The US government is pouring money into the Internet of Things

The U.S government spent $8.8 billion in the fiscual year of 2015, up from $7.7 billion in the fiscal year 2014, according to a report from Govini, which collects and analyzes data about government contracts. Overall, the federal government spent almost $35 billion on IoT solutions from the fiscal year 2011 through the fiscal year 2015.

The report split the government's IoT investments into three categories. First is infrastructure

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Xiaomi Buys 1,500 Patents From Microsoft To Aid Global Expansion

Xiaomi has signed a deal with Microsoft to acquire 1,500 patents in exchange for bundling Skype and Office apps on its smartphones and tablets, as the Chinese company seeks a way to expand its products into Western markets. The deal, which also includes a cross-licensing agreement, could hasten the launch of Xiaomi smartphones in markets such as Western Europe and North America where it is believed that a lack of a robust mobile patent portfolio is the major factor in preventing a more global launch.

The patents Xiaomi has acquired cover wireless communications, video, cloud and multimedia technologies, and come six months after the Chinese company signed a patent-licensing deal with U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm covering 3G and 4G technologies. Xiaomi has acquired 1,500 patents from Microsoft, in a deal that will

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WhatsApp Revenue Model And The Reasons Behind Facebook’s 19 Billion Dollar Acquisition !

Facebook’s owned WhatsApp had announced in March that WhatsApp will be completely free for users and will no longer change any subscription fee. The app that gained more than 1 billion users across the globe allows users to message contacts anyone who is using WhatsApp at no cost and is currently available for iPhones, Blackberries, Symbian and the web version. Facebook purchased WhatsApp in February 2014 for amount which is estimated to $19 billion. After nine months, (i.e. September 2014), WhatsApp had generated revenue of approximately $1.2 million, as per 2014 Facebook Form 10-Q. The big question is how WhatsApp generated such a revenue?

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The 2017 ARM Processor Powering the 2017 iPhone will Pack a Powerful Graphics Punch

Despite Nvidia's CEO thinking that VR's problems will take another 20 years to resolve, the industry is still racing forward to accommodate VR applications. Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 1080 will greatly assist VR applications on the desktop in 2016 and so will the new chip from ARM that's due to arrive in time for the 2017 iPhone. According to Trusted Reviews, ARM has laid its cards down for a mobile gaming future fuelled by VR. The chip architecture design company, which is behind the architecture for processors seen in phones including the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 6S, has launched its new processor and graphics architecture at Computex, with particular focus on VR content consumption.

The new ARM Mali-G71 is of particular interest; mostly because

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Don't be alarmed if Android wants to get physical

Q. My Android phone popped up a notification that “Physical Web pages are nearby.” What does that mean?

A. The plain language of that Android notification suggests that if you look in the right direction, you might spot a printout of a Web page taped to a wall. What Google’s operating system is actually saying: A nearby Bluetooth beacon is broadcasting a Web page’s address, and if you open that notification, the Chrome browser on your phone will display the page. Why would you want to do that? At Google’s I/O developer conference two weeks ago, Rahul Roy-chowdhury, vice president of product management for Chrome, spelled out one such scenario in his mobile-Web talk: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you got on a bus and you

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The best tech to prevent distracted driving

While everyone knows they shouldn’t use a smartphone behind the wheel, one in every four crashes still involves someone texting, snapping, sharing, or chatting on a mobile device. So how do we save ourselves … from ourselves? I’ve tested more than a dozen apps and gadgets that promise a fix.

DriveMode Wins Top Spot

Every major cellular provider offers something to help with distracted driving. I found AT&T’s free DriveMode app for Android and iPhone works the best

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StanChart launches mobile banking push in Africa as rivals retreat

Standard Chartered is to launch its mobile and online banking platform in eight African countries, its consumer banking chief for the region told Reuters, as the lender seeks to grow in Africa at a time when some European banks are retreating. StanChart will launch the service for its 1 million customers in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe in the first half of 2016, the bank's regional head for retail banking

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Your Dose Of Disruptive Tech For This Week !

As a part of the tech in Techstory, we bring you the latest in the technology from around the world. This week we saw HP unveiling its Omen backpack PC for mobile VR gaming and China unveiling elevated bus to tackle traffic jams. We also saw Toyota remaking the ibot wheelchair and Samsung’s plans for IoT network. In case, if you’ve missed any of those, along with the Reddit’s latest update on hosting its own image uploading service, don’t worry just keep reading!

HP Unveils Omen Backpack PC For Mobile VR Gaming

                                                

HP unveiled a new series of gaming laptops under the Omen X branding, but apparently that’s not all the company has up their sleeves. It seems that HP is also working on a backpack PC that will allow gamers to play virtual reality on the go, or at the very least allow

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Here's Facebook's next major app: Moments

Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) mobile app is one of the most popular in the world. More than 1 billion people use Facebook on their mobile devices each and every day. But there's more to Facebook than its core social network. The company has an increasingly impressive array of other apps, each boasting hundreds of millions of additional users in their own right. Collectively, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram reach 2.3 billion people each month, mostly through mobile devices. WhatsApp and Messenger lead the way with 1 billion and 900 million monthly actives, respectively; Instagram adds 400 million. The company has tried many times to add a fifth to that lineup, but most of its initiatives have been outright failures. Last year, Facebook discontinued Slingshot, Riff, and Rooms after they failed to gain sufficient traction. But Facebook has one up-and-coming app that may hold considerably more promise: Moments, a photo-centric app Facebook launched

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15 Latest Developments In Robotics Field !

2016 is proving to be a year of robotics and automation. We are already half way down the year and semi – autonomous vehicles are already on the roads. The robotics too has some notable achievements to boast of. Have a look yourself:

1. RoboBee Clings to the Ceiling With Static Electricity

This insect-sized flying robot is smaller than a quarter, 12 times lighter than a paperclip, and zips through the air with a pair of flapping wings. That’s not even the impressive part. Using a trick of electrostatic energy, the minuscule bot can efficiently cling to the underside of any flat surface, from tree leaves to glass skylights to your plaster

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NASA is inflating a prototype of a new habitat for astronauts in the International Space Station

The unexpanded Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is seen attached to the Tranquility module on the International Space Station in this still image taken from NASA TV May 26, 2016. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station on Saturday slowly inflated an experimental fabric module that may provide a less expensive and safer option for housing crews during long stays in space, a NASA TV broadcast showed. 

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Samsung braces for patent war

The total number of patents that tech giant Samsung Electronics holds in the U.S. increased by more than fifteen times over the past nine years, according to the company on Thursday. Samsung’s patents registered at the U.S. patent office stood at 38,809 last year, up from 2,457 in 2007

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South Africa: How the State Capture Controversy Has Influenced South Africa's Nuclear Build

South Africa is facing a critical decision that could see it investing about R1 trillion - or US$60 billion to $70 billion - in a fleet of new nuclear power stations. Proponents argue that it will greatly increase electrical base-load capacity and generate industrial growth. But opponents believe the high cost would cripple the country economically. What should be an economic decision has now been clouded by controversy, with political pressure to push through the nuclear build and the increasingly apparent rewards it would bring to politically linked individuals. The nuclear expansion programme needs to be considered exceptionally carefully given that the required financial commitment is roughly equal to the total South African annual tax revenue. Loan repayments could place a devastating long-term burden on

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You Won't Be Able to Use PayPal's App on These Phones Anymore

Shares of PayPal Holdings  (PYPL) are down by 1.68% to $38.11 late Thursday afternoon, as the San Jose, CA-based technology platform company announces it is discontinuing its apps on the Windows Phone (MSFT), BlackBerry (BBRY) and Amazon's(AMZN) Fire OS.

As of June 30, the only two of PayPal's money transaction apps remaining will be on Google's Android (GOOGL) and Apple's(AAPL) iOS.

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Facebook and Microsoft team up to build undersea internet cable over 4,000 miles long

Facebook and Microsoft are teaming up to build a giant undersea internet cable from the US to Spain to help them move vast amounts of data across the world more easily.

The fibre optic cable, named Marea (that's Spanish for 'tide'), will stretch from Virginia on America's east coast to Bilbao, in the Basque Country, across around 4,100 miles of seabed.

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Google's victory over Oracle: A win for developers

The ruling sets a high bar for the level of "creativity" that APIs may need to show before they

deserve protection under copyright law. When the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2014 that Java APIs deserved copyright protection, siding with Oracle over Google in the matter, it shocked many in the developer community and the tech industry at large. Some said that the ruling would have a "chilling effect" on software development, but that prediction didn't really materialize.

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What Do You Think Is The Impact Of Technological Advancements In Healthcare Industry?

Technology has brought about massive changes in every aspect of human life and healthcare is no exception. With the penetration of technology in the healthcare industry, there has been significant reduction in barriers to health care access and allowed major improvement in the understanding of disease patterns.

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Mars is emerging from an ice age that ended about 400,000 years ago

Mars is emerging from an ice age, according to a new study. Studying the Martian climate and how it changes over time can help scientists better plan future missions to Mars and even understand climate change here on Earth, the study authors say.

Models had already predicted that Mars underwent several rounds of ice ages in the past, but little physical measurements ever confirmed those predictions. Today’s study,

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SpaceX planning to launch Dragon supply ship to ISS in mid-July

On Tuesday, a SpaceX official said that in mid-July, the company will get its next chance to return a Falcon 9 booster to landing at Cape Canaveral, as it is looking forward to launch a Dragon supply ship to the International Space Station (ISS). Prior to then, Falcon 9 flights will deploy communications satellites into high-altitude geostationary transfer orbits, a place that is quite high and demand excessive speed for the initial stage to reverse course and go in the direction of landing on shore. On Monday, NASA announced that SpaceX’s next cargo run to the ISS won’t get launched before July 16. The position of the orbit of the space station that day will decide the launch time around

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Battery life to get five times better

Scientists have discovered a new catalyst material which may lead to cellphone and car batteries that last five times longer than current ones. Kyeongjae Cho from University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) in the US has found the catalyst materials for lithium-air batteries that jumpstart efforts at expanding battery capacity. “There is huge promise in lithium-air batteries. However, despite the aggressive research being done by groups all over the world, those promises are not being delivered in real life,” said Cho. “So this is very exciting progress. Hopefully, this discovery will revitalise research in this area and create momentum for further development,” he said.

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Intels pledges sustained expansion agenda in Nigeria

Despite various economic challenges especially in the oil and gas sector, Intels Nigeria Limited, concessionaire of Onne Free Trade Zone (OFTZ) has pledged to sustain ongoing expansion scheme. The resolve, according to the company, is expected to impact positively on its operations and that of 150 firms operating within the maritime facility. Providing update of its operations, Intels explained that critical infrastructure such as world acclaimed Liebherr crane has either been deployed or enhanced inline with global standard

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Sun-powered plane continues U.S. journey

The sun-powered Solar Impulse 2 plane took off fromDayton, Ohio, early Wednesday on its fourth flight across the U.S. mainland as it continues its around-the-world tour. The aircraft will make its way to Allentown, Pa., where it will land at Lehigh Valley Airport late Wednesday after a journey that's expected to last about 17 hours. Pilots and Swiss adventurerers André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard set out to circumnavigate the globe last year in the plane without using fuel or spewing polluting emissions

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Users Beware: WhatsApp Gold Upgrade Is Nothing But A Scam

Users probably feel safe when sending or receiving text, photo and video messages and sharing documents in WhatsApp thanks to the app's end-to-end encryption policy. However, that doesn't mean you are free from getting fooled on the platform when it comes to scams.

You might have received a message in your inbox inviting you to upgrade your account to the exclusive premium version of the popular messaging app called "WhatsApp Gold." However, users should beware: whatever you do, do not

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Microsoft won PC but lost mobile, what now?

Microsoft is bowing out of building its own phones for consumers. After dramatically scaling back its Lumia devices last year, Microsoft hammered the final nail in the coffin today with an additional $950 million write off and 1,850 more job losses. Microsoft's Lumia devices still account for more than 95 percent of all Windows phones sold, but a lack of new devices means sales and Windows Phone market share have declined sharply over the past year. Windows Phone is dead, and phone makers aren't

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6 big changes coming to Android phones

After A, I, V, and R (as in artificial intelligence and virtual reality), the next most important letter at Google’s just-concluded I/O conference here had to have been N.That’s the letter assigned to the next version of its Android operating system, the subject of a major part of the keynote Wednesday. Google will almost certainly name it  after a dessert beginning with “n,” in keeping with its habit of thinking with its sweet tooth when christening new Android releases. While we wait for a ruling from the Google officials on that, here’s what we do know is coming from Android N when it ships later this summer:

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Must Read, Ancient Egyptian spellbook revealed: Papyrus contains curses that claim to ‘burn the heart of a woman' and make men do exactly what you want

Recently translated texts dating back 1,700 years reveal the ancient spells that called upon both gods and demons in hopes to attain love, sex, and power. Researchers have uncovered numerous magical formulas which may once have been used in hopes to tamper with fate, requiring a person simply add the name of their target in order to lay a curse. The spells are just a small part of an expansive collection of Egyptian papyri discovered more than 100 years ago in the city Oxyrhynchus.

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India's mini space shuttle blasts off

India successfully launched its first model space shuttle on Monday, a top official said, as New Delhi joined the race to develop a reusable rocket to make space travel easier and cheaper. The winged shuttle blasted off on a rocket from the southeastern spaceport of Sriharikota at about 7:00am (0130 GMT), with television footage showing it streaming through a clear sky. 

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Buying a smartphone? Understand these features

If you’re shopping for a new smartphone, you might feel like you need a geek-to-English dictionary just to understand the lingo. Megapixel this, gigahertz that, terabyte this. It could make your head spin. Am I right?

If you’re one of the many looking to upgrade your smartphone this summer – but need a bit of help to understand what all the tech specs mean — look no further than this following

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Dinosaurs may have had lips, research suggests. But could they whistle?

The "Jurassic Park" image of a Tyrannosaurus rex baring a mouthful of ferocious teeth may be getting a facelift. New research suggests that theropods -- those "beast-footed" terrestrial carnivores -- had lips and gums that covered most of their teeth, challenging toothy ideas of what they looked like. University of Toronto vertebrate paleontologist Robert Reisz presented the findings Friday at the Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's annual meeting in Mississauga, Ontario. "In popular culture, we imagine dinosaurs as more ferocious-looking, but that is not the case," Reisz said in a news

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Your Dose Of Disruptive Tech For This Week !

As a part of the tech in Technology, we bring you the latest in the technology from around the world! This week we saw Microsoft building its own bot to rival Google and Viv and Google developing gigapixel camera for the art fans. We also saw Japanese developers reaching out to the public for their laughing robot and IMAX helping out big screen lovers go Virtual Reality. In case, if you’ve missed any of those, along with Google’s plan for saving the pedestrian accidents, don’t worry just keep reading !

Microsoft Is Building Its Own Bot To Rival Google Assistant And Viv

Conversational bots, which can understand complex voice commands and complete tasks for you, are quickly becoming the rage. Earlier this month,

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Samsung Galaxy Note 6 tipped to feature 6GB RAM

Samsung has launched a new 6GB DRAM chip, which adds weight to the rumour that the Galaxy Note 6 will feature a whopping 6GB RAM.

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Google Unveils Project Soli 2.0, Radar-Based Gesture Tracking for Wearables, IoT

Google's annual developer conference saw some huge announcements from the company on the three-day extravaganza which included Android N improvements, Daydream VR ecosystem, Android app support on Chrome OS, Allo and Duo, Google Home, Google Assistant, Android TV, Android Auto, and more. The search engine giant however had more in store for the last day of I/O 2016 where Google's ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Projects) took the stage and showed off improvements to its gesture tracking technology, Project Soli, and its touch-sensitive fabric technology, Project Jacquard.

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Uber tests self-driving cars in Pittsburgh

The company is working out the bugs in its self-driving technology. The ride-hailing behemoth announced in a blog post Thursday that it has begun testing a self-driving car in Pittsburgh, home of the company's nascent Advanced Technologies Center. The car, a Ford Fusion Hybrid with a roof-full of radar, lasers and cameras, will be collecting road-mapping data as well as testing its real-world traffic reactions. Uber's interest in autonomous car technology dates to a year ago, when the $60 billion start-up began hiring Carnegie Mellon University robotics experts to staff its new center not far from the Pittsburgh-based school.

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Hypersonic Jet Can Fly From Sydney To London In Less Than Two Hours

Scientists in Australia have successfully tested a new type of jet aircraft capable of reaching speeds of more than seven times the speed of sound, bringing the possibility of hypersonic travel one step closer to reality. For a rocket or jet to be considered hypersonic, it has to be able to reach Mach 5, or at least five times the speed of sound. The new aircraft, known as the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) 5B, not only broke through the Mach 5 mark, but easily reached Mach 7.5, or 5,760 miles per hour 
and an altitude of about 173.4 miles during its latest trial in the Australian desert. 

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Astronaut Speaks With Wisconsin Students From Space

Astronaut Jeff Williams took a time out during his stay in the International Space Station to speak with students from his hometown of Winter, Wisconsin, through a video uplink with NASA. Around 320 students looked on from the bleachers of Winter’s middle-school gym as Williams took questions via satellite link from their classmates. The students asked questions about everything, from bone and muscle loss in space to whether solar energy is used to power the International Space Station.  

"What are you personally researching and what will be done with it when the experiments are finished?" asked fifth-grader Albert Blair. 'Williams explained their experiments cover areas like plant and cell growth and DNA, but he said the bulk of research focuses on

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Asia-Pacific accounts for 91% of global natural disaster deaths: UN report

By 2070, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bangkok, Dhaka, Guangzhou, and Shanghai will be the top Asian cities with maximum exposure to coastal flooding.

The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the bulk of deaths from natural disasters in the last century, said a United Nations report, which called it the world’s most disaster-prone region.

“The region accounted for 91% of the world’s deaths due to natural disasters in the last century,” said the report Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6): Regional Assessments

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1GB RAM Android Smartphone Is A Fraud

A lot of folks have complained about OEM’s who slam 1GB RAM on smartphones and sell for over N30,000. It is not clear why manufacturers still continue to do this, but this action has reached an unbearable point.

A guy who purchases a smartphone above N30,000 expects the phone to function properly. In most cases, this doesn’t happen. After prolong usage, traces of lag and low performance becomes noticeable.

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3 Ways to Analyse SEO Content and Increase Sales

I’ve got news for you. You’re missing the fundamental point of SEO and google is laughing at you.

Why? Because while you tinker with your backlink profile and worry about the semantic variety of thematic keywords, Google is doing the one thing you aren’t:thinking about the customer.

The future of SEO lies in a customer-centric approach to search. Don’t get me wrong – we still need to build technically fast, competent platforms for the wider search environment. Technology and content KPIs and traditional streams of work are still critical in the doing. However, optimising for traditional Search KPI’s alone is akin to chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Reality is far removed from this world of fiction. I liken SEO to medical diagnosis and treatment – you may know the anatomy of a body on paper and the different effects of medicines, but

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Microsoft to sell feature phone business to Foxconn

Microsoft announced it will sell its feature phone business to a subsidiary of Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn.

In a statement released Wednesday, Microsoft says it will transfer its feature phone assets including brands, software and services to FIH Mobile and Finnish company HMD for $350 million. The deal is expected to close during the second half of this year.

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Get up close with Van Gogh: Google camera captures gigapixel images of art that lets users zoom in to see each brushstroke

Gigapixel image is made of 1 billion pixels and shows incredible detail

Google's Art Camera is being used in 25 new museums around the world

Google is today sharing the first 1,000 high resolution images of artworks     from artists including Pissarro, Signac, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Mone 

Forget going to the Tate. Google has unveiled an incredibly high-resolution camera that will bring detailed works of art to your phone or computer.

Dubbed the 'Art Camera', the device has so far taken a thousand gigapixel images of famous masterpieces, which can all be viewed online by anyone for free.

A gigapixel image is made of over one billion pixels, and can bring out details invisible to the naked eye – allowing viewers to see individual brush strokes. 'Zooming into these images is the closest thing to walking up to the real thing with a magnifying glass,' writes Ben John and engineer at Google Cultural Institute. Google is today sharing the first thousand ultra-high resolution images of artworks from artists including Pissarro, Signac, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Monet.

Around 200 of these gigapixel images were taken in the past five years, showing individual brush strokes and subtle changes in colour. But these first images were captured using highly specialised and expensive equipment, and required a trained technician to complete the job.

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The $1billion boat arrives in Britain: World’s biggest cruise ship Harmony of the Seas

The $1billion boat arrives in Britain: World’s biggest cruise ship Harmony of the Seas rules the waves as it docks in Southampton ahead of maiden voyage 

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Africa: On World Telecommunication Day, UN Hails Role of It in Sustainable Development

The global sustainable development agenda recognizes the great potential of information and communication technology to accelerate human progress, bridge the digital divide and advance knowledge, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, marking World Telecommunication and Information Society Day with a call for Governments, businesses and civil society leaders to develop new technologies that have a lasting social impact. In his message for the Day, the UN chief highlighted that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals specifically call for employing information and communication technology (ICT) to realize the overall vision of a life of dignity for all people.

"These technologies provide smart

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Mars is within reach, says German tapped for space command

Humans could set foot on Mars within decades if they wanted to, according to the German astronaut who has been tapped to become his country's first commander of the International Space Station. Alexander Gerst said the space station offers a unique opportunity to test the technology needed to explore other planets, especially if its lifetime is extended beyond 2020. "It is very clear to me that those manned missions to the moon and Mars, human missions, will happen," he told The Associated Press in an interview at the European Space Agency's astronaut training center in Cologne, Germany. "But we need the decision as a society. And once we do that we are ready to go, basically."

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Genome Analysis Reveals How Giraffes Developed Exceptionally Long Necks

Why the long neck, you ask? Several genetic clues from the giraffe and its relative may provide insight on how the animals developed their exceptional height, a new study revealed. Considered as the world's tallest terrestrial species, giraffes are dominated by their long neck and legs, which contribute to their overall stature. These animals' size can reach up to 5.79 meters (19 feet) tall or nearly the equivalent of a two-storey building.

Additionally, giraffes can sprint at a speed of 37 miles per hour (60 km per hour). The animals' heart can pump blood two meters (6.56 feet) up to its brain, suggesting a powerful cardiovascular function. This is plausible, as its left ventricle has evolved to become unusually large.

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Google's bigger I/O attracts more women, minorities

SAN FRANCISCO — Google's annual conference for software developers looks a lot like Google itself: Mostly male, white and Asian. Unwilling to accept the status quo, the tech giant is leading the charge to shake up the lopsided demographics of tech conferences and, at I/O, Google says it's making progress in closing the gender and racial gap.

The percentages of women and minorities attending the developers conference have not budged much since last year, but the numbers have, Google says. Women account for 23% of conference goers, same as last year, but I/O is 25% bigger, according to Google. Women accounted for 16% of attendees in 2014 and 8% in 2013. For the first time this year, Google

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How to use or avoid hidden iPad keyboard options

Q. The keyboard on my iPad has moved up the screen. How do I pull it back down?

A. This option to “undock” iOS’s standard keyboard,added back in iOS 5, possesses a frustrating combination of qualities: It’s both unadvertised and possible to invoke by mistake.

Although you won’t find any mention of this in Apple’s iOS-keyboard help page or a separate introduction to the iPad’s onscreen keyboard, you only need to tap and hold the hide-keyboard button in the bottom right corner to get a menu to pop open with “Undock” and “Split” items.

The first moves the keyboard about 40 percent of the way up the screen. I am not sure what benefit that provides. I do know that when I undocked my iPad mini 4’s keyboard with an errant swipe that must have lingered over the hide-keyboard key

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Your Dose Of Disruptive Tech For This Week !

As a part of the Technology we bring you the latest in the technology from around the world under “TECH THIS WEEK!” every Sunday! This week we saw BMW revealing its plans for a self driving car and periscope  broadcasting via drones. We also saw Hyundai launching wearable suits and Facebook’s new Wi-Fi project. In case, if you’ve missed any of those, along with Hyperloop’s exclusively licensed passive magnetic levitation system, don’t worry just keep reading!

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IOSCO drives global securities markets’ growth

The International Organisation of Securities Commissions has opened the public sessions of its annual conference in Lima focusing on small and medium enterprise financing, investor protection and education, and the opportunities and challenges of new financial technologies. The public conference comes at the conclusion of IOSCO’s private meetings in which members discussed responses to the challenges facing markets regulators, according to a statement by the body. During the four-day meeting, the IOSCO Board, the Growth and Emerging Markets Committee, the four regional committees and the Affiliate Members Consultative Committee discussed policy initiatives to strengthen

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Nigeria: Oil Exploration Causes Environmental Warming in Nigeria - NGO

Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), said oil exploration by multinational companies was a major contributor to environmental warming and climate change effects in Nigeria.

Coordinator of the organisation, Mr Nnimo Bassey, stated this on Sunday at an environmental awareness campaign tagged "Break Free 2016" in Ibeno, Akwa Ibom.

He said that exploitation of crude oil and flaring of gas had destroyed the ecosystem thereby causing environmental warming in the country.

"We can break free from fossil fuel; we cannot

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Panama Papers: Full database published

The ICIJ is publishing the information in the public interest The data the ICIJ is now making public represents a fraction of the Panama Papers, a trove of more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.

The consortium is not publishing the totality of the leak, and it is not disclosing raw documents or personal information en masse. The database contains a great deal of information about company owners, proxies and intermediaries in secrecy jurisdictions, but it does not disclose bank accounts, email exchanges and financial transactions contained in the documents.

In all, the database reveals more than 360,000 names of people and companies behind secret offshore structures. As the data are from leaked sources and not a standardised registry, there may be some duplication of names. The data was originally obtained from an anonymous source by reporters at the German newspaper Süeddeustche Zeitung, who asked ICIJ to organise a global reporting collaboration to analyse the files. More than 370 reporters (https://panamapapers.icij.org/about.html) in nearly 80 countries investigated the files for a year. Their investigations uncovered the secret

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Five Pacific islands lost to rising seas as climate change hits

Six more islands have large swaths of land, and villages, washed into sea as coastline of Solomon Islands eroded and overwhelmed. Five tiny Pacific islands have disappeared due to rising seas and erosion, a discovery though to be the first scientific confirmation of the impact of climate change on coastlines in the Pacific, according to Australian researchers.

The submerged islands were part of the Solomon Island

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This Personal electric plane won't need an airport

Backed by the ESA, the "Lilium" will take off vertically and fly at 250 mph. Now that hoverboards are an honest-to-god thing, we have to say we're pretty disappointed with how flying cars have worked out. Another company has jumped into the fray with a vertical take-off plane called theLilium that can soar at 400 km/h (250 mph). We'd normally say they're dreaming with the specs: A 10,000 foot ceiling, 500 km (310 mile) range and helicopter-like takeoffs, all on battery power. However, it's hosted by a European Space Agency (ESA) incubator and the team from the Technical University of Munich plans manned tests next year.

The Lilium has wings and flies like a regular plane, but takes off like a helicopter by swiveling its ducted fan engines, much like DARPA's VTOL X-Plane concept. The engines, batteries and controllers

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Password tips you've never heard

Once again, hundreds of millions of passwords used in e-mail accounts were stolen this week. And, again, we're being told there's only one way to keep ourselves digitally safe: Change our passwords frequently, with hard-to-figure combinations of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols.

This week we asked the panelists on the #Talking Tech Roundtable podcast how they go about it. You'll be amazed at this simple tip from 

a Google product manager. If it could work for him — he's never been hacked — perhaps we need to revise our password strategies and make them easier to recall.

The most commonly used

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Water deficit to hurt economies of African countries – World Bank

The World Bank has warned that water shortages will severely hurt economies of the countries in Africa including Middle East and Central Asia by the middle of the century, taking double digits off their GDP.

The bank predicted that by 2050, growing demand for cities and for agriculture would put water in short supply in regions where it is now plentiful and worsen shortages across a vast swath of Africa and Asia, spurring conflict and migration. Water shortages could strip off 14 per cent of GDP in the Middle East and nearly 12 per cent of GDP in the Sahel– without a radical shift in management-according to the bank’s projections.

Central Asia could lose close to 11 per cent of GDP and East Asia

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Panama Papers: Secret offshore world feeds global inequality

At a meeting on Brexit and the law last week in Dublin, former attorney general Paul Gallagher SC emphasised the potential for instability in the UK’s referendum on leaving the European Union.

What if one of the largest economies in Europe was to pull out of such a project as the EU? Would others follow suit, or threaten to do so unless they received whatever was on their national demand wish list? How would this affect an already very fragile world order? Are we back in the 1930s, Gallagher asked, sleepwalking towards disaster?

Up until the financial crisis erupted in 2008, the US Federal Reserve

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Oracle vs. Google, Round 2: Trial begins over Java API copyright claim fight is back in court

Two of the world's biggest software companies face off in court this week for the second time, even though the most important issue of their dispute has already been resolved.

The high-profile trial that begins Monday will again include celebrity CEOs on the stand, dense expert testimony, and an utterly unpredictable outcome decided by a jury. But what's truly at stake in Oracle v. Google, round two?

For those who work with code for a living, a lot. The case revolves around how Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, can and cannot be used. Boiled down, APIs define how different types of code communicate to each other. If owners of those APIs can use copyright law to control how programming is done, there will be a sea change in industry practices. For many developers, especially of open source software, this will be a change for the worse.

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Self-driving cars could hit roads within 5 years, says Fiat Chrysler chief

Self-driving cars could hit roads within five years, the head of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has said, days after the company announced an alliance with Google parent Alphabet. Chief executive Sergio Marchionne declined to disclose financial details of the partnership or a timetable for building minivans that will expand the Internet company’s test fleet of autonomous vehicles.

“It’s not sort of ‘pie-in-the-sky,’ the thing is real and it’s coming,” Marchionne said. “People are talking about 20 years, I think we’ll have it here in the next five years.” Alphabet this week

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