On Friday, Brazil’s top court ordered the immediate suspension of X—formerly Twitter—in the country following a months-long feud with owner Elon Musk. Now, rival platforms are benefiting. Bluesky Sees Surge in Sign-Ups Bluesky, which fully opened to the public in February 2023, is seeing massive surge in users, reportedly gained one million new users in just three days. The decentralized social app started off as a project by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019 when he was Twitter’s CEO. It has since become an independent public benefit corporation, with Twitter founder
Heman Bekele, a 15-year-old high school student from Virginia, has been named TIME’s Kid of the Year 2024 for inventing a soap that could one day treat and prevent multiple forms of skin cancer. While the product may take years to reach the market, Bekele is already working in a lab at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, dedicated to making his vision a reality. A Young Scientist’s Vision Bekele’s journey into science began at a young age. He experimented with household chemicals and later received a
Dr. Kenvi Phillips recently made history as the inaugural Director of the Barack Obama Presidential Library, the first fully digital presidential library in the United States. Her appointment, which kicked off on June 16, 2024, sees Phillips overseeing all programs and activities at the library. A New Era in Presidential Archives The Barack Obama Presidential Library is unique within the network of 15 presidential libraries managed by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)—it is entirely digital. An estimated 95% of the records from the Obama administration were born digital,
ChurchSpace is changing how churches use their spaces by turning underutilized real estate into vibrant community hubs. Nicknamed the “Airbnb for churches,” this innovative app allows churches to generate additional income by renting out their facilities as commercial kitchens, event venues, and meeting spaces. Created by the millennial pastors’ kids Day Edwards and Emmanuel Brown, ChurchSpace addresses church leaders’ financial pressures and offers a new model for community engagement. Empowering Communities Through Church Real Estate Launched in 2019, ChurchSpace aims to strengthen local communities by repurposing church real estate. “Church
Nigeria will be sending its first citizen to space as part of collaboration between its National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) and Space Exploration and Research Agency (SERA), a global space agency. SERA will reserve a seat for a Nigerian citizen on an upcoming Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital spaceflight. First Nigerian in Space Announced on June 19, 2024, this initiative is part of a broader effort to include nations historically underrepresented in space exploration. “Until now, space has been an exclusive domain, with over 80% of all astronauts
Latinas face the steepest drop in representation as they climb the corporate ladder, according to Lean In’s first-ever report on the state of Latinas in corporate America. Despite Latinas accounting for nearly 1 in 10 people in the US, they hold less than 1 in 20 entry-level corporate jobs and only 1 in 100 C-suite positions. Disparities in Advancement and Pay In 2023, white men’s representation increased by nearly two-thirds (64%) from entry-level to C-suite positions, while Latinas’ representation decreased by over three-quarters (78%). Latinas also experience the largest pay
Verzuz, the multimedia platform co-founded by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, announced a new distribution deal with Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). Episodes will stream for free exclusively on X, while VERZUZ maintains full ownership and creative control. VERZUZ comes to X This partnership follows Swizz Beatz and Timbaland’s reacquisition of VERZUZ from Triller after a lawsuit over $28 million in unpaid fees. Despite legal issues, the founders kept their equity in Triller and retained the artists who participated in VERZUZ. Swizz Beatz expressed excitement about the partnership: “We are beyond
MoviePass, a Black-owned movie-theater subscription service, has received an equity investment from Forecast Labs, a consumer venture group owned by Comcast. As first reported by Variety, this investment will help MoviePass attract new customers through targeted TV ads using Comcast’s media reach. The financial details were not disclosed. The company was recently the subject of the HBO series “MoviePass, MovieCrash.” The Rise, Fall, And Rise of MoviePass Launched in 2011 by Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt, MoviePass allowed subscribers to buy one movie ticket daily for a monthly fee. Despite
Crunchbase has announced the expansion of its Diversity Spotlight feature to include companies in Europe. This expansion will allow up to one million additional companies on Crunchbase to add Diversity Spotlight tags to their profiles, enhancing the visibility of diverse founders and investors across the continent. Crunchbase’s Diversity Spotlight Crunchbase introduced its Diversity Spotlight feature in 2020 to centralize and highlight data about companies with diverse leadership and the investors who fund them. This feature indicates diversity in an organization’s leadership team, including founders and CEOs for startups and managing
A Georgia federal jury has awarded $535,000 in damages to a Black tech worker who alleged he was fired in retaliation for complaining about racial discrimination. The jury handed down the verdict on June 4 in favor of Matthew Reed, a former employee of Beko Technologies Corp. Retaliation and Discrimination Claims Matthew Reed began working at Beko, which develops and manufactures compressed air technology, in 2016 as a production technician. According to Law360, Reed claimed that despite his excellent work performance, his supervisor denied him raises and treated him discriminatorily.
