Year: 2024

ATHENS, GREECE — Greece announced plans on Monday to enhance parental oversight of mobile devices in 2025 through a government-operated app that will help get digital age verification and browsing controls.  Dimitris Papastergiou, the minister of digital governance, said the Kids Wallet app, due to launch in March, was aimed at safeguarding children under the age of 15 from the risks of excessive and inappropriate internet use.  The app will be run by a widely used government services platform and operate in conjunction with an existing smartphone app for adults to carry digital identification documents.  "It's a big change," Papastergiou told reporters, adding that the app would integrate advanced algorithms to monitor usage and apply strict authentication processes.  "The Kids Wallet application will do two main things: It will make parental…

WASHINGTON — Chinese hackers remotely accessed several U.S. Treasury Department workstations and unclassified documents after compromising a third-party software service provider, the agency said Monday.  The department did not provide details on how many workstations had been accessed or what sort of documents the hackers may have obtained, but it said in a letter to lawmakers revealing the breach that "at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information."  "Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds," the department said. "Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors."  The department said it…

Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela's highest court Monday fined TikTok $10 million in connection with viral challenges that authorities say left three adolescents dead from intoxication by chemical substances. Supreme Tribunal of Justice Judge Tania D'Amelio said that the popular video-sharing app had been negligent in failing to implement "necessary and adequate measures" to stop the spread of content encouraging the challenges. TikTok, which is owned by China's ByteDance, was ordered to open an office in the South American country and given eight days to pay the fine or face "appropriate" measures. Venezuela would use the money to "create a TikTok victims fund, intended to compensate for the psychological, emotional and physical damages to users, especially if these users are children and adolescents," D'Amelio said. The company told the court that it…

For Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as "rineanswsaurs" or sarcastic as "srkastik."  The 14-year-old from suburban Indianapolis can sound out words, but her dyslexia makes the process so draining that she often struggles with comprehension. "I just assumed I was stupid," she recalled of her early grade school years.  But assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence has helped her keep up with classmates. Last year, Makenzie was named to the National Junior Honor Society. She credits a customized AI-powered chatbot, a word prediction program and other tools that can read for her.  "I would have just probably given up if I didn't have them," she said.  New tech; countless possibilities Artificial intelligence holds the promise of helping countless  students with…

WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday sided with key supporter and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk in a public dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backs the program for foreign tech workers opposed by some of his supporters.  Trump's remarks followed a series of social media posts from Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who vowed late Friday to "go to war" to defend the visa program for foreign tech workers.  Trump, who moved to limit the visas' use during his first presidency, told The New York Post on Saturday he was likewise in favor of the visa program.  "I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a…

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence tools that allow people to efficiently produce novel and detailed online reviews with almost no work has put merchants, service providers and consumers in uncharted territory, watchdog groups and researchers say.  Phony reviews have long plagued many popular consumer websites, such as Amazon and Yelp. They are typically traded on private social media groups between fake review brokers and businesses willing to pay. Sometimes, such reviews are initiated by businesses that offer customers incentives such as gift cards for positive feedback.  But AI-infused text generation tools, popularized by OpenAI's ChatGPT, enable fraudsters to produce reviews faster and in greater volume, according to tech industry experts.  The deceptive practice, which is illegal in the U.S., is carried out year-round but becomes a bigger problem for…

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a "political resolution" to the issue. The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by January 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk. "President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the court consider staying the act's deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case," said Trump's amicus brief, which supported neither party in…

NASA said on Friday that its Parker Solar Probe was "safe" and operating normally after successfully completing the closest-ever approach to the sun by any human-made object.  The spacecraft passed 6.1 million kilometers from the solar surface on Tuesday, flying into the sun's outer atmosphere — called the corona — on a mission to help scientists learn more about Earth's closest star.  The agency said the operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland received the signal, a beacon tone, from the probe just before midnight on Thursday.  The spacecraft is expected to send detailed telemetry data about its status on January 1, NASA added.  Moving at up to 692,000 kilometers per hour the spacecraft endured temperatures of up to 982 degrees Celsius, according to the NASA…

WASHINGTON — A sprawling Chinese espionage campaign hacked a ninth U.S. telecom firm, a top White House official said Friday. The Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. The White House earlier this month said the attack affected at least eight telecommunications companies and dozens of nations. Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, told reporters Friday that a ninth victim was identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks. The update from Neuberger is the latest development in a massive hacking operation that alarmed national security officials, exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the private sector and laid bare China's…

Russia’s invasion has pushed Ukrainian tech companies working with defense simulation technology to seriously compete in global markets. One such company is SKIFTECH, which specializes in high-tech military simulators. Iryna Solomko visited the company’s production site in Kyiv. Anna Rice narrates the story. Camera: Pavlo Terekhov ...

TOKYO — Japan Airlines reported a cyberattack on Thursday that caused delays to domestic and international flights but later said it had found and addressed the cause. The airline, Japan's second biggest after All Nippon Airways (ANA), said 24 domestic flights had been delayed by more than half an hour. Public broadcaster NHK said problems with the airline's baggage check-in system had caused delays at several Japanese airports but no major disruption was reported. "We identified and addressed the cause of the issue. We are checking the system recovery status," Japan Airlines (JAL) said in a post on social media platform X. "Sales for both domestic and international flights departing today have been suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused," the post said. A JAL spokesperson told AFP earlier the company…

TEHRAN, IRAN — Iran's top council responsible for safeguarding the internet voted Tuesday to lift a ban on the popular messaging application WhatsApp, which has been subject to restrictions for over two years, state media reported.  "The ban on WhatsApp and Google Play was removed by unanimous vote of the members of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace," the official IRNA news agency said.  The council is headed by the president, and its members include the parliament speaker, the head of the judiciary and several ministers.  It was not immediately clear when the decision would come into force.  'Restrictions ... achieved nothing but anger' The move has sparked a debate in Iran, with critics of the restrictions arguing the controls were costly for the country.   "The restrictions have achieved nothing but…