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Florida shooting: US high school students stage mass walkout

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Students and school staff across the US are commemorating the Florida school shootings with a walkout, exactly one month after the killings. They are stopping lessons for 17 minutes in memory of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stone-man Douglas High School. A former pupil has been charged with the killings. Organizers of the protest accuse Congress of failing to tackle gun violence adequately. The White House revealed a plan this week to deter school shootings which does not include President Donald Trump's repeated calls to raise the age for buying semi-automatic rifles to 21. Instead, it moves ahead with his controversial proposal to provide firearms training to school employees. The walkouts were scheduled to begin at 10:00 (10:00 EST is 14:00 GMT) across America's time zones. Organizers of the National School Walkout, who were also behind the Women's March in January 2017 against Mr Trump's inauguration, are calling on "students, teacher

Google pulls down 3.2bn adverts, reveals how much publishers got in 1 year

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Google pulled down 3.2 billion adverts that violated its advertising and publishers policies in 2017, adding that this was more than 100 bad adverts per second in Nigeria and other part of the world. Google explained that it used this approach to block the majority of bad adverts experiences, like malvertising and phishing scams, before the scams impacted people. Google said it took specific actions against violating adverts involved in scraping; tabloid cloaking; malicious activity; malware and trick to click formats. The United States of America’s technology company went on to reveal that it paid publishers $12.6 billion in the year under review. It added that 79 million adverts were blocked on its network for attempting to send people to malware-laden sites, and removed 400,000 of these unsafe sites last year. It equally removed 66 million, “trick-to-click” adverts as well as 48 million adverts that were attempting to get users to install unwanted software.

Paris Jackson Lights Up Her First Film Premiere in Valentino

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Paris Jackson’s star is rising. She appears in her first movie, Gringo , alongside heavyweights like Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried, and for last night's premiere in L.A., Jackson chose a look that reflected her new status. Her black gown from Valentino with a snake curving up its necklines projected the elegance of old Hollywood. She kept things simple elsewhere with her slicked-back, oversized hoop earrings, and a plum-stained pout, offering a departure from the bombshell vibe of her Oscar-night Versace dress and the hippie chic of her off-duty wardrobe.Of course, Jackson’s foray into classic fashion doesn’t mean she’s lost her inner rock chick.  She let her personality show beneath the layers of tulle and embroidery, from her visible tattoos to her now-signature beaded bracelets. Enjoying the night out with her co-stars and her big brother Prince, she marked the next chapter of her career in style.

US moots exemptions to metal tariffs

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Canada and Mexico may be exempt from US plans to impose tariffs on metal imports, the White House says. Other countries may also see "carve-outs" on national security grounds, press secretary Sarah Sanders said. US President Donald Trump has said steel products will face a 25% tariff, with 10% on aluminum goods. But there are fears the plans could spark a trade war, and it reportedly helped lead to the resignation of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn. The EU has proposed retaliatory measures against a number of US goods including bourbon and peanut butter. Despite opposition at home and abroad, Ms Sanders said the US president would sign the measures in by the end of the week. But she added: "There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well based on that process. That would be [on] a case-by-case and country by country basis." Mr Trump has railed against the US trade

Black Panther — Good film with many lessons for Nigeria

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Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President of Nigeria, has disclosed the lessons he has learnt from the new movie ‘Black Panther’. Atiku Abubakar writes: Over the weekend, I joined my children to watch the much talked about ‘Black Panther’. It was a good film, and I was happy they took me to see it. However, I came out of the movie theater a little upset. When the first scenes came up, and I saw “Sambisa Forest” I was unhappy that the only reference the filmmakers could have for Nigeria was a negative one, but I was later encouraged by the thought of Africans solving African problems. That is a good thing, the kinds of things we used to do. For young people who may not remember, Nigerian civil servants and indeed most able citizens used to contribute money every month to support the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. Nigeria was the single stabilizing force across West Africa. Helping to restore peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone are examples of the gigantic st