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Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies at 56 of lung cancer

YouTube’s former chief executive and long-time Google executive Susan Wojcicki died on Saturday at the age of 56 after a two-year battle with lung cancer.

“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” Dennis Troper, Wojcicki’s husband, said in a Facebook post.

“Over the last two years, even as she dealt with great personal difficulties, Susan devoted herself to making the world better through her philanthropy, including supporting research for the disease that ultimately took her life,” Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.

One of the most prominent women in tech, Wojcicki joined Google in 1999 to become one of the first few employees of the web search leader, years before it acquired YouTube.

Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Before becoming CEO of YouTube in 2014, Wojcicki was senior vice president for ad products at Google.

After nine years at the helm, Wojcicki stepped down from her role at YouTube in 2023 to focus on “family, health, and personal projects”. She was replaced by her deputy, Neal Mohan, a senior advertising and product executive who joined Google in 2008. Wojcicki at that time planned to take on an advisory role at Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

“Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine. Their names were Larry and Sergey .... It would be one of the best decisions of my life,” Wojcicki wrote in a blog post on the day she left YouTube, referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Today we at YouTube lost a teammate, mentor, and friend, Susan Wojcicki,” Mohan said in a post on X.

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'We have the flight records': Trump insists that he was on helicopter with Willie Brown

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled down on Friday evening that he had an emergency helicopter landing with Willie Brown, even as the former San Francisco mayor denied such an incident ever happened.

Trump told the New York Times he had records to back his claim , but he has not produced them.

On Thursday, it appeared Trump had confused Brown with the former California Governor Jerry Brown , during a press conference, including a bizarre and false story about a near-death experience in a helicopter.

Adding to the mystery, a former Los Angeles city council member, 95-year-old Nate Holden, told POLITICO  that it was, in fact, he who was with Trump aboard the helicopter.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden told POLITICO. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles."

From Mar-a-Lago, the former president dramatically recalled a story about almost crashing on a flight while traveling with  Willie Brown, who briefly dated Vice President  Kamala Harris  several decades ago.

“I went down in a helicopter with him; we thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

Trump claimed that Brown had made critical comments about Harris, but the former mayor refuted those remarks, stating that he was always on good terms with his former protégée, even after their breakup.

“And Willie was — he was a little concerned, Trump explained. “So, I know him, but I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about her. But this is what you’re telling me, anyway, I guess. But he had a big part in what happened with Kamala. But he — he, I don’t know, maybe he’s changed his tune. But he — he was not a fan of hers very much, at that point.”

However, new details show that perhaps Trump confused the two California politicians.

Brown, a longtime Democratic power broker who also served as the California State Assembly speaker, told the San Francisco Chronicle after Trump’s press conference that he was never in a helicopter with the former president .

“You would have known if I had gone down on a helicopter with Trump,” he told the newspaper. He also denied that he had ever said anything disparaging about Harris to Trump.

The NYT reported that Willie Brown wasn’t on the helicopter flight at all , but Gov. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California. The current governor of California, Gavin Newsom , who was also on the flight, said there was no emergency landing, and the helicopter’s passengers were never in any danger.

“I call complete B.S.,” Newsom said.

So what did happen on the helicopter?

In 2018, then-President Trump toured fire-ravaged portions of California via helicopter alongside then-California Governor Jerry Brown.

Brown, who left office in January 2019, confirmed to CNN through a spokesperson, that there was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.

Trump’s campaign and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday about the apparent mix-up.

When President Joe Biden , 81, was still running for reelection, Trump, 78, frequently challenged him to take a cognitive test, alleging he was unfit for office.

Biden has since been replaced atop the ticket by the 59-year-old Harris, forcing Trump to scramble to find new lines of attack.

Reuters contributed to the reporting of this story

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Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki dies at 56 of lung cancer

YouTube’s former chief executive and long time Google executive  Susan Wojcicki  died on Saturday at the age of 56 after a two-year battle with lung cancer.

“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” Dennis Troper, Wojcicki’s husband, said in a Facebook post.

“Over the last two years, even as she dealt with great personal difficulties, Susan devoted herself to making the world better through her philanthropy, including supporting research for the disease that ultimately took her life,” Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.

One of the most prominent women in tech, Wojcicki joined Google in 1999 to become one of the first few employees of the web search leader, years before it acquired YouTube.

Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Before becoming CEO of YouTube in 2014, Wojcicki was senior vice president for ad products at Google.

After nine years at the helm, Wojcicki stepped down from her role at YouTube in 2023 to focus on “family, health, and personal projects”. She was replaced by her deputy, Neal Mohan, a senior advertising and product executive who joined Google in 2008. Wojcicki at that time planned to take on an advisory role at Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

“Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine. Their names were Larry and Sergey .... It would be one of the best decisions of my life,” Wojcicki wrote in a blog post on the day she left YouTube, referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Today we at YouTube lost a teammate, mentor, and friend, Susan Wojcicki,” Mohan said in a post on X.

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How to fast travel with the Battle Bus and Bus Stations in Lego Fortnite

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The Battle Bus arrived in Lego Fortnite as of an August 2024 update, giving the option for limited fast travel between Bus Stations .

Our Lego Fortnite Bus Station guide will explain how to build Bus Stations and how to fast trave l.

How to build Bus Stations in Lego Fortnite

The Bus Stations you’ll need to summon the Battle Bus to your Lego Fortnite village are a high-level construction. You’ll need to have reached the snowy Frostlands biome to build one.

You’ll need:

• 4 iron bars
• 2 malachite slabs
• 6 frostpine
• 3 rift shards

Those first three ingredients are easy enough to find in Frostlands biomes, but the last one — rift shards — a new and unique. Let’s talk about them.

Where to find rift shards in Lego Fortnite

Rift shards are a unique resource that you can only get by destroying Bus Stations . Since they’re made out of high-level (Frostlands) materials, you’ll need an epic pickaxe (8 obsidian slabs, 5 frostpine rods) to deal any damage.

To destroy one, you’ll need to find said bus stations.

Where to find Bus Stations in Lego Fortnite

The short answer is that you find Bus Stations by exploring the world .

You’ll find one near your world’s spawn point. Beyond that, all we can say is that they seem exceedingly rare. When you’re close to one, you may hear a low pulsing sound. Better yet, you can look for the blue light on the roof (especially at night).

Why can’t I destroy Bus Stations in Lego Fortnite?

Update (8/9/2024): The indestructible Bus Stations bug has been fixed. You can now tear down any Bus Station you find to gather up those precious rift shards.

It's time to thank the Bus Driver! Battle Buses will now arrive to help you travel quickly across the world! The Bus Stations are also destructible, so you can tear them down and rebuild them where you like. Additionally, we deployed a fix for an issue that was spawning… pic.twitter.com/sytL5gveT4 — LEGO Fortnite Status (@LEGOFN_Status) August 7, 2024

Original story (8/7/2024): As of August 7, there’s currently a bug that makes the naturally spawned Bus Stations — the ones you have to destroy to collect rift shards — indestructible. Even in sandbox mode. You can destroy any Bus Stations you build yourself in sandbox mode, but there’s currently no solution for survival.

That means that there’s no way to gather the necessary rift shards at the moment. You can still use any Bus Station you find to fast travel to the Rebel Base, though.

We are aware that the Battle Bus may not arrive at the station. We are also looking into an issue where the Bus Stations may appear indestructible. We are actively investigating and will provide an update when we have one. pic.twitter.com/X455oIlVhQ — LEGO Fortnite Status (@LEGOFN_Status) August 6, 2024

Looking for more on Lego Fortnite? Check out our Lego Fortnite beginners guide . We also have guides on how to play multiplayer with your buddies , how to find caves , and how to build a successful village . And if you’re looking for places to go, see our list of the best seeds in Lego Fortnite .

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First Nigerian to travel into space - what this flight means for the country’s ambitions

Law lecturer, University of Calabar

Disclosure statement

Anne Uruegi Agi is affiliated with Learnspace Foundation as a Trustee and President and the Africa Space Leadership Institute as the Secretary of the Institute.

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The Blue Origin space craft owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is to take six individuals to space from nations historically underrepresented in space exploration. Nigeria is one of the selected countries. Though a date is yet to be fixed for this particular trip, the Blue Origin space flight usually lasts about 11 minutes, during which participants are expected to undertake an experiment of their choice. The partnership to send the first Nigerian to space was facilitated by Anne Agi, a space law and policy academic and president of LearnSpace Foundation . She explains, in this interview with The Conversation’s West Africa regional editor, Adejuwon Soyinka, why the space trip is important and its benefits for Nigeria as the country marks 25 years of its space exploration journey.

How did this come about?

The Space Exploration and Research Agency , a US based organisation, has an initiative called the Human Space Flight Program . Its mandate is to democratise space for everyone. The agency is purchasing seats on the Blue Origin which will be given out for free to partner nations with little or no space footprint.

In June 2022, the programme launched the second Brazilian ever to go to space. On the next flight, one seat is guaranteed to go to a Nigerian. Also on the flight will be an Indian and citizens from some small island developing states (yet to be determined).

The date is yet to be fixed.

How will the person be chosen?

The arrangement is that the Nigerian public will choose someone in an open, democratic voting process that will be administered by the Space Exploration and Research Agency . Any Nigerian can apply as long as they are over 18 years of age, are healthy and have basic English language skills. They don’t need to be a scientist.

A public online voting process will select the Nigerian for the mission. Think of this as a “Big Brother reality show on space”.

This Nigerian will then team up with citizens of five other countries for the space flight. It will take off from a Blue Origin facility in the US.

During the short space flight, the space farers will be allowed to undertake one experiment. Researchers and scientists in Nigeria’s National Space Research and Development Agency are already meeting to decide what experiment the Nigerian will take up.

The Nigerian space agency is also encouraging Nigerian students to come up with an experiment.

Read more: One of Nigeria's satellites is on its last legs: why this is worrying

What building blocks has Nigeria put in place in space-related activities?

Nigeria has established the National Space Research and Development Agency , responsible for coordinating space-related activities, including human spaceflight, and has sponsored or co-sponsored six satellites .

Nigeria has also partnered with the Space Exploration and Research Agency to access a reliable launch vehicle and spacecraft capable of carrying humans to space. The country has established a training programme to prepare astronauts for space travel, including physical conditioning, scientific knowledge and spaceflight operations.

Nigeria has developed ground infrastructure, such as mission control centres, tracking stations and communication networks, to support space missions. And lastly, it has fostered partnerships with international organisations and space agencies.

Why is this important for Nigeria and what are the benefits?

First, Nigeria’s entry into human spaceflight will open doors to new international collaborations, commercial opportunities and access to space-based resources. Asteroids, for example, are rich in platinum, cobalt and helium-3 – rare but valuable materials.

The mission will conduct scientific experiments which may lead to breakthroughs in various fields.

Secondly, it will signify to the world that Nigeria is intentional about its space programme. This could attract investors in the science and technology sector.

Increased funding will also attract and retain the best talents in the field in Nigeria. Investing in space exploration can drive long-term economic growth, innovation and human capital development, aligning with Nigeria’s Vision 2050 goals .

Read more: There's a case for Nigeria and South Africa to cooperate on outer space activities

Thirdly, it can inspire young Nigerians to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Fourth, the preparation and actual event are crucial for Nigeria to demonstrate its capabilities, build expertise, and reap the benefits of space exploration and development.

Read more: Outer space: Rwanda and Nigeria sign an accord for more responsible exploration – why this matters

What’s your assessment of Nigeria’s 25-year space journey?

I’d say early initiatives like the establishment of the National Space Research and Development Agency in 1999 and training of professionals in satellite technology, space science and related disciplines were notable. They have inspired a new generation of scientists and engineers.

Starting with the NigeriaSat-1 in 2003, Nigeria became one of the few African countries with an indigenous satellite in orbit. It provides valuable data for various applications, including disaster management and environmental monitoring. Subsequent satellites have furthered capabilities in Earth observation and remote sensing, aiding agriculture, disaster management and urban planning.

Nigeria has collaborated with international space agencies and organisations, including partnerships with China, Russia, the European Space Agency, and recently with private space agencies. These collaborations have provided opportunities for knowledge exchange, research and training.

Despite these achievements, Nigeria’s space programme faces challenges and setbacks. Funding constraints affect the timely development and launch of new satellites, as well as the maintenance of existing infrastructure.

This has also created a gap in indigenous technological capabilities for more complex missions such as deep space exploration or advanced satellite communication systems. As a result, Nigeria depends on foreign technology and expertise.

There is also the challenge of attracting and retaining space technology talent. Brain drain to countries with more established space programmes is a risk, especially without competitive salaries and career development prospects.

Nigeria’s weak institutional and policy framework also hampers the sector. A stronger institutional structure and clearer policy guidelines and legal framework could help streamline efforts and maximise the impact of the space program.

Increased and sustained funding for the National Space Research and Development Agency, and space research and development programmes to attract and retain top space talent, are ways to improve the sector. There is also a need for public awareness campaigns on the benefits of space technology and international collaborations to access advanced technologies and expertise.

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