Category: Business

India is set to launch a spacecraft to the moon Friday. If successful, it would make India only the fourth country to do so, after the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China. It will take the $75 million Chandrayaan-3 over a month to reach the moon’s south pole  in August. The south pole is a special place of interest because scientists believe water is present there. Chandrayaan-3’s equipment includes a lander to deploy a rover. Chandrayaan-3 means “moon craft” in Sanskrit. …

Hackers, possibly linked to China’s intelligence agencies, are being blamed for a monthlong campaign that breached some unclassified U.S. email systems, allowing them to access to a small number of accounts at the U.S. State Department and a handful of other organizations. Microsoft first announced the intrusion Tuesday, attributing the attack on its Outlook email service to Chinese threat actors it dubbed Storm-0558. The company said in a blog post that the hackers managed to forge a Microsoft authentication token and gain access to the email accounts of 25 organizations, both in the U.S. and around the globe, starting in mid-May. The company said access was cut off after the breach was discovered a month later. “We assess this adversary is focused on espionage, such as gaining access to email systems for intelligence collection,” Microsoft said. “This type of espionage-motivated adversary seeks to abuse credentials and gain access to data residing in sensitive systems.” The State Department confirmed Wednesday that it had discovered the breach and had taken “immediate steps” to secure its systems and to notify Microsoft. Some U.S. officials, however, were hesitant to back Microsoft’s attribution for the attack while saying the U.S. “would make all efforts to impose costs” on whoever was responsible. “The sophistication of this attack, where actors were able to access mailbox content of victims, is indicative of APT [advanced persistent threat] activity but we are not prepared to discuss attribution at a more specific level,” a senior FBI official told reporters Wednesday, briefing them …

U.S. tech titan Mark Zuckerberg has plunged into a high-stakes game of brinkmanship with the European Union by withholding his new Threads app from users in Europe, but analysts say he will struggle to win the fight. Threads, billed as the killer of Twitter, a platform that has tumbled into chaos under the leadership of mercurial tycoon Elon Musk, has added more than 100 million users in its first week in app stores. But Zuckerberg’s firm Meta said it could not be released in Europe because of “regulatory uncertainty” around the Digital Markets Act, an antitrust regulation that will not come into force until next year. “The reason they gave made me laugh,” said Diego Naranjo, head of policy at campaign group European Digital Rights. “The regulation is not uncertain, it’s very certain, it’s just that Meta doesn’t like it.”  His theory is that Meta will give Threads to the rest of the world and Europeans will become so vexed at missing out that they will pressure the EU to water down the DMA. Naranjo, for one, thinks the ploy will fail. But either way, the rest of the big tech platforms will be glued to their screens as this fight could shape the future regulatory landscape in Europe for all of them. ‘Fatal’ blow Meta and the rest are already regularly in trouble with EU regulators over their data gathering and retention policies. They struggle to keep to the terms of Europe’s mammoth five-year-old data privacy regulation (GDPR). When …

Meta Platforms’ Twitter rival Threads crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of launch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday, dethroning ChatGPT as the fastest-growing online platform to hit the milestone.  Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on Wednesday, with celebrities, politicians and other newsmakers joining the platform seen by analysts as the first serious threat to the Elon Musk-owned microblogging app.  “That’s mostly organic demand, and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” Zuckerberg said in a Threads post announcing the milestone.  The app’s sprint to 100 million users was much speedier than that of OpenAI-owned ChatGPT, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in January about two months after its launch, according to a UBS study.  Still, Threads has some catching up to do. Twitter had nearly 240 million monetizable daily active users as of July last year, according to the company’s last public disclosure before Musk’s takeover.  Twitter has responded to Threads’ arrival by threatening to sue Meta, alleging that the social media behemoth used its trade secrets and other confidential information to build the app.  That claim, legal experts say, could be hard to prove.  Threads bears a strong resemblance to Twitter, as do numerous other social media sites that have cropped up in recent months as users have chafed at Musk’s management of the service. It allows posts that are up to 500 characters long and supports links, photos and videos of up to 5 minutes.  The app …

In a world where technology, such as artificial intelligence, is advancing at a rapid pace, what guidance do technology developers have in making the best ethically sound decisions for consumers?  A new handbook, titled “Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap,” promises to give guidance on such issues as the ethical use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT. The handbook, released June 28, is the first product of the Institute for Technology, Ethics and Culture, or ITEC, the result of a collaboration between Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and the Vatican’s Center for Digital Culture. The handbook has been in the works for a few years, but the authors said they saw a need to work with a new sense of urgency with the recent escalation of AI usage, following security threats and privacy concerns after the recent release of ChatGPT.      Enter Father Brendan McGuire. McGuire worked in the tech industry, serving as executive director of the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association in the early 1990s, before entering the priesthood about 23 years ago.  McGuire said that over the years, he’s continued to meet with friends from the tech world, many of whom are now leaders in the industry. But, about 10 years ago, their discussions started to get more serious, he said. “They said, ‘What is coming over the hill with AI, it’s amazing, it’s unbelievable. But it’s also frightening if we go down the wrong valley,’” McGuire said. “There’s no mechanism …

HONG KONG — Chinese regulators are fining Ant Group 7.123 billion yuan ($985 million) for violating regulations in its payments and financial services, an indicator that more than two years of scrutiny and crackdown on the firm that led it to scrap its planned public listing may have come to an end. The People’s Bank of China imposed the fine on the financial technology provider on Friday, stating that Ant had violated laws and regulations related to corporate governance, financial consumer protection, participation in business activities of banking and insurance institutions, payment and settlement business, and attending to anti-money laundering obligations. The fine comes more than two years after regulators pulled the plug on Ant Group’s $34.5 billion IPO — which would have been the biggest of its time — in 2020. Since then, the company has been ordered to revamp its business and behave more like a financial holding company, as well as rectify unfair competition in its payments business. “We will comply with the terms of the penalty in all earnestness and sincerity and continue to further enhance our compliance governance,” Ant Group said in a statement. The move is widely seen as wrapping up Beijing’s probe into the firm and allowing Ant to revive its initial public offering. Chinese gaming firm Tencent, which operates messaging app WeChat, also received a 2.99 billion yuan fine ($414 million) for regulatory violations over its payments services, according to the central bank Friday, signaling that the crackdown on the Chinese technology …

Just one day after its launch, Threads, the latest social media network, was blocked by the Islamic Republic, denying access to the Iranian population. This action occurred even though an account had been created for Iran President Ebrahim Raisi on the platform. On Thursday afternoon, Raisi’s user account, under the address raisi.ir, was established on Threads. Within a few hours, by Friday noon, he had garnered 27,000 followers. He has yet to make any posts, apparently because the Presidential Office staff administers Raisi’s social media accounts. As Raisi’s user account debuted on the social media platform, numerous Iranian social media users have voiced concerns regarding restricted access to the platform since Thursday evening. Users have indicated that similar to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, they require a VPN or proxy to connect to Threads.   Journalist Ehsan Bodaghi said on Twitter: “During the election, Mr. Raisi spoke about the importance of people’s online businesses and his 2 million followers on Instagram. After one year, he blocked and filtered all social media platforms, and now, within the initial hours, he has become a member of the social network # Threads, which his own government has filtered. Inconsistency knows no bounds!” Another journalist, Javad Daliri, posted this on Twitter: “Mr. Raisi and Mr. Ghalibaf raced each other to join the new social network # Threads. As a citizen, I have a question: Can one issue filtering orders and be among the first to break the filtering and join? By the way, was joining …

Ukraine has been using drones for reconnaissance and attacks since the start of Russia’18s invasion. But sometimes combat drone operators use them to save civilians — or even capture the enemy. Anna Kosstutschenko went to the Donbas region to find out more. Camera: Pavel Suhodolskiy Produced by: Pavel Suhodolskiy …

Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live. The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite some early glitches, 30 million people had signed up before noon on Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads. New arrivals to the platform include celebrities like Oprah, pop star Shakira and chef Gordon Ramsay — as well as corporate accounts from Taco Bell, Netflix, Spotify, The Washington Post and other media outlets. Threads, which Meta says provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations,” arrives at a time when many are looking for Twitter alternatives to escape Elon Musk’s raucous oversight of the platform since acquiring it last year for $44 billion. But Meta’s new app has also raised data privacy concerns and is notably unavailable in the European Union. Here’s what you need to know about Threads. How Can I Use Threads? Threads is now available for download in Apple and Google Android app stores for people in more than 100 countries. Threads was built by the Instagram team, so Instagram users can log into Threads through their Instagram account. Your username and verification status will carry over, according to the platform, but you will also have options to customize other areas of your profile — including whether or not you want to follow the same people that you …

Tens of millions of people have signed up for Meta’s new app, Threads, as it aims to challenge competitor platform Twitter. Threads launched on Wednesday in the United States and in more than 100 other countries. In a Thursday morning post on the platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 30 million people had signed up. “Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build out the app,” he said in the post. Threads is a text-based version of Meta’s social media app Instagram. The company says it provides “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.” The high number of sign-ups is likely an indication that users are looking for an alternative to Twitter, which has been stumbling since Elon Musk bought it last year. Meta appears to have taken advantage of rival Twitter’s many blunders in pushing out Threads. Like Twitter, Threads features short text posts that users can like, re-post and reply to. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos that are up to five minutes long, according to a Meta blog post. Unlike Twitter, Threads does not include any direct message capabilities. “Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji. He said the app had 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours. Kim Kardashian, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are among the celebrities who have joined the platform, …

In India, a recent court judgement that dismissed a legal petition by Twitter challenging the federal government’s orders to block tweets and accounts is a setback for free speech, according to digital rights activists.   The Karnataka High Court, which delivered its judgement last week, also imposed a fine of $ 61,000 on the social media company for its delay in complying with the government’s takedown orders.   “The order sets a dangerous precedent for curbing online free speech without employing procedural safeguards that are meant to protect users of online social media platforms,” Radhika Roy, a lawyer and spokesperson for the digital rights organization, Internet Freedom Foundation, told VOA.   Twitter’s lawsuit filed last year was seen as an effort to push back against strict information technology laws passed in 2021 that allow the government to order the removal of social media posts.   The government has defended the regulations, saying they are necessary to combat online misinformation in the interest of national security, among other reasons, and says social media companies must be accountable. Critics say the rules enable the government to clamp down on online comments that authorities consider critical.    In court, Twitter argued that 39 orders of the federal government to take down content went against the law. It is not known which content it referred to, but media reports have said that many of these contained political content and dissenting views against farm laws that sparked a massive farmers protest in 2020.   The government told the court the content …

Elon Musk spent the weekend further alienating Twitter users with more drastic changes to the social media giant, and he is facing a new challenge as tech nemesis Mark Zuckerberg prepares to launch a rival app this week. Zuckerberg’s Meta group, which owns Facebook, has listed a new app in stores as “Threads, an Instagram app”, available for pre-order in the United States, with a message saying it is “expected” this Thursday. The two men have clashed for years but a recent comment by a Meta executive suggesting that Twitter was not run “sanely” irked Musk, eventually leading to the two men offering each other out for a cage fight. Since buying Twitter last year for $44 billion, Musk has fired thousands of employees and charged users $8 a month to have a blue checkmark and a “verified” account. On the weekend, he limited the posts readers could view and decreed that nobody could look at a tweet unless they were logged in, meaning external links no longer work for many. He said he needed to fire up extra servers just to cope with the demand as artificial intelligence (AI) companies scraped “extreme levels” of data to train their models. But commentators have poured scorn on that idea and marketing experts say he has massively alienated both his user base and the advertisers he needs to get profits rolling. In another move that shocked users, Twitter announced Monday that access to TweetDeck, an app that allows users to monitor several …

U.S. President Joe Biden says he wants every American to have access to high-speed internet. VOA’s Julie Taboh has our story about the United States’ more than $40 billion-dollar investment to expand the service. …

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — Sweden on Monday ordered four companies to stop using a Google tool that measures and analyzes web traffic, as doing so transfers personal data to the United States. One company was fined the equivalent of more than $1.1 million.  Sweden’s privacy protection agency, the IMY, said it had examined the use of Google Analytics by the firms following a complaint by the Austrian data privacy group NOYB (none of your business), which has filed dozens of complaints against Google across Europe.  NOYB asserted that the use of Google Analytics for web statistics by the companies resulted in the transfer of European data to the United States in violation of the EU’s data protection regulation, the GDPR.  The GDPR allows the transfer of data to third countries only if the European Commission has determined they offer at least the same level of privacy protection as the EU. A 2020 EU Court of Justice ruling struck down an EU-U.S. data transfer deal as being insufficient.  The IMY said it considers the data sent to Google Analytics in the United States by the four companies to be personal data and that “the technical security measures that the companies have taken are not sufficient to ensure a level of protection that essentially corresponds to that guaranteed within the EU.”  It fined telecommunications firm Tele2 $1.1 million and online marketplace CDON $27,700.   Grocery store chain Coop and Dagens Industri newspaper had taken more measures to protect the data being transferred and were not …

Airline passengers who have endured tens of thousands of weather-related flight delays this week could face a new source of disruptions starting Saturday, when wireless providers are expected to power up new 5G systems near major airports. Aviation groups have warned for years that 5G signals could interfere with aircraft equipment, especially devices using radio waves to measure distance from the ground and which are critical when planes land in low visibility. Predictions that interference would cause massive flight groundings failed to come true last year, when telecom companies began rolling out the new service. They then agreed to limit the power of the signals around busy airports, giving airlines an extra year to upgrade their planes. The leader of the nation’s largest pilots’ union said crews will be able to handle the impact of 5G, but he criticized the way the wireless licenses were granted, saying it had added unnecessary risk to aviation. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently told airlines that flights could be disrupted because a small portion of the nation’s fleet has not been upgraded to protect against radio interference. Most of the major U.S. airlines say they are ready. American, Southwest, Alaska, Frontier and United say all of their planes have height-measuring devices, called radio altimeters, that are protected against 5G interference. The big exception is Delta Air Lines. Delta says 190 of its planes, which include most of its smaller ones, still lack upgraded altimeters because its supplier has been unable to provide them fast …

If you logged onto social media over the past few months, you may have seen it – a video of the Russian Embassy on a gray, overcast day in Washington with the sounds of passing cars and buses in the background. A man’s voice asks in English, “Do you want to change your future?” Russian subtitles appear on the bottom of the screen and the narrator makes note of the first anniversary of “Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine.” As somber music begins to play, the camera pans to the left and takes the viewer down Wisconsin Avenue, to the Adams Morgan Metro station and on through Washington, ending at FBI headquarters, a few blocks from the White House. “The FBI values you. The FBI can help you,” FBI Assistant Director Alan Koehler says as the video wraps up, Russian subtitles still appearing on the screen. “But only you have the power to take the first step.” The video, put out by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, first appeared as a posting on the field office’s Twitter account on February 24. Another five versions started the same day as paid advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, costing the bureau an estimated $5,500 to $6,500. That money may seem like a pittance for a government agency with an annual budget of more than $10 billion, but it was not the first nor the last time the FBI spent money to court Russian officials. The video is part of an expansive, long-running campaign by …

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said Friday that a cybersecurity incident involving one of its IT hardware suppliers has led to the leak of the vendor’s company data.  “TSMC has recently been aware that one of our IT hardware suppliers experienced a cybersecurity incident that led to the leak of information pertinent to server initial setup and configuration,” the company said.  TMSC confirmed in a statement to Reuters that its business operations or customer information were not affected following the cybersecurity incident at its supplier Kinmax.  The TSMC vendor breach is part of a larger trend of significant security incidents affecting various companies and government entities.  Victims range from U.S. government departments to the UK’s telecom regulator to energy giant Shell, all affected since a security flaw was discovered in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer product last month.  TSMC said it has cut off data exchange with the affected supplier following the incident. …

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA – Chinese and Russian companies will invest more than $1.4 billion in the extraction of lithium in Bolivia, one of the countries with the largest reserves of the mineral used in electric car batteries, the government in La Paz said Friday.   China’s Citic Guoan and Russia’s Uranium One Group — both with a major government stake — will partner with Bolivia’s state-owned YLB to build two lithium carbonate processing plants, Bolivian President Luis Arce said at a public event.   Lithium is often described as the “white gold” of the clean-energy revolution, a highly coveted component of mobile phones and electric car batteries.   “We are consolidating the country’s industrialization process,” Arce said. Bolivia, which claims to have the world’s largest deposits, in January also signed an agreement with Chinese consortium CBC to build two lithium battery plants.   The country’s energy ministry said in a statement that each of the two new plants would have the capacity to produce up to 25,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate per year.   Construction will begin in about three months.   China and Russia are among Bolivia’s main lithium buyers.   Lithium is mostly mined in Australia and South America.  …

Meta Platforms’ Oversight Board on Thursday called for the suspension of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen for six months, saying a video posted on his Facebook page had violated Meta’s rules against violent threats. The board, which is funded by Meta but operates independently, said the company erred in leaving up the video and ordered its removal from Facebook. Meta, in a written statement, agreed to take down the video but said it would respond to the recommendation to suspend Hun Sen after a review. A suspension would silence the prime minister’s Facebook page less than a month before an election in Cambodia, although critics say the poll will be a sham due to Hun Sen’s autocratic rule. The decision is the latest in a series of rebukes by the Oversight Board over how the world’s biggest social media company handles rule-breaking political leaders and incitement to violence around elections. The company’s election integrity efforts are in focus as the United States prepares for presidential elections next year. The board endorsed Meta’s 2021 banishment of former U.S. President Donald Trump – the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – after the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, but criticized the indefinite nature of his suspension and urged more careful preparation for volatile political situations overall. Meta reinstated the former U.S. president earlier this year.   Last week, the board said Meta’s handling of calls for violence after the 2022 Brazilian election continued to raise concerns about the effectiveness …

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a devoted and very active user of Facebook — on which he has posted everything from photos of his grandchildren to threats against his political enemies — said Wednesday that he would no longer upload to the platform and would instead depend on the Telegram app to get his messages across.  Telegram is a popular messaging app that also has a blogging tool called “channels.” In Russia and some neighboring countries, it is actively used both by government officials and opposition activists for communicating with mass audiences. Telegram played an important role in coordinating unprecedented anti-government protests in Belarus in 2020, and it currently serves as a major source of news about Russia’s war in Ukraine.  Hun Sen, 70, who has led Cambodia for 38 years, is listed as having 14 million Facebook followers, though critics have suggested a large number of them are merely “ghost” accounts purchased in bulk from so-called “click farms,” an assertion the long-serving prime minister has repeatedly denied. The Facebook accounts of Joe Biden and Donald Trump by comparison boast 11 million and 34 million followers, respectively, though the United States has about 20 times the population of Cambodia.  Hun Sen officially launched his Facebook page on September 20, 2015, after his fierce political rival, opposition leader Sam Rainsy, effectively demonstrated how it could be used to mobilize support. Hun Sen is noted as a canny and sometimes ruthless politician, and he has since then managed …

U.S. President Joe Biden says he wants to make sure that every American has access to high-speed internet. VOA’s Julie Taboh has our story about the United States’ more than $40 billion-dollar investment to expand the service. (Videographer:  Adam Greenbaum; Produced by Julie Taboh, Adam Greenbaum)     …

Since the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT launched last fall, a torrent of think pieces and news reports about the ins and outs and ups and downs of generative artificial intelligence has flowed, stoking fears of a dystopian future in which robots take over the world.   While much of that hype is indeed just hype, a new report has identified immediate risks posed by apps like ChatGPT. Some of those present distinct challenges to journalists and the news industry.   Published Wednesday by New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, the report identified eight risks related to generative artificial intelligence, or AI, including disinformation, cyberattacks, privacy violations and the decay of the news industry.   The AI debate “is getting a little confused between concerns about existential dangers versus what immediate harms generative AI might entail,” the report’s co-author Paul Barrett told VOA. “We shouldn’t get paralyzed by the question of, ‘Oh my God, will this technology lead to killer robots that are going to destroy humanity?’”  The systems being released right now are not going to lead to that nightmarish outcome, explained Barrett, who is the deputy director of the Stern Center.   Instead, the report — which Barrett co-authored with Justin Hendrix, founder and editor of the media nonprofit Tech Policy Press — argues that lawmakers, regulators and the AI industry itself should prioritize addressing the immediate potential risks.   Safety concerns Among the most concerning risks are the human-level threats that artificial intelligence may pose to the safety of journalists …

The commission that enforces rules for U.S. elections is not regulating AI-generated deepfakes in political advertising ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Deana Mitchell has the story. …

Just a dot on the horizon at first, the bug-like and surprisingly quiet electrically-powered craft buzzes over Paris and its traffic snarls, treating its doubtless awestruck passenger to privileged vistas of the Eiffel Tower and the city’s signature zinc-grey rooftops before landing him or her with a gentle downward hover. And thus, if all goes to plan, could a new page in aviation history be written. After years of dreamy and not always credible talk of skies filled with flying, nonpolluting electric taxis, the aviation industry is preparing to deliver a future that it says is now just around the corner. Capitalizing on its moment in the global spotlight, the Paris region is planning for a small fleet of electric flying taxis to operate on multiple routes when it hosts the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games next summer. Unless aviation regulators in China beat Paris to the punch by greenlighting a pilotless taxi for two passengers under development there, the French capital’s prospective operator — Volocopter of Germany — could be the first to fly taxis commercially if European regulators give their OK. Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke, a former top executive at aerospace giant Airbus, has a VVIP in mind as his hoped-for first Parisian passenger — none other than French President Emmanuel Macron. “That would be super amazing,” Hoke said, speaking this week at the Paris Air Show, where he and other developers of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft — or eVTOLs for short — competed with industry …