NASA, April: A relatively large near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly three years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. Although there is no possibility for the asteroid …
Read More »Nigerian becomes first African to fly solo around the world
Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Nigerian airline pilot Ademola Odujinrin, known as “Lola”, has become the first African to fly solo around the world, his foundation Transcend said in a statement Thursday. The 38-year-old Nigerian left Washington in September last year abord a Cirrus SR22, a small, single engine airplane, …
Read More »EU to end mobile roaming charges in June
Strasbourg, France | AFP | The EU will abolish mobile phone roaming charges from June 15 following a vote in the European Parliament on Thursday. MEPs backed a deal between operators and European Union member states that will mean the end of extra charges when people use their phones abroad in …
Read More »Twitter rejects US effort to unmask anti-Trump users
Washington, United States | AFP | Twitter filed suit Thursday against the US government, asking a court to back its refusal to hand over the identities of users claiming to be dissenting federal employees. The lawsuit revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection had sought …
Read More »MPs demand for 2nd class, not first class SGR railway
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Committee on Physical Infrastructure on Wednesday April 5, 2017 presented to parliament its report on the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in which they demanded that Uganda downgrades to China Class 2 from China Class 1, in the regional project. Presenting a report, Member …
Read More »Twitter drops egg icon in battle with internet ‘trolls’
San Francisco, United States | AFP | An egg icon that for years marked profiles of new Twitter users was gone Monday, a victim of “trolls” who often hid behind them to launch anonymous online attacks. For seven years, anyone who created a Twitter account automatically got an egg icon as …
Read More »TECH: Volkswagen targets Sub-Sahara
One car likely to benefit is the Volkswagen Polo By Motoring Guru The German car maker, Volkswagen, has launched a Sub-Saharan Africa region to develop and strengthen the African market. Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the …
Read More »Break-in at Ugandan newspaper deals blow to media
Kampala, Uganda | AFP | The offices of Uganda’s leading private newspaper were ransacked overnight and all its computers stolen, its editor said Saturday, dealing a fresh blow to independent media in the country. “Almost all our desktops, a couple of laptops, cameras and hard drives were stolen,” said The Observer …
Read More »Streaming now makes up most US music industry revenue
New York, United States | AFP | Streaming for the first time accounted for most recorded music revenue in the United States last year, bringing the industry its fastest growth in nearly 20 years, figures showed Thursday. While the breakneck expansion is welcome news for a long-beleaguered music industry, overall revenue …
Read More »Twitter makes room for more characters in tweets
San Francisco, United States | AFP | Twitter on Thursday began rolling out changes to let people pack more into tweets, subtracting from the character count names of those being replied to in posts. The latest software modification at the one-to-many messaging service comes about a year after Twitter set out …
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