China’s new rules around tech exports mean ByteDance’s sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations could need Beijing’s approval, a Chinese trade expert told state media, a requirement that would complicate the forced and politically charged divestment.ByteDance has been ordered by President Donald Trump to divest short video app TikTok — which is challenging the order — in the United States amid security concerns over the personal data it handles.Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp are among the suitors for the assets, which also includes TikTok’s Canada, New Zealand and Australia operations.However, China late on Friday revised a list of technologies that are banned or restricted for export for the first time in 12 years and Cui Fan, a professor of international trade at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said the changes would apply to TikTok.”If ByteDance plans to export related technologies, it should go through the licensing procedures,” Cui said in an interview with Xinhua published on Saturday.China’s Ministry of Commerce added 23 items –- including technologies such as personal information push services based on data analysis and artificial intelligence interactive interface technology — to the restricted list.It can take up to 30 days to obtain preliminary approval to export the technology.TikTok’s secret weapon is believed to be its recommendation engine that keeps users glued to their screens. This engine, or algorithm, powers TikTok’s “For You” page, which recommends the next video to watch based on an analysis of your behavior.Cui noted that ByteDance’s development overseas had relied on its domestic technology that provided the core algorithm and said the company may need to transfer software codes or usage rights to the new owner of TikTok from China to overseas.”Therefore, it is recommended that ByteDance seriously studies the adjusted catalog and carefully considers whether it is necessary to suspend” negotiations on a sale, he added.ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.China’s foreign ministry has said that it opposes the executive orders Trump has placed on TikTok and that Beijing will defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses.
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Facebook made a mistake in not removing a militia group’s page earlier this week that called for armed civilians to enter Kenosha, Wisconsin, amid violent protests after police shot Jacob Blake, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.The page for the “Kenosha Guard” violated Facebook’s policies and had been flagged by “a bunch of people,” Zuckerberg said in a video posted Friday on Facebook. The social media giant has in recent weeks adopted new guidelines removing or restricting posts from groups that pose a threat to public safety.Facebook took down the page Wednesday, after an armed civilian allegedly killed two people and wounded a third Tuesday night amid protests in Kenosha that followed the shooting of Blake, who is Black.”It was largely an operational mistake,” Zuckerberg said. “The contractors, the reviewers, who the initial complaints were funneled to, didn’t, basically didn’t pick this up.”Zuckerberg did not apologize for the error and said that so far, Facebook hasn’t found any evidence that Rittenhouse was aware of the Kenosha Guard page or the invitation it posted for armed militia members to go to Kenosha.Facebook is now taking down posts that praise the shooting or shooter, Zuckerberg said. Yet a report Thursday by The Guardian newspaper found examples of support and even fundraising messages still being shared on Facebook and its photo-sharing service, Instagram.Zuckerberg also contrasted the treatment of Blake, who was shot in the back by Kenosha police, and the white 17-year-old now charged in Tuesday’s slayings, Kyle Rittenhouse, who carried an AR-15-style rifle near police without being challenged. Zuckerberg also acknowledged the civil rights demonstration Friday in Washington, D.C.”There’s just a sense that things really aren’t improving at the pace that they should be, and I think that’s really painful, really discouraging,” Zuckerberg said.Zuckerberg also said the company is working on improving its execution, though he did not provide details. He acknowledged that the approaching presidential election would present greater challenges around polarizing content.”There is a real risk and a continued increased risk through the election during this very sensitive and polarized and highly charged time,” he said.
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Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s neuroscience startup Neuralink on Friday unveiled a pig named Gertrude that has had a coin-sized computer chip in her brain for two months, showing off an early step toward the goal of curing human diseases with the same type of implant.Co-founded by Tesla Inc and SpaceX CEO Musk in 2016, San Francisco Bay Area-based Neuralink aims to implant wireless brain-computer interfaces that include thousands of electrodes in the most complex human organ to help cure neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s, dementia and spinal cord injuries and ultimately fuse humankind with artificial intelligence.”An implantable device can actually solve these problems,” Musk said on a webcast Friday, mentioning ailments such as memory loss, hearing loss, depression and insomnia.Musk did not provide a timeline for those treatments, appearing to retreat from earlier statements that human trials would begin by the end of this year. Neuralink’s first clinical trials with a small number of human patients would be aimed at treating paralysis or paraplegia, the company’s head surgeon, Dr. Matthew MacDougall, said.Neuroscientists unaffiliated with the company said the presentation indicated that Neuralink had made great strides but cautioned that longer studies were needed.Musk presented what he described as the “three little pigs demo.” Gertrude, the pig with a Neuralink implant in the part of the brain that controls the snout, required some coaxing by Musk to appear on camera, but eventually began eating off of a stool and sniffing straw, triggering spikes on a graph tracking the animal’s neural activity.Musk said the company had three pigs with two implants each, and also revealed a pig that previously had an implant. They were “healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig,” Musk said. He said the company predicted a pig’s limb movement during a treadmill run at “high accuracy” using implant data.Musk described Neuralink’s chip, which is roughly 23 millimeters in diameter, as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.””I could have a Neuralink right now and you wouldn’t know,” Musk said. “Maybe I do.”One comment from a webcast viewer described the animals as “Cypork.”Graeme Moffat, a University of Toronto neuroscience research fellow, said Neuralink’s advancements were “order of magnitude leaps” beyond current science thanks to the novel chip’s size, portability, power management and wireless capabilities.Stanford University neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky said the company had made substantial and impressive progress since an initial demonstration of an earlier chip in July 2019.”Going from that to the fully implanted system in several pigs they showed is impressive and, I think, really highlights the strengths of having a large multidisciplinary team focused on this problem,” Stavisky said.Some researchers said longer studies would be required to determine the longevity of the device.Neuralink’s chip could also improve the understanding of neurological diseases by reading brain waves, one of the company’s scientists said during the presentation.Recruiting, not fundraisingMusk said the focus of Friday’s event was recruiting, not fundraising. Musk has a history of bringing together diverse experts to drastically accelerate the development of innovations previously limited to academic labs, including rocket, hyperloop and electrical vehicle technologies through companies such as Tesla and SpaceX.Neuralink has received $158 million in funding, $100 million of which came from Musk, and employs about 100 people.Musk, who frequently warns about the risks of artificial intelligence, said the implant’s most important achievement beyond medical applications would be “some kind of AI symbiosis where you have an AI extension of yourself.”Small devices that electronically stimulate nerves and brain areas to treat hearing loss and Parkinson’s disease have been implanted in humans for decades. Brain implant trials have also been conducted with a small number of people who have lost control of bodily functions due to spiral cord injuries or neurological conditions like strokes.Startups such as Kernel, Paradromics and NeuroPace also are trying to exploit advancements in material, wireless and signaling technology to create devices similar to Neuralink. In addition, medical device giant Medtronic PLC produces brain implants to treat Parkinson’s disease, essential tremors and epilepsy.  
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The head of TikTok resigned Wednesday as tensions mount between the Chinese-owned video platform and the White House, which contends TikTok is a security risk in the U.S.
 
Chief Executive Officer Kevin Mayer announced his resignation days after the company filed a lawsuit challenging a U.S. government crackdown on the company over claims the social media app can be a tool to spy on U.S. citizens.
 
Mayer, a former Disney executive who joined the company in May, said in letter to employees his decision to quit came after the “political environment has sharply changed” in recent weeks.
 
“I understand that the role that I signed up for, including running TikTok globally, will look very different as a result of the U.S. administration’s action to push for a sell-off of the U.S. business.”
 
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 banning TikTok unless its parent company, ByteDance, sells its U.S. operations to an American company within 90 days.FILE – The logo of the TikTok application is seen on a screen in this picture illustration taken Feb. 21, 2019. Computer software firm Microsoft, headquartered in the northwestern U.S. city of Redmond, Washington, has confirmed it is negotiating to purchase TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Bloomberg News has reported that technology business Oracle Corp., based in the western U.S. city of Redwood City, California, is also entertaining a bid for the company.
 
TikTok argues in its lawsuit that Trump’s executive order was an abuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act because it is not “an unusual and extraordinary threat.”
 
The company provides a platform on which short videos are shared. Since its launch in 2017, TikTok has become very popular, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide, many of them teens.
 
U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may pose a security threat, fearing that the company might share its user data with China’s government. However, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has said it does not share user data with the Chinese government and maintains that it only stores U.S. user data in the U.S. and Singapore.
 
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Tax officials in Africa estimate that government revenues will drop between 10 and 30 percent in 2020 as a result of the economic fallout stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. But while businesses in the hospitality, construction and retail sectors have suffered, digital companies have boomed as more people stay home and conduct their activities online.This is driving talks in Africa about how to make sure big multinationals such as Google and Facebook, which do not always have a physical presence in the countries where they make a profit, can be taxed.Logan Wort, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum, was among government officials, members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and African Union who gathered virtually Wednesday to address the issue.FILE – A worker sorts online orders before they are delivered to customers from a Checkers store, amid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, in Johannesburg, South Africa, July 14, 2020.Wort said that due to the coronavirus pandemic, businesses in the sectors of e-commerce, online transactions and other digital services have experienced a boom. The e-commerce sector alone is projected to increase its revenues by 41 percent, according to the African Tax Administration Forum.  “Question: Are we collecting better on these transactions? Are we aware of these transactions? Are the businesses doing these transactions, do they have a physical presence in our countries and, if not, do our regulations provide for them to be taxed?” Wort asked.Talks about how to roll out harmonized laws to allocate tax rights in cross-border transactions are currently under way among members of the OECD. This is because governments across the world are concerned there is a misalignment between the location where profits are reported and the location where economic activities occur.Victor Harison, the commissioner of economic affairs for the African Union, said the tax-to-GDP ratio in 26 African countries reporting to the AU is just 17.2 percent, compared to 32.2 percent in developed countries that belong to the OECD.He called on more African countries to participate in talks on a global level about how to tax multinational companies so the profits from their wealth can be shared more equitably. “So far, only 25 African countries are part of this initiative, which is a cause of concern for the African Union,” Harison said. “Corporate income tax is a substantial source of taxation in Africa, amounting to more than 25 percent of total revenues in most countries.”  FILE – A schoolgirl receives online lessons in the district of Port Bouet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, April 21, 2020.David Masondo, deputy minister of finance of South Africa, said Africa needs a central body within the African Union to speak with one voice on tax policies. “These unified policies should include or focus on improving the allocation of tax rights in cross-border transactions, including the digital transactions of multinational enterprises,” Masondo said.The U.S. has pushed for its companies to be able to opt in and out of the global rules on taxing multinational companies, as long as they adhere to certain basic principles.Annet Oguttu, a member of the high-level panel on financial accountability and transparency, said while Europe was at loggerheads with the U.S. over the matter, African countries also have a role to play in the discussion. “The focus of the discussion seems to be about the U.S. protecting its multinationals and the European countries trying to get the best out of it,” she said. “The question then is, where do we stand as developing countries in Africa? Perhaps coming together under the platform of ATAF could bring together a more united front that could be able to address these issues.” Talks at a global level are due to reconvene in October, now that proposals about how to tax digital multinationals have been shared among governments. 
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U.S. forces are taking an aggressive approach in cyberspace ahead of November’s presidential election, aiming to wipe out threats from foreign countries and other actors before they have a chance to disrupt voting or other critical, election-related systems. “Cyber Command needs to do more than prepare for a crisis in the future; it must compete with adversaries today,” Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of U.S. Central Command, and senior adviser Michael Sulmeyer said in a piece published Tuesday in FILE – National Security Agency Director Gen. Paul Nakasone testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 29, 2019.“U.S. forces must compete with adversaries on a recurring basis, making it far more difficult for them to advance their goals over time,” the officials wrote, outlining the strategy for the public with the presidential election now less than three months away. “Additionally, cyber effects operations allow Cyber Command to disrupt and degrade the capabilities our adversaries use to conduct attacks.” Nakasone and Sulmeyer say the more proactive approach to protecting the upcoming U.S. election began, in part, in October 2019, after a team from Cyber Command traveled to Podgorica, Montenegro, to investigate attempts, possibly by Russia, to infiltrate that country’s networks. In the process, the Cyber Command team “saw an opportunity to improve American cyber defenses ahead of the 2020 election,” they said in the article. Nakasone and Sulmeyer also say they are building on efforts from 2018, when Cyber Command joined with the National Security Agency to form the Russia Small Group (RSG) to help protect the congressional mid-term elections, shoring up vulnerabilities within the U.S. election infrastructure, sounding alarms about Russian disinformation campaigns, and hunting for malware. “Thanks to these and other efforts, the United States disrupted a concerted effort to undermine the midterm elections,” they wrote. “Together with its partners, Cyber Command is doing all of this and more for the 2020 elections.” Managing riskCritics point out that the more aggressive approach to cyber defense carries risks. Namely, they worry that whether due to a miscalculation or an accident, a confrontation in cyberspace could escalate and lead to all-out war. But U.S. Cyber Command officials argue the risk is manageable and that the “hunt forward” strategy allows them to impose necessary costs on adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. “Inaction poses its own risks: that Chinese espionage, Russian intimidation, Iranian coercion, North Korean burglary, and terrorist propaganda will continue unabated,” Nakasone and Sulmeyer wrote in the magazine. “So, the question is how, not whether, to act.” Determining whether Cyber Command’s “hunt forward” approach is paying off may be difficult. U.S. officials charged with protecting key voting-related systems said at least so far, there are no signs of any country-directed attacks on the United States. FILE – Senior Cybersecurity Adviser at the Department of Homeland Security Matthew Masterson testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 22, 2019.“We are not and have not seen specific targeting of those election systems that has been attributable to nation-state actors at this time,” Matthew Masterson, senior cybersecurity adviser for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told the Atlantic Council on Tuesday. “(We) aren’t seeing a broad campaign in that way,” he said, adding, “We’re cognizant that’s in the playbook.” Evidence of meddlingEarlier this month, U.S. counterintelligence officials warned they have evidence that Russia, China and Iran are trying to meddle with the November election. “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President (Joe) Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment,’” National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said in a statement.  “Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President (Donald) Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” he added. China and Iran, according to Evanina, appear to prefer a Biden presidency.  Official: US Adversaries Taking Sides, Wielding Influence Ahead of Election  US counterintelligence officials, splitting with President Trump, warn Russian-linked actors are pulling for his reelection as China and Iran aim to put Democrat Joe Biden in the White HouseBut for now, descriptions by counterintelligence officials portray such efforts by Russia, as well as by China and Iran, more as disinformation campaigns as opposed to attacks on computer systems and networks that could play a key role in collecting and tabulating votes. Most of the activity on that front, for the time being, appears to be coming from criminal actors with no definitive ties to Russia, China or other U.S. adversaries. “We do see regular scanning, regular probing of election infrastructure as a whole, what you’d expect to see as you run IT systems,” said CISA’s Masterson, citing the use of ransomware as a top concern.  “What we see is an ability to shut down county (local government) networks as a whole, which obviously has an impact on the election office to operate,” he said. Still, U.S. election security officials are optimistic that measures put in place since 2016 will be enough to ward off any attacks. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The 2020 election will be the most secure election in modern history,” CISA Director Chris Krebs told reporters last month. US Officials Promising ‘Most Secure Election in Modern History’The officials say while the November presidential election will not be risk free, defense and back-up systems should guarantee a free and fair result 
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While most parents are stressed about kids and remote online learning, some experts say expect more of that in the future, and that that may be a good thing. Deana Mitchell reports.
Camera, Producer: Deana Mitchell
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Videoconferencing platform Zoom experienced worldwide outages Monday morning, coinciding with the first day of remote classes for many schools and universities. On its status page, Zoom reported partial outages for its website, meetings and webinars. By Monday afternoon, all systems were reported as operational. Downdetector recorded a spike in issue reports, mostly from North America and western Europe, which peaked at nearly 17,000 complaints at 9 a.m. EST. Lighter areas on Downdetector’s map Monday morning also showed complaints in China, India, Mexico and other countries, although most had faded by the afternoon. The company’s Twitter mentions were flooded with concerned and panicked users, including professors and students. “Please fix the system — we depend on your availability,” wrote Janine M. Ziermann, an assistant professor at Howard University’s College of Medicine in Washington. “Half of my student’s [sic] don’t get emails due to server failure … Zoom seems down … my lecture starts in 43 minutes,” she wrote, alongside an animated image from TV show The Big Bang Theory of a character hyperventilating into a paper bag. Half of my student’s don’t get emails due to server failure … Zoom seems down …
my lecture starts in 43 minutes pic.twitter.com/OY2sPRyx5g
— Janine M. Ziermann, PhD (@JMZiermann) August 24, 2020“My laptop is buzzing, phone melting down,” wrote Florida State University professor Mark Zeigler. “I would cry, but I decided to laugh and have a cup of tea.” So ZOOM is out campus wide. My laptop is buzzing, phone melting down….I would cry, but I decided to laugh and have a cup of tea.
— Mark Zeigler (@fsuzeigler) August 24, 2020Students were quick to make jokes on the widespread outages. “And like clockwork both Zoom and Canvas crash the first morning back to school,” wrote Lauren Gruber, a graduate student at Indiana University, alongside an image of a flaming Elmo figure. The meme is used to denote chaotic situations. “You really, really can’t make this stuff up.” And like clockwork both Zoom and Canvas crash the first morning back to school. You really, really can’t make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/u3SCCjIliZ
— Lauren Gruber (@GrubersOrch) August 24, 2020Canvas is a program that supports online learning by allowing users to submit homework assignments and view their grades. Zoom announced it was investigating the problems at 8:51 a.m. EST and said by 11:30 a.m. it had rolled out a fix for most users. “Everything should be working properly now!” the company tweeted, offering its “sincere apologies” to customers. Everything should be working properly now! We are continuing to monitor the situation. Thank you all for your patience and our sincere apologies for disrupting your day.
— Zoom (@zoom_us) August 24, 2020Users in California, Mexico and elsewhere replied saying they were still experiencing issues. Others, seemingly students, jokingly asked Zoom to shut down again. Billionaire businessman Eric Yuan started Zoom in 2011, originally under the name Saasbee. By the end of its first month, the California-based company had more than 400,000 users, and by 2017 was valued at $1 billion. The company remained little known outside its base of mostly business users, but when the coronavirus pandemic began in early 2020, Zoom saw its usage rates surge. Schools, universities and other organizations took their operations to Zoom, kicking off heightened scrutiny of the software’s security and privacy features, and connections to China. In June, the company acknowledged closing three accounts belonging to U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held a Zoom event to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, Axios reported. Zoom has also been plagued by reports of unwanted guests intruding on video meetings, an event so common it has its own name: Zoom-bombing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a press release in March warning the public of the practice after two schools said their online classes were hacked. The widespread crashes Monday morning underscored the problems of online learning, even as schools kick off another year.Students Give Online Learning Low MarksMany call on universities to end the semester early  
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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was a tough act to follow. But Tim Cook seems to be doing so well at it that his eventual successor may also have big shoes to fill.
Initially seen as a mere caretaker for the iconic franchise that Jobs built before his 2011 death, Cook has forged his own distinctive legacy. He will mark his ninth anniversary as Apple’s CEO Monday — the same day the company will split its stock for the second time during his reign, setting up the shares to begin trading on a split-adjusted basis beginning August 31.
Grooming Cook as heir apparent was “one of Steve Jobs’ greatest accomplishments that is vastly underappreciated,” said longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster, who is now managing partner of Loup Ventures.
The upcoming four-for-one stock split, a move that has no effect on share price but often spurs investor enthusiasm, is one measure of Apple’s success under Cook. The company was worth just under $400 billion when Cook the helm; it’s worth five times more than that today, and has just become the first U.S. company to boast a market value of $2 trillion. Its share performance has easily eclipsed the benchmark S&P 500, which has roughly tripled in value during the past nine years.
But it hasn’t always been easy. Among the challenges Cook has faced: a slowdown in iPhone sales as smartphones matured, a showdown with the FBI over user privacy, a U.S. trade war with China that threatened to force up iPhone prices and now a pandemic that has closed many of Apple’s retail stores and sunk the economy into a deep recession.
Cook, 59, has also struck out into novel territory. Apple now pays a quarterly dividend, a step Jobs resisted partly because he associated shareholder payments with stodgy companies that were past their prime. Cook also used his powerful perch to become an outspoken advocate for civil rights and renewable energy, and on a personal level came out as the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 2014.
Apple declined to make Cook available for an interview. But it did point to 2009 comments Cook made to financial analysts when he was running the company while Jobs battled pancreatic cancer.
Asked what the company might look like under his management, Cook said that Apple needs “to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make.” It has doubled down on that commitment, becoming a major chip producer in order to supply both iPhones and Macs. He added that Apple would resist exploring most projects “so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us.”
That laser focus has served Apple well. At the same time, though, under Cook’s stewardship, Apple has largely failed to come up with breakthrough successors to the iPhone. Its smartwatch and wireless ear buds have emerged as market leaders, but not game changers.
Cook and other executives have dropped hints that Apple wants make a big splash in the field of augmented reality, which uses phone screens or high-tech eyewear to paint digital images into the real world. Apple has yet to deliver, although neither have other companies that have hyped the technology.
Apple also remains a laggard in artificial intelligence, particularly in the increasingly important market for voice-activated digital assistants. Although Apple’s Siri is widely used on Apple devices, Amazon’s Alexa and Google”s digital assistant have made major inroads in helping people manage their lives, particularly in homes and offices.
Apple also has stumbled a few times under Cook’s leadership.
In 2017, it alienated customers by deliberately but quietly slowing the performance of older iPhones via a software update, ostensibly to spare the life of aging batteries. Many consumers, though, viewed it as a ploy to boost sales of newer and more expensive iPhones. Amid the furor, Apple offered to replace aging batteries at a steep discount; later it paid $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over the matter.
Apple has also faced government investigations into its aggressive efforts to minimize its corporate taxes and complaints that it has abused control of its app store to charge excessive fees and stifle competition to its own digital services. On the tax front, a court ruled in July that Apple did nothing wrong.
Cook has turned the app store into the cornerstone of a services division that he set out to expand four years ago. At the time, it was growing clear that sales of the iPhone — Apple’s biggest money maker — were destined to slow down as innovations grew sparse and consumers kept their old devices for longer.
To help offset that trend, Cook began to emphasize recurring revenue from app commission, warranty programs and streaming subscriptions to music, video, games and news sold for the more 1.5 billion devices already running on the company’s software.
After doubling in size in less than four years, Apple’s services division now generates $50 billion in annual revenue, more than all but 65 companies in the Fortune 500. Ives estimates Apple’s services division by itself is worth about $750 billion — about the same as Facebook currently is in its entirety.
That division could be worth even more now had Cook done something many analysts believe Apple should have done at least five years ago by dipping into a hoard of cash that at one point surpassed $260 billion to buy Netflix or a major movie studio to fuel its video streaming ambitions.
Buying Netflix seemed within the realm of possibility five years ago when the video streaming service was valued at around $40 billion. Now that Netflix is worth more than $200 billion today, that idea seems off the table, even for a company with Apple’s vast resources.
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Some U.S.-based users of WeChat are suing President Donald Trump in a bid to block an executive order that they say would effectively bar access in the U.S. to the hugely popular Chinese messaging app.The complaint, filed Friday in San Francisco, is being brought by the nonprofit U.S. WeChat Users Alliance and several people who say they rely on the app for work, worship and staying in touch with relatives in China. The plaintiffs said they are not affiliated with WeChat, nor its parent company, Tencent Holdings.In the lawsuit, they asked a federal court judge to stop Trump’s executive order from being enforced, claiming it would violate its U.S. users’ freedom of speech, free exercise of religion and other constitutional rights.“We think there’s a First Amendment interest in providing continued access to that app and its functionality to the Chinese-American community,” Michael Bien, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said Saturday.Trump on August 6 ordered sweeping but vague bans on transactions with the Chinese owners of WeChat and another popular consumer app, TikTok, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy.The twin executive orders — one for each app — are expected to take effect September 20, or 45 days from when they were issued. The orders call on Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who is also named as a defendant in the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance lawsuit, to define the banned dealings by that time.It remains unclear what the orders will mean for the apps’ millions of users in the U.S., but experts have said the orders appear intended to bar WeChat and TikTok from the app stores run by Apple and Google. That would make them more difficult to use in the U.S.“The first thing we’re going to seek is a postponement of the implementation of the penalties and sanctions – a reasonable period of time between explaining what the rules are and punishing people for not complying with them,” Bien said.TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, said Saturday saying it plans to mount a legal challenge against the executive order that President Trump issued against the popular video app.WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, is less well-known than TikTok to Americans without a connection to China.Mobile research firm Sensor Tower estimates about 19 million U.S. downloads of the app. But it is crucial infrastructure for Chinese students and residents in the U.S. to connect with friends and family in China and for anyone who does business with China.Within China, WeChat is censored and expected to adhere to content restrictions set by authorities. The Citizen Lab internet watchdog group in Toronto have said WeChat monitors files and images shared abroad to aid its censorship in China.Even so, the U.S. WeChat Users Alliance complaint argued that losing access to the app would harm millions of people in the U.S. who rely on it, noting it is the only app with an interface designed for Chinese speakers.“Since the executive order, numerous users, including plaintiffs, have scrambled to seek alternatives without success. They are now afraid that by merely communicating with their families, they may violate the law and face sanctions,” according to the complaint. 
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Video app TikTok said Saturday it will challenge in court a Trump administration crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned platform, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat.As tensions soar between the world’s two biggest economies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance — effectively setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of the app to a U.S. company.”To ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and users are treated fairly, we have no choice but to challenge the executive order through the judicial system,” TikTok said in a statement.”Even though we strongly disagree with the administration’s concerns, for nearly a year we have sought to engage in good faith to provide a constructive solution,” it said.”What we encountered instead was a lack of due process as the administration paid no attention to facts and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”ByteDance said in a separate statement that the suit would be filed on Monday, U.S. time.TikTok’s kaleidoscopic feeds of short clips feature everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics. It has been downloaded 175 million times in the U.S. and more than a billion times around the world.Trump claims TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.The company has said it has never provided any U.S. user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump’s crackdown as political.The U.S. measures come ahead of November 3 elections in which Trump, behind his rival Joe Biden in the polls, is campaigning hard on an increasingly strident anti-Beijing message.Trump and ChinaTrump has increasingly taken a confrontational stance on China, challenging it on trade, military and economic fronts.Shortly after Trump announced his moves against TikTok this month, the United States slapped sanctions on Hong Kong’s leader over the Chinese security clampdown after last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations.Microsoft and Oracle are possible suitors for TikTok’s U.S. operations.Reports have said Oracle — whose chairman Larry Ellison has raised millions in campaign funds for Trump — was weighing a bid for TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.The Trump administration has also given ByteDance a 90-day deadline to divest in TikTok before the app is banned in the United States.The measures move away from the long-promoted American ideal of a global, open internet and could invite other countries to follow suit, analysts told AFP previously.”It’s really an attempt to fragment the internet and the global information society along U.S. and Chinese lines, and shut China out of the information economy,” Milton Mueller, a Georgia Tech professor and founder of the Internet Governance Project said previously. 
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Facebook’s India chief said Friday the social media giant denounces hate and bigotry in the wake of a controversy sparked by a media report alleging it failed to remove hate-speech posted by members linked to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party over fears of damaging its business in the country.   
 
“We’ve made progress on tackling hate speech on our platform, but we need to do more,” Facebook India’s managing director Ajit Mohan said in an online post that denied any bias.  
 
Facebook executives have been ordered to appear before a parliamentary panel to answer questions on how the company regulates content in the country.  
 
The company is under scrutiny after an Aug. 14 Wall Street Journal report quoted unnamed former and current Facebook executives saying a senior public policy executive had “opposed applying hate-speech rules” to a BJP legislator and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups linked with the BJP although they had been flagged by staff.  
 
The Journal report referred specifically to T. Raja Singh, a BJP legislator in the southern Telangana state, who in Facebook posts and public appearances had said that mainly Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar should be shot, called Muslims traitors, and threatened to raze mosques.
The newspaper reported that staff members policing the platform flagged the posts in March this year as violating the company’s hate speech rules but were told punishing violations by politicians from India’s ruling party would damage the company’s business prospects in the country.  
 
India is Facebook’s biggest market by number of users – it has over 300 million users, more than in any other country.  FILE – Indian commuters pass a poster of a Facebook ad campaign, in Bangalore, India, March 22, 2018.”Over the last few days, we have been accused of bias in the way we enforce our policies. We take allegations of bias incredibly seriously, and want to make it clear that we denounce hate and bigotry in any form,” Mohan, wrote in his online post.
 
“The decisions around content escalations are not made unilaterally by just one person,” the post said. “The process comes with robust checks and balances,” it said.  
 
He said the platform will remove content posted by public figures in India when it “violates our Community Standards.”
 
Platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp have become primary campaigning tools for the BJP and other political parties – with the spread of smartphones in the country the reach of social media has expanded exponentially. In particular, the spectacular rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in India is partly credited to sophisticated digital campaigns by the party.
 
The Journal report has triggered a political storm, with the opposition Congress Party accusing the social media company of favoring the BJP and the party denying allegations of preferential treatment.
 
In the wake of the newspaper report, Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted that “BJP & RSS control Facebook & Whatsapp in India. They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate.” “RSS” refers to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist organization often called the BJP’s ideological parent.  
 
In a reference to Gandhi’s tweet, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, told a press conference that “losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP.”
 
After the Journal report turned the spotlight on how the social media giant regulates political content in India, a parliamentary panel on information technology has summoned Facebook executives on Sept. 2 to question them about prevention of misuse of social and online news media platforms. Facebook has not commented on the parliamentary summons.  
 
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President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to allow him to block critics from his personal Twitter account. The administration said in a high-court filing Thursday that Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account with more than 85 million followers is his personal property and blocking people from it is akin to elected officials who refuse to allow their opponents’ yard signs on their front lawns. “President Trump’s ability to use the features of his personal Twitter account, including the blocking function, are independent of his presidential office,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote in urging the justices to review the case. The federal appeals court in New York ruled last year that Trump uses the account to make daily pronouncements and observations that are overwhelmingly official in nature. It held that Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to silence a viewpoint. A decision about whether even to hear the case is not likely before the November election. The case grew out of a challenge brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which sued on behalf of seven individuals blocked by Trump after criticizing his policies. Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said the justices should decline to take up Trump’s appeal. “This case stands for a principle that is fundamental to our democracy and basically synonymous with the First Amendment: government officials can’t exclude people from public forums simply because they disagree with their political views,” Jaffer said in a statement. The administration argued in its appeal that the Supreme Court, not lower courts, “should decide where to draw the line between the President’s personal decisions and official conduct.” The pace of the case was slowed by the coronavirus pandemic as well as Trump’s decision to ask the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the ruling by a three-judge panel. The court refused to do so by a 7-2 vote in March. Two Trump appointees, Judges Michael H. Park and Richard J. Sullivan, were the only members of the court to side with the president. The Supreme Court extended its deadline to file an appeal from 90 days to 150 days when it shut the building to the public and abandoned in-person meetings in favor of telephone conferences because of the virus outbreak. 
 
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Apple is the first U.S. company to boast a market value of $2 trillion, just two years after it became the first to reach $1 trillion.  
Apple shares have gained nearly 60% this year as the company overcame the shutdown of factories in China that produce the iPhone and the closure of its retail sales amid the coronavirus pandemic.  
The company’s hugely loyal customer base trusts its products so much that they continued to buy iPhones and other devices online while stuck at home. Apple recently reported blowout earnings for the April-June quarter.
 
An upcoming four-for-one stock split that will make Apple’s shares more affordable to more investors also sparked a rally after it was announced three weeks ago.
Apple has been at the vanguard of a group of Big Tech companies that are increasingly taking over people’s lives — and the stock market. Just five companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google’s parent company — account for nearly 23% of the S&P 500’s entire value.
Saudi Aramco reached a market value of $2 trillion shortly after becoming a public company in December 2019. The Saudi energy producer’s shares have fallen since amid a drop in oil prices and its market value is now about $1.82 trillion.
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The U.S. Agency for Global Media announced Tuesday that it is moving forward with funding two internet firewall circumvention projects despite an ongoing legal battle over the agency’s broader internet freedom strategy. The awardees — Psiphon and ACI — write software that help people gain access to websites and information blocked by their governments.  “Our agency is determined to expand freedom of expression by continuing to explore, develop, and fund the most secure and effective internet freedom tools,” FILE – Michael Pack, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is seen at his confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Sept. 19, 2019. Pack’s nomination was confirmed June 4, 2020.The announcement comes as USAGM, which is also the parent agency of Voice of America, remains locked in a legal battle with the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a Washington-based organization that receives a grant from USAGM to fund internet freedom technologies worldwide. Founded in 2012 as a pilot program under Radio Free Asia, another media organization under USAGM, OTF was spun out into a nonprofit organization in the fall of 2019. After Pack assumed office in June, he moved to fire OTF’s board and executives and install new leadership. A federal appeals court blocked that move in July. USAGM has withheld funding to OTF, leading the organization to halt 49 of its 60 internet freedom projects.US Global Internet Freedom Group Says Work Limited by Funding Dispute Open Technology Fund says global media chief is blocking access to $20 million for programs aimed at evading censorship in China, Iran, other authoritarian countriesEarlier this month, a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers asked the Trump administration to release $20 million in congressionally approved funds for OTF. Psiphon, based in Toronto, creates software that “helps over 3 million people every week connect to content on the Internet,” according to its website. ACI, also known as Advanced Circuiting Inc., is the creator of NthLink, an “anti-censorship mobile application capable of circumventing Internet censorship and self-recovering from blocking events,” according to material on its website.  Both Psiphon and ACI have received funding through OTF over the past few years. A May OTF monthly report called the companies “veteran circumvention tool providers.” Details of the new awards were unavailable. 
 
USAGM did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. Lawyers representing Open Technology Fund board members also did not respond to questions about the awards.  In its announcement Tuesday, USAGM also said it was reviving the Office of Internet Freedom (OIF), which was created in 2016 but had ceased operations. It is through the OIF that the grants to Psiphon and ACI were made. OIF will soon launch “another round of competitive bidding to fund additional internet freedom technology,” according to the USAGM press release. Pack said that reviving the Office of Internet Freedom will help allow people worldwide to gain access to information. “Blocking access to information is a horrible thing. But fostering access to information, especially in this advanced capacity, will prove a blow for liberty,” Pack said in a statement. “That’s why we’re funding a range of internet firewall circumvention tools. Bringing back OIF will further allow our agency to make significant strides in this area.” 
 
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The Trump administration announced on Monday it will further tighten restrictions on Huawei Technologies Co, aimed at cracking down on its access to commercially available chips.
The U.S. Commerce Department actions, first reported by Reuters, will expand restrictions announced in May aimed at preventing the Chinese telecommunications giant from obtaining semiconductors without a special license – including chips made by foreign firms that have been developed or produced with U.S. software or technology.
The administration will also add 38 Huawei affiliates in 21 countries to the U.S. government’s economic blacklist, the sources said, raising the total to 152 affiliates since Huawei was first added in May 2019.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business the restrictions on Huawei-designed chips imposed in May “led them to do some evasive measures. They were going through third parties,” Ross said. “The new rule makes it clear that any use of American software or American fabrication equipment is banned and requires a license.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the rule change “will prevent Huawei from circumventing U.S. law through alternative chip production and provision of off-the-shelf chips.” He added in a statement “Huawei has continuously tried to evade” U.S. restrictions imposed in May.
Huawei did not immediately comment.
With U.S.-China relations at their worst in decades, Washington is pushing governments around to world to squeeze Huawei out, arguing it would hand over data to the Chinese government for spying. Huawei denies it spies for China.
The new actions, effective immediately, should prevent Huawei’s attempts to circumvent U.S. export controls, Commerce said.
It “makes clear that we’re covering off-the-shelf designs that Huawei may be seeking to purchase from a third-party design house,” one Commerce Department official told Reuters.
A new separate rule requires companies on the economic blacklist to obtain a license when a company like Huawei on the list acts “as a purchaser, intermediate consignee, ultimate consignee, or end user.”
The department also confirmed it will not extend a temporary general license that expired Friday for users of Huawei devices and telecommunication providers. Parties must now submit license applications for transactions previously authorized.
The Commerce Department is adopting a limited permanent authorization for Huawei entities to allow “ongoing security research critical to maintaining the integrity and reliability of existing” networks and equipment.
Existing U.S. restrictions have already had a heavy impact on Huawei and its suppliers. The May restrictions do not fully go into effect until Sept. 14.
On Aug. 8, financial magazine Caixin reported Huawei will stop making its flagship Kirin chipsets next month due to U.S. pressure on suppliers.
Huawei’s HiSilicon division has relied on software from U.S. companies such as Cadence Design Systems Inc and Synopsys Inc to design its chips and outsourced the production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) , which uses equipment from U.S. companies.
TSMC has said it will not ship wafers to Huawei after Sept. 15.
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Google is warning that Australians’ personal information could be “at risk” if the digital giant has to pay for news content. A proposed law would require firms like Google and Facebook to pay Australian news organizations for the content that appears on their websites. The law was drafted last month after months of negotiations between the Australian government and the two tech giants broke down. In an open letter posted online Monday, Melanie Silva, Google’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, said Australians’ personal data could be turned over to big media firms if the law is enacted, which would help them automatically inflate their search ranking.  Silva also said the law would make such free services such as Google Search and YouTube “dramatically worse” and could lead to Australians paying for such services. Rod Sims, the chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, dismissed Google’s claims as “misinformation.”  He said the proposed law does not require Google to turn over user’s personal information, or charge for its search services.The open letter was published as Australian regulators begin the last week of gathering public consultations and comments on the proposed law.   Australian media companies have seen their advertising revenue increasingly siphoned off by firms like Google and Facebook in recent years. 
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Beginning Thursday, U.S. Facebook users who post about voting may start seeing an addendum to their messages — labels directing readers to authoritative information about the upcoming presidential election.
It’s the social network’s latest step to to combat election-related misinformation on its platform as the Nov. 3 election nears — one in which many voters may be submitting ballots by mail for the first time. Facebook began adding similar links to posts about in-person and mail-in balloting by federal politicians, including President Donald Trump, in July.
These labels will link to a new voter information hub similar to one about COVID-19 that Facebook says has been seen by billions of users around the world. The labels will read, “Visit the Voting Information Center for election resources and official updates.”
Despite such efforts, Facebook continues to face widespread criticism around how it handles misinformation around elections and other matters. The company has generally refused to fact-check ads by politicians, for instance, and a two-year audit of its civil rights practices faulted the company for leaving U.S. elections “exposed to interference by the President and others who seek to use misinformation to sow confusion and suppress voting.”
The effectiveness of such labels will depend on how well Facebook’s artificial intelligence system identifies the posts that really need them, said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media. If every post containing the word “vote” or “voting” gets an informational link, he said, “people will start ignoring those links.”
Facebook expects the voter hub to reach at least 160 million people in the U.S., said Emily Dalton Smith, who serves as head of social impact at the company. The primary focus is registering people to vote, she said, but the information people see will evolve throughout the election season.
“This is a unique election and a unique election season,” she said. “Certainly we have never gone through an election during a global pandemic.”
Other tech companies, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, have undertaken similar efforts around the November election. Twitter said it is working on expanding its policies to address “new and unique challenges” related to this year’s elections, including misinformation around mail-in voting.
Looking ahead to November, Facebook said it is “actively speaking with election officials about the potential of misinformation around election results as an emerging threat.”
The company did not give details on the potential threats, but said that a prolonged ballot process where results are not immediately clear “has the potential to be exploited in order to sow distrust in the election outcome.”
“One way we plan to fight this is by using the Voting Information Center and the US Elections digest in Facebook News to make sure people have easy access to the latest, authoritative information and news on and after Election Night,” Naomi Gleit, vice president of product management and social impact, wrote in a blog post.
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The Pentagon and the White House have identified an additional 100 MHz in the coveted mid-band frequency spectrum to be used for the commercial 5G wireless technology network within the United States.The announcement on Monday takes frequencies previously designated for use by the Department of Defense and makes them available for spectrum sharing between the military and commercial telecommunication businesses.Senior administration officials say the spectrum, ranging from 3450 to 3550 MHz, is “ideal” for 5G because waves on that frequency can travel long distances at fast speeds, which could ensure more access to the network across the United States.Department of Defense chief information officer Dana Deasy testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee, in Washington, May 6, 2020.But that particular mid-band spectrum currently supports critical military operations ranging from air defense, missile and gunfire control, counter mortar, battlefield weapon locations and air traffic control, according to Dana Deasy, chief information officer of the Department of Defense.Deasy addressed concerns about sharing the spectrum Monday, stressing that the Pentagon was planning a spectrum relocation transition that would minimize any impact to military operations.United States White House CTO Michael Kratsios delivers a speech on the last day of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Nov. 7, 2019.“This particular part of the band between 3450 and 3550 MHz has been identified because it can be made available without sacrificing our nation’s great military and national security capabilities,” said Michael Kratsios, the Trump administration’s chief technology officer.Deasy said the latest mid-band transition would use rules similar to those agreed upon in previous government-commercial sharing plans.An auctioning of the right to share a nearby frequency band, dubbed the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, with the military is currently ongoing and could bring in as much as $10 billion.The latest moves will provide U.S. commercial businesses with a continuous spectrum spanning from 3450 MHz to 3980 MHz in which to build a new 5G network. 5G will come with faster data transfer, better responsiveness and the ability to connect a lot more devices at once.The United States and China are currently racing to deploy 5G with the hopes of dominating the technology’s standards, patents and leadership in the global supply chain. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will auction the latest 100 MHz spectrum beginning in December 2021 for use as soon as mid-2022, a process that senior administration officials say chops the typical time for mid-band availability from years to months.“This process reflects the fastest transfer of federal spectrum to commercial use in history,” Kratsios added.
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President Trump’s new executive orders banning Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat marked a significant escalation in the ongoing technology tensions between the U.S. and China, according to analysts.On Aug. 6, 2020, Trump declared that TikTok and WeChat posed a threat to national security and invoked the International Emergency Economic Power Act. He prohibited Americans from carrying out any transactions with the parent companies of TikTok and WeChat beyond 45 days — meaning U.S. companies and individuals will not be able to advertise with the platforms, offer them for download via app stores, or enter into licensing agreements with them.WeChat logoVOA spoke with government officials, think tank experts and app users for perspective on the immediate and long-term implications of the decision to ban the two major Chinese apps.Two Internets: One controlled by US, other by ChinaMembers of the City Youth Organization hold posters with the logos of Chinese apps in support of the Indian government for banning the popular video-sharing ‘TikTok’ app, in Hyderabad on June 30, 2020.Mixed reaction from app usersTikTok is one of the world’s best-loved apps, with more than 800 million monthly active users in the United States.WeChat, while not as popular in the U.S. as TikTok, is extensively used by the Chinese diaspora to connect with family and friends in China.“I think my life will be hugely impacted if WeChat is banned,” said Helen, a Chinese international student at New York University (NYU). “WeChat is the only way of communication between me and my friends in China.”Most chatting apps, such as Line, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, are banned in China. Currently WeChat is the only “super app” connecting people living in the U.S. and China and offers cross-border payment options.Kevin, who works in a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown, told VOA that it would be hard for him to connect with family back home. “I know some people who have houses here for rent and live in China, they are using WeChat to collect rent. If the app is banned, it will be a big problem for them,” he said.Chinese Americans who spoke with VOA, meanwhile, do not seem to be concerned with the ban on WeChat.“It’s not going to stop people from making other apps to chat, I don’t know what’s the point,” said Stanley, a nurse living in New York.Monica Xu,  Wenhao Ma contributed to this report. 
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An idea is percolating in Vietnam as it fights COVID-19: “send in the robots.”  The pandemic has brought artificial intelligence (AI) more of a spotlight as nations around the world look for uses, from combing data for clues to predict an outbreak, to robot waiters that reduce human contact. In Vietnam, which has reported remarkably low infection and death figures, the possible uses are still being tested. They include chatbots to dispense information, face recognition technology, predictive mapping, and software to combat rumors about the disease.  For instance, FPT Corp., the nation’s biggest telecommunications and software company, introduced a web application that uses automation to assess COVID-19 risk. How it works: Vietnamese go to the Corona Check website and enter data on where they have been recently. The app then cross references that with data on the location, timing, and quantity of cases nationwide to calculate the odds someone has come into contact with the coronavirus.  “Our AI system is continuously updating data to improve itself,” Tran Hoang Giang, the FPT Software vice president, said. “Currently it could predict the probability of coronavirus infection with 90% accuracy. But it’ll get even better as more people submit self-assessments on the web.” The process is helped in part by the fact that Vietnam, which has had 841 COVID-19 cases this year, publishes uniquely detailed, anonymized data on patients’ movements so that others can check if they went somewhere at the same time as an infected person. For instance, one record showed the times that a patient had gone to a mall, a cafe, and a market. Warning system The work on machine learning sends a good message, according to FPT chairman Truong Gia Binh.   “Not only tech enthusiasts in developed countries but also young, talented Vietnamese have the opportunity to exchange knowledge and research about AI,” he said. Vietnam has also joined in on a popular AI strategy globally to map out many data points that might predict where the next cluster of COVID-19 cases will occur. The data points can number in the dozens and may not seem directly related, such as weather, density in a shopping center, or popular Google searches. However, taken together, the right data can correlate with disease outbreaks and serve as a warning system that detects risks before humans do.  In addition to models that assess the threat of a disease, Vietnam has a COVID-19 map that is paired with news articles, which are updated through automation software to dispel misinformation. The Southeast Asian nation has taken a hard line against pandemic rumors, which could prove deadly and in other nations have encouraged unscientific home remedies. Telemedicine  Beyond machine learning, COVID-19 is also spurring more interest in another emerging technology called telemedicine. For instance, the company Doctor Anywhere now has physicians assessing Vietnamese patients for signs of the disease via video consultations, which are also conducted in Thailand and Singapore.  All of this is part of Industry 4.0, a term for the latest advancements that are supposed to help economies move to the next stage of development. Vietnam expects these advances to help it recover from the pandemic, too. “AI is considered a core technology for Industry 4.0 that has implications for post COVID-19 healing,” Chu Ngoc Anh, the Minister of Science and Technology in Vietnam, said. His government is working with Australia, which said last week it donated 650,000 Australian dollars “to find new ways to use AI as Vietnam recovers from COVID-19.” The money will fund things like a contest in which programmers submit competing ideas to put machine learning to use. “In the face of the global pandemic, it [innovation] has become more important than ever,” Robyn Mudie, the Australian Ambassador to Vietnam, said.  She added: “This AI initiative is a great example of how new technology can be adapted quickly to respond to Vietnam’s emerging needs.” 
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Twitter Inc has approached TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to express interest in acquiring the U.S. operations of the video-sharing app, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as experts raised doubts over Twitter’s ability to put together financing for a potential deal.It is far from certain that Twitter would be able to outbid Microsoft Corp and complete such a transformative deal in the 45 days that U.S. President Donald Trump has given ByteDance to agree to a sale, the sources said on Saturday.The news of Twitter and TikTok being in preliminary talks and Microsoft still being seen as the front-runner in bidding for the app’s U.S. operations was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.Twitter has a market capitalization of close to $30 billion, almost as much as the valuation of TikTok’s assets to be divested, and would need to raise additional capital to fund the deal, according to the sources.”Twitter will have a hard time putting together enough financing to acquire even the U.S. operations of TikTok. It doesn’t have enough borrowing capacity,” said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan.”If it (Twitter) tries to put together an investor group, the terms will be tough. Twitter’s own shareholders might prefer that management focus on its existing business,” he added.One of Twitter’s shareholders, private equity firm Silver Lake, is interested in helping fund a potential deal, one of the sources added.Twitter has also privately made a case that its bid would face less regulatory scrutiny than Microsoft’s, and will not face any pressure from China given that it is not active in that country, the sources said.TikTok, ByteDance and Twitter declined to comment.TikTok has come under fire from U.S. lawmakers over national security concerns surrounding data collection.Earlier this week, Trump unveiled bans on U.S. transactions with the China-based owners of messaging app WeChat and TikTok, escalating tensions between the two countries.Trump said this week he would support Microsoft’s efforts to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations if the U.S. government got a “substantial portion” of the proceeds. He nevertheless said he will ban the popular app on September 15.Microsoft said on Sunday it was aiming to conclude negotiations for a deal by mid-September.  
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TikTok reacted to President Donald Trump’s executive order barring U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with its parent company, ByteDance, by threatening to take legal action and urging its U.S. users to lobby on its behalf.  Trump ordered sweeping bans late Thursday prohibiting U.S. companies from doing business with ByteDance and Tencent, the owner of the messenger app WeChat. The executive orders targeting the Chinese companies go into effect in 45 days.  “We are shocked by the recent Executive Order, which was issued without any due process,” ByteDance said in a statement released Friday.  The company suggested that the executive order was illegal and that it might be challenged in court. “We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly — if not by the Administration, then by the U.S. courts,” the company said.  In the meantime, Tencent responded by saying it was evaluating the situation. “The company is reviewing the potential consequences of the administrative order in order to fully understand its impact,” Tencent said in a brief statement issued through Hong Kong Stock Exchange.  In addition to its hugely popular messaging feature, WeChat also links to finance and other services. It claims that the app has more than 1 billion users.  The Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns that the Chinese social media services could provide American users’ personal information to the Chinese government. Both companies have said they do not share their data with the Chinese government.  The twin executive orders Thursday added new contention to growing U.S.-Chinese conflict over technology and security. The Chinese foreign ministry accused Washington of “political suppression” and said the moves would hurt American companies and consumers.  “The United States is using national security as an excuse, frequently abuses national power and unreasonably suppresses companies of other countries,” Wang Wenbin, a ministry spokesman, said.  Wang, who did not mention TikTok or Tencent by name, said China strongly opposed the move but gave no indication of how Beijing might retaliate.  The Trump administration has previously threatened to shut TikTok down if it remains under the ownership of Beijing-based ByteDance.  According to a memo sent Monday by Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming, ByteDance is exploring all possibilities to ensure that its subsidiary can continue operating in the United States. Without naming Microsoft directly, the company said Friday, “We even stated that we could sell our U.S. business to a U.S. company.”  The statement ended by calling on its 100 million U.S. users to put pressure on the Trump administration.  “As TikTok users, creators, partners and family members, you have the right to express your opinions to all levels of lawmakers, including the White House government,” the statement said.   
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U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday ordered sweeping bans on two Chinese consumer apps.He ordered the bans prohibiting U.S. companies from doing business with ByteDance, the owner of the video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent, the owner of the messenger app WeChat. The executive orders targeting the Chinese companies go into effect in 45 days.Whether Trump has the legal authority for such actions is not immediately clear, analysts said.The move comes amid data collection and privacy concerns the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers have expressed about the apps. However, no evidence has been cited to support the claims.Both companies have said they do not share their data with the Chinese government.“I am the first to yell from the rooftops when there is a glaring privacy issue somewhere,” mobile security expert Will Strafach told The Associated Press last month. ”But we just have not found anything we could call a smoking gun in TikTok.”Analysts said they expect China to retaliate.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that the U.S. would not allow U.S. stores to sell Chinese apps because of security concerns.Millions of people around the world use the two apps.
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