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Good morning. A professor in Britain said his youngest grandson is just three years of age but he's lived through two monarchs, three Prime Ministers, an exit from the EU, a pandemic, a war in Europe, and an energy crisis.
North Korea. A law has been passed to enshrine the right to use nuclear weapons. Leader Kim Jong Un said the legislation means that the country's status as a nuclear power is "irreversible" because it bans denuclearization talks.
Ukraine. The Zaporizhzhia facility, the largest nuclear plant in Europe, has completely shut down amidst ongoing fighting in the region. The plant was damaged by a rocket attack last month following weeks of shelling. Russian forces captured the complex in March during the early days of the invasion.
Ukraine. Troops have "liberated dozens of settlements" and retaken more than 1,000 sq km (385 sq miles) from Russian invaders in the eastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions over the past week. Ukrainian officials said that Russian forces near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city after Kyiv, are retreating.
1755 Giacomo Casanova sentenced
Giacomo Casanova, Adventurer, Writer and famous Lover, is sentenced to 5 years imprisonment in Venice without trial for affront to religion and common decency.
NIGERIA
Dying Nigerian Languages
The Story
The Nigerian government has expressed concern over the threat of extinction of local languages in the country.
What's the threat?
The Director-General of the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC), Segun Runsewe, expressed the government's concern while speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), as he noted Nigerians' increasing preference for the English language. Runsewe expressed fears of a further decline in morality, as he said that the dangers inherent in the trend are beyond the negative impact on local languages.
What dangers?
Runsewe argued that the increasing decline in morality is a direct result of the society's consumption of foreign cultures. According to the DG, youths are deep into immorality due to the way they imbibe other people’s cultures, which is another proof of the complexities of elevating a foreign language above the local ones. "Today, if you go for an occasion and you speak English language wrongly people will laugh at you", Runsewe said.
What solutions did he proffer?
Runsewe advocated reorientation and adequate enlightenment to create awareness for parents, schools, and relevant agencies on the dangers of neglecting Nigerian languages. "The problem is that parents want their children to speak English phonetics", he said. Stressing how serious his concern is, Runsewe called for a policy that will ensure English ceases to be Nigeria’s official language. Source
NORTH AMERICA
Maximum Sentence of 621 Years
The Story
The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has declared a 29-year-old Nigerian, Chidozie Collins Obasi, wanted for an alleged $30m fraud.
How did the fraud happen?
Posing as a representative of an Indonesian-based medical supply company, according to the FBI, Obasi defrauded the State of New York at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, under the pretence of supplying the state with ventilators. Having been convinced that the company had a large stockpile of ventilators manufactured by a German company, the state was said to have wired $30m for the purchase of the "non-existent" ventilators.
Internet of risks
The FBI statement also highlighted the many risks on the internet, as Obasi - in collusion with others - is alleged to have also used unsuspecting remote job seekers to execute scams of more than $1m. Obasi and a co-conspirator are alleged to have offered phony work-from-home jobs to US citizens in September 2018 and obtained more than $1m through that means. Unsuspecting responders to the phony job offers were said to have been engaged as US representatives of a legitimate company, "with responsibilities including collecting on outstanding invoices”.
How did they get money from that?
As part of the job duties, the new employee is said to have been sent counterfeit cheques by Obasi's ally in Canada, with instructions to deposit the cheques. Once the deposit is done, the employee took an agreed commission, and "wired the rest of the money to a foreign bank account ostensibly owned by the fake company". In addition to these, Obasi and his co-conspirators are alleged to have obtained "more than $135,000 in the COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan in June 2020". The FBI has said that he risks a maximum sentence of 621 years in prison. Source
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EUROPE
The Good Side Of Carbon
The Story
Stakeholders are exploring new ways to tackle the effects of Climate Change with a technology that converts carbon into useful everyday products.
What's the technology?
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had noted for a while that Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a potentially effective way to mitigate climate change. A technology that has existed for about five decades, CCS traps CO2 from smokestacks or ambient air and pumps it underground for permanent sequestration. There are currently 27 CCS facilities operating around the world, 12 of which are in the United States.
How much impact does the procedure have on carbon control?
Through these facilities, an estimated 36 million tons of carbon is stored per year, according to the Global CCS Institute. And for the first time, the IPCC added carbon capture and utilization (CCU) to its list of possible measures for reducing atmospheric carbon. Following the IPCC lead, stakeholders are now looking beyond the storage, and exploring ways to turn the stored carbon to useful products, which could happen on a commercial scale soon.
How soon?
The U.S is intensifying work on it, with the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which provides $3.5b in funding for 4 additional direct capture facilities. Through CCU, captured CO2 is incorporated into carbon-containing products like cement, jet fuel, and the raw materials used in making plastics. Though still in early stages of development and commercialization, CCU could help reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 20 billion tons in 2050 - more than half of the world’s current global emissions. Source
FEATURE
Time Out With Jennifer
Meet her...
Jennifer Ajise, an ardent reader of Freshly Pressed, who is a Clinical Research Associate, jumped on this random question session with us.
What’s the single most impactful piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Do not forget who you are, where you are coming from, and where you are going.
What do you think is the silliest song but you like singing it anyway?
Baby Shark doo doo doo doo
How would you explain Tiktok to your great-grandparents?
Granny, TikTok na short film when dey for phone, you fit watch anybody or anything you like. You go see different people dey act, e no dey tay sha, but you go like am.
If you could erase one event from history, which one would you erase?
Biafra War
Let's meet you! If you would like to be featured in Freshly Pressed's Time Out With, shoot us a mail at info@freshlypressed.ng or click WhatsApp. We'd love to hear from you.
286 Britons, Lebanese, Italians, others get Nigerian citizenship
Nigerian oil exports at lowest level in 25 years
Number of supreme court justices drops to 13 as Abdu Aboki retires
Gunmen attack Ifeanyi Ubah’s convoy, police officers feared killed
Kanu: IPOB declares Tuesday sit-at-home in South-East
Vote of confidence can’t save Ayu – Wike
Angola court rejects poll result appeal, opposition urges protest
EPL games postponed over Queen Elizabeth II death
Charles III: Antigua and Barbuda plans vote on King's role as head of state
Alcaraz wins US Open and becomes youngest world number one
KNOWLEDGE
ELI5: So how does the the human brain ignore the second the?
Kotama
We don't actually read every word in a sentence. Our brains pick up the patterns and fill in the blanks as we skim along the text, which greatly increases our reading speed while doing very little to reduce comprehension.
We do it with just about all sensory input, as well. We blank out while driving but still reach our destinations with no incidents, we tune out smells pretty quickly (no matter how bad the smell is), we tune out physical sensations (you're now aware of how your tongue is resting in your mouth, also you're breathing manually), we hit that autopilot button at work and just coast through it while thinking about the grocery shopping, etc.
It's probably an evolutionary trait that evolved from a need to be vigilant against unique sensory input, like sudden movements and noticing things that aren't supposed to be there. We're good at recognizing patterns, and tune things out to reduce overall taxation from sensory inputs so we can instead focus on novel inputs.
Edit: I'm an English tutor, and one of the practices we use to catch those kinds of mistakes is to read the whole text backward. Doing this tricks the brain into not recognizing the speech patterns and causes it to focus on each word.
Infographic: The UK’s royal line of succession explained. Al Jazeera
The Scottish school that educated a king. BBC
Visualizing the link between cancer and life span. VC
Visualizing Pakistan's devastating floods. Reuters
Germany introduces 'green card' to bolster workforce. DW
TRIVIA
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000)
INTERNET GIGGLES
OUR ARCHIVE
Written by Seun, Mercy, Kingsley, and Tosin.
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