Opposition Candidate Julius Maada Wins Serra Leone’s Presidential Race

Opposition candidate and former military junta leader Julius Maada has won the Presidential bid as Sierra Leone’s new president.

Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) won 51.8 percent of a total of over 2.5 million ballots cast in the March 31 vote, beating out the ruling All People’s Congress candidate Samura Kamara, who garnered 48.1 percent.

He was later on sworn in just hours after the elections commission announced his victory in a tight run-off poll on Wednesday.

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The Negative Impact of Oil Discoveries on African Economies

Natural resources are often thought of as a curse in developing countries, slowing economic growth rather than driving it. But new results from the International Growth Center have shown that show that discoveries themselves – before extraction happens – have their own economic consequences.

According to the research, countries, where natural resources are discovered, are inundated with injections of capital, much like boomtowns during a gold rush.

Giant and unexpected oil and gas discoveries act as news shocks, driving the business cycle by triggering foreign direct investment (FDI) bonanzas. Across countries, we find that FDI inflows driven by new projects in new industries increased by 58 percent in the two years following a giant discovery.

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Mark Zuckerberg Admits that Some Facebook Users’ Privacy has been Violated at One Point

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes most of Facebook users who had a specific search function enabled have had their profile data scraped by third parties.

“We’ve seen some scraping,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with reporters. “I would assume if you had that setting turned on that someone at some point has access to your public information in some way,” he said

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