When Flutterwave launched in 2016, the fintech company quickly became the poster child for African startup success stories. In 2021, it achieved unicorn status, reaching a valuation of more than $1 billion, and in 2022, after raising $250 million, it secured a $3 billion valuation. CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola was celebrated for his leadership and lauded as a trailblazer in African ...
For the past decade, China has consistently ranked last in the world for internet freedom due to its all-pervading online surveillance and content control system dubbed the “Great Firewall.” But a new report out Wednesday shows that internet freedoms in China’s neighbor Myanmar are now just as lacking. The report from Freedom House, a US government-funded NGO, found that global internet ...
Italy’s parliament made it illegal on Wednesday for couples to go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy — a pet project of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party which activists say is meant to target same-sex partners. Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has pursued a highly conservative social agenda, looking to promote what she sees as traditional family values, ...
The Tasmanian tiger, a wolf-like marsupial that once stalked the forests of Tasmania, could be brought back from extinction after a team of US and Australian researchers claimed a series of scientific breakthroughs. Also known as the thylacine, the labrador-sized beast was Australia’s only native apex predator. The last one died in a Hobart zoo in 1936 after the rest ...
A new rule that will force businesses to make it easier for customers to cancel unwanted subscriptions and memberships is to be introduced in the US. The “click-to-cancel” rule will ban retailers and businesses from misleading consumers about subscriptions and require them to obtain people’s consent before charging for memberships, auto-renewals, and programmes linked to free trials. In the Federal ...
Jabs used for weight loss and treating type 2 diabetes could help people with alcohol abuse problems, according to a study. The injections led to a 50% lower rate of alcohol intoxication in people taking them compared to those who had not been prescribed them, researchers found. They also found off-label use of the drugs could help people addicted to ...
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hoped the ongoing violence in the Middle East might simmer below the surface in the final weeks of the presidential race, but fresh Israeli military offensives are making that virtually impossible, U.S. officials and campaign aides say. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set the Gaza Strip ablaze with a renewed bombing campaign ...
President Joe Biden, who has long idolized Robert F. Kennedy and who served for decades in the Senate with Edward M. Kennedy, on Wednesday delivered an emotional eulogy for Ethel Kennedy. He dabbed his eyes several times. He apologized for his emotions. His voice grew faint as he recounted the ways in which Ethel Kennedy, Robert’s widow, comforted him in ...
A Georgia judge on Wednesday blocked a series of rules approved this year by a pro-Trump majority of the state’s election board, admonishing the board in stinging language that the rules are “ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND VOID.” The judge struck down more than a half-dozen new rules, including one that allowed county election officials to launch investigations of irregularities, which critics ...
Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, a veteran of America’s clandestine operations who served as the point man for the transactions in the Iran-contra affair, the arms-for-hostages scandal that metastasized into the most serious crisis of the Reagan administration, died Oct. 15 at a nursing home in Port Orange, Fla. He was 92. A grandson, John Secord Jr., ...