Category: Business

Disinfecting public spaces is a major undertaking but it is essential for a safe return to normal activity. Now an army of robots that uses ultra-violet light to disinfect surfaces and the air, as Matt Dibble reports. Camera, Producer: Matt Dibble ...

Disinfecting public spaces is a major undertaking but it is essential for a safe return to normal activity. Now an army of robots that uses ultra-violet light to disinfect surfaces and the air, as Matt Dibble reports. Camera, Producer: Matt Dibble ...

Lee Kun-hee, the ailing Samsung Electronics chairman who transformed the small television maker into a global giant of consumer electronics, has died. He was 78.A Samsung statement said Lee died Sunday with his family members, including his son and de facto company chief Lee Jae-yong, by his side.Lee Kun-hee had been hospitalized since May 2014 after suffering a heart attack, and the younger Lee has run Samsung, the biggest company in South Korea.“All of us at Samsung will cherish his memory and are grateful for the journey we shared with him,” the Samsung statement said. “Our deepest sympathies are with his family, relatives and those nearest. His legacy will be everlasting.”Lee Kun-hee inherited control from his father and during his nearly 30 years of leadership, Samsung Electronics Co. became a…

A U.S. judge in San Francisco on Friday rejected a Justice Department request to reverse a decision that allowed Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to continue to offer Chinese-owned WeChat for download in U.S. app stores.U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler said the government's new evidence did not change her opinion about the Tencent app. As it has with Chinese video app TikTok, the Justice Department has argued WeChat threatens national security.WeChat has an average of 19 million daily active users in the United States. It is popular among Chinese students, Americans living in China and Americans who have personal or business relationships in China.WeChat is an all-in-one mobile app that combines services similar to Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Venmo. The app is an essential part of daily life for…

Huawei's new smartphone has an upgraded camera, its latest advanced chipset and a better battery. What it may not have outside the Chinese tech giant's home market is very many buyers. Huawei, which recently became the world's No. 1 smartphone maker, on Thursday unveiled its Mate 40 line of premium phones, a product release that comes at a crucial moment for the company as it runs out of room to maneuver around U.S. sanctions squeezing its ability to source components and software. The Mate 40 could be the last one powered by the company's homegrown Kirin chipsets because of U.S. restrictions in May barring non-American companies from using U.S. technology in manufacturing without a license. Analysts say the company had been stockpiling chips before the ban but its supply won't…

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it is launching its dating service in 32 European countries after the rollout was delayed earlier this year due to regulatory concerns.The social media company had postponed the rollout of Facebook Dating in Europe in February after concerns were raised by Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), the main regulator in the European Union for a number of the world's biggest technology firms, including Facebook.The DPC had said it was told about the Feb. 13 launch date on Feb. 3 and was very concerned about being given such short notice.It also said it was not given documentation regarding data protection impact assessments or decision-making processes that had been undertaken by Facebook.Facebook Dating, a dedicated, opt-in space within the Facebook app, was launched in the United States…

Microsoft Corp said Tuesday it had disabled more than 90% of the machines used by a gang of Russian-speaking cyber criminals to control a massive network of computers with a potential to disrupt the U.S. election. Aided by a series of U.S. court orders and relationships with technology providers in other countries, Microsoft said its weeklong campaign against the gang running the Trickbot network was heading off a possible source of disruption to the November 3 U.S. vote. "We've taken down most of their infrastructure," corporate Vice President Tom Burt said in an interview. "Their ability to go and infect targets has been significantly reduced." The criminals in charge of Trickbot have infected more than 1 million personal computers, including many inside local governments, according to cybersecurity professionals. They then make deals with other…

Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies are rolling out new policies on controversial content during the U.S. presidential campaign. Michelle Quinn reports. Camera: Deana Mitchell ...

The U.S. Justice Department along with the attorneys general of 11 states on Tuesday brought a massive anti-trust lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of maintaining illegal monopolies over search and search advertising on the internet.The widely expected lawsuit, the most significant anti-trust case since the Justice Department sued Microsoft for its monopoly of the software market in 1998, stemmed from a yearlong investigation into Google and three other tech giants — Apple, Amazon and Facebook.Attorney General William Barr called the lawsuit a monumental case “both for the Department of Justice and for the American people.”“This lawsuit strikes at the heart of Google’s grip over the internet for millions of American consumers, advertisers, small businesses and entrepreneurs beholden to an unlawful monopolist,” Barr said.Barr said the lawsuit, filed in…

U.S. prosecutors on Monday announced charges against six Russian military intelligence officers in connection with a global computer hacking campaign that targeted the 2017 French presidential election and the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, and carried out other high-profile cyberattacks.   The campaign, spanning from 2015 to 2020, was the "most disruptive and destructive" carried out by a single group of cyber intruders, law enforcement officials said.  The six hackers, all officers of the Russian military intelligence service known as GRU, "engaged in computer intrusions and attacks intended to support Russian government efforts to undermine, retaliate against, or otherwise destabilize" entities and institutions seen as anti-Russia, the Justice Department said.  The same unit, known to cybersecurity researchers as the "Sandworm" team, was allegedly behind the hacking of Democratic computer networks…

U.S. prosecutors have charged six Russian military intelligence officers in connection with a global computer malware campaign that struck the 2017 French presidential election and the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea among other targets.  The cyber campaign represented “the most disruptive and destructive series of computer attacks ever attributed to a single group,” said John C. Demers, head of the Justice Department’s national security division. “No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously or irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite,” Demers said Monday at a news conference. The six hackers, all officers of the Russian military intelligence service known as GRU, “engaged in computer intrusions and attacks intended to support Russian government efforts to undermine, retaliate against, or…

Finland's Nokia has been selected by NASA to build the first cellular network on the moon, the company said on Monday.   The lunar network will be part of the U.S. space agency's efforts to return humans to the moon by 2024 and build long-term settlements there under its Artemis program.   Nokia said the first wireless broadband communications system in space would be built on the lunar surface in late 2022, before humans make it back there.   The Finnish company will partner with Texas-based private space craft design firm Intuitive Machines to deliver the network equipment to the moon on their lunar lander.   After delivery, the network will configure itself and establish the first LTE (Long-Term Evolution) communications system on the moon, Nokia said. "The network will…

Dr. Scott Atlas is a neuroradiologist, a fellow at a conservative-leaning think tank, a science adviser to President Donald Trump and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. He is also the latest person in Trump’s world to have a tweet blocked by Twitter. Facebook to Ban Anti-Vaccine AdsThe social media giant says the efforts are part of an attempt to support vaccinesOver the weekend, Atlas tweeted “Masks work? NO,” and said widespread use of masks is not supported, according to the Associated Press. Twitter told the AP that the tweet violated its policy that prohibits false and misleading information about COVID-19 that could lead to harm. The “This Tweet is unavailable” label was put on Atlas’ Twitter feed where his tweet once was.Atlas followed up with another tweet, which remained…

YouTube is following the lead of Twitter and Facebook, saying that it is taking more steps to limit QAnon and other baseless conspiracy theories that can lead to real-world violence. The Google-owned video platform said Thursday it will now prohibit material targeting a person or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify violence.   One example would be videos that threaten or harass someone by suggesting they are complicit in a conspiracy such as QAnon, which paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and "deep state" government officials. Pizzagate is another internet conspiracy theory — essentially a predecessor to QAnon — that would fall in the banned category. Its promoters claimed children were being harmed at a pizza…

The decision by Twitter to block the dissemination of a story on its site about Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, has added to an already heated discussion in the U.S. about whether internet companies have too much power and are making decisions that could affect the U.S. elections.Some have applauded Twitter’s move as a stand against misinformation. Others have criticized Twitter’s decision as biased, curtailing speech in a way that could affect the outcome of the U.S. election.In recent weeks, Twitter, Facebook and Google, the owner of YouTube, have increasingly taken steps to restrict the spread of what they describe as misinformation and extremist speech on their sites. After the 2016 U.S. election, internet companies were criticized for not doing enough to stop misinformation on…

Senate Republicans said Thursday they will subpoena Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey over the decision to block a news report critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. "This is election interference and we're 19 days out from an election," Senator Ted Cruz said, a day after the social network blocked links to the article by the New York Post alleging corruption by Biden in Ukraine. Cruz said the Senate Judiciary Committee would vote next Tuesday to subpoena Dorsey to testify at the end of next week and "explain why Twitter is abusing their corporate power to silence the press." "The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know what the hell is going on," he said. "Twitter and Facebook and big tech millionaires don't get to censor political speech and actively interfere in the election. That's what…

Around the world, governments are turning to technology to trace people who have been exposed to the coronavirus. There are two main approaches. Michelle Quinn has a look at how they aim to work. ...

Governments around the world have used the COVID-19 pandemic as their reason for expanding digital surveillance and collecting more data from their citizens, according to a report published Wednesday.The annual FILE - People wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus use their smartphones to enter their personal data before being allowed to enter a pedestrian shopping street in Beijing, May 16, 2020.The report again singled out China for specific criticism as the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom, but Beijing also found new methods of digital surveillance in the pandemic.The report noted that Chinese authorities combined low- and high-tech tools not only to manage the outbreak of the coronavirus, but also to deter internet users from sharing information from independent sources and challenging the official narrative.The report concluded “the…

Apple unveiled four new iPhones equipped with technology for use with faster new 5G wireless networks, hoping that demand for higher data speeds will spark demand for new phones. That might not happen as quickly as Apple would like. In a virtual presentation Tuesday, the company announced four 5G-enabled versions of the new iPhone 12 ranging in price from almost $700 to roughly $1,100. Apple also announced a new, less expensive version of its HomePod smart speaker. Smartphone sales have been slowing for years as their technology has matured. That has meant far fewer gotta-have-it innovations that can drive demand and, at least until recently, increasingly pricey phones. Add to that pandemic-related economic crisis, and consumers have tended to eke as much life as possible out of their existing phones.…

As coronavirus infections surged in Malaysia this year, a wave of hate speech and misinformation aimed at Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar began appearing on Facebook.   Alarmed rights groups reported the material to Facebook. But six months later, many posts targeting the Rohingya in Malaysia remain on the platform, including pages such as "Anti Rohingya Club" and "Foreigners Mar Malaysia's Image," although those two pages were removed after Reuters flagged them to Facebook recently.   Comments still online in one private group with nearly 100,000 members included "Hope they all die, this cursed pig ethnic group."   Facebook acknowledged in 2018 that its platform was used to incite violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and last year spent more than $3.7 billion on safety and security on its platform. But the surge of anti-Rohingya comment in Malaysia shows how…

A mobile app launched last week in China that many there hoped would allow access to long banned Western social media sites abruptly disappeared from Chinese app stores a day after its unveiling.Tuber, an Andriod app backed by Chinese cyber security software giant Qihoo 360, first appeared to be officially available last Friday. It offered Chinese citizens limited access to websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Google, and it facilitated some 5 million downloads following its debut.Yet a day later, the Tuber app disappeared from mobile app stores, including one run by Huawei Technologies Co. A search for the app’s website yielded no results when VOA checked Monday. It’s unclear whether the government ordered the takedown of the app.Experts told VOA that such ventures are sometimes designed to create the…

Microsoft announced legal action Monday seeking to disrupt a major cybercrime digital network that uses more than 1 million zombie computers to loot bank accounts and spread ransomware, which experts consider a major threat to the U.S. presidential election. The operation to knock offline command-and-control servers for a global botnet that uses an infrastructure known as Trickbot to infect computers with malware was initiated with an order that Microsoft obtained in Virginia federal court on Oct. 6.  Microsoft argued that the crime network is abusing its trademark. "It is very hard to tell how effective it will be, but we are confident it will have a very long-lasting effect," said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of threat research at ESET, one of several cybersecurity firms that partnered with Microsoft to map the command-and-control servers. "We're sure that they are…

Facebook announced Monday that it is updating its hate speech policy and will ban all posts that deny or distort the Jewish Holocaust.Today we're updating our hate speech policy to ban Holocaust denial. We've long taken down posts that praise hate...Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, October 12, 2020“We've long taken down posts that praise hate crimes or mass murder, including the Holocaust,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. Zuckerberg said that with rising anti-Semitism, the company was expanding its policy to prohibit such content. He added, “If people search for the Holocaust on Facebook, we’ll start directing you to authoritative sources to get accurate information.”The announcement follows a #NoDenyingIt campaign by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.The non-profit Anti-Defamation League said on Facebook that it…

Mounted on rooftops, utility poles and streetlights throughout China since last year are hundreds of thousands of high-tech wireless towers for 5G, a powerful sign of the country's ambition to lead in new technology. Yet many of them are operational for only half the day.China Unicom, one of three telecommunication operators, announced in August that its Luoyang branch in Henan province would automatically switch its 5G transmitter stations to sleep mode from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. because there were few people using them. The other two carriers quickly followed suit and since then have rolled out the same policies in other cities across the country."Shutting down base stations is not a manual shutdown, but an automatic adjustment made at a certain time,” Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, said…

Twitter Inc. said Friday that it would remove tweets calling for people to interfere with the U.S. election process or implementation of election results, including through violence, as the company also announced more restrictions to slow the spread of misinformation.Twitter said in a blog post that, from next week, users will get a prompt pointing them to credible information before they can retweet content that has been labeled as misleading.It said it would add more warnings and restrictions on tweets with misleading information labels from U.S. political figures like candidates and campaigns, as well as U.S.-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers or that get "significant engagement."Twitter, which recently told Reuters it was testing how to make its labeling more obvious and direct, said people will have to tap through…

Pakistan has blocked online short-video sharing platform TikTok on the grounds of "immoral/indecent" content for viewing in the majority-Muslim nation.The state regulator said Friday that it had repeatedly instructed the platform to tighten its content monitoring to block access to the "unlawful" material."However, the application failed to fully comply with the instructions, therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country," said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, PTA.The regulator defended the decision, saying the PTA, in a formal warning, had given "considerable time" to the online platform to respond and comply with the instructions.FILE - A man opens social media app TikTok on his cellphone, in Islamabad, Pakistan, July 21, 2020."TikTok has been informed that the authority is open for engagement and will review its decision subject to…

Tech giants Google and Oracle are clashing at the Supreme Court in a copyright dispute that's worth billions and important to the future of software development. The case before the justices Wednesday has to do with Google's creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. Google says that to create Android, which was released in 2007, it wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that's part of Oracle's Java platform.   Google has defended its actions, saying what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. But Oracle says Google "committed an egregious act of plagiarism" and sued, seeking more than…

Facebook said it will ban groups that "represent" QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that paints President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and "deep state" government officials. The company said Tuesday that it will remove Facebook pages, groups and Instagram accounts for "representing QAnon," even if they don’t promote violence. The social network said it will consider a variety of factors to decide if a group meets its criteria for a ban, including its name, the biography or "about" section of the page, and discussions within the page, group or Instagram account. Mentions of QAnon in a group focused on a different subject won't necessarily lead to a ban, Facebook said. Less than two months ago, Facebook said it would stop promoting the group and…