Africa

Naspers invests big in South Africa

South African media and investment company, Naspers, has announced plans to invest $100 million in tech startups. The amount is a third of commitments made by the company to form a Naspers Foundry Fund to support the tech industry. “Naspers Foundry will help talented and ambitious South African technology entrepreneurs to develop and grow their businesses,” the company announced in a release.

Data breach at Arik Air

Nigeria’s Arik Air has been accused of laxity in addressing a data breach that could have affected over 50,000 customers. The data breach was discovered by Cloudflare, an internet security and cloud network platform. After reaching out to Arik Air, however, Justin Paine, Head of Trust and Safety at Cloudflare, said it took up to a month for management of the airline to secure the S3 bucket. The leak is said to have uncovered 54,011 unique names and 65,412 unique emails among other user details.

Europe

Hologram lecturers in Imperial College, London

Following in the footsteps of pop stars like Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, Imperial College London is bringing hologram technology into lecture halls. The technology will allow lecturers from remote locations to teach students without being present in the hall. BBC reports the apparition-like images of lecturers will be piloted at Imperial College’s Business Schools and could eventually become popular across academia.

Facebook messages selling for 10 cents

Facebook’s woes don’t seem to be ending anytime soon as news emerged that hackers stole private messages of up to 120 million users. While Facebook denies any security breach, it is possible the hackers used malicious browser extensions to steal data of users from Ukraine, Russia, UK, USA, and Brazil. The hackers put 81,000 private messages up for sale at 10 cents each, though the said adverts have been removed.

The Americas

Dell sued for nondisclosure

Activist investor, Carl Icahn, has sued Dell over nondisclosure of financial information ahead of a planned return to the stock market. The US computer manufacturer announced in July 2018 of its intention to call back up to $21.7 billion of stocks in VMware Inc, allowing it to raise funds without an IPO. Carl Icahn and other investors allege the buyback price undervalues the stock and that investors were being coerced into agreeing with the deal.

Chinese firms to be prosecuted for data theft

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has indicted two Chinese and Vietnamese firms and three other individuals for stealing trade secrets from Micron Technology Inc. The companies are Vietnam-based United Microelectronics Corp and China state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co Ltd, and follow in a string of actions taken by the Trump administration to fight intellectual property theft by China. The other three individuals were former employees of the US chipmaker. China has demanded evidence from the DoJ to back its allegations.

Asia

Chinese bike-sharing comes to London

Chinese bike startup, Youon, is riding overseas as it sets up a joint venture with a UK-based bike-sharing startup, Cycle.land. The venture will see city bikes manufactured by Youon on the streets of London under the management of the bike-sharing startup. Youon bikes are already in Malaysia, Russia, and India.

Dodging the bullet in Japan’s railway drills

Japan has stopped its ‘scary’ bullet train drills amidst pressure from worker unions. The drill involved workers crouching inside a one-metre deep trench between two rails as bullet trains whizzed past them at approximately 300km per hour. The buffeting winds were scary and felt like flogging, some workers protested. Instead of ending the drill outright, however, workers will now observe the shooting trains outside the tunnel and behind a fence.