Category: News

The controversy over the death of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi has shined a harsh light on the growing financial ties between Silicon Valley and the world's largest oil exporter. As Saudi Arabia's annual investment forum in Riyadh — dubbed "Davos in the Desert" — continues, representatives from many of the kingdom's highest-profile overseas tech investments are not attending, joining other international business leaders in shunning a conference amid lingering questions over what role the Saudi government played in the killing of a journalist inside their consulate in Turkey. Tech leaders such as Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, and Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, declined to attend this week's annual investment forum in Riyadh. Even the CEO of Softbank, which has received billions of dollars from Saudi…

Technological solutions to prevent land corruption require resources, but they do not have to be expensive, land rights experts said Tuesday. Satellite imagery, cloud computing and blockchain are among technologies with the potential to help many of the world's more than 1 billion people estimated to lack secure property rights. But they can be expensive and require experts to be trained. That's where low-tech solutions such as Cadastre Registry Inventory Without Paper (CRISP) can be useful, said Ketakandriana Rafitoson, executive director of global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) in Madagascar. CRISP helps local activists in Madagascar, one of the world's poorest countries, document land ownership using tablets with fingerprint readers and built-in cameras, which cost $20 a day to rent. Users can take pictures of ID cards, location agreements, photos of landowners, their neighbors and any witnesses who were present during land demarcation, Rafitoson…

Apple’s new iPhone XR has most of the features found in the top-of-the-line iPhone XS Max, but not its $1,100 price tag. The XR offers the right trade-offs for just $750. For something cheaper, you’ll need to look in the iPhone history bin. Older models are still quite good. If you’re shopping for a new phone, it pays to think hard about what you really want and what you’re willing to pay for it. Improvements over the previous generation tend to be incremental, but can add up over time — and so do the sums you’ll pay for them. IPHONE 7 ($449) The big jump in iPhone cameras came a generation earlier with the iPhone 6S, when Apple went from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels in resolution. With the iPhone…

Twitter has removed some accounts thought to be used to circumvent a ban on conspiracy-monger Alex Jones and Infowars, the company said Tuesday. A Twitter spokesman confirmed that the accounts had been removed but provided no additional comment. The company says it usually does not discuss specific accounts. Twitter permanently suspended @realalexjones and @infowars from Twitter and Periscope in early September. It said it based that action in reports of tweets and videos that violated its policy against abusive behavior. The company said it would continue to evaluate reports regarding other accounts potentially associated with @realalexjones or @infowars and would take action if it finds content that violates its rules or if other accounts are used to try to circumvent their ban. Other tech companies, including PayPal, YouTube, Apple and…

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday said it had ordered Transdev North America to immediately stop transporting schoolchildren in Florida in a driverless shuttle as the testing could be putting them at "inappropriate" risk. The auto safety agency known as NHTSA said in an order issued late Friday that Transdev's use of its EZ10 Generation II driverless shuttle in the Babcock Ranch community in southwest Florida was "unlawful and in violation of the company's temporary importation authorization." "Innovation must not come at the risk of public safety," said Deputy NHTSA Administrator Heidi King in a statement. "Using a non-compliant test vehicle to transport children is irresponsible, inappropriate, and in direct violation of the terms of Transdev's approved test project." In March, NHTSA granted Transdev permission to temporarily import…

The World Health Organization is closely watching the Ebola outbreak in Congo where the number of cases has risen to 185 since the outbreak started in August. One of the challenges for health workers fighting highly infectious diseases like Ebola is spending time in HazMat suits. They can be unwieldy and incredibly hot, but new technology could solve one of those problems. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

When you think of wind energy, you tend to think of the massive constructs that dot hilly landscapes or the ocean horizon. But two researchers see a future where it's as common for wind turbines to show up in backyards and on rooftops and balconies. VOA's Kevin Enochs reports. ...

In Tanzania, protecting endangered animals has become easier thanks to Earth Ranger. Earth Ranger is not a superhero, it's a technology platform, developed by Vulcan Inc., a company co-founded by U.S. philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The system helps rangers remotely monitor elephants and other animals to stay ahead of poachers. Faiza Elmasry has the story. VOA's Faith Lapidus narrates. ...

A global financial body says governments worldwide must establish rules for virtual currencies like bitcoin to stop criminals from using them to launder money or finance terrorism. The Financial Action Task Force said Friday that from next year it will start assessing whether countries are doing enough to fight criminal use of virtual currencies. Countries that don't could risk being effectively put on a "gray list" by the FATF, which can scare away investors. Marshall Billingslea, an assistant U.S. Treasury secretary who holds the FATF's rotating leadership, said, "We've made clear today that every jurisdiction must establish" virtual currency rules. "It's no longer optional." The FATF described how the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have used virtual currencies. Financial regulators worldwide have struggled to deal with the rise of electronic…

Facebook has hired former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to head its global policy and communications teams, enlisting a veteran of European Union politics to help it with increased regulatory scrutiny in the region. Clegg, 51, will become a vice president of the social media giant, and report to Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Clegg will be called upon to help Facebook and other Silicon Valley stalwarts grapple with a changing regulatory landscape globally. European Union regulators are interested in reining in mostly American tech giants who they blame for avoiding tax, stifling competition and encroaching on privacy rights. Clegg led the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015, including five years in the coalition government with the Conservatives. He lost his Sheffield Hallam seat at last year's general election.…

The Syrian government says the ancient city of Palmyra, gravely damaged by IS militants, could reopen to the public next spring. But, while restoration continues on the ground, one French startup is showing people how Palmyra and other cities affected by war once looked, how they look now, and how they might look after restoration. Kevin Enochs explains. ...

Computer giant IBM Corp., financial services company Western Union Co. and European police launched a project Thursday to share financial data that  they said may one day be able to predict human trafficking before it occurs. The shared data hub will collect information on money moving around the world and compare it with known ways that traffickers move their illicit gains, highlighting red flags signaling potential trafficking, organizers said. "We will build and aggregate that material, using IBM tools, into an understanding of hot spots and routes and trends," said Neil Giles, a director at global anti-slavery group Stop the Traffik, which is participating in the project. Data collection, digital tools and modern technology are the latest weapons in the fight against human trafficking, estimated to be a $150 billion-a-year global business, according to the International Labor Organization. The U.N. has set a…

Even in the country that invented the internet, access has remained painfully slow for many rural residents in places like the central state of Arkansas, far from the big cities of the East and West coasts. That may be about to change. The Federal Communications Commission — a government agency — recently auctioned off almost $1.5 billion in subsidies to get broadband providers to serve an additional 700,000 American homes over the next 10 years. Additional such auctions are planned. For rural residents in Arkansas — ranked as one of the worst connected states in the country — it cannot come too soon. "Remember dial-up?" That's how Ashley Vaughan responds when she's asked to describe her internet speed at home. She's a resident of Pangburn, Arkansas, a town of about…

On Wednesday, Twitter released a collection of more than 10 million tweets related to thousands of accounts affiliated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency propaganda organization, as well as hundreds more troll accounts, including many based in Iran. The data, analyzed and released in a report by The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, are made up of 3,841 accounts affiliated with the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, 770 other accounts potentially based in Iran as well as 10 million tweets and more than 2 million images, videos and other media. Russian trolls targeting U.S. politics took on personas from both the left and the right. Their primary goal appears to have been to sow discord, rather than promote any particular side, presumably with a goal of weakening the United States, the…

Twitter has released a collection of more than 10 million tweets it says are related to foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections going back a decade, including many tied to Russia’s digital efforts to sow chaos and sway the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. Twitter says it made the cache, which includes tweets from Iran and Russia’s state-sponsored troll farm, Internet Research Agency, available so researchers around the world could conduct their own analyses. The non-partisan Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab has been looking through the collection since last week.  In a preliminary analysis posted on Medium, the online publishing platform, the Lab noted operators from Iran and Russia appeared to have targeted politically polarized groups in order to maximize divisiveness in the United States’ political scene.…