🩺 Patients pays

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Good morning 🌤️ The Saudis made French star—and the reason we don’t let our children sleep in—Kylian Mbappe an offer he couldn’t refuse: a one-year salary of $776 million. For context, an annual salary of $776 million is $24 per second and more than LeBron James’ and Tiger Woods' combined career earnings.

But Mbappe refused.

No punchline here, just…*screams in poverty*... cold shock.

— Gloria Mbabazi, Shem Opolot

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Headlines

📺 Channelling discontent

The Uganda Editors’ Guild boycotted government press briefings and events to protest President Museveni’s directive to ban government agencies from advertising in private media. The editors described the directive as unconstitutional, unfair, and harmful to the media industry and the public interest. The contentious directive, which would encourage more mediocrity from UBC, mandates that all government advertising be channeled solely through the state-owned Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) and the Vision Group for, we assume, only 60+ year-olds to consume. (Read Daniel Kalinaki’s thoughts)

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) later placed the ban on a commercial break and agreed to meet with the President and other government representatives in two weeks to seek a resolution.

🩺 Patients pay(s)

The Ministry of Health finally deployed 1901 medical interns to 58 training hospitals across the country after months of delay and protest. The incoming interns will receive a net monthly allowance of Shs. 1 million, which is less than half of what the previous interns earned. The Uganda Medical Association said the President hasn’t changed his earlier directive to pay interns half of their senior’s pay, and the Shs. 1 million is a stopgap due to limited resources.

Other headlines

Iron sheets delivered by OPM to victims of Karamojong attacks in Agago

UNBS gets new boss as IGG orders Ebiru's arrest

Committee absolves Nandala, Amuriat of allegations

Museveni holds bilateral talks with Putin | UK visa fees hiked

Cholera outbreak reported in Namayingo District

Makerere staff plot to strike over lack of tribunal

Four wins for Uganda at World Schools’ debating championship

First bone marrow transplant to be conducted by Ugandan doctors

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Beyond Borders 

🌍️ Africa

🇳🇪 Coup in Niger. It turns out (at least in Niger) that becoming president is as easy as putting the president in timeout locking the real president inside their room.
Members of the Presidential Guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum inside his palace in the capital, Niamey, last Wednesday. The usurpers, led by General Abdourahamane Tiani, who appeared on state television and declared himself the new president of Niger, named themselves the National Council for the Preservation of the Fatherland and announced their intention to form a transitional government. However,…President Bazoum, whose inauguration in 2021 was headlined by a thwarted coup attempt, somehow found WiFi and expressed his defiance via Twitter X.

Niger is the world's poorest nation, according to the UN's development rankings for 189 countries, and has seen more military coups than Ugandans have seen presidents.

🇹🇳 Turbulence in Tunisia. Tunisia's economy is in dire straits as debt, inflation, and dependence on subsidies soar. Worse still, negotiations for a potential bailout from the IMF have stalled because Tunisia’s President Kais Saied rejected economic reforms suggested by the IMF.
On a related note, in a battle of cross purposes, Tunisia’s situation makes it a major launchpad for migrants trying to flee to Europe,…but Italy hosted a conference in Rome where Mediterranean leaders discussed extending an EU-backed deal with Tunisia to curb the arrival of migrants to European shores.

Putin 🤝🏾 Africa. Against the backdrop of the ongoing war with Ukraine and strained grain exports to Africa, Russia hosted the second Russia–Africa Summit in St. Petersburg from July 27–28, with 17 heads of state from Africa—less than half of the 43 that attended the first summit in 2019—attending this year’s summit. While valuable summit KPIs were limited, Putin gifted the Zimbabwean president a presidential helicopter, pledged up to 50,000 tons of free grain each to Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and Eritrea within the next 6 months, and pledged to resume the grain deal if Ukraine agreed to end the war.

Other headlines

Egypt, Ethiopia working on water deal | 25 troops killed in Somalia suicide bombing

Nigerian doctors strike | Ghana’s parliament abolishes the death penalty

“We are dying” — Migrants' plea at the Libya-Tunisia border

Ruto offers to meet opposition; Odinga rejects it

Kenya to grant visas on arrival after hack job | Sudan wants Ruto out of IGAD

Joint bid by Kenya and Uganda revived to complete the SGR project

Francophonie Games kick off in Kinshasa

🗺️ The rest of the world

🇮🇱 Israel passes a controversial law. Israel's Parliament passed a law that, for many, was less than kosher. The highly contested law that spurred protests in Israel that have lasted as long as this newsletter has been active (that’s 7 months 👋🏾), limits the Supreme Court's power to overrule government actions it deems “unreasonable.” The law and ensuing protests have rocked Israel’s economy: 150 companies have gone on strike, 68% of startups are reconsidering doing business in Israel, and the shekel is in shambles. (Read more)

⚡ Super breakthrough conducted(?) This past week, the Twitter crypto experts, who became AI experts, became electrical engineers to fan the latest fad—superconductivity.

What are those?! Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity without any resistance, making them great for transporting electricity. While superconductors can speed up computers and power batteries, the current ones only work at extremely low temperatures and under extremely high pressure, making them impractical in the real world.

But scientists in South Korea claimed to have developed a superconductor that can function in the same environment as your TV remote—ambient pressure and room temperature.

What could this mean?

• Widespread levitating high-speed trains

• More affordable and compact medical imaging devices

• An iPhone that doesn’t overheat

• Much (much) lower electricity bills

• Faster computers

But before you start telling lies in the office, the study hasn’t been peer-reviewed and the results haven’t been replicated, so scientists are skeptical. And even if room-temperature superconductivity were achieved, it’d take A WHILE to make any real-world applications. So, in the meantime, long-press the back arrow on your YAKA meter to quiet the beeps.

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Nn’ebigenderako

Politics and Government

Spain enters period of political uncertainty

Wildfires in Greece | Youth unemployment in China might’ve hit 46.5%

Russia-Ukraine war update | Singapore hanged a woman for the first time in 19 years

UFO whistleblower testified before US Congress

Deadly typhoon strikes the Philippines

Business and Finance

Twitter rebranded to X and (probably) disrupted the porn industry

Now’s a good time to buy Yeezys | Threads is hanging by a thread

Automakers unite (against Tesla) to build EV charging network in America

Science and Technology

The maker of ChatGPT launched Worldcoin, the project that’d pay you if AI took your job

Flying taxis are coming | A new kind of thermal imaging

Open AI, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic unite for safe AI development

July 2023 was the hottest month on record

Why building a better search engine isn’t enough to beat Google

Sports

Women’s World Cup update

Bronny James, LeBron James’ son, released from hospital after cardiac arrest

Lifestyle and Entertainment

2023 Emmy Awards postponed due to strikes

Kevin Spacey acquitted of sexual assault charges

Sinéad O’Connor, the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer, died at 56

Procrastination corner

Games and Puzzles

From Puzzle Prime

You have a glass of water and an ice cube floating in it. When the ice cube melts, will the water level increase, decrease, or remain the same?

Answer at the bottom

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Games answer

Answer:

It will remain the same. The amount of water that the ice cube displaces is equal to its mass. Since the mass does not change and the density of water is equal to 1, the extra water after melting will be the same amount as the displaced water before that.

Have a good week!

— Too Long; Didn’t Read (TLDR)

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