2.7 million South African homes affected by drought.

Residents of a South African coastal town say their drinking water "tastes like the sea" as a worsening drought affects fresh water sources, according to a local newspaper.

Citizens of Port Shepstone in KwaZulu-Natal province lined up with buckets for fresh water distributed by officials as one of the driest periods in 50 years increased the salt content of rivers, reported the South Coast Herald newspaper. Elsewhere in the province the levels of dams have dipped to about a third of capacity, according to South Africa's ministry of water and sanitation.

An estimated 2.7 million households, about 18 percent of the population, are affected by the drought, according to the ministry of water and sanitation.

The ministry declared the KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provinces as disaster areas and warned that rural communities in two more provinces face water shortages. South Africa's capital, Pretoria, also implemented water restrictions.

Facebook Replaces 'Maybe' With 'Interested' On Events

Facebook has decided to completely replace the “Maybe” button on Events with an “Interested” button, according to a spokesperson in an interview with The Next Web. The “Interested” button option has been rolled out to every Facebook user and you will likely see it on public Event pages soon. However, private events still appear to have the “Maybe” button.

By selecting the “Interested” option, you are indicating to the Event organizer that you are interested but cannot decide yet. And if you press “Interested,” you will receive notifications and updates from the events. Selecting “Maybe” seemed ambiguous about whether you would actually show up to the event.

Changing the wording from “Maybe” to “Interested” may increase the likelihood that users will respond to invitations. And since more users are expected to respond to invitations, event promoters would be able to reach more users. Facebook has been testing the wording change since March 2013. 

Facebook Events work well for organizing get togethers, including birthday parties and baby showers. Earlier this year, Facebook started alerting users about nearby events and upcoming events. You can also subscribe to events so you will receive notifications when your favorite Pages host events near you.

Facebook Events product manager Aditya Koolwal recently told Mashable that some of the feedback received in regards to events is that users cannot invite all their friends because not all of them use the social network — especially in emerging markets. Eventually users will still be able to invite a friend by entering their email address. That person will receive an email which lets them RSVP without requiring a Facebook account. “You won’t have the full Facebook experience, but for me, that’s fine, because as the organizer of that event, it’s important to know that I can invite you,” said Koolwal in the interview.

The least popular feature added to Events this year was “read receipts.” The read receipts will allow hosts to see who received invitations and reviewed the updates posted to the Event page. The read receipts look similar to the ones used in the Facebook Messenger and Groups services 

Back in July, Facebook revealed that there are 450 million active users on Facebook Events. Eventually Facebook may launch a standalone Events app, but there are no plans to develop one as of right now.

YouTube Red: Is Google's ad-free media-streaming service worth the price of admission?

Going down the YouTube rabbit hole can be frustrating. You want to catch up on last night’s late show or check out a few sports highlights, but you soon find yourself trapped in mind-numbing loop of annoying advertisements. It can bad enough to make you think your pay-TV bundle is a great deal.

But the ads are there for a reason: content producers deserve to get paid. It might not matter as much for the big companies who throw their stuff on YouTube merely for exposure; but for video bloggers and other independent creators, it can mean the difference between making a living and going back to their day jobs.

Google thinks it has the answer for both viewers and content producers: YouTube Red, a $10-per-month subscription service that grants you ad-free access to virtually all of YouTube’s video vault. YouTube Red works anywhere you encounter YouTube videos: youtube.com, embedded videos across the web, and within YouTube’s Android and iOS apps.

In addition to that, your subscription also includes the unlimited version of Google Play Music (and if you already have a paid subscription to that service, you now have access to YouTube Red, too). More on that later.

Here’s what you get

In addition to Google Play Music and ad-free videos, you get two other goodies with a YouTube Red subscription: First, when watching on a mobile device, you can save videos offline so you can watch them even when you don’t have an Internet connection. Second, videos will continue to play in the background even if you lock your mobile device or switch to another app.

Those features are the outgrowth of YouTube Music Key Beta, which Google rolled out last year as a trial run at how it might reinvent YouTube. The company provided the same offline access and background playing, while eliminating advertisements on music videos.

I’ve been a Play Music subscriber since day one, and I really came to appreciate the ability to save a video offline or to keep a song playing while zipping over to another app. Be aware, however, that you’ll need to hop into the settings to enable background play; by default, YouTube kicks it on only if your device is connected to headphones or a speaker.

But YouTube Red feels liberating: there’s no dreading an irritating advertisement every time I go to launch a new video. It’s made me go to YouTube more often to seek out a how-to video or to just glance at the various subscription channels. I know I’m a member of the “in” crowd now, so I’m more apt to spend time there.

YouTube is subtly integrated with Google Play Music: If there’s a video for the song you’re listening to, you’ll see the album art in both the mobile apps and browser-based player. Each artist page also has a collection of their YouTube videos.

If you’re not all that into music videos it might be uninteresting, but I like the ability to discover a new song through one of Play Music’s curated stations and then see what the artists can do on camera. It’s a great add-on.

It’s a compelling package, for some

From what I’ve seen so far, YouTube Red—combined with Google Play Music—is a compelling package. For $10 a month you get an excellent streaming-music service plus a supercharged YouTube experience.

If you’re already a Play Music subscriber, you automatically get YouTube Red. And if you’re one of the few early adopters who signed up for Play Music at launch (and stuck with it) you’re still locked in at the $8-per-month rate. Now that is an absolute steal.

That’s what Google hopes, of course. This ad-free bliss, however, is limited to paid YouTube content, such as movie and TV rentals and purchases, and YouTube’s gaming channel. But Google will soon offer more to hook you in. There’s a YouTube Music app in the works (YouTube is the home to most of the world’s music videos, so it’s the right kind of vertical to launch), and YouTube is developing original programming, just like Amazon has done with its Prime service.

The original content looks to be quite the mashup of comedy, drama, and romance, but we’ll need to actually see how it turns out to determine if the quality is there. This excites me less, especially since none of it’s ready yet; but it does give me the feeling that there will be at least some extra value for my monthly fee.

A gateway to Google Play Music

As I mentioned earlier, a YouTube Red subscription includes the unlimited version of Google Play Music. Similar to Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and other services, this gives you a broad catalog of music for streaming and/or offline listening. You can also upload music that you own (up to 50,000 tracks) to an online music locker and play them through the Play Music site and its mobile app.

The 320Kbps streaming bit rate isn’t audiophile quality—Tidal streams in lossless FLAC—but it’s better than what some other streaming-music services offer. If you’re concerned about going over your mobile data plan’s cap, you can configure the app to stream at the highest bit rate only when you’re on a Wi-Fi network.

What's unknown at this point is if you’ll get to join the YouTube Red party as part of the new Play Music family plans that will launch soon. It seems likely, but we won’t know for sure until Google chimes in.

I won't formally review YouTube Red at this point, because none of its original series are available for screening, but I'm a fan of what Google has put together so far. If you don't care about music videos, and you're already subscribing to another music-streaming service (paid or free), you might not feel the same. Google is offering a 30-day free trial if you're curious. Just remember, this is still YouTube: For every piece of quality content, you'll encounter 100 painfully amateur videos.

What’s Happening in Your Brain and Body as You Listen to Music

You wake up to a song as your alarm clock, stream music while you crunch numbers at work, blast power workout playlists at the gym, and attend music festivals on the weekend. But did you know that what you’re listening to can actually affect how you act, feel, and think?

“The effect of music on the brain or body depends in part on its genre,” Frank A. Russo, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Ryerson University, tells Yahoo Health. But it also depends on whether or not you like the song. “Someone who is a ‘metalhead’ will be able to hear all sorts of emotions in music that others would generally hear as being aggressive,” he says.

Regardless of your taste in music, here are some things that happen in your brain and body every time you push play on Spotify. Your mood improves. Listening to “Happy” by Pharrell Williams can actually cheer you up. Research published in the Journal of Positive Psychology shows that listening to upbeat music improves mood, with one catch — it only works if you have the desire to be happy. Test subjects who listened to the upbeat music without feeling an urge to be happy did not see their moods change. “Listening to positive music may be an effective way to improve happiness, particularly when it is combined with an intention to become happier,” the study says. A separate study also showed that the “feel-good” neurochemical called dopamine is released when we listen to music. 

You work better. A 1993 study on “the Mozart effect” showed that listening to Mozart could improve standardized test scores. However, it’s not just classical music that has this effect. A study published in the journal Intelligence shows that people exposed to music performed better at spatial tasks than those not listening to music, but this was not dependent on the musical genre. One of the researchers in the Mozart effect study, Frances Rauscher, explained the implications to NPR: “The key to it is that you have to enjoy the music. If you hate Mozart, you’re not going to find a Mozart effect. If you love Pearl Jam, you’re going to find a Pearl Jam effect.” 

Xiaomi moves to sell its phones in Africa

Fresh from its June launch in Brazil, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is hoping to make a splash in a totally new continent -- Africa.

This time, however, Xiaomi won't be on its own. It will work with the Mobile in Africa Group to sell two of its smartphones in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.

he budget-friendly Redmi 2 and the slightly higher-end Mi 4 phones will go on sale in the middle of November.

"We see Africa as the next frontier for smartphone growth," said Xiaomi's global strategy director, Raymond Tian, in a statement. "And we are excited to be partnering with MIA Group to offer consumers in these three countries our high-quality smartphones at amazing prices."

For the first time in the company's history, Xiaomi won't directly sell its phones to consumers. Instead, the MIA Group will handle sales, marketing and customer support.

Valued at $45 billion, Xiaomi has gone from strength to strength. It's now the world's fifth-largest smartphone maker and it overtook Apple in the Chinese smartphone market earlier this year. However, it's since lost that position to Chinese rival Huawei.

Xiaomi will need to succeed in the African market to hit its 100 million smartphone sales target for 2015. In the first half of 2015, it sold just under 35 million ​phones. However, China's upcoming Black Friday equivalent, Singles Day on November 11, will likely help inch it closer to its sales target.

Sub-Saharan Africa's first metro railway

Commuters in Addis Ababa, the booming capital of Ethiopia, now have an option to rise above the notoriously congested streets of the city with the opening of a new metro -- the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ato Workeneh Gebeyehu, the country's Minister of Transport, says that each day, more than 60,000 people use the north-south and east-west lines that form the first phase of the project; when completed, the railway should carry 100,000 people per day.

Gebeyehu says that the project is focused on providing an affordable solution for the country's low income workers.

"When the government thought of constructing this, it was for low income people, the people who are using the minibuses," he explains. 

"The majority of the users who move from the city, travel from here to there, people who are working in the factories, government offices and so on and so forth... most of them cannot afford expensive transportation." 

etachew Betru, the CEO of the Ethiopian Railways Corporation, says that the plan is not to make money, but to provide a service to the city to enable its growth.

"The light rail is not a commercial business, it is a social infrastructure. Economically it's not very expensive, the longest you go you pay nothing more than 30¢. It is reliable, you can time yourself to go anywhere you want to go. So the convenient effect will give an added value to the city of Addis," he says.

Many of Addis Ababa's inhabitants rely on 'taxis' -- actually minibus services that make short journeys around the city. Betru says that the light rail will not compete with these small businesses, but will be complementary, offering a cheaper way to cover large distances, and allowing travelers to link up with minibuses at metro stations.

BlackBerry releases its first Android smartphone

 The future of BlackBerry’s smartphone businessmay very well be sitting in your hands later this week.

The BlackBerry Priv, the company’s first Android device, marks what could be a last-ditch attempt by the Waterloo, Ont.-based developer to create a phone popular enough to save its struggling hardware division.

If the Priv doesn’t sell, it’s almost certain BlackBerry will pull the plug on designing phones after a series of sales flops whittled down its thriving device business into a money-losing operation.

“BlackBerry’s handset business rides on the success or failure of the Priv,” said technology analyst Carmi Levy.

“If this device doesn’t turn the sales tide around, expect a quick decision in the new year.” After being pummelled by the likes of Apple and Samsung, BlackBerry is doing what some of its critics say should’ve happened years ago: appealing to existing smartphone trends instead of fighting against them.

For first time in its history, BlackBerry will be selling a phone beginning Friday that doesn’t run on its own operating system, using Google’s Android system instead.

It’s a compromise with the mainstream on almost every level. On the surface, its larger touch screen evokes the design of most smartphones on the market, while a slider keyboard caters to more traditional BlackBerry users who still favour one of the company’s most beloved features.

In naming the device Priv – short for privacy and privilege – the company hopes to tap into a conversation about how we unknowingly share our personal details with third parties through various phone apps.

BlackBerry promises the Priv will help users learn exactly who is accessing their information by monitoring the legitimacy of apps and outlining how many times services like Facebook and free games log details like GPS co-ordinates, access image files or activate the microphone.

Whether those selling features are enough to lure back former “CrackBerry” users remains to be seen.

BlackBerry put off calls to build a phone on the Android for years, despite appeals from some analysts to abandon what they considered was a tunnel-vision perspective that ignored some of the biggest failures of its own devices.

Using the world’s most popular operating system resolves one of the biggest setbacks of the company’s most recent models: a lack of apps that set it miles behind other phones that could stream Netflix, post on Instagram and interact through Snapchat.

BlackBerry executives had tried to overcome the hurdle, but with every year it became harder to ignore how quickly the company was falling short of what people expected from their phones.

When John Chen joined the company in late 2013, one of his first priorities was saving the company from its own app disaster.

“I was swimming uphill against the application people,” he said in late September. “Eventually it didn’t matter how hard I tried.”

After a partnership with Amazon’s app store failed to completely solve the app shortage, Chen was faced with breaking one of BlackBerry’s cardinal rules which resisted saddling up to a competitor’s operating system.

But putting the pride of BlackBerry aside wasn’t easy. The decision was “highly contested and debated” by employees, Chen said.

One former insider at the company, who was not authorized to speak about BlackBerry’s internal operations, said employees were concerned that making an Android phone would result in widespread layoffs – a fear that he says began to prove true when BlackBerry slashed its development staff over the summer.

After an ugly transition period, the Priv arrives in stores nearly two years after concepts for the device began to take shape.

Over the coming weeks, BlackBerry will unveil a marketing campaign it says forgoes the traditional launch event in favour of spending on advertising throughout the crucial holiday shopping season.

The goal of boosting BlackBerry sales could prove a huge challenge against a slate of high-end devices from industry giants, particularly Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy.

This year, sales of a variety of cheaper phones, like Google’s Nexus, Sony and LG, have also picked up momentum, and that could make it harder for BlackBerry to pitch a compelling case to invest in its pricier device, which lists for $899 at BlackBerry’s Canadian web store without a carrier contract.

If the Priv doesn’t sell, BlackBerry would likely scale back its staff even further and pivot attention to its software licensing and services division.

Chief operating officer Marty Beard said BlackBerry executives have been focused on ensuring that doesn’t happen.

“We’re doing everything we can to make hardware a profitable business, of which meeting our business case objectives for Priv is a very important part,” he said.

“We have a down-to-the-penny view on what we need to achieve with Priv and we’re very focused on that.”

While Beard wouldn’t provide presales figures, he said advance orders for the Priv have been “much” better than the Passport, Classic and Leap devices.

Executives have also emphasized that despite pairing with Android, the company isn’t abandoning its BlackBerry 10 operating system. It plans to offer new updates in early 2016.

Before the middle of next year, Chen needs to make a few big decisions, including whether there’s still hope in making BlackBerry phones a viable business.

While outsiders might be skeptical, the CEO said he’s confident the hardware division can still become profitable.

“It’s doable,” he said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.”