Year: 2018

Self-driving technology is making online shopping a more convenient, more cost-effective experience. One new startup in San Jose, California, is launching a fully driverless delivery service, which many predict is something customers will be seeing a lot more of in the future. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at how these driverless cars are making people's lives easier, in this report narrated by Faith Lapidus. ...

Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it would no longer dispatch employees to the offices of political campaigns to offer support ahead of elections, as it did with U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2016 race. The company and other major online ad sellers, including Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Twitter Inc., have long offered free dedicated assistance to strengthen relationships with top advertisers such as presidential campaigns. Brad Parscale, who was Trump's online ads chief in 2016, last year called on-site "embeds" from Facebook crucial to the candidate's victory. Facebook has said that Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton was offered identical help, but she accepted a different level than Trump. Google and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests to comment on whether they also would pull back support. Facebook said it could offer assistance to more candidates globally by focusing on offering support through an…

The European Union's consumer protection chief said Thursday she's growing impatient with Facebook's efforts to improve transparency with users about their data, warning it could face sanctions for not complying. EU Consumer Commissioner Vera Jourova turned up the pressure on the social media giant, saying she wants the company to update its terms of service and expects to see its proposed changes by mid-October so they can take effect in December.   "I will not hide that I am becoming rather impatient because we have been in dialogue with Facebook almost two years and I really want to see, not the progress — it's not enough for me — but I want to see the results,'' Jourova said.   The EU wants Facebook to give users more information about how their data…

When Behnoush Babzani turned 35, she threw a party. She also used her birthday to ask friends to donate to a cause she cares about deeply: helping people who need bone marrow transplants. She herself received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. “It’s not that my body was making cancerous cells, it was that my body was making no cells,” she said. “So think about the boy in the bubble. I had to be isolated. I didn’t have an immune system to protect me.” Using a new feature on Facebook, Babzani in a few clicks posted a photo of herself in a hospital gown when she was receiving treatment and she asked her friends to help raise $350.   WATCH: Facebook's Birthday Fundraiser Feature Brings Smiles to Charitable Causes…

Facebook has always been a convenient way to send birthday wishes to friends. But many users have started taking advantage of a new feature introduced a year ago by the popular social networking site to turn birthday wishes into donations to help a favorite cause. And it's turned into a huge success for charities. In its first year, Facebook's birthday fundraiser feature raised more than $300 million for charities around the world. Michelle Quinn has more. ...

EU regulators are quizzing merchants and others on U.S. online retailer Amazon's use of their data to discover whether there is a need for action, Europe's antitrust chief said on Wednesday. The comments by European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager came as the world's largest online retailer faces calls for more regulatory intervention and even its potential break-up because of its sheer size. Vestager said the issue was about a company hosting merchants on its site and at the same time competing with these same retailers by using their data for its own sales. "We are gathering information on the issue and we have sent quite a number of questionnaires to market participants in order to understand this issue in full," Vestager told a news conference. "These are very early days…

How to communicate with someone who speaks a different language?  It's an age-old problem. But now with an explosion of translation apps and devices, Michelle Quinn reports that overcoming language barriers is becoming easier. ...

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. ...