NEWS

Saudi man ‘accidentally’ buys $300m planes for son A father in Saudi Arabia has set the standards for parents buying birthday presents for their children when he accidentally purchased two Airbus A350-1000s after searching for small scale models of the plane for his son. The Saudi man, who remains unnamed and is an investor in the kingdom’s energy sector, was searching for small models of the plane as a birthday gift for his son who is a big fan of aviation. When he called the world’s second biggest aerospace company Airbus to obtain the model planes, however, his lack of verbal clarity in the English language made communication between him and company difficult. “They asked so many questions about interior and exterior, I just thought they make very accurate scale models,” the Saudi was reported as saying. When the price of around $365 million was presented to the man, it did not seem to deter him, saying that “I got lost in currency conversions, I thought it was a bit exp...

The  Aluu Four lynching  was a  necklace lynching  that involved four young men, Ugonna Obuzor, Toku Lloyd, Chiadika Biringa, and Tekena Elkanah, all students of the  University of Port Harcourt . They were all lynched after they were falsely accused of theft in Aluu, a community in  Ikwerre  local government area,  Rivers State ,  Nigeria  on 5 October 2012. Chiadika Biringa, Lloyd Toku Mike, Tekena Erikena and Ugonna Obuzor were all friends, first sons of their parents, and students of  University of Port Harcourt . The four students were also occasional roommates. Ugonna sometimes spent the night with Tekena who lived outside the campus because his residence on campus was broken into multiple times. Ugonna had a debtor called Bright who was owing him some undisclosed amount of money which bothered him much. In time, Ugonna managed to find out Bright's particular location. He sought the help of his cousin Lloyd, childhood and ...

          Canada bans HK consulate staff fromChina The Canadian Consulate in Hong Kong says local staff would not be allowed to leave the city on official business, following the detention of a British Consulate worker in mainland China. It didn't say whether the travel restriction was related to the detention of Simon Cheng Man-kit, who went missing two weeks ago after he went on a business trip from Hong Kong's high-speed rail terminal to Shenzhen, a mainland city just across the border from the semi-autonomous territory. "At present, locally engaged staff will not undertake official business travel outside of Hong Kong," the Canadian Consulate said in a statement. The Chinese government's announcement this week that Cheng had been detained has stoked tensions in Hong Kong, which has been gripped by more than two months of anti-government protests sparked by outrage over proposed legislation that would have allowed some criminal suspects to be sent...

Google says its YouTube streaming video service disabled 210 channels appearing to engage in a coordinated influence operation around the Hong Kong protests. The announcement comes days after Twitter and Facebook said they dismantled a similar campaign originating in mainland China. "This discovery was consistent with recent observations and actions related to China announced by Facebook and Twitter," said Shane Huntley, one of Google's security leaders, in a blog post. But he stopped short of identifying the origin of the channels. Twitter and Facebook on Monday said the channels they removed had engaged in a state-backed effort by China to undermine the protests in Hong Kong through posts calling participants dangerous and vile extremists. The protests, which have presented one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came to power in 2012, began in June as opposition to a now-suspended bill that would allow suspects to be extrad...

NIGERIAN SCAMMER FBI BUST: 80 DEFENDANTS IN US, NIGERIA CHARGED IN CYBERFRAUD CONSPIRACY TO STEAL MILLIONS Thursday, August 22, 2019 7:55PM CT Federal prosecutors announced a 252-count indictment that accuses 80 people in the U.S. and Nigeria of participating in a "massive conspiracy to steal millions of dollars through a variety of fraud schemes." LOS ANGELES -- After search warrants were executed at multiple locations across L.A. County on Thursday morning, federal prosecutors announced a 252-count indictment that accuses 80 people in the U.S. and Nigeria of participating in a "massive conspiracy to steal millions of dollars through a variety of fraud schemes." The defendants allegedly laundered the funds through a Los Angeles-based money laundering network. Eleven of them were arrested Thursday in Southern California, while three others were taken into custody elsewhere in the U.S., according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of ...

Alpha Jetman Blows the Doors of Possibility Wide Open WRITTEN BY  DR. LYNDA Can you imagine actually  becoming  the plane? Yves Rossy created a winged jetpack that enables him to  take to the sky with the freedom of a bird , awarding him the accurate moniker of  Jetman.  And let me tell you, seeing a human body flying right next to full metal jets has completely shaken up what’s possible! Source:  Airborne-Films // YouTube Yves Rossy is just one of those great people who must never have heard  “it can’t be done”. We thank both  Airborne Films – Jetman  (what beautiful work) and  XDubai  (leading out on the edges) for bringing us some of the Jetman story in the videos below! Via:  Airborne-Films   1 The marvel of this leap in aviation is incalculable. I’m not sorry to admit that my sense of possibility was expanded by watching this and that I shed a little tear. Just imagine the thoug...

[  BUSINESS  ] Bill Gates Drinks Sewage: Introducing the Omni Processor WRITTEN BY  DR. LYNDA On January 22, 2015, Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, came on the set of  The Tonight Show  with all-around funnyman Jimmy Fallon, with a simple proposition for Fallon: let’s each drink a glass of water. Simple right? Oh… here’s the catch: one of the glasses contained bottled water, while the other was very recently fresh  sewage , filtered using Gates’ latest philanthropic effort, the Omni Processor. Let’s watch the fun results as they played out on  The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon : Via: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon   1  Omni Processor Water Purifier In retrospect, it seems incredibly obvious that the solution to the question, “how do we get potable water to all of  Africa ?” ended up being this process which involves no advanced technology, just...

[  ANIMALS  ] Powering Your World with Fish Scales? WRITTEN BY  LIESL ULRICH-VERDERBER Have you ever looked at a dead fish and thought,  “Now there’s a technological innovation waiting to happen” ? I’m guessing you haven’t, because honestly, who would. Well, after watching today’s video you may walk by the seafood counter at your local market feeling a little more inspired by new innovations. Source:  James Palinsad  //  Flickr Liesl, why are you being so cryptic? Okay, fine, I was trying to build dramatic tension to lead us up to the topic we are exploring today; the future of  advanced technology  using fish scales to  power electronics . Yes, fish scales could help power a very near future! For more on this remarkable idea here’s one of our favorite YouTube Channels,  Gross Science  with more. Gross Science has some great and interesting content over of their channel, so take a moment to  poke a...

What’s the Deal with Virtual Reality? WRITTEN BY  LIESL ULRICH-VERDERBER Has all the hype about virtual reality intrigued you? What’s going on with this virtual reality stuff anyway? By now, virtual reality (VR) has probably made it on to your radar screen in some way. Maybe you’ve only heard about it in bits and pieces, or maybe you’ve tried it yourself. Whatever the case, virtual reality feels like it could be the new generation of advanced technology. Source:  BagoGames // Flickr So, what’s going on with virtual reality? How does it work? What impact is it having on your brain? Though I have tried a virtual reality headset before, I realized I really didn’t know that much about it, or what is possible with this technology. I’d never really had virtual reality explained to me in a way I was able to understand. So, I decided to look into it and found a great video from one of our favorite YouTube channels,  The Good St...

Saving the Rainforest with Old Cell Phones WRITTEN BY  LIESL ULRICH-VERDERBER Rainforest Connection is saving the rainforest with something sitting in your desk drawer! Rainforests have some of the most complicated soundscapes on the planet. In this dense noise of  insects ,  primates ,  birds , and everything else that moves in the forest, how can you detect the sounds of illegal logging? The old cell phone you have hanging around and collecting dust may have the answer. Source:  Rainforest Connection So, how exactly does one go about saving the rainforest with old cell phones? After a visit to the rainforests of Borneo, physicist and engineer  Topher White was struck by the sounds of the forest. In particular, the noises he couldn’t hear. While on a walk, White and others came across an illegal logger sawing down a tree just a few hundred meters away from a ranger station. This incident set White thinking that perhaps the best w...

Helping the Blind See With Their Tongues WRITTEN BY AJAYI OLUWAFEMI  “Technology, for me, it’s giving something back to somebody who was taken out of humanity.” – Andy Fabino What if we told you there are new innovations that can help about 285 million people around the world living with a visual impairment move around with a little more ease?  1 Okay, it’s easy enough to believe, but what if we told you the innovation works by using the surface of their tongues? Source:  Pixabay Now here’s something that should be celebrated: there’s an increasing number of  sensory-substitution device s being developed that use the brain in the most remarkable way. These devices take in visual information from the environment and translate it into forms of physical touch or sound in order to be interpreted by the user as vision. If that’s not amazing enough,  The New Yorker  lets us in on yet another benefit: “While these devic...