TECH NEWS

San Francisco, United States | AFP | Facebook launched Monday a “Marketplace” trading platform that lets users of the vast social network buy and sell goods with each other in a mighty challenge to the likes of eBay and Craigslist. The new feature puts Facebook — with a global base …

Berlin, Germany | AFP |  Celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, anonymous whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks can look back on a decade that saw it turn classified documents into global headlines and inspire a host of copycat leaks. But with founder Julian Assange hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy to evade rape …

San Francisco, United States | AFP | A high-profile Google event Tuesday is widely expected to show a new emphasis on hardware, challenging rivals Apple and Amazon and launching a new strategy for the online giant. While the company has offered no official preview, it is expected to unveil a …

Government has today started the trial provision of free wireless access to internet to Ugandans, starting with the Kampala Central Business District and Entebbe. It will also be one of the highlights of the Kampala Capital City Authority Street Carnival  Sunday. The service will later be rolled out to other areas of Kampala …

Dijon, France | AFP |  French prosecutors said Friday they would seek a fast-track trial against a young man — apparently an unsatisfied customer — who ran amok in an Apple store, smashing phones and tablets with a metal ball. The scene, captured on camera and posted on the Internet, …

Darmstadt, Germany | AFP | Europe’s ground-breaking quest to unravel the Solar System’s mysteries concludes Friday with the Rosetta comet chaser crashlanding onto the cosmic wanderer’s rocky surface. The mission, summarised in numbers: 1: Rosetta became the first spacecraft, in August 2014, to enter the orbit of a comet. In …

Stockholm, Sweden | AFP | It’s serendipity: from America to Viagra, history is full of great discoveries helped along by chance, as more than a century of Nobel prizes can attest. Among the chance discoveries that have been honoured with the prestigious prize are X-rays (physics, 1901), penicillin (medicine, 1945), …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Samsung is in discussions about “potential safety issues” concerning some of its washing machines after a class-action lawsuit complained the appliances were exploding, the company said Wednesday. The news comes after the South Korean electronics giant recalled millions of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones …

Ottawa, Canada | AFP | BlackBerry announced Wednesday it would halt in-house production of smartphones, marking the end of an era for the once-dominant Canadian tech firm. Ontario-based BlackBerry said it had reached a deal to outsource production of its phones to an Indonesian partner, and would instead concentrate on …

Aviation bodies in the East African region are considering shifting the airport control systems to a cheaper, more efficient, and safer satellite navigation system. The satellite-based system will be supported by the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (Egos). In the recent meeting held in Kigali, Rwanda the East African Community …