💰 Budget Bonanza

Good morning ☀️

Welcome to all the new subscribers who joined the TLDR Weekly family this past week! This isn’t a long con to get you into network marketing, so we hope you stay. There’s water at the back and the restrooms are Cafe Javas clean.

To start the news—Google plans to delete inactive accounts, so you should log into [email protected] every now and then if you want to keep it.

— Gloria Mbabazi, Shem Opolot

1. First time here? Subscribe here

2. If you’re new here (or an OG), please fill out this quick survey so we can get to know you better and improve our offering

3. Advertise with us and reach hundreds of readers weekly

4. You can now leave a [nice] comment at the bottom

Headlines

💰 Budget Bonanza

The 2023/2024 National Budget finally passed, leaving lawmakers exhausted and taxpayers creasing their eyebrows with scepticism. While the Shs. 52.7 trillion dazzles on paper, Shs. 21.4 trillion is already earmarked for statutory expenditure, leaving MPs with limited options for “allocation.”

Winners: State House and the Office of the President got Shs. 419 billion that’ll make you consider running for office, but shake that thought.

Losers: The Directorate of Ethics and Integrity’s proposed provision for fighting homosexuality and pornography among the youth was rejected by Parliament. Uganda National Roads Authority’s plans also hit a speed bump.

🏊🏾‍♂️ Bridge Is Temporary; Adventure Is Forever

Minister of Works Katumba Wamala promised his ministry will construct a temporary bridge on Masaka Road in 5 days for boda bodas, small cars and pedestrians to cross (Background). Travellers going to Masaka and beyond will have the exciting choice of either braving the rashly-built temporary bridge, or using the safer but 6-hour route through Mpigi, Butambala, Gomba, Sembabule, Bukomansimbi, Villa Maria, Nyendo, and finally Masaka (without stopping for roasted chicken at Lukaya).

Other headlines

Attorney General to re-table the narcotics bill

Judiciary driver arrested for sounding off on poor salaries and welfare

Foreign Minister Jeje Odong tackles the Ukraine grain deal on Moscow visit

MTN fights mobile money tax, pays Shs. 123 billion in dividends

"You are not a thief if you steal from a thief," Owiny Dollo backs Otto

Netball Federation President Sarah Kityo jailed for alleged fraud

Gov’t remains equivocal on medical intern deployment, so eat apples (we guess?)

Airtel rebrands from 'Smartphone Network' to ‘Reason to Imagine’

🔌 Promo

The Friday Fix is the best way to start your weekend.

Beyond Borders 

🌍️ Africa

🇸🇩 Sudan’s seven-day truce. Sudan’s warring factions signed an agreement on Saturday for a seven-day ceasefire. The deal is due to come into effect on Monday evening to provide relief to civilians in Khartoum caught up in the conflict. Air strikes have hit Khartoum’s outskirts as the war continues. The fighting has led to a collapse in law and order with looting that both sides [spiderman-meme] blame the other for, and the rapid dwindling of stocks of food, cash, and essentials (Read more).

🇰🇲 Comoros President at G7 Summit. Azali Assoumani, the president of the tiny island nation of Comoros, found himself rubbing shoulders with world leaders at the G7 summit in Hiroshima. Assoumani got the golden ticket because he currently chairs the African Union.
South Africa was spurned this year for its recent overt flirtation with Russia.

Other headlines

Zimbabwe released more than 4,000 prisoners under a presidential amnesty

Nigerian chef Hilda Bassey cooks for 100 hours in a world record attempt

Kenya deploys a new commander of the EACRF to pacify DR Congo

Sudan war locks depositors out of savings.

Safaricom buys M-Pesa cash firm from Vodafone amid regional expansion

Somalia seized military shipments bound for Al Shabaab

Equinor, Shell and Exxon Mobil to build a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Tanzania

The death toll in Nigeria’s north-central state of Plateau has risen beyond 100

The World Bank extends $150 million to post-Cyclone Freddy Mozambique 

🗺️ The rest of the world

🪙 Have you heard of Worldcoin? Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (think—ChatGPT), co-founded Worldcoin to compensate people for jobs lost to AI via universal basic income (UBI). But… to access the UBI, people must stare wide-eyed into an orb to give Worldcoin access to their unique iris scan. Nothing could go wrong! Altman secured $100 million for the iris-scanning-dystopian-sci-fi-movie-plot-enacting project. (Read more here and here)

🇹🇷 Presidential run-off in Turkey. The Turkish election is headed to a run-off on May 28^th  after neither the incumbent, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, nor his challenger Kemal Klçdarolu exceeded the 50% threshold required for victory in the nation's most important election in a decade.

💻 EU approves of Microsoft’s $69b deal to buy Activision. The EU approved Microsoft's $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, the American video game holding company that brought you Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and other games that conspire to prolong teenage virginity. However,…authorities in the UK and the US blocked the deal over antitrust concerns. Antitrust laws protect against market monopoly, so, you know, what we don’t have with MTN/Airtel and Umeme.

Nn’ebigenderako

A shaky truce announced between Israeli and Palestinian Jihad militants

For $1 per minute, you can get a virtual girlfriend

Ecuador is embroiled in a political crisis (Country background)

The 76th Cannes Film Festival will run from May 16 - May 27

Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra could be the most hated show of all time

Apple to replace Siri’s robotic cadence with your own

Heavy rains in northern Italy kill 8, cancel Formula 1 Grand Prix

Instagram is [not so secretly] testing a Twitter replacement

Games and Puzzles

Brought to you by Braingle

In each group below, the 3 words end in the same 3 letters, so they look like they should rhyme, but they don't. See if you can figure out the missing letters in each group. Example: plo___, tho___, to___ would be plough, though, tough.

1. b___, el___, oppos___
2. bl___, br___, g___
3. f___, h___, t___.

Hint:

One letter has been filled in for you:
1. bi__, eli__, opposi__
2. blo__, bro__, go__
3. fo__, ho__, to__

Answer at the bottom

Procrastination corner

🚨 How to break that bad habit

👻 Lessons on friendship from Aristotle

🕰️ Watch: this guy makes clocks out of anything

Games answer

1. bite, elite, opposite
2. blood, brood, good
3. four, hour, tour

Have a good week!

— Too Long; Didn’t Read (TLDR)