Law enforcement officials have said that six children are suspected of orchestrating a nationwide campaign of bomb threats against historically Black colleges. More than a dozen universities and places of worship have been targeted by hoax calls, which reportedly spiked on the first day of Black History Month on Tuesday, according to widespread media reports. According to law enforcement, the minors appear to be using sophisticated methods to disguise the source of the threats, which seem to have a racist motivation. “A bomb threat against the university is being investigated,”
Plug In South LA has announced its third tech accelerator program focused on Black and Latinx communities. The benefits of the tech accelerator will include potential grants of up to $40,000 and possible seed investments and pilot partnerships. Mentors in the program will include leaders and executives from the California Health Care Foundation, Courtside Ventures, RareBreed Ventures, and Zeal Capital Partners, among others. “We are keen to help Founders secure capital and investment plus help them leverage the LA start ecosystem to develop traction and momentum around their company,” notes Derek Smith, founder of
On Monday, the rapper took to Instagram to share with over 10 million followers that he will not be endorsing non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Instead, Kanye will continue to place his focus on his products, the “real world,” “real food,” “real clothes,” and “real shelter.” “STOP ASKING ME TO DO NFT’s I’M NOT FINNA CO-SIGN … FOR NOW I’M NOT ON THAT WAVE I MAKE MUSIC AND PRODUCTS IN THE REAL WORLD,” he wrote for his Instagram caption. At the end of Kanye’s note, he adds “ASK ME LATER.” So, perhaps
Dennis Cail started Dallas-based Zirtue, a fintech platform that helps people lend money to family or friends at 0 percent interest for terms of less than one year, or 5 percent for longer-term loans, in 2016. The app “helps keep the lights on, the car running,” Cail says. According to the Federal Reserve, in 2019 the typical White family in the U.S. had eight times the wealth of the typical Black family. “Less wealth means Black Americans are underrepresented in the market for financial products and services,” states a 2020 report from McKinsey. Here are four more Black
Casava, the self-described “Nigeria’s first 100% digital insurance company”, has raised a $4 million pre-seed round. It was first founded by Bode Pedro. Before starting Casava, Pedro ran VisaCover, an insurance brokerage company, in 2014. The idea for Casava came while VisaCover provided an alternative in the auto insurance market by allowing drivers of Uber, which was one of its partners, to make weekly insurance payments instead of quarterly or yearly payments insurance partners before it operated, according to TechCrunch. He left the VisaCover company in 2016 and Pedro brought on Olusegun
If you’re interested in supporting Black voices in the gaming industry, look no further than these three titles that are either out now or currently in development. Here POCIT has made a list of three Black developers who’ve created their own video games. Shawn Alexander Shawn is the game designer, animator, visual artist, writer, and founder of Nuchallenger, an independent games and culture studio. Before creating his game – Treachery in Beatdown City – Shawn worked for almost five years at Rockstar games, where he worked on GTA IV Complete,
Black and LGBTQ+ travelers are leading the charge to build inclusive technologies that help their communities travel safely. One such digital program is the Green Book Project, which offers city guides from the perspective of Black travelers. It’s an app from software engineer Christian Lowe created that allows travelers to determine how inclusive a business is through a unique search system based on how users identify themselves, indicated by a hashtag they place on their reviews. For example, a queer vegan traveler could filter a restaurant’s reviews for insight into how
Lame, TikTok’s second most-followed creator with 130 million followers, has partnered with Hugo Boss to star in a campaign surrounding its re-brand. Lame will also co-design a capsule collection with the fashion label as part of a multi-year pact. BOSS’ Rebrand The iconic brand has drafted supermodels, social media sensations, and world-class athletes for a celebrity campaign designed to usher in a new era for core brand BOSS after nearly 50 years. Lame will appear in the campaign alongside Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner, model Joan Smalls, South Korean actor Lee Min-ho, rapper Future, boxer Anthony Joshua, tennis pro Matteo
A Toronto-based organization dubbed the Black Professionals in Tech Network is launching a new platform for recruitment, events, and networking to encourage companies to hire Black talent. The network has inked partnerships with many large companies such as Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, and Microsoft since it was founded in 2018. Its membership has now surpassed 50,000 Black workers, primarily across Canada and the United States – up from just 20,000 a year ago. But on Tuesday, it revealed that it would be launching a new global platform called obsidi.com during
Alejandro Cordero, a professor of electronics and the CEO & Founder of Innova Space, which is reportedly the only company in Latin America that specializes in the design and development of PocketQube pico-satellites. Innova Space was born from an educational project led by Cordero and his seventh-year students. Cordero had challenged his students of Technical High School, which is dubbed number five in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina with designing a satellite in 2019. In the process, Innova Space received an offer from a startup accelerator. An investment of $100,000
