TECH NEWS

London, United Kingdom | AFP | British actress Jodie Whittaker was unveiled Sunday as the first woman to play “Doctor Who”, telling fans of the cult BBC science fiction series they should “not be scared by my gender”. The 35-year-old, who starred in the British award-winning drama “Broadchurch”, will take …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | A strikingly toxic campaign ad was unleashed online in Kenya just weeks before national elections — a potentially explosive move in a country where politics and ethnicity are closely aligned. The 90-second video, shot in moody monochrome, presented a dystopia in which Raila Odinga, the leading …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | Two German air force jets were deployed late Saturday to escort and help a Korean plane land in Stuttgart after it lost contact with air traffic controllers. The Korean Air plane with around 200 people was flying from Seoul to Zurich when communication with controllers …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP |  A whites-only enclave in South Africa has resisted the country’s multi-racial reality for more than two decades, even adopting its own paper money in its bid to promote self-sufficiency. Now Orania, a town of 1,400 established during the dying years of apartheid and protected …

Jakarta, Indonesia | AFP | Indonesia has blocked web-based access to a popular messaging service and threatened a full ban on the app due to its “terrorism” content, the government said. The communications ministry said in a statement that “so many channels in the (Telegram) service contain radicalism and terrorism… …

Washington, United States | AFP | Our Sun is much like other stars, and not an anomaly because of its magnetic poles that flip every 11 years, scientists said Thursday. The report in the journal Science aims to lay to rest the controversy over whether our solar system’s star is cyclic, …

Chicago, United States | AFP |  The Chicago Sun-Times, the city’s oldest continuously published daily and winner of eight Pulitzer prizes, has been sold to an investor group, reportedly for $1. The newspaper, which traces its history to 1844, reported Thursday it was purchased by an investment group led by …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | Uber on Thursday announced that it was merging in Russia and five other ex-Soviet states with the taxi hailing app of the country’s leading internet giant, Yandex. “Uber and Yandex have entered into an agreement to form a new company,” the head of Uber’s operations …

Mogadishu, Somalia | AFP |Last month, a baby was born in the Somali capital Mogadishu with a terrible eye defect that requires treatment abroad. The infant was cleared for treatment in Turkey but before the paperwork was complete a container ship, believed to be the Panama-flagged MSC Alice, docked outside …

Have you turned to a mobile app to manage or improve your health? |James Bullen| Apps that claim to treat everything from pimples to depression appeal to the anxiety many of us harbour about our health. But how trustworthy are they, and what’s the evidence behind their effectiveness? Can your …