Transparency

A group, under the auspices of the Ekiti Tax for Service, has demanded transparency in the implementation of the N1.4 billion earmarked for the Ekiti International Cargo Airport in the 2024 budget and other provisions in the appropriation. The Tax for Service policy group, which comprises the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), FIDA, artisans, hoteliers, market women, and traditional chiefs, among others, said that tax payment would not be…

Apple Inc. shareholders rejected a labor-backed request for an artificial intelligence transparency report, which would have delved into whether the company is using the technology ethically. The proposal, submitted by AFL-CIO Equity Index Funds, was voted down in a preliminary tally at Apple's annual meeting on Wednesday. Shareholders also rejected measures about equal employment policies, civil liberties, racial and gender pay gaps, and human rights. They approved the board slate and the company's executive…

Apple has been infamously tight-lipped regarding its AI plan, yet one shareholder movement might force it to finally reveal its plans. As initially reported by the Financial Times, Norges Bank Investment Management and Legal & General, which are two of the biggest Apple shareholders, are backing a proposal from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) that could force Apple to announce its plans for AI.According to the Financial Times report, Legal & General has…

Some Neuralink rivals, such as Precision Neuroscience, are developing implants that sit on top of the brain, or in the case of Synchron, a stentlike device that’s inserted into a blood vessel and sits against the brain. These devices aim to allow paralyzed people to communicate using digital devices by reading electrical patterns generated from groups of neurons.Neuralink hasn’t exactly been operating in secrecy—it has livestreamed demonstrations of its technology over the years and published a white paper in 2019—but…

The European Commission has opened an investigation into TikTok over claims it has failed to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act with regards to transparency and protecting children. “Today we open an investigation into #TikTok over suspected breach of transparency & obligations to protect minors,” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a post on X Monday. Breton highlighted four specific issues with the platform: TikTok’s “Addictive design and screen time limits”, the “rabbit hole effect,” age verification,…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain As a purely voluntary form of disclosure, management earnings forecasts may tell us as much about the managers themselves as about their company's financial future. All sorts of personality traits may influence the content and cadence of forecasts, but you would expect core attributes—such as political ideology, which has been likened to an "official religion" in the United States—to be the…

Investors prodded Byju’s founder Byju Raveendran to ensure full transparency about company financials and the latest state of affairs at the edtech firm at its annual general meeting, according to people present at the meeting.Investors made it clear that full clarity on what is going on in the company needed to be communicated to the shareholders and only with this transparency, trust could be built for them to support the firm in any manner going forward, according to an investor.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with…

Welcome to this year's final edition of ETtech Morning Dispatch. Thank you so much for reading us every AM. We have a packed edition today as we call it a wrap on 2023!Also in this letter:■ Activists call for withdrawal of telecom bill■ UPI AutoPay gains momentum■ BSNL suffers data breachProgramming note: ETtech’s newsletter team will be off starting December 23. We will be back with a brand new edition of the newsletter on January 2, 2024. Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Stay tuned to ETtech.com…

Human rights advocates hoped to show this was not just a one-off incident, but a systemic issue ignored by the local government. In fact, Fengxian, the county where the woman lived, has long had an infamous reputation for allowing women to be abducted and sold to men looking to procreate.  By searching CJO, advocates found at least two previous cases in which abducted women filed for divorce in Fengxian and were denied; they also found that people who were prosecuted in the county for human trafficking received minimal…

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is the latest public figure to question how Meta is moderating content during the Israel-Hamas war. In a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, Warren raises several issues reported by Instagram users since October 7, and presses Meta for more information about its underlying policies and how much content the company has taken down related to the conflict.In the letter, Warren cites reports from the media and human rights groups about inconsistencies in the company’s moderation…