With a pending law declaring the social media application TikTok illegal in the United States, set to take effect on Sunday, the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is signaling that it plans to try to find a way to prevent the service from going offline. Under current law, the service’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, must either sell TikTok to a non-Chinese firm or see it banned in the U.S. Representative Mike Waltz, who has been tapped to serve as Trump’s national security adviser, told Fox News on Thursday that the president-elect has options available to postpone enforcement of the law while a possible deal is worked out to sell the company. That includes a section of the law allowing the president to give ByteDance a 90-day extension to finalize a sale. “We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark,” Waltz said, “as long as a viable deal is on the table. Essentially that buys President Trump time to keep TikTok going.” Executive action reportedly considered Also on Wednesday, several media outlets reported that Trump is considering issuing an executive order that would protect TikTok. The legality of such a move is unclear and is thrown further into doubt by the fact that the Supreme Court is poised to rule on a request by the company to overturn the law. The high court heard arguments in the case last week and is expected to rule shortly. The outcome is not certain. However, in oral arguments, …

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says he wants the United States to be the world leader in artificial intelligence and crypto currency. To that end, he has tapped a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor to be the AI and crypto czar. Michelle Quinn has the story. …

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Blue Origin’s giant New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida early Thursday morning on its first mission to space, an inaugural step into Earth’s orbit for Jeff Bezos’ space company as it aims to rival SpaceX in the satellite launch business. Thirty stories tall with a reusable first stage, New Glenn launched around 2 a.m. ET (0700 GMT) from Blue Origin’s launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, its seven engines thundering for miles under cloudy skies on its second liftoff attempt this week. Hundreds of employees at the company’s Kent, Washington headquarters and its Cape Canaveral, Florida rocket factory roared in applause as Blue Origin VP Ariane Cornell announced the rocket’s second stage made it to orbit, achieving a long-awaited milestone. “We hit our key, critical, number-one objective, we got to orbit safely,” Cornell said on a company live stream. “And y’all we did it on our first go.” The rocket’s reusable first stage booster was due to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean after separating from its second stage, but failed to make that landing, Cornell confirmed. Telemetry from the booster blacked out minutes after liftoff. “We did in fact lose the booster,” Cornell said. The culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development journey, the mission marks Blue Origin’s first trek to Earth’s orbit in the 25 years since Bezos founded the company. Bezos told Reuters on Sunday, before Blue Origin’s first launch attempt, that he was most nervous about landing the booster. …

BENGALURU — India became the world’s fourth nation on Thursday to achieve the feat of space docking, a technological milestone that underscores its ambitions to expand its share of a rapidly growing $400-billion global space market.  Target and Chaser, two satellites of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) that are each roughly the size of a large refrigerator, successfully latched onto each other Thursday morning, an agency spokesperson said.  The indigenous technology, crucial for satellite servicing, space station operations, and interplanetary missions, positions India for a key role in commercial and exploratory space efforts.  “India has ambitious missions planned and to achieve those, this is an important technology,” astrophysicist Jayant Murthy said.  “Various missions, like building a space station, need assembly in space, which is not possible without space docking.”  ISRO said the two satellites participating in its Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), will now be controlled as a single object, with power transfer checks made in the next few days.  The mission had been postponed twice, first because the docking process needed further validation through ground simulations, and then to resolve an issue stemming from excess drift between the satellites.  SpaDeX, launched on Dec. 30 from India’s main spaceport, deployed the satellites in orbit with an Indian-made rocket.  Among 24 payloads and experiments were eight cowpea seeds, sent to space to study plant growth in microgravity conditions, which germinated within four days of the mission’s launch.  Scientists say this is a critical step demonstrating that food can eventually be grown in …

On Wednesday the U.S. Department of Commerce announced it would implement new export controls on certain biotechnology equipment, citing national security concerns relating to artificial intelligence and data science. The Commerce Department warned that China could use the biotech equipment’s technology to bolster its military capabilities and help design new weapons using artificial intelligence. The department said the technology has many applications, including its ability to be used for “human performance enhancement, brain-machine interfaces, biologically inspired synthetic materials and possibly biological weapons.” The sanctions effectively restrict shipments of the technology to countries without a U.S. license, such as China. The controls apply to parameter flow cytometers and certain mass spectrometry equipment, which according to the Commerce Department, can “generate high-quality, high-content biological data, including that which is suitable for use to facilitate the development of AI and biological design tools.” Last week, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said Beijing “firmly opposes any country’s development, possession or use of biological weapons.” This latest move by the United States follows recent policy decisions that reflect Washington’s broad aim to limit Beijing’s access to U.S. technology and data. Washington announced on Monday that it would tighten Beijing’s access to AI chip and technology exports by implementing new regulations that cap the number of chips that can be exported to certain countries, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. This month, the ban on popular Chinese-owned social media TikTok is planned to go into effect due to U.S. concerns over its potential to share …

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — As TikTok’s Sunday deadline to divest or face a U.S. ban approaches, hundreds of thousands of American users of the popular social media video app say they are migrating to another Chinese social media app, Xiaohongshu, or RedNote. Dubbing themselves “TikTok Refugees,” some say they are making the move in search of a new home; others say their exodus is a form of protest against the ban. With just days to go before the deadline, users are facing growing uncertainty as they wait for a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether the ban will be upheld. Reports are now suggesting that TikTok may just shut down its operations in the United States if the ban goes through. “Our government is out of their mind if they think we are going to stand for this TikTok ban,” said American user Heather Roberts in one video on Xiaohongshu. “We are just going to a new Chinese app and here we are.” Sky Bynum, an 18-year-old makeup content creator in the eastern state of New Jersey, told VOA that she is joining Xiaohongshu because she wants to find another social media site with a sense of community. “The best thing about TikTok is the community on there,” Bynum told VOA in a video interview via Zoom. “When I posted my first few makeup videos, TikTok pushed them to the makeup people and I instantly found my community. I think [the potential ban on TikTok] is awful because I’m not …

Two moon landers built by private U.S. and Japanese companies are on their way to the moon after lifting off early Wednesday on a shared ride aboard a SpaceX rocket. The launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is the latest in a public-private program that put a spacecraft from Intuitive Machines on the moon last year. Wednesday’s launch included a lander from Japanese space exploration company ispace that is carrying a rover with the capability of collecting lunar dirt and testing potential food and water sources on the moon. The spacecraft is also carrying a small red “Moonhouse” built by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. The ispace mission is expected to reach its destination on the moon’s far north in four to five months. The company is making its second attempt at a lunar landing, after a 2023 mission failed in the final stages.  Also aboard the rocket heading toward the moon is a lander from U.S. company Firefly Aerospace that is set to carry out 10 experiments for NASA. The planned experiments include gathering dirt and measuring subsurface temperatures. The spacecraft is expected to arrive in about 45 days. Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters …

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden signed on Tuesday an executive order to boost development of artificial intelligence infrastructure in America. A day earlier, his administration announced sweeping measures to block access to the most advanced semiconductors by China and other adversaries. But the U.S. left India, its strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific, off a list of 18 countries that are allowed unrestricted access to advanced AI chips. Analysts say while a growing technological relationship between the two countries would likely make India eligible in the future to access advanced U.S. AI chips, New Delhi’s existing ties with Moscow and the perception of a less robust technology regulatory framework led to its exclusion from the top list. Exclusion not a surprise The Commerce Department’s policy framework divides the world into three categories. The first tier includes the U.S. and 18 countries with unrestricted access, followed by a list of more than 100 countries that will be subjected to new caps on advanced semiconductors with individual exemptions. The third tier includes adversaries such as China and Russia that face maximum restrictions. India falls in the second category, along with U.S. allies like Israel and close friends such as Singapore. Bhaskar Chakravorti, the dean of global business at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, said that India’s relationship with Russia “puts it outside a super safe category.” India has had close ties with Russia since the Soviet Union supported its desire for independence from Britain. It maintained those ties …

Elon Musk was sued on Tuesday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the world’s richest person of waiting too long to disclose in 2022 he had amassed a large stake in Twitter, the social media company he later bought. In a complaint filed in Washington, the SEC said Musk violated federal securities law by waiting 11 days too long to disclose his initial purchase of 5% of Twitter’s common shares. An SEC rule requires investors to disclose within 10 calendar days, or by March 24, 2022, in Musk’s case, when they cross a 5% ownership threshold. The SEC said that at the expense of unsuspecting investors, Musk bought more than $500 million of Twitter shares at artificially low prices before finally revealing his purchases on April 4, 2022, by which time he owned a 9.2% stake. Twitter’s share price rose more than 27% following that disclosure, the SEC said. Tuesday’s lawsuit seeks to force Musk to pay a civil fine and disgorge profits he didn’t deserve. Musk eventually purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, and renamed it X. Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, in an email called the SEC lawsuit the culmination of the regulator’s “multi-year campaign of harassment” against his client. “Today’s action is an admission by the SEC that they cannot bring an actual case,” he said. “Mr. Musk has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.” Spiro added that the lawsuit addresses a mere “alleged administrative …

The White House says it has finalized rules that crack down on Chinese and Russian automobile technology effectively banning all personal smart cars from the two countries from entering the U.S. market. In a White House fact sheet detailing the decision, the Biden administration Tuesday said that while connected vehicles offer advantages, the involvement of foreign adversaries such as China and Russia in their supply chains presents serious risks granting “malign actors unfettered access to these connected systems and the data they collect.” “The Department of Commerce has issued a final rule that will prohibit the sale and import of connected vehicle hardware and software systems, as well as completed connected vehicles, from the PRC and Russia,” the fact sheet said. PRC is the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China. Connected vehicles are smart cars that are designed to be convenient for consumers and provide safety for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians through the use of many connected parts such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and satellite connectivity. “Cars today aren’t just steel on wheels; they’re computers,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo when speaking on the rule. “This is a targeted approach to ensure we keep PRC- and Russian-manufactured technologies off American roads,” said Raimondo. The new rule is the “culmination of a year-long examination” of potential risks posed by connected vehicles and will “help the United States defend against the PRC’s cyber espionage and intrusion operations, which continue to pose a significant threat to U.S. critical infrastructure …

— U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order Tuesday directing the development of artificial intelligence data centers on six federal land sites, with a special focus on powering them with clean energy and upholding high labor standards.  Biden said in a statement that the United States is the world leader in AI, but cannot take that lead for granted.  “We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water,” Biden said.  The order calls for the Department of Defense and Department of Energy to each identify three suitable sites where private companies will lease the land, pay for the construction and operation of the data centers and ensure the supply of enough clean energy to fully power the sites.  The developers will also have to buy “an appropriate share” of semiconductors produced in the United States to help ensure there is a “robust domestic semiconductor supply chain,” the White House said.  In addition to identifying the sites, the federal government will also commit under the order to expedite the permitting process for the data center construction.  Senior administration officials, in a phone call with journalists previewing the order, highlighted the national security need for the United States to have its own powerful AI infrastructure, both to protect it for its own use but also to prevent adversaries such as China from possessing those capabilities.  …

LONDON — Britain’s antitrust regulator said on Tuesday it would investigate Google’s search services using its new powers to see how they impact consumers and businesses, including advertisers, news publishers and rival search engines. The Competition and Markets Authority, which has gained new powers to examine big tech, said search was vital for economic growth and it was critical that competition was working well. “Millions of people and businesses relied on Google’s search and advertising services – with 90% of searches happening on their platform and more than 200,000 UK businesses advertising there,” CMA boss Sarah Cardell said in a statement. “It’s our job to ensure people get the full benefit of choice and innovation in search services and get a fair deal.” The CMA’s move comes after U.S. prosecutors in November argued to a judge that Google must sell its Chrome browser, share data, and search results with rivals, and take a range of other measures to end its monopoly on online search. Google did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. …

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin will try again to launch its massive new rocket as early as Tuesday after calling off the debut launch because of ice buildup in critical plumbing. The 98-meter New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn Monday with a prototype satellite. But ice formed in a purge line for a unit powering some of the rocket’s hydraulic systems and launch controllers ran out of time to clear it, according to the company. Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin said Tuesday’s poor weather forecast could cause more delay. Thick clouds and stiff wind were expected at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic. New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn. It is five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket that carries paying customers to the edge of space from Texas. Bezos founded the company 25 years ago. He took part in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located at the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. No matter what happens, Bezos said this weekend, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.” …

WASHINGTON — The U.S. on Monday imposed sanctions on an extreme right-wing online network, designating the “Terrorgram” collective a terrorist group and accusing it of promoting violent white supremacy.  The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it had designated the group, which primarily operates on the Telegram social media site, and three of its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.  The State Department said the group has motivated and facilitated attacks and attempted attacks by users, including a 2022 shooting outside an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia, a planned attack in 2024 on energy facilities in New Jersey and an August knife attack at a mosque in Turkey.  “The group promotes violent white supremacism, solicits attacks on perceived adversaries, and provides guidance and instructional materials on tactics, methods, and targets for attacks, including on critical infrastructure and government officials,” the State Department said.  The action freezes any of the group’s U.S. assets and bars Americans from dealing with it.  The leaders targeted on Monday with sanctions were based in Brazil, Croatia and South Africa, according to the statement.  In September, U.S. prosecutors unveiled criminal charges against two alleged leaders of the group, saying they used Telegram to solicit attacks on Black, Jewish, LGBTQ people and immigrants with the aim of inciting a race war.  Britain in April said it would proscribe the Terrorgram collective as a terrorist organization, meaning it would become a criminal offense in the country to belong to or promote the group.  U.S. President Joe Biden has …

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission has vowed to continue the agency’s drive to break up Big Tech monopolies while adding a new focus: free speech. VOA’s Matt Dibble has the story. …

— The Biden administration announced Monday new restrictions on the export of the most advanced artificial intelligence chips and proprietary parameters used to govern the interactions of users with AI systems. The rule, which will undergo a 120-day period for public comments, comes in response to what administration officials described as a need to protect national security while also clarifying the rules under which companies in trusted partner countries could access the emerging technology in order to promote innovation. “Over the coming years, AI will become really ubiquitous in every business application in every industry around the world, with enormous potential for enhanced productivity and societal, healthcare and economic benefits,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters. “That being said, as AI becomes more powerful, the risks to our national security become even more intense.” A senior administration official said the new rule will not include any restrictions on chip sales to Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom or the United States. Countries that are under U.S. arms embargoes are already subject to export restrictions on advanced AI chips, but a senior administration official said they will now be under restrictions for the transfer of the most powerful closed weight AI models. The weights in an AI model determine how it processes the inputs from a user and determines what to provide the user as a response, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In …

jerusalem — When a renowned Israeli TV journalist lost his ability to speak clearly because of ALS, he thought his career might be over. But now, using artificial-intelligence software that can re-create his widely recognized gravelly voice, Moshe Nussbaum — known to generations of viewers simply as “Nussi” — is making a comeback.  Nussbaum, 71, was diagnosed two years ago with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease that attacks nerve cells that control muscles throughout the body.  At the time, he vowed to viewers of Israel’s Channel 12 News to continue working as long as he was physically able. But, gradually, it became more and more difficult.  It was a devastating blow to the career of a leading, no-nonsense reporter who for more than 40 years had covered many of Israel’s most important stories from the field. He had appeared from the scenes of suicide bombing attacks and the front lines of wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and had covered scandals in Israel’s parliament and high-profile court cases.  After Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war in Gaza, Nussbaum was unable to report from the field. It was the first war of his career he had ever sat out, he noted in a recent interview with colleagues at Channel 12, the country’s largest station.  Even though he was having trouble moving and speaking, he launched a segment interviewing injured soldiers from Israeli hospitals. His questions were slow and halting, but he kept it …

WASHINGTON — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has begun producing advanced 4-nanometer chips in Arizona for U.S. customers, a milestone in the Biden administration’s semiconductor efforts, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told Reuters. In November, the Commerce Department finalized a $6.6 billion grant to TSMC’s U.S. unit for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona. “For the first time ever in our country’s history, we are making leading-edge 4-nanometer chips on American soil, American workers — on par in yield and quality with Taiwan,” Raimondo told Reuters in an interview, saying it had begun in recent weeks. “That’s a big deal — never been done before, never in our history. And lots of people said it couldn’t happen,” Raimondo said of the previously undisclosed production start. A spokesperson for TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to Apple and Nvidia, which reports earnings next week, declined to comment Friday. In April, TSMC agreed to expand its planned investment by $25 billion to $65 billion and to add a third Arizona production facility by 2030. Congress created a $52.7 billion semiconductor manufacturing and research subsidy program in 2022. Commerce persuaded all five leading-edge semiconductor firms to locate production facilities in the United States as part of the program. Raimondo told Reuters earlier that Commerce had to persuade TSMC to boost its U.S. plans. “It didn’t happen on its own. … We had to convince TSMC that they would want to expand,” Raimondo said. TSMC will produce the world’s most advanced 2-nanometer technology at …

Technology companies, industry executives and entrepreneurs are in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week for CES, the consumer electronics show featuring the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, vehicle technology, robotics and more. Tina Trinh reports from Las Vegas. …

WASHINGTON — Russia’s efforts to obtain China’s help in enhancing artificial intelligence is seen as a bid to challenge America’s lead in the field even as the outgoing Biden administration is expected to impose new export control measures to further curb Beijing’s access to AI chips. As the new year began, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country’s state-owned Sberbank, to work with China in researching and developing AI technology, according to the Kremlin. “The Russian president sees his country in global competition for AI with the United States and has positioned the state resources to try and compete with the U.S. in information and cyberspace – two areas where artificial intelligence is supposed to aid Russia in what they see as Western narratives and influence,” said Samuel Bendett, adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Moscow views Beijing’s success in AI as an example to follow, and its “cooperation with China is viewed as a necessary step towards acquiring artificial intelligence-related skill sets, knowledge and technology,” Bendett told VOA in written comments. The U.S. currently leads in AI innovation, followed by China, which is falling behind by wide margins, according to a November report by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Russia ranks 31st out of 83 countries in AI implementation, innovation and investment, according to U.K.-based Tortoise Media’s Global AI Index. Response to sanctions Western sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have limited the country’s AI development, and Moscow …

LAS VEGAS — So much of the technology showcased at CES includes gadgets made to improve consumers’ lives — whether by leveraging AI to make devices that help people become more efficient, by creating companions to cure loneliness, or by providing tools that help people with mental and physical health.  But not all innovation is good, according to a panel of self-described dystopia experts that has judged some products as “Worst in Show.” The award that no company wants to win calls out the “least repairable, least private, and least sustainable products on display.”  “We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them, and it enables some cool things,” Liz Chamberlain, director of sustainability at the e-commerce site iFixit told The Associated Press. “But it also means that now we’ve got microphones and cameras in our washing machines, refrigerators and that really is an industry-wide problem.”  The fourth annual contest announced its decisions Thursday.  A new smart ring every few years?  Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, awarded the Ultrahuman Rare Luxury Smart Ring the title of “least repairable.”  The rings, which come in colors like dune and desert sand, cost $2,200. Wiens said the jewelry “looks sleek but hides a major flaw: its battery only lasts 500 charges.” Worse, he said, is the fact that replacing the battery is impossible without destroying the device entirely.  “Luxury items may be fleeting, but two years of use for $2,200 is a new low,” he said.  Ultrahuman …

The United States Supreme Court has fast-tracked oral arguments on a challenge by the Chinese company ByteDance — the owner of TikTok — to a new law that would ban the social media platform on grounds of national security. VOA’s Steve Herman reports. …

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that there would be a wider range of speech on Facebook and other Meta platforms. “We’re going to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” he said. Here are some of the key changes: Gone will be third-party fact-checkers eyeing Facebook posts for violations in the United States. Instead, Facebook will rely on “community notes,” a system used on X (formerly Twitter) that allows community members to flag posts and vote on the legitimacy of them. Restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity will be lifted. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far. So, I want to make sure that people can share their beliefs and experiences on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said. Civic and political content, which the company stopped presenting to users in recent years, will be recommended again on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. And the firm’s trust and safety and content moderation teams will move from California, considered a liberal state, to Texas, considered a conservative-leaning state. The move “will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” he said. Preparing for Trump Zuckerberg’s announcement comes as Meta and other technology companies prepare for major policy and regulatory changes with the return of President-elect Donald Trump to the …

Meta is ending its fact-checking program in the U.S. and replacing it with a “Community Notes” system similar to that on Elon Musk-owned X, the Facebook parent said on Tuesday.   The Community Notes model will allow users on Meta’s social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads to call out posts that are potentially misleading and need more context, rather than placing the responsibility on independent fact checking organizations and experts.   “Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives. This showed up in the choices some made about what to fact check and how … A program intended to inform too often became a tool to censor,” Meta said.   Meta added that its efforts over the years to manage content across its platforms have expanded “to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable.”  The company said it would begin phasing in Community Notes in the United States over the next couple of months and would improve the model over the course of the year.  It will also stop demoting fact-checked content and use a label notifying users there is additional information related to the post, instead of the company’s current method of displaying full-screen warnings that users have to click through before even viewing the post.   …