Nigeria, Adamawa state.
Gunmen riding camels and horses killed six people in a village in northeast Nigeria, a region beset by Islamist attacks, police said on Sunday.
“Armed bandits” launched a pre...View MoreNigeria, Adamawa state.
Gunmen riding camels and horses killed six people in a village in northeast Nigeria, a region beset by Islamist attacks, police said on Sunday.
“Armed bandits” launched a predawn attack on Thursday on Aljannaru, a village in Adamawa state, before encountering a local self-defence group, police spokesman Suleiman Nguroje said.
They “clashed with some hunters, which led to the killing of six (people)”, Nguroje said.
Bandit attacks in northern Nigeria have risen in recent years, targeting remote areas and livestock.
Villages in southern Adamawa have also been repeatedly attacked by Boko Haram jihadists, leading to the rise of hunters and other self-defence groups to fight them.
In 2014, hunters helped force out Boko Haram militants occupying parts of Adamawa, yet sporadic attacks by the group persist.
In a separate incident in neighbouring Borno state, three Nigerian soldiers were killed on Sunday when their armoured vehicle was hit by a projectile fired by Boko Haram jihadists, army sources told AFP.
Fighters attacked the convoy at a military post outside the town of Gwoza, near the border with Cameroon, the sources said.
“We lost three soldiers in the attack,” said an army officer speaking on condition of anonymity, adding soldiers were injured and an army vehicle destroyed.
The decade-long jihadist conflict has spilt into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. It has claimed 35,000 lives and displaced around two million in Nigeria alone.
The President of Congo has promised eradicate the Ebola string that has killed several people.
DRC officials have introduced two vaccines to fight the epidemic.
The Ebola virus is passed on by contac...View MoreThe President of Congo has promised eradicate the Ebola string that has killed several people.
DRC officials have introduced two vaccines to fight the epidemic.
The Ebola virus is passed on by contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected or recently deceased person.
Following an incubation period of up to three weeks, a high fever develops, along with weakness, intense muscle and joint pain, headaches and a sore throat.
This is often followed by vomiting and diarrhoea, skin eruptions, kidney and liver failure, and internal and external bleeding.
The death rate is typically high, ranging up to 90 percent in some outbreaks, according to the WHO.
The virus’s natural reservoir is suspected to be a tropical bat which does not itself fall ill but can pass on the microbe to humans who hunt it for food.
USA
Motorola has today announced a modern successor to one of the most iconic phones ever released: the Razr V3. The popular flip-phone was first released in 2004 and had been a huge success for the...View MoreUSA
Motorola has today announced a modern successor to one of the most iconic phones ever released: the Razr V3. The popular flip-phone was first released in 2004 and had been a huge success for the company as it went on to sell over a 100M units. The clamshell design was immensely popular as it was a lot thinner and had a unique design. The new Razr takes the core aspects of this design and ports it over to the latest 2019 technologies. At the heart of the new smartphone lies Motorola’s take on foldable displays, giving the new Razr a proper modern “full body screen” experience.
At the heart of the new Razr, don’t expect any kind of flagship components as Motorola had to make due with limited internal space. The phone comes with a Snapdragon 710 SoC which is at the mid-range segment. Similarly, the phone comes with 6GB of RAM, but does at least have 128GB of storage. Of course, if you’re interested in the new Razr it’s not because of hardware, but because of its design. Motorola did an excellent job of capturing the Razr clamshell design language and transferring it to the modern age.
At the centre we find a flexible plastic OLED panel with a 6.2” diagonal with a resolution of 2142 x 876. The screen’s elongate 21:9 aspect ratio betrays the true size of the phone as it’s not quite all that wide at 72mm. It’s certainly a bigger form-factor phone than the original Razr which came in at 53mm width.
The top side of the screen sees a display notch – but it’s actually adding to the design of the phone as the whole top design is curved and it has the iconic Razr feel to it. There’s an earpiece speaker as well as a small 5MP f/2.0 front-facing camera.
Motorola’s hinge design on the new unit is very unique as the company has been able to avoid some of the compromises and issues as we’ve seen with other foldable phones such as the Galaxy Fold. The main issue with an inward folding phone display is the curvature and radius of the bend – the thickness of your folded design is limited by how aggressively you can actually make the screen fold.
Motorola’s take on the Razr is that the phone has two internal moving plates that allow the screen panel to recess further into the body of the phone when it’s in a folded state, allowing the screen and the bend radius to more fully take advantage of the full 14mm thickness of the phone when it’s folded. Of course, the issue of this design is that you cannot physically achieve it without some give between the screen’s height and the body height as the two cannot be the same between folded and unfolded positions. It’s here that the new Razr’s design is ingenious; when it’s being folded, the whole bottom half of the screen slightly slides into the chin of the phone.
What Motorola did here with this design is allow for more vertical tension on the plastic screen itself. The swivelling internal support plates which allow the screen to bend into the phone body when folded also serve as structural supports for the screen when it’s unfolded. This allows the Razr to essentially solve the middle crease issue we’ve seen in other foldables such as the Galaxy Fold or the Huawei Mate X, giving a much “flatter” screen at the hinge. Motorola’s engineering of the fold screen seemingly seems to be the best we’ve seen so far from any vendor.
Of course, there’s still limitations with the hinge design. For example, there still will be some gaps for particulates to possibly enter the hinge. In Motorola’s renders we see that the hinge gears are visible from the outside when the phone is folded, to which I have to wonder about what happens to the mechanism if there’s any dust or any other debris entering it.
The phone’s I/O consists simply of a USB-C port at the bottom of the phone in the iconic “chin”. We find a bottom speaker and that’s about it in terms of what you’ll find on the phone. There’s no SIM tray as the phone is eSIM only and of course no expandable storage either. The front of the chin sports a fingerprint reader.
When closed, you the front side of the phone looks excellent and the curved glass panel embeds both a secondary display as well as the main camera. The display is also OLED here, but it’s of a smaller 2.7” diagonal featuring a resolution of 800 x 600 in a 4:3 form-factor.
The main camera is a 16MP unit with 1.22µm dual pixel PD in a f/1.7 lens, but it lacks OIS. Frankly given the phone’s extremely limited z-height of 6.9mm when unfolded we weren’t expecting anything more.
Finally, the phone does appear to be quite heavy at 205g, but is nowhere near the weight of other phones such as the Galaxy Fold or Mate X. The battery is 2510mAh is on the smaller side, but it’s also a less demanding SoC as well as a lower resolution display so we can’t say too much about how battery life might end up.
The new Razr launches December 26th for pre-order with availability on January 9th for a price tag of $1499. Clearly it’s going to be more of a fashion phone rather than being a contender in terms of value it brings, but in terms of design and innovation it brings to the foldable phone segment I think Motorola has been able to achieve something special here, and I’m looking forward to experience the new Razr.
Courtesy: Andrei Frumusanu
USA, California.
One person is dead and at least two people are in critical condition following a mass shooting with multiple victims at a high school in Southern California, officials said.
A 15-ye...View MoreUSA, California.
One person is dead and at least two people are in critical condition following a mass shooting with multiple victims at a high school in Southern California, officials said.
A 15-year-old suspected gunman is dead following a self-inflicted gun wound, according to reports. He was believed to be a student at the school.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department tells The Independent they cannot yet confirm whether the victims are students, teachers or other school faculty at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita.
Courtesy: Independent
The 2020 GRAMMY Awards will be hosted by Alicia Keys
South Africa, Johannesburg.
South African Airways has announced that all flights departing from South Africa on Friday the 15th of Nov 2019 has been cancelled. This comes at the back of a workers str...View MoreSouth Africa, Johannesburg.
South African Airways has announced that all flights departing from South Africa on Friday the 15th of Nov 2019 has been cancelled. This comes at the back of a workers striking threat issued by the workers union Numsa and SACCA. These organised labour movements are demanding for a salary increase and demands that all planned retrenchments in SAA be called off. This sit out strike may cost SAA Fifty Seven Million South African Rand.
KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.
The extent of a severe storm that hit parts of KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday is yet to be fully determined, but Wednesday's pictures from New Hanover show the damage caused by a tor...View MoreKwaZulu-Natal, Durban.
The extent of a severe storm that hit parts of KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday is yet to be fully determined, but Wednesday's pictures from New Hanover show the damage caused by a tornado that claimed at least two lives.
Bolivia.
Evo Morales has accepted an offer of political asylum in Mexico a day after resigning as president of Bolivia amid election fraud protests.
In a tweet, he said it hurt to be leaving Bolivia...View MoreBolivia.
Evo Morales has accepted an offer of political asylum in Mexico a day after resigning as president of Bolivia amid election fraud protests.
In a tweet, he said it hurt to be leaving Bolivia but he would return with more "strength and energy".
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed Mr Morales had boarded a Mexican government plane.
Meanwhile, Bolivia's military commander ordered troops to back up police who have clashed with Morales supporters.
Some 20 people were reported injured in the clashes. Mr Morales earlier urged his supporters to resist the "dark powers" that had forced him to step down.
He also tweeted a photo of what he described as "my first night after leaving the presidency forced out by the coup [organised by opposition leader Carlos] Mesa and [opposition activist Luis Fernando] Camacho with the help of the police".
Evo Morales, a cocoa gamer was elected president of Bolivia in 2006 but he defied the Bolivian constitution and ran for his fourth term in office which critics believed that he won by rigging the election system.
Courtesy: BBC
Washington DC, USA
The impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives moves to public hearings on Wednesday.
Trump is threatened with removal from office over ...View MoreWashington DC, USA
The impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives moves to public hearings on Wednesday.
Trump is threatened with removal from office over allegations that he abused his powers and broke the law by pressuring Ukraine to supply damaging information on rival Democrats and possible 2020 presidential election challenger Joe Biden.
The evidence covers a series of events from April 2019 when Zelensky was elected, and both sides sought to reboot Washington-Kyiv relations. Zelensky sought to aid and a meeting with the US leader; Trump sought “investigations.”
Giuliani machinations
Trump gave the Ukraine leader a congratulatory phone call on April 19. Days later, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said online and in public that the US wanted Ukraine to investigate Burisma, the energy company on whose board Biden’s son Hunter served for five years until April 2019.
Giuliani also called for an investigation into a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine helped the Democrats against Trump in the 2016 election.
“Explain to me why Biden shouldn’t be investigated if his son got millions from a Russian loving crooked Ukrainian oligarch while He was VP and point man for Ukraine,” Giuliani tweeted on May 10.
Giuliani’s immediate impact was in getting Trump to remove US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had resisted Giuliani’s involvement in Ukraine policy.
Another result: Trump told Vice President Mike Pence not to attend Zelensky’s May 14 inauguration, sending Energy Secretary Rick Perry instead. According to a whistleblower complaint in August, that downgrade was meant to signal to the new government that Trump wanted the investigations.
July 10 meeting
In a July 10 meeting in the office of White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, told Ukrainian officials that a high profile meeting they sought between Zelensky and Trump was contingent on “investigations in the energy sector” and later referenced “Burisma”.
Sondland told the Ukrainians the alleged quid pro quo was authorized by Trump’s right-hand man, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney.
“We have an agreement with the chief of staff for a meeting if these investigations in the energy sector start,” Sondland told the Ukrainians, according to witnesses.
Bolton, who objected to the linkage, immediately cut the meeting short, but Sondland continued to make the point in a subsequent meeting, witnesses said.
Aid suspension
On July 19 Mulvaney, who also heads the White House budget office, froze a military aid package for Ukraine worth $391 million dollars. He told budget officials it was at the order of Trump, but did not explain the reason. But in October Mulvaney told reporters it was linked to investigations and said there was nothing wrong with the quid pro quo.
July 25 phone call
On July 25 Trump spoke again by phone with Zelensky. According to a rough summary of the call released by the White House, he made clear he wanted Ukraine to open the investigations, and hinted at the linkage with assistance and a face-to-face meeting.
“I would like you to do us a favour though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump said.
Trump made direct reference to the story that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election helping rival Democrats.
“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation,” Trump said. “It’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
Trump added that “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son… A lot of people want to find out about that,” he said, proposing Kiev cooperate with US Attorney General Bill Barr.
“The United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.”
Text messages
After the July 25 call, Sondland pressed on Kiev the need for investigations. Text messages between Sondland and other US diplomats show he was focused on Trump’s insistence on “the deliverable” — the investigations as a quid pro quo for the military aid.
“I think potus (Trump) really wants the deliverable,” he wrote on August 9.
In August he helped arrange a prepared statement for Zelensky to deliver that would satisfy Trump.
The statement, according to an August 13 text, was to read: “We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 US elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.”
Seeing that, Sondland wrote: “Perfect.”
That statement was never delivered. On September 1 Sondland told Zelensky advisor Andriy Yermak that military aid would not be released until Kiev signalled the investigations into Biden and 2016.
Eswateni, Mbambane
The biggest opposition party in eSwatini, the People's United Democratic Movement (Pudemo) has sharply criticised King Mswati III for importing luxury vehicles amid unrest linked ...View MoreEswateni, Mbambane
The biggest opposition party in eSwatini, the People's United Democratic Movement (Pudemo) has sharply criticised King Mswati III for importing luxury vehicles amid unrest linked to civil servants' demands for a pay rise and the escalating cost of living in the southern African monarchy.
In a statement Pudemo's secretary general Wandile Dludlu called the king's move a "blatant display of arrogance" and total disregard of the poor people of eSwatini.
"The shameless King Mswati continues to spoil himself and his family, totally oblivious to the myriad of problems afflicting the people he claims to lead. Last week, a total of 19 Rolls Royce cars were delivered to Swaziland for the exclusive use of the King, his mother and wives and the total cost of these vehicles to the Swazi taxpayer was over E250 million," Dludlu said.
Images and videos showing three trucks ferrying numerous Rolls Royce vehicles reported to be for the king's 15-odd wives and other royal family members have gone viral on social media. According to reports, each of the vehicles costs between R4 million to R10 million.
"Notwithstanding the outrage of Swazis over the purchase of the Rolls Royces, the King Mswati led government continued rub salt into the gaping wound suffered by people by purchasing a further 120 BMWs and 30 motorbikes," said Dludlu.
"He is basically showing them a middle finger and proving to all and sundry that he is a law unto himself and not at all concerned about the people’s concerns. As Pudemo, we strongly condemn in the strongest possible terms this brazen looting of the oppressed people of Swaziland’s hard earned taxes by Mswati," Dludlu added.
He urged citizens to "stand up and face up to this evil regime that continues to keep us in bondage".
"Under no circumstances can we allow one family to continuously condemn us to poverty. It is about time that we fight back and reclaim what rightfully belongs to us. This has been going on and has emboldened the regime and we must fight back," said Dludlu.
The biggest opposition party in eSwatini, the People's United Democratic Movement has sharply criticised King Mswati III for importing luxury vehicles
He said in Africa's last absolute mornachy, formerly known as Swaziland, public sector workers had not received salary adjustments in three years and the health system had totally collapsed, rendering the poorest citizens vulnerable.
"Tertiary institutions have also closed down due to student unrest caused by the regime’s failure to cater for their tuition fees, text book fees, accommodation and other expenses," said Dludlu.
This month, civil servants in the capital Mbabane took to the streets, expressing outrage over the king's expenditure.
Courtesy: African News Agency (ANA)
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