Category: Technology

Cities around the world are installing new technology that connects to the personal devices of pedestrians, drivers, and riders on public transportation. Some cities are using these systems to make transportation easier for people with disabilities, such as those who are blind. For VOA, Jason Strother has the story from Busan, South Korea. ...

South Korea’s second largest city is using new, inclusive technology to bring down barriers to mobility for people who are blind.Park Hyoung-bae glides his long, white cane along a strip of raised yellow blocks that form a trail through an underground metro station. The tactile paving leads blind commuters from the street all the way to the train platform.But Park, who is walking arm in arm with his mother, says the tiles still don’t make him feel comfortable enough to travel far from his home on his own.Information boards, maps and other signage direct travelers to exits, restrooms and other station amenities, but all of these visual indicators are inaccessible for the 32-year-old.Without help from a family member or a hired guide, he explains Busan’s metro system can be overwhelming.“I’ve…

Cities around the world are installing new technology that connects to the personal devices of pedestrians, drivers, and riders on public transportation. Some cities are using these systems to make transportation easier for people with disabilities, such as those who are blind. For VOA, Jason Strother has the story from Busan, South Korea. ...

JBS Foods, the world’s largest meat supplier, has been forced to shut down operations in Australia and North America Monday, as the company has been a target of a cyberattack over the weekend, according to officials at its headquarters in Brazil. Authorities said they are working to resolve the impact. A U.S. subsidiary, JBS USA, issued a statement following the attack saying they are taking “immediate action, suspending all affected systems, notifying authorities, and activating the company’s global network of IT [Information Technology] professionals and third-party experts,” to address the issue, Reuters reported. Some transactions with customer and suppliers might be delayed due to the cyberattack, the company statement added.  There is no evidence, so far, that the personal data of customers and suppliers or employees had been compromised, the statement said. The company’s backup IT system was not hit by what the company said was an “organized cybersecurity attack.” The largest global meatpacker has operations…

Cities around the world are installing new technology that connects to the personal devices of pedestrians, drivers, and riders on public transportation. Some cities are using these systems to make transportation easier for people with disabilities, such as those who are blind. For VOA, Jason Strother has the story from Busan, South Korea. ...

JBS Foods, the world’s largest meat supplier, has been forced to shut down operations in Australia and North America Monday, as the company has been a target of a cyberattack over the weekend, according to officials at its headquarters in Brazil. Authorities said they are working to resolve the impact. A U.S. subsidiary, JBS USA, issued a statement following the attack saying they are taking “immediate action, suspending all affected systems, notifying authorities, and activating the company’s global network of IT [Information Technology] professionals and third-party experts,” to address the issue, Reuters reported. Some transactions with customer and suppliers might be delayed due to the cyberattack, the company statement added.  There is no evidence, so far, that the personal data of customers and suppliers or employees had been compromised, the statement said. The company’s backup IT system was not hit by what the company said was an “organized cybersecurity attack.” The largest global meatpacker has operations…

New clean energy technologies like solar power and electric vehicles are expected to remake the global energy industry. Trillions of dollars used to drill and ship oil and gas will instead be spent finding and processing the specialized minerals used to make high-tech gear including advanced electric generators and powerful, compact batteries.Energy analysts say this will challenge the United States, which will likely need to import vastly more minerals like cobalt, lithium and aluminum, at the same time that China has increased its control over the supply of some key resources.People cool off in the beach near the mining pipeline "Puerto Coloso" of the "Escondida" cooper mine in Antofagasta, Chile, Feb. 16, 2017.A VOA examination of U.S. government data shows how China has become the main supplier for some of…

The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted spear-phishing assault on U.S. and foreign government agencies and think tanks this week using an email marketing account of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Microsoft said. The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said in a blog post late Thursday. It did not say what portion of the attempts may have led to successful intrusions. The cybersecurity firm Volexity, which also tracked the campaign but has less visibility into email systems than Microsoft , said in a post  that relatively low detection rates of the phishing emails suggest the attacker…

A new report suggests that Chinese telecommunication firm Huawei has successfully secured contracts to provide cloud infrastructure in emerging economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America — a strategy that could allow Beijing to harvest important and sensitive information for "coercive leverage." The move comes as many developed economies such as the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and France are banning or restricting Huawei from their 5G networks.  The report, FILE - Huawei's Director of the Board William Xu speaks at the opening of Huawei Global Analysts Summit in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, April 12, 2021.The CSIS report warned that as Huawei carves out a niche as a provider to governments and state-owned enterprises, "its activities could provide Chinese authorities with intelligence and even coercive leverage." In response to the report, Huawei issued…

Facebook says it will no longer remove claims that COVID-19 is human-made or manufactured “in light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts."There is rising pressure worldwide to investigate the origins of the pandemic, including the possibility that it came from a lab. Since the pandemic began, Facebook has been changing what it allows on the topic and what it bans. In February, it announced a host of new claims it would be prohibiting -- including that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese lab. Other claims it added at the time included the false notion that vaccines are not effective or that they are toxic.Lisa Fazio, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, said the reversal shows the difficulty of fact-checking in…

The Cyprus-flagged oil tanker Berlina was drifting near the Caribbean island of Dominica earlier this year when tracking technology showed it stopping in its tracks and in two minutes turning around 180 degrees.It was an amazingly quick pivot since the 274-meter ship needs roughly 10 times that amount of time to perform such a maneuver.Even more intriguing: Around the same time the Berlina was pinging its location at sea, it was physically spotted loading crude oil in nearby Venezuela despite U.S. sanctions against such trading.Meanwhile, nine other ships, some connected to the same Greece-based owner of the Berlina, were digitally monitored moving nearby at an identical speed and direction with sudden draft changes, indicating they had somehow been loaded full of crude though apparently out at sea.The Berlina's impossible journey…

Russia and Iran are leading the way when it comes to pushing bad information on one of the world's most popular social media platforms, and new analysis finds they are getting savvier at evading detection. Facebook issued a report Wednesday looking at so-called coordinated inauthentic behavior over the past four years, warning that despite ongoing efforts to identify and remove disinformation networks, there is no let-up in attempts to exploit or weaponize conflict and crisis. "Threat actors have adapted their behavior and sought cover in the gray spaces between authentic and inauthentic engagement and political activity," according to the Facebook report, which looked at the more than 150 networks from more than 50 countries that its security teams took down from 2017 to 2020. "We know they will continue to look for new ways…

WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit challenging the Indian government’s new rules that require the Facebook-owned messaging platform to make people’s messages traceable, a move it says would undermine the privacy of users.The lawsuit was filed as India brought sweeping new regulations into force on Wednesday to make social media and technology companies, that have tens of millions of users in the country, more accountable for content on their platform.One of the new rules would require messaging platforms to identify the “first originator of information” when authorities demand it. WhatsApp wants that regulation blocked saying that it undermines citizens’ fundamental right to privacy.In a statement issued after the lawsuit was filed, the government said it respects the right to privacy as a fundamental right but "no Fundamental Right, including the Right…

A few hours after the latest cease-fire took effect in the Gaza Strip, a number of Palestinian journalists in the coastal enclave found they were blocked from accessing WhatsApp messenger — a crucial tool used to communicate with sources, editors and the world beyond the blockaded strip.  The Associated Press reached out to 17 journalists in Gaza who confirmed their Whatsapp accounts had been blocked since Friday. By midday Monday, only four journalists — working for Al Jazeera — confirmed their accounts had been restored.The incident marks the latest puzzling move concerning WhatsApp's owner Facebook Inc. that's left Palestinian users or their allies bewildered as to why they've been targeted by the company, or if indeed they'd been singled out for censorship at all.Twelve of the 17 journalists contacted by…

Some might put off a visit to the eye doctor, but one company has come up with a way for patients to administer their own vision exam at home, using a smartphone. Tina Trinh reports. ...

Indian police officials say they visited Twitter's Delhi and Gurgaon offices to serve notice to the company's managing director concerning an investigation into the company tagging some government official's tweets as "manipulated media."Several leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shared parts of a document they said was created by their main political opposition, Congress, which allegedly showed how it planned to hinder the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.Some have been critical of the government's handling of the pandemic. The BJP has blamed state governments for the slow response and ignoring warnings by Modi of a second wave.Congress said the documents were fake and complained to Twitter, which tagged the posts as manipulated.Twitter tags posts as "manipulated media" "that include media (videos, audio, and images) that…

The recent cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, the operator of the largest petroleum pipeline in the U.S., shows how internet criminals are increasingly targeting companies and organizations for ransom in what officials and experts term a growing national security threat.These hackers penetrate victims’ computer systems with a form of malware that encrypts the files, then they demand payments to release the data. In 2013, a ransomware attack typically targeted a person’s desktop or laptop, with users paying $100 to $150 in ransom to regain access to their files, according to Michael Daniel, president and CEO of Cyber Threat Alliance.“It was a fairly minimal affair,” said Daniel, who served as cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council under U.S. President Barack Obama, at the RSA Cybersecurity Conference this week.In recent years, ransomware…

Apple's online marketplace would become a "toxic" mess if the iPhone maker were forced to allow third-party apps without reviewing them, chief executive Tim Cook said in testimony at a high-stakes trial challenging the company's tight control of its platform.Cook, the last scheduled witness in the case brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games, delivered a strong defense of Apple's procedures for reviewing and approving all the apps it offers for iPhone and iPad users."We could no longer make the promise ... of privacy, safety and security," Cook said under questioning from Apple attorney Veronica Moye in federal court in California.Cook said Apple's review process helps keep out malicious software and other problematic apps, helping create a safe place for consumers.Without this review, the online marketplace "would become a toxic kind…

South Korea requested from the United States incentives such as tax deductions and infrastructure construction to ease the U.S. investment of Korean firms, including leading chipmaker Samsung Electronics, its presidential office said Friday.South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in Washington for a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, told a gathering of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, her South Korean counterpart and CEOs of Qualcomm, Samsung and other companies that both countries can benefit by strengthening supply chain cooperation.Biden has advocated for support for the U.S. chip industry amid a global chip shortage that has hit automakers and other industries.He met with executives from major companies including Samsung in April and previously announced plans to invest $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and research.Samsung plans to invest $17 billion for a…

The hackers who carried out the massive SolarWinds intrusion were in the software company's system as early as January 2019, months earlier than previously known, the company's top official said Wednesday. SolarWinds had previously traced the origins of the hack to the fall of 2019 but now believes that hackers were doing "very early recon activities" as far back as the prior January, according to Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the company's president and CEO. "The tradecraft that the attackers used was extremely well done and extremely sophisticated, where they did everything possible to hide in plain sight, so to speak," Ramakrishna said during a discussion hosted by the RSA Conference. The SolarWinds hack, which was first reported last December and which U.S. officials have linked to the Russian government, is one in a series of major breaches that has prompted…

From earbuds that measure blood pressure to clothing that monitors your heart rate, the latest in health monitoring technology is being included in everyday items such as clothes, rings and glasses. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. Camera: Elizabeth Lee Producer: Elizabeth Lee ...

Ireland's data regulator can resume a probe that may trigger a ban on Facebook's transatlantic data transfers, the High Court ruled Friday, raising the prospect of a stoppage the company warns would have a devastating impact on its business.   The case stems from EU concerns that U.S. government surveillance may not respect the privacy rights of EU citizens when their personal data is sent to the United States for commercial use.   Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Facebook's lead regulator in the European Union, launched an inquiry in August and issued a provisional order that the main mechanism Facebook uses to transfer EU user data to the United States "cannot in practice be used."   Facebook had challenged both the inquiry and the Preliminary Draft Decision (PDD), saying they…

Ireland's health service operator shut down all its IT systems Friday to protect them from a ransomware attack, which crippled diagnostic services and disrupted COVID-19 testing.An international cybercrime gang was behind the attack, said Ossian Smyth, Ireland's minister responsible for e-government. Smyth described it as possibly the most significant cybercrime attempt against the Irish state.Ireland's COVID-19 vaccination program was not directly affected, but the attack was affecting IT systems serving all other local and national health provisions, the head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) said.Ransomware attacks typically involve the infection of computers with malicious software, often downloaded by clicking on seemingly innocuous links in emails or other website pop-ups. Users are left locked out of their systems, with the demand that a ransom be paid to restore computer functions.No payment"We…

A fully robotic kitchen with a robot chef that can cook thousands of dishes could be a gamechanger in homes and restaurants around the world. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.Producers: Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum    ...

A Russia-linked cyberattack targeting the largest U.S. fuel pipeline system is a “criminal act, obviously,” President Joe Biden said Monday.“The agencies across the government have acted quickly to mitigate any impact on our fuel supply,” the president said at the White House at the start of remarks about his economic agenda.Biden, responding to a reporter’s question after he concluded his prepared statement about whether there is any evidence of involvement of Russia’s government, replied: “I’m going to be meeting with President (Vladimir) Putin. And so far, there is no evidence based on — from our intelligence people that Russia is involved.”Biden added, however, with evidence that the ransomware actors are based in Russia, the government in Moscow has “some responsibility to deal with this.”Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., asks a question during…

A Russia-linked cyberattack targeting the largest U.S. fuel pipeline system is a “criminal act, obviously,” President Joe Biden said Monday.“The agencies across the government have acted quickly to mitigate any impact on our fuel supply,” the president said at the White House at the start of remarks about his economic agenda.Biden, responding to a reporter’s question after he concluded his prepared statement about whether there is any evidence of involvement of Russia’s government, replied: “I’m going to be meeting with President (Vladimir) Putin. And so far, there is no evidence based on — from our intelligence people that Russia is involved.”Biden added, however, with evidence that the ransomware actors are based in Russia, the government in Moscow has “some responsibility to deal with this.”Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., asks a question during…

The global shortage of semiconductors, or microchips — the “brains” in all electronic devices, has heightened the geopolitical significance of Taiwan and its chip-making sector. The island is home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).Many describe Taiwan’s strength in microchips as its “silicon shield,” which can protect it against Chinese aggression.But others suspect the sector, coveted by China, may also trigger China to accelerate its efforts to take advantage of Taiwan’s tech prowess.‘Not let war happen’When asked to explain the shield, TSMC chairman Mark Liu told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program last week that it means “the world all needs Taiwan’s high-tech industry support. So, they will not let the war happen in this region because it goes against interest of every country in the…

Facebook has taken down a network of hundreds of fake accounts and pages targeting people in Ukraine and linked to individuals previously sanctioned by the United States for efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, the company said Thursday.Facebook said the network managed a long-running deceptive campaign across multiple social media platforms and other websites, posing as independent news outlets and promoting favorable content about Ukrainian politicians, including activity that was likely for hire. The company said it started its probe after a tip from the FBI.Facebook attributed the activity to individuals and entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department, including politician Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian lawmaker who was blacklisted by the U.S. government in September over accusations he tried to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election won by President Joe…