U.S. senators expressed empathy with Twitter’s former security chief during a hearing on Tuesday as he outlined serious concerns about the influential social media platform.

“It doesn’t matter who has keys if you don’t have any locks on the doors. And this kind of vulnerability is not in the abstract. It’s not far-fetched to say an employee in the company could take over the accounts of all of the senators in this room,” said Peiter “Mudge” Zatko in testimony before the Senate’s Judiciary Committee.

“Given the real harm to users and national security, I determined it was necessary to take on the personal and professional risk to myself and to my family of becoming a whistleblower.”

Zatko, appearing under subpoena, added he was not making the disclosures “out of spite or to harm Twitter.”

Zatko, who made a number of revelations previously in an 84-page complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission and other U.S. government regulatory agencies, said that executive incentives compel Twitter executives to prioritize profits over security.

“There was a culture of not reporting bad results up, only reporting good results up,” Zatko told the senators.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, noted that according to Zatko, “the door to that vault is wide open and that vault contains a lot more information about you than you can imagine.”

Several senators, from both the Democratic and Republican parties, expressed concern that Twitter’s vulnerabilities could constitute a national security threat.

“This data is a gold mine of information that could be used against America’s interest. Twitter has a responsibility to ensure that the data is protected and doesn’t fall into the hands of foreign powers,” said Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican senator on the committee.

“Your testimony today has legitimized what most of us feel is a process out of control, that the regulatory environment is insufficient to the task,” said Senator Lindsey Graham a Republican. “It’s time to up our game in this country.”

Graham said he is working with Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, to create a regulatory system that would have “teeth,” similar to what has been enacted in Europe.

“I’m not reaching any conclusions, but clearly what we’re doing right now is not working,” said Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on the committee, who raised the possibility of creating a new government agency to regulate tech companies and protect consumers.

One senator, Mazie Hirono, a Democrat, appeared exasperated that Twitter has not been held to account even though it has paid a $150 million fine for violating a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission on protecting users’ data.

“Do people need to go to prison?” she asked Zatko.

“I think holding people accountable is a good start,” he replied.

Zatko, a former high-profile computer hacker who became head of cybersecurity research at a Defense Department research and development agency known as DARPA and subsequently worked at Google before joining Twitter in 2020, also testified there were suspected foreign agents working inside Twitter — from China, India and Nigeria — and that there was no way to track their access to company databases, including those containing users’ personal information.

Zatko said when he raised his concern with another Twitter executive about a particular suspected foreign agent inside the company that person replied: “Well, since we already have one, what does it matter if we have more?”

Twitter’s hiring process is independent of any foreign influence and access to data is managed through measures including background checks, access controls, and monitoring and detection systems and processes, according to a Twitter company spokesman.

“Today’s hearing only confirms that Mr. Zatko’s allegations are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies,” a Twitter company spokesperson, who declined to be publicly identified, responded to VOA and did not elaborate.

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal declined to voluntarily appear before the committee on Tuesday. Durbin and Grassley told reporters they will discuss issuing a subpoena to compel the executive to appear.

Zatko “continues to believe that through this public disclosure process, real world harm for Twitter users may be avoided and our country’s national security better protected,” said his attorney, Alexis Ronickher, in a statement following the hearing.

Following Zatko’s testimony, Twitter announced that its shareholders have approved a $44 billion takeover offer from Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. But since making the bid, the billionaire has terminated the agreement, accusing Twitter of misrepresenting the number of authentic users. Twitter has countersued, and the matter is scheduled to be heard in Delaware’s chancery court next month.

A judge in the state of Delaware ruled last week that Zatko’s claims can be included in Musk’s case against Twitter.
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Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, the Twitter whistleblower who is warning of security flaws, privacy threats and lax controls at the social platform, will take his case to Congress Tuesday. 

Senators who will hear Zatko’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee are alarmed by his Twitter allegations at a time of heightened concern over the safety of powerful tech platforms. 

It’s Zatko’s second Capitol Hill appearance, and in some ways a 21st-century echo of his first. In 1998, he testified before a Senate panel along with fellow members of a hacker collective who warned about the security dangers of the then-emerging internet age. 

Zatko, a respected cybersecurity expert, was Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year. He brought the stunning allegations to Congress and federal regulators, asserting that the influential social platform misled regulators about its cyber defenses and efforts to control millions of “spam” or fake accounts. 

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the panel, has said that if Zatko’s claims are accurate, “they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world.” 

Musk battle

Zatko’s accusations are also playing into billionaire tycoon Elon Musk’s battle with Twitter. The Tesla CEO is trying to get out of his $44 billion bid to buy the company; Twitter has sued to force him to complete the deal. The Delaware judge overseeing that case ruled last week that Musk can include new evidence related to Zatko’s allegations in the high-stakes trial set to start October 17. 

The allegation that Twitter engaged in deception in its handling of automated “spam bot” accounts is at the core of Musk’s attempt to back out of the Twitter deal. 

At the same time, many of Zatko’s claims are uncorroborated and appear to have little documentary support. In a statement, Twitter has called Zatko’s description of events “a false narrative.” 

Also Tuesday, Twitter’s shareholders are scheduled to vote on the company’s pending buyout by Musk. The vote is something of a formality given that the deal is on hold while the court case plays out. But if the measure passes as expected, it would pave the way for a Musk takeover should Twitter prevail in court. 

Zatko also filed complaints with the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among his most serious accusations is that Twitter violated the terms of a 2011 FTC settlement by falsely claiming that it had put stronger measures in place to protect the security and privacy of its users. 

The SEC is questioning Twitter about how it counts fake accounts on its platform. Twitter uses counts of its presumably real users to attract advertisers, whose payments make up about 90% of its revenue. The “spam bots” have no value to advertisers because there’s no person behind them. 

San Francisco-based Twitter has an estimated 238 million daily active users worldwide. The company says it removes 1 million spam accounts daily. 

‘Egregious deficiencies’

Zatko’s 84-page complaint alleges that he found “extreme, egregious deficiencies” on the platform, including issues with “user privacy, digital and physical security, and platform integrity/content moderation.” 

It accuses CEO Parag Agrawal and other senior executives and board members of making “false and misleading statements to users and the FTC” about these issues. Twitter denies those claims and has said that Zatko was fired in January for “ineffective leadership and poor performance.” Zatko’s attorneys say the performance claim is false. 

Twitter also hinted that Zatko’s complaint might be designed to bolster Musk’s legal fight with the company. Twitter called Zatko’s complaint “a false narrative” that is “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and lacks important context.” 

News of Zatko’s complaint surfaced August 23, almost two months before the Twitter-Musk trial is scheduled to begin. One of Zatko’s attorneys has said “he’s never met Elon Musk. Doesn’t know Elon Musk. They know people in common.” 

The company also says it has significantly tightened security since 2020. 

Among Zatko’s specific allegations: 

— The company had such poor cybersecurity that it easily could have been exposed to outside attacks or attempts to siphon off its internal data. 

—The company lacked effective leadership, with its top executives practicing “deliberate ignorance” of pressing problems. Zatko described former CEO Jack Dorsey as “extremely disengaged” during the last months of his tenure, to the point where he wouldn’t even speak during meetings on complex issues. Dorsey stepped down in November 2021. 

—That Twitter knowingly allowed the government of India to place its agents on the company payroll, where they had “direct unsupervised access” to highly sensitive data on users. It makes a parallel but less detailed accusation that Twitter took funding from unidentified Chinese entities who may have gained access enabling them to access the identities and sensitive data of Chinese users who secretly use Twitter, which is officially banned in China. 

Better known by his hacker handle “Mudge,” Zatko, 51, first gained prominence in the 1990s. He was the best-known member of the Boston-based collective L0pht, which pioneered ethical hacking, embarrassing companies including Microsoft for poor security. His work raised awareness in the computing world that forced such major companies to take security seriously. He co-founded the consultancy @Stake, which was later acquired by Symantec. 

Zatko later worked in senior positions at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Google. He joined Twitter at Dorsey’s urging in late 2020, the same year the company suffered an embarrassing security breach involving hackers who broke into the Twitter accounts of world leaders, celebrities and tech moguls, including Musk, attempting to scam their followers out of bitcoin. 
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An army of computer programmers scattered across the globe is set to attempt one of the biggest software upgrades the crypto sector has ever seen this week to reduce its environmentally unfriendly energy consumption.

Developers have spent years working on a more energy-efficient version of the ethereum blockchain, a digital ledger that underpins a multibillion-dollar ecosystem of cryptocurrencies, digital tokens (NFTs), games and apps.

Ethereum — the second most important blockchain after bitcoin — burns through more power each year than New Zealand.

Experts say the changeover, expected to take place between Tuesday and Thursday, would slash energy consumption by more than 99%.

Enthusiasts hope a greener ethereum will spur wider adoption, particularly as a way of enabling banks to automate transactions and other processes.

But so far the technology has been used largely to create speculative financial products.

The ING bank said in a recent note that the switchover might help ethereum gain acceptability among policymakers and regulators.  

“This in turn may provide a boost to traditional financial institutions’ willingness to develop ethereum-based services,” the bank said.

The switchover, dubbed “the merge,” will change the way transactions are logged.

At the moment, so-called crypto miners use energy-guzzling rigs of computers to solve puzzles that reward them with new coins — a system known as “proof of work.”

The new system will get rid of those miners and their computer stacks overnight.

Instead, “validators” will have to put up 32 ether (worth about $55,000) — ethereum’s cryptocurrency — to participate in the new “proof of stake” system where they earn rewards for their work.

But the merge process will be risky.

Blockchain company Consensys called it a “monumental technological milestone” and the biggest update to ethereum since it was launched in 2015.

Critics have questioned whether such an upgrade will pass off without incident, given the sector’s history of instability.

Ethereum went offline in May for three hours when a new NFT project sparked a surge in buyers that overwhelmed the network.

Several exchanges and crypto companies said they would halt transactions during the merge process.

The upgrade also faces a possible rebellion from crypto mining companies whose business will be severely damaged.

They can try to hijack the process or create a “fork,” basically a smaller blockchain that would continue with the old mechanism.

And even if the “merge” is successful, ethereum will still face major hurdles before it can be more widely adopted.

For example, it is expensive to use and the update will not reduce fees.

And the wider crypto sector is beset by wildly fluctuating prices, security flaws and an array of scams.

Crypto lawyer Charles Kerrigan from the firm CMS told AFP that ethereum was “decentralized and complicated” and had not yet been tested enough for governments and banks to get onboard.

“There have been questions about how easily it could deal with upgrades of the type that traditional software vendors provide to customers,” he said. “A successful merge will answer those questions.”
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Voice-operated smartphones are aiming at a vast yet widely overlooked market in sub-Saharan Africa — the tens of millions of people who face huge challenges in life because they cannot read or write.

In Ivory Coast, a so-called “Superphone” using a vocal assistant that responds to commands in a local language is being pitched to the large segment of the population — as many as 40 percent — who are illiterate.

Developed and assembled locally, the phone is designed to make everyday tasks more accessible, from understanding a document and checking a bank balance to communicating with government agencies.

“I’ve just bought this phone for my parents back home in the village, who don’t know how to read or write,” said Floride Jogbe, a young woman who was impressed by adverts on social media.

She believed the 60,000 CFA francs ($92) she forked out was money well spent.

The smartphone uses an operating system called “Kone” that is unique to the Cerco company, and covers 17 languages spoken in Ivory Coast, including Baoule, Bete, and Dioula, as well as 50 other African languages.

Cerco hopes to expand this to 1,000 languages, reaching half of the continent’s population, thanks to help from a network of 3,000 volunteers.

The goal is to address the “frustration” illiterate people feel with technology that requires them to be able to read or write or spell effectively, said Cerco president Alain Capo-Chichi, a Benin national.

“Various institutions set down the priority of making people literate before making technology available to them,” he told AFP.

“Our way skips reading and writing and goes straight to integrating people into economic and social life.”

Of the 750 million adults around the world who cannot read or write, 27 percent live south of the Sahara, according to UN figures for 2016, the latest year for which data is available.

The continent also hosts nearly 2,000 languages, some of which are spoken by tens of millions of people and are used for inter-ethnic communication, while others are dialects with a small geographical spread.

Lack of numbers or economic clout often means these languages are overlooked by developers who have already devised vocal assistants for languages in bigger markets.

Twi and Kiswahili

Other companies investing in the voice-operation field in Africa include Mobobi, which has created a Twi language voice assistant in Ghana called Abena AI, while Mozilla is working on an assistant in Kiswahili, which has an estimated 100 million speakers in East Africa.

Telecommunications expert Jean-Marie Akepo questioned whether voice operation needed the platform of a dedicated mobile phone.

Existing technology “manages to satisfy people”, he said.

“With the voice message services offered by WhatsApp, for example, a large part of the problem has already been solved.”

Instead of a new phone, he recommended “software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone”.

The Ivorian phone is being produced at the ICT and Biotechnology Village in Grand-Bassam, a free-trade zone located near the Ivorian capital.

It came about through close collaboration with the government. The company pays no taxes or customs duties and the assembly plant has benefited from a subsidy of more than two billion CFA francs.

In exchange, Cerco is to pay 3.5 percent of its income to the state and train around 1,200 young people each year.

The company says it has received 200,000 orders since launch on July 21.

Thanks to a partnership with French telecommunications giant Orange, the phone will be distributed in 200 shops across Ivory Coast.
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Companies that accept U.S. funding under a plan to build up America’s computer chip-making capacity will be barred from establishing advanced fabrication facilities in China for 10 years, the administration of President Joe Biden announced this week.

The Commerce Department rolled out its plan to distribute $50 billion provided by the CHIPS Act, which Biden signed into law last month. In an appearance at the White House on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the rules include specific language on transferring technology to China.

“Companies who receive CHIP funds can’t build leading-edge or advanced technology facilities in China for a period of 10 years,” she said. “Companies who receive the money can only expand their mature node factories in China to serve the Chinese market.”

Mature node factories refer to semiconductor fabrication facilities that only produce older technology that is already widely available.

Raimondo reminded her audience of the semiconductor supply shortage during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “We saw the impact of the chip shortage on American families when car prices drove a third of inflation because of lack of chips, factory workers were furloughed, household appliances were often unavailable, all because of a lack of semiconductors.”

“With this funding, we’re going to make sure that the United States is never again in a position where our national security interests are compromised or key industries are immobilized due to our inability to produce essential semiconductors here at home,” she said.

Low US capacity

The CHIPS Act is a response not just to the computer chip shortage that snarled global supply chains during the pandemic but also to the perceived national security threat that a lack of domestic semiconductor manufacturing presents.

According to the Commerce Department, the U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s most advanced computer chips but does not produce any of them. As for less advanced chips, the U.S. consumes 30% but manufactures only 13%.

Because advanced chips are used not only in consumer goods but in weapons systems and other technology important to national security, the federal government worries that global adversaries could choke off supply in the event of a conflict.

For example, a large percentage of the chips the U.S. imports come from Taiwan, which has come under increasingly serious threat from China, whose government claims the island nation as part of its country.

‘Unusual’ policy

James A. Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told VOA that the 10-year time limit is “an unusual” policy for the U.S., and it probably represents an effort to find middle ground between technology companies and China hawks in the federal government.

“I can’t think of any other case where we’ve put a time limit like that. … It’s not how we usually do things internationally,” he said.

The Commerce Department, Lewis said, found itself between technology companies reluctant to be completely cut off from one of the world’s largest markets on one side, and Congress and the White House on the other. Lawmakers and President Biden are both eager to prevent China from producing cutting-edge semiconductors.

Technology restrictions not new

Although a decade-long ban on the manufacture of advanced semiconductor technology in China may be stricter than expected, U.S. companies are used to facing restrictions on the export of critical technology.

“U.S. companies will follow U.S. law. They will continue to sell chips to Chinese buyers in accordance with existing law,” Doug Barry, a vice president with the U.S.-China Business Council, told VOA in an email exchange. “They have long been required to apply for export licenses to sell certain kinds of chips and have halted sales to specific China entities when U.S. law required them to do so.”

Barry said that his organization’s members “support the policies of a strong indigenous semiconductor industry and robust national security.”

He added: “The key for preserving U.S. competitiveness in important technologies is to narrow the scope of export and investment controls, and to consult regularly with the business community to avoid unintended policy consequences.”

Chinese embassy responds

In a reply to a query from VOA, the Chinese embassy in Washington emailed a response to the measure from spokesperson Liu Pengyu.

“The Chinese side opposes the relevant Act’s intervention in and restriction on economic, trade and investment cooperation of the global business community,” Liu said. “The Act which includes terms limiting relevant companies’ normal investment and trade in China and normal China-U.S/ sci-tech cooperation. It would distort the global semiconductor supply chains and disrupt international trade. China is firmly against that.”

In conclusion, Liu said, “The U.S. politicizes, instrumentalizes and weaponizes tech and trade issues, and engages in tech blockade and decoupling in an attempt to monopolize the world’s advanced technologies, perpetuate its hegemony in the sci-tech sector, and damage the closely-knit global industrial and supply chains. Such moves would hurt others without benefiting oneself.”

A bifurcated future

Lewis, of CSIS, said the 10-year ban strengthens the possibility that China will simply go its own way, investing in the capacity to produce its own technology, perhaps to standards that would not be compatible with Western technology.

Were it to do so, it might find willing customers in countries such as Russia and Iran, which find themselves on the receiving end of U.S.-backed sanctions. China might also begin to compete with the U.S. in other markets.

“If nothing changes, by 2030 we’ll see a bifurcated system,” Lewis said. “It’s a new kind of competition. There’ll be Chinese stuff made on Chinese standards that they’ll want to sell to the global market. And there will be Western stuff made on Western standards that they’ll want to sell to the global market.” 
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Apple on Wednesday avoided price hikes of its best-selling iPhones during its biggest product launch of the year, focusing on safety upgrades rather than flashy new technical specs, with the exception of a new adventure-focused watch. 

The iPhone maker leaned into safety technologies, like the ability to detect a car accident and summon a rescue from a remote mountaintop, to add allure to its devices. Apple positioned itself as the brand to allow users to pursue excitement and adventure — with a safety net. 

Such intangible features “are the things that make you not just want the products for yourself, but also for loved ones,” said Ben Bajarin, head of consumer technologies at Creative Strategies. “Ultimately, the increased emphasis on safety — safety as a service — is super interesting as a value proposition.” 

The iPhone lineup that generates half of Apple’s sales got tweaks to cameras and battery life, though only the iPhone Pro lineup got an upgrade to a completely new processor chip.  

Prices of the high-end iPhone 14s are the same as last year’s iPhone 13 models. But Apple dropped its cheapest option, the iPhone Mini, meaning its lowest-priced model now costs $100 more than last year.  

The iPhone 14 will start at $799 and the iPhone 14 Plus at $899 and be available for preorder starting Friday. The iPhone Pro will cost $999 and the iPhone Pro Max $1,099 and be available September 16.  

“They decided to essentially maintain pricing despite inflationary pressure,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Tom Forte. 

Nintendo and T-Mobile have also said they will hold off on price increases.  

Satellite SOS feature

Apple said its satellite SOS feature will work with emergency responders. It also said that users will be able to use its FindMy app to share their location via satellite when they have no other connectivity. 

The service will be free for two years with the iPhone 14. Apple did not say what would happen after that period.  

Shares in Globalstar jumped 20% on Wednesday after the satellite services firm announced it would be the satellite operator for Apple’s emergency SOS service.  

The Cupertino, California-based company also showed a trio of new Apple Watches, including a new Watch Ultra model aimed at extreme sports and diving and designed to challenge sports watch specialists such as Garmin and Polar.  

On the watch front, the $799 Ultra has a bigger battery to last through events like triathlons and better waterproofing and temperature resistance to operate in outdoor environments, as well as better GPS tracking for sports. 

All of the watches, which include a Series 8 priced the same as last year and an updated, cheaper SE model, and new iPhones will have the ability to detect when a user has been in a serious car crash and call emergency services. 

Ovulation detection

The new Series 8 watch has a temperature sensor that will retroactively detect ovulation. The company emphasized the privacy approach of its cycle tracking. Privacy and reproductive health data have become a focus for tech companies in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended a constitutional right to abortion in the United States. 

But while accessories like the Apple Watch have driven incremental sales from Apple’s existing user base, the iPhone remains the bedrock of its business with 52.4% of sales in its most recent fiscal year, and investors continue to wonder what, if anything, will be the company’s next major product category. 

Analysts expect that category to be a mixed reality headset that could come to market as soon as next year, but Apple gave no hints at those potential products on Wednesday.
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Elon Musk will be able to include new evidence from a Twitter whistleblower as he fights to get out of his $44 billion deal to buy the social media company, but Musk won’t be able to delay a high-stakes October trial over the dispute, a judge ruled Wednesday. 

Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, denied Musk’s request to delay the trial by four weeks. But she allowed the billionaire Tesla CEO to add evidence related to whistleblower allegations by former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko, who is scheduled to testify to Congress next week about the company’s poor cybersecurity practices. 

Twitter has sued Musk, asking the Delaware court to force him to go through with the deal he made in April to buy the company. Musk has countersued and a trial is set to start the week of October 17. 

Musk’s legal team has argued that the allegations made by Zatko to U.S. officials may help bolster Musk’s claims that Twitter misled him and the public about the company’s problem with fake and “spam” accounts. Zatko, a well-known cybersecurity expert known by his hacker handle ” Mudge,” said he was fired in January after raising flags about Twitter’s negligence in protecting the security and privacy of its users. 

The judge’s ruling followed an hourslong hearing Tuesday at which attorneys for Musk and Twitter argued with each other about the merits of Zatko’s claims and the pace at which both sides are producing evidence ahead of the trial. 

Twitter’s attorneys sought to downplay the relevance of Zatko’s allegations to the merger dispute, arguing that an initial 27-page complaint he sent to Twitter and a later retaliation claim made no mention of the “spam bot” issues that Musk has given as a reason to terminate the deal. Zatko “never said a word about spam or bots” until his July whistleblower complaint, said Twitter attorney William Savitt. 

Twitter has argued for weeks that Musk’s stated reasons for backing out were just a cover for buyer’s remorse after agreeing to pay 38% above Twitter’s stock price shortly before the stock market stumbled and shares of the electric-car maker Tesla, where most of Musk’s personal wealth resides, lost more than $100 billion of their value. 

McCormick, the judge, said Wednesday the newly published whistleblower complaint gave Musk’s team grounds to amend its countersuit but she declined to weigh in on the details. 

“I am reticent to say more concerning the merits of the counterclaims at this posture before they have been fully litigated,” she wrote. “The world will have to wait for the post-trial decision.” 

McCormick, however, sided with Twitter’s concerns that delaying the trial would make it harder for the company to get back to business. 

“I am convinced that even four weeks’ delay would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify,” she wrote. 

In afternoon trading, Twitter shares added 5.5% to $40.77. 

 
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Augmented reality books add new dimensions to storytelling by including animation and sound. VOA’s Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles, California.
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Africa’s largest e-commerce company, Jumia, launched the first commercial drone delivery service on the continent this week, offering delivery of products across Ghana.

After more than three months of testing in the town of Omenaku, Jumia and California-based instant-delivery service Zipline have started delivering products to homes.

The service is available nationwide in the West African country. Jumia says it has made 100 delivery flights so far.

“Today, we believe it’s a great enabler for service for far-flung areas in Africa, very quickly in good speed and also with a great amount of sustainability and safety,” said Apoorva Kumar, Jumia’s chief operations officer.

A March 2022 Forbes report shows that Africa lags in access to energy and road networks, but the continent has made significant strides in internet penetration, which is estimated at 70%. So digital entrepreneurs are using technology to solve problems that are typically reserved for more traditional forms of infrastructure.

However, economists such as Ken Gichinga say that poor addressing systems for homes are still a major obstacle to drone delivery.

“Droning, if it is marked well with geo-mapping, can open up the industry in terms of delivery, but for good delivery we need to have a proper addressing system,” Gichinga said. “We don’t have them like in the west, proper addressing systems.”

According to the United Nations conference on trade and development, Africa also is lagging in key aspects of e-trade because of connectivity issues, lack of payment systems, and various government policies.

Less than 40% of African countries have adopted data privacy legislation, economist Wohoro Ndohho told VOA. If consumers fear their personal information will be shared with the wrong party, he said, the drones-for-delivery business may not take off.

“Africa is ready for drones to the extent that, in one sense, it leads to the whole question of building infrastructure,” he said. “For example, what is done in Rwanda, another part of Africa where they have used drones in delivery of medicine, but there must be an underlying legal system that support taking advantage of drones.”

Jumia operates in 11 African countries, with more than 30 warehouses. The group hopes to expand drone delivery services across the continent in the future.
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Twitter is internally testing a widely requested edit button, a feature that will be rolled out to paid subscribers in the coming weeks, the social media company said Thursday.

For years, Twitter users have demanded the ability to edit their tweets after publishing in order to fix errors like typos. Those requests have led to jokes online that Twitter would rather introduce any other product, such as newsletters, before giving users their top-requested feature.

Soon, those demands will be met. Users will be able to edit their tweets “a few times” within 30 minutes of publication, Twitter said in a blog post.

Edited tweets will have an icon and timestamp to display when the post was last edited. Users will be able to click on the label of an edited tweet to view the edit history and previous versions of the post.

Twitter has experimented with versions of an edit button. Subscribers of Twitter Blue, the company’s paid subscription product, currently have access to a feature that holds tweets for up to one minute, allowing users to review the tweet and “undo” it before the post is published.
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VOA’s Kane Farabaugh spoke with NASA Astronaut Victor Glover ahead of Monday’s scheduled Artemis launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. While the launch was postponed, NASA’s quest to return to the moon and eventually send humans to Mars remains a priority for the U.S. space agency.
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Elon Musk and Twitter lobbed salvos at each other Tuesday in the latest round of legal filings over the billionaire Tesla CEO’s efforts to rescind his offer to buy the social media platform. 

Musk filed more paperwork to terminate his agreement to buy Twitter, this time based on information in a whistleblower complaint filed by Twitter’s former head of security. Twitter fired back by saying his attempt to back out of the deal is “invalid and wrongful.” 

In an SEC filing, Musk said his legal team notified Twitter of “additional bases” for ending the deal on top of the ones given in the original termination notice issued in July. 

In a letter to Twitter Inc., which was included in the filing, Musk’s advisers cited the whistleblower report by former executive Peiter Zatko — also known by his hacker handle “Mudge.” 

Zatko, who served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year, alleged in his complaint to U.S. officials that the company misled regulators about its poor cybersecurity defenses and its negligence in attempting to root out fake accounts that spread disinformation. 

The letter, addressed to Twitter’s Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, said Zatko’s allegations provide extra reasons to end the deal if the July termination notice “is determined to be invalid for any reason.” 

Billionaire Musk has spent months alleging that the company he agreed to acquire undercounted its fake and spam accounts, which means he doesn’t have to go through with the $44 billion deal. Musk’s decision to back out of the transaction sets the stage for a high-stakes legal battle in October. 

In a separate SEC filing, Twitter responded to what it called Musk’s latest “purported termination,” saying it’s “based solely on statements made by a third party that, as Twitter has previously stated, are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lack important context.” 

The company vowed to go through with the sale at the price agreed with Musk. 

 
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The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has fallen dramatically in recent months. Still, many investors are excited about the future of digital currencies despite the risks. VOA’s Michelle Quinn reports from San Francisco.
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Elon Musk’s legal team is demanding to hear from Twitter’s whistleblowing former security chief, who could help bolster Musk’s case for backing out of a $44 billion deal to buy the social media company. 

Former Twitter executive Peiter Zatko — also known by his hacker handle “Mudge” — received a subpoena Saturday from Musk’s team, according to Zatko’s lawyer and court records. 

The billionaire Tesla CEO has spent months alleging that the company he agreed to acquire undercounted its fake and spam accounts — and that he shouldn’t have to consummate the deal as a result. 

Zatko’s whistleblower complaint to U.S. officials alleging Twitter misled regulators about its privacy and security protections — and its ability to detect and root out fake accounts — might play into Musk’s hands in an upcoming trial scheduled for Oct. 17 in Delaware. 

Zatko served as Twitter’s head of security until he was fired early this year. 

 
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As the U.S. military continues to consider China’s military strength in the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S. Navy is turning to driverless ships to multiply its forces. VOA’s Jessica Stone takes us along for a closer look at this military innovation. Camera: Keith Lane
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NASA’s new moon rocket remained on track to blast off on a crucial test flight Monday, despite a series of lightning strikes at the launch pad.

The 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket is the most powerful ever built by NASA. It’s poised to send an empty crew capsule into lunar orbit, a half-century after NASA’s Apollo program, which landed 12 astronauts on the moon.

Astronauts could return to the moon in a few years, if this six-week test flight goes well. NASA officials caution, however, that the risks are high and the flight could be cut short.

In lieu of astronauts, three test dummies are strapped into the Orion capsule to measure vibration, acceleration and radiation, one of the biggest hazards to humans in deep space. The capsule alone has more than 1,000 sensors.

Officials said Sunday that neither the rocket nor capsule suffered any damage during Saturday’s thunderstorm; ground equipment also was unaffected. Five lightning strikes were confirmed, hitting the 600-foot (183-meter) towers surrounding the rocket at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The strikes weren’t strong enough to warrant major retesting.

“Clearly, the system worked as designed,” said Jeff Spaulding, NASA’s senior test director.

More storms were expected. Although forecasters gave 80 percent odds of acceptable weather Monday morning, conditions were expected to deteriorate during the two-hour launch window.

On the technical side, Spaulding said the team did its best over the past several months to eliminate any lingering fuel leaks. A pair of countdown tests earlier this year prompted repairs to leaking valves and other faulty equipment; engineers won’t know if all the fixes are good until just a few hours before the planned liftoff.

After so many years of delays and setbacks, the launch team was thrilled to finally be so close to the inaugural flight of the Artemis moon-exploration program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology.

“We’re within 24 hours of launch right now, which is pretty amazing for where we’ve been on this journey,” Spaulding told reporters.

The follow-on Artemis flight, as early as 2024, would see four astronauts flying around the moon. A landing could follow in 2025. NASA is targeting the moon’s unexplored south pole, where permanently shadowed craters are believed to hold ice that could be used by future crews.
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of protections for abortion rights has intensified scrutiny of the personal data that technology firms collect. Apple, Facebook and Google typically comply with legal requests for user data. For women who live in states where most abortions are now illegal, their smartphones and devices could be used against them. Tina Trinh reports.
Videographer: Saqib Ul Islam, Greg Flakus Video editor: Tina Trinh
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California set itself on a path Thursday to end the era of gas-powered cars, with air regulators adopting the world’s most stringent rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles.

The move by the California Air Resources Board to have all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs be electric or hydrogen by 2035 is likely to reshape the U.S. auto market, which gets 10% of its sales from the nation’s most populous state.

But such a radical transformation in what people drive will also require at least 15 times more vehicle chargers statewide, a more robust energy grid and vehicles that people of all income levels can afford.

“It’s going to be very hard getting to 100%,” said Daniel Sperling, a board member and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California-Davis. “You can’t just wave your wand, you can’t just adopt a regulation — people actually have to buy them and use them.”

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom told state regulators two years ago to adopt a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035, one piece of California’s aggressive suite of policies designed to reduce pollution and fight climate change. If the policy works as designed, California would cut emissions from vehicles in half by 2040.

More to come

Other states are expected to follow, further accelerating the production of zero-emissions vehicles.

Washington state and Massachusetts already have said they will follow California’s lead and many more are likely to — New York and Pennsylvania are among 17 states that have adopted some or all of California’s tailpipe emission standards that are stricter than federal rules. The European Parliament in June backed a plan to effectively prohibit the sale of gas and diesel cars in the 27-nation European Union by 2035, and Canada has mandated the sale of zero-emission cars by the same year.

California’s policy doesn’t ban cars that run on gas — after 2035 people can keep their existing cars or buy used ones, and 20% of sales can be plug-in hybrids that run on batteries and gas. Though hydrogen is a fuel option under the new regulations, cars that run on fuel cells have made up less than 1% of car sales in recent years.

The switch from gas will drastically reduce emissions and air pollutants. Transportation is the single largest source of emissions in the state, accounting for about 40% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The air board is working on different regulations for motorcycles and larger trucks.

California envisions powering most of the economy with electricity, not fossil fuels, by 2045. A plan released by the air board earlier this year predicts electricity demand will shoot up by 68%. Today, the state has about 80,000 public chargers. The California Energy Commission predicted that needs to jump to 1.2 million by 2030.

The commission says car charging will account for about 4% of energy by 2030 when use is highest, typically during hot summer evenings. That’s when California sometimes struggles to provide enough energy because the amount of solar power diminishes as the sun goes down. In August 2020, hundreds of thousands of people briefly lost power because of high demand that outstripped supply.

That hasn’t happened since, and to ensure it doesn’t going forward, Newsom, a Democrat, is pushing to keep open the state’s last-remaining nuclear plant beyond its planned closure in 2025. Also, the state may turn to diesel generators or natural gas plants as a backup when the electrical grid is strained.

More than 1 million people drive electric cars in California today. Their charging habits vary, but most people charge their cars in the evening or overnight, said Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who has studied car charging habits and energy grid needs.

If people’s charging habits stay the same, once 30% to 40% of cars are electric, the state would need to add more energy capacity overnight to meet demand, he said. The regulations adopted Thursday require 35% of vehicle sales to be electric by 2026, up from 16% now.

But if more people charged their cars during the day, that problem would be avoided, he said. Changing to daytime charging is “the biggest bang for the buck you’re going to get,” he said.

Both the state and federal government are spending billions to build more chargers along public roadways, at apartment complexes and elsewhere to give people more charging options.

The oil industry believes California is going too far. It’s the seventh-largest oil-producing state and shouldn’t wrap its entire transportation strategy around a vehicle market powered by electricity, said Tanya DeRivi, vice president for climate policy with the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry group.

“Californians should be able to choose a vehicle technology, including electric vehicles, that best fits their needs based on availability, affordability and personal necessity,” she said.

Some difficulties seen

Many car companies, like Kia, Ford and General Motors, are already on the path to making more electric cars available for sale, but some have warned that factors outside their control like supply chain and materials issues make Californians’ goals challenging.

“Automakers could have significant difficulties meeting this target, given elements outside of the control of the industry,” Kia Corp.’s Laurie Holmes told the air board before its vote.

As the requirements ramp up over time, automakers could be fined up to $20,000 per vehicle sold that falls short of the goal, though they’ll have time to comply if they miss the target in a given year.

The new rules approved by the air board say that the vehicles need to be able to travel 150 miles (241 kilometers) on one charge. Federal and state rebates are also available to people who buy electric cars, and the new rules have incentives for car companies to sell electric cars at a discount to low-income buyers.

But some representatives of business groups and rural areas said they fear electric cars will be too expensive or inconvenient.

“These regulations are a big step backwards for working families and small businesses,” said Gema Gonzalez Macias of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.

Air board members said they are committed to keeping a close eye on equity provisions in the rules to make sure all California residents have access.

“We will not set Californians up to fail, we will not set up the other states who want to follow this regulation to fail,” said Tania Pacheco-Warner, a member of the board and co-director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at California State University-Fresno.
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This summer, for the first time, Facebook and Twitter removed a network of fake user accounts promoting pro-Western policy positions to foreign audiences and critical of Russia, China and Iran, according to a new report.

The accounts, which violated the companies’ terms of service, “used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia” and were likely a series of covert campaigns spanning five years, according to the report from Stanford University and Graphika, a social media analytics firm.

Twitter and Facebook, which shared their data about the accounts with the researchers, haven’t publicly identified what entities or organizations were behind the campaigns, the researchers said. Twitter identified the U.S. and Britain as the campaigns’ “presumptive countries of origin,” and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, identified the U.S. as the country of origin, according to the report.

In recent years, internet firms have shut down online influence operations stemming from authoritarian regimes in China, Russia and Iran. The discovery of a U.S.-based online influence operation using many of the same techniques, such as fake people and fake followers to push a narrative, raises questions about who is behind the effort, its goals and whether the operation is effective.

When asked Thursday by VOA whether the U.S. military had created the fake accounts, Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said officials would need to look at the data provided by Facebook or Twitter. He said that the U.S. military does conduct “military information support operations around the world.”

“Obviously, I’m not going to talk about ongoing operations or particular tactics, techniques and procedures, other than to say that we operate within prescribed policies,” he said.

Linking to media, other sites

The researchers noted that the fake social media accounts often posted links to sham media sites as well as “sources linked to the U.S. military,” such as websites in Central Asia that name U.S. Central Command as their sponsor.

In addition, these inauthentic accounts linked to articles from Voice of America, the federally funded international broadcaster, and its sister organization, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the report said. Sham media sites copied stories from BBC Russia, VOA and other sources.

Several suspended social media accounts were linked to sham media accounts operating in Persian, such as Dariche News, which claimed to be an independent media outlet and had some original content. But, the report added, “many of their articles were explicit reposts from U.S.-funded Persian-language media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda and VOA Farsi.”

USAGM responds

On Thursday, the United States Agency for Global Media, the agency that oversees VOA and RFE/RL, said it didn’t have knowledge of these accounts.

“USAGM maintains only its own official social media accounts and websites, using the highest standards to ensure that official accounts are fact-based, accessible and verifiable,” said Lesley Jackson, a spokesperson, in an email.

USAGM doesn’t work with other U.S. government agencies or other groups to promote news content through fake social media accounts, Jackson confirmed. 

“With its mission to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy, USAGM will always promote the free flow of credible information to those in need and stand against misinformation, disinformation and censorship,” Jackson said.

Tactics

The online influence campaigns’ tactics were similar to those of other such campaigns and included doctoring photos to create fake accounts and using hashtags and petitions to attempt to build support.

One set of accounts in Central Asia focused on Russia’s military activities in the Middle East and Africa, but shifted in February to the war in Ukraine, “presenting the conflict as a threat to people in Central Asia,” the report said.

The accounts linked to a petition, whose authorship was unclear, “calling for the Kazakh government to ban Russian TV channels,” the report said.

The researchers said that the tactics of the inauthentic accounts didn’t really work to generate engagement. Most of the posts and tweets received only a handful of likes or retweets. A majority of the accounts had fewer than 1,000 followers.

Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report. 
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Microelectronics produced in the United States and allied countries are crucial components of Russian weapons systems used in the Ukraine invasion, according to a report by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

The RUSI report, Silicon Lifeline: Western Electronics as the Heart of Russia’s War Machine, says more than 450 foreign-made components have been found in Russian weapons recovered in Ukraine. The report’s authors say Moscow acquired critical technology from companies in the United States, Europe and Asia in the years before the invasion.

Ukraine says Russia fired more than 3,650 missiles and guided rockets into its territory in first five months of the war. Most of the weapons rely highly on Western-made microelectronic technologies, according to report co-author Gary Somerville, a research fellow at RUSI’s Open-Source Intelligence and Analysis Research Group.

“It doesn’t appear that they actually have the ability to reproduce – at least to the same level of sophistication and at scale – a lot of these critical microelectronics. These are the ones that would be absolutely essential for, for example precision-guided munitions which have very sophisticated processing units,” Somerville told VOA.

That includes Russia’s Iskander 9M727 cruise missile, one of its most advanced weapons. RUSI researchers recovered some missiles in the field inside Ukraine and inspect the microelectronics inside.

They found several Western-sourced components, including digital signal processors, flash memory modules and static RAM modules made by U.S.-based companies including Texas Instruments, Advanced Micro Devices and Cypress Semiconductor, along ethernet cabling that originated from American, Dutch and German companies.

Russia’s Kh-101 cruise missiles, some of which targeted the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, were found to contain 31 foreign components.

Common chips

All the microelectronics companies cited in the report said they comply with trade sanctions and they have stopped selling components to Russia. There is no suggestion in the report that the companies broke any export control laws.

“How is Russia possibly getting hold of this stuff? When we actually looked through a lot of these components, they are quite prosaic and in many ways ubiquitous, they can be found in any sort of electronics really – microwaves, dishwashers,” Somerville said.

Such microelectronics were freely available to Russia before its invasion of Ukraine.

However, RUSI also identified at least 81 components classified as “dual-use” by the U.S. Commerce Department and subject to U.S. export controls.

They include a high-performance CMOS static RAM microchip originally made by U.S.-based Cypress Semiconductor, found inside a handheld navigational system used by Russia’s special forces to pinpoint their position and estimate coordinates for precision artillery and air strikes.

“The component is a high-speed, ultra-low-power memory chip148 that is classified as a dual-use good for export purposes,” according to the RUSI report.

Two-thirds of the foreign components found in Russian weapons systems were manufactured by U.S.-based companies. Japan was the second-biggest supplier.

Export bans

Many of the microelectronics found in the weapons were decades old and, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, many states have banned the export of such components to Russia.

Somerville pointed to Russia’s history of using elaborate methods to procure technology, Somerville said.

“It’s through the use of a number of front companies that, on the surface when you conduct a due diligence check, appear to be legitimate — but in reality are actually, or can be somewhat affiliated with, large Russian companies that are actually members of the military-industrial complex,” he said.

The report details how Russia also uses false end-user certificates and transshipment companies based in third countries, including several in Hong Kong, to obscure the final destination.

It cites Russian customs records showing that in March 2021, one company imported $600,000 worth of electronics manufactured by Texas Instruments through a Hong Kong-based distributor. Seven months later, the same company imported another $1.1 million worth of microelectronics made by Xilinx, according to RUSI.

U.S. and allied sanctions imposed on Russian weapons manufacturers and companies supplying them with components must be tightened, Somerville said.

“What the sanctions and effective enforcement of these sanctions can do is raise the costs on Russia to acquire these particular microelectronics,” he said.

The report’s authors say Russia is now scrambling to procure microelectronics in bulk, and that its military could be permanently weakened if the supply can be cut off.

Some of the information in this report was provided by Reuters.
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China’s global dominance in the solar industry is a supply chain and national security risk, according to some industry observers, and one of the reasons that the United States has been trying to boost domestic solar manufacturing capacity.

U.S. President Joe Biden Tuesday signed into law the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act, which includes tax incentives for the development of a more robust solar industry. The White House aims to triple domestic solar manufacturing by 2024.

The law responds to longstanding calls by some in the solar industry for U.S. action to boost domestic manufacturing and to level the playing field between the United States and China. Many U.S. firms complain that China can manufacture solar panels and other hardware more cheaply than they can.

China has been expanding solar panel production and innovation that has helped drive down global manufacturing costs, according to a July International Energy Agency (IEA) report.

Another industry observer, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said it saw prices drop sharply over a 10-year period starting in 2010.

However, the risks of a global dependence on China have become apparent during the pandemic. The high cost of shipping from China has led to price increases. The price of polysilicon, the material used to make solar cells, quadrupled in the last year because an oversupply caused manufacturers to slow down production, which then led to a shortage when demand for the product increased. Forty percent of the global polysilicon manufacturing comes from China’s Xinjiang region.

“This level of concentration in any global supply chain would represent a considerable vulnerability; solar PV (photovoltaics) is no exception,” stated the IEA report’s executive summary.

China dominates manufacturing

China is involved in manufacturing more than 80% of solar components, according to the IEA.

“If we don’t have the supply chain here in the U.S., we look at it as a national security concern,” said Mamun Rashid, chief executive officer of California-based Auxin Solar, one of the few U.S. manufacturers of solar panels.

“If you have a renewable energy grid and it is powered by solar and the solar equipment is being deployed and you don’t have the ability to supply it yourself at any moment, the faucet can be turned off,” explained Rashid.

Beijing dismissed the concerns and accused the U.S. of thinly veiled protectionism that will harm Chinese businesses.

“China urges the U.S. to stop hobbling Chinese enterprises, quit the erroneous practice of disrupting the supply chain and industrial chain, and create favorable conditions for China-U.S. cooperation on clean energy and climate change,” Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA.

This year, a succession of actions in Washington has directly or indirectly impacted the solar industry in China and the U.S.

In February, the U.S. extended tariffs on solar products containing crystalline silicon from China. Additionally, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, banning products including solar components from China’s Xinjiang region, went into effect in June.

China has been criticized over its treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority and others in Xinjiang province by rights organizations and Western governments. The U.S. accuses Beijing of forced labor practices among its Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region, which China has denied, saying its employment programs have helped improve the financial situation for Uyghurs.

China reacts to US action

China has taken issue with Uyghur-related legislation enacted by Washington.

“Having implemented the so-called ‘Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act’ on the pretext of ‘forced Labor’ in Xinjiang, the U.S. is illegally suppressing and unilaterally sanctioning China’s PV industry without justification,” Liu said in an emailed response to VOA.

“This is seriously against the law of the market and WTO (World Trade Organization) rules and detrimental to the international trade order and the stability of global PV industrial and supply chains and global climate response,” the Chinese embassy’s Liu told VOA, adding, “The U.S. needs to immediately stop spreading lies and stop enforcing this malicious legislation.”

Trade law investigation

Separately, while the Inflation Reduction Act provides tax credits to further develop the U.S. solar industry, Rashid is pushing for the U.S. to enforce its trade laws.

“You’re dealing with China. It’s not a free market economy. You can never out-subsidize China, so that won’t be enough,” said Rashid.

Auxin Solar’s concerns about the pricing of Chinese products prompted a U.S. Department of Commerce investigation earlier this year into whether some solar panels coming to the U.S. from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were actually Chinese products and that Beijing was attempting to dodge U.S. anti-dumping tariffs.

Many U.S. solar projects were halted, fearing the impact of retroactive tariffs. In response, Biden announced a two-year tariff freeze on solar components from the four Southeast Asian countries.

“When you have product that’s selling in the market that’s lower than (what) your bill of materials cost, something is wrong there. The U.S. worker hasn’t even had a chance to enter the race and they’ve lost the race,” Rashid said.

In a press release, U.S. Commerce officials said their findings will be applied when the two-year period ends in 2024.

In the coming years, “based on current manufacturing capacity under construction,” the IEA predicts China will account for some 95% of solar components made for the global supply chain.

Steven Gute contributed to this report.
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In the past year, there has seen a dramatic transformation in the way customers pay for their purchases in Banuri, a village in the Himachal Pradesh state of North India. Whether at a small grocery store or a street cart, instead of handing over cash, they use a simple system that involves scanning a code on a smartphone to make an online payment.

“Even if someone buys only half a kilogram of vegetables, he can pay digitally. We do the smallest of transactions,” said Nishant Sharma, a vegetable vendor in Banuri as he hands over a cauliflower to a customer that costs 75 cents. “It is much easier than handling cash.”

In recent years, a government initiative called “Digital India” has helped millions plug into new digital technologies as internet access expands to distant areas. One of them is a payments system that is transforming the way retail business is transacted in vast rural areas and small towns, where more than two thirds of India’s 1.4 billion people live.

Much like glitzy city stores, street vendors to small shops are making the switch to digital payments. But instead of credit or debit cards, they use India’s Unified Payment Interface popularly known as UPI. It is a payment system that involves no merchant fees and can be used for the smallest of transactions to make instant transfers across bank accounts. It was developed under the initiative of India’s Central Bank.

“It is the ease of the technology and overall reduction in transaction cost that has made this system popular. It takes place with the click of a button, it is cost-effective, and easy to manage,” said economist N.R. Bhanumurthy, Vice Chancellor at D.R. Ambedkar School of Economics University in Bengaluru. “It is certainly a huge transformation from what we did in the past and has changed the way we do business.”

Its expansion has also been helped by a massive push in recent years to bring more people into the banking system. More than 80% of adults now have bank accounts, compared to just one-third of adults some years ago. Affordable smartphones that cost as little as $50 are in the hands of about 750 million people. The COVID-19 pandemic, when cash transactions were discouraged, also prompted many to switch to digital payments.

“The Digital India Movement can bring about revolutionary changes in India and the lives of the common man,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an Independence Day address on Monday. According to the Indian leader, 40% of the real-time digital transactions made in the world now take place in India.

Whether in big towns, cities, or small villages, India’s retail sector is dominated by millions of small stores and shops, who for decades only did business in cash.

The speed and scale with which they are embracing the new payment system is evident in Banuri village. The owner of a chemist shop, Akhilesh Sharma, said about 70% of his customers pay online. It has eased his life.

“Whenever I open PhonePe or Google Pay app, all the transactions are done in my business account,” said Sharma. “In cash, I have to count the money at the end of the day, and it is a little long process. Then I have to go to bank and deposit the cash.”

Economists say digital payments boost business by facilitating transactions. Small town and village residents, especially younger customers, are also discovering the benefits of going cashless.

“I don’t have to worry about carrying money,” said Vikas Sharma, a resident of Palampur. “Earlier when I went to a crowded place, I worried about getting my wallet stolen. Now all I need is my phone.”

Digital transactions are just one of the benefits that the internet has brought people living in outlying areas. For older people such as a retired government employee, Romesh Dogra, the biggest benefit is connecting via video calls with his three daughters who live outside his district.

“I get energized daily when I talk to my grandchildren,” said Dogra, a retired official. “I can watch them growing up. Life has become good.”

There are still gaps to plug in — internet speeds can pose a challenge, especially in villages and small towns. And while the numbers of people with access to the internet have doubled to nearly 700 million in the last five years, millions are still not connected. But with rapid progress, it may not take long for India’s digital footprint to expand.
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In India, an initiative to bring internet access across the country has helped millions plug into new digital technologies. One of them is a payments system that is transforming the way business is being done in the vast rural areas of the country. Anjana Pasricha has a report.
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Ukraine’s top cyber official addressed a room full of security experts at a hackers convention following a two-day trip from Kyiv to a casino in Las Vegas.

During his unannounced visit, Victor Zhora, deputy head of Ukraine’s State Special Communications Service, told the so-called Black Hat convention Wednesday that the number of cyber incidents that have hit Ukraine tripled in the months following Russia’s invasion of his country in late February.

“This is perhaps the biggest challenge since World War II for the world, and it continues to be completely new in cyberspace,” Zhora told an audience at the annual conference.

Ukraine faced a number of “huge incidents” in cyberspace from the end of March to the beginning of April, Zhora said, including the discovery of the “Industroyer2” malware that could manipulate equipment in electrical utilities to control the flow of power.

Russian hackers also hit Ukraine at the onset of the war though a cyberattack that took down regional satellite internet service.

Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine had detected over 1,600 “major cyber incidents,” Zhora said.

Zhora told Reuters in an interview that Microsoft, Amazon and Google had offered pro bono cloud computing services to the Ukrainian government as it moves its data out of the country, away from the destruction wreaked by Russian bombs and missiles.

Some of Ukraine’s data archives are being held within data centers across “multiple [European] countries,” he added, without elaborating.

Zhora said his trip to Las Vegas took two days. He traveled to neighboring Poland to stay a night before flying to the United States.

Zhora said he would not waste time on the slot machines at the sprawling Mandalay Bay casino, where the Black Hat conference is being held: “It would be inappropriate for me to gamble here while Ukrainian soldiers are defending our land.” 
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