Category: Business

For U.S. social media companies, the violent mob storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6 last year spurred action. They shut down then-President Donald Trump’s accounts. One year later, are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube any better prepared to face similar situations in the U.S. or in other countries? Michelle Quinn reports. Camera: Deana Mitchell Produced by: Matt Dibble ...

2021 was a historic year for all-things space ... from the success of private spaceflight companies to robots exploring Mars in a road trip for the ages. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi beams us through the Year in Space. ...

The White Fox restaurant in Mosul, Iraq, isn’t known for its comfortable atmosphere or its great food and drinks. It’s known for its servers. VOA’s Kawa Omar filed this report, narrated by Rikar Hussein. Producer and camera: Kawa Omar. ...

"White-knuckle" -- That's how Rusty Whitman describes the month ahead, after the launch of the historic James Webb Space Telescope, now tentatively set for Saturday.  From a secure control room in Baltimore, Maryland, Whitman and his colleagues will hold their breath as Webb comes online. But that's just the beginning.  For the first six months after Webb's launch, Whitman and the team at the Space Telescope Science Institute will monitor the observatory around the clock, making tiny adjustments to ensure it is perfectly calibrated for astronomers across the world to explore the universe. The most crucial moments will come at the beginning of the mission: the telescope must be placed on a precise trajectory, while at the same time unfurling its massive mirror and even larger sun-shade -- a perilous…

U.S. chipmaker Intel is facing criticism in China after it apologized Thursday for a letter the firm sent to suppliers asking them "to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region." On Thursday, Intel posted a Chinese-language message on its WeChat and Weibo accounts apologizing for "trouble caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners and the public. Intel is committed to becoming a trusted technology partner and accelerating joint development with China." Intel's apology came as U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans the import of goods produced by Uyghur slave labor. Under the measure, a company is prohibited from importing from China's Xinjiang region unless it can prove that its supply chains…

Polish Senator Krzysztof Brejza's mobile phone was hacked with sophisticated spyware nearly three dozen times in 2019 when he was running the opposition's campaign against the right-wing populist government in parliamentary elections, an internet watchdog found. Text messages stolen from Brejza's phone — then doctored in a smear campaign — were aired by state-controlled TV in the heat of that race, which the ruling party narrowly won. With the hacking revelation, Brejza now questions whether the election was fair.  It's the third finding by the University of Toronto's nonprofit Citizen Lab that a Polish opposition figure was hacked with Pegasus spyware from the Israeli hacking tools firm NSO Group. Brejza's phone was digitally broken into 33 times from April 26, 2019, to October 23, 2019, said Citizen Lab researchers, who…

Under pressure from U.S. auto safety regulators, Tesla has agreed to stop allowing video games to be played on center touch screens while its vehicles are moving.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the Internet so the function called "Passenger Play" will be locked and won't work while vehicles are in motion.  The move comes one day after the agency announced it would open a formal investigation into distracted driving concerns about Tesla's video games, some of which could be played while cars are being driven.  An agency spokeswoman says in a statement Thursday that the change came after regulators discussed concerns about the system with Tesla. The statement says NHTSA regularly talks about infotainment screens with all automakers. A…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined an effort by Apple Inc. to skip a shareholder proposal asking the iPhone maker to provide greater transparency in its efforts to keep forced labor out of its supply chain.  A group of shareholders earlier this year asked Apple's board to prepare a report on how the company protects workers in its supply chain from forced labor. The request for information covered the extent to which Apple has identified suppliers and sub-suppliers that are a risk for forced labor, and how many suppliers Apple has taken action against.  In a letter from the SEC reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, regulators denied Apple's move to block the proposal, saying that "it does not appear that the essential objectives of the proposal have been…

New York’s largest convention center hosts about 175 events each year that draw hundreds of thousands of people to the city. To help offset the environmental impact, the owners have installed an urban farm and solar farm...on the building’s roof. Tina Trinh reports. ...

In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russia's Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn't been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But that's small comfort to Ken Trzaska. Trzaska is president of Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school that canceled classes for days after a ransomware attack last month that knocked critical computer systems offline. "That first day," Trzaska said, "I think all of us were probably up 20-plus hours, just moving through the process, trying to get our arms around what happened." Even if the United States isn't currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or…

After internal Facebook documents were shared widely with news organizations, the question remains whether and how Facebook will change. Michelle Quinn reports. ...

China and Russia have begun collaborating on technology to rival the United States' GPS and European Galileo satellite navigation systems, as the two countries pursue closer military and strategic ties. Earlier this year, China agreed to host ground monitoring stations for Russia’s GLONASS positioning system on its soil, which improves global range and accuracy but can pose a security risk. In turn, Russia agreed to host ground stations for China’s BeiDou system. The reciprocal agreement indicates a growing level of trust and cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, says analyst Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Russia’s schism with the West and deepening confrontation and competition between China and the U.S. as two superpowers is definitely contributing to rapprochement…

Airbus is set to deliver the final A380 superjumbo to Dubai's Emirates on Thursday, marking the end of a 14-year run that gave Europe an instantly recognized symbol across the globe but failed to fulfil the commercial vision of its designers.    Production of the world's largest airliner — capable of seating 500 people on two decks together with perks like showers in first class — has ended after 272 were built compared with the 1,000 or more once predicted.    Airbus, a planemaking conglomerate drawn together from separate entities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain to carry out their brainchild of mega-jets to beat congestion, pulled the plug in 2019 after airlines went for smaller, leaner models.    Thursday's handover is expected to be low key, partly because of…

The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has consistently claimed it does not actively partner with the Chinese government in gathering intelligence on individuals within China, but a report by The Washington Post this week showing the company appears to have marketed surveillance technology to government customers calls the company’s assertions into question. The report comes as major parts of the large company’s operations remain severely restricted by sanctions imposed by the United States under former President Donald Trump, which were renewed, and in some cases tightened, by President Joe Biden. The newspaper obtained more than 100 PowerPoint presentations that were briefly posted to a public page of the company’s website. The trove of documents suggests the company was marketing various surveillance-related services, including voice recognition technology, location tracking and facial-recognition-based area surveillance.…

The U.S. space agency NASA says its Parker Solar Probe this week became the first spacecraft to enter the Sun’s atmosphere, also known as the corona.  The space agency announced the news Tuesday at a press conference during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans.  In a statement, NASA scientists said the probe actually entered the Sun’s corona April 18, but it took until now to get the data and examine it to confirm it had accomplished its mission.  NASA said while the Sun doesn’t have a solid surface, it does have a superheated corona made of solar material bound to the Sun by gravity and magnetic forces. The point at which those forces are too weak to contain material ejected from the sun is considered the edge of the corona, an area scientists call the Alfvén critical surface.  NASA says the Parker probe crossed this boundry about 13 million kilometers above the surface of the sun. Until they…

China’s advances in quantum computing will give a new advantage to its armed forces, already the world’s third strongest, analysts say. Quantum refers to a type of computing that lets high-powered machines make calculations that are too complex for ordinary devices.  The concept discovered by American physicist Richard Feynman in 1980 has two key military uses, the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a 2019 paper. It can decrypt encoded messages and send cryptographic keys that intercept otherwise secure communication chains, the study says. “I think the challenge is basically in the dual civilian-military strategy of China where the government will enlist the private sector into its military modernization program,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii. “Also,…

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday unveiled a White House plan to build 500,000 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, part of President Joe Biden’s goal of making the vehicles more accessible for both local and long-distance trips.  Harris made the announcement during a ceremony at an EV charging facility in suburban Maryland outside the U.S. capital, Washington. “There can be no doubt: The future of transportation in our nation and around the world, is electric,” Harris said, adding that the nation's ability to manufacture, charge and repair electric vehicles will help determine the health of U.S. communities, the strength of the nation’s economy and the sustainability of the planet.  The EV Charging Plan takes $5 billion from the infrastructure law signed last month and allocates…

The United States, Australia and Japan said Sunday they will jointly fund the construction of an undersea cable to boost internet access in three tiny Pacific countries, as the Western allies seek to counter rising Chinese influence in the region. The three Western allies said they would develop the cable to provide faster internet to Nauru, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia. "This will support increased economic growth, drive development opportunities, and help to improve living standards as the region recovers from the severe impacts of COVID-19," a joint statement from the United States, Japan and Australia said. The three allies did not specify how much the project will cost. The development of the undersea cable is the latest funding commitment from the Western allies in the telecommunications sector…

A self-driving flying taxi. A super-fast land-based transport vehicle. A sustainable floating city. Science fiction, or the wave of the future? The "Futures" exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, open Nov. 20, 2021, through July 6, 2022, gives visitors a peek at what may happen in the years to come. The exhibit opened as part of the 175th anniversary of the Smithsonian and is being held at the Arts and Industries Building, which reopened in November after being closed for almost two decades. With more than 150 ideas, innovations, technologies and artifacts, the exhibit invites visitors to think about the kind of future in which they want to live. It also provides food for thought by looking back to past innovations, like an 1800s experimental telephone and a spacesuit-testing…

As the two-day virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by President Joe Biden wrapped up on Friday, the U.S., Australia, Denmark and Norway announced an export control program to monitor and restrict the spread of technologies used to violate human rights. “We focused on the need to empower human rights defenders" and ensure that technology "is used to advance democracies to lift people up, not to hold them down,” Biden said during his closing remarks. The Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative seeks to address the problem of authoritarian governments misusing dual-use technologies to surveil and hack into the communications of political opponents, journalists, activists and minority communities. The signees will work to develop a voluntary, written code of conduct intended to use human rights criteria to guide export licensing policy and practices,…

As the two-day virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by President Joe Biden wrapped up on Friday, the U.S., Australia, Denmark and Norway announced an export control program to monitor and restrict the spread of technologies used to violate human rights. The U.S. is also launching programs to support independent media and anti-corruption efforts and defend free and fair elections. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has more. ...

A software vulnerability exploited in the online game Minecraft is rapidly emerging as a major threat to internet-connected devices around the world. "The internet's on fire right now," said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. "People are scrambling to patch and there are … all kinds of people scrambling to exploit it." In the 12 hours since the bug's existence was disclosed, he said Friday morning, it had been "fully weaponized," meaning that malefactors have developed and distributed tools to exploit. The flaw may be the worst computer vulnerability discovered in years. It opens a loophole in software code that is ubiquitous in cloud servers and enterprise software used across industry and government. It could allow criminals or spies to loot valuable data, plant…

Robotic vacuum cleaners halted in their tracks. Doorbell cameras stopped watching for package thieves, though some of those deliveries were canceled anyway. Netflix and Disney movies were interrupted, and The Associated Press had trouble publishing the news. A major outage in Amazon's cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for hours, raising questions about the vulnerability of the internet and its concentration in the hands of a few firms.  How did it happen?  Amazon has said nothing about exactly what went wrong. The company limited its communications Tuesday to terse technical explanations on an Amazon Web Services dashboard and a brief statement delivered via spokesperson Richard Rocha that acknowledged the outage had affected Amazon's own warehouse and delivery operations but said the company…

While the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on, one might not know it by looking at 2021’s most searched items on Google.  According to the list released by Google Wednesday, “NBA” was the most searched term in the U.S., but it’s unclear why.  Other most searched topics were rapper DMX, who died; Gabby Petito, an apparent murder victim who died during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who was also on the most searched list. Laundrie was declared a person of interest in Petito’s death, but he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.  Also on the list is Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted last month of killing two protesters and wounding a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020.  The most searched news item was “mega millions” as people were curious about…

A major outage disrupted Amazon's cloud services on Tuesday, temporarily knocking out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, a wide range of apps, and Amazon.com Inc.'s e-commerce website as consumers shopped ahead of Christmas.  "Many services have already recovered; however, we are working towards full recovery across services," Amazon said on its status dashboard.  Amazon's Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, which use Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported issues, according to their social media pages.  Trading app Robinhood and Walt Disney's streaming service Disney+ and Netflix were also down, according to Downdetector.com.  "Netflix, which runs nearly all of its infrastructure on AWS, appears to have lost 26% of its traffic," said Doug Madory, head of internet analysis at analytics firm Kentik.  Amazon said…

Two computer scientists at the University of Maryland have developed a new artificial intelligence system that evolves to detect and evade internet censorship in repressive countries. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. ...

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are suing Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, for $150 billion over allegations that the social media company did not take action against anti-Rohingya hate speech that contributed to violence.  A U.S. class-action complaint, filed in California on Monday by law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC, argues that the company’s failures to police content and its platform’s design contributed to real-world violence faced by the Rohingya community. In a coordinated action, British lawyers also submitted a letter of notice to Facebook’s London office.  Facebook did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the lawsuit. The company has said it was “too slow to prevent misinformation and hate” in Myanmar and has said it has since taken steps to crack down on platform abuses in the region, including banning the military from Facebook and Instagram after…

In the shadows of the coronavirus pandemic, violence against women has been on the rise around the world, including in South Africa, where half of the country’s women report at least one incident of violence in their lifetime. Now, a local tech company has developed an alarm system to help stop the abuse. A click of a button could save a woman’s life. That’s what South African firm Afri-Tec Technologies hopes to achieve with its alert app. Gender-based violence has become so rampant during coronavirus lockdowns, President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it the country’s “second pandemic.” Afri-Tec presents its app as one solution, allowing users to discretely alert friends, family and authorities that they are in danger. “We're not saying that our tech or our solution is the silver bullet. But…