3 Charged in Massive Twitter Hack, Bitcoin Scam

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A British man, a Florida man and a Florida teen hacked the Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls to scam people around globe out of more than $100,000 in bitcoin, authorities said Friday. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested Friday in Tampa, where the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office will prosecute him as adult. He faces 30 felony charges, according to a news release. Mason Sheppard, 19, of Bognor Regis, U.K., and Nima Fazeli, 22, of Orlando, were charged in California federal court. In one of the most high-profile security breaches in recent years, hackers sent out bogus tweets on July 15 from the accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and a number of tech billionaires including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Tesla CEO…


Twitter Bans Account of Former KKK Leader David Duke

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Twitter Inc said on Friday it has permanently suspended the account of David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan, as the social media company tries to curb the spread of hateful content on its website.Duke's account had been suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter's policy on hateful content and harmful links, the micro-blogging site said.Under Twitter's hateful conduct policy, any threats of attacks directed at people on the basis of their religion, race or ethnicity is prohibited on its website.Twitter has long been under pressure to clean up hateful content on its platform and has come under the scanner to control misinformation especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.The KKK is the oldest white supremacist group in the United States and its roots trace back to the…


EU Sanctions Russian Intelligence, N.Korean, Chinese Firms over Alleged Cyberattacks

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The European Union on Thursday imposed travel and financial sanctions on a department of Russia's military intelligence service and on firms from North Korea and China over their suspected participation in major cyberattacks across the world.In its first-ever sanctions related to cybercrime, the EU targeted the department for special technologies of the Russian military intelligence service, known as Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, it said in a statement.The bloc accused the Russian service of having carried out two cyberattacks in June 2017, which hit several companies in Europe resulting in large financial losses. The service is also accused of two cyberattacks against Ukraine's power grid in 2015 and 2016.Four individuals working for the Russian military intelligence service were also sanctioned for…


WHO Warns Africa Against Easing of Coronavirus Restrictions

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The World Health Organization on Thursday warned Africa against easing coronavirus restrictions as the number of infections on the continent has doubled in the past month.WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said at a virtual news conference, “We are concerned that ... we will see an increase in cases as we have seen in [other] countries” where restrictions have been eased too soon.”She said more than 20 African countries have recorded more new cases than in the previous weeks, with South Africa accounting for the most but increases also reported in Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe.Moeti said Uganda, Seychelles and Mauritius are doing well in controlling the virus.The WHO said there have been nearly 890,000 reported coronavirus cases in Africa and 18,000 deaths.World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros…


Amid Pandemic, Big Tech Reports Mixed Earnings

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Big Tech companies reported mixed quarterly earnings Thursday, a day after their top executives faced a tough congressional grilling over their market power and alleged monopolistic practices.The staggering economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic was reflected in reports released Thursday from Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google's corporate parent, Alphabet.Apple delivered surprisingly strong numbers with both its revenue and profit rising, defying analysts' lowered expectations. The iPhone maker's revenue rose 11% to nearly $60 billion while profit rose 12% to $11.3 billion.Alphabet, Google's holding company, reported its first-ever drop in quarterly revenue compared with the prior year. Although it was only a 2% decline, it was a telling sign of a downturn in the digital ad market while also serving as a reminder that the economy is struggling even more…


NASA Rover En Route to Mars to Look for Signs of Life

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The U.S. has launched its next-generation Mars rover in search of potential signs of life on the red planet.NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, launched at 11:50 GMT Thursday from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern state of Florida.The robotic explorer was propelled into space by an Atlas 5 rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between private aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed.The rocket has separated from the first stage and is being boosted to orbit by the Centaur second stage. @NASAPersevere is now preparing for a second burn that will put it on a trajectory towards Mars. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/MBRqcxMTdw — NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in February at the bottom of a 250-meter crater that was a lake some 3.5 billion years ago.…


NASA Rover Continues Quest to Find Evidence of Life on Mars

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NASA aims its new rover to an ancient Martian river delta searching for evidence of past life.  A French astronaut is scheduled to become the first European astronaut aboard a SpaceX capsule destined for the International Space Station. And Virgin Galactic unveils a new spaceship. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space. ...


US Launches Next-Generation Rover to Mars

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The U.S. has launched its next-generation Mars rover in search of potential signs of life on the red planet.NASA’s latest rover, Perseverance, launched at 11:50 GMT Thursday from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern state of Florida.The robotic explorer was propelled into space by an Atlas 5 rocket operated by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between private aerospace companies Boeing and Lockheed.The rocket has separated from the first stage and is being boosted to orbit by the Centaur second stage. @NASAPersevere is now preparing for a second burn that will put it on a trajectory towards Mars. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/MBRqcxMTdw — NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The rover is scheduled to land on Mars in February at the bottom of a 250-meter crater that was a lake some 3.5 billion years ago.…


NASA’s Next-Generation Mars Rover Launches Thursday Morning

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NASA's next-generation Mars rover Perseverance is set for liftoff from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Thursday on a mission to search for traces of potential past life on Earth's planetary neighbor.The U.S. space agency's $2.4 billion mission is scheduled for launch at 7:50 a.m. ET and is expected to reach Mars in February.LIVE NOW: The #CountdownToMars begins. We are launching a historic mission to the Red Planet. Tune in to watch @NASAPersevere liftoff and begin her mission to search for signs of ancient life on another world: https://t.co/JxyRCol01i— NASA (@NASA) July 30, 2020The car-sized six-wheeled robotic rover, which will launch atop an Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance, also is scheduled to deploy a mini helicopter on Mars and test out equipment for future human missions…


COVID Vaccines Enter Final Tests 

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Two coronavirus vaccines entered the final phase of testing this week. There are now five shots in the pipeline. Scientists expect to know by the end of the year if any of them are safe and effective. VOA's Steve Baragona has this update. ...


2020’s Final Mars Mission Poised for Blastoff from Florida

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The summer's third and final mission to Mars — featuring NASA's most elaborate life-hunting rover — is on the verge of liftoff.The rover Perseverance will follow China's rover-orbiter combo and a United Arab Emirates orbiter, both launched last week. It will take the spacecraft seven months to reach Mars after traveling 300 million miles.Once on the surface, Perseverance will scrounge for evidence of past microscopic life in an ancient lakebed, and gather the most promising rock samples for future pickup. NASA is teaming up with the European Space Agency to return the samples to Earth around 2031.This unprecedented effort will involve multiple launches and spacecraft — and cost more than $8 billion."We don't know if life existed there or not. But we do know that Mars at one point in…


Scientists Discover Ancient Microbial Life 5 Kilometers Below Sea Level

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Living microbes, possibly millions of years old, have been discovered more than five kilometers beneath the  Pacific Ocean’s surface, in an area believed to have been devoid of life.In a study published Tuesday, Japanese and American scientists described what they found in sediment samples taken from a flat, wide area 3.7 kilometers to 5.7 kilometers below the ocean’s surface, known as an abyssal plain.  Because of their depth and the limited organic material in the sediment found there, these areas were long believed unable to support life.Microbes revived from 101.5 million-year-old sediment cores gathered from beneath the Pacific Ocean floor are seen in an undated magnified image released by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Kochi, Japan July 28, 2020.But the researchers, whose work was published in…


US Treasury to Recommend Options to Trump About Tik Tok

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The Chinese-owned app TikTok is under a security review by the U.S. government, which will make a recommendation on the matter to President Donald Trump next week, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.Trump said Wednesday, “we are thinking about making a decision” about TikTok.The video-sharing social media app, is extremely popular in both the US. and around the world. It has already been downloaded 2 billion times worldwide and 165 million of those downloads were in the U.S.The app features not only entertainment videos, but also debates and takes positions on political issues, such as racial justice and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.TikTok to Exit Hong Kong Market Over New National Security Law Decision by Chinese-based app follows decisions by Facebook, Google and Twitter to briefly suspend review of Beijing requests…


VOA-TEK: COVID-19 – How Did We Get Here?

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The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has the world in its grip. Not since the Spanish flue outbreak of 1918 has a disease spread across the world so far and so fast. But how did we get here, and what have we learned? This is the story behind the virus called SARS-CoV-2 that has left a trail of infection touching everyone, everywhere. ...


Loss of Smell, Taste During COVID Infection Only Temporary, Scientists Say

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One of the most frustrating symptoms of COVID-19 coronavirus is the loss of the sense of smell and scientists now say they think they understand why it happens. The experts writing in the journal Science Advances said the coronavirus infiltrates the cells that provide major structural support to sensory neurons -- the neurons that detect odors and send those messages to the brain. Since the sense of smell is linked to the sense of taste, the coronavirus also affects the ability to taste food. Harvard Medical School researchers said 90% of recovering COVID-19 patients who lost their sense of smell and taste regained it.   “Once the infection clears, olfactory neurons don’t appear to need to be replaced or rebuilt from scratch,” neurobiology professor Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta writes in the Science Advances study. “But we need more data and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms to confirm this conclusion.”  In separate studies, scientists are still trying to conclude whether it is possible to get COVID-19 twice. They say the particular coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is new and much is…


Congress to Question Tech CEOs About Market Dominance

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They control the digital spaces where many around the world spend their time, shop, work, and talk to friends and family.  Together, the companies’ combined annual sales are roughly the same as the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, as Axios notes.Now the CEOs of four top U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google – are set to answer questions Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust about how they wield their considerable market power. Deposition for the world The hearing comes as federal and state regulators are looking into whether the tech giants, through their dominance in some markets, stifle competition.  The joint appearance of Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon is a sign of how high the stakes are for the future of their businesses, legal observers say. Critics, customers and regulators globally will…


Chinese Hackers Targeted Vatican, NY Times Reports

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The New York Times Wednesday said the Vatican’s computer networks have been breached by Chinese hackers since May, in an apparent espionage effort before the start of sensitive talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Communist China. The Times says the attack, discovered by private U.S.-based cybersecurity and monitoring firm Recorded Future, appears to be the first time hackers have been publicly caught directly hacking into the Vatican and a Hong Kong-based group of de facto Vatican representatives who have negotiated with China over the Church’s status on the mainland.  The newspaper says cybersecurity experts at Recorded Future have presumed the hackers are working for the Chinese government.   The Vatican and China are expected to begin talks in September over renewal of a provisional agreement they reached in 2018 that gives the pope the final say…


Holocaust Survivors Urge Facebook to Remove Denial Posts

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Holocaust survivors around the world are lending their voices to a campaign launched Wednesday targeting Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to take action to remove denial of the Nazi genocide from the social media site. Coordinated by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the #NoDenyingIt campaign uses Facebook itself to make the survivors' entreaties to Zuckerberg heard, posting one video per day  urging him to remove Holocaust-denying groups, pages and posts as hate speech. Videos will also be posted on Facebook-owned Instagram, as well as Twitter. Zuckerberg raised the ire of the Claims Conference and others with comments in 2018 to the tech website Recode that posts denying the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews would not necessarily be removed. He said he did not…


US Cyberfirm Says Vatican Target of Chinese Hackers, NY Times Reports

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The New York Times Wednesday said the Vatican’s computer networks have been breached by Chinese hackers since May, in an apparent espionage effort before the start of sensitive talks between the Roman Catholic Church and Communist China. The Times says the attack, discovered by private U.S.-based cybersecurity and monitoring firm Recorded Future, appears to be the first time hackers have been publicly caught directly hacking into the Vatican and a Hong Kong-based group of de facto Vatican representatives who have negotiated with China over the Church’s status on the mainland.  The newspaper says cybersecurity experts at Recorded Future have presumed the hackers are working for the Chinese government.   The Vatican and China are expected to begin talks in September over renewal of a provisional agreement they reached in 2018 that gives the pope the final say…


COVID-19 Shuts Out Baseball’s Miami Marlins

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Major League Baseball (MLB) has suspended all Miami Marlins games for the rest of the week after at least 15 players and coaches reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus.The team is in Philadelphia where the affected players are in quarantine. The Philadelphia Phillies, who hosted the Marlins earlier this week, will also be idle through Friday.New York Yankees' Gleyber Torres (25) celebrates his solo home run with Luke Voit during the seventh inning of a game against Washington at Nationals Park, July 26, 2020.Some players with the New York Yankees, who were scheduled to play the Phillies this week, balked at using the same visitors' clubhouse in Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park that the Marlins had used.MLB officials say they postponed the Yankees-Phillies games "out of an abundance of caution."The source…


Scientists: Smelling, Tasting Loss From COVID-19 Is Temporary

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One of the most frustrating symptoms of COVID-19 coronavirus is the loss of the sense of smell and scientists now say they think they understand why it happens. The experts writing in the journal Science Advances said the coronavirus infiltrates the cells that provide major structural support to sensory neurons -- the neurons that detect odors and send those messages to the brain. Since the sense of smell is linked to the sense of taste, the coronavirus also affects the ability to taste food. Harvard Medical School researchers said 90% of recovering COVID-19 patients who lost their sense of smell and taste regained it.   “Once the infection clears, olfactory neurons don’t appear to need to be replaced or rebuilt from scratch,” neurobiology professor Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta writes in the Science Advances study. “But we need more data and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms to confirm this conclusion.”  In separate studies, scientists are still trying to conclude whether it is possible to get COVID-19 twice. They say the particular coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is new and much is…


Trump Administration Promises Huge Loan for Kodak to Develop Drug Ingredients

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The U.S. government says it will use the Defense Production Act to help transform a legacy photographic film maker into a producer of pharmaceutical ingredients, including those for hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial President Donald Trump has touted as a treatment to ward off the coronavirus.President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House, July 28, 2020, in Washington.“Today I’m proud to announce one of the most important deals in the history of U.S. pharmaceutical industries,” Trump told reporters in the White House briefing room Tuesday afternoon.Kodak will receive a $765 million loan under the Defense Production Act to launch a pharmaceuticals company, creating hundreds of jobs, Trump said.It is not a done deal, however, according to the White House.A letter of intent has been signed and final negotiations…


Scientists Get Closer to Blood Test for Alzheimer’s Disease

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New study results are boosting hopes that there soon may be a simple, reliable way to help family doctors diagnose the most common form of dementia. Researchers say an experimental blood test was able to distinguish people with Alzheimer's disease from those without it in several studies. The accuracy ranged from 89% to 98%, though the test still needs more validation. Several companies are developing these tests, which measure a protein that damages the brains of people with the disease. The results were discussed at an Alzheimer's conference Tuesday, and some were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Developing such a test has been a long-sought goal, and scientists warn that the new approach still needs more validation and is not yet ready for wide use. But…


Erdogan Seeks to Tame Social Media, Again 

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Turkey is poised to introduce drastic measures to control social media platforms.  The proposed legislation is drawing growing international criticism with social media remaining one of the few venues for dissent.  FILE - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech at the Bestepe National Congress and Culture Center in Ankara, July 21, 2020.Infuriated by tweets mocking his son in law and daughter, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared this month, the "immoral [social media] platforms" would be "completely banned or controlled." Under new legislation set to pass before Eid holidays later this week, the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Tik Tok will be compelled to open offices in Turkey by requiring them to assign representatives who would be subject to Turkish laws, including tax regulations. "It builds upon and expands upon the current regime of controls," said Professor…


Can You Get the Coronavirus Twice?

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Is it possible to get the coronavirus more than once?  Scientists don't know for sure yet, but they believe it's unlikely.  Health experts think people who had COVID-19 will have some immunity against a repeat infection. But they don't know how much protection or how long it would last.  There have been reports of people testing positive for the virus weeks after they were believed to have recovered, leading some to think they may have been reinfected. More likely, experts say, people were suffering from the same illness or the tests detected remnants of the original infection. There's also the chance that tests could have been false positives.  Scientists say there has been no documented instance of a patient spreading the virus to others after retesting positive.  With similar viruses,…


Scientists Develop Material that Repairs Itself

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Inspired by the pandemic-induced need for durable, clean face masks and other personal protection equipment to prevent the spread of COVID-19, researchers may have developed a biosynthetic polymer material that repairs itself by synthesizing a protein found in squids.A study published Monday in the science journal Nature Materials reports on an international team of researchers from Germany, Turkey, and Penn State University in the United States. It describes how they were able to transform unique proteins found in squid teeth into a soft, biodegradable material that could be used to develop so-called “soft robots” and tear-resistant personal protective equipment (PPE).Self-repairing materials are not a new thing, but researchers say the existing materials can take up to 24-hours to “heal” and when they do, they tend to not be as strong…


Twitter Deletes Tweet by Donald Trump Jr, Limits His Account

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Twitter has limited Donald Trump Jr.’s account and deleted one of his tweets for violating Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policies.  The tweet, posted on Monday, had what Twitter termed a misleading video on the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.  An adviser to Trump Jr., Andrew Surabian, tweeted an angry response, in which he said that Trump Jr.’s account had been suspended, adding that “big tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America.”  He added in a statement to Business Insider that Twitter’s action is evidence that “the company is committing election interference to stifle Republican votes.”BREAKING: @Twitter & @jack have suspended @DonaldJTrumpJr for posting a viral video of medical doctors talking about Hydroxychloroquine.Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America today & they're continuing to engage in open…