India successfully placed a lander in the moon’s southern polar region Wednesday evening, making history as it became the first country to touch down on an uncharted part of the lunar surface.  

Although the United States, Russia and China have landed around the moon’s equator, no country has so far made a soft landing on the more challenging rough terrain of the south pole.   

Scientists clapped, cheered and waved in the mission command center of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) after the unmanned lander called Vikram made its final descent. It was a huge moment for India’s space agency, whose mission to reach the south pole four years ago had ended in disappointment when the lander crashed.  

India reported success of its Chandrayaan-3 mission after Russia’s Luna-25, that was also headed to the south pole, crashed on Saturday.  

“This is the dawn of a new India,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said after watching the landing from South Africa, where he is attending the BRICS summit. Waving the Indian flag on a live broadcast, he said “This is a moment to cherish forever.”  

“India is on the moon,” ISRO’s chairman, S. Somanath said.  

By placing the lander on the moon, India achieved one of the mission’s major objectives — demonstrating the capability of making a controlled and safe landing on the lunar surface, which only three countries have done so far.   

Its other goals will be tested over the next two weeks when a six-wheeled, 26-kilogram robotic rover called Pragyan or wisdom, that the lander carried, is expected to map the lunar surface. ISRO scientists said it will be rolled out in the next few hours or on Thursday.   

If all goes according to plans, a range of instruments on the rover will probe the rocks and craters on the moon for the presence of water, minerals and study the topography of the south pole, which scientists say has a different geology from the equatorial regions of the lunar surface.  

“The successful landing gives us a lot of confidence that we will be able to carry out the experiments over the next two weeks,” Somanath told reporters.  

Chandrayaan-3, which means moon vehicle in Sanskrit and Hindi, is India’s third mission to the moon. The first one in 2008 helped confirm evidence of water, the second in 2019 failed in making a landing, but placed an orbiter around the moon that continues to send data back to earth.  

Experts say the Chandrayaan-3 mission marks a milestone in the country’s efforts to emerge on the frontlines of space exploration. In 2014, it became the first Asian nation to put a satellite into orbit around Mars. 

“India started its journey in planetary exploration about two decades ago. Now to have a lander, rover and orbiter on the moon and on Mars is an enormous achievement for the country,” said Amitabha Ghosh, a space scientist and a former member of the NASA mars missions.    

Interest in exploring the moon has gained new momentum in recent years as scientists seek to determine whether it will be possible to mine earth’s nearest neighbor for minerals and other resources that are shrinking on earth. 

An important focus of the Chandrayaan-3 mission will be to find evidence of deposits of water ice. “There are higher chances that water molecules could be found on the south pole, which is frigid.  It could be hidden in craters, in dark zones which ensures a high repository of water ice,” according to Chaitanya Giri, Associate Professor, Environmental Sciences at Flame University in Pune. “These could supply fuel, oxygen and drinking water for future missions or potential human settlements. “ 

The landing date was chosen to coordinate with sunrise at the landing site. The data and images will be transmitted to the lander and then onto earth.  

Scientists say transmitting back signals from the rover to ensure high-quality, scientific results before its solar-powered batteries get discharged would be crucial in conducting investigations from the moon’s surface.  

The lander’s touchdown on Wednesday evoked nationalistic fervor – millions, including schoolchildren tuned in to watch the livestreaming of the landing. “India Conquers the Moon,” “Chandrayaan-3 scripts history” flashed headlines on television channels after the landing.   

Ahead of the mission, many had offered prayers for its success, others took part in religious rituals to invoke blessings for the mission.  

India’s space endeavors are a source of national pride and seen as part of its ambitions to be counted among a select group of space faring countries.  

The program has come a long way since 1963, when the first rocket it launched was transported by a bullock cart to the launch site. The ISRO is now developing a spacecraft to take astronauts into orbit, probably in 2025 – it is part of the country’s efforts to showcase its technological advancement as it seeks to raise its global profile.   

The country, which runs its space program on a relatively modest budget, also prides itself on conducting space exploration at a modest cost — the price tag of India’s current mission is about $75 million.
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A Kenyan court has given Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the content moderators who are suing it for unfair dismissal 21 days to resolve their dispute out of court, a court order showed on Wednesday.

The 184 content moderators are suing Meta and two subcontractors after they say they lost their jobs with one of the firms, Sama, for organizing a union.

The plaintiffs say they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at the second firm, Luxembourg-based Majorel, after Facebook switched contractors.

“The parties shall pursue an out of court settlement of this petition through mediation,” said the order by the Employment and Labour Relations Court, which was signed by lawyers for the plaintiffs, Meta, Sama and Majorel.

Kenya’s former chief justice, Willy Mutunga, and Hellen Apiyo, the acting commissioner for labor, will serve as mediators, the order said. If the parties fail to resolve the case within 21 days, the case will proceed before the court, it said.

Meta, Sama and Majorel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A judge ruled in April that Meta could be sued by the moderators in Kenya, even though it has no official presence in the east African country.

The case could have implications for how Meta works with content moderators globally. The U.S. social media giant works with thousands of moderators around the world, who review graphic content posted on its platform.

Meta has also been sued in Kenya by a former moderator over accusations of poor working conditions at Sama, and by two Ethiopian researchers and a rights institute, which accuse it of letting violent and hateful posts from Ethiopia flourish on Facebook.

Those cases are ongoing.

Meta said in May 2022, in response to the first case, that it required partners to provide industry-leading conditions. On the Ethiopia case, it said in December that hate speech and incitement to violence were against the rules of Facebook and Instagram.
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Meta Platforms on Tuesday launched the web version of its new text-first social media platform Threads, in a bid to retain professional users and gain an edge over rival X, formerly Twitter.

Threads’ users will now be able to access the microblogging platform by logging-in to its website from their computers, the Facebook and Instagram owner said.

The widely anticipated roll out could help Threads gain broader acceptance among power users like brands, company accounts, advertisers and journalists, who can now take advantage of the platform by using it on a bigger screen.

Threads, which crossed 100 million sign-ups for the app within five days of its launch on July 5, saw a decline in its popularity as users returned to the more familiar platform X after the initial rush.

In just over a month, daily active users on Android version of Threads app dropped to 10.3 million from the peak of 49.3 million, according to a report, dated August 10, by analytics platform Similarweb.

The company will be adding more functionality to the web experience in the coming weeks, Meta said.
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Google, Facebook, TikTok and other Big Tech companies operating in Europe are facing one of the most far-reaching efforts to clean up what people encounter online.

The first phase of the European Union’s groundbreaking new digital rules will take effect this week. The Digital Services Act is part of a suite of tech-focused regulations crafted by the 27-nation bloc — long a global leader in cracking down on tech giants.

The DSA, which the biggest platforms must start following Friday, is designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal or violates a platform’s terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia. It also looks to protect Europeans’ fundamental rights like privacy and free speech.

Some online platforms, which could face billions in fines if they don’t comply, have already started making changes.

Here’s a look at what’s happening this week:

Which platforms are affected?

So far, 19. They include eight social media platforms: Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat.

There are five online marketplaces: Amazon, Booking.com, China’s Alibaba AliExpress and Germany’s Zalando.

Mobile app stores Google Play and Apple’s App Store are subject, as are Google’s Search and Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Google Maps and Wikipedia round out the list.

What about other online companies?

The EU’s list is based on numbers submitted by the platforms. Those with 45 million or more users — or 10% of the EU’s population — will face the DSA’s highest level of regulation.

Brussels insiders, however, have pointed to some notable omissions from the EU’s list, like eBay, Airbnb, Netflix and even PornHub. The list isn’t definitive, and it’s possible other platforms may be added later on.

Any business providing digital services to Europeans will eventually have to comply with the DSA. They will face fewer obligations than the biggest platforms, however, and have another six months before they must fall in line.

Citing uncertainty over the new rules, Meta Platforms has held off launching its Twitter rival, Threads, in the EU.

What’s changing?

Platforms have started rolling out new ways for European users to flag illegal online content and dodgy products, which companies will be obligated to take down quickly and objectively.

Amazon opened a new channel for reporting suspected illegal products and is providing more information about third-party merchants.

TikTok gave users an “additional reporting option” for content, including advertising, that they believe is illegal. Categories such as hate speech and harassment, suicide and self-harm, misinformation or frauds and scams, will help them pinpoint the problem.

Then, a “new dedicated team of moderators and legal specialists” will determine whether flagged content either violates its policies or is unlawful and should be taken down, according to the app from Chinese parent company ByteDance.

TikTok says the reason for a takedown will be explained to the person who posted the material and the one who flagged it, and decisions can be appealed.

TikTok users can turn off systems that recommend videos based on what a user has previously viewed. Such systems have been blamed for leading social media users to increasingly extreme posts. If personalized recommendations are turned off, TikTok’s feeds will instead suggest videos to European users based on what’s popular in their area and around the world.

The DSA prohibits targeting vulnerable categories of people, including children, with ads.

Snapchat said advertisers won’t be able to use personalization and optimization tools for teens in the EU and U.K. Snapchat users who are 18 and older also would get more transparency and control over ads they see, including “details and insight” on why they’re shown specific ads.

TikTok made similar changes, stopping users 13 to 17 from getting personalized ads “based on their activities on or off TikTok.”

Is there pushback?

Zalando, a German online fashion retailer, has filed a legal challenge over its inclusion on the DSA’s list of the largest online platforms, arguing that it’s being treated unfairly.

Nevertheless, Zalando is launching content flagging systems for its website even though there’s little risk of illegal material showing up among its highly curated collection of clothes, bags and shoes.

The company has supported the DSA, said Aurelie Caulier, Zalando’s head of public affairs for the EU.

“It will bring loads of positive changes” for consumers, she said. But “generally, Zalando doesn’t have systemic risk [that other platforms pose]. So that’s why we don’t think we fit in that category.”

Amazon has filed a similar case with a top EU court.

What happens if companies don’t follow the rules?

Officials have warned tech companies that violations could bring fines worth up to 6% of their global revenue — which could amount to billions — or even a ban from the EU. But don’t expect penalties to come right away for individual breaches, such as failing to take down a specific video promoting hate speech.

Instead, the DSA is more about whether tech companies have the right processes in place to reduce the harm that their algorithm-based recommendation systems can inflict on users. Essentially, they’ll have to let the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm and top digital enforcer, look under the hood to see how their algorithms work.

EU officials “are concerned with user behavior on the one hand, like bullying and spreading illegal content, but they’re also concerned about the way that platforms work and how they contribute to the negative effects,” said Sally Broughton Micova, an associate professor at the University of East Anglia.

That includes looking at how the platforms work with digital advertising systems, which could be used to profile users for harmful material like disinformation, or how their livestreaming systems function, which could be used to instantly spread terrorist content, said Broughton Micova, who’s also academic co-director at the Centre on Regulation in Europe, a Brussels-based think tank.

Under the rules, the biggest platforms will have to identify and assess potential systemic risks and whether they’re doing enough to reduce them. These risk assessments are due by the end of August and then they will be independently audited.

The audits are expected to be the main tool to verify compliance — though the EU’s plan has faced criticism for lacking details that leave it unclear how the process will work.

What about the rest of the world?

Europe’s changes could have global impact. Wikipedia is tweaking some policies and modifying its terms of service to provide more information on “problematic users and content.” Those alterations won’t be limited to Europe, said the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the community-powered encyclopedia.

“The rules and processes that govern Wikimedia projects worldwide, including any changes in response to the DSA, are as universal as possible. This means that changes to our Terms of Use and Office Actions Policy will be implemented globally,” it said in a statement.

It’s going to be hard for tech companies to limit DSA-related changes, said Broughton Micova, adding that digital ad networks aren’t isolated to Europe and that social media influencers can have global reach.

The regulations are “dealing with multichannel networks that operate globally. So there is going to be a ripple effect once you have kind of mitigations that get taken into place,” she said.
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Meta Platforms is set to roll out the web version on its new text-first social media platform Threads, hoping to gain an edge over X, formerly Twitter, as the initial surge in users waned.

The widely anticipated web version will make Threads more useful for power users like brands, company accounts, advertisers and journalists.

Meta did not give a date for the launch, but Instagram head Adam Mosseri said it could happen soon.

“We are close on web…,” Mosseri said in a post on Threads on Friday. The launch could happen as early as this week, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Threads, which launched as an Android and iOS app on July 5 and gained 100 million users in just five days, saw its popularity drop as users returned to the more familiar platform X after the initial rush to try Meta’s new offering. 

But in just over a month, its daily active users on Android app dropped to 10.3 million from the peak of 49.3 million, according to a report by analytics platform Similarweb dated Aug. 10. 

Meanwhile, the management is moving quickly to launch new features. Threads now offers the ability to set post notifications for accounts and view them in a type of chronological feed. 

It will soon roll out an improved search that could allow users to search for specific posts and not just accounts. 
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The Biden administration on Monday continued its push toward internet-for-all by 2030, announcing about $667 million in new grants and loans to build more broadband infrastructure in the rural U.S.

“With this investment, we’re getting funding to communities in every corner of the country because we believe that no kid should have to sit in the back of a mama’s car in a McDonald’s parking lot in order to do homework,” said Mitch Landrieu, the White House’s infrastructure coordinator, in a call with reporters.

The 37 new recipients represent the fourth round of funding under the program, dubbed ReConnect by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Another 37 projects received $771.4 million in grants and loans announced in April and June.

The money flowing through federal broadband programs, including what was announced Monday and the $42.5 billion infrastructure program detailed earlier this summer, will lead to a new variation on “the electrification of rural America,” Landrieu said, repeating a common Biden administration refrain.

The largest award went to the Ponderosa Telephone Co. in California, which received more than $42 million to deploy fiber networks in Fresno County. In total, more than 1,200 people, 12 farms and 26 other businesses will benefit from that effort alone, according to USDA.

The telephone cooperatives, counties and telecommunications companies that won the new awards are based in 22 states and the Marshall Islands.

At least half of the households in areas receiving the new funding lack access to internet speeds of 100 megabits per second download and 20 Mbps upload — what the federal government considers “underserved” in broadband terminology. The recipients’ mandate is to build networks that raise those levels to at least 100 Mbps upload and 100 Mbps download speeds for every household, business and farm in their service areas.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the investments could bring new economic opportunities to farmers, allow people without close access to medical care to see specialist doctors through telemedicine and increase academic offerings, including Advanced Placement courses in high schools.

“The fact that this administration understands and appreciates the need for continued investment in rural America to create more opportunity is something that I’m really excited about,” Vilsack said on the media call.  
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Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the moon.

“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said Sunday.

On Saturday, the agency said it had a problem with the craft and lost contact with it.

The unmanned robot lander was set to land on the moon’s south pole Monday, ahead of an Indian craft scheduled to land on the south pole later this week.

Scientists are eager to explore the south pole because they believe water may be there and that the water could be transformed by future astronauts into air and rocket fuel.

Russia’s last moon launch was in 1976, during the Soviet era.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Texas on Wednesday approved its plan to require companies to include Tesla’s technology in electric vehicle charging stations to be eligible for federal funds, despite calls for more time to re-engineer and test the connectors.

The decision by Texas, the biggest recipient of a $5 billion program meant to electrify U.S. highways, is being closely watched by other states and is a step forward for Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s plans to make its technology the U.S. charging standard.

Tesla’s efforts are facing early tests as some states start rolling out the funds. The company won a slew of projects in Pennsylvania’s first round of funding announced on Monday but none in Ohio last month.

Federal rules require companies to offer the rival Combined Charging System, or CCS, a U.S. standard preferred by the Biden administration, as a minimum to be eligible for the funds.

But individual states can add their own requirements on top of CCS before distributing the federal funds at a local level.

Ford Motor and General Motors’ announcement about two months ago that they planned to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard, or NACS, sent shockwaves through the industry and prompted a number of automakers and charging companies to embrace the technology.

In June, Reuters reported that Texas, which will receive and deploy $407.8 million over five years, planned to mandate companies to include Tesla’s plugs. Washington state has talked about similar plans, and Kentucky has mandated it.

Florida, another major recipient of funds, recently revised its plans, saying it would mandate NACS one year after standards body SAE International, which is reviewing the technology, formally recognizes it. 

Some charging companies wrote to the Texas Transportation Commission opposing the requirement in the first round of funds. They cited concerns about the supply chain and certification of Tesla’s connectors could put the successful deployment of EV chargers at risk.

That forced Texas to defer a vote on the plan twice as it sought to understand NACS and its implications, before the commission voted unanimously to approve the plan on Wednesday.

“The two-connector approach being proposed will help assure coverage of a minimum of 97% of the current, over 168,000 electric vehicles with fast charge ports in the state,” Humberto Gonzalez, a director at Texas’ department of transportation, said while presenting the state’s plan to the commissioners.
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Social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, delayed access to links to content on the Reuters and New York Times websites as well as rivals like Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Washington Post report on Tuesday.

Clicking a link on X to one of the affected websites resulted in a delay of about five seconds before the webpage loaded, The Washington Post reported, citing tests it conducted on Tuesday. Reuters also saw a similar delay in tests it ran.

By late Tuesday afternoon, X appeared to have eliminated the delay. When contacted for comment, X confirmed the delay was removed but did not elaborate.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October, has previously lashed out at news organizations and journalists who have reported critically on his companies, which include Tesla and SpaceX. Twitter has previously prevented users from posting links to competing social media platforms.

Reuters could not establish the precise time when X began delaying links to some websites.

A user on Hacker News, a tech forum, posted about the delay earlier on Tuesday and wrote that X began delaying links to the New York Times on Aug. 4. On that day, Musk criticized the publication’s coverage of South Africa and accused it of supporting calls for genocide. Reuters has no evidence that the two events are related.

A spokesperson for the New York Times said it has not received an explanation from X about the link delay.

“While we don’t know the rationale behind the application of this time delay, we would be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for unclear reasons,” the spokesperson said on Tuesday.

A Reuters spokesperson said: “We are aware of the report in the Washington Post of a delay in opening links to Reuters stories on X. We are looking into the matter.”

Bluesky, an X rival that has Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on its board, did not reply to a request for comment.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Vice President Kamala Harris marked the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act by touting the Biden administration’s commitment to mitigating the climate crisis. Natasha Mozgovaya reports from Seattle.
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Google plans to train 20,000 Nigerian women and youth in digital skills and provide a grant of $1.6 million to help the government create 1 million digital jobs in the country, its Africa executives said on Tuesday. 

Nigeria plans to create digital jobs for its teeming youth population, Vice President Kashim Shettima told Google Africa executives during a meeting in Abuja. Shettima did not provide a timeline for creating the jobs. 

Google Africa executives said a grant from its philanthropic arm in partnership with Data Science Nigeria and the Creative Industry Initiative for Africa will facilitate the program. 

Shettima said Google’s initiative aligned with the government’s commitment to increase youth participation in the digital economy. The government is also working with the country’s banks on the project, Shettima added. 

Google director for West Africa Olumide Balogun said the company would commit funds and provide digital skills to women and young people in Nigeria and also enable startups to grow, which will create jobs. 

Google is committed to investing in digital infrastructure across Africa, Charles Murito, Google Africa’s director of government relations and public policy, said during the meeting, adding that digital transformation can be a job enabler. 
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For a vast number of book writers, artificial intelligence is a threat to their livelihood and the very idea of creativity. More than 10,000 of them endorsed an open letter from the Authors Guild this summer, urging AI companies not to use copyrighted work without permission or compensation.

At the same time, AI is a story to tell, and no longer just science fiction.

As present in the imagination as politics, the pandemic, or climate change, AI has become part of the narrative for a growing number of novelists and short story writers who only need to follow the news to imagine a world upended.

“I’m frightened by artificial intelligence, but also fascinated by it. There’s a hope for divine understanding, for the accumulation of all knowledge, but at the same time there’s an inherent terror in being replaced by non-human intelligence,” said Helen Phillips, whose upcoming novel “Hum” tells of a wife and mother who loses her job to AI.

“We’ve been seeing more and more about AI in book proposals,” said Ryan Doherty, vice president and editorial director at Celadon Books, which recently signed Fred Lunzker’s novel “Sike,” featuring an AI psychiatrist.

“It’s the zeitgeist right now. And whatever is in the cultural zeitgeist seeps into fiction,” Doherty said. 

Other AI-themed novels expected in the next two years include Sean Michaels’ “Do You Remember Being Born?” — in which a poet agrees to collaborate with an AI poetry company; Bryan Van Dyke’s “In Our Likeness,” about a bureaucrat and a fact-checking program with the power to change facts; and A.E. Osworth’s “Awakened,” about a gay witch and her titanic clash with AI.

Crime writer Jeffrey Diger, known for his thrillers set in contemporary Greece, is working on a novel touching upon AI and the metaverse, the outgrowth of being “continually on the lookout for what’s percolating on the edge of societal change,” he said.

Authors are invoking AI to address the most human questions.

In Sierra Greer’s “Annie Bot,” the title name is an AI mate designed for a human male. For Greer, the novel was a way to explore her character’s “urgent desire to please,” adding that a robot girlfriend enabled her “to explore desire, respect, and longing in ways that felt very new and strange to me.”

Amy Shearn’s “Animal Instinct” has its origins in the pandemic and in her personal life; she was recently divorced and had begun using dating apps.

“It’s so weird how, with apps, you start to feel as if you’re going person-shopping,” she said. “And I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you could really pick and choose the best parts of all these people you encounter and sort of cobble them together to make your ideal person?”

“Of course,” she added, “I don’t think anyone actually knows what their ideal person is, because so much of what draws us to mates is the unexpected, the ways in which people surprise us. That said, it seemed like an interesting premise for a novel.”

Some authors aren’t just writing about AI, but openly working with it.

Earlier this year, journalist Stephen Marche used AI to write the novella “Death of An Author,” for which he drew upon everyone from Raymond Chandler to Haruki Murakami. Screenwriter and humorist Simon Rich collaborated with Brent Katz and Josh Morgenthau for “I Am Code,” a thriller in verse that came out this month and was generated by the AI program “code-davinci-002.” (Filmmaker Werner Herzog reads the audiobook edition). 

Osworth, who is trans, wanted to address comments by “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling that have offended many in the trans community, and to wrest from her the power of magic. At the same time, they worried the fictional AI in their book sounded too human, and decided AI should speak for AI.

Osworth devised a crude program, based on the writings of Machiavelli among others, that would turn out a more mechanical kind of voice.

“I like to say that CHATgpt is a Ferrari, while what I came up with is a skateboard with one square wheel. But I was much more interested in the skateboard with one square wheel,” they said.

Michaels centers his new novel on a poet named Marian, in homage to poet Marianne Moore, and an AI program called Charlotte. He said the novel is about parenthood, labor, community, and “this technology’s implications for art, language and our sense of identity.”

Believing the spirit of “Do You Remember Being Born?” called for the presence of actual AI text, he devised a program that would generate prose and poetry, and uses an alternate format in the novel so readers know when he’s using AI.

In one passage, Marian is reviewing some of her collaboration with Charlotte.

“The preceding day’s work was a collection of glass cathedrals. I reread it with alarm. Turns of phrase I had mistaken for beautiful, which I now found unintelligible,” Michaels writes. “Charlotte had simply surprised me: I would propose a line, a portion of a line, and what the system spat back upended my expectations. I had been seduced by this surprise.”

And now AI speaks: “I had mistaken a fit of algorithmic exuberance for the truth.”
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Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, including a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean.

The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness.

Cheers erupted from families and friends watching from below when the craft’s rocket motor fired after it was released from the plane that had carried it aloft. The rocket ship reached about 88 kilometers high.

Richard Branson’s company expects to begin offering monthly trips to customers on its winged space plane, joining Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the space tourism business.

Virgin Galactic passenger Jon Goodwin, who was among the first to buy a ticket in 2005, said he had faith that he would someday make the trip. The 80-year-old athlete — he competed in canoeing in the 1972 Olympics — has Parkinson’s disease and wants to be an inspiration to others.

“I hope it shows them that these obstacles can be the start rather than the end to new adventures,” he said in a statement.

Ticket prices were $200,000 when Goodwin signed up. The cost is now $450,000.

He was joined by sweepstakes winner Keisha Schahaff, 46, a health coach from Antigua, and her daughter, Anastatia Mayers, 18, a student at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen. Also on board: two pilots and the company’s astronaut trainer.

It was Virgin Galactic’s seventh trip to space since 2018, but the first with a ticket-holder. Branson, the company’s founder, hopped on board for the first full-size crew ride in 2021. Italian military and government researchers soared in June on the first commercial flight. About 800 people are currently on Virgin Galactic’s waiting list, according to the company.

Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship launches from the belly of an airplane, not from the ground, and requires two pilots in the cockpit. Once the mothership reaches a height of about 15 kilometers, the space plane is released and fires its rocket motor to make the final push to just over 80 kilometers up. Passengers can unstrap from their seats, float around the cabin for a few minutes and take in the sweeping views of Earth, before the space plane glides back home and lands on a runway.

In contrast, the capsules used by SpaceX and Blue Origin are fully automated and parachute back down.

Like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin aims for the fringes of space, quick ups-and-downs from West Texas. Blue Origin has launched 31 people so far, but flights are on hold following a rocket crash last fall. The capsule, carrying experiments but no passengers, landed intact.

SpaceX, is the only private company flying customers all the way to orbit, charging a much heftier price, too: tens of millions of dollars per seat. It’s already flown three private crews. NASA is its biggest customer, relying on SpaceX to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station. since 2020.

People have been taking on adventure travel for decades, the risks underscored by the recent implosion of the Titan submersible that killed five passengers on their way down to view the Titanic wreckage. Virgin Galactic suffered its own casualty in 2014 when its rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot. Yet space tourists are still lining up, ever since the first one rocketed into orbit in 2001 with the Russians.

Branson, who lives in the British Virgin Islands, watched Thursday’s flight from a party in Antigua. He had held a virtual lottery to establish a pecking order for the company’s first 50 customers — dubbed the Founding Astronauts. Virgin Galactic said the group agreed Goodwin would go first, given his age and his Parkinson’s.
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China will require all mobile app providers in the country to file business details with the government, its information ministry said, marking Beijing’s latest effort to keep the industry on a tight leash. 

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said late on Tuesday that apps without proper filings will be punished after the grace period that will end in March next year, a move that experts say would potentially restrict the number of apps and hit small developers hard. 

You Yunting, a lawyer with Shanghai-based DeBund Law Offices, said the order is effectively requiring approvals from the ministry. The new rule is primarily aimed at combating online fraud but it will impact all apps in China, he said. 

Rich Bishop, co-founder of app publishing firm AppInChina, said the new rule is also likely to affect foreign-based developers which have been able to publish their apps easily through Apple’s App Store without showing any documentation to the Chinese government. 

Bishop said that in order to comply with the new rules, app developers now must either have a company in China or work with a local publisher.  

Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment. 

The iPhone maker pulled over a hundred artificial intelligence (AI) apps from its App Store last week to comply with regulations after China introduced a new licensing regime for generative AI apps for the country.  

The ministry’s notice also said entities “engaged in internet information services through apps in such fields as news, publishing, education, film and television and religion should also submit relevant documents.” 

The requirement could affect the availability of popular social media apps such as X, Facebook and Instagram. Use of such apps are not allowed in China, but they can be still downloaded from app stores, enabling Chinese to use them when traveling overseas. 

China already requires mobile games to obtain licenses before they launch in the country, and it had purged tens of thousands of unlicensed games from various app stores in 2020. 

Tencent’s WeChat, China’s most popular online social platform, said on Wednesday that mini apps, apps that can be opened within WeChat, must also follow the new rules. 

The company said that new apps must complete the filing before launch starting from September, while exiting mini apps have until the end of March.  

 
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The White House on Wednesday said it had launched a multimillion-dollar cyber contest to spur use of artificial intelligence to find and fix security flaws in U.S. government infrastructure, in the face of growing use of the technology by hackers for malicious purposes.  

“Cybersecurity is a race between offense and defense,” said Anne Neuberger, the U.S. government’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology.

“We know malicious actors are already using AI to accelerate identifying vulnerabilities or build malicious software,” she added in a statement to Reuters.

Numerous U.S. organizations, from health care groups to manufacturing firms and government institutions, have been the target of hacking in recent years, and officials have warned of future threats, especially from foreign adversaries.  

Neuberger’s comments about AI echo those Canada’s cybersecurity chief Samy Khoury made last month. He said his agency had seen AI being used for everything from creating phishing emails and writing malicious computer code to spreading disinformation.

The two-year contest includes around $20 million in rewards and will be led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. government body in charge of creating technologies for national security, the White House said.

Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI — the U.S. technology firms at the forefront of the AI revolution — will make their systems available for the challenge, the government said.

The contest signals official attempts to tackle an emerging threat that experts are still trying to fully grasp. In the past year, U.S. firms have launched a range of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT that allow users to create convincing videos, images, texts, and computer code. Chinese companies have launched similar models to catch up.

Experts say such tools could make it far easier to, for instance, conduct mass hacking campaigns or create fake profiles on social media to spread false information and propaganda.  

“Our goal with the DARPA AI challenge is to catalyze a larger community of cyber defenders who use the participating AI models to race faster – using generative AI to bolster our cyber defenses,” Neuberger said.

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a U.S. group of experts trying to improve open source software security, will be in charge of ensuring the “winning software code is put to use right away,” the U.S. government said. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden is planning Wednesday to impose restrictions on U.S. investments in some high-tech industries in China.

Biden’s expected executive order could again heighten tensions between the U.S., the world’s biggest economy, and No. 2 China after a period in which leaders of the two countries have held several discussions aimed at airing their differences and seeking common ground.

The new restrictions would limit U.S. investments in such high-tech sectors in China as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and advanced semi-conductors, but apparently not in the broader Chinese economy, which recently has been struggling to advance.

In a trip to China in July, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Chinese Premier Li Qiang, “The United States will, in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security. And we may disagree in these instances.”

Trying to protect its own security interests in the Indo-Pacific region and across the globe, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in April that the U.S. has implemented “carefully tailored restrictions on the most advanced semiconductor technology exports” to China.

“Those restrictions are premised on straightforward national security concerns,” he said. “Key allies and partners have followed suit, consistent with their own security concerns.”

Sullivan said they are not, as Beijing has claimed, a ‘technology blockade.’”
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The company whose name became synonymous with remote work is joining the growing return-to-office trend.

Zoom, the video conferencing pioneer, is asking employees who live within a 50-mile radius of its offices to work onsite two days a week, a company spokesperson confirmed in an email. The statement said the company has decided that “a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom.”

The new policy, which will be rolled out in August and September, was first reported by the New York Times, which said Zoom CEO Eric Yuan fielded questions from employees unhappy with the new policy during a Zoom meeting last week.

Zoom, based in San Jose, California, saw explosive growth during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic as companies scrambled to shift to remote work, and even families and friends turned to the platform for virtual gatherings. But that growth has stagnated as the pandemic threat has ebbed.

Shares of Zoom Video Communications Inc. have tumbled hard since peaking early in the pandemic, from $559 apiece in October 2020, to below $70 on Tuesday. Shares have slumped more than 10% to start the month of August. In February, Zoom laid off about 1,300 people, or about 15% of its workforce.

Google, Salesforce and Amazon are among major companies that have also stepped up their return-to-office policies despite a backlash from some employees.

Similarly to Zoom, many companies are asking their employees to show up to the office only part time, as hybrid work shapes up to be a lasting legacy of the pandemic. Since January, the average weekly office occupancy rate in 10 major U.S. cities has hovered around 50%, dipping below that threshold during the summer months, according to Kastle Systems, which measures occupancy through entry swipes.
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U.S. police reform advocates have long argued that police-worn body cameras will help reduce officers’ excessive use of force and work to build public trust. But the millions of hours of footage that so-called “body cams” generate are difficult for police supervisors to monitor. As Shelley Schlender explains, artificial intelligence may help.
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Pope Francis on Tuesday called for a global reflection on the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI), noting the new technology’s “disruptive possibilities and ambivalent effects.”  

Francis, who is 86 and said in the past he does not know how to use a computer, issued the warning in a message for the next World Day of Peace of the Catholic Church, falling on New Year’s Day.  

The Vatican released the message well in advance, as it is customary.  

The pope “recalls the need to be vigilant and to work so that a logic of violence and discrimination does not take root in the production and use of such devices, at the expense of the most fragile and excluded,” it reads.  

“The urgent need to orient the concept and use of artificial intelligence in a responsible way, so that it may be at the service of humanity and the protection of our common home, requires that ethical reflection be extended to the sphere of education and law,” it adds.  

Back in 2015, Francis acknowledged being “a disaster” with technology, but he has also called the internet, social networks and text messages “a gift of God,” provided that they are used wisely.  

In 2020, the Vatican joined forces with tech giants Microsoft MSFT.O and IBM IBM.N to promote the ethical development of AI and call for regulation of intrusive technologies such as facial recognition.
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Two to tech groups on Monday backed TikTok Inc in its lawsuit seeking block enforcement of a Montana state ban on use of the short video sharing app before it takes effect on January 1.

NetChoice, a national trade association that includes major tech platforms, and Chamber of Progress, a tech-industry coalition, said in a joint court filing that “Montana’s effort to cut Montanans off from the global network of TikTok users ignores and undermines the structure, design, and purpose of the internet.”

TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, filed a suit in May seeking to block the first-of-its-kind U.S. state ban on several grounds, arguing it violates the First Amendment free speech rights of the company and users.
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The use of sophisticated spyware to hack into the devices of journalists and human rights defenders during a period of conflict in Armenia has alarmed analysts.

A joint investigation by digital rights organizations, including Amnesty International, found evidence of the surveillance software on devices belonging to 12 people, including a former government spokesperson.

The apparent targeting took place between October 2020 and December 2022, including during key moments in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Amnesty reported.

The region has been at the center of a decades-long dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have fought two wars over the mountainous territory.

Elina Castillo Jiménez, a digital surveillance researcher at Amnesty International’s Security Laboratory, told VOA that her organization’s research — published earlier this year — confirmed that at least a dozen public figures in Armenia were targeted, including a former spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a representative of the United Nations.

Others had reported on the conflict, including for VOA’s sister network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; provided analysis; had sensitive conversations related to the conflict; or in some cases worked for organizations known to be critical of the government, the researchers found.

“The conflict may have been one of the reasons for the targeting,” Castillo said.

If, as Amnesty and others suspect, the timing is connected to the conflict, it would mark the first documented use of Pegasus in the context of an international conflict.

Researchers have found previously that Pegasus was used extensively in Azerbaijan to target civil society representatives, opposition figures and journalists, including the award-winning investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova.

VOA reached out via email to the embassies of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington for comment but as of publication had not received a response.

Pegasus is a spyware marketed to governments by the Israeli digital security company NSO Group. The global investigative collaboration, The Pegasus Project, has been tracking the spyware’s use against human rights defenders, critics and others.

Since 2021, the U.S government has imposed measures on NSO over the hacking revelations, saying its tools were used for “transnational repression.” U.S actions include export limits on NSO Group and a March 2023 executive order that restricts the U.S. government’s use of commercial spyware like Pegasus.

VOA reached out to the NSO Group for comment but as of publication had not received a response.

Castillo said that Pegasus has the capability to infiltrate both iOS and Android phones.

Pegasus spyware is a “zero-click” mobile surveillance program. It can attack devices without any interaction from the individual who is targeted, gaining complete control over a phone or laptop and in effect transforming it into a spying tool against its owner, she said.

“The way that Pegasus operates is that it is capable of using elements within your iPhones or Androids,” said Castillo. “Imagine that it embed(s) something in your phone, and through that, then it can take control over it.”

The implications of the spyware are not lost on Ruben Melikyan. The lawyer, based in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, is among those whose devices were infected.

An outspoken government critic, Melikyan has represented a range of opposition parliamentarians and activists.

The lawyer said he has concerns that the software could have allowed hackers to gain access to his data and information related to his clients.

“As a lawyer, my phone contained confidential information, and its compromise made me uneasy, particularly regarding the protection of my current and former clients’ rights.” he said.

Melikyan told VOA that his phone had been targeted twice: in May 2021, when he was monitoring Armenian elections, and again during a tense period in the Armenia and Azerbaijan conflict in December 2022.

Castillo said she believes targeting individuals with Pegasus is a violation of “international humanitarian law” and that evidence shows it is “an absolute menace to people doing human rights work.”

She said the researchers are not able to confirm who commissioned the use of the spyware, but “we do believe that it is a government customer.”

When the findings were released this year, an NSO Group spokesperson said it was unable to comment but that earlier allegations of “improper use of our technologies” had led to the termination of contracts.

Amnesty International researchers are also investigating the potential use of a commercial spyware, Predator, which was found on Armenian servers.

“We have the evidence that suggests that it was used. However, further investigation is needed,” Castillo said, adding that their findings so far suggest that Pegasus is just “one of the threats against journalists and human rights defenders.”

This story originated in VOA’s Armenia Service.
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A mother is suing the city of Detroit, saying unreliable facial recognition technology led to her being falsely arrested for carjacking while she was eight months pregnant. 

Porcha Woodruff was getting her two children ready for school the morning of February 16 when a half-dozen police officers showed up at her door to arrest her, taking her away in handcuffs, the 32-year-old Detroit woman said in a federal lawsuit.

“They presented her with an arrest warrant for robbery and carjacking, leaving her baffled and assuming it was a joke, given her visibly pregnant state,” her attorney wrote in a lawsuit accusing the city of false arrest. 

The suit, filed Thursday, argues that police relied on facial recognition technology that should not be trusted, given “inherent flaws and unreliability, particularly when attempting to identify Black individuals” such as Woodruff.

Some experts say facial recognition technology is more prone to error when analyzing the faces of people of color.

In a statement Sunday, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office said the warrant that led to Woodruff’s arrest was on solid ground, NBC News reported.

“The warrant was appropriate based upon the facts,” it said.

The case began in late January, when police investigating a reported carjacking by a gunman used imagery from a gas station’s security video to track down a woman believed to have been involved in the crime, according to the suit.

Facial recognition analysis from the video identified Woodruff as a possible match, the suit said.

Woodruff’s picture from a 2015 arrest was in a set of photos shown to the carjacking victim, who picked her out, according to the lawsuit.

Woodruff was freed on bond the day of her arrest and the charges against her were later dropped due to insufficient evidence, the civil complaint maintained. 

“This case highlights the significant flaws associated with using facial recognition technology to identify criminal suspects,” the suit argued.

Woodruff’s suit seeks unspecified financial damages plus legal fees. 
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U.S. scientists have achieved net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the second time since December, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said on Sunday.

Scientists at the California-based lab repeated the fusion ignition breakthrough in an experiment in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on July 30 that produced a higher energy yield than in December, a Lawrence Livermore spokesperson said.

Final results are still being analyzed, the spokesperson added.

Lawrence Livermore achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers on Dec. 5, 2022. The scientists focused a laser on a target of fuel to fuse two light atoms into a denser one, releasing the energy.

That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said.

In other words, it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it, the department said.

The Energy Department called it “a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.”

Scientists have known for about a century that fusion powers the sun and have pursued developing fusion on Earth for decades. Such a breakthrough could one day help curb climate change if companies can scale up the technology to a commercial level in the coming decades.
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Elon Musk said in a social media post that his proposed cage fight with Meta (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg would be live-streamed on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. 

The social media moguls have been egging each other into a mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas since June.

“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans,” Musk said in a post on X early on Sunday morning, without giving any further details.

Earlier on Sunday, Musk had said on X that he was “lifting weights throughout the day, preparing for the fight”, adding that he did not have time to work out so brings the weights to work.

When a user on X asked Musk the point of the fight, Musk responded by saying “It’s a civilized form of war. Men love war.”

Meta did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on Musk’s post. 

The brouhaha began when Musk said in a June 20 post that he was “up for a cage match” with Zuckerberg, who is trained in jiujitsu.

A day later, Zuckerberg, 39, who has posted pictures of matches he has won on his company’s Instagram platform, asked Musk, 51, to “send location” for the proposed throwdown, to which Musk replied “Vegas Octagon”, referring to an events center where mixed martial arts (MMA) championship bouts are held.

Musk then said he would start training if the cage fight took shape. 
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