Biafra Activist - Biafra Or Dead. No Going Back
3 Gadgets You Didn’t Know You Needed, but Are Worth Buying Photo Credit Manu Fernandez/Associated Press It’s easy to forget how far technology has come within a few years. We went from praying our CD players wouldn’t skip to streaming music wirelessly to AirPods in our ears. But even some recently introduced devices have made the jump from being high-end, enthusiast tech to at-home must haves. Here are a few of them.
Photo Amazon Echo Dot . Credit Elaine Thompson/Associated Press The assistant we didn’t ask for, but can’t live without“Weird.” “Curious.” “Baffling.” “Quite Stupid.” These words all once described Alexa, the voice-activated digital assistant on Amazon’s Echo device. Now, according to Amazon, the Echo Dot, a smaller, less expensive version of the Echo was the “#1 selling Amazon Device” during the holidays last year.
Back in 2014, it was odd to consider even owning an Echo (and you needed an invite from Amazon to actually purchase one). Today, you can pick from five differ..
The Spanish lender reported a strong performance elsewhere
Santander said the impact of Carillion’s collapse contributed to a 21 per cent drop in UK profits in the first three months of 2018.
UK pre-tax profit fell to £414m from £525m in the same period of 2017, while interest income dropped to £906m from £940m.
The Spanish-owned reported credit impairment losses of £60m in the first quarter, compared with a loss of £13m last year, driven in part by a drawdown by Carillion, which fell into liquidation in January.
Read more Carillion: Investors smelled a rat and then ran. Why didn't ministers? Nathan Bostock, UK chief executive, said: “Our first quarter results have been impacted by ongoing competitive pressures in the UK. We have maintained our investment in business transformation and growth initiatives even though regulatory, risk and control costs stepped up, given a number of major projects are due to be implemented during 2018.
“Cost discipline remains an area of pa..
IPOB PRESS RELEASE 23/04/2018 IPOB LAUNCH OPERATION COW DANCE 2 TO APPREHEND AND SUBMIT BUHARI TO DNA TEST DURING HIS UPCOMING TRIP TO WASHINGTON Following the successful completion of our Operation Cow Dance, beautifully executed by the United Kingdom IPOB family, that led to the premature and unscheduled exit of the person referred to as…
The 12 A29 from the United States to fight insurgency are not due to arrive until 2020, a senior United States administration official disclosed at the weekend. Speaking ahead of President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to the White House next Monday, the official said the high regard the Donald Trump administration accords Nigeria…
Google’s Parent Company Spends Like It’s Thinking of a Future Beyond Ads Photo Alphabet, Google’s parent company, spent big in the first quarter on new data centers and services aimed at businesses. Credit Christie Hemm Klok for The New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is spending like it is beginning to prepare for life after advertising.
Currently, Alphabet makes nearly 90 percent of its money from selling advertising on the internet, and gobbles up heaps of data about its users to help marketers target those ads more effectively.
But a close reading of Alphabet’s financial results for the first quarter of 2018, which were announced on Monday, showed that the Silicon Valley giant is accelerating its efforts to diversify into other businesses.
Alphabet has made investments in areas like self-driving cars and online computer services for businesses for years, but spending in those areas was up dramatically in the first quarter. The company’s capital expendi..
'Lots of coffee chains are making pledges about how they plan to tackle cup waste in the future. We need to stop right now'
Network operators focus too much on data speed at the expense of reliability, research shows
Birmingham, Leeds and London have the worst mobile phone signal in the UK, according to a new study.
Research by Global Wireless Solutions (GWS) showed O2 was the best performing network, with Vodafone ranked as the worst based on testing using both Android and iOS devices in 32 cities and towns across the UK. Telefonica-owned O2 was rated the most reliable network in 17 places, while Three was most reliable in 12 – including London – and EE came out on top in three.
Meanwhile, when it comes to criteria for selecting a network consumers are twice as likely to choose reliability over network speed, according to surveys and focus groups conducted by YouGov on behalf of GWS.
More than two thirds (69 per cent) of respondents said the most important phone function is making calls, while 53 per cent selected texting as the highest priority, followed by 43 per cent who chose internet browsing. ..
Deported to Libya, Ex-Gitmo Detainees Vanish. Will Others Meet a Similar Fate? Photo The system set up under President Barack Obama to send low-level Guantánamo detainees to stable countries is at risk of collapsing under President Trump, current and former officials said. Credit Lucas Jackson/Reuters WASHINGTON — In President Barack Obama’s drive to close the Guantánamo prison, his administration struck deals with about three dozen nations to take in lower-risk detainees from dangerous countries. Resettling them in stable places would increase the chances they would live peacefully, officials argued, rather than face persecution or drift into Islamist militancy.
But a decision this month by Senegal to deport two former detainees to their chaotic birth country of Libya has raised the prospect that the resettlement system is starting to collapse under President Trump. After a traumatic journey, the Libyans fell into the hands of a hard-line militia leader who has been accused of prisone..
The video-sharing site said it took down more than eight million videos in the fourth quarter of 2017. The vast majority were flagged by computers.
This Start-Up Says It Wants to Fight Poverty. A Food Stamp Giant Is Blocking It.
Four years ago, Jimmy Chen left a lucrative perch as a product manager at Facebook to found Propel, what he calls an “anti-poverty software company.”
In 2016, the Brooklyn start-up released a smartphone app that lets food stamp recipients easily look up how much money was left in their accounts, rather than call an 800 number or keep paper receipts. Today, one million food stamp participants use Propel’s app, and the start-up has added features like links to food coupons, healthy recipes, budgeting tools and job opportunities.
But in the last few months, the Propel app has been hobbled or become unavailable in many states, sometimes for weeks. Behind the slowdown is a big government contractor, Conduent, which runs the food stamp networks in 25 states, including New York, California and Pennsylvania. In those states, where 60 percent of Propel’s users live, Conduent maintains the database that Propel’s ap..
