Year: 2019

Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legislation in parliament on Monday, stoking fears from internet firms and human rights groups that it may give the government too much power and hinder freedom of speech. The law would require social media sites like Facebook to carry warnings…

Networks like Bluetooth connect our devices easily and effortlessly. But the area that these portable networks cover is big enough to make them hackable. Now, a group of engineers from Purdue has solved that problem by turning your body into a network. Kevin Enochs explains.…

Anjana Pasricha contributed to this report. ISLAMABAD - Facebook has removed hundreds of accounts and pages linked to Indian political parties or the Pakistani military for what the company described as "coordinated inauthentic behavior or spam." The Facebook or Instagram accounts, pages or groups were…

Facebook is lifting the lid on the algorithm that decides which posts appear in its news feed, as part of a drive to be more transparent and offer greater control to users. The feature "Why am I seeing this post?", being rolled out from Monday,…

David Johnston stands over a table full of peculiar items confiscated at Dulles International Airport: a glittery clutch with brass knuckles as a clasp. A perfume bottle shaped like a grenade. A rusted circular saw blade. A pocket-sized pitchfork. None of those is quite right.…

For techies and phone geeks, Digital Cambodia 2019 was the place to be. More than a dozen high school students clustered at the booth for Cellcard, Cambodia’s leading mobile operator. Under the booth’s 5G sign, they played video games on their phones. Hak Kimheng, a…

For decades, it was virtually unknown outside a small circle of investors, corporate lawyers and government officials.    But in recent years, the small interagency body known as the Committee for Investment in the United States has grown in prominence, propelled by a U.S. desire…

Facebook said Friday it is further tightening requirements for European Union political advertising, in its latest efforts to prevent foreign interference and increase transparency ahead of the bloc's parliamentary elections. However, some EU politicians criticized the social media giant, saying the measures will make pan-European…

Most of us don't give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks - like buttoning a shirt - can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. Tina Trinh reports.…

At one atom thick, graphene is one of those miracle materials that many say is the stuff of the future. The future may be now as graphene's potential is being realized as the key to quick efficient 5G networks, and the future of telecommunications. VOA's…

Facebook was charged with discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because of its ad-targeting system. HUD said Thursday Facebook is allowing advertisers to exclude people based on their neighborhood by drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map and…

British cybersecurity inspectors have found significant technical issues in Chinese telecom supplier Huawei's software that they say pose risks for the country's telecom companies.   The annual report Thursday said there is only "limited assurance" that long-term national security risks from Huawei's involvement in critical…

Most of us don't give much thought to getting dressed every day, but for the elderly and disabled, seemingly simple tasks like buttoning a shirt can prove complicated. Fashion design students recently looked at low-tech ways to make clothes smarter. VOA's Tina Trinh reports. ...

Facebook has announced it is banning praise, support, and representation of white nationalism and separatism on its platform and on Instagram, which it also owns. The company made the announcement Wednesday in a blog post, saying, "It's clear that these concepts are deeply linked to…

Computers have become so smart during the past 20 years that people don't think twice about chatting with digital assistants like Alexa and Siri or seeing their friends automatically tagged in Facebook pictures. But making those quantum leaps from science fiction to reality required hard…

India says it has successfully tested a new anti-satellite missile, marking another major development in its budding space program. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Wednesday in a nationally televised address that scientists had destroyed a satellite orbiting about 300 kilometers above Earth's atmosphere in a…

In Japan, every emperor's era has its own name - appearing in places such as coins, official paperwork and newspapers - and with abdication coming at the end of April, speculation is swirling about what the new "gengo" will be. Although the Western calendar has…

Mounting public concern over data privacy is pushing tech giants to change their ways, industry experts said on Tuesday, a day after Apple unveiled a series of new products, stressing their privacy-friendly features. The world's second-most valuable technology company will now offer a credit card,…