Category: Business

Russia plans to block certain Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and protocols that are deemed by a commission of experts to pose a threat, state news agency RIA reported, citing correspondence from the digital ministry. Demand for VPN services soared after Russia restricted access to some Western social media after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022. A 2017 Russian law obliged providers of VPN technology to cooperate with the Russian authorities and to restrict access to content banned by Russia or be banned themselves. Many VPN services remain widely in use throughout Russia and there has been a public debate among lawmakers about how much further to go in blocking VPN services that still allow access to banned information but also a host of other information. RIA quoted a reply from the digital ministry to an address by lawmaker Anton Tkachev who had raised concerns about what he said were plans to essentially block all VPNs, a step he said would increase pressure on Russians by cutting them off from using some simple household appliances. “On the basis of a decision by the expert commission… the filtration of certain VPN services and VPN protocols can be carried out on the mobile communication network for foreign traffic which is identified as a threat,” RIA quoted the ministry as saying. RIA said that the ministry said that circumvention of restrictions on certain information was considered a threat. …

The Australian government on Sunday described as “serious and ongoing” a cybersecurity incident that forced ports operator DP World Australia to suspend operations at ports in several states since Friday. DP World Australia, which manages nearly half of the goods that flow in and out of the country, said it was looking into possible data breaches as well as testing systems “crucial for the resumption of normal operations and regular freight movement.” The breach halted operations at container terminals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Western Australia’s Fremantle since Friday. “The cyber incident at DP World is serious and ongoing,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. A DP World spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on when normal operations would resume. The company, part of Dubai’s state-owned DP World, is one of a handful of stevedore industry players in the country. The Australian Federal Police said they were investigating the incident but declined to elaborate. Late Saturday, National Cyber Security Coordinator Darren Goldie, appointed this year in response to several major data breaches, said the “interruption” was “likely to continue for a number of days and will impact the movement of goods into and out of the country.” In the Asia-Pacific region, DP World says it employs more than 7,000 people and has ports and terminals in 18 locations. …

Internet access across the war-torn nation of Yemen collapsed Friday and stayed down for hours, with officials later blaming unannounced “maintenance work” for an outage that followed attacks by the country’s Houthi rebels on both Israel and the U.S. The outage began early Friday and halted all traffic at YemenNet, the country’s main provider for about 10 million users which is now controlled by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis. Both NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages, and the internet services company CloudFlare reported the outage. The two did not offer a cause for the outage. “Data shows that the issue has impacted connectivity at a national level as well,” CloudFlare said. Several hours later, some service was restored, though access remained troubled. In a statement to the Houthi-controlled SABA state news agency, Yemen’s Public Telecom Corp. blamed the outage on maintenance. “Internet service will return after the completion of the maintenance work,” the statement quoted an unidentified official as saying. An earlier outage occurred in January 2022 when the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in Yemen bombed a telecommunications building in the Red City port city of Hodeida. There was no immediate word of a similar attack. The undersea FALCON cable carries the internet into Yemen through the Hodeida port along the Red Sea for TeleYemen. The FALCON cable has another landing in Yemen’s far eastern port of Ghaydah as well, but the majority of Yemen’s population lives in its west along the Red Sea. GCX, the company that operates the cable, …

An industrial robot grabbed and crushed a worker to death at a vegetable packaging plant in South Korea, police said Thursday, as they investigated whether the machine was defective or improperly designed. Police said early evidence suggests that human error was more likely to blame rather than problems with the machine itself. But the incident still triggered public concern about the safety of industrial robots and the false sense of security they may give to humans working nearby in a country that increasingly relies on such machines to automate its industries. Police in the southern county of Goseong said the man died of head and chest injuries Tuesday evening after he was snatched and pressed against a conveyor belt by the machine’s robotic arms. Police did not identify the man but said he was an employee of a company that installs industrial robots and was sent to the plant to examine whether the machine was working properly. South Korea has had other accidents involving industrial robots in recent years. In March, a manufacturing robot crushed and seriously injured a worker who was examining it at an auto parts factory in Gunsan. Last year, a robot installed near a conveyor belt fatally crushed a worker at a milk factory in Pyeongtaek. The machine that caused the death on Tuesday was one of two pick-and-place robots used at the facility, which packages bell peppers and other vegetables exported to other Asian countries, police said. Such machines are common in South Korea’s agricultural …

For farmers in the Midwest United States, emerging autonomous technology could reduce costs and increase efficiency in the agricultural supply chain. Kane Farabaugh shows the promise of the technology on the farm in this edition of LogOn.  …

Elon Musk unveiled details Saturday of his new AI tool called “Grok,” which can access X in real time and will be initially available to the social media platform’s top tier of subscribers. Musk, the tycoon behind Tesla and SpaceX, said the link-up with X, formerly known as Twitter, is “a massive advantage over other models” of generative AI. Grok “loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way,” Musk quipped, adding a laughing emoji to his post. “Grok” comes from Stranger in a Strange Land, a 1961 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein, and means to understand something thoroughly and intuitively. “As soon as it’s out of early beta, xAI’s Grok system will be available to all X Premium+ subscribers,” Musk said. The social network that Musk bought a year ago launched the Premium+ plan last week for $16 per month, with benefits like no ads. The billionaire started xAI in July after hiring researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla and the University of Toronto. Since OpenAI’s generative AI tool ChatGPT exploded on the scene a year ago, the technology has been an area of fierce competition between tech giants Microsoft and Google, as well as Meta and start-ups like Anthropic and Stability AI. Musk is one of the world’s few investors with deep enough pockets to compete with OpenAI, Google or Meta on AI. Building an AI model on the same scale as those companies comes at an enormous expense in computing power, infrastructure …

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s spectacular rise and fall in the cryptocurrency industry — a journey that included his testimony before Congress, a Super Bowl advertisement and dreams of a future run for president — hit rock bottom Thursday when a New York jury convicted him of fraud in a scheme that cheated customers and investors of at least $10 billion. After the monthlong trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried’s claim during four days on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago. “His crimes caught up to him. His crimes have been exposed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon told the jury of the onetime billionaire just before they were read the law by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and began deliberations. Sassoon said Bankman-Fried turned his customers’ accounts into his “personal piggy bank” as up to $14 billion disappeared. She urged jurors to reject Bankman-Fried’s insistence when he testified over three days that he never committed fraud or plotted to steal from customers, investors and lenders and didn’t realize his companies were at least $10 billion in debt until October 2022. Bankman-Fried was required to stand and face the jury as guilty verdicts on all seven counts were read. He kept his hands clasped tightly in front of him. When he sat down after the reading, he kept his head tilted down for several minutes. After the judge set a …

World leaders have agreed on the importance of mitigating risks posed by rapid advancements in the emerging technology of artificial intelligence, at a U.K.-hosted safety conference. The inaugural AI Safety Summit, hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Bletchley Park, England, started Wednesday, with senior officials from 28 nations, including the United States and China, agreeing to work toward a “shared agreement and responsibility” about AI risks. Plans are in place for further meetings later this year in South Korea and France. Leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, discussed each of their individual testing models to ensure the safe growth of AI. Thursday’s session included focused conversations among what the U.K. called a small group of countries “with shared values.” The leaders in the group came from the EU, the U.N., Italy, Germany, France and Australia. Some leaders, including Sunak, said immediate sweeping regulation is not the way forward, reflecting the view of some AI companies that fear excessive regulation could thwart the technology before it can reach its full potential. At at a press conference on Thursday, Sunak announced another landmark agreement by countries pledging to “work together on testing the safety of new AI models before they are released.” The countries involved in the talks included the U.S., EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada and Australia. China did not participate in the second day of talks. The summit will conclude with …

India’s cybersecurity agency is investigating complaints of mobile phone hacking by senior opposition politicians who reported receiving warning messages from Apple, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. Vaishnaw was quoted in the Indian Express newspaper as saying Thursday that CERT-In, the computer emergency response team based in New Delhi, had started the probe, adding that “Apple confirmed it has received the notice for investigation.” A political aide to Vaishnaw and two officials in the federal home ministry told Reuters that all the cyber security concerns raised by the politicians were being scrutinized. There was no immediate comment from Apple about the investigation. This week, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to hack into opposition politicians’ mobile phones after some lawmakers shared screenshots on social media of a notification quoting the iPhone manufacturer as saying: “Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID.” A senior minister from Modi’s government also said he had received the same notification on his phone. Apple said it did not attribute the threat notifications to “any specific state-sponsored attacker,” adding that “it’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected.” In 2021, India was rocked by reports that the government had used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to snoop on scores of journalists, activists and politicians, including Gandhi. The government has declined to reply to questions about whether …

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris says leaders have “a moral, ethical and societal duty” to protect humans from dangers posed by artificial intelligence, and is pushing for a global road map during an AI summit in London. Analysts agree and say one element needs to be constant: human oversight. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington. …

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is bringing together government officials, academics and tech moguls from around the world for a two-day AI Safety Summit Wednesday and Thursday at Bletchley Park, the once top-secret headquarters of World War II-era codebreakers. The inaugural symposium is a moment for key players in global affairs to spar over the future of frontier AI, specifically whether the technology represents a danger to humanity and what can be done to mitigate that potential threat. Frontier AI is a broad term for general-purpose systems that can operate on the very cutting-edge of today’s software. The 100-person guest list includes Elon Musk, the richest man on earth; Sam Altman, the brain behind ChatGPT; and a host of prominent professors and researchers. World leaders are among those in attendance, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris; China’s Vice Minister of Science and Technology Wu Zhaohui; U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. China, a frontrunner in AI development, has a key role in the forum as Sunak attempts to position himself as a middleman between East and West. The decision to invite China was met with mixed reactions at home in the British Parliament and abroad. Jane Hartley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, made clear that the White House had no part in bringing China to the table. “This is the U.K. invitation, this is not the U.S.,” Hartley told Reuters. “When the U.K. government was talking to us, we said it’s your …

Drivers in Malawi are getting an opportunity to purchase electric vehicles through a local startup company. The handful of buyers so far say they no longer have to struggle daily to get fuel at pump stations. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre. …

The world’s first major summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety opens in Britain Wednesday, with political and tech leaders set to discuss possible responses to the society-changing technology. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will all attend the two-day conference, which will focus on growing fears about the implications of so-called frontier AI. The release of the latest models has offered a glimpse into the potential of AI, but has also prompted concerns around issues ranging from job losses to cyber-attacks and the control that humans actually have over the systems. Sunak, whose government initiated the gathering, said in a speech last week that his “ultimate goal” was “to work towards a more international approach to safety where we collaborate with partners to ensure AI systems are safe before they are released. “We will push hard to agree the first ever international statement about the nature of these risks,” he added, drawing comparisons to the approach taken to climate change. But London has reportedly had to scale back its ambitions around ideas such as launching a new regulatory body amid a perceived lack of enthusiasm. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is one of the only world leaders, and only one from the G7, attending the conference. Elon Musk is due to appear, but it is not clear yet whether he will be physically at the summit in Bletchley Park, north of London, where top British …

President Joe Biden on Monday signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence, covering topics as varied as national security, consumer privacy, civil rights and commercial competition. The administration heralded the order as taking “vital steps forward in the U.S.’s approach on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.” The order directs departments and agencies across the U.S. federal government to develop policies aimed at placing guardrails alongside an industry that is developing newer and more powerful systems at a pace rate that has many concerned it will outstrip effective regulation. “To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology,” Biden said during a signing ceremony at the White House. The order, he added, is “the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust.”  ‘Red teaming’ for security  One of the marquee requirements of the new order is that it will require companies developing advanced artificial intelligence systems to conduct rigorous testing of their products to ensure that bad actors cannot use them for nefarious purposes. The process, known as red teaming, will assess, among other things, “AI systems threats to critical infrastructure, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and cybersecurity risks.”  The National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the standards for such testing, and AI companies will be required to report their results to the federal government prior to releasing new products to the public. The Departments of Homeland Security and …

Elon Musk has said that corrections to posts on X would no longer be eligible for payment as the social network comes under mounting criticism as becoming a conduit for misinformation. In the year since taking over Twitter, now rebranded as X, Musk has gutted content moderation, restored accounts of previously banned extremists, and allowed users to purchase account verification, helping them profit from viral — but often inaccurate — posts. Musk has instead promoted Community Notes, in which X users police the platform, as a tool to combat misinformation.  But on Sunday, Musk tweeted a modification in how Community Notes works. “Making a slight change to creator monetization: Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share,” he wrote.   “The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism,” he added.  X pays content creators whose work generates lots of views a share of advertising revenue.  Musk warned against using corrections to make X users ineligible for receiving payouts. “Worth ‘noting’ that any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open source,” he posted. Musk’s announcement follows the unveiling Friday of a $16-a-month subscription plan that users who pay more get the biggest boost for their replies. Earlier this year it unveiled an $8-a-month plan to get a “verified” account. A recent study by the disinformation monitoring group NewsGuard found that verified, paying subscribers were the big spreaders of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war.  …

Elon Musk said on Saturday that SpaceX’s Starlink will support communication links in Gaza with “internationally recognized aid organizations.” A telephone and internet blackout isolated people in the Gaza Strip from the world and from each other on Saturday, with calls to loved ones, ambulances or colleagues elsewhere all but impossible as Israel widened its air and ground assault. International humanitarian organizations said the blackout, which began on Friday evening, was worsening an already desperate situation by impeding lifesaving operations and preventing them from contacting their staff on the ground. Following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Starlink satellites were reported to have been critical to maintaining internet connectivity in some areas despite attempted Russian jamming. Since then, Musk has said he declined to extend coverage over Russian-occupied Crimea, refusing to allow his satellites to be used for Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces there. …

Brinc Drones is one of the U.S. companies shipping hundreds of drones to Ukraine. These drones are designed to help first responders survey the impacted areas of Russian shelling and find survivors. Adriy Borys visited the Brink manufacturing facility. Anna Rice narrates his story. Camera — Dmitriy Savchuk. …

Zara-owner Inditex, the world’s biggest clothing retailer, has agreed to buy recycled polyester from a U.S. start-up as it aims for 25% of its fibers to come from “next-generation” materials by 2030. As fast-fashion retailers face pressure to reduce waste and use recycled fabrics, Inditex is spending more than $74 million to secure supply from Los Angeles-based Ambercycle of its recycled polyester made from textile waste. Polyester, a product of the petroleum industry, is widely used in sportswear as it is quick-drying and durable. Under the offtake deal, Inditex will buy 70% of Ambercycle’s production of recycled polyester, which is sold under the brand cycora, over three years, Inditex CEO Oscar Garcia Maceiras said at a business event in Zaragoza, Spain. Garcia Maceiras said Inditex is also working with other companies and start-ups in its innovation hub, a unit looking for ways to curb the environmental impact of its products. “The sustainable transformation of Inditex … is not possible without the collaboration of the different stakeholders,” he said. The Inditex investment will help Ambercycle fund its first commercial-scale textile recycling factory. Production of cycora at the plant is expected to begin around 2025, and the material will be used in Inditex products over the following three years. Zara Athleticz, a sub-brand of sportswear for men, launched a collection on Wednesday of “technical pieces” containing up to 50% cycora. Inditex said the collection would be available from Zara.com. Some apparel brands seeking to reduce their reliance on virgin polyester have switched …

Thirty-three U.S. states are suing Meta Platforms Inc., accusing it of damaging young people’s mental health through the addictive nature of their social media platforms. The suit filed Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, alleges Meta knowingly installed addictive features on its social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook, and has collected data on children younger than 13, without their parents’ consent, violating federal law. “Research has shown that young people’s use of Meta’s social media platforms is associated with depression, anxiety, insomnia, interference with education and daily life, and many other negative outcomes,” the complaint says. The filing comes after Meta’s own research in 2021 found that the company was aware of the damage Instagram can do to teenagers, especially girls. In Meta’s 2021 study, 13.5% of teen girls said Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls said it makes eating disorders worse. Meta responded to the lawsuit by saying it has “already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families.” “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,” the company added. Meta is one of many social media companies facing criticism and legal action, with lawsuits also filed against ByteDance’s TikTok and Google’s YouTube. Measures to protect children on social media exist, but they are easily circumvented, such as a federal law that bans kids under 13 from setting up …

Phoenix, Arizona, in America’s Southwest, is the site of a Taiwanese semiconductor chip making facility. One part of President Joe Biden’s cornerstone agenda is to rely less on manufacturing from overseas and boost domestic production of chips that run everything from phones to cars. Many Taiwanese workers who moved to the U.S. to work at the facility — face the challenges of living in a new land. VOA’s Stella Hsu, Enming Liu and Elizabeth Lee have the story. …

Kenyan developers have designed a mobile phone application that police say is helping to safeguard smartphones from theft, recover stolen cell phones and prevent loss of data. Victoria Amunga reports from Nairobi. Camera: Jimmy Makhulo …

Russia’s efforts to discredit and undermine democratic elections appears to be expanding rapidly, according to newly declassified intelligence, spurred on by what the Kremlin sees as its success in disrupting the past two U.S. presidential elections. The U.S. intelligence findings, shared in a diplomatic cable sent to more than 100 countries and obtained by VOA, are based on a review of Russian information operations between January 2020 and December 2022 that found Moscow “engaged in a concerted effort … to undermine public confidence in at least 11 elections across nine democracies.” The review also found what the cable describes as “a less pronounced level of Russian messaging and social media activity” that targeted another 17 democracies. “These figures represent a snapshot of Russian activities,” the cable warned. “Russia likely has sought to undermine confidence in democratic elections in additional cases that have gone undetected. “Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including in the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective,” the cable added. VOA reached out to the Russian Embassy for comment on the cable warnings but so far has not received a response. Russia has routinely denied allegations it interferes in foreign elections. However, last November, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appeared to admit culpability for interfering in U.S. elections in a social media post. “Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere,” Prigozhin said. U.S. officials assess that, in addition to Russia’s efforts to sow doubt surrounding the …

The Philippine defense chief has ordered all defense personnel and the 163,000-member military to refrain from using digital applications that harness artificial intelligence to generate personal portraits, saying they could pose security risks. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. issued the order in a Saturday memorandum, as Philippine forces have been working to weaken decades-old communist and Muslim insurgencies and defend territorial interests in the disputed South China Sea. The Department of National Defense on Friday confirmed the authenticity of the memo, which has been circulating online in recent days, but did not provide other details, including what prompted Teodoro to issue the prohibition. Teodoro specifically warned against the use of a digital app that requires users to submit at least 10 pictures of themselves and then harnesses AI to create “a digital person that mimics how a real individual speaks and moves.” Such apps pose “significant privacy and security risks,” he said. “This seemingly harmless and amusing AI-powered application can be maliciously used to create fake profiles that can lead to identity theft, social engineering, phishing attacks and other malicious activities,” Teodoro said. “There has already been a report of such a case.” Teodoro ordered all defense and military personnel “to refrain from using AI photo generator applications and practice vigilance in sharing information online” and said their actions should adhere to the Philippines Defense Department’s values and policies. …

After the Hamas attack on Israel, the Israeli Embassy in Beijing began posting on China’s social media platform Weibo. The online effort to gain popular support appears to be backfiring as comments revile the Jewish state, applaud Hamas and praise Adolf Hitler. The embassy’s account, which has 24 million followers, shows almost 100 posts since the Oct. 7 attack. Some are disturbing, such as an image of a baby’s corpse burnt in the attack. Others suggest Israeli resilience, such as the story of one person who was wounded at the Nova Festival but rescued several other music fans after the attack. The comment areas have been flooded with hate speech such as “Heroic Hamas, good job!” and “Hitler was wise” referring to the German leader who orchestrated the deaths of 6 million Jews before and during World War II. Many people changed their Weibo avatars to the Israeli flag with a Nazi swastika in the middle. Occasionally, someone expresses support for Israel and accuses Hamas of being a terrorist group. This triggers strong reactions from other netizens, such as “Only dead Israelis are good Israelis” and “the United States supports Israel, and the friend of the enemy is the enemy.” Similar commentary has flooded sites elsewhere on China’s heavily censored internet. VOA Mandarin could not determine how many of the Weibo accounts posting to the Israeli Embassy account belong to people who work for the Chinese government. The Israeli Embassy in China did not respond to interview requests from VOA …