Uganda's parliament has passed a law to impose a controversial tax on people using social media platforms. It imposes a 200 shilling [$0.05, £0.04] daily levy on people using internet messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber and Twitter. President Yoweri Museveni had pushed for the changes, arguing that social media encouraged gossip. The law should come into effect on 1 July but there remain doubts about how it will be implemented. The new Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill will also impose various other taxes, including a 1% levy on the total value of mobile money transactions - which civil society groups…

Two young women suffered serious injuries after lightning struck them while they were taking selfies in western Germany, officials said Monday. A spokesman for Bochum police said first responders found the 23 and 21-year-old women lying on the ground with their clothing torn in the city's Wattenscheid district on Sunday evening. Paramedics had to resuscitate the 23-year-old and she remains in intensive care with life-threatening injuries, Bochum police spokesman Volker Schuette said. The younger woman told police the last thing she remembered was walking with her friend on a footpath and recording each other with their smartphones, Schuette told The…

Surprised Singaporeans pursued North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday before realising the portly man with slick black hair near the Marina Bay Sands hotel was an impersonator. "It looked like the real Kim Jong Un, but later I realised it's not the real one," said Sagar Admuthe who was visiting from Mumbai, India, after several selfies with the doppleganger against a backdrop of the city's bay. "When you see him, it's very difficult to make out."The Australian-Chinese man posing as the North Korean leader calls himself only Howard X and said he was appearing to wish success for…

Recent directive mandating all intending couples of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) to submit themselves for mandatory genital tests has elicited mixed reactions with many in support of the directive and others wondering if the church was not going too far by invading people’s privacy. In a memo, which has since gone viral, Assistant General Overseer of the RCCG (Admin & Personnel), Mr J.F. Odesola, said the church had observed the recurrence of marital crises resulting from falsehood, especially in the case of undeclared or un-confessed reproductive or genital status. Dated May 10, 2018, the memo read: “Calvary greetings…