Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $19B,for more double click and read more.

 

Facebook is placing a $19 billion bet on reaching its next billion mobile users with the acquisition of WhatsApp, a popular messaging service that lets people send texts, photos and videos on their smartphones.

The $19 billion deal is by far Facebook’s largest and bigger than any that Google, Microsoft or Apple have ever done. But it is likely to raise worries that Facebook and other technology companies are starting to become overzealous in their pursuit of promising new products and services, said Anthony Michael Sabino, a St. John’s University business professor.

“This could be seen as a microcosm of a bubble,” Sabino said. “I expect there to be a lot of skepticism about this deal. People are going to look at this and say, ‘Uh-oh, did they pay way too much for this?”

Facebook, for its part, is taking the long view. WhatsApp has 450 million monthly users, 70 percent of whom use it every day. The service is adding a million new users a day. There are 19 billion messages sent and 34 billion received via WhatsApp each day, in addition to 600 million photos and 100 million video messages.

At this rate, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is confident the app will reach a billion users. Services that reach that milestone, Zuckerberg said in a statement, “are all incredibly valuable.”

It’s an elite group to be sure — one that includes Google (which owns YouTube), Facebook itself and little else.

Facebook said Wednesday that it’s paying $12 billion in stock and $4 billion in cash for WhatsApp. In addition, the app’s founders and employees — 55 in all — will be granted restricted stock worth $3 billion that will vest over four years after the deal closes.

The transaction translates to roughly 11 percent of Facebook’s market value. In comparison, Google’s biggest deal was its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, while Microsoft’s largest was Skype at $8.5 billion. Apple, meanwhile, has never done a deal above $1 billion.

Facebook’s $1 billion Instagram deal seems like a bargain in retrospect. Capturing mobile users — and young people — was a big reason behind Facebook’s 2012 purchase of the photo-sharing app. Even its reported $3 billion offer for disappearing-message app Snapchat pales in comparison. Snapchat spurned the bid.

The deal stunned Gartner analyst Brian Blau. “I am not surprised they went after WhatsApp, but the amount is staggering,” he said.

The world’s biggest social networking company likely prizes WhatsApp for its audience of teenagers and young adults who are increasingly using the service to engage in online conversations outside of Facebook, which has evolved into a more mainstream hangout inhabited by their parents, grandparents and even their bosses at work.

WhatsApp also has a broad global audience.

Zuckerberg said the service “doesn’t get as much attention in the U.S. as it deserves because its community started off growing in Europe, India and Latin America. But WhatsApp is a very important and valuable worldwide communication network. In fact, WhatsApp is the only widely used app we’ve ever seen that has more engagement and a higher percent of people using it daily than Facebook itself.”

Blau said Facebook’s purchase is a bet on the future. “They know they have to expand their business lines. WhatsApp is in the business of collecting people’s conversations, so Facebook is going to get some great data,” he noted

E. Africa leaders in Kampala for regional summit

 Rwandan President Paul Kagame signs the visitor’s book after arriving in Kampala for the East African Community summit yesterday.

Kampala- President Museveni has invited Tanzania and Burundi to a key regional integration summit in Kampala today (Thursday) to join President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya.

President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi missed the last summit in Kigali while President Jakaya Kikwete was not invited, raising criticism that the so-called Coalition of the Willing (CoW) was driving a wedge between the East African Community member states.

A senior Ugandan foreign affairs ministry official said the invitation extended to Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete was a sign that the initiative “is undertaken in good faith to deepen, rather than weaken, regional integration” in the EAC.

Mr Premi Kibanga, a spokesperson for President Kikwete, said yesterday that the Tanzanian leader, who is preparing for a major constitutional summit in Dodoma next week, would send his deputy, Dr Mohammed Gharib Bilal, to represent him in Kampala. Ugandan foreign affairs ministry officials said they expected President Nkurunziza to attend or send representation.

President Kagame had arrived in the country by press time with Kenya’s President Kenyatta also expected.

The presidents are expected to launch an East African single tourist visa, part of a slew of reforms aimed at integrating the region’s economies.

Tanzania and Burundi are yet to sign on to the initiative, which will allow tourists to use one visa to travel across the three participating EAC member states.
The heads of state are also expected to formally launch the use of national identity cards as border-crossing documents, which started in January.

Updates on refinery project
The fourth Northern Corridor Integration Projects Summit, which follows earlier meetings in Kampala, Mombasa and Kigali, is also expected to hear updates on plans to jointly develop an oil refinery in western Uganda, a crude-oil export pipeline, and a standard gauge railway line from Mombasa to Kigali with a spur to Juba, South Sudan.

President Salva Kiir of South Sudan, which has applied to join the EAC, was also invited to the summit after attending the last one in Kigali.

Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda launched the Single Customs Territory during the last summit in Kigali. The heads of state are expected to receive updates on how the system, which allows for taxes to be paid once at the first port of entry into the region, and which went live in January, is operating.

Sticking issue of political federation

Pact expected. The presence of all five EAC member states might unlock a discussion on fast-tracking the political federation but it is not clear how much unanimous agreement will be reached in Kampala. A security pact is a likely step towards shared sovereignty while the more arduous discussions on political federation continue.
Critics. Political federation remains contentious. After featuring in the first two summits in Kampala and Mombasa, it appeared to fall off the agenda in Kigali, amidst complaints from Tanzania that the meetings were discussing a core pillar of EAC integration in the absence of two community members.
Tanzania is opposed to Uganda’s efforts to fast-track political federation alongside the establishment of the Monetary Union.

German court jails Rwandan ex-mayor on genocide charges

 Onesphore Rwabukombe (partly hidden by microphone) awaits the final verdict at the courtroom in Frankfurt,

A German court on Tuesday sentenced to 14 years in jail a former Rwandan town mayor for ordering a massacre of hundreds of people in a church during the 1994 genocide.

The man, Onesphore Rwabukombe, 56, had since 2002 lived in Germany, where he had applied for political asylum.

The former mayor of the town of Muvumba in northeastern Rwanda was found guilty of aiding genocide.

Prosecutors had asked for a term of life in jail over the killings, while the defence had demanded an acquittal in the trial at the higher regional court in the western city of Frankfurt.

It was the first case heard in Germany related to the Rwandagenocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them ethnic Tutsis, were killed between April and July 1994.

The three-year trial had heard more than 100 witnesses, and Germany had sent criminal investigators to Rwanda.

Germany has prosecuted suspected war criminals from the Nazi era and the former Yugoslavia for genocide but this is the first time it has tried someone for alleged links to the Rwandan bloodletting.

The Frankfurt court heard the case because Germany did not want to extradite the defendant to Rwanda, fearing he would not receive a fair trial, and as international courts in The Hague and Tanzania did not ask to handle the case.

Tough penalties loom as Museveni signs Anti-Pornography Bill into law,for me log on http//drivhot.blogspot.com

 Ethics minister Simon Lokodo addressing journalists in Kampala yesterday. Fr Lokodo said the President assented to the Bill on February 6.

Promoters of pornographic material could soon be in trouble after the President signed the Anti-Pornography Bill, 2011 into law. Publishers, broadcasters, film importers and exporters, artists, bar owners and internet café operators are the likely culprits.
Ethics minister Simon Lokodo announced the President’s assent to the Bill at the government Media Centre yesterday.

The announcement came on the heels of Mr Museveni’s indication at the weekend that he would soon sign the anti-gays Bill into law, provoking a backlash from the West where US President Barack Obama called the legislation an “affront to human rights” with potential to “complicate our valued relationship with Uganda.”

Fr Lokodo said pornography had pervaded the Ugandan society, becoming an insidious social problem that had eaten society to the “marrow.” He said children had become innocent victims. Other costs of the vice, he said, included the rise in HIV/Aids infections, murders, teenage pregnancies and school drop-outs.

Section Two of the law defines pornography as “any representation through publication, exhibition, cinematography, indecent show, information technology, or by whatever means of a person engaged in real or stimulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of sexual parts of a person for primary sexual excitement.”

Under this definition, people who skimpily dress may fall prey to the legislation. “If your miniskirt falls within the ambit of this definition then I am afraid you will be caught up by the law,” the minister said.

The Anti- Pornography bill signed into law

Ethics and integrity minister Fr Simon Lokodo announced at the government Media Centre on Tuesday that the President has assented to the Anti-pornography Bill 2011 on February 6, 2014.
The law prescribes various penalties for publishers, broadcasters and internet café operators.
The law caused public excitement when it tried to determine the length of the dress for work and it was quickly dubbed the mini-skirt bill.

“This Bill will be operational within a matter of days, I have already prepared my statement for the Statory instrument and have consulted with the Solicitor general to help me with the proper legal drafting, it will be returned soon and I will just append my signature.” Said Fr. Lokodo.

“The police are already equipped with the parameters for determining those who offend the law; and these are already clear, the way in which one talks, dresses or walks which is deemed provocative or likely to cause sexual excitement.” He added, “Anything that provokes, stirs or creates unnecessary sensitivity..” he added.

WOMEN TO PAY N50, 000 FINE FOR WEARING TROUSERS IN ANAMBRA COMMUNITY

 Akwaihedi community in Nnewi South Local Government Area of Anambra State has allegedly passed a law against the wearing of trousers by women.

A source said: “Anyone caught breaking the law will be molested and fined N50, 000 or be banished.”

The source added that but for the intervention of youths, female members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), posted to the community, would have been stripped.

A corps member, Grace Uduak, said she was shocked when the ruler slammed her for wearing the NYSC uniform. Another source, who preferred anonymity, alleged that 10 people had been fined by the community court.

The source said the situation was serious because policemen were not allowed to enter the community, as the monarch said the traditional court would handle domestic issues.

The law promulgated by the Igwe and the president-general of the town union, stipulated that no woman should wear trousers. Women are also forbidden from walking in public without covering their heads

Police bosses arrested after robbers gun down colleague

 Kampala Metropolitan Police Commander Andrew Kaweesi speaking to journalists in Kampala yesterday.

Kampala- Four senior police officers at Kajjansi Police Station have been arrested over operational errors that led to the killing of an assistant superintendent of police.
The four were arrested following the killing of Joseph Bigirwa, the officer in-charge of the station, who was on Friday shot by thugs as he was responding to a robbery of a petrol station and mobile money shop.

According to Kampala Metropolitan Police Commander Andrew Kaweesi, the four officers failed to deploy and respond in time to the robbery thus placing their colleague in danger while the deceased committed operational misjudgment.

“I have taken action against the officers, they have already been arrested and detained. It was irresponsibility on their side and action will be taken. On the side of the OC, he misjudged the operation. If only he had called in for enforcement,” Mr Kaweesi said.

Police admit weaknesses
Police acknowledged that the killing in Kajjansi arose from operational errors and vowed not to rest until the thugs are arrested and brought to book. They also blamed the rising armed robbery cases on weak laws on prosecution of people found in possession of guns.

“Those days people found in possession of guns were tried at the court martial but now there are very weak guidelines to deal with such situation,” Mr Kaweesi added.
Bigirwa, who was buried in Bushenyi District on Sunday, was shot and died on the spot at around 11pm in Kajjansi Town on Friday night.

Shoot-to-kill policy back
Meanwhile, the police have again embarked on a shoot-to-kill move against armed robbers, barely a year after the force came under criticism over the method.

Mr Kaweesi, while addressing journalists yesterday, said he had ordered all police officers to shoot and kill armed robbers who failed to heed to a police warning that is only given once.

“If police officers give a warning and you (armed criminal) fail to stop or surrender, they will shoot and kill you because the law gives police the mandate and they shall not wait for you to kill them,” Mr Kaweesi said.