In March 2012, a 25-year-old Russian computer whiz named Yevgeny Nikulin sat with several others in a conference room in a hotel in eastern Moscow. A video taken by a Ukrainian named Oleksandr Ieremenko showed them discussing plans for an Internet cafe business and other matters.In an earlier part of the video, Ieremenko, 19, drives to the hotel to meet the group, which he calls a “summit of bad [expletives].”That same month, according to U.S. prosecutors, Nikulin broke into a social media company engineer’s computer a half a world away, in California — and allegedly stole the usernames and passwords used by tens of millions of people to access their LinkedIn accounts. Some of that data was put up for sale on a notorious Russian hacker forum that June.These details and other evidence were contained in pretrial motions prosecutors filed this week ahead of the opening of Nikulin’s trial in U.S. federal court in San Francisco. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday.The case against Nikulin, who was arrested in 2016 in Prague and extradited to the United States in 2018, is the latest example of a Russian citizen facing prosecution in the United States for cybercrimes. It’s a trend that has infuriated the Russian Foreign Ministry, which complains that the United States is “hunting” Russians around the globe.But the pretrial motions add yet more evidence of the web of relationships among Russia’s cyber underworld, allegedly tying Nikulin, now 32, to people who have been charged with even bigger, more serious hacks. That includes a hacker who allegedly worked for Russian intelligence to steal hundreds of millions of Yahoo user credentials — possibly used in the 2016 hack of the U.S. Democratic National Committee, according to cyberexperts.Nikulin, who was examined by court-ordered psychologists last year amid concerns about his mental health, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.Arkady Bukh, one of Nikulin’s lawyers, said prosecution lawyers appeared to be trying to pressure Nikulin to plead guilty ahead of the trial — particularly, he said, since the conviction rate for such cybercases is high.Nikulin, however, has refused his lawyer’s counsel to change his plea to guilty.’Zhenya’ from MoscowAccording to prosecutors’ evidence, the video showing Nikulin, Ieremenko and others was from a hard drive seized by Ukrainian authorities who raided Ieremenko’s home in Kyiv, and the homes of several other alleged Ukrainian hackers, in November 2012.An FBI affidavit said photographs found on the hard drive included photos that said “Zhenya from Moscow” — a diminutive form of the name Yevgeny.The U.S. Secret Service obtained the hard drive as part of an investigation into hacks of several business newswires, a scheme that involved selling unreleased corporate information to stock traders who then made trades based on the nonpublic information.Ieremenko, now 27, was implicated in that scheme, but he gained wider notoriety in 2019 when U.S. authorities indicted him and another Ukrainian in connection with a similar scam that traded on corporate earnings reports stolen from a database of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Ieremenko is believed to be in Russia.According to the trial motions, Nikulin worked closely with Ieremenko in 2012, sharing hacked passwords and coding tips, using Skype accounts. A Skype address they tied to Nikulin — dex.007 — was used to send Ieremenko a link containing the password to one of Nikulin’s accounts on a domain hosting site, along with stolen LinkedIn credentials.’Reporting on the spot’The video, one of eight copied from Ieremenko’s hard drive, was shot on March 18 or 19, 2012. In it, the person making the video narrates it, saying: “In short, we are reporting on the spot. Now, here at this Vega Izmailovo Hotel, there will be a f****** summit of bad motherf*****s,” according to the U.S. transcript submitted in the court record.Nikulin also worked closely with another Russian, Nikita Kislitsin, who was indicted in the United States in 2014 on conspiracy charges related to the hack of another, lesser-known social media company called Formspring. Kislitsin’s indictment, which was under seal since being filed, was unsealed earlier this week.U.S. prosecutors say that, three months after the Moscow meeting, Nikulin himself stole 30 million user credentials from  Formspring and utilized some of those credentials when he hacked into the LinkedIn engineer’s computer.According to the court documents, the FBI used “court-ordered electronic interceptions” — phone and email taps — to track Nikulin in 2012 and 2013.U.S. investigators discovered overlap with another Russian, Aleksei Belan, under investigation in connection with a separate hack: the theft of user credentials from the Internet giant Yahoo, beginning in 2013.FILE – A cyclist rides past a Yahoo sign at the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., July 19, 2016. The Yahoo hack announced in December 2016 exposed personal details from all of the company’ user accounts.Yahoo eventually revealed all 3 billion of its users had had their credentials compromised in what is today considered one of the largest data breaches in the history of the internet.Prosecutors said the FBI, which had obtained a court-authorized warrant to search Belan’s e-mail and tap his phones, found that Belan, along with Kislitsin, purchased the Formspring passwords in July 2012.That same year, Belan was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for cyberthieves. The following year, he was arrested in Greece at the request of U.S. authorities. But he avoided being extradited and escaped back into Russia, according to U.S. and European authorities.In 2014, according to previous U.S. documents, Belan was recruited by Russia’s main intelligence and security agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and its cyberunit, known as the Center for Information Security.Belan, according to the 2016 Yahoo hack indictment, was ordered by the FSB cyberunit to conduct the breach of Yahoo accounts.In all, U.S. officials charged four people with the Yahoo breach, including two FSB officers. Those officers themselves were later arrested by the FSB itself and charged with state treason, allegedly for passing classified intelligence to U.S. agencies.One, Sergei Mikhailov, pleaded not guilty to the Russian charges and was sentenced last year to 22 years in prison. The other, Dmitry Dokuchaev, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators. He was handed a six-year sentence.In December 2016, in response to the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had tried to meddle in the presidential election won by Donald Trump that year, the administration of outgoing President Barack Obama announced sweeping sanctions against Belan and another Russian, who also allegedly had ties to Russian intelligence, Yevgeny Bogachev.The interference, according to U.S. intelligence, included the hack of the U.S. Democratic National Committee and the theft of emails that were later leaked publicly during the election campaign. U.S. officials, and cyberanalysts, have said the FSB was among those responsible for the hack, and that the stolen Yahoo credentials may been used to trick victims into letting hackers steal their emails.Kislitsin connectionsA further illustration of the web of ties among Russia’s cyber underground comes in the case of Kislitsin, who attended the March 2012 meeting in Moscow with Nikulin and Ieremenko.Kislitsin, according the U.S. prosecutors, allegedly partnered with Belan to get the Formspring data from Nikulin in July 2012.The following year, in 2013, Kislitsin met with an official from the U.S. Justice Department to discuss “research into the [cyber]underground,” according to Group IB, a prominent Russian cybersecurity and research firm.Kislitsin was joined in the meeting with the Justice Department official by representatives from Group IB, according to a Group IB statement provided to RFE/RL.Group IB later hired Kislitsin, and he is currently listed as the “head of network security” for the company.Asked for comment about the newly unsealed charges, which include conspiracy and trafficking in stolen user names and passwords, against Kislitsin, Group IB said that they predated his employment.”The information that has become public contains only allegations, and no findings have been made that Nikita Kislitsin has engaged in any wrongdoing,” the company said in the statement to RFE/RL.The company also said that after the 2013 meeting with the Justice Department official, “neither Group-IB nor Nikita Kislitsin has been officially approached with any additional questions.”And there’s one other connection involving Kislitsin. He previously worked as editor in chief for a well-known Russian cybermagazine called Hacker, where the ex-FSB officer Dokuchaev worked for him, writing under his nickname, Forb.’I want to hack the prison’Nikulin was arrested in Prague in October 2016 after his entrance into the country a few days earlier triggered a notification among Czech law enforcement.He and his lawyers strenuously fought the U.S. request for his extradition. Ultimately, he was sent to the United States in March 2018, prompting an angry statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which called it “a conscious, politically motivated step by the Czech side aimed at undermining the constructive basis of bilateral cooperation.”While in U.S. custody, Nikulin was reported by prison authorities as behaving strangely, prompting a judge to order a psychological examination. He was later deemed competent to stand trial.”He is refusing to accept a guilty plea, and this is another example of his mental condition,” Bukh told RFE/RL.The evidence that will be introduced in the trial also included other less significant but revealing comments, including a transcript of a phone conversation Nikulin had with a woman named Anya in November 2018.In the conversation, Nikulin complained that he had not received food, books or magazines, as he requested. He also joked with Anya.”I want to hack the prison,” he is quoted as saying. “The rules here are stupid.”This story was first published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
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In a lively Muslim quarter of Nanchang city, a sprawling Chinese factory turns out computer screens, cameras and fingerprint scanners for a supplier to international tech giants such as Apple and Lenovo. Throughout the neighborhood, women in headscarves stroll through the streets, and Arabic signs advertise halal supermarkets and noodle shops.Yet the mostly Over the past four years, the Chinese government has detained more than a million people from the far west Xinjiang region, most of them Uighurs, in internment camps and prisons where they go through The Chinese government says the labor program is a way to train Uighurs and other minorities and give them jobs. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday called concern over possible coerced labor under the program “groundless” and “slander.”However, experts say that like the internment camps, the program is part of a broader assault on the Uighur culture, All the companies that responded said they required suppliers to follow strict labor standards. LG and Dell said they had “no evidence” of forced labor in their supply chains but would investigate, as did Huawei. HP did not respond.OFILM also lists as customers dozens of companies within China, as well as international companies it calls “partners” without specifying what product it offers. And it supplies PAR Technology, an American sales systems vendor to which it most recently shipped 48 cartons of touch screens in February, according to U.S. customs data obtained through ImportGenius and Panjiva, which track shipping data.PAR Technology in turn says it supplies terminals to major chains such as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Subway. However, the AP was unable to confirm that products from OFILM end up with the fast food companies.McDonald’s said it has asked PAR Technology to discontinue purchases from OFILM while it launches an immediate investigation. PAR Technology also said it would investigate immediately. Subway and Taco Bell did not respond.OFILM confirmed it received AP requests for comment but did not reply. Its website says the company “answered the government’s call” and went to Xinjiang to recruit minorities, as part of an effort to pull them from poverty and help them “study and improve.” It recruited more than 3,000 young men and women from Xinjiang starting in 2017.A report Sunday from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, researched separately from the AP, estimated that more than 80,000 Uighurs were transferred from Xinjiang to factories across China between 2017 and 2019. The report said it found “conditions that strongly suggest forced labor” consistent with International Labor Organization definitions.The AP also reported a year ago that Uighur forced labor was being used within Xinjiang to make sportswear that ended up in the U.S.
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A U.S. senator is introducing legislation that would ban government employees from using the social media app TikTok on their government devices.Josh Hawley, a Republican representing the state of Missouri, said at a hearing Wednesday the data the Chinese-owned app collects and the potential for it to be shared with China’s government represent a “majority security risk for the American people.”He said similar bans are in place at some of the biggest federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the State Department.Hawley did not say exactly when he would introduce the bill.The effort is the latest security scrutiny of TikTok, which allows users to post and view short videos.The company has said any data from U.S. users is stored in the United States and not subject to any Chinese government jurisdiction.It says it understands the safety concerns, but thinks they are unfounded, and that it has reached out to lawmakers in order to explain its policies.
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The United States appears to have found a new partner in its drive to discourage European allies from building their 5G telecommunication networks with Chinese equipment.In a joint declaration last week, the U.S. and the Baltic nation of Latvia agreed to encourage the use of “reliable and trustworthy network hardware” as the world builds out the next generation of telecom networks and to promote frameworks that protect against “unauthorized access and interference.”
The declaration did not name any country or company, but it comes in the context of a U.S. campaign to steer countries away from Chinese-based Huawei, the world’s largest supplier of 5G equipment, which Washington fears is vulnerable to Chinese spying.FILE – Signage is seen at the Huawei offices in Reading, Britain, May 2, 2019.The American effort has suffered setbacks in recent weeks, with Britain rejecting U.S. entreaties to ban Huawei from its 5G networks and Germany torn on the issue. That makes the agreement with Latvia — following similar agreements last year with Poland and Estonia — all the more important.Latvia has working 5G networkWhile small in population, with fewer than 2 million people, Latvia last summer became one of the world’s first countries to roll out a working 5G network and, according to its foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, it is “one of the largest exporters of 5G technologies and IT solutions.”The joint declaration calls for “a rigorous evaluation” of potential 5G suppliers, taking into account “the rule of law; the security environment; ethical supplier practices; and a supplier’s compliance with security standards and best practices.”That would appear to rule out Huawei, at least in U.S. eyes. At a recent security conference in Germany, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued that “Huawei and other state-backed tech companies are Trojan horses for Chinese intelligence.”Speaking to VOA a day after he and Pompeo signed the joint declaration, Rinkevics said he and the secretary had discussed alternative 5G providers besides Huawei. “We would love to have for the United States, leading European nations and their companies work out good, viable alternatives. Call it Ericsson, call it Nokia, call it Samsung, call it Motorola,” the name doesn’t matter as long as the substance is there, he said. “We can’t simply say ‘this is bad, that is not good,’ without presenting a sound, solid alternative.”’Growing understanding’Latvia, he added, is ready “to be part of wider efforts with our technological contribution, with our companies working on both software and hardware components of these initiatives.”While European approaches to the use of Huawei ‘s 5G equipment vary widely, Rinkēvičs said there is a “growing understanding” within the European Union that “we should address this jointly, not separately.”“We are currently developing joint European policies. It’s not an easy task — you have 27 nations, you have European institutions, everyone has his/her interests — but I think we have done relatively well, all things considered,” he said.Sounding an optimistic note, he added “we are making progress; if you compare, let’s say even year 2018, 2019, we are moving ahead.”
 
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Twitter staff across the world were asked to work from home starting Monday in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly new coronavirus epidemic.At the same time, thousands of staff at Google’s European headquarters in Ireland were told to stay away for the day after one employee reported flu-like symptoms.The outbreak has spread across the world since emerging in central China late last year, killing more than 3,100 people, infecting over 90,000, and prompting a wave of travel restrictions.Twitter’s decision to ask its staff to avoid the office follows similar requests by governments in virus hotspots.”We are strongly encouraging all employees globally to work from home if they’re able,” Twitter human resources chief Jennifer Christie said in a Monday blog post.”Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus for us — and the world around us.”Working from home will be mandatory for employees at the company’s South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan offices, Christie said.South Korea has recorded nearly 5,000 confirmed COVID-19 infections — the largest number outside mainland China — along with 28 deaths. More than half of the cases have been linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a secretive religious group often described as a cult.Japan’s government has urged the closure of schools nationwide and employers to give their staff permission to work remotely.Most civil servants in Hong Kong returned to work on Monday after they were asked to work from home for a month. The financial hub has recorded 100 cases of the infection.Twitter had already announced the suspension of “non-critical” business travel and events last week.Google employees some 8,000 staff and contractors in the Irish capital.”We continue to take precautionary measures to protect the health and safety of our workforce,” a spokesperson said in a statement.”In accordance with the advice of medical experts, and as part of that effort, we have asked our Dublin teams to work from home today.”Ireland has one confirmed case of COVID-19 — a man who returned from northern Italy.Google staff who have been in contact with their colleague with the flu-like symptoms have been told to monitor their health, while the company is using the situation to help test the company’s readiness to deal with any outbreak.
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In the near future, farmers in Africa could boldly go where no farmers have gone before. Major manufacturers look to launch the industry into the 21st Century by tying tractors to cell phones. With a high-tech device, can follow a tractor’s movement and productivity. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi ploughs through this story.
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NASA is preparing to send a new rover to Mars for a human exploration mission of the Red Planet. Voice of America reporter Verónica Villafañe saw the space vehicle up close and spoke with members of the mission.
 
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Huawei will build its first European manufacturing plant in France, its chairman said Thursday, as the Chinese telecom giant seeks to ease worldwide concerns stoked by U.S. charges that Beijing could use its equipment for spying. Liang Hua said Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecom equipment, would invest 200 million euros ($217 million) in the first phase of setting up the mobile base station plant. He said it would create 500 jobs. Huawei, which denies its equipment poses a security risk, is at the center of a storm pitting the United States against China over 5G, the next-generation mobile technology. Europe has become a major battleground. Continental market”This site will supply the entire European market, not just France’s,” Liang said at a news conference. “Our group’s activities are worldwide and for this we need a global industrial footprint.” 5G technology is expected to deliver a huge leap in the speed and capacity of communications and an exponential spike in connections between billions of devices, from smart refrigerators to driverless cars, that are expected to run on 5G networks. It was not immediately clear whether Huawei’s decision had the blessing of French President Emmanuel Macron, who has courted foreign investors but also led warnings about Chinese encroachment into the European Union’s economy. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Chairman Liang Hua speaks during a news conference in Paris, France, Feb. 27, 2020.Liang said Huawei had outlined the group’s plans to the French government. “This is not a charm offensive,” he said. There was no immediate reaction from Macron’s office. Early stages The United States has repeatedly warned European allies against allowing the Chinese firm into the continent’s 5G infrastructure. But European capitals are divided about how to deal with Huawei. France has yet to start rolling out its 5G networks but the top French mobile operator, state-controlled Orange, has already chosen Huawei’s European rivals, Nokia and Ericsson. Smaller operators Bouygues Telecom and Altice Europe’s SFR, whose existing networks rely heavily on Huawei, are urging Paris to clarify its position on Huawei. France says it will not discriminate against any vendor but requires all suppliers to be screened so they can secure a green light from the cybersecurity agency, which is examining Huawei equipment. Sources close to the French telecom industry say they fear Huawei will be barred in practice even if no formal ban is announced. Neighboring Germany is also struggling to reach consensus on the way forward. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservatives back tougher rules on foreign vendors but have stopped short of an outright ban on Huawei. British planBritain has defied the United States by allowing “high-risk vendors” such as Huawei into nonsensitive parts of its 5G network but not what it describes as “core” components. Washington has pressed London to reconsider. The mobile base stations that will be manufactured in France are not considered core to 5G network infrastructure. Huawei accuses the United States of seeking to frustrate its growth because no U.S. company can offer the same range of technology at a competitive price. The French plant will be Huawei’s second manufacturing facility outside China. It has a plant making smartphones in India but only has assembly plants elsewhere. The plant in France will generate 1 billion euros a year in sales. 
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Imagine how life would change for so many people who need a replacement organ if scientists could just print a new one that works. That’s exactly one of the projects scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are working on – 3D bio printed human organs. They’re also working to develop artificial blood vessels and miniature models of a human body using 3d bio printing.  Lesia Bakalets has the story from Winston-Salem, North Carolina in this report narrated by Anna Rice.
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Technology is finally able to make food appear. With help from a local NGO, hungry kids in Kenya can now get a hot lunch for a few pennies with just a tap of their wrists. It happens using short-range Wi-Fi, as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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NASA says Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who worked on NASA’s early space missions and was portrayed in the film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died.
   
In a Monday morning tweet, the space agency said it celebrates her 101 years of life and her legacy of excellence and breaking down racial and social barriers.
   
Johnson was one of the so-called “computers” who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits by hand during NASA’s early years.
   
Until 1958, Johnson and other black women worked in a racially segregated computing unit at what is now called Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Their work was the focus of the Oscar-nominated 2016 film.
   
In 1961, Johnson worked on the first mission to carry an American into space. In 1962, she verified computer calculations that plotted John Glenn’s earth orbits.
   
At age 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
   
Johnson focused on airplanes and other research at first. But her work at NASA’s Langley Research Center eventually shifted to Project Mercury, the nation’s first human space program.
   
“Our office computed all the [rocket] trajectories,” Johnson told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.”
   
In 1961, Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space. The next year, she manually verified the calculations of a nascent NASA computer, an IBM 7090, which plotted John Glenn’s orbits around the planet.
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New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google Thursday over allegations the tech company is illegally collecting personal data generated by children in violation of federal and state laws.The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque claims Google is using its education services package that is marketed to school districts, teachers and parents as a way to spy on children and their families.Attorney General Hector Balderas said that while the company touts Google Education as a valuable tool for resource-deprived schools, it is a means to monitor children while they browse the internet in the classroom and at home on private networks. He said the information being mined includes everything from physical locations to websites visited, videos watched, saved passwords and contact lists.The state is seeking unspecified civil penalties.“Student safety should be the number one priority of any company providing services to our children, particularly in schools,” Balderas said in a statement. “Tracking student data without parental consent is not only illegal, it is dangerous.”Google dismissed the claims as “factually wrong,” saying the G Suite for Education package allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary.“We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads,” said company spokesman Jose Castaneda.“School districts can decide how best to use Google for education in their classrooms and we are committed to partnering with them.”Unlike Europe, the U.S. has no overarching national law governing data collection and privacy. Instead, it has a patchwork of state and federal laws that protect specific types of data, such as consumer health, financial information and the personal data generated by younger children.New Mexico’s claim cites violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites and online services to obtain parental consent before collecting any information from children under 13.In a separate case, Google already has agreed to pay $170 million combined to the Federal Trade Commission and New York state to settle allegations its YouTube video service collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent.According to the New Mexico lawsuit, outside its Google Education platform, the company prohibits children in the U.S. under the age of 13 from having their own Google accounts. The state contends Google is attempting to get around this by using its education services to “secretly gain access to troves of information” about New Mexico children.The attorney general’s office filed a similar lawsuit against Google and other tech companies in 2018, targeting what Balderas described as illegal data collection from child-directed mobile apps. That case still is pending in federal court, but the companies have denied wrongdoing.The latest lawsuit claims more than 80 million teachers and students use Google’s education platform. Balderas said in a letter to New Mexico school officials that there was no immediate harm if they continue using the products and that the lawsuit shouldn’t interrupt activities in the classroom. 
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday questioned whether Facebook, Google and other major online platforms still need the immunity from legal liability that has prevented them from being sued over material their users post. “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts. They have become titans,” Barr said at a public meeting held by the Justice Department to examine the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “Given this changing technological landscape, valid questions have been raised about whether Section 230’s broad immunity is necessary, at least in its current form,” he said. Section 230 says online companies such as Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Twitter Inc. cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of information they provide. This largely exempts them from liability involving content posted by users, although they can be held liable for content that violates criminal or intellectual property law.  FILE – U.S. Attorney General William Barr is pictured in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 4, 2020.Barr’s comments offered insight into how regulators in Washington are reconsidering the need for incentives that once helped online companies grow but are increasingly viewed as impediments to curbing online crime, hate speech and extremism. The increased size and power of online platforms has also left consumers with fewer options, and the lack of feasible alternatives is a relevant discussion, Barr said, adding that the Section 230 review came out of the Justice Department’s broader look at potential anticompetitive practices at tech companies. Lawmakers from both major political parties have called for Congress to change Section 230 in ways that could expose tech companies to more lawsuits or significantly increase their costs. Lawmakers’ concernsSome Republicans have expressed concern that Section 230 prevents them from taking action against internet services that remove conservative political content, while a few Democratic leaders have said the law allows the services to escape punishment for harboring misinformation and extremist content. Barr said the department would not advocate a position at the meeting. But he hinted at the idea of allowing the U.S. government to act against recalcitrant platforms, saying it was “questionable” whether Section 230 should prevent the American government from suing platforms when it is “acting to protect American citizens.” Others at the meeting floated different ideas. FILE – Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson with a bipartisan group of state attorneys general speaks to reporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sept. 9, 2019.The attorney general of Nebraska, Doug Peterson, noted that the law does not shield platforms from federal criminal prosecution; the immunity helps protect against civil claims or a state-level prosecution. Peterson said the exception should be widened to allow state-level action as well. Addressing the tech industry, he called it a “pretty simple solution” that would allow local officials “to clean up your industry instead of waiting for your industry to clean up itself.” Matt Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which counts Google and Facebook among its members, said such a solution would result in tech giants having to obey 50 separate sets of laws governing user content. He suggested law enforcement’s energies might be better spent pursuing the millions of tips that the tech industry sent over every year, only a small fraction of which, he noted, resulted in investigations. “There appears to be some asymmetry there,” he said. Others argued that different rules should apply to different platforms, with larger websites enjoying fewer protections than internet upstarts. “With great scale comes great responsibility,” said David Chavern, of the News Media Alliance, whose members have bristled as Google and Facebook have gutted journalism’s business model. How to distinguishBut other panelists argued that distinguishing one site from another might be tricky. For example, would platforms like Reddit or Wikipedia, which have large reach but shoestring staffs, be counted as big sites or small ones? The panelists also briefly debated encryption, another area over which Barr has pressed the tech industry to change its modus operandi. Facebook in particular has drawn the ire of U.S. officials over its plans to secure its popular messaging platform. Kate Klonick, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York, urged caution. “This is a massive norm-setting period,” she said, with any alterations to one of the internet’s key legal frameworks likely to draw unexpected consequences. “It’s hard to know exactly what the ramifications might be.” 
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A federal judge in Texas has dismissed Chinese tech giant Huawei’s lawsuit challenging a U.S. law that bars the government and its contractors from using Huawei equipment because of security concerns.The lawsuit, filed last March, sought to declare the law unconstitutional. Huawei argued the law singled out the company for punishment, denied it due process and amounted to a “death penalty.”But a court ruled Tuesday that the ban isn’t punitive and that the federal government has the right to take its business elsewhere.Huawei, China’s first global tech brand, is at the center of U.S.-Chinese tensions over technology competition and digital spying. The company has spent years trying to put to rest accusations that it facilitates Chinese spying and that it is controlled by the ruling Communist Party.The lawsuit was filed in Plano, Texas, the headquarters of Huawei’s U.S. operations. It was dismissed before going to trial. Experts had described Huawei’s challenge as a long shot, but said the company didn’t have many other options to challenge the law.Huawei said it was disappointed and will consider further legal options.The Trump administration has been aggressively lobbying Western allies to avoid Huawei’s equipment for next-generation, 5G cellular networks. Administration officials say Huawei can give the Chinese government backdoor access to data, allegations that the company rejects.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also spoken out against Huawei, including during a talk with reporters in Brussels on Monday, turning U.S. opposition to Huawei into a bipartisan effort.
 
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Spain’s government approved Tuesday the introduction of new taxes on digital business and stock market transactions, following similar steps by other European countries.The Cabinet agreed at its weekly meeting to adopt the so-called Google tax and Tobin tax. The measures still require parliament’s approval.Finance Minister Mara Jesus Montero said the Google tax, which has angered U.S. authorities and brought a threat of tariffs by the Trump administration, will be levied only from the end of the year.By then, the government hopes an international agreement on digital business taxes will be in place. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which advises the world’s rich countries on policies, is currently trying to draw up the agreement.Montero said the government wants a “fairer” tax system, adapted to the new economic trends of globalization and digitalization.Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government is following other European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, in adopting a digital tax.The measure is an attempt to get around tax avoidance measures frequently used by multinationals. Big tech firms such as Google and Facebook pay most of their taxes in the European Union country where they are based and often pay very little in countries where they run large and profitable operations.Spain wants to place a 3% tax on online ads, on deals brokered on digital platforms and on sales of user data by tech companies that have a turnover of more than 750 million euros a year internationally and more than 3 million in Spain. It hopes to raise close to 1 billion euros a year in extra tax revenue.Other EU countries, such as France, Italy and Belgium, have already passed a Tobin tax. In Spain, the government aims to levy a 0.2% tax on share purchases involving companies worth more than 1 billion euros. That should raise more than 800 million euros annually, according to the government.A Socialist government first said it wanted to adopt the new taxes in January of last year, but an April general election foiled its plans.
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As some of the negative effects of life lived online become more apparent, “digital wellness” groups are promoting ways to maintain healthy lifestyles. Deana Mitchell reports 
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Women and minorities pursuing computer science degrees often feel alone and isolated, since the field is overwhelmingly dominated by men. While about 60 percent of all 2017 bachelor’s degree recipients in the U.S. were women, only about 20 percent of Computer and Information Science bachelor’s degree recipients went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). But an innovative program initiated by a global non-profit in partnership with universities across the U.S. has already made impressive gains in helping to boost those numbers. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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It seems inevitable that in this era of smart technology people would begin to think of ways to make their tech part of their body. Today, people have the ability to change themselves in new and unprecedented ways – and a 19-year-old Kai Landre is living proof. Anna Nelson has the story, narrated by Anna Rice
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to throw his support behind international reforms that would require Silicon Valley tech giants to pay more tax in Europe.
    
The billionaire social network founder is due to meet members of the European Union’s executive Commission in Brussels and speak at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
    
Zuckerberg is expected to tell the conference on Saturday that he’s backing plans for digital tax reform on a global scale proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
    
According to an excerpt of his speech provided in advance, Zuckerberg will say, “I understand that there’s frustration about how tech companies are taxed in Europe.”
    
Zuckerberg will tell the conference that he’s glad that that the OECD is looking at tax reform, which Facebook also wants.
“And we accept that may mean we have to pay more tax and pay it in different places under a new framework,” Zuckerberg will reportedly say.
    
The OECD plans would require digital and internet companies, including social media platforms, to pay more tax in countries where they have significant consumer-facing activities and generate profits.
    
The current system for taxing multinationals is based on where they are physically located, which sees internet companies such as Facebook pay the majority of their tax in the United States.
    
The situation is even more complicated in the European Union, where multinationals largely pay taxes on business done across the region in the one country that serves as their EU base, often a low-tax haven.
    
Tech companies have faced criticism for not paying enough tax in come countries. The U.S., meanwhile, has criticized the OECD plans, arguing they discriminate against big Silicon Valley companies.
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Facebook decided Friday to allow a type of paid political message that had sidestepped many of the social network’s rules governing political ads. Its policy change came days after presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg exploited a loophole to run such humorous messages promoting his campaign on the accounts of popular Instagram personalities followed by millions of younger people. The change involves what Facebook calls branded content'' — sponsored items posted by ordinary users who are typically paid by companies or organizations. Advertisers pay the influential users directly to post about their brand. No money for FacebookFacebook makes no money from such posts and does not consider them advertising. As a result, branded content isn't governed by Facebook's advertising policies, which require candidates and campaigns to verify their identity with a U.S. ID or mailing address and disclose how much they spent running each ad. Until Friday, Facebook tried to deter the use of paid posts through influential users as political messages. Specifically, it barred political campaigns from using a tool designed to help advertisers run branded posts on Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Friday's rule change will now allow campaigns in the U.S. to use this tool, provided they've been authorized by Facebook to run political ads and disclose who paid for the sponsored posts. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during his campaign launch of "Mike for Black America," at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, Feb. 13, 2020, in Houston.The Bloomberg campaign took the unconventional step of paying social media influencers — individuals with huge followings — to post Bloomberg memes using their Instagram accounts. Different versions of the sponsored posts from the Bloomberg campaign ran on more than a dozen influential Instagram accounts, each of which has millions of followers. That effort skirted many of the rules that tech companies have imposed on political ads to safeguard U.S. elections from malicious foreign and domestic interference and misinformation. Online political ads have been controversial, especially after it was revealed Russia used them to try to influence the 2016 presidential election. In response, Facebook has rolled out rules to prevent a repeat of that, though it has declined to fact-check political ads and refuses to ban even blatantly false messages. The Bloomberg campaign's memes showed the 78-year-old candidate, in a tongue-in-cheek awkward fashion, chatting with popular social media influencers with names likeTank Sinatra,asking them to help him raise his profile among younger folk. Can you post a meme that lets everyone know I’m the cool candidate?” Bloomberg wrote in one of the exchanges posted by an account called F Jerry, which has nearly 15 million followers on Instagram. The candidate then sent a photo of him wearing baggy chino shorts, an orange polo and a zip-up vest. F Jerry’s account then replied, Ooof that will cost like a billion dollars.'' Bloomberg responded by asking where to send the money. Looking to broaden audienceWith the sponsored posts, Bloomberg's campaign said it was reaching those who might not be normally interested in the day-to-day developments of politics. You want to engage people at every platform and you want them to feel like they’re not just getting a canned generic statement,” campaign spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said of the campaign’s strategy. The campaign declined to say how much it paid for the sponsored posts, or if it had more of them in the works. The posts did not appear in Facebook’s ad transparency library, which catalogs the political ads that campaigns buy directly from Facebook or Instagram and tells users how much was spent on them. Bloomberg’s campaign told The Associated Press on Thursday that Instagram does not require the campaign to disclose that information on the sponsored posts it ran earlier this week. 
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A federal judge in Washington has halted, for now, a major U.S. Defense Department cyber contract, blocking Microsoft Corp. from working on the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud-computing initiative pending the resolution of a lawsuit brought by rival Amazon.com.In October, Microsoft was awarded the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, which has an estimated worth of around $10 billion over the next decade. The JEDI project will process and store classified data to provide the U.S. military improved communications with soldiers in the field as well as artificial intelligence to speed up war planning and fighting capabilities.By November, Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, filed a lawsuit alleging the Defense Department unfairly judged its bid for the contract. Amazon believes the process was tainted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s animosity towards Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer and owner of The Washington Post newspaper, which Trump has regularly accused of bias against him.FILE – This April 12, 2016 file photo shows the Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, France.Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith said the JEDI contract cannot continue to be enacted “until further order of the court.” Judge Campbell-Smith’s full opinion was sealed.While Amazon scored at least a preliminary victory, it is required to create a $42 million security fund that will be used to pay for any damages if the court later finds the injunction was improper.Earlier this week, Amazon asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to allow them to question Trump and top Pentagon leaders, including former defense secretary James Mattis and Defense Secretary Mark Esper about any political interference from the White House in the awarding of the contract.“We believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work to make sure those who serve our country can access the new technology they urgently require,” said Microsoft’s spokesman Frank Shaw, adding that he is disappointed by the ruling and believes the Pentagon’s decision-making process was fair.
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Organizers of the world’s biggest mobile technology fair insisted Thursday that they canceled the annual Mobile World Congress due to health and safety concerns over the virus outbreak in China. But the Spanish government disagreed, hinting that there was another motive for the cancellation.
“This is indeed a very difficult situation and a very difficult decision that we have taken,” Mats Granryd, director general of the GSMA, told reporters in Barcelona on Thursday, a day after they canceled the event.
“Our priorities have been very clear and very simple: The first is health and safety of everyone involved in the show and the second priority is the reputation of the MWC and this event here in Barcelona,” he said.
The decision to scrap the Feb. 24-27 event in Barcelona was taken after dozens of tech companies and wireless carriers dropped out over the COVID-19 virus, including major companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Sony, Amazon, Intel and LG. The companies cited concerns for the safety of staff and visitors.
But the Spanish government said in a statement Thursday it “believes it is not public health reasons in Spain that have motivated the cancellation.”
“There is no public health reason to not hold events of this type in our country,” the government added. It did not say what reasons it thought were behind the decision.
Spain has only two people infected with the virus, neither of whom is in Barcelona.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, sitting alongside Granryd, also said, “neither in Barcelona, Catalonia or Spain does any health concern exist today. There is no local reason” to cancel.
Granryd said the decision had nothing to do with the trade differences between China and the U.S., as suggested by one reporter who noted that some of those that had canceled were at events in Amsterdam.
“Absolutely not. Everyone I have spoken to, this is a health and safety issue concern, concern of travel, concern of having to put business-critical resources in quarantine for 14 days so it has nothing to do with anything else than the force majeure situation of having coronavirus disease spreading on the planet,” Granryd said.
John Hoffman, chief executive of GSMA, emphasized they were dealing with “business-critical people,” including 8,000 CEOs. He said “there was grave concern on disrupting their business not only now but into the future.”
Granryd said GSMA could not discuss the costs of the cancellation, as it was “early days.”
“It’s not about money,” he added.
Hoffman said they had considered a scaled-down event but “all of our buyers have indicated they would not attend.”
He said they looked at the data Wednesday and concluded that the “vast majority of those who planned to attend were not going to be there.”
He said it was not possible to postpone the event because it was impossible to know when the situation would change.
Describing it as “a very dark day,” Hoffman said that the group nevertheless looked forward to hosting the event again in Barcelona in 2021. Barcelona city hall and the national government welcomed this.
The show was originally expected to draw more than 100,000 visitors from about 200 countries, including 5,000-6,000 from China.
The decision stands to be a major economic blow to the city, which has been hosting the event for 14 years.
Colau said “the local impact will be very substantial” and that authorities will consult with those sectors affected to see how they can reduce the financial pain.
The show normally represents a huge source of revenue for hotels, restaurants and taxi companies. Authorities have estimated the show would generate 473 million euros ($516 million) and more than 14,000 part-time jobs for the local economy. 
 
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The earliest fans of the internet wondered if it could be a democratizing technology, giving all people access to information, regardless of their income, social status, or level of freedom under their governments. Today another computer technology — artificial intelligence — raises similar questions, depending on whether it will bring benefits for all, or worsen the inequality already in place.A new report, jointly released by Google, INSEAD business school, and Adecco recruiters, tackles those questions by ranking nations and cities based on how well they attract people to their workforce by investing in technology like AI. Asian nations shot up the Global Talent Competitiveness Index in 2020 compared to 2019, particularly developing nations. That has led observers to a two-pronged conclusion marked by cautious optimism: on the one hand, poorer nations can use this technology to get ahead; on the other hand, if people become complacent, the technological advantage could stay in rich nations.“As talent becomes increasingly fluid and mobile, some early AI adopters could leverage this to become more talent competitive,” Bruno Lanvin, executive director of global indices at INSEAD, said, “however there are also signs that the ubiquity of AI is amplifying current imbalances and inequalities.”Most large nations in Asia improved their rankings this year, including China, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The index assigns nations a score for each of dozens of indicators, such as how much technical education and training they provide, the amount of technology transfer they enable, and the level of social mobility.The reason observers have drawn mixed conclusions from the index is that there is opportunity for developing nations to improve, but it is limited. For instance Malaysia got higher marks this year because it does a good job of matching workforce needs with talent. However the report authors say it “would benefit from higher tolerance and greater opportunities for minorities and immigrants.”Residents walk down a street in Kyoto, Japan, a nation whose investment in artificial intelligence helped it climb three spots in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index. (VOA News)What the authors call most “worrying,” though, is the risk of a widening gap between rich and poor in terms of which nations are best preparing to use artificial intelligence. Rich city-state Singapore is the only Asian nation to break the top 10 of the index released last month. In the part of the study focused on cities, high-income Tokyo and Hong Kong are the best performing in the region.Developing nations are able to make some progress because, at a lower level, technology is accessible and cheap. India and the Philippines, for instance, have become global call centers and IT outsourcing hubs, and it is relatively easy for their citizens to pick up basic coding skills regardless of their income.However when technology needs move beyond just coding skills, more investment and resources help. Artificial intelligence, in particular, relies on massive amounts of data to be input and computer power to crunch the data. Nations and companies that amass that data, and the highly-paid professionals who can understand it, have such an advantage that it might become too hard for others to catch up in the future.“AI also will affect people’s jobs and change the nature of work,”Kent Walker, senior vice president of Google, said. “We need to anticipate these changes and take steps to prepare for them.”Google has exactly such an AI advantage. It has been able to collect many photos to input into and improve its image recognition algorithms, for instance, at a level that would be hard for other companies to match.The authors released the global talent index in hopes of highlighting the digital divide, as well as providing recommendations on how to solve it. They say to prevent people from being left behind, developing nations can focus on vocational training and lifelong learning, and not just for lower-skilled tech jobs like coding. People can learn to do work that is complemented — not replaced — by robots; machines may be able to move a syringe into position, but patients will still want human nurses to oversee the injection, for instance.“The human role in the world of work is being augmented by technology rather than substituted by it,” Alain Dehaze, CEO of the Adecco Group, said.At a government level, nations should agree on the rules and principles that guide AI research and uses, such as the need for data protection, the report said. That would increase the odds that new technologies are advanced in the interest of humans.
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Samsung on Tuesday unveiled a new foldable phone, the Galaxy Z Flip, its second attempt to sell consumers on phones with bendable screens and clamshell designs.The company announced the phone at the start of a product event in San Francisco. The new phone can unfold from a small square upward into a traditional smartphone form, and will go on sale Feb. 14 starting at $1,380.Samsung’s first foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold, finally went on sale last September after delays and reports of screens breaking. The Fold, which carries a price tag of nearly $2,000, folds at a vertical crease rather than horizontally as a flip-phone design would. Motorola has also taken the flip-phone approach with its new $1,500 Razr phone.The foldable phones represent manufacturers’ attempt to energize a market where sales have slowed. Many consumers are holding onto old phones longer, in part because new phone features offer increasingly marginal benefits. But these foldable models come with higher price tags and are likely to appeal for now mostly to tech enthusiasts and others at the forefront of technology.For everyone else, Samsung offers its S series. As the 2020s kick off, the South Korean company showed off the Galaxy S20, S20 Plus and S20 Ultra at an event in San Francisco, skipping directly to the 20s from its S10 series.The S20 phones are designed to take high-quality pictures in dark settings, Samsung product manager Mark Holloway said. The phones can take both video and photos at the same time, using artificial intelligence to zero in on the best moments to capture the still images.Samsung’s renewed focus on the camera follows Apple, whose iPhone 11 phones last fall offered an additional lens for wider-angle shots and combined multiple shots with software to improve low-light images. Google’s Pixel phones also offer a similar low-light feature.Samsung’s S phones already offer the wider angle and some features for low-lighting – but Samsung says the new phones will focus on high-resolution photos and the ability to zoom in 30 to 100 times, depending on the model.The S20 phones are expected to come out in March. Samsung didn’t immediately announce prices. Last year’s main S10 model went for $900 in the U.S. at launch. For all models, Samsung plans to make versions compatible with next-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, though it’s still an early technology that consumers typically won’t need yet.As people packed into San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts for Samsung’s launch event, they passed a team taking remote temperatures in the security line, likely a precaution to check for the coronavirus. Samsung also offered hand sanitizer stations and face masks inside the event lobby.
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