How Christians in Kenya are trying to hack government corruption

Religion and technology are two important elements in Nairobi, however, they have remained distant until the corrupt government brought them together. Christian hackathons are now opportunities for technology and religion to meet to spur innovation that can help fight against corruption

The technology world, plagued by a lack of privacy and security, is looking for solutions. To increase trustworthiness of computers, transactions, and pretty much anything online, blockchain is being used all around the world. While blockchain was first used by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, it is now being used in such diverse ways as to track business products, trade in the stock market, and support musical collaboration. Blockchain's applications are continuing to grow and spread.

New initiatives have been implemented to address Wikipedia’s gender gap: both the discrepancy of who is editing the site and the discrepancy of who is covered by the site. Activities include classes to teach girls how to edit and “wiki-thons” where editors develop articles on Wikipedia about women.

Ireland held a citizens’ assembly to discuss the country’s contentious abortion laws and demonstrated the potential of such democracy-building initiatives. A random selection of participants gathered over five weekends and formulated recommendations after hours of respectful, fact-based discussion.

CekFakta is a collaborative network that fights misinformation with around 6,000 fact-checkers from major Indonesian media organizations, citizens, and academics. The group holds training sessions to help journalists identify doctored images and misinformation, with the idea that participants will pass the skills on to their colleagues. CekFakta impacted 2019 presidential debates with large-scale, real-time, collaborative fact-checking that enabled a quick release of fact-checked information. The collaborative process is key to helping people find high-quality information amid so much online content.

As conspiracy theories spread and misleading news stories are shared, educators are trying to battle misinformation with media literacy education. Through courses, and updated class curriculum, students from elementary to college are learning how to better differentiate between false news stories and misinformation.

Novva’s data center in West Jordan, Utah, uses recirculating pipes with refrigerant to cool its servers. This method uses significantly less water than the typical method, evaporative cooling.

Readers on the BBC website can now find out more about select stories through “Appy Helper,” a module that provides background about an ongoing, complex story. The module works through both a chat-style interface that readers navigate via prompts or a more linear timeline display.

To increase awareness of cervical cancer and the cancer-preventing HPV vaccine, Al-Ansar radio shares information about the disease, the vaccine and works to dispel speculation and misinformation about vaccines in general to those in underserved and hard-to-reach areas, as they’re often hardest to get vaccinated.

New York City’s “small purchase” program allows the city’s Department of Transportation to offer government contracts up to a certain spending limit specifically to minority- and women-owned businesses, with the goal of diversifying the city’s pool of contractors and suppliers. In fiscal year 2024, 32 percent of the department’s contract spending went to these businesses, compared to 24 percent in 2023 and 11 percent in 2022.