In a neat little neighborhood in Venice, Calif., there’s a block of squat, similar homes, filled with mortals spending their finite days on the planet eating pizza with friends, blowing out candles on birthday cakes, and binging late-night television. Halfway down the street, there’s a cavernous black modern box. This is where Bryan Johnson is working on what he calls “the most significant revolution in the history of Homo sapiens.” 

Johnson, 46, is a centimillionaire tech entrepreneur who has spent most of the last three years in pursuit of a singular goal: don’t die. During that time, he’s spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system called Blueprint, in which he outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors, who use data to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his “biological age.” That system includes downing 111 pills every day, wearing a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, collecting his own stool samples, and sleeping with a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections. Johnson thinks of any act that accelerates aging—like eating a cookie, or getting less than eight hours of sleep—as an “act of violence.” 

Johnson is not the only ultra-rich middle-aged man trying to vanquish the ravages of time. Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel were both early investors in Unity Biotechnology, a company devoted to developing therapeutics to slow or reverse diseases associated with aging. Elite athletes employ therapies to keep their bodies young, from hyperbaric and cryotherapy chambers to  “recovery sleepwear.” But Johnson’s quest is not just about staying rested or maintaining muscle tone. It’s about turning his whole body over to an anti-aging algorithm. He believes death is optional. He plans never to do it. 

Outsourcing the management of his body means defeating what Johnson calls his “rascal mind”—the part of us that wants to eat ice cream after dinner, or have sex at 1 a.m., or drink beer with friends. The goal is to get his 46-year-old organs to look and act like 18-year-old organs. Johnson says the data compiled by his doctors suggests that Blueprint has so far given him the bones of a 30-year-old, and the heart of a 37-year-old. The experiment has “proven a competent system better at managing me than a human can,” Johnson says, a breakthrough that he says is “reframing what it means to be human.” He describes his intense diet and exercise regime as falling somewhere between the Italian Renaissance and the invention of calculus in the pantheon of human achievement. Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel; Johnson has his special green juice. 

But when I showed up at Johnson’s house one Monday in August, I wasn’t really there to figure out if his elaborate age-defying strategies actually worked. I assumed that given my family history of cancer and personal fondness for pepperoni pizza, I probably won’t live long enough to find out. Instead, I spent three days observing Johnson to learn what a life run by an algorithm would look like, and whether the “next evolution of being human” would have any real humanity at all. If living like Johnson meant you could live forever—a big if!—would it even be worth it?

Kate Tolo opens the door to Johnson’s house and welcomes me inside. Tolo, a 27-year-old former fashion strategist who is originally from Australia, is Johnson’s chief marketing officer and most loyal disciple. Two months ago, she became the first person aside from Johnson to commit to Blueprint, making her the first test of how Blueprint works on a female body. Tolo is known as “Blueprint XX.”

The home is beautiful and devoid of clutter, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the pool and lush greenery outside. It reminds me of an Apple Store in a jungle. Tolo offers me a little bowl of special chocolate, which had been “un-dutched,” stripped of heavy metals, and sourced only from regions with high polyphenol density. It tastes like a foot. She also makes me a juice-like concoction that contains chlorella powder with spermidine, amino complex, creatine, collagen peptides, cocoa flavanols, and ceylon cinnamon. Tolo and Johnson call it the Green Giant, but it looks almost black, like the stuff that washes off a duck after an oil spill. She manages to mix it without getting any of the dark sludge on her immaculate white jumpsuit. “It moves through some people’s digestive system faster than others,” she chirps, gesturing to the nearby bathroom. I take a tentative sip. It tastes like Gatorade, but sandy.

Johnson walks into the room, wearing a green T-shirt and tiny white shorts. He has the body of an 18-year-old and the face of someone who had spent millions attempting to look like an 18-year-old. His skin is pale and glowing, which is partly because of the multiple laser treatments he’s done, and partly because he had no hair on his entire body. The hair on his head is “not dyed,” Johnson says, but he does use a “gray-hair-reversal concoction” which includes “an herbal extract” that colors the hair a darkish brown. He gestures to my Green Giant, and then toward the bathroom. “Did you warn her?” he asks Tolo. I pretend to take another sip.

The next day, Johnson walks me through his morning routine, step-by-step. He woke up at 4:53 a.m, but delayed most of his routine until I arrive at 7 a.m. to observe him. His bedroom has almost nothing in it: no photos, no books, no television, no glass of water, no phone charger, no chair with piled-up clothes he tried on once, no dry cleaning he meant to put away, no towels, no mirror, no nothing. “I only sleep in here,” he says. “No work, no reading.” The only two objects in the room besides his bed are a laser face-shield he uses for collagen growth and wrinkle reduction, and the device he wears on his penis while he sleeps to measure his nighttime erections. “I have, on average, two hours and 12 minutes each night of erection of a certain quality,” he says. “To be age 18, it would be three hours and 30 minutes.” Nighttime erections, he says, are “a biological age marker for your sexual function,” one that also has implications for cardiovascular fitness. The erection tracker looks like a little AirPods case with a turquoise strap, like a purse worn by a penis. (No penises were viewed in the reporting of this article.)

When Johnson wakes up and removes the device, he weighs himself on a scale that uses “electrical impedance” to measure his weight, body-mass index, hydration level, body fat, and something called “pulse wave velocity,” which he explained but I didn’t quite grasp. “I’m in the top 1% of ideal muscle fat,” he says. Then he turns on his light-therapy lamp (which mimics sun exposure) for two to three minutes to reset his circadian rhythm. He takes his inner-ear temperature to monitor changes in his body, and starts off with two pills of ferritin to boost his iron, along with some vitamin C. He washes his face, uses a cream to prevent wrinkles, and puts on a laser light mask for five minutes, with red and blue lights designed to stimulate collagen growth and control blemishes. By this time, it’s typically about 6 a.m., and Johnson walks downstairs to start his day. 

The Blueprint supplement regimen is arranged on Johnson’s kitchen counter, organized from left to right. He begins with eye drops for his pre-cataracts, then uses a little vibrating device against the side of his nose to stimulate a nerve that apparently helps his eyes create tears. Johnson makes his Green Giant, then starts taking more pills in between sips of dark-green sludge. “It’s what my body has asked for,” he says. Does he ever miss coffee, even a little? “I love coffee, it’s so fun,” he says. “It’s an addictive escalation drug for me.”

At this point, he begins doing special exercises to increase his grip strength. Then he heads to his home gym—decorated with a floor-to-ceiling wallpaper photograph of a forest—and starts an hour-long routine. Johnson can leg-press 800 lbs., but his daily workout isn’t much more advanced than something you’d see from a very enthusiastic guy at the gym: a series of weights, planks, and stretches. He does this seven days a week; he adds on a high-intensity workout three days a week. Occasionally, during these high-intensity workouts, he’ll wear a plastic mask to measure his VO2 max, or the maximum rate of oxygen consumption during physical exercise. Johnson’s VO2 Max is in the top 1.5% of 18-year-olds, he says.

After his workout, Johnson eats a meal of steamed vegetables and lentils that have been blended until they resemble a mush the color of a sea lion. He and Tolo don’t name their meals “breakfast,” “lunch,” or “dinner.” They call them “first meal,” “second meal,” and so on. This is first meal. He offers me some “nutty pudding,” which is made from macadamia-nut milk, ground macadamia and walnuts, chia seed, flaxseed, Brazil nuts, sunflower lecithin, ceylon cinnamon, and pomegranate juice. It’s the color of a pencil eraser and tastes a little dusty, but it’s not too different from a vegan yogurt, if you like that sort of thing. 

Johnson insists all this is about something much bigger than getting ripped and maintaining a youthful glow. “Most people assume death is inevitable. We're just basically trying to prolong the time we have before we die,” he says. Until now, he adds, “I don't think there's been any time in history where Homo sapiens could say with a straight face that death may not be inevitable.”

Experts strongly disagree. “Death is not optional; it’s written into our genes,” says Pinchas Cohen, dean of the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California. Cohen emphasizes that living longer in the future is certainly possible: over the course of the 20th century, human life expectancy rose from around 50 to more than 80. But living forever is not. “There’s absolutely no evidence that it’s possible,” Cohen says, “and there’s absolutely no technology right now that even suggests that we’re heading that way.”

“If you want immortality, you should go to a church,” adds Eric Verdin, CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. “If I believed even a little bit that it would be possible, I would be excited. It’s a pipe dream.” Verdin isn’t just skeptical of Johnson’s claims that he can achieve immortality; he’s skeptical of his claims of age-reversal altogether. “He professes to make everything transparent, but as a scientist it’s really impossible to understand the tools he’s using to assess his age,” Verdin says, adding that the Buck Institute reached out to Johnson to collaborate on some research, but never heard back. Johnson’s lack of interest in collaboration with independent scientists made Verdin even more skeptical. “I think if he wants to convince all of us that what he’s doing is valid, then he’s going to have to accept being challenged by colleagues,” he says. (Johnson doesn’t remember ignoring Verdin’s invitation, and says that he and Verdin have recently exchanged friendly emails.)

Some scientists do believe that limited age-reversal is possible. In still controversial and contested work, researchers at Harvard Medical School have claimed they've rejuvenated older mice, and are currently testing whether the aging clock can be turned back in human skin and eye cells. But those experiments are being done according to established scientific conventions. Johnson, in contrast, has made himself a human guinea pig, adopting nearly every age-related treatment at once and seeing what works.

It’s not just that medical professionals are skeptical of Blueprint’s ability to achieve immortality. They’re not even convinced Johnson’s routine is particularly healthy. Nir Barzilai, the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, met Johnson in May, at the annual retreat for the Academy for Health & Lifespan Research. Barzilai recalls that when Johnson showed up, the doctors present were concerned. “He looked sick. He was pale. I don’t know what he did with his face,” Barzilai says, adding that he was alarmed by Johnson’s lack of fat, which plays an important role in the body. “All these MDs, we all kind of agreed that he didn’t look so great.”

Barzilai also has serious reservations about Johnson taking so many supplements and treatments at once, warning that all the different pills could interact with one another in dangerous ways. “What he’s doing hasn’t proven to be safe, because some of the treatments he’s taking are actually antagonizing to each other,” he says, adding that doctors normally research the effects of one drug at a time, rather than the cumulative effects of more than 100 pills at once. “Even if it works for him, how do you know it works for you?” Barzilai says. Blueprint, he adds, is “not an experiment that we accept as scientists or doctors.” 

Johnson did not make his own doctors available for an interview, nor did he provide details about his team. But he intends to bring Blueprint to the masses. Johnson puts all of his biological measurements online—from his resting heart rate to his plaque index to images of his intestines taken with a “small bowel camera”—and his YouTube videos about his exercise regimen and therapeutic experiments have been viewed by millions of people. Roughly 180,000 people signed up for his newsletter in the first five months, Tolo says. Blueprint’s first commercial product, sold on his website, is an allegedly cholesterol-reducing olive oil, sold in a black box emblazoned with a red-lit photo of Johnson and the slogan “Build your autonomous self.” Fifteen percent of Johnson’s daily diet consists of this olive oil. Two 25 oz. bottles cost $75. Tolo says they’ve sold out.

As Johnson, Tolo and I settle in to eat our “first meal” on his massive rust-colored couch, Johnson gestures to a bookshelf full of biographies: Ben Franklin, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Napoleon. “I have a relationship with the 25th century more than I have a relationship with the 21st century,” he says. “I don't really care what people in our time and place think of me. I really care about what the 25th century thinks.”

Artificial intelligence “is clearly the most significant event in this part of the galaxy,” he says. “What is the equivalent response for humans to have to AI?” Given the looming AI revolution, Johnson argues that outsourcing the management of the body to an algorithm is the ultimate form of human-AI “alignment.” If everything from marketing to legal research to retail will soon be optimized by algorithms, why shouldn’t algorithms run our bodies as well? Johnson argues that automating the physical body is a form of evolutionary adaptation to what he believes is an inevitable, AI-dominated future.

But all this talk about the scope of history, and the march of technology, and the benefits of un-dutched chocolate seemed to be missing something, I say. Aren’t humans more than just brains and meat? Isn’t there some other ineffable element that makes us human: the feeling of watching your toddler play in a lake, the joy of popcorn with girlfriends at the movie theater, the grief of losing a family member, the frustration at a lost earring? Surely, there must be more to living than simply maintaining adequate oxygen in your spleen. 

He doesn’t see it that way. “Whether we're talking about falling in love, or having sex, or going to the baseball game, you're talking about biochemical states in the body,” Johnson says. “You can remove everything and just say, ‘I'm experiencing this kind of electrical activity in my body and these kinds of hormones.’ We have a whole bunch of ideas about what it means to exist, we have all these ideas about what is happiness, and other things. We're walking into a future where we no longer have control,” he continues. Which means “we are willing to divorce ourselves from all human custom. Everything: all philosophy, all ethics, all morals, all happiness.” 

I try another approach. Let’s say you’re right, I ask Johnson. What if you do live forever? That means you’d outlive everybody you’d ever known on the planet. You’d watch your children and grandchildren and all your friends die before you. What would that be like? Is a life without the people you love worth living?

Johnson says that question reminds him of “senior night” before graduating from high school. “We say goodbye, we have been together all these years, and we're probably not going to see each other again,” he says. “At every stage in life, we move through these transition states of relationships and new experiences,” he continues. “And at every stage, you could certainly pose that question, because the circumstances are going to change. Is it worth it to carry on?”

It strikes me as a weird way to answer a question about watching his own children die, but I turn to Tolo, who was silently eating her nutty pudding in a different corner of the couch. I ask her what she thought about the possibility of watching everyone she loves die before she does. It doesn’t seem like she’s considered this. “Hopefully they wouldn’t,” she says. “I really hope that as many people as possible can come along that journey.” 

Johnson chimes in again. “I think your question reflects Homo sapiens for the 21st century,” he says. “The underlying assumption is, they have roughly 70 years of life. That's their starting frame: I'm going to die soon, and I can't do anything about it. So I'm optimizing in this window of time… If you change the frame, and death is not inevitable, none of the previous practiced thought patterns work.”

My 21st century Homo sapien brain was not convinced. Johnson seemed to suggest that for humans to survive in an AI-aligned future, they may need to sacrifice part of what makes them human in the first place. I thought of Tuck Everlasting, the 1975 children’s novel about an immortal family whose inability to age sets them apart from the world, adrift from the life of everyone they meet, forever alone.

I left Johnson’s house and drove to the DoubleTree hotel in Marina Del Rey. The woman at the front desk handed me a chocolate chip cookie, as they usually do at DoubleTrees (which is why I stay there). My rascal brain wanted it. But it was an act of violence that would accelerate my inevitable death. I abandoned it on the counter and took my Blueprint-approved dinner—steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and lentils, with $75 dollar olive oil and absolutely no flavor—up to my room.

Johnson wasn’t always like this. He grew up in a small Mormon community in Utah. His grandfather owned a farm with horses, and Johnson and his four siblings spent most of their time outside, helping to harvest alfalfa and corn. Johnson served his Mormon mission in Ecuador, then went to Brigham Young University, followed by business school at the University of Chicago. He got married, had three children, and in 2007 he founded Braintree, a payment-processing company. Braintree acquired Venmo five years later. In 2013, the combined entity was sold to PayPal for roughly $800 million. Johnson walked away with more than $300 million.

Despite his financial success, Johnson recalls this as a painful time. He says he fell into a deep depression in 2004 and stayed there for 10 years. He was overwhelmed by building his company while raising three young children. Medication and therapy didn’t help. He was 50 pounds overweight and miserable, he says.

Within a year of selling his company, Johnson ended his marriage and left the Mormon church. In 2014, he plowed $100 million into the creation of the OS Fund, which invests in companies working in what Johnson calls the “programmable physical world”—his term for companies that use AI and machine learning to develop new technologies for therapeutics, diagnostics, and synthetic biology. In 2016, Johnson founded Kernel, a neurotechnology company that uses a specially designed helmet to measure brain activity. Its goal is to detect cognitive impairment at the earliest stages; for now, the company is looking for biomarkers for psychiatric conditions. It can also be used, as a fun side hobby, to measure the age of his brain. 

One day during my visit, we drive to the company’s offices, which are about 20 minutes from Johnson’s home. Even though his mission in life is to “not die,” he still drives himself around LA in an electric Audi. (Extremely slowly.) Before he pulls out of his driveway, he utters his pre-driving mantra to himself: “Driving is the most dangerous thing we do.” Johnson is aware that his singular focus on living forever might make an accidental death somewhat embarrassing.  “What would be more beautiful irony than me getting hit by a bus and dying?” he says. 

In Kernel’s open-plan office, I’m brought into a small room, where a technician fits my head with what looks like a ski helmet with dozens of circular probes inside. I’m instructed to sit and watch a screensaver-type video of soft crystalline shapes morphing into each other. Later that day, my results appear in my email. It tells me that although I am 34, my brain age is 30.5.

On the way home, Johnson utters his pre-driving mantra again before inching through the streets of LA at about 16 m.p.h. As he’s explaining again why Blueprint is “the most significant revolution in the history of Homo sapiens,” a black Chevy truck pulls out of a Trader Joe’s parking lot. He swerves to avoid it, barely taking a breath before returning to comparing himself to Magellan and Lewis and Clark. “I'm not a biohacker. I'm not an optimization person,” he tells me. “I'm an explorer, about the future of being human.” 

Even futuristic humans were mere mortals once. Tolo first reached out to Johnson in 2016, when she was working in fashion in New York City. The AI revolution was beginning to come into view. “I felt so strongly that the only way we could proceed as species would be to kind of latch ourselves onto AI,” she says. She saw a quote from Johnson in a tech newsletter, advocating for humans to “merge with AI,” and decided she wanted to work for him. After years of entreaties, a job finally opened up, and Tolo took a title and pay cut to become Johnson’s assistant at Kernel. “We'd spend hours in his office, just chatting about the future of humanity,” she says.

When she first started working for Johnson, Tolo was a typical twentysomething. She drank alcohol and milky lattes, ate fast food, and stayed up too late dancing with her friends. But early this year, she and Johnson began discussing whether she should try Blueprint as well, to see how the routine would affect a female body. Before committing, Tolo requested a 30-day trial period. That trial included committing to a rigorous sleep routine, adopting Johnson’s exact diet protocol, taking more than 60 pills a day, and doing 13 minutes of intense exercise and 39 minutes of moderate exercise every day. She also measured her ovulation and her menstrual cycle.

“When I was in my trial period, I would go out to brunch with friends, and I would bring my Blueprint food, and there is a bit of sadness,” Tolo says. “Because everyone else at the table is like, ‘Oh my God, this breakfast burrito is so good.’” Ultimately Tolo decided to commit to Blueprint for good. She concluded the health benefits outweighed the lifestyle costs. Tolo says her friends have adjusted to her Blueprint lifestyle. She’s moved her social life earlier in the day to protect her sleep schedule, and they’ve gotten used to her habit of bringing her own vegetable mush to restaurants. The decision, once made, was permanent. “It would also be the final decision in a way,” she says. “It's like, I'm deciding to no longer decide again.”

Now, as Blueprint XX, she has given up “all the things that I've come to cherish in small ways about my life,” she says. She and Johnson think of themselves as a sort of futuristic Adam and Eve. They had even planned an Adam-and-Eve themed photoshoot to help people understand that they’re “talking about a revolution on the scale of the whole human race,” Johnson says. Even though Tolo is apparently as important to the future of humanity as Eve herself, she plated and served all the meals I ate on my visit, and, at least while I was there, seemed to do most of the dishes.

Johnson is currently single. His older son is serving a mission for the Mormon church, and his younger daughter is 13 and lives with her mother. So Johnson spends much of his time with his 18-year-old middle son, Talmage, who commits to the Blueprint diet, rest, and exercise routines, but skips the anti-aging therapies. He briefly donated blood plasma to Johnson in order to test whether it had a measurable impact on his father's aging, but stopped once Johnson decided it didn’t work. Talmage, who is about to start his freshman year of college, says that he’s adopted many of his dad’s attitudes towards lifestyle and life extension. “The idea of having pizza is more painful than pleasurable for me,” he says.

Johnson says his lifestyle makes it very difficult for him to date, rattling off what he calls the “10 reasons why [women] will literally hate me.” The reasons include: eating dinner at 11:30 a.m., no sunny vacations, bed at 8:30pm, no small talk, always sleeping alone, and, of course, “they’re not my number one priority.”

Throughout my visit with Johnson, I could feel my rascal brain buzzing to life. Johnson venerates what he calls “the emergent self,” which is driven “more by computational guidance and less by human want.” And yet wanting, I thought, is what humans do. There is almost no experience more human than the experience of want. As I watched Johnson drink his immortality gruel and explain his religious commitment to bedtime, I was wondering: What did he want? Did he miss eating birthday cake? Staying up late dancing? Baseball games that stretch into long nights filled with hot dogs and beer? Johnson wanted an eternal life. But what is life without wanting?
There were so many things I wanted to do, even if I knew that each indulgence could bring me closer to death. I wanted to meet a friend for cocktails in Santa Monica. I wanted to snuggle into my hotel bed and watch And Just Like That, and I wanted to stay up too late texting my friends about it. I wanted to FaceTime my daughter, the one who had caused me to gain 30 happy pounds when I ate only butter pasta and cheese pizza for most of my pregnancy. I wanted to take the first plane home, even if it meant landing at 1 a.m. and getting four hours of sleep, so that I could be there when she wakes up and says “Up!” with the force of a commanding officer. I wanted eggs and bacon for breakfast. I didn’t want to stop wanting. Life’s too short.

Time

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released guidelines for the sale of foreign exchange (Forex) by Bureau De Change (BDC) operators within the country.

CBN said the guidelines will enhance the regulatory framework for the operations of BDCs as part of the ongoing reforms of the Nigerian foreign exchange market.

The apex bank disclosed this on Friday in a document titled ‘Revised Regulatory and Supervisory Guidelines for Bureau De Change Operations in Nigeria’.

A BDC is a company licensed by the CBN to carry out only retail foreign exchange business in Nigeria.

According to the CBN, the guidelines revise the permissible activities, licensing requirements, corporate governance and anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) provisions for BDCs.

“It also sets out new record-keeping and reporting requirements, among others,” the financial regulator said.

“No person shall carry on the business of BDC in Nigeria except with the prior authorization of the CBN.”

According to the circular, commercial, merchant, non-interest, and payment service banks shall not be allowed to participate in the ownership of BDCs — directly or indirectly. 

Also, CBN said other financial institutions (OFIS), including holding companies and payment service providers are not permitted to own BDCs.

Other ineligible entities, the apex bank said, include non-governmental organisations, serving staff of financial services regulatory and supervisory agencies, governments at all levels, public officers, and cooperative societies, among others.

‘CUSTOMERS WITH $10,000 AND ABOVE MUST DECLARE SOURCE OF FX’

CBN said sellers of the equivalent of $10,000 and above to BDCs are required to declare the source of the foreign exchange “and comply with all AML/CFT/CPF regulations and foreign exchange laws and regulations”.

“Customers may transfer foreign currencies from their individual domiciliary accounts with Nigerian banks to BDCs,” the apex bank said.

“All digital/transfer purchases of foreign currencies shall be credited to the BDC’s Nigerian domiciliary account.

“Payments for all digital/transfer purchases of foreign currency by a BDC shall be by transfer to the customer’s Naira account. If the customer is non-resident (whether Nigerian or not), a BDC may issue the customer a prepaid NGN card. 

“Where such a card is issued, relevant maximum credit and cumulative limits, in line with relevant Know Your Customer requirements, shall apply.

“Payments to customers for cash purchases of foreign currency, the equivalent of above USD500, shall be by transfer to the customer’s Naira bank account.”

If the customer is a non-resident (whether Nigerian or not), according to the circular, a BDC shall issue the customer a prepaid naira card.

Where such a card is issued, CBN said relevant maximum credit and cumulative limits, in line with relevant know your customer (KYC) requirements, shall apply.

SALE OF FOREIGN CURRENCY

The financial regulator said forex sales by BDCs must fall within the scope of personal travel allowance (PTA), and business travel allowance (BTA), “provided that a person who receives BTA on behalf of a non-individual entity shall not be entitled to PTA for the same period”.

Others listed by CBN include payment of medical bills, payment of school fees, and the repurchase of unused naira from a non-resident from whom the BDC had sourced foreign currency in the course of the visit.

‘75% OF FX SALE BY BDCS MUST BE TRANSMITTED ELECTRONICALLY’

A beneficiary of BTA or PTA shall receive up to 25 percent of the foreign currency in cash, according to the CBN, and the remaining 75 percent shall be transferred to the customer electronically (to the customer’s Nigerian domiciliary account or prepaid card).

“Payments for all sales of foreign exchange by BDCS shall be by transfer to the BDC’s Naira account,” CBN said.

However, the apex bank said beneficiaries of BTA or PTA of $500 or less can receive the forex in cash.

In the same vein, the financial regulator said payments to customers for cash purchases of forex of the equivalent of $500 and below may be made in cash.

Furthermore, CBN said BDC operators can not engage in street trading, maintenance of any type of account for the public, and opening or maintaining any account with any financial institution outside Nigeria.

They are also banned by the CBN from engaging in offshore business, financing political activities, and selling FX on credit to customers.

The apex bank restricted the BDCs from dealing in gold or precious metals, granting loans, as well as international inward transfers (except for operators that serve as cash-out points for International Money Transfer Operators).

CBN also said the minimum capital requirement for tier 1 BDCs is N2 billion and N500 million for tier 2 BDCs.

The financial regulator raised the minimum capital requirement from N35 million previously set for all BDCs.

The Cable

Netanyahu seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in Gaza in new postwar plan

A long-awaited postwar plan by Israel’s prime minister shows that his government seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip. That was swiftly rejected Friday by Palestinian leaders and runs counter to Washington’s vision for the war-ravaged enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the two-page document to his security Cabinet late Thursday for approval.

Deep disagreements over Gaza’s future have led to increasingly public friction between Israel and the United States, its closest ally. The Biden administration seeks eventual Palestinian governance in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to Palestinian statehood, an outcome vehemently opposed by Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Netanyahu’s plan envisions hand-picked Palestinians administering Gaza.

Separately, cease-fire efforts appeared to gain traction, with mediators to present a new proposal at an expected high-level meeting this weekend in Paris. The U.S., Egypt and Qatar have been struggling for weeks to find a formula that could halt Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza, but now face an unofficial deadline as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches.

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes in the center and south of the territory killed at least 92 Palestinians, including children and women, overnight and into Friday, health officials and an Associated Press journalist said. Another 24 bodies remained trapped under the rubble.

After a strike levelled his apartment building in the central town of Deir al-Balah, online video showed Mahmoud Zueitar — a comedian well known in Gaza for his appearances in TV commercials — rushing into the hospital holding his young sister, who was screaming and covered in blood. At least 25 people were killed in the strike, 16 of them women and children.

Throughout the war, Zueitar has been posting upbeat and cheerful videos on social media, joking with people about ways they endure bombardment and displacement, praising Palestinian culture and assuring those around him that one day things will be better.

Another video at the hospital showed him cradling his wounded sister in his lap. “I always say, ‘God, may they not force us out of Gaza,’ that’s how much I love it and its people,” he says, crying. “But it looks like they want us to leave Gaza.” Earlier at the hospital, relatives wept over bodies laid out in burial shrouds in the courtyard, and a man cradled a dead infant.

The overall Palestinian death toll since the start of the war rose to more than 29,500, with close to 70,000 people wounded, Gaza health officials said. The death toll amounts to close to 1.3% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.

NETANYAHU’S VISION FOR GAZA

Netanyahu’s plan, while lacking specifics, marks the first time he has presented a formal postwar vision. It reiterates that Israel is determined to crush Hamas, the militant group that overran the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Polls have indicated that a majority of Palestinians don’t support Hamas, but the group has deep roots in Palestinian society. Critics, including some in Israel, say the goal of eliminating Hamas is unattainable.

Netanyahu’s plan calls for freedom of action for Israel’s military across a demilitarized Gaza after the war to thwart any security threat. It says Israel would establish a buffer zone inside Gaza, which is likely to provoke U.S. objections.

The plan also envisions Gaza being governed by local officials who it says would “not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them.”

It’s not clear if any Palestinians would agree to such sub-contractor roles. Over the past decades, Israel has repeatedly tried and failed to set up hand-picked local Palestinian governing bodies.

The Palestinian Authority, which administers pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Friday denounced Netanyahu’s plan as “colonialist and racist,” saying it would amount to Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintained control of access to the territory.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had not seen details of the plan. But he said any plan should be consistent with basic principles the U.S. had set out for Gaza’s future, “including that it cannot be a platform for terrorism, there should be no Israeli re-occupation of Gaza, the size of Gaza’s territory should not be reduced.”

The Biden administration wants to see a reformed Palestinian Authority govern both Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward Palestinian statehood. It has sought to chip away at Netanyahu’s resistance by holding out the prospect of the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which demands a Palestinian state as a precondition.

THE WAR DRAGS ON

U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials are expected to meet in Paris this weekend to discuss cease-fire efforts. A senior Egyptian official said Egypt and Qatar would bring an understanding reached with Hamas leaders that calls for a six-week cease-fire and the release of elderly and sick hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. During the cease-fire, details would be worked out on a further stage.

Hamas has demanded a complete halt to Israel’s offensive and a withdrawal of its troops from Gaza in return for releasing all its remaining hostages, as well as the freeing of Palestinians held by Israel, including top militants. Netanyahu has rejected those demands.

Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 7, after the militants stormed into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were freed in a weeklong cease-fire in late November.

Since the start of the war, 29,514 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s offensive and close to 70,000 were wounded, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday. Two-thirds of those killed have been women and children, said the ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.

Israel says it has killed at least 10,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence for its count. It holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties because the group operates and fights from within civilian areas.

The Israeli offensive has inflicted immense suffering in Gaza. About 80% of the population have been displaced, infectious diseases run rampant and hundreds of thousands of people are facing hunger.

In the West Bank, two Palestinians killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car were buried Friday in the Jenin refugee camp. The two bodies were wrapped in flags of the militant group Islamic Jihad and carried on stretchers during the funeral procession.

Israel says one of those killed was previously involved in shooting attacks on Israeli settlements and army posts, and was about to carry out another attack when he was killed in the drone strike late Thursday.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine's defences under strain as war enters its third year

Ukraine marks the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion on Saturday looking more vulnerable than at any time since the early days of Europe's most deadly conflict since World War Two.

The former Soviet republic's 40 million people defied expectations - and the Kremlin's best-laid plans - by repelling a much larger enemy and preventing outright defeat in the days and weeks after Russian tanks and soldiers rolled towards Kyiv.

But as the war enters its third year, international aid and military supplies have slowed, impacting the battlefield where Kyiv's summer counteroffensive floundered and Moscow is grinding out territorial gains.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy still has plenty of friends. On Saturday he welcomes Western leaders to discuss security guarantees, sanctions against Russia and other pressing issues.

U.S. President Joe Biden remains a staunch ally, although $61 billion in aid is being held up by political bickering in Washington.

Looking to the end of 2024, U.S. elections could bring a change in president and in policy towards Ukraine and its war with Russia, clouding the outlook for the coming years.

During a trip to the United States in November, Zelenskiy invited Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump - a vocal critic of U.S. support for Kyiv - to Ukraine to see for himself the damage wrought by Russia's war.

Zelenskiy also told U.S. politicians that Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, may not stop at Ukraine's borders if it emerges victorious.

Putin dismisses such claims as nonsense. He casts the war as a wider struggle with the United States, which the Kremlin elite says aims to cleave Russia apart. The West sees the invasion as an unjustified act of aggression that must be repelled.

OLD WAR AND NEW

As well as hosting foreign dignitaries, Zelenskiy will take part in a call with G7 leaders on Saturday. There will be events across Ukraine including a commemoration service for those who died in Bucha, north of Kyiv - scene of some of the worst alleged war crimes of the conflict.

Ukraine's prosecutor general said on Friday it had launched investigationsinto more than 122,000 suspected war crimes cases in the last two years. Russia denies carrying them out.

The initial shock of the invasion gradually morphed into familiarity and then fatigue, as the world watched initial Russian gains and a stunning Ukrainian counteroffensive in late 2022 slow into grinding, attritional trench warfare.

In scenes reminiscent of the battlefields of World War One, soldiers under heavy artillery fire are dying in their thousands, sometimes for a few kilometres of land.

Meanwhile, both sides have developed huge and increasingly sophisticated fleets of air, sea and land drones for surveillance and attack, an unprecedented use of unmanned vehicles that could point the way to future conflicts.

Russia, with a much bigger population to replenish the army's ranks and a larger military budget, might favour a drawn-out war, although the costs have been huge for Moscow as it seeks to navigate sanctions and a growing reliance on China.

Ukraine's position is more precarious. Villages, towns and cities have been razed, troops are exhausted, ammunition is running low and Russian missiles and drones rain down almost daily.

Earlier in February, Russia registered its biggest victory in nine months when it captured the eastern town of Avdiivka, ending months of deadly urban combat.

Yet Zelenskiy remained defiant ahead of the anniversary.

"I am convinced that victory awaits us," he told diplomats in Kyiv this week in an emotional address. "In particular, thanks to unity and your support."

Tens of thousands of troops have been killed on both sides and tens of thousands more wounded, while thousands of Ukrainian civilians have perished. Moscow says it only aims at military and strategic targets.

RISING COSTS

The scale of devastation in Ukraine is staggering.

A recent World Bank study said that rebuilding Ukraine's economy could cost nearly $500 billion. Two million housing units have been damaged or destroyed, and nearly 6 million people have fled abroad.

In addition to raising money and arms to continue the war, Zelenskiy is pushing legislation through parliament allowing Ukraine to mobilise up to half a million more troops - a target some economists say could paralyse the economy.

Russia's finances have proved resilient so far to unprecedented sanctions. While natural gas exports have slumped, shipments of oil have held up, thanks largely to Indian and Chinese buying.

Russia's GDP expanded 3.6% in 2023, although some Russia-based economists warned that this was driven by a leap in defence spending and that stagnation or recession loom.

That will not jeopardise Putin's victory in elections in March, which he is set to win by a landslide amid broad support for his performance and for the war, described by the Kremlin as a "special military operation".

In the last two years, authorities have cracked down hard on any form of dissent over the conflict. On Feb. 16, Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 30-year sentence.

On Friday, Putin addressed troops fighting in Ukraine as Russia marked Defender of the Fatherland Day, hailing them as heroes battling for "truth and justice."

He laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the foot of the Kremlin wall to honour those who have died in battle.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian forces hit Patriot SAM launcher, missile reload trailer transporter

Russian missile forces have hit a launcher, ammunition and other components of the US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system during the special military operation in Ukraine over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

"As a result of a group strike, the Missile Troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have hit a launcher, a truck, ammunition and a missile reload trailer transporter of the US-made Patriot surface-to-air missile system," the statement said.

Donetsk area

Russian forces have liberated Pobeda and took more advantageous positions in the Donetsk area over the past week, and 12 Ukrainian counterattacks have also been also repelled, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"In the Donetsk area, Battlegroup South units have liberated the populated locality of Pobeda and gained more advantageous positions. Near Georgievka, Leninskoye, Bogdanovka and Novgorodskoye, 12 counterattacks carried out by assault groups of Ukraine’s 79th airborne assault, 24th and 42nd mechanized brigades have been repelled," the ministry said.

The Ukrainian armed forces have suffered losses of up to 1,195 troops and six tanks in the South Donetsk area over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

The Defense Ministry pointed out that in that area, the Battlegroup Vostok (East) units had improved their frontline positions and inflicted a defeat on units of Ukraine’s 72nd mechanized brigade as well as its 102nd, 108th, 127th, and 128th brigades of territorial defense near Vodyanoye, Novodonetskoye, Staromayorskoye, and Urozhaynoye of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as Chervonoye, Priyutnoye, and Lugovskoye of the Zaporozhye Region.

"Four attacks conducted by assault groups of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 58th motorized infantry brigade near Novodonetskoye and Shevchenko in the Donetsk People’s Republic were repelled. The Ukrainian military suffered losses of up to 1,195 troops, six tanks, six armored fighting vehicles, 23 motor vehicles and 16 field artillery guns," the ministry added.

The Russian Armed Forces carried out 37 group strikes over the past week, using precision weapons, to hit Ukrainian military structures, military industrial enterprises, ammunition and fuel depots, airfield infrastructure, and deployment sites of Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries, as a result, all the designated targets were hit, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"Between February 17 and 23, 2024, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation conducted 37 group strikes using precision weapons, including air-to-surface long-range ones, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, to hit facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, infrastructure of military airfields, arsenals, and fuel storage bases," the ministry said.

"Moreover, the deployment areas of the Ukrainian armed forces’ units, nationalists’ formations and foreign mercenaries have been struck. All the assigned targets have been engaged," the ministry added.

Russian aircraft and air defenses have shot down Ukraine’s MiG-29 fighter jet and Mi-8 helicopter over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

"Over the past week, aircraft and air defense systems brought down a MiG-29 fighter jet and a Mi-8 helicopter of the Ukrainian air force," the statement said.

The Ukrainian armed forces have suffered losses of 12 tanks, 31 armored fighting vehicles and more than 2,560 troops in the Donetsk area over the past week, the Russian Defense Minsitry said.

"Units of Battlegroup South have hit the Ukrainian armed forces’ manpower and equipment near Belogorovka, Grigorovka, Krasnoye, Kleshcheevka, Kurdyumovka, Razdolovka, Novomikhailovka, Nevelskoye and Krasnogorovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The enemy has lost more than 2,560 service members, 12 tanks, 31 armored fighting vehicles, 58 vehicles, 13 field artillery guns and a Grad MLRS combat vehicle," the ministry said.

Kherson area

The Ukrainian armed forces have suffered losses of more than 460 troops, five tanks, six boats and 14 field artillery guns in the Kherson area over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"The enemy has suffered losses of over 460 service members, five tanks, six armored fighting vehicles, 33 motor vehicles, six boats and 14 field artillery pieces," the ministry said, adding that three attacks of Ukraine’s 82nd mountain assault brigade were also repelled outside Rabotino in the Zaporozhye Region.

According to the ministry, in the Kherson area, Russian troops have taken control of Krynki, gained more advantageous positions and conducted strikes on the manpower and equipment of the 28th, 65th and 118th mechanized brigades; the 35th and 37th marine brigades; the 121st and 126th territorial defense brigades outside Malaya Tokmachka, Verbovoye, Orekhov, Shcherbaky, Lugovoye in the Zaporozhye Region as well as near Zolotaya Balka, Mikhailovka, Ivanovka, Tyaginka and Zmeyevka in the Kherson Region.

Over the past week, Russian aircraft and air defense systems have shot down seven Storm Shadow missiles, a Patriot missile, four S-200 missiles and 652 drones belonging to the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"Over the past week, aircraft and air defenses have brought down seven Storm Shadow cruise missiles, a Patriot surface-to-air guided missile, four S-200 surface-to-air guided missiles modified to hit ground targets, three HARM anti-radar missiles, six JDAM precision-guided bombs and 42 rockets of HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, as well as 652 unmanned aerial vehicles," the ministry said.

Kupyansk area

Units of Battlegroup Zapad (West) have improved their frontline positions in the Kupyansk area, where 25 Ukrainian counterattacks were also repelled, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

"Over the past week, the Battlegroup Zapad (West) units took active action and improved their position along the frontline in the Kupyansk area, and also repelled 25 enemy counterattacks near Sinkovka in the Kharkov Region and Terny in the Donetsk People’s Republic. In addition, the military personnel and equipment of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 30th and 66th mechanized, 10th mountain assault, and 25th airborne brigades, as well as 125th brigade of territorial defense were hit near Chugunovka, Petropavlovka, Kislovka in the Kharkov Region; Yampolovka and Torskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic; and Stelmakhovka and Chervonaya Dibrova in the Lugansk People’s Republic," the ministry said.

According to the Defense Ministry, the enemy losses were over 390 troops, four tanks, 13 armored fighting vehicles, 21 vehicles and 25 field artillery pieces altogether.

Avdeyevka area

Russian forces continue to advance westward in the Avdeyevka area, repelling 39 Ukrainian counterattacks over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said adding that the enemy lost more than 2,900 troops.

"In the Avdeyevka area, units of Battlegroup Tsentr (Center) liberated the town of Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic and continued to advance westwards," the ministry said. "A total of 39 counterattacks launched by assault detachments of the Ukrainian armed forces’ 71st <…> brigade; 47th and 53rd mechanized, 59th motorized infantry and 3rd assault brigades were repelled near Berdychy, Lastochkino and Pervomaiskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Over the past week, the enemy suffered over 2,900 casualties in this area," the ministry said.

The battlegroup’s units, supported by aircraft and artillery, inflicted losses on amassments of Ukrainian military personnel and equipment near Orlovka, Solovyevo, Semyonovka, Tonenkoye, Yevgenovka and Mirolyubovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic. The Ukrainian military lost four tanks, 37 armored fighting vehicles, 90 vehicles, eight field artillery pieces and a Grad MLRS combat vehicle.

Reuters/Tass

"I heard this woman was on a night out when she was set upon by a group of gun totting men and raped on the streets at night. She desperately cried for help, but no one came to her aid. According to eyewitnesses, the rapists were armed policemen assigned to provide security in the neighbourhood."

"Eeeh yah! See another life wasted. May Nigeria not happen to us!"

"Look, the woman is still alive. Let's take her to the hospital. Hurry!"

"Me. Lailai. Can't you see the woman is a victim of assault? You carry her to the hospital, and you become a witness or even a suspect in the case. You are on your own, please".

"Really? Do they just rope people into cases like that. We are talking about a human life here. It could be you tomorrow"!

"Olorun ma je! I reject that in Jesus name! This can never be me. Look at her. See how she's dressed like a prostitute!"

"Ohh, is it her fault now? What has her dress got to do with the fact that she was assaulted by police officers whose job was to provide security for the neighbourhood? You haven't said a thing about the criminal police officers"

"Leave matter for Mattias, we all know what the Nigerian police is like. But tell me, will you be happy if your sister goes out like that at night?"

"What the hell are you talking about? Look, I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm taking this woman in the car, and to the hospital"

"Well, it's your car. Do what you like. I'm not coming out with you at the hospital. You are on your own"

"You see, this is one of Nigeria's biggest problems: victim blaming and gaslighting. When you mix that with sycophancy, short-sightedness and collective amnesia, you understand why the country has been moving round circle, and always tethering on the precipice. We are talking about a woman hanging for dear life after a tragic assault by men assigned to protect her. But here you are, blaming the victim."

"All this grammar upon wetin! My point is simple: the woman's dressing attracted the assault."

"You are impossible! Presumably you also think Nigerians should be blamed for unprecedented inflation and desperate hunger in the streets?"

"Well I believe all Nigerians bear responsibility"

"Hmmnn. So all Nigerians have the level of power, ordinary citizens and government alike? Or how do you propose to share this responsibility?"

"All I'm saying is everyone must do their little bit"

"You are deflecting the issue. Responsibility is shared yes, but it is shared according to the level of power delegated to each stakeholder. A child's responsibility is to listen and learn in class. This is different in form and level from a teacher's responsibility to teach, and a government's responsibility to provide the infrastructure. When you muddle up the roles and the responsibility, you expose yourself as government's apologist making excuses and selling dummies to citizens"

"All you this Obidient people. You just want to blame the government for everything. Wait for your turn!"

"And there you are, deflecting once again and confirming what I just said. I did not support Obi in the last election. You know this. Even if I did, what has Obi got to do with desperate hunger and starvation induced by unprecedented inflation?"

"And you forgot that the last government ran the country aground?"

"Ah, so it's Buhari fault now?"

"Are you saying you didn't know that Buhari ruined Nigeria's economy?"

"But we are talking about now, about the current government?"

"Asiwaju is trying. Nigerians need to be patient. There is no magic wand anywhere"

"Nigerians do not expect magic. They just want a government that works and does the basics. There is hunger in the land. Only the living can be patient. What exactly is the government doing to address this existential crisis?"

"Look, the government needed to float the Naira. Previous governments borrowed heavily to subsidise fuel and defend a false value of the Naira, and with little to show for it in development terms and value to citizens. The rich were getting richer, and Nigeria was incurring debts for the next generations. It was simply not sustainable. What you see now is the true value of the Naira."

"This level of hunger is not sustainable, and many Nigerians, including the most strident critics of the previous government, will most likely say they had it much better under Buhari. You still haven't explained what the Tinubu government is doing to tackle this existential crisis"

'I am neither an economist nor a spokesperson for the Tinubu government."

"You just sounded like both. If I didn't know any better, I'd assumed you are the special economic adviser to the government."

'I am just an ordinary citizen"

"Ordinary citizens right now are pleading desperately for help. The government should take this seriously and declare a state of emergency on the economy. They should put emergency policies in place to drive production, especially in the agricultural sector. The food crisis is the number one crisis in need of emergency interventions, including short term imports to tackle the problem of hunger. Most importantly, the government needs to take responsibility and lead from the front! This include a drastic reduction of waste in government, including expenses for overseas trip and reduction of allowance for officials. That will send the right message. It is hypocritical for government to ask citizens to make sacrifices while profligacy continues unabated in government. As Francis bacon once noted, 'rebellion is caused by two things: much poverty, much discontent'. There is desperate hunger in the land, and rising anger. The government should act now to forestall a national meltdown. A word is enough for the wise."

The brains of men and women operate differently, scientists have shown for the first time in a breakthrough that shows sex does matter in how people think and behave.

‌The issue of whether male and female brains are distinct has proven controversial, with some academics arguing it is society – rather than biology – that shapes divergence.

‌There has never been any definitive proof of difference in activity in the brains of men and women, but Stanford University has shown that it is possible to tell the sexes apart based on activity in “hotspot” areas.

‌They include the “default mode network”, an area of the brain thought to be the neurological centre for “self”, and is important in introspection and retrieving personal memories. 

‌The limbic system is also implicated, which helps regulate emotion, memory and deals with sexual stimulation, and striatum, which is important in habit forming and rewards.

‌Experts said the brain differences could influence how males and females view themselves, how they interact with other people and how they recall past experiences.

‌Dr Vinod Menon, prof of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford, said: “This is a very strong piece of evidence that sex is a robust determinant of human brain organisation.”‌

“Our findings suggest that differences in brain activity patterns across these key brain regions contribute to sex-specific variations in cognitive functioning.”

However, she added that further research is needed to fully understand the implications of the findings.

‌It is well known that male and female chromosomes release sex-specific hormones in the brain, particularly in early development, puberty and during ageing.‌

There are also marked differences in how women and men perform in the real world. 

‌The issue of whether male and female brains are distinct has proven controversial, with some academics arguing it is society – rather than biology – that shapes divergence.

‌There has never been any definitive proof of difference in activity in the brains of men and women, but Stanford University has shown that it is possible to tell the sexes apart based on activity in “hotspot” areas.

‌They include the “default mode network”, an area of the brain thought to be the neurological centre for “self”, and is important in introspection and retrieving personal memories. 

‌The limbic system is also implicated, which helps regulate emotion, memory and deals with sexual stimulation, and striatum, which is important in habit forming and rewards.

‌Experts said the brain differences could influence how males and females view themselves, how they interact with other people and how they recall past experiences.

‌Dr Vinod Menon, prof of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford, said: “This is a very strong piece of evidence that sex is a robust determinant of human brain organisation.”‌

“Our findings suggest that differences in brain activity patterns across these key brain regions contribute to sex-specific variations in cognitive functioning.”

Men and women's brains do work differently, scientists discover for first time

© Provided by The Telegraph

However, she added that further research is needed to fully understand the implications of the findings.

‌It is well known that male and female chromosomes release sex-specific hormones in the brain, particularly in early development, puberty and during ageing.‌

There are also marked differences in how women and men perform in the real world. 

Women tend to be better at reading comprehension and writing ability on average, and have good long term memory. 

Conversely, men seem to have stronger visual and spatial awareness and better working memory.

‌Yet scientists have struggled to spot these differences in neural activity, with brain structures looking the same in men and women.‌

For the research, the team used “explainable AI” – a type of computer learning which can sift through vast amounts of data to explain why an effect is taking place.

‌The model was shown MRI scans of working brains and told whether it was looking at a woman or man. Over time, the neural network began to pick out subtle differences between the two sexes that had been missed by humans.

‌When the researchers tested the model on about 1,500 brain scans, the model was able to tell if the scan came from a woman or a man more than 90 per cent of the time.

Gina Rippon, emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, and author of The Gendered Brain, has argued that society is to blame for brain differences in men and women.

‌Commenting on the study, she said: “The really intriguing issue is that those areas of the brain which are most reliably distinguishing the sexes are key parts of the social brain.

‌“The key issue is whether these differences are a product of sex-specific, biological influences, or of brain-changing gendered experiences. Or both. Are we really looking at sex differences? Or gender differences?

‌“Or, acknowledging that almost all brain–shaping factors are dynamically entangled products of both sex and gender influences, are we looking at what should be called sex/gender differences?”

‌Experts are hopeful that finding differences between male and female brains could be crucial in tackling neurological or psychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.

‌For example, women are twice as likely as men to experience clinical depression while men are more at risk of drug and alcohol dependence and dyslexia. The brain areas discovered in the study are often associated with neurological disease.

‌Dr Menon added “A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in ageing, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

“Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders.”

‌Researchers said the AI model could answer other important questions about brain connectivity, cognitive ability, or behaviour and will be making it publicly available for any researchers to use.

‌The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Telegraph

Nigeria's economy grew 3.46% in the fourth quarter, a similar pace as it did a year earlier, data showed on Thursday, as oil output picked up and government reforms to boost growth began to take effect.

Gross domestic product grew quicker than in the two previous quarters of 2023. GDP grew 2.54% in the third quarter and 2.51% in the second.

Growth in the final quarter of 2022 was 3.52% in annual terms.

National Bureau of Statistics said full-year growth for 2023 was 2.74%.

"The performance of the GDP in the fourth quarter of 2023 was driven mainly by the services sector, which recorded a growth of 3.98% and contributed 56.55% to the aggregate GDP," the statistics office said.

Growth in the agriculture and industrial sectors, which create jobs, improved marginally during the period, compared with a year ago, the data showed.

Average daily oil output rose to 1.55 million barrels per day, up from 1.34 million a year ago.

Nigeria relies on oil production for about two-thirds of government earnings and 90% of its foreign exchange income.

"The real growth of the oil sector was 12.11% year-on-year in Q4 2023, indicating an increase of 25.5% points relative to the rate recorded in the corresponding quarter of 2022 at -13.38%," said the statistics office.

Reuters

Federal government has announced the suspension of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exports.

Ekperikpe Ekpo, minister of state for petroleum resources (gas) made this known on Thursday during an “Internal Stakeholders’ Workshop” in Abuja.

He said the action is part of a deliberate attempt to increase the availability of LPG in the domestic market and lessen the financial strain on customers due to the hike in the price of the commodity.

“We are interacting with critical stakeholders to ensure that there is no exportation of LPG. All LPG produced within the country will have to be domesticated. When this is done, the volume will increase and of course, the price will automatically crash,” he said. 

“I am in contact with the regulation, NMDPRA, we hold meetings almost on a daily basis, and the producers such as Mobil, Chevron, and Shell. So, there is that hope that things will turn around. We don’t need to make noise about it.”

The minister underlined the need for banning the export of domestically manufactured LPG, saying the entire production will be utilised within the country.

He said the expected increase in the volume available for the domestic market and price reductions would bring relief to customers struggling with the high cost of cooking gas.

The development comes amid a rise in the price of the product.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the average retail price for refilling a 12.5kg cylinder of LPG increased by 0.28 percent on a month-on-month basis from N10,248.97 in December 2022 to N10,277.17 in January 2023.

Currently, the 12.5kg sells for between N15,000 and N16,000.

The Cable/NewsScroll

Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) announced the distribution of N1.149 trillion in January 2024 revenue, marking an increase compared to December 2023.

FAAC’s spokesperson, Bawa Mokwa, disclosed in a statement on Thursday that the amount was distributed among the Federal Government, States, and Local Government Councils.

The N1.149 trillion in total distributable revenue comprised distributable statutory revenue of N463.079 billion, distributable Value Added Tax (VAT) revenue of N391.787 billion, Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL) revenue of N15.922 billion and Exchange Difference revenue of N279.028 billion, according to a communiqué issued by FAAC.

FAAC said that the total revenue of N2.068 trillion was available in January 2024, while the total deductions for the cost of collection were N78.412 billion, total transfers, interventions and refunds were N639.926 billion and savings were N200 billion.

“Gross statutory revenue of N1.151 trillion was received for January 2024. This was higher than N875.382 billion received in December 2023 by N 276.426 billion,” the statement reads.

“The gross revenue available from the Value Added Tax (VAT) in January 2024 was N420.733 billion. This was lower than the N492.506 billion available in December 2023 by N71.773 billion.”

The communique disclosed that the federal government received the largest share (N407 billion), followed by states (N379 billion) and local governments (N278 billion) from the N1.148 trillion total distributable revenue.

Additionally, N85.101 billion (13% of mineral revenue) was also shared with the benefiting states as derivation revenue.

It added that FG also received N216.757 billion of the N463.079 billion in distributable statutory revenue, while the state governments received N109.942 billion and the local government councils received N84.761 billion.

N51.619 billion (13% of mineral revenue) was shared with the benefiting states as derivation revenue.

According to FAAC, FG received N58.768 billion, state governments received N195.894 billion and local government councils received N137.125 billion from the N391.787 billion distributable VAT revenue.

The agency added that the N15.922 billion EMTL was shared as follows: the Federal Government received N2.388 billion, State Governments received N7.961 billion and Local Government Councils received N5.573 billion.

From the N 279.028 billion exchange difference revenue, FG received N129.354 billion, state governments received N65.610 billion, and local government received N50.582 billion, adding that N33.482 billion (13% of mineral revenue) was shared to the benefiting states as derivation revenue.

“In January 2024, Companies Income Tax (CIT), Import Duty, Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) and Oil and Gas Royalties increased significantly, while Value Added Tax (VAT), Export Duty, Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL) and CET Levies decreased considerably. The balance in the ECA was $473,754.57.”

The Guardian