Category: Business

Yuriy Fedorenko got his call sign Achilles for bravery and independence. Before the war, he was working full time as a Kyiv city council deputy; today, he is fighting against Russian forces in Donbas as commander of an attack drone squadron. Anna Kosstutschenko has his story. VOA footage by Pavel Suhodolskiy …

One of the world’s biggest auto shows opened in Munich on Monday, with Tesla ending a 10-year absence to jostle for the spotlight with Chinese rivals as the race for electric dominance heats up.   Chancellor Olaf Scholz will officially inaugurate the IAA mobility show, held in Germany every two years, on Tuesday.   But carmakers used Monday’s press preview as an early chance to show off some of the new models that will be hitting the road soon.   The industry-wide shift towards electric vehicles will be front and center at this week’s fair, with Chinese carmakers out in force as they eye the European market.   U.S. electric car pioneer Tesla, owned by Elon Musk, will return to the IAA for the first time since 2013 and is expected to unveil a revamped version of its mass-market Model 3.   That Tesla, usually a holdout at such events, is coming to Munich shows it is taking the growing competition seriously, said Jan Burgard from the Berylls automotive consulting group.   “The electric car market with its many new players will be divvied up over the next few years and people want to know: who is offering what?” Burgard told the Handelsblatt financial daily.   Having captured an increasingly large part of the prized Chinese market, Chinese upstarts are now hoping to win over European customers with cheaper electric cars.   Chinese manufacturers are starting “their assault on Europe with the IAA”, said industry analyst Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer from the …

A California tech startup is using artificial intelligence, or AI, to mask the accents of call center workers to reduce discrimination, but some say diversity is being erased. Matt Dibble has the story. …

Cambodia’s ex-leader Hun Sen returned to Facebook on Sunday, claiming the social media giant had “rendered justice” to him by refusing to suspend his account after he posted violent threats on the platform. In a post, Hun Sen said Facebook had rejected a recommendation from its Oversight Board to suspend his account after he had posted a video threatening to beat up his rivals. It is the latest twist in a months-long row that has seen the prolific user quit Cambodia’s most popular social media site, deactivate his account, and threaten to ban the platform. “I have decided to use Facebook again… after Facebook rejected recommendations of a group of bad people and rendered justice to me,” he wrote on Sunday, referencing the Oversight Board. Hun Sen’s hugely popular page — which has around 14 million followers — was reactivated in July, but his social media assistant claimed to be running it in his place at the time. Facebook’s parent company Meta did not respond to AFP’s request for comment. Suspension row The row kicked off in June when the platform’s Oversight Board recommended that Hun Sen’s Facebook and Instagram accounts be suspended for six months due to a video he posted in January. In the clip, he told opponents they would face legal action or a beating with sticks if they accused his party of vote theft during elections in July. The Oversight Board’s recommendation prompted a furious reaction from the then-leader, who banned Facebook representatives from the country …

Tesla on Friday unveiled a restyled Model 3 with a longer driving range in China and other markets including Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Japan, putting pressure on rivals who are expected to announce new electric vehicles in the next few days. In China, the world’s largest auto market, the refreshed version of the Model 3 came with a starting price 12% higher than the previous, base rear-wheel drive model, reversing a trend toward price cuts which had sparked a price war between Tesla and its Chinese EV rivals. The updated version of the Model 3 was Tesla’s first new or restyled car since it launched its global best-seller, the Model Y, in 2020. Tesla plans to start production of its Cybertruck later this year. The rollout of the Model 3 in China and markets to which Tesla exports from its manufacturing hub there suggested that its Shanghai plant would be first to make the model. Tesla also makes the Model 3 at its plant in Fremont, California. The new Model 3 promises a longer driving range for China, according to the company’s website. The standard version has a rated range of 606 kilometers based on China’s testing standards. That’s about 9% higher than the base model it replaces in China. Tesla said it had started taking orders and would begin deliveries in China in the fourth quarter. In Australia, deliveries were set for January. Tesla sold 64,285 China-made electric vehicles in July, down 31% from a month earlier, …

Chinese tech giant Baidu rolled out its ChatGPT-like ERNIE Bot to the public Thursday. But the app is highly censored, offering state-approved answers to taboo questions and sometimes refusing to process them altogether when AFP tested the service. Here are some of ERNIE’s answers to questions about sensitive topics in China: Taiwan Asked about the status of Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own, ERNIE told AFP that it is “not a country.” “Taiwan is part of the sacred territory of the People’s Republic of China. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity cannot be violated or divided,” it said. “It is the sacred duty of all Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots, to complete the great cause of reunifying the motherland,” it said. “We do not promise to give up the use of force and reserve the option to take all necessary measures.” Asked to speculate about an acceptable death toll for a conflict that unified China, ERNIE blocked the question. But when asked in English about Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, ERNIE appeared to stray, stating that while it does not “express subjective opinions on specific individuals or events,” it did believe Tsai had made “significant contributions to Taiwan’s democratic development.” Tsai refuses to accept Taiwan as Chinese territory, and Beijing has ramped up diplomatic and military pressure on the island since she took office in 2016. ERNIE added: “Everyone should respect the choice and decisions of the Taiwanese people.” Tiananmen The bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at …

Ukrainian troops using Android mobile devices are coming under attack from Russian hackers, who are using a new kind of malware to try to steal information critical to the ongoing counteroffensive. Cyber officials from the United States, along with counterparts from Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, issued a warning Thursday about the malware, named Infamous Chisel, which aims to scan files, monitor communications and “periodically steal sensitive information.” The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, describes the new malware as “a collection of components which enable persistent access to an infected Android device … which periodically collates and exfiltrates victim information.”   A CISA report published Thursday shared additional technical details about the Russian campaign, with officials warning the malware could be employed against other targets. Thursday’s warning reflects “the need for all organizations to keep their Shields Up to detect and mitigate Russian cyber activity, and the importance of continued focus on maintaining operational resilience under all conditions,” said Eric Goldstein, CISA executive assistant director for cybersecurity, in a statement. According to the report by the U.S. and its allies, the malware is designed to persist on a system by replacing legitimate coding with other coding from outside the system that is not directly attached to the malware itself. It also said the malware’s components are of “low to medium sophistication and appear to have been developed with little regard to defense evasion or concealment of malicious activity.” Ukraine’s SBU security agency first discovered the Russian …

Russia has been using sham websites to obtain the personal information of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and their family members, U.S. defense officials say, in what they believe is an attempt to detain the family members who are living in occupied Ukraine and deport them to Russia. Two U.S. defense officials say a Russian information warfare unit has created at least two phishing websites, WarTears.org and ForeignCombatants.ru, that are posing as support websites for friends and family members of missing, captured or fallen Ukrainian soldiers. Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, confirmed to VOA that the two websites are scams. He said there are dozens of similar phishing websites that try to collect data from the families. “They exploit the extremely vulnerable relatives and loved ones of missing or captured servicemen … [using] the fact that Russia does not provide Ukraine with information about those they hold in captivity,” Yatsenko told VOA. “Relatives hope that their loved one is not dead but is imprisoned, so they provide their personal data.” One of the websites, WarTears.org, claims to have records of more than 170,000 Ukrainian soldiers in its database. U.S. defense officials say they believe that Russia is using the names, phone numbers and addresses of Ukrainians obtained through these sites to determine whether any of the soldiers and their family members are living inside Russian-occupied territories. Those living in occupied territories can be found, screened, detained and deported to Russia, according to …

A global operation led by the FBI has dismantled one of the most notorious cybercrime tools used to launch ransomware attacks and steal sensitive data. U.S. law enforcement officials announced on Tuesday that the FBI and its international partners had disrupted the Qakbot infrastructure and seized nearly $9 million in cryptocurrency in illicit profits. Qakbot, also known as Qbot, was a sophisticated botnet and malware that infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, allowing cybercriminals to access and control them remotely. “The Qakbot malicious code is being deleted from victim computers, preventing it from doing any more harm,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement. Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and Don Alway, the FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, announced the operation at a press conference in Los Angeles. Estrada called the operation “the largest U.S.-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure” used by cybercriminals to carry out ransomware, financial fraud, and other cyber-enabled crimes. “Qakbot was the botnet of choice for some of the most infamous ransomware gangs, but we have now taken it out,” Estrada said. Law enforcement agencies from France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Romania, and Latvia took part in the operation, code-named Duck Hunt. “These actions will prevent an untold number of cyberattacks at all levels, from the compromised personal computer to a catastrophic attack on our critical infrastructure,” Alway said. …

Meta on Tuesday said it purged thousands of Facebook accounts that were part of a widespread online Chinese spam operation trying to covertly boost China and criticize the West. The campaign, which became known as “Spamouflage,” was active across more than 50 platforms and forums including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter, according to a Meta threat report. “We assess that it’s the largest, though unsuccessful, and most prolific covert influence operation that we know of in the world today,” said Meta Global Threat Intelligence Lead Ben Nimmo. “And we’ve been able to link Spamouflage to individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement.” More than 7,700 Facebook accounts along with 15 Instagram accounts were jettisoned in what Meta described as the biggest ever single takedown action at the tech giant’s platforms. “For the first time we’ve been able to tie these many clusters together to confirm that they all go to one operation,” Nimmo said. The network typically posted praise for China and its Xinjiang province and criticisms of the United States, Western foreign policies, and critics of the Chinese government including journalists and researchers, the Meta report says. The operation originated in China and its targets included Taiwan, the United States, Australia, Britain, Japan, and global Chinese-speaking audiences.  Facebook or Instagram accounts or pages identified as part of the “large and prolific covert influence operation” were taken down for violating Meta rules against coordinated deceptive behavior on its platforms. Meta’s team said the network seemed to …

The tech industry is rushing to unlock the potential of artificial intelligence, and AI hackathons — daylong collaborations using the technology to tackle real-world problems — are increasing in popularity. From the state of Washington, Natasha Mozgovaya has more. …

Toyota said Tuesday it has been hit by a technical glitch forcing it to suspend production at all 14 factories in Japan. The world’s biggest automaker gave no further details on the stoppage, which began Tuesday morning, but said it did not appear to be caused by a cyberattack. The company said the glitch prevented its system from processing orders for parts, resulting in a suspension of a dozen factories or 25 production lines on Tuesday morning. The company later decided to halt the afternoon shift of the two other operational factories, suspending all of Toyota’s domestic plants, or 28 production lines. “We do not believe the problem was caused by a cyberattack,” the company said in a statement to AFP. “We will continue to investigate the cause and to restore the system as soon as possible.” The incident affected only Japanese factories, Toyota said. It was not immediately clear exactly when normal production might resume.  The news briefly sent Toyota’s stocks into the red in the morning session before recovering. Last year, Toyota had to suspend all of its domestic factories after a subsidiary was hit by a cyberattack. The company is one of the biggest in Japan, and its production activities have an outsized impact on the country’s economy. Toyota is famous for its “just-in-time” production system of providing only small deliveries of necessary parts and other items at various steps of the assembly process. This practice minimizes costs while improving efficiency and is studied by other manufacturers …

OpenAI on Monday said it was launching a business version of ChatGPT as its artificial intelligence sensation grapples with declining usership nine months after its historic debut. ChatGPT Enterprise will offer business customers a premium version of the bot, with “enterprise grade” security and privacy enhancements from previous versions, OpenAI said in a blog post. The question of data security has become an important one for OpenAI, with major companies, including Apple, Amazon and Samsung, blocking employees from using ChatGPT out of fear that sensitive information will be divulged. “Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data,” OpenAI said. The ChatGPT business version resembles Bing Chat Enterprise, an offering by Microsoft, which uses the same OpenAI technology through a major partnership. ChatGPT Enterprise will be powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s highest performing model, much like ChatGPT Plus, the company’s subscription version for individuals, but business customers will have special perks, including better speed. “We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive,” the company said. It added that companies including Carlyle, The Estée Lauder Companies and PwC were already early adopters of ChatGPT Enterprise. The release came as ChatGPT is struggling to maintain the excitement that made it the world’s fastest downloaded app in the weeks after its release. That distinction was taken over last month by Threads, the Twitter rival from …

Organized cybercrime is set to pose a threat to Canada’s national security and economic prosperity over the next two years, a national intelligence agency said on Monday. In a report released Monday, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) identified Russia and Iran as cybercrime safe havens where criminals can operate against Western targets. Ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure such as hospitals and pipelines can be particularly profitable, the report said. Cyber criminals continue to show resilience and an ability to innovate their business model, it said. “Organized cybercrime will very likely pose a threat to Canada’s national security and economic prosperity over the next two years,” said CSE, which is the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. “Ransomware is almost certainly the most disruptive form of cybercrime facing Canada because it is pervasive and can have a serious impact on an organization’s ability to function,” it said. Official data show that in 2022, there were 70,878 reports of cyber fraud in Canada with over C$530 million ($390 million) stolen. But Chris Lynam, director general of Canada’s National Cybercrime Coordination Centre, said very few crimes were reported and the real amount stolen last year could easily be C$5 billion or more. “Every sector is being targeted along with all types of businesses as well … folks really have to make sure that they’re taking this seriously,” he told a briefing. Russian intelligence services and law enforcement almost certainly maintain relationships with cyber criminals and allow them to operate with near …

Tesla Inc TSLA.O is set to defend itself for the first time at trial against allegations that failure of its Autopilot driver assistant feature led to death, in what will likely be a major test of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s assertions about the technology. Self-driving capability is central to Tesla’s financial future, according to Musk, whose own reputation as an engineering leader is being challenged with allegations by plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits that he personally leads the group behind technology that failed. Wins by Tesla could raise confidence and sales for the software, which costs up to $15,000 per vehicle. Tesla faces two trials in quick succession, with more to follow. The first, scheduled for mid-September in a California state court, is a civil lawsuit containing allegations that the Autopilot system caused owner Micah Lee’s Model 3 to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour, strike a palm tree and burst into flames, all in the span of seconds. The 2019 crash, which has not been previously reported, killed Lee and seriously injured his two passengers, including a then-8-year old boy who was disemboweled. The lawsuit, filed against Tesla by the passengers and Lee’s estate, accuses Tesla of knowing that Autopilot and other safety systems were defective when it sold the car.  Musk ‘de facto leader’ of autopilot team The second trial, set for early October in a Florida state court, arose out of a 2019 crash north of Miami where …

Thailand said this week it is preparing to sue Facebook in a move that could see the platform shut down nationwide over scammers allegedly exploiting the social networking site to cheat local users out of tens of millions of dollars a year. The country’s minister of digital economy and society, Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, announced the planned lawsuit after a ministry meeting on Monday. Ministry spokesperson Wetang Phuangsup told VOA on Thursday the case would be filed in one to two weeks, possibly by the end of the month. “We are in the stage of gathering information, gathering evidence, and we will file to the court to issue the final judgment on how to deal with Facebook since they are a part of the scamming,” he said. Some of the most common scams, Wetang said, involve paid advertisements on the site urging people to invest in fake companies, often using the logo of Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission or sham endorsements from local celebrities to lure them in. Of the roughly 16,000 online scamming complaints filed in Thailand last year, he said, 70% to 80% involved Facebook and cost users upwards of $100 million. “We believe that Facebook has a responsibility,” Wetang said. “Facebook is taking money from advertising a lot, and basically even taking money from Thai society as a whole. Facebook should be more responsible to society, should screen the advertising. … We believe that by doing so it would definitely decrease the investment scam in Thailand on the Facebook.” …

Meta is being accused of endangering lives by blocking news links in Canada at a crucial moment, when thousands have fled their homes and are desperate for wildfire updates that once would have been shared widely on Facebook. The situation “is dangerous,” said Kelsey Worth, 35, one of nearly 20,000 residents of Yellowknife and thousands more in small towns ordered to evacuate the Northwest Territories as wildfires advanced. She described to AFP how “insanely difficult” it has been for herself and other evacuees to find verifiable information about the fires blazing across the near-Arctic territory and other parts of Canada. “Nobody’s able to know what’s true or not,” she said. “And when you’re in an emergency situation, time is of the essence,” she said, explaining that many Canadians until now have relied on social media for news. Meta on Aug. 1 started blocking the distribution of news links and articles on its Facebook and Instagram platforms in response to a recent law requiring digital giants to pay publishers for news content. The company has been in a virtual showdown with Ottawa over the bill passed in June, but which only takes effect next year. Building on similar legislation introduced in Australia, the bill aims to support a struggling Canadian news sector that has seen a flight of advertising dollars and hundreds of publications closed in the last decade. It requires companies like Meta and Google to make fair commercial deals with Canadian outlets for the news and information — estimated …

Google, Facebook, TikTok and other Big Tech companies operating in Europe must comply with one of the most far-reaching efforts to clean up what people see online. The European Union’s groundbreaking new digital rules took effect Friday for the biggest platforms. The Digital Services Act is part of a suite of tech-focused regulations crafted by the 27-nation bloc, long a global leader in cracking down on tech giants. The DSA is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal or violates a platform’s terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia. It also looks to protect Europeans’ fundamental rights like privacy and free speech. Some online platforms, which could face billions in fines if they don’t comply, already have made changes. Here’s a look at what has changed: Which platforms are affected?  So far, 19. They include eight social media platforms: Facebook; TikTok; X, formerly known as Twitter; YouTube; Instagram; LinkedIn; Pinterest; and Snapchat. There are five online marketplaces: Amazon, Booking.com, China’s Alibaba and AliExpress, and Germany’s Zalando. Mobile app stores Google Play and Apple’s App Store are subject to the new rules, as are Google’s Search and Microsoft’s Bing search engines. Google Maps and Wikipedia round out the list.  What about other online companies? The EU’s list is based on numbers submitted by the platforms. Those with 45 million or more users — or 10% of the EU’s population — face the DSA’s highest level of regulation.  Brussels insiders, …

The U.S. Justice Department is suing Elon Musk’s SpaceX for refusing to hire refugees and asylum-recipients at the rocket company. In a lawsuit filed on Thursday, the Justice Department said SpaceX routinely discriminated against these job applicants between 2018 and 2022, in violation of U.S. immigration laws. The lawsuit says that Musk and other SpaceX officials falsely claimed the company was allowed to hire only U.S. citizens and permanent residents due to export control laws that regulate the transfer of sensitive technology. “U.S. law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are advanced weapons technology,” Musk wrote in a June 16, 2020, tweet cited in the lawsuit. In fact, U.S. export control laws impose no such restrictions, according to the Justice Department. Those laws limit the transfer of sensitive technology to foreign entities, but they do not prevent high-tech companies such as SpaceX from hiring job applicants who have been granted refugee or asylum status in the U.S. (Foreign nationals, however, need a special permit.) “Under these laws, companies like SpaceX can hire asylees and refugees for the same positions they would hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents,” the Department said in a statement. “And once hired, asylees and refugees can access export-controlled information and materials without additional government approval, just like U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.” The company did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the lawsuit and whether it had changed its hiring policy. Recruiters discouraged refugees, …

With White House funding to help get more electric cars on the road, some states are creating local rules to get top technologies into their charging stations. Deana Mitchell has the story. …

New artificial intelligence tools that write human-like prose and create stunning images have taken the world by storm. But these awe-inspiring technologies are not creating something out of nothing; they’re trained on lots and lots of data, some of which come from works under copyright protection. Now, the writers, artists and others who own the rights to the material used to teach ChatGPT and other generative AI tools want to stop what they see as blatant copyright infringement of mass proportions. With billions of dollars at stake, U.S. courts will most likely have to sort out who owns what, using the 1976 Copyright Act, the same law that has determined who owns much of the content published on the internet. U.S. copyright law seeks to strike a balance between protecting the rights of content creators and fostering creativity and innovation. Among other things, the law gives content creators the exclusive right to reproduce their original work and to prepare derivative works. But it also provides for an exception. Known as “fair use,” it permits the use of copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission for content such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching and research. On the one hand, “we want to allow people who have currently invested time, money, creativity to reap the rewards of what they have done,” said Sean O’Connor, a professor of law at George Mason University. “On the other hand, we don’t want to give them such strong rights that we inhibit the next generation …

A Kenyan court has given Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the content moderators who are suing it for unfair dismissal 21 days to resolve their dispute out of court, a court order showed on Wednesday. The 184 content moderators are suing Meta and two subcontractors after they say they lost their jobs with one of the firms, Sama, for organizing a union. The plaintiffs say they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at the second firm, Luxembourg-based Majorel, after Facebook switched contractors. “The parties shall pursue an out of court settlement of this petition through mediation,” said the order by the Employment and Labour Relations Court, which was signed by lawyers for the plaintiffs, Meta, Sama and Majorel. Kenya’s former chief justice, Willy Mutunga, and Hellen Apiyo, the acting commissioner for labor, will serve as mediators, the order said. If the parties fail to resolve the case within 21 days, the case will proceed before the court, it said. Meta, Sama and Majorel did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A judge ruled in April that Meta could be sued by the moderators in Kenya, even though it has no official presence in the east African country. The case could have implications for how Meta works with content moderators globally. The U.S. social media giant works with thousands of moderators around the world, who review graphic content posted on its platform. Meta has also been sued in Kenya by a former moderator over accusations of poor …

India successfully placed a lander in the moon’s southern polar region Wednesday evening, making history as it became the first country to touch down on an uncharted part of the lunar surface.   Although the United States, Russia and China have landed around the moon’s equator, no country has so far made a soft landing on the more challenging rough terrain of the south pole.    Scientists clapped, cheered and waved in the mission command center of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) after the unmanned lander called Vikram made its final descent. It was a huge moment for India’s space agency, whose mission to reach the south pole four years ago had ended in disappointment when the lander crashed.   India reported success of its Chandrayaan-3 mission after Russia’s Luna-25, that was also headed to the south pole, crashed on Saturday.   “This is the dawn of a new India,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after watching the landing from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS summit. Waving the Indian flag on a live broadcast, he said “This is a moment to cherish forever.”   “India is on the moon,” ISRO’s chairman, S. Somanath said.   By placing the lander on the moon, India achieved one of the mission’s major objectives — demonstrating the capability of making a controlled and safe landing on the lunar surface, which only three countries have done so far.    Its other goals will be tested over the next two weeks when a six-wheeled, 26-kilogram robotic rover called Pragyan …

In 2023, a new way to use AI has come online. Some companies are using the tool to make lifelike avatars of people, even those who have died.  Maxim Moskalkov reports. Camera: Andrey Degtyarev. …