Author: thaobh.leo@gmail.com

For decades, observers have chalked up Africa’s slow economic growth to corruption, weak institutions, and poor leadership. But these explanations miss a deeper force at work. The single most powerful variable shaping the speed of economic growth, stability, and the chance of democracy taking root across African countries is the age structure of their populations.A country tends to be most productive when its fertility rate declines enough that working-age adults outnumber children and elderly people in need of care. When young adults make up a large share of the population—and they are educated, in good health, and able to find…

L3Harris Technologies’ board of directors has promoted Sam Mehta to chief executive from his former role as president of space and mission systems in an abrupt leadership change announced Monday.Chris Kubasik, L3Harris’ CEO since June 2021, stepped down from that position and his other roles as chairman and member of the board of directors effective immediately.L3Harris said the board determined to enter into a separation agreement with Kubasik after an investigation found conduct by him that was “not consistent with the values of the company as outlined in its code of conduct.” The company added the alleged conduct was not related…

KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine has rebounded to full strength as Kyiv’s mid- and deep-range strikes continue to hammer Russia’s oil industry.The CIA has worked closely with Ukraine’s intelligence services since Russia’s 2014 invasion, growing a partnership built on assistance and training into a two-way exchange of intelligence, according to Forbes. However, the relationship nearly collapsed in February 2025, when a contentious Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended with Washington temporarily cutting off the flow of intelligence and weapons to Kyiv.But Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking…

The U.S. military, scrambling to rebuild depleted stocks of high-tech weaponry, on Monday said it had awarded RTX unit Raytheon a $22.9 billion contract to dramatically boost the output of Tomahawk missiles.The U.S. ‌has supplied large amounts of arms to allies while also using munitions in the Iran conflict, raising concerns about inventories of air defense and precision-guided weapons.“We called on industry to rapidly scale up munitions output, and RTX is delivering,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in an X post. “This landmark Tomahawk contract ensures our warfighters continue to have the lethal firepower they need.” In…

Trending:Colby Covington praises Arman Tsarukyan following RAF 11 match: “You’re gonna be the UFC lightweight champ”mmajunkie on InstagramMMA legend Edson Barboza has explained his decision to retire from mixed martial arts after his loss at UFC 330. On Saturday night, Edson Barboza’s mixed martial arts career came to an abrupt end when he suffered a bad defeat at the hands of Esteban Ribovics. It’s a decision that feels like it’s been coming for a while now, and the man himself acknowledged that he just isn’t at the level he needs to be anymore. RELATED: Edson Barboza discusses possible MMA retirement…

Faced with a backlog of accommodation requests from employees with disabilities and medical conditions, the Labor Department plans to use artificial intelligence to triage the workload. An internal email obtained by Government Executive states that staff at the Civil Rights Center, which processes reasonable accommodation requests, currently must “engage substantively with every request regardless of completeness or likely outcome, limiting capacity and delaying determinations.” “The process requires case-by-case judgment, but cases vary significantly in complexity and documentation quality: some are well-supported and straightforward, some require additional documentation, and some are not well-supported by the documentation provided,” the email states. Labor Department employees told…

Dan Hardy was not sold on Ian Machado Garry’s friendly approach to Islam Makhachev during UFC 330 fight week, questioning whether several interactions were calculated rather than spontaneous. Speaking to Submission Radio, Hardy focused on Garry, 28, introducing his son to Makhachev and the Irishman’s respectful tone at the pre-fight press conference. “The whole thing with introducing his son. Call me cynical, but I struggle to look at anything like that and go, that’s just a genuinely lovely moment,” Hardy said. “A lot of what he does is performative.” Hardy said he could not be sure whether Garry had a…

In the summer of 2023, during Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive, I watched two soldiers working under a camouflage net behind a battered school in Zaporizhzhia carry out in ninety seconds a sequence of tasks that the Army distributes across an entire fire support team. A folding table, a cracked tablet, and a power bank sat between them. One of them flew the drone; the navigator did everything else. The drone was finding targets for the gun line. While the navigator talked to the pilot beside him, he tracked the drone feed on one screen and friendly positions on another; the gun…

Imagine a rifle so large that calling it a “rifle” almost feels like underselling the engineering involved. The Barrett M82 was built around a simple but ambitious idea: take the enormous .50 BMG cartridge, traditionally associated with heavy machine guns, and create a weapon that a small team could actually transport and operate. That idea […]

Khabib Nurmagomedov had UFC fans talking after appearing with gloves on at UFC 330. Dana White was then asked the question many people had in mind: could the unbeaten former champion ever be convinced to fight again? Dana White does not expect Khabib Nurmagomedov to put the gloves back on. The UFC CEO was asked about the retired former lightweight champion after UFC 330, where footage showed Nurmagomedov wearing UFC gloves backstage. “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen,” White said at the post-fight press conference. “Listen, when he was trying to retire, I was all over that f*ing…