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A man who was accused of abandoning his wife and their new born child in the hospital after she underwent a CS operation has denied the allegations leveled against him.

According to him, he never abandoned his wife and their child, as he narrated how he was at the hospital throughout all her travails in trying to bring their child into the world.

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26 years after he went missing, an Algerian man has been found alive in his neighbour’s cellar.

The 45-year-old man identified as Omar bin Omran disappeared from the north-central Algerian town of Djelfa when he was 19.

He was assumed to be among the hundreds of thousands k+lled or kidn@pped during the Algerian Civil W@r in 1998.

But Mr Omran was found last week in a sheepfold under haystacks only about 200 metres away from his childhood home on May 12.

Officials confirmed they had arrested a 61-year-old doorman suspected of keeping him prisoner.

According to the Algerian newspaper El Khabar, his dog recognized his scent and stayed near where Omar was held. It was alleged that the captor po+§%ned the dog to ward the family off.

The kidn@pping was discovered after the suspect’s brother posted revealing information on social media, amid an alleged inheritance dispute between the siblings.

Mr Omran said he had not been able to call out for help “because of a spell that his captor had cast on him,” Algerian media reported.

Mr Omran’s mother di£d in 2013 without ever knowing the truth of what happened to him, according to El Khabar.

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The Kano State Hisbah Board has banned male disc jockeys (DJs) from performing at female-dominated events in the state.

The Commander General of the board, Sheikh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, announced this at a meeting with the representatives of DJs in the state.

According to him, the decision became necessary to prohibit the mixing of males and females during events, adding that only women would be allowed henceforth to officiate at women’s gatherings.

“As an Islamic state, it is unacceptable for us to allow the indiscriminate mixing of males and females at the same event. This is because this act can promote and spread immorality,” he said.

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Under Armour (UAA) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter profit that fell well short of analyst estimates, with Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kevin Plank saying the company faced a "challenging retail environment" over the last fiscal year.

The sportswear brand also announced a fiscal 2025 restructuring plan that would incur charges of about $70 million to $90 million and include layoffs.

Shares of the company initially fell in premarket trading but pared those losses and by 11:48 a.m. ET Thursday were trading 1% higher at $6.87.

The company said its fourth-quarter sales were $1.33 billion, in line with analyst estimates compiled by Visible Alpha. However, net income of $6.6 million, or 2 cents per share, was well below the $33.4 million and 7 cents per share analysts expected.

Revenue during the quarter in North America fell 10% year-over-year to $772 million, but that change was partially offset by 7% growth in international sales to $561 million.

Under Armour also projected fiscal 2025 revenue would fall by a "low-double-digit percentage rate," which includes a 15%-17% decline in North America.

Diluted earnings per share (EPS) for the full year is expected to be just 2 cents to 5 cents, well below the 59 cents per share analysts were projecting.

"Amid a challenging retail environment in fiscal 2024 that included high inventories and a consistent drumbeat of promotions—we demonstrated disciplined expense control and delivered results that were aligned with our previous outlook," said Plank, who founded the company and returned as CEO early last month.

Under Armour said its board approved the restructuring plan to "strengthen and support the company's financial and operational efficiencies."

The company's board also approved a $500 million buyback of the company's Class C common stock. The buyback will be undertaken over the next three years.

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Bank of America Corp. (BAC) is among the largest financial institutions in the world, with roughly $3.27 trillion in assets and a customer base of about 69 million consumers and small businesses. The company serves customers including individual consumers, large corporations, high-net-worth individuals, and governments. Bank of America is also one of the oldest financial institutions in the United States, with some parts of the company founded 240 years ago.

Today, the company divides its products and services into four segments: Global Banking, Global Markets, Consumer Banking, and Global Wealth and Investment Management. In 2023, Bank of America reported $98.58 billion in revenue and $26.51 billion in net income. It has a market capitalization of $304.29 billion as of May 16, 2024.

Bank of America’s major acquisitions represent efforts by the company to expand into new areas of finance and banking or to increase its reach within existing businesses. Below, we look in greater detail at six of Bank of America’s most important acquisitions. The company does not provide a breakdown of how much profit or revenue each acquisition currently contributes.

Bank of America’s acquisition of investment and wealth management firm Merrill Lynch in 2008 is by far the company’s largest. Merrill Lynch was officially founded in 1915 and developed over the next century into one of the largest financial services companies in the country.

Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch made the bank one of the largest wealth management businesses in the world, with about $1.8 trillion in client assets at the time of closing. However, Merrill Lynch’s investment in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other complex, high-risk financial products placed the firm in danger of collapse during the 2008 financial crisis, threatening to pull its parent into insolvency. Bank of America was forced to take a number of charges and write-offs related to the deal in subsequent years. The costs included Bank of America’s settlement of a $2.4 billion class action lawsuit related to the acquisition.

U.S. Trust Corp. was founded in 1853 to provide financial services for personal and corporate funds, with a particular focus on high-net-worth individuals. It catered to America’s richest families and industrialists. When Bank of America purchased the company from Charles Schwab Corp. in 2007, U.S. Trust managed roughly $94 billion in client assets and 21,000 employees.

The purchase enabled Bank of America to significantly expand its private banking business by combining U.S. Trust with several companies to create a larger business with $427 billion in total client assets. In the process of acquiring U.S. Trust, Bank of America dissolved the earlier brand and rebranded the business as U.S. Trust Bank of America Private Wealth Management. This division is now known as Bank of America Private Bank.

Countrywide Financial was founded in 1969 and eventually grew into the largest originator of home mortgages in the United States. Though Countrywide’s financial health deteriorated drastically during the 2008 financial crisis, Bank of America viewed the acquisition as a way to dramatically increase its position in the home mortgage market. However, the deal significantly boosted Bank of America’s exposure to mortgage lending just as the U.S. housing market was collapsing.

Thus, Countrywide became one of Bank of America’s (and the financial services world’s) worst acquisitions. Ultimately, the acquisition cost Bank of America more than $34 billion in consumer real estate losses and money set aside for payments to investors, as well as $16.7 billion in a fraud settlement related to Countrywide and Merrill Lynch.

FleetBoston Financial was created in 1999 by the merger of BankBoston and Fleet Financial Group. The company was based in New England and focused primarily on providing banking services for customers in the Northeast.

With the purchase of FleetBoston, Bank of America became in 2004 the second-largest banking company in the United States, with 33 million customers and 2.5 million business clients in dozens of nations around the world. As part of the acquisition, all Fleet branches eventually rebranded as Bank of America locations.

Bank of America purchased ABN AMRO North America Holding Co., the parent company of LaSalle Bank, from ABN AMRO Holding NV in late 2007. At the time of the acquisition, LaSalle had a substantial presence in both consumer and commercial banking in the U.S. Midwest and particularly around Chicago and Detroit.

Bank of America’s purchase of LaSalle helped to significantly increase its presence in the region, adding 1.4 million retail customers, more than 400 banking centers, 264 offices, and thousands of ATMs in the Chicago area, Michigan, and Indiana.

Axia Technologies Inc. was founded in 2015, making it one of the youngest companies acquired by Bank of America. Axia provides a gateway and terminal software solution for healthcare providers to facilitate end-to-end payments.

Bank of America’s acquisition of a healthcare financial technology company shows that it is attempting to move into the fast-growing medical payments market. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) has made similar acquisitions. In 2019, JPMorgan acquired InstaMed, another medical payments company.

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