COP29 leaders unveil climate funding and energy storage goals

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LONDON — Less than two months ahead of the COP29 United Nations Climate Summit, the Azerbaijani leadership laid out its plans on Tuesday for what it hoped to achieve, as countries continue to wrestle with how to raise ambitions for a new financing target. The main task for the November summit is for countries to agree on a new annual target for funding that wealthy countries will pay to help poorer nations cope with climate change. Many developing countries say they cannot upgrade their targets to cut emissions faster without first receiving more financial support to invest in doing this. With countries remaining far from agreement on the financing goal, the COP29 presidency this week outlined more than a dozen side initiatives that could raise ambitions, but do not require party…


France uses tough, untested cybercrime law to target Telegram’s Durov

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PARIS — When French prosecutors took aim at Telegram boss Pavel Durov, they had a trump card to wield - a tough new law with no international equivalent that criminalizes tech titans whose platforms allow illegal products or activities. The so-called LOPMI law, enacted in January 2023, has placed France at the forefront of a group of nations taking a sterner stance on crime-ridden websites. But the law is so recent that prosecutors have yet to secure a conviction. With the law still untested in court, France's pioneering push to prosecute figures like Durov could backfire if its judges balk at penalizing tech bosses for alleged criminality on their platforms. A French judge placed Durov under formal investigation last month, charging him with various crimes, including the 2023 offence: "Complicity in…


Climate change will escalate child health crisis due to malnutrition, says Gates

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LONDON — Malnutrition is the world's worst child health crisis and climate change will only make things more severe, according to Microsoft-co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates. Between now and 2050, 40 million more children will have stunted growth and 28 million more will suffer from wasting, the most extreme and irreversible forms of malnutrition, as a result of climate change, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in a report on Tuesday. “Unless you get the right food, broadly, both in utero and in your early years, you can never catch up,” Gates told Reuters in an online interview last week, referring to a child’s physical and mental capacity, both of which are held back by a lack of good nutrition. Children without enough of the right food are also more…


AI videos of US leaders singing Chinese go viral in China

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WASHINGTON — “I love you, China. My dear mother,” former U.S. President Donald Trump, standing in front of a mic at a lectern, appears to sing in perfect Mandarin. “I cry for you, and I also feel proud for you,” Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in this year’s election, appears to respond, also in perfect Mandarin. Trump lets out a smile as he listens to the lyric. The video has received thousands of likes and tens of thousands of reposts on Douyin, China’s variation of TikTok. “These two are almost as Chinese as it gets,” one comment says. Neither Trump nor Harris knows Mandarin. And the duet shown in the video has never happened. But recently, deepfake videos, frequently featuring top U.S. leaders, including President Joe Biden, singing Chinese…


Authorities install air quality Monitors around Nairobi

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Authorities in Nairobi are trying to tackle the Kenyan capital’s chronic and worsening air pollution. With help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, authorities are placing sensors that can monitor air quality around the densely populated city. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo ...


Tech billionaire returns to Earth after first private spacewalk

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A billionaire spacewalker returned to Earth with his crew on Sunday, ending a five-day trip that lifted them higher than anyone has traveled since NASA's moonwalkers. SpaceX's capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida's Dry Tortugas in the predawn darkness, carrying tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, two SpaceX engineers and a former Air Force Thunderbird pilot. They pulled off the first private spacewalk while orbiting nearly 740 kilometers above Earth, higher than the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope. Their spacecraft hit a peak altitude of 1,408 kilometers following Tuesday's liftoff. Isaacman became only the 264th person to perform a spacewalk since the former Soviet Union scored the first in 1965, and SpaceX's Sarah Gillis the 265th. Until now, all spacewalks were done by…


Traveling ‘health train’ has become essential source of free care in South Africa

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JOHANNESBURG — Thethiwe Mahlangu woke early on a chilly morning and walked through her busy South African township, where minibuses hooted to pick up commuters and smoke from sidewalk breakfast stalls hung in the air. Her eyes had been troubling her. But instead of going to her nearby health clinic, Mahlangu was headed to the train station for an unusual form of care. A passenger train known as Phelophepa — or "good, clean, health" in the Sesotho language — had been transformed into a mobile health facility. It circulates throughout South Africa for much of the year, providing medical attention to the sick, young and old who often struggle to receive the care they need at crowded local clinics. For the past 30 years — ever since South Africa's break with…


Robot begins removing Fukushima nuclear plant’s melted fuel

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tokyo — A long robot entered a damaged reactor at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant on Tuesday, beginning a two-week, high-stakes mission to retrieve for the first time a tiny amount of melted fuel debris from the bottom. The robot's trip into the Unit 2 reactor is a crucial initial step for what comes next — a daunting, decades-long process to decommission the plant and deal with large amounts of highly radioactive melted fuel inside three reactors that were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Specialists hope the robot will help them learn more about the status of the cores and the fuel debris. Here is an explanation of how the robot works, its mission, significance and what lies ahead as the most challenging phase of the reactor…


WHO flags limited mpox testing in epicenter DRC

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Geneva, Switzerland — Limited capacity is keeping mpox testing coverage low in the DR Congo — the epicenter of the international emergency — the World Health Organization said Saturday in its latest situation report.  "Testing coverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains low, due to limited testing capacity," the United Nations health agency said in its update.  It said the mpox case fatality ratio in the DRC in 2024 was 0.5% among confirmed cases — or 25 deaths from 5,160 cases — and 3.3% among suspected cases, both tested and untested — or 717 deaths among 21,835 cases.  "Due to limited access to laboratory testing in remote areas, only about 40% of all suspected cases have been tested in 2024 (up from 9% in 2023), and among these, around…


Brazil’s Lula pledges to finish paving road experts say could worsen Amazon deforestation

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brasilia — In a visit to see the damage caused by drought and fire in the Amazon, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to pave a road that environmentalists and some in his own government say threatens to vastly increase destruction of the world's largest tropical forest — and contribute to climate change.  The BR-319 roadway is a mostly dirt road through the rainforest that connects the states of Amazonas and Roraima to the rest of the country. It ends in Manaus, the Amazon's largest city with over 2 million people, and runs parallel to the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira is at its lowest recorded level, disrupting cargo navigation, with most of its riverbed now endless sand dunes under a sky thick with…


Apple faces challenges in Chinese market against Huawei’s tri-fold phone

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Taipei, Taiwan — The U.S.-China technology war is playing out in the smartphone market in China, where global rivals Apple and Huawei released new phones this week. Industry experts say Apple, which lacks home-field advantage, faces many challenges in defending its market share in the country. The biggest highlight of the iPhone 16 is its artificial intelligence system, dubbed Apple Intelligence, while the Huawei Mate XT features innovative tri-fold screen technology.  But at a starting price of RMB 19,999, about $2,810, the Mate XT will cost about three times as much as the iPhone 16. According to data from VMall, Huawei's official shopping site, nearly 5.74 million people in China preordered the Mate XT as of late Thursday, 5½ days after Huawei began accepting preorders. But in a survey conducted on…


Tech billionaire pulls off first private spacewalk high above Earth

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A tech billionaire performed the first private spacewalk hundreds of kilometers above Earth on Thursday, a high-risk endeavor reserved for professional astronauts — until now. Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company's brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring spacewalk also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside. This spacewalk was simple and quick — less than two hours — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move across the sprawling complex for repairs, always traveling in pairs and lugging gear. Station spacewalks can last seven to eight hours. Isaacman emerged first from the hatch, joining a small elite group of spacewalkers who until…


Botswana, US firm partner to conduct border pathogen monitoring

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Gaborone, Botswana — Botswana and an American biotech firm, Ginkgo Bioworks, have partnered to conduct pathogen surveillance at the country’s entry points. Health officials say the proactive move is meant to safeguard public health as the world faces emerging disease threats. Botswana introduced mpox screening last month for travelers at its entry points. In a statement Wednesday, Ministry of Health spokesperson Christopher Nyanga said a pathogen-monitoring program is critical to detecting similar emerging health threats. Dr. Mbatshi Mazwiduma, a public health expert, said the pathogen-surveillance program will complement existing strategies to prevent disease threats. "The initiative by the Ministry of Health is a very welcome development in the sense that it is at least demonstrating that they are both embracing traditional methods of surveillance and disease detection plus at the same…


AI not a US election gamechanger yet, officials say

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Washington — When the U.S. announced the seizure of 32 internet domains tied to Russian efforts to ply American voters with disinformation ahead of November’s presidential election, prosecutors were quick to note the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. The Russian operation, known as Doppelganger, drove internet and social media users to the fake news using a variety of methods, the charging documents said, including advertisements that were “in some cases created using artificial intelligence.” AI tools were also used to “generate content, including images and videos, for use in negative advertisements about U.S. politicians,” the indictment added. And Russia is far from alone in turning to AI in the hopes of swaying U.S. voters. “The primary actors we've seen for election use of this are Iran and Russia, although as…


Soyuz craft heads to space station with 2 Russians, 1 American

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MOSCOW — A Soyuz spacecraft carrying two Russians and an American blasted off Wednesday for an express trip to the International Space Station.  The space capsule atop a towering rocket set off at 1623 GMT from Russia's manned space launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and was scheduled to dock with the space station three hours later, in contrast to some missions that last for days.  The mission commander is Alexei Ovchinin, with Russian compatriot Ivan Vagner and American Donald Pettit in the crew.  The blast-off took place without obvious problems and the Soyuz entered orbit eight minutes after liftoff, a relief for Russian space authorities after an automated safety system halted a launch in March because of a voltage drop in the power system.  On the space station, Pettit, Vagner and…


China takes lead in critical technology research after ‘switching places’ with US

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SINGAPORE — An Australian think tank that tracks tech competitiveness says China is now the world leader in research on almost 90% of critical technologies. In a newly released report, the research group adds there is also a high risk of Beijing securing a monopoly on defense-related tech, including drones, satellites and collaborative robots — those that can work safely alongside humans. Analysts say the huge leap forward for China is the result of heavy state investment over the past two decades. They add that despite the progress, Beijing is still dependent on other countries for key tech components and lacks self-sufficiency. The report from the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, released last Thursday, says China led the way in research into 57 out of 64 advanced technologies in…


Google, Apple lose court fights against EU, owe billions in fines, taxes

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LONDON — Google lost its last bid to overturn a European Union antitrust penalty, after the bloc's top court ruled against it Tuesday in a case that came with a whopping fine and helped jumpstart an era of intensifying scrutiny for Big Tech companies. The European Union's top court rejected Google's appeal against the $2.7 billion penalty from the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's top antitrust enforcer, for violating antitrust rules with its comparison shopping service. Also Tuesday, Apple lost its challenge against an order to repay $14.34 billion in back taxes to Ireland, after the European Court of Justice issued a separate decision siding with the commission in a case targeting unlawful state aid for global corporations. Both companies have now exhausted their appeals in the cases that date to…


Zimbabwe rolls out hefty fines for poor telecommunications services

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Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s government has introduced hefty fines of up to $5,000 for poor service in the country's telecommunications industry. In a statement Tuesday, Zimbabwe’s ICT Minister Tatenda Mavetera said the government will levy fines of between $200 and $5,000 per infringement for telecommunications companies and internet providers who fail to give reliable service. Willard Shoko, an independent high-speed internet consultant, said the new fines could result in a solid telecom industry that can compete in the entire southern African region. “The motive behind that is to improve internet for the end user. But I think they should also consider improving the infrastructure sharing and also collaboration to improve internet, not only for the region but also for Zimbabwe, because this is the foundation of the digital economy,” Shoko said.…


First doses of mpox vaccine from US arrive in DR Congo

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KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo said that 50,000 doses of mpox vaccine from the United States arrived in the country on Tuesday, a week after the first batch arrived from the European Union. Adults in Equateur, South Kivu and Sankuru, the three most-affected provinces, will be vaccinated first, starting on October 2, said Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of the DRC's Monkeypox Response Committee. Last week, the first batch of mpox vaccines arrived in the capital, Kinshasa, the center of the outbreak. The 100,000 doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine, manufactured by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic, were donated by the EU through HERA, the bloc's agency for health emergencies. Another 100,000 were delivered over the weekend. The 50,000 doses from the U.S. will be…


Australia plans age limit to ban children from social media

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SYDNEY — Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and "onto the footy fields." Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a "scourge." The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said. The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16. Age verification trials are being held over the coming months, the center-left leader said, though analysts said they doubted it…


Google faces new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly 

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — One month after a judge declared Google's search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.  The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.  The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends.  They allege…


Apple embraces AI craze with newly unleashed iPhone 16 lineup

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CUPERTINO, California — Apple on Monday charged into the artificial intelligence craze with a new iPhone lineup that marks the company's latest attempt to latch onto a technology trend and transform it into a cultural phenomenon.  The four different iPhone 16 models will all come equipped with special chips needed to power a suite of AI tools that Apple hopes will make its marquee product even more indispensable and reverse a recent sales slump.  Apple's AI features are designed to turn its often-blundering virtual assistant Siri into a smarter and more versatile sidekick, automate a wide range of tedious tasks, and pull off other crowd-pleasing tricks such as creating customized emojis within seconds.  After receiving a standing ovation for Monday's event, Apple CEO Tim Cook promised the AI package would unleash…


Bomb blast hits Pakistan polio team amid national immunization drive 

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Islamabad — Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday that a roadside bomb explosion injured at least 10 people, including anti-polio vaccinators and police personnel escorting them.     The bombing in the South Waziristan district near the border with Afghanistan targeted a convoy carrying polio workers and their guards on the opening day of a nationwide immunization campaign.     Area security and hospital officials reported that three health workers and six security personnel were among the victims. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the violence in a region where security forces are fighting militants linked to the outlawed Pakistani Taliban.     Last week, Pakistan reported its 17th wild poliovirus case of the year from Islamabad, saying it paralyzed a child and marked the first infection in 16 years in…