Since her first public appearance in 2015, Sophia, a social humanoid robot, made an impact all over the world. With her impressive interaction skills and witty comebacks, the robot as been a key speaker at several organizations, perhaps most notably the United Nations. However, a new development has taken place: Sophia just sat down for her first interview in the Middle East. Last night, Sophia sat down with television host Ossama Kamal on DMC television channel for an interview, where they addressed a variety of issues from world peace to football. Sophia began the interview saying she loves Egypt, which she is currently visiting to attend The Creative Industry Summit’s annual celebration of creativity in the MENA region.

A massive Chinese infrastructure program that Beijing says is aimed at promoting global trade and economic growth is actually intended to expand the country’s political influence and military presence, according to a report issued Tuesday. The report by the US-based research group C4ADS questions China’s portrayal of the trillion-dollar program, called the “Belt and Road Initiative,” as strictly meant to promote economic development.

The past few years have seen a band of young actors get into space with big plans to commercialize the satellite industry. But it s still not all about money. Some are focused on more ethical uses for space data. Sri Lanka Lichter Nacht NASA Satellit (Christopher Small) Few people will speak openly about it, but we all know there are spy satellites in space tracking our every move. We also know some satellites are used for military purposes, even though the 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbids the militarization of space. Then there s that other mega "-ization" — the commercialization of space.

Mohamed Rizk, founder and CEO of Swedish company Brantu, said that his company will officially launch its e-commerce website elprices at the end of October 2018, after testing its price comparison services, scheduled to be complete by April. Rizk told Daily News Egypt that Brantu is investing $1.2m in the Egyptian market, adding, “we began our startup project less than one year ago. Our business is remarkably growing.”

It seems a technological era is coming to an end. Apple is phasing-out its iTunes store for music downloads and will replace it with an online-streaming app, sources within the company told Digital Music News. The iTunes store would close down in mid-2019 if the change indeed goes ahead. While rumors of the change have hovered around iTunes since 2016, Apple executive Jimmy Iovine himself pointed to the shutdown of the store when “people stop buying,” increasing suspicion of earlier claims by sources within the company foreseeing a 2019 shutdown.

Andy Yan, vice chairperson of Transsion Holdings, the owner company of Tecno Mobile, said that the African market is his company s top priority and is expected to be a launchpad for the rest of the world. “Nearly 10 years ago, we started injecting investments [in Africa], and we always look at the markets of middle and west Africa in a special way given their promising growth opportunities,” Yan said. Ghana and Ivory Coast are two of the most important markets for Tecno Mobile, according to Yan. He added that the Nigerian market is deemed the largest in the continent as its population nears 200 million people.

After a seven-day business trip, Amr Elgbaly, VoxEra founder and CEO, incurred over $500 of roaming charges. As necessity is the mother of invention, Elgbaly did not stop at paying his bill. Instead, he decided to exploit his seven years of experience in VoIP technologies to come up with a new technology. After some tests and experiments, the new solution saw the light and emerged as a new startup, raising funds through a Kickstarter campaign. Elgbaly does not intend to stop there. Investors are lined up to pour money into the new solution. He expects to collect $1m this round to scale up the company. Within three years, Elgbaly told Daily News Egypt, he plans to list the company on the Egyptian Exchange.

Raya Holding has begun the assembly of light transport vehicles in cooperation with the Italian company Piaggio, a project with investments worth EGP 100m. Medhat Khalil, chairperson at Raya Holding, said in a press conference, that his company pays great attention to light transport vehicles, including motorcycles and vehicles with two-tonne loads, especially with the strong growth opportunities in Egypt and Africa, allowing generating jobs for young people, and in line with the government s goal to create more jobs.

The average person around the world spent nearly three hours a day in front their television last year, according to a report released Monday. Eurodata TV Worldwide said that television viewing was holding up despite more and more people watching online platforms like Netflix and Amazon.

Belarusian Minister of Communications and Informatisation Sergei Popkov said that he was surprised by the Egypt-manufactured mobile phone by Sico, adding, “I had wrong information that Huawei and Samsung dominated the market, so we are really interested in collaborating on the manufacturing programme.” The minister added, at a press conference organised by the Canadian Egyptian Business Council on Tuesday evening, that the cooperation with Egypt in the IT sector is still at the very beginning, noting, “the political leadership will in both countries encourages boosting relationships, but activating the ideas needs further studies.”

Environment Minister Khaled Fahmy announced the launch of the new system of waste management, which will start in Kafr al-Sheikh. The Cabinet approved the implementation of the new system in Kafr al-Sheikh, Gharbiya, Qena and Assiut governorates in collaboration between local authorities, the German Construction Bank and the European Union (EU).

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Yasser al-Qadi said on Monday that the ministry will implement a strategy to turn Egypt into a regional and global hub for data. During a conference titled the Future of Data, Qadi added that the strategy is based on two important hubs, namely the attraction of investments and to attract global data centers which could utilize the geographic location of Egypt in the middle of globe and the passage of 17 marine cables through the country’s waters to connect the East with the West.

The 23-story tall Falcon Heavy, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster automobile into space as a mock payload, roared off its launch pad at 3:45 p.m. (2045 GMT) at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. It launched from the same site used by NASA s towering Saturn 5 rockets to carry Apollo missions to the moon more than 40 years ago. The two side-boosters successfully separated from the center main-stage rocket and flew back to Earth for safe simultaneous touchdowns on twin launch pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The center booster was expected for a return landing on a drone ship floating at sea, but its fate was not immediately known. The launch had been delayed for more than two hours due to wind-shear conditions.

Marketer published a list of the countries projected to achieve the fastest growing sales via e-commerce this year and the coming two years. The list is comprised of 15 countries. According to the report, India topped the list of countries expected to achieve strong growth in the e-commerce market. The report predicted India will mark a 40.1% growth in e-commerce sales in 2018.

Here's a trick question: where is Europe's spaceport? Answer: It's in Europe. Right? Well, yes. But actually … not quite. You see, "Europe's spaceport," as it is indeed sold, is in French Guiana. Technically, that is in Europe. French Guiana is a French colony, making it a European, or EU, jurisdiction - which is great if you happen to be there on a European cell phone plan because EU Roaming applies. Yeah! But geographically, the Guiana Space Centre is in South America, right next door to Brazil.

Britain on Wednesday announced plans for consumers to pay a deposit on plastic bottles as part of a broader push to tackle pollution. The government will introduce a charge on plastic, glass and metal single use drinks containers sold in England, the environment ministry said.

Vodafone Egypt topped the list of telecommunications companies with the fastest growing revenues in 2017. According to sources in the communications sector, the Vodafone Egypt s revenue growth reached 19%, while Etisalat came second with 18%, followed by Orange with 6%. Vodafone Egypt topped the list of most profitable telecom companies, with a profit growth rate of 45% in 2017, versus 44% in 2016.

Etisalat Egypt continued to lose more of its customers in similar fashion to recent months. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) report, showing data from December, showed that the company has lost nearly 500,000 clients to other competitors. According to the report, the number of Etisalat Egypt s customers declined from 23.1 million in November to 22.6 million in December.

As the Facebook crisis has escalated in recent days, calls for user account deletion have increased due to disclosure of data from more than 50 million users to Cambridge Analytica. If you think of meeting the Facebook boycott call and believe there is no alternative, read this report as Al-Masry Al-Youm lists some social networks, messaging applications, and news aggregators that you can rely on as an alternative to Facebook.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for mistakes his company made in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users, and promised tougher steps to restrict developers access to such information. The world s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States. This follows allegations by a whistleblower that British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016.