Month: September 2018

German luxury car brand Audi this week staged the global launch of a new electric sport utility vehicle on the home turf of rival Tesla, and highlighted a deal with Amazon.com Inc. to make recharging its forthcoming e-tron models easier. The Audi e-tron midsize SUV will be offered in the United States next year at a starting price of $75,795 before a $7,500 tax credit. It is one of a volley of electric vehicles coming from Volkswagen AG brands, as well as other European premium brands including Daimler-owned Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo Cars and Jaguar Land Rover. All aim to expand the market for premium electric vehicles and also to grab a share of that market from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tesla, which has had the niche largely to itself. "I want…

A volunteer medic and the man whose life he saved. A lawmaker whose Facebook post calling for protests in Kyiv's Maidan square helped bring down a president. These are some of the characters featured in a virtual reality reconstruction of the bloodiest day in the 2013-14 street demonstrations in Ukraine, when dozens of protesters were killed in the final moments of Viktor Yanukovich's rule. Ahead of the fifth anniversary of the protests, a group of 14 journalists, designers and information technology engineers developed a program that lets a user to walk through the area around Maidan square. Videos of people who were there on Feb. 20 — the bloodiest day of violence — pop up to relate their experiences and explain the significance of particular spots. A transparent blue wall marks where…

SpaceX, Elon Musk's space transportation company, on Monday named its first private passenger as Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa, the founder and chief executive of online fashion retailer Zozo. A former drummer in a punk band, billionaire Maezawa will take a trip around the moon planned for 2023 aboard its forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, taking the race to commercialize space travel to new heights. The first person to travel to the moon since the United States' Apollo missions ended in 1972, Maezawa's identity was revealed at an event on Monday evening at the company's headquarters and rocket factory in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. Maezawa, who is most famous outside Japan for his record-breaking $110 million purchase of an untitled 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting, said he would invite six…

Lasers might soon be the newest line of defense for vulnerable aircraft that are key to keeping other military planes in battle. Air tankers are getting an upgrade next month with the introduction of the new Boeing KC-46 Pegasus, carrying up to about 96,000 kilograms of highly flammable aviation fuel. The long-awaited plane will be able to refuel other aircraft off its wings and to receive fuel from another tanker while its refueling a plane. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has more. ...

There's a push to keep a remote Icelandic nature reserve free from any internet or phone signals to preserve the area's tranquility. But not everyone is on board with the proposed digital free zone. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports. ...

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested $1 billion Monday in an American electric car manufacturer just weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier claimed the kingdom would help his own firm go private. Tesla stock dropped Monday on reaction to the news, the same day that the Saudi fund announced it had taken its first loan, an $11 billion borrowing from global banks as it tries to expand its investments. The Saudi Public Investment Fund said it would invest the $1 billion in Newark, California-based Lucid Motors. The investment "will provide the necessary funding to commercially launch Lucid's first electric vehicle, the Lucid Air, in 2020," the sovereign wealth fund said in a statement. "The company plans to use the funding to complete engineering development and testing of the Lucid…

Researchers are working to create robots that can do all types of jobs and now some scientists are trying to make androids - or robots that appear human. But androids can make some people feel uneasy. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains this feeling or phenomenon known as the "uncanny valley." ...

Facebook is better prepared to defend against efforts to manipulate the platform to influence elections and has recently thwarted foreign influence campaigns targeting several countries, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday. Zuckerberg, posting on his Facebook page, outlined a series of steps the leading social network has taken to protect against misinformation and manipulation campaigns aimed at disrupting elections. "We've identified and removed fake accounts ahead of elections in France, Germany, Alabama, Mexico and Brazil," Zuckerberg said. "We've found and taken down foreign influence campaigns from Russia and Iran attempting to interfere in the US, UK, Middle East, and elsewhere — as well as groups in Mexico and Brazil that have been active in their own country." Zuckerberg repeated his admission that Facebook was ill-prepared for the vast influence efforts…

Apple's polished iPhone line-up comes with tools to help users dial back their smartphone obsessions, amid growing concerns over "addiction" and harmful effects on children. An iOS 12 mobile operating system that will power new iPhones unveiled on Wednesday, and be pushed out as an update to prior models, has new features to reduce how much they distract people from the real world. Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi said of iOS 12 at a developers conference earlier this year the new system offers "detailed information and tools" to help users and parents keep tabs on device use. A new "Screen Time" tool generates activity reports showing how often people pick up their iPhones or iPads, how long they spend in apps or at websites, and numbers…

Apple Inc unveiled larger iPhones and watches based on the design of current models on Wednesday, confirming Wall Street expectations that the company is making only minor changes to its lineup. The world's most valuable tech company wants users to upgrade to newer, more expensive devices as a way to boost revenue as global demand for smartphones levels off. The strategy has helped Apple become the first publicly-traded U.S. company to hit a market value of more than $1 trillion earlier this year. Its shares were down 1.2 percent on Nasdaq. Apple uses the 'S' suffix when it upgrades components but leaves the exterior design of a phone the same. Last year's iPhone X — pronounced "ten" — represented a major redesign. The new phones are the XS, with a…

A group representing major internet companies including Facebook, Amazon.com and Alphabet said on Tuesday it backed modernizing U.S. data privacy rules but wants a national approach that would preempt California's new regulations that take effect in 2020. The Internet Association, a group representing more than 40 major internet and technology firms including Netflix, Microsoft and Twitter, said "internet companies support an economy-wide, national approach to regulation that protects the privacy of all Americans." The group said it backed principles that would ensure consumers should have "meaningful controls over how personal information they provide" is used and should be able to know who it is being shared with. Consumers should also be able to seek deletion of data or request corrections or take personal information to another company that provides similar…