President Obama State of the Union 2015 Address: The president laid out a vision for his last two years in office, outlining areas of possible consensus with Republicans as well as challenging them to support his push on education, child care and tax breaks for the middle class.
Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau claimed a massive attack on the northeast Nigerian town of Baga and threatened Niger, Chad and Cameroon in a new video published online on Tuesday evening.
The message came as Nigeria and its neighbours met in Niger’s capital, Niamey, to discuss a regional response to the threat and Chadian troops headed to Cameroon to help repel repeated Boko Haram attacks.
“Heavy clashes” between Islamist fighters and Cameroon soldiers were reported in the far northern border village of Bonderi on Tuesday night.
Hundreds of people, if not more, are feared to have been killed in the attack on Baga, a fishing town on the shores of Lake Chad, in what could be the militants’ worst in their six-year rebellion.
The rebels burnt large parts of the town to the ground and razed at least 16 surrounding settlements, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes, many of them into Chad and Niger.
“We killed the people of Baga. We indeed killed them, as our Lord instructed us in His Book,” Shekau said in the 35-minute message, which was posted on the video-sharing website YouTube.
The militant leader was shown speaking in front of four white pick-up trucks, with eight masked and heavily armed men.
But there was no indication of when or where the video was shot.
Survivors of the Baga attack, which also saw Boko Haram fighters capture a military base used by Nigerian, Nigerien and Chadian troops, have described how bodies still littered the streets.
Shekau dismissed the extent of the slaughter, saying: “We will not stop. This is not much. You’ll see.”
Representatives from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon have been meeting to seek a regional response to the threat from Boko Haram because of increasing fears of cross-border raids.
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama has also suggested a new force, possibly under the auspices of the African Union, to crush the group.
But in the video, Shekau dismisses the threat and shows off a huge arsenal of weapons, apparently from the military base, and said Boko Haram would take on all-comers.
“The kings of Africa, you are late. I challenge you to attack me even now. I’m ready,” he said.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/boko-haram-says-its-behind-yet-another-massive-attack-2015-1#ixzz3PSQz1nfM
Netflix will offer Sony Pictures Entertainment’s controversial comedy “The Interview” to U.S. and Canadian streaming members beginning Saturday, Jan. 24, the company announced Tuesday.
As previously reported by Variety, Netflix in December entered into talks with Sony about licensing “The Interview” to streaming subscribers after Starz, which has an output deal with the studio, released pay-TV window rights.
But it seems that the studio wanted to maximize digital and VOD sales first before opening up to SVOD: “The Interview” as of Sunday had generated more than $40 million in revenue via more than 5.8 million rentals and sales through digital distributors like Google Play, YouTube and iTunes as well as cable, satellite and telco TV providers, according to Sony Pictures.
The film stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as two bumbling American TV journalists enlisted by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The communist regime, according to U.S. officials, retaliated against SPE in one of the worst cyber-attacks on a private company to date, resulting in the release of internal studio emails, documents and several unreleased movies.
Netflix has exclusive SVOD rights to “The Interview” in the U.S. and Canada. CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells announced the deal in their fourth-quarter 2014 earnings letter to shareholders.
Sony launched digital distribution of “The Interview” on Dec. 24, 2014, a day before it opened in limited theatrical release. That came after SPE had pulled back plans on its original broad U.S. release in movie theaters, following threats by the hackers who attacked the company.
Sony has set Feb. 17 for the “Freedom Edition” release of the film on DVD and Blu-ray.
Twitter’s acquisition of India-based mobile marketing startup ZipDial is not only a smart move to boost monetization of its international user base, but it highlights that there are innovative tech companies hiding in plain sight in emerging markets.
ZipDial began in response to the phenomenon of missed calls, which developed into an alert system of their own in India. With many phone owners on pre-pay tariffs and keen to avoid charges for mobile data or SMS/calling, drop-calling a friend when you get home from an evening out, for example, became a way to let them know you arrived safely without incurring costs.
ZipDial smartly tapped into that opportunity to give advertisers a convenient medium to reach consumers on any kind of mobile phone. That same model worked well for advertisers on Twitter and also Facebook, both of which had partnered with the Indian company. (Rumor has it Facebook was also bidding to buy it.)
What is most interesting about ZipDial is that its product is unique, it could only have been thought up in an emerging market. In that way it is not wholly dissimilar to WhatsApp — the red hot messaging app that was unknown to many in Silicon Valley until Facebook bought it last year, despite having hundreds of millions of active users across the world. (Yes, WhatsApp was founded in the U.S. but CEO Jan Koum is not American and has a different mindset to the ‘Silicon Valley Set’.)
Twitter has paid much less than the $17 billion that Facebook forked out for WhatsApp — our sources suggest ZipDial may have been sold for $40-$50 million — but the deal highlights that emerging markets can’t be wholly dependent on Silicon Valley, even though it is the global home of startups that has birthed huge tech firms.
When you consider that top programmers and thinkers are in emerging markets, with VC firms like 500 Startups (a ZipDial investor) providing money and knowhow, it stands to reason that this is just the beginning for emerging market innovation.
As for ZipDial and Twitter: the deal could turn out to be a relative bargain for the U.S. company. ZipDial had already begun its expansion to Southeast Asia, and the company has hinted that it has new products and services coming soon.
India is a vast market for social networks — Facebook has over 100 million active users there, for example — but it could be that the ZipDial platform is introduced in other parts of the world, such as Africa and Latin America. Regardless of whether it takes off in any of those places, $50 million is a shrewd investment to grow Twitter’s visibility in India and get an engineering office in the country.
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