published this week in PLoS ONE by Reneé Pereyra-Elías, Maria Quigley, and Claire Carson of the University of Oxford, U.K.
Previous studies have found an association between breastfeeding and standardized intelligence test scores. However, a causal relationship is still debated. Improved cognitive outcomes could be explained by other characteristics – such as socioeconomics and maternal intelligence...
North Korea fired three ballistic missiles early on Wednesday morning, South Korea's military has said.
Authorities in Seoul said the missiles were fired in the space of less than an hour from the Sunan area in Pyongyang.
It comes just a day after U.S. President Joe Biden left the region, following a trip that saw him vowing to bolster measures to deter North Korea.
North Korea has been test-firing a flurry of ballistic missiles since the beginning...
More than one-third of the world's population lives in drylands that experience significant water shortages. Scientists and engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a solution that could help people in these areas access clean drinking water.
The team developed a low-cost gel film made of abundant materials that can pull water from the air in even the driest climates. The materials that facilitate this reaction cost a mere $2 per kilogram,...
Iran's president has promised to take revenge after a colonel in the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) was shot dead in Tehran on Sunday, the BBC reports.
Two gunmen on a motorbike opened fire at Sayad Khodai as he sat in a car outside his home, state media reported.
Col Khodai was a member of the elite Quds Force, the IRGC's shadowy overseas operations arm, they said.
President Ebrahim Raisi blamed "the hands of global arrogance" –...
(Bloomberg) -- The world’s richest nation is waking up to an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation – it’s getting poorer.
The collective net worth of U.S. residents had been climbing at a dizzying rate for the past two years, even as families and businesses contended with the ravages of a pandemic. Households piled up an extra $38.5 trillion from early 2020 to the end of last year, bringing their collective net worth to a record $142 trillion,...
As NASA's James Webb Space Telescope moves through the final phases of commissioning its science instruments, we have begun working on technical operations of the observatory, writes Thaddeus Cesari of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. While the telescope moves through space, it will constantly find distant stars and galaxies and point at them with extreme precision to acquire images and spectra. We also plan to observe planets and their satellites, asteroids, and comets in our solar system, which move across...
Alexander Govor, the McDonald’s Corp. franchisee who has bought the chain’s entire business in Russia, will have to create a new brand to replace the “golden arches” that came to symbolize his country’s embrace of capitalism during the Soviet Union’s collapse, Bloomberg reports.
McDonald’s agreed this week to sell its network of 850 restaurants to the former Siberian coal mine owner, saying it would “de-arch” Russia’s largest fast-food chain after it decided to leave the...
Canada says it will ban two of China's biggest telecoms equipment makers from working on its 5G phone networks.
The restrictions against Huawei and ZTE were announced by the country's industry minister on Thursday.
Francois-Philippe Champagne says the move will improve Canada's mobile internet services and "protect the safety and security of Canadians."
But Huawei Canada said it was "disappointed" by the decision, which it said was "political," the BBC reports.
"This is an unfortunate political decision that...
