Month: May 2019

A new mass spectroscopy machine is helping forensic scientists who are looking for a much better view of fingerprints on objects used in a crime. The current methods of making a copy of a fingerprint may not be good enough and DNA swabbing can damage evidence. VOAs Deborah Block reports. ...

South Africa, which has the largest population of rhinos in the world, has been the country hit hardest by poaching. Between 2007 and 2015, there was a 9,000% increase in poaching there, reaching a high of 1,215 animals in 2014. While numbers have been declining since then, poaching remains a problem. But as Faith Lapidus reports, technology is helping turn one game reserve into a high-tech fortress. ...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order this month designed to strengthen the country's cybersecurity workforce, the front line against hackers, domestic and foreign. With 7 billion internet-connected devices in the world, and numbers expected to rise, the threat is growing. Faith Lapidus reports, web-connected devices, from smart homes to drones, are vulnerable. ...

A cat who lost his back legs when he was hit by a train got a new lease on life by getting new prosthetic limbs. They were designed by engineering students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison using a 3D printer. VOA's Deborah Block has more. ...

Billionaire Richard Branson is moving Virgin Galactic’s winged passenger rocket and more than 100 employees from California to a remote commercial launch and landing facility in southern New Mexico, bringing his space tourism dream a step closer to reality. Branson said Friday at a news conference that Virgin Galactic’s development and testing program has advanced enough to make the move to the custom-tailored hangar and runway at the taxpayer-financed Spaceport America facility near the town of Truth or Consequences. Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said a small number of flight tests are pending. He declined to set a specific deadline for the first commercial flight. An interior cabin for the company’s space rocket is being tested, and pilots and engineers are among the employees relocating from California to New Mexico.…

The question comes up over and over, with extremist material, hate speech, election meddling and privacy invasions. Why can't Facebook just fix it? It's complicated, with reasons that include Facebook's size, its business model and technical limitations, not to mention years of unchecked growth. Oh, and the element of human nature. The latest revelation: Facebook is inadvertently creating celebratory videos using extremist content and auto-generating business pages for the likes of Islamic State and al-Qaida. The company says it is working on solutions and the problems are getting better. That is true, but critics say better is not good enough when mass shootings are being live-streamed and online mobs are spreading rumors that lead to deadly violence. "They have been frustratingly slow in dealing with everything from child sexual abuse…

France welcomed Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on Friday with a threat of sweeping new regulation. With Facebook under fire on multiple fronts, Zuckerberg is in Paris to show that his social media giant is working hard to limit violent extremism and hate speech shared online. But a group of French regulators and experts who spent weeks inside Facebook facilities in Paris, Dublin and Barcelona say the company isn't working hard enough. Just before Zuckerberg met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, the 10 officials released a report calling for laws allowing the government to investigate and fine social networks that don't take responsibility for the content that makes them money. The French government wants the legislation to serve as a model for Europe-wide management of social networks. Several countries have introduced…

Nike wants to meet your feet. The sneaker seller will launch a foot-scanning tool on its app this summer that will measure and remember the length, width and other dimensions of customers' feet after they point a smartphone camera to their toes. The app will then tell shoppers what size to buy each of its shoes in, which Nike hopes will cut down on costly online returns as it seeks to sell more of its goods through its websites and apps.    But Nike will also get something it has never had before: a flood of data on the feet of regular people, a potential goldmine for the shoemaker, which says it will use the information to improve the design of its shoes. Nike mainly relies on the feet of…

U.S. communications regulators are rejecting a Chinese telecom company's application to provide service in the U.S. due to national-security risks amid an escalation in tensions between the two countries.   The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted unanimously, 5-0 across party lines, to reject China Mobile International USA Inc.'s long-ago filed application. The Commerce Department had recommended that denial last year.   The company, which the FCC says is ultimately owned by the Chinese government, applied in 2011 to provide international phone service in the U.S.   The Trump administration has been pushing against China in several ways. It has been pressuring allies to reject Chinese telecom equipment for their networks, citing security risks from Chinese telecom giant Huawei.   The U.S. and China are also in the middle of…

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes says it's time to break up the social media behemoth. He says in a New York Times opinion piece that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has allowed a relentless focus on growth to crush competitors and "sacrifice security and civility for clicks." Hughes says Facebook is a monopoly and should be forced to spin off WhatsApp and Instagram. He says future acquisitions should be banned for several years Hughes roomed with Zuckerberg at Harvard and left Facebook in 2007 to campaign for Barack Obama. He says he liquidated his Facebook shares in 2012, the year he became publisher of The New Republic. Last year, Hughes published a book advocating a universal basic income. In 2017, Forbes put his net worth at more than $400 million. ...

Earlier this month, officials from a group of 30 countries agreed to take a more coordinated approach to secure the next generation of fast mobile communication networks, known as 5G. The United States and others worry that technology companies located in countries with governments like China's could be subject to state influence, making the networks insecure. Elizabeth Lee reports on the security concerns over 5G, and what it means to consumers. ...

A senior U.S. State Department official said there is no need for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to explicitly ban Chinese telecommunication company Huawei from taking part in the buildout of the U.S. 5G networks. The four largest U.S. telecom carriers — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint — have agreed not to use Huawei in any part of their 5G networks, said Ambassador Robert Strayer, deputy assistant secretary of state for cyber and international communications and information policy. Strayer spoke with VOA about U.S. 5G policy and security concerns over Huawei. He also said the United States will only use trusted vendors, including South Korea’s Samsung, Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia, in the buildout of the U.S. 5G networks.   WATCH: Is 5G Chinese Technology a Threat to…

U.S. law enforcement officials announced on Wednesday the indictment of two Israeli operators of a website that referred hundreds of thousands of users to underground internet marketplaces to purchase drugs, weapons and other illegal products.     Tal Prihar, 37, an Israeli citizen living in Brazil, and Michael Phan, 34, who lives in Israel, were indicted by a federal grand jury in Western Pennsylvania with money laundering in connection with operating DeepDotWeb, a website that served as a gateway to the Darkweb, the internet's dark underbelly where users can purchase and exchange illegal products.   Prihar was arrested by French authorities in Paris Monday and faces likely extradition to the U.S. Phan was arrested on Monday in Israel and faces charges there.  Prosecutors declined to say whether they'll seek Phan's…

Google’s self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, is teaming up with Lyft in Arizona to attempt to lure passengers away from ride-hailing market leader Uber. The alliance announced Tuesday will allow anyone with the Lyft app in the Phoenix area to summon one of the 10 self-driving Waymo cars that will join the ride-hailing service by end of September. Waymo’s robotic vehicles will still have a human behind the wheel to take control in case something goes awry with the technology. But their use in Lyft’s service could make more people feel comfortable about riding in self-driving cars. Self-driving to a profit Both Lyft and Uber consider self-driving cars to be one of the keys to turning a profit, something neither company has done so far. Meanwhile, Waymo has been slowly expanding…