Category: Technology

Russia said one of its warships intercepted a U.S. destroyer in the Sea of Japan that was encroaching on its territorial waters, claiming the vessels came within 60 meters (200 feet) of each other during the confrontation.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet rejected Russia’s characterization of the incident hours later.

“The statement from the Russian Defense Ministry about the interaction between our two Navy ships is false,” U.S. Pacific Fleet Public Affairs said in an emailed statement, which added that the interaction between the two ships was “safe and professional.”

The episode took place in an area that had been closed for joint Russia-China naval exercises, according to Interfax. The U.S. disputed that as well.

“Although Russia issued a Notice to Airman and Mariners (NOTAM/NOTMAR) in this area for later in the day, the NOTAM/NOTMAR was not in effect at the time of the interaction,” according to the U.S. statement. “At all times, USS Chafee conducted operations in accordance with international law and custom. The United States will continue to fly, sail, and operate where international law allows.”

It’s the latest in a series of close military encounters between Russia and North Atlantic Treaty Organization members amid some of the worst tensions since the Cold War.

In June, Russia said it forced a U.K. destroyer in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea to change course after it fired warning shots. The U.K. denied the claims and said its ship was in international waters at the time.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda- Angola minister of Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Media Manuel Homem Tuesday in Luanda stressed the need for the Angola Press Agency EP (ANGOP) Agency to continue to be a prominent tool in promoting the country abroad and internal dissemination of the achievements of Angolan citizens.

Manuel Homem, who was speaking at the opening ceremony of the 5th Consultative Council of ANGOP focused on strengthening its internal and external assertion.

He said that the only news agency in Angola should invest in the production of multimedia content with a focus on an agenda that has as its goal the production of specific packages to be made available on the market.

The minister also backed the improvement in investigative journalistic work, with a view to producing texts of substantive and diversified quality, which will open the doors for the agency to generate revenue from its production.

The minister also pointed out the commitment to permanent training of staff as the secret to success and improvement in the quality of the work provided, together with the exchange of experience with other agencies and Media.

Manuel Homem expressed satisfaction with the company’s strategy of gradually reinstalling municipal correspondence, which constitutes the main differential when it comes to the production of internal content.

The three-day event will take stock of the execution of the actions planned during the IV council and outline strategies to improve the coverage of the general elections, scheduled for 2022, and of the daily agendas.

The agenda also includes an approach to the importance of telecommunications and information technologies for journalistic work, as well as lectures on labor legislation and on ethics and professional deontology.

In their last Consultative Council, the participants recommended, among other things, the need to conduct technical refreshment actions in the preparation of news and other journalistic genres, the creation of a network of permanent trainers to continue to take care of the professional technical updating of journalists.

Created in July 1975, under the name Agência Nacional Angola Press (ANAP), at first, its works were distributed in the form of a printed bulletin, until, on 30 October of the same year, it launched its first telegraphic dispatch.

On December 2, 1975, the agency adopted its current and definitive name Agência Angola Press, by launching, on that date, its first dispatch with the acronym ANGOP.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Wednesday awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to two scientists for their work – independently – in developing a new way of building molecules, a process with applications throughout industry.

Speaking in Stockholm, academy Secretary General Goran Hansson said chemists Benjamin List of Germany’s Max Planck Institute and David MacMillan of Princeton University will split this year’s prize.

In presenting the award, the academy explained the two chemists developed new, organic catalysts to help build molecules.

Catalysts are substances that control and accelerate chemical reactions, without becoming part of the final product, and are essential to constructing molecules for research and industry.

The academy said previously, it was believed there were just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. But over the last 20 years, List and MacMillan, working independently of each other, have developed a third type of catalyst, known as asymmetric organocatalysis.

In the words of the academy, “Organic catalysts have a stable framework of carbon atoms, to which more active chemical groups can attach. These often contain common elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur or phosphorus. This means that these catalysts are both environmentally friendly and cheap to produce.”

Using these reactions, researchers can build molecules that can form elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries or inhibit the progression of disease.

The Nobel Prizes for medicine and physics were awarded earlier this week. The prizes for literature, peace and economics to be awarded over the next week.

Source: Voice of America

Cuito – The Minister of Health, Sílvia Lutucuta, reaffirmed this Saturday in Cuito city, Bié province, the Government bet on continuous education process of health professionals in order to improve technical skills, management capacities and behaviour.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the first scientific conferences of Walter Strangway Hospital, held as part of its first anniversary, the minister said that training activities aimed at allowing the constant adaptation and scientific and technical evolution of professionals, in order to meet the needs of the national health system with quality, equity and efficiency in hospitals.

For this, the Health Minister said it was important to invest more in health research in order to provide significant gains in health indicators, to have a healthier population and to contribute to the country’s development.

According to her, the scientific research produced in hospitals plays an important role in improving health indicators and increasing the human development index in Angola.

Silvia Lutucuta acknowledged that the sector was still limited in terms of specialised and qualified resources to meet the needs of health care nationwide.

Walter Strangway Hospital plays important role

Minister Silvia Lutucuta considered positive the performance of Walter Strangway Hospital, in one year of existence, in what concerns the bet on staff training, medical assistance and, above all, humanized care.

Walter Strangway Hospital has 1,425 workers, of these 51 are specialists, 104 are internal doctors, who guarantee quality services to the population.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Minister of State for Social Sector Carolina Cerqueira Thursday reiterated the Executive commitment to education with focus on construction of infrastructure, training and upgrading the skills of the staff.

Carolina Cerqueira stressed the implementation of the Integrated Programme for Intervention in Municipalities (PIIM) which, according to her, will provide more than 800 schools of various teaching levels in the country.

“Effort has been made to tackle concerns such as low-performing students and gender equality to reduce the huge difference between boys and girls in secondary school level”, she said.

The performance rate in girls increased to about 60% in the latest five years”, the official told an International Conference on cooperation among the Portuguese Speaking countries, sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

She said that the average years of schooling is only 5,2, which is a reduced value, but on its simplicity hides a very high effort made by the Angolan Executive.

The official highlighted that in order to counter the low quality, the Executive is committed as well to the improvement of teaching staff, through training and upgrading actions as well as the inclusion of news teachers.

As for the cooperation with other countries, she said 66 Angolan graduates are attending Master´s degree in Minho University (Portugal) in pre-school education method of the primary and secondary education.

According to the official data, over 10 million students from general education were reported in 2020 school year. Of this figure, two million enrolled for the first time in education system.

National Teaching System has 210,674 teachers, 30,000 of whom were employed in the last three years.

The public network comprises 18,297 schools, making a total of 167,032 classrooms.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Lubango – The non-governmental organization Acção para o Desenvolvimento Rural e Ambiente (ADRA) Saturday defended the improvement of environmental education mechanisms in rural communities, starting from schools, as a way of fighting drought in the country.

Speaking to the press at the end of ADRA’s XXII Training Module on Community Development, the spokeswoman for the meeting, Cidália Gomes, said it was important that information was shared from primary school level onwards, so that children and young people grow up with an environmental conscience.

She said that many of the causes of the current drought have to do with man’s actions in nature, due to constant practices that do little to help the conservation of the environment, such as the devastation of forests and environmental pollution.

According to her, there is a need to continue developing actions that aim to stimulate the forest repopulation through native, exotic or fruit plants, in order to reposition the forests and food security of the families,

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – The Ministry of Telecommunications, Information Technologies and Media (MINTTICS) on Saturday encouraged Edições Novembro to modernise its media and provide an increasingly impartial, balanced and diversified information service.

In a message alluding to the company’s 45 years of existence, the ministerial department also points to the need for greater attention to be paid to human resources, as part of the programme to constantly improve social and working conditions.

“There is an increasing need to enhance the technical-professional skills and knowledge of the workers, especially for the main makers of the titles, with a view to continuously improving the content and to correspond to the wishes of the readers, with a view that it be guided by factual, richer information and with several perspectives, whether through opinion articles or the news itself,” the message reads.

However, MINTTICS emphasises the quality of the text and the creativity of the journalists, the image and the editing, diversity and greater impartiality of the information in the sense that it is more accurate and more understandable to all audiences.

In the view of MINTTICS, the public media are more attractive, with a diversity of themes, reports some once unthinkable and opinions of columnists with other political thoughts, increasing plurality and their credibility.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda -The Minister of Education, Luísa Grilo, on Friday reiterated the strengthening of partnership with the church in the teaching and learning process.

The minister, who was speaking at a conference on “Education and teaching in Angola and the participation of the Tocoist church in the process of improving the quality of teaching and learning”, highlighted the role of the church in the teaching process, as in literacy, with particular attention to children, youths and women.

Luísa Grilo also highlighted the use of digital resources and connectivity in schools, allowing wider and faster access to knowledge and the development of digital literacy among teachers and students.

In his turn, the rector of the Independent University of Angola, Filipe Zau, stressed the role of the church in the teaching process, staff training and the development of actions linked to education.

He considered that the church should be a partner of the State in the training of staff and in the construction of social infrastructures.

“Education is complex and through it we train people for citizenship, work, culture, among other areas”, he underlined.

The spiritual leader of the Tocoist Church in Angola, Dom Afonso Nunes, said that the commitment and involvement of active social actors such as churches had contributed to improving the quality of education.

“In our church we don’t want to be just critics, but to contribute to improving the quality of the teaching and learning process in the country,” he concluded.

The conference was part of the celebrations for the 72nd anniversary of the recall of the Tocoist church, to be marked on July 25.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

In recent years Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, has become Africa’s most attractive tech hub for investors. But that could be imperilled by the government’s decision to suspend Twitter’s operations in the country.

Although no direct connection has been drawn, the ban came two days after Twitter took down a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari. Twitter claimed the message had been deleted because it violated its rules against “abusive behaviour”. The ban could be in retaliation.

A new chill entered into the relationship between Nigeria and Twitter in mid-April when the social media platform chose Ghana for its regional headquarters. Nigeria’s market is bigger than Ghana’s, with more Twitter users than Ghana has citizens. Ghana won because its government has created an attractive environment for external investors by improving the country’s electricity output, and investing in good roads and a paperless port project.

Nevertheless, Nigeria’s fledgling technology sector had been seen as an attractive proposition to investors because of the pool of talent in Nigeria, increasing smartphone penetration and access to the Nigerian market of 200 million people.

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The Nigerian technology scene, concentrated in Lagos, is a recent and rare success story. One particular area of growth has been the financial technology (fintech) sector.

But the ban makes it difficult for the government to argue that it is friendly to technology enterprises. The Nigerian government has often called on foreign investors to invest in Nigerian technology start-ups and support Nigeria’s technology ecosystem.

For example, in 2016 Buhari hosted Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook CEO’s first visit to sub-Saharan Africa. Facebook is set to open an office in the second quarter of 2021 in Lagos.

The indefinite Twitter suspension could prove to be a setback by spooking investors.

Tech start ups

Nigeria’s financial technology (fintech) start-ups have begun to engage innovatively with segments of the population that can’t access traditional financial services. About 56% of Nigerian adults are unbanked.

Homegrown businesses Flutterwave and Paystack are two examples of fintech start-ups that have been able to secure investments recently.

Flutterwave provides payment solutions for businesses. It recently attracted investment of US$170 million from a consortium of foreign investors. Paystack, which also provides payment solutions and customer analytics, attracted US$200 million from US payments giant Stripe.

The two start-ups recently earned the coveted unicorn status. This is a reference to privately held technology start-up businesses valued at more than US$1 billion. This means that Flutterwave and Paystack are already, on paper, more valuable than most of Nigeria’s biggest banks.

The suspension could make it harder for technology entrepreneurs like this to get investment. Technology entrepreneurs will now need to convince investors about regulatory risks. This will be especially so if their business models require an active social media presence.

The Twitter ban will also reduce the exposure of Nigerian technology entrepreneurs to the world, reducing their ability to attract funding and grow their markets.

Finally, it sits at odds with the government’s goal of economic growth and openness by sending a signal that Nigeria is not entirely open for technology business.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Angola’s Ministry of Education (MED) announced Tuesday in Luanda the opening of a public tender for access to update the career of primary and secondary education teachers.

The tender procedure is in accordance with the terms of reference approved by the Joint Executive Decree of the Ministries of Education and Territorial

Administration and other legislation in force.

According to a press release reached ANGOP Tuesday, the MED states that the move aims to fill vacancies in the staff of the Education sector in primary and secondary teaching careers.

The nationwide tender will cover 181, 624 teachers, who were admitted until the year 2013.

Available data indicate that the sector currently has 210, 674 teachers.

Source: Angola Press News Agency