A three-year-old named Keila Nkomo from Cowdray Park in Bulawayo drowned after slipping into a Blair toilet pit that had filled up with rainwater. The kid was messing around outside with another child when she fell into the roughly 2.5-meter hole. Her aunt pulled her out and tried to help, but she had already gone under.
Cops are telling parents to watch their kids more carefully during the wet season since pits and wells can turn deadly real quick. Cowdray Park has garbage sanitation setup with tons of shallow toilets that get dangerous when storms roll through. Similar accidents killed a two-year-old who fell down a well and a four-year-old who drowned in a flooded latrine over the past few years.
An engineer at Leonardo UK named Maria Kelly got her discrimination case tossed after she complained about trans women using the bathroom at work. The tribunal decided the defense contractor handled everything legally when they let transgender employees pick their facilities, and the judge said Kelly could have just used single-occupancy bathrooms if she felt uncomfortable. Leonardo has around 9,500 workers, and Kelly was literally the only person who made a fuss about the policy.
Kelly plans to appeal because she thinks the court botched the legal analysis, especially after that Supreme Court ruling from the spring that defined women as a biological sex under equality law. Employment lawyers are pointing out that workplaces are stuck...
Jaguar Land Rover kicked out their design boss, Gerry McGovern, after he ran that wild pink rebrand campaign that had zero cars in it. The 69-year-old got walked out of the building right after a new CEO from Tata Motors took over, and people are saying his fashion-forward aesthetic with angular models and slogans like "delete ordinary" totally bombed with audiences. Elon Musk dunked on them, asking if they even sell cars, and Trump called the whole thing stupid.
McGovern actually had a solid track record before this mess, since he redesigned the Defender and pushed Range Rover upmarket over his two decades at the company. The company dealt with a cyberattack that shut down production for over a month, and they're fighting chip...
Business majors at the University of Sunderland turned their starter cash of 25 quid per squad into over 12,700 pounds for The Children's Foundation charity. The winning crew, called North East Giving, pulled in more than 2,500 by themselves, and the whole class of first-year students beat every previous record for the annual challenge. They ran bake sales, raffles, food stands, and carnival games across a month-long hustle.
The Children's Foundation works with at-risk kids around the North East by funding mental health programs at schools and helping out new families. Lecturer Iraa Wimpenny said the students showed serious entrepreneurial energy, and the charity boss Sean Soulsby called their work inspiring. Twenty-four teams competed...
UK companies slashed jobs faster than at any point in the past nine months after Budget uncertainty and shaky customer confidence froze up business decisions, according to S&P Global data. The PMI reading dropped to 51.2 from 52.2, and workforce numbers fell for the thirteenth straight month. Tim Moore from S&P Global said companies held back on hiring and spending while everyone waited to see what tax hikes and cuts were coming.
Businesses blamed higher payroll expenses, increased taxes, and rising wages for the headcount reductions. The services sector slumped to 51.3, but manufacturing posted its first positive number in over a year. Economists think GDP growth hit around 0.1 percent for the quarter, and they expect the Bank of...
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told his US-based workers they have to show up at the office every weekday starting in February. The mandate goes harder than Meta's baseline three-day requirement for Facebook and WhatsApp teams, but the parent company said each department can do its own thing. Mosseri pitched the change as necessary for better creativity and momentum after what he called a rough year, and he pointed to the New York office as proof that in-person work delivers results.
Amazon already went full-time office this year, and Elon Musk made X employees come back a while ago. Most of Silicon Valley settled on a hybrid three-day setup at this point. Instagram also plans to axe all recurring meetings twice a year and only bring...
Electro-Harmonix put out a new solid-state amp called the ABRAMS100 that pushes 100 watts through Class D power while staying light at around 2.5 pounds. The thing costs 299 bucks and comes with a preamp section that handles three-band EQ plus a presence toggle, and they threw in digital spring reverb.
The effects loop setup lets people run their pedals after the EQ stage, and the return jack doubles as a power amp input if someone wants to skip the internal preamp completely. That means external preamp pedals or modelers can hook straight into the power section without going through the built-in tone controls first.
Waves dropped another plugin for its Magma lineup called StressBox, and the whole deal runs on basically one knob that handles compression when you twist right and expansion when you go left. The company pitched it as a way simpler option than stacking multiple processors for EQ, saturation, and dynamics work. Right now, the price sits at 30 bucks instead of the usual 80.
The plugin works on Windows 10 and up, plus recent Mac systems, and it ships with VST3, AU, and AAX formats. Waves claims the single-control approach can pull off everything from aggressive punch to more delicate mix tweaks without needing to understand technical audio stuff. It throws in an auto-gain feature to keep output levels steady while you mess with the main...
The Business Disability Forum rolled out its updated awards program for disability inclusion work, and they switched up the name to put more weight on actual results instead of just vibes. Diane Lightfoot runs the org, and she basically said companies need to show they're making real changes happen for disabled workers and customers rather than just talking about it. The program lets any size company enter for free across 14 different categories, and they added a new tech award specifically aimed at smaller businesses this year.
Winners from previous years say the recognition helped them land partnerships and get taken more seriously by clients. Imali Chislett from a company called Inkfire mentioned their win helped spread the word...
