TECH NEWS

Paris, France | AFP | The mayors of Paris, London and Seoul on Wednesday launched an initiative to rate the most polluting vehicles in a bid to keep them off the roads of their cities. The aim of the “Air’volution” scheme is to help drivers avoid buying the most harmful …

New York, United States | AFP | Samsung on Wednesday unveiled its new Galaxy S8 smartphones, incorporating the virtual assistant Bixby, as the market leader seeks to rebound from a chaotic handset recall and a corruption scandal. The South Korean giant’s mobile chief DJ Koh told a New York event …

Madrid, Spain | AFP | A Spanish court on Wednesday sentenced a young woman to jail for posting jokes on Twitter about the 1973 assassination of a senior figure in the Franco dictatorship. The National Audience, Spain’s top criminal court, found Cassandra Vera, 21, guilty of glorifying terrorism and humiliating victims …

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has ordered telecommunication companies to deactivate all unregistered or partially registered phone SIM-cards by midnight tonight. The order will also affect all pre-activated SIM-cards being sold on the streets. Registration for a SIM-card will from midnight tonight be open only to customers with either a …

Montreal, Canada | AFP | British and US bans on laptops and tablet computers in flight cabins are not sustainable in the long term, the head of the association representing airlines said Tuesday. “The current measures are not acceptable as a long-term solution to whatever threat they are trying to …

Washington, United States | AFP | Secret meetings, phone taps, Russian oil money and mysterious intelligence dossiers: the swirling scandal over Donald Trump’s ties to Moscow has all the makings of a classic spy novel — whose ending has yet to be written. But the maelstrom engulfing Washington over Russia’s …

Shanghai, China | AFP | China Southern Airlines said Tuesday it would sell almost a one-tenth stake to American Airlines in a $200 million tie-up that could see two of the world’s biggest carriers cooperate in a range of areas. American Airlines is the world’s largest carrier by scheduled passengers carried, …

It’s a modern to take on an old formula It’s easy to look at the 2018 Mercedes E400 Coupe as, simply, an E-Class with two fewer doors, but that’s selling it short. For Mercedes, it represents a return to building the sort of car it abandoned in 1996–the mid-size luxury …

Washington, United States | AFP | The Central Intelligence Agency is able to permanently infect an Apple Mac computer so that even reinstalling the operating system will not erase the bug, according to documents published Thursday by WikiLeaks. In its second release allegedly from the CIA’s arsenal of hacking tools, WikiLeaks …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Kenya, a pioneer in mobile money, on Thursday began selling the first ever government bonds via mobile phone, allowing anyone from teachers to shop owners to invest and fund infrastructure projects. The bond is named M-Akiba, which means “mobile savings” in Swahili, and was launched …