A reedy pipe and a high-pitched trill duet against the backdrop of a low-pitched insect drone. Their symphony is the sound of a forest and is monitored by scientists to gauge biodiversity.

The recording from the forest in Ecuador is part of new research looking at how artificial intelligence could track animal life in recovering habitats.

When scientists want to measure reforestation, they can survey large tracts of land with tools like satellite and lidar.

But determining how fast and abundantly wildlife is returning to an area presents a more difficult challenge — sometimes requiring an expert to sift through sound recordings and pick out animal calls.

Jorg Muller, a professor and field ornithologist at University of Wurzburg Biocenter, wondered if there was a different way.

“I saw the gap that we need, particularly in the tropics, better methods to quantify the huge diversity… to improve conservation actions,” he told AFP.

He turned to bioacoustics, which uses sound to learn more about animal life and habitats.

It is a long-standing research tool, but more recently is being paired with computer learning to process large amounts of data more quickly.

Muller and his team recorded audio at sites in Ecuador’s Choco region ranging from recently abandoned cacao plantations and pastures to agricultural land recovering from use to old-growth forests.

They first had experts listen to the recordings and pick out birds, mammals and amphibians.

Then, they carried out an acoustic index analysis, which gives a measure of biodiversity based on broad metrics from a soundscape, like volume and frequency of noises.

Finally, they ran two weeks of recordings through an AI-assisted computer program trained to distinguish 75 bird calls.

More recordings needed

The program was able to pick out the calls on which it was trained in a consistent way, but could it correctly identify the relative biodiversity of each location?

To check this, the team used two baselines: one from the experts who listened to the audio recordings, and a second based on insect samples from each location, which offer a proxy for biodiversity.

While the library of available sounds to train the AI model meant it could only identify a quarter of the bird calls the experts could, it was still able to correctly gauge biodiversity levels in each location, the study said.

“Our results show that soundscape analysis is a powerful tool to monitor the recovery of faunal communities in hyperdiverse tropical forest,” said the research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

“Soundscape diversity can be quantified in a cost-effective and robust way across the full gradient from active agriculture to recovering and old-growth forests,” it added.

There are still shortcomings, including a paucity of animal sounds on which to train AI models.

And the approach can only capture species that announce their presence.

“Of course (there is) no information on plants or silent animals. However, birds and amphibians are very sensitive to ecological integrity, they are a very good surrogate,” Muller told AFP.

He believes the tool could become increasingly useful given the current push for “biodiversity credits” — a way of monetizing the protection of animals in their natural habitat.

“Being able to directly quantify biodiversity, rather than relying on proxies such as growing trees, encourages and allows external assessment of conservation actions, and promotes transparency,” the study said.

 
…

The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday tightened its export controls to keep China from acquiring advanced computer chips that it could use to help develop hypersonic missiles and artificial intelligence.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the new controls are “intended to protect technologies that have clear national security or human rights implications.”   

The new controls could increase tensions between the United States, the world’s biggest economy, and No. 2 China. In recent talks over several months with high-ranking U.S. officials, Beijing had appealed for “concrete actions” from Washington to improve relations between the two countries, although U.S. officials warned that the new export rules were in the offing.

Raimondo told reporters, “The vast majority of [the sale of] semiconductors [to China] will remain unrestricted. But when we identify national security or human rights threats, we will act decisively and in concert with our allies.”

The Commerce Department said the new restrictions came after consultations with U.S. chip manufacturers and conducting technological analyses.

The new controls allow the monitoring of the sale of chips that could still be used for military aims, even if they might not specifically meet the thresholds for trade limitations. The U.S. said chip exports can also be restricted to companies headquartered in Macao, a Chinese territory, or other countries under a U.S. arms embargo, to prevent them from circumventing the controls and providing chips to China.

The updated restrictions, an expansion of export controls announced last year, also make it more difficult for China to manufacture advanced chips abroad. The list of manufacturing equipment that falls under the export controls has also been expanded, among other changes to the policy.

China protested last year’s export controls, viewing the design and manufacture of high-level semiconductors as essential for its economic growth. Raimondo has said the limits on these chips are not designed to impair China’s economy.  

Chinese government officials are scheduled to go to San Francisco in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

U.S. President Joe Biden has suggested he could meet on the sidelines of the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, though a meeting has yet to be confirmed. The two leaders met last year following the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, shortly after the export controls were announced.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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Artificial Intelligence is being used to create musical “deepfakes” – songs that sound like one artist but were made by a computer. Deana Mitchell brings us the story of one artist who is engaging with machine learning to create new kinds of music.
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A technology, innovation and entrepreneurship summit sparked imaginations in Ethiopia last week. The inaugural Enkopa summit — a collaboration between the Ethiopian Ministry of Labor and Skills and other partners — brought in speakers and exhibitors from across the world to Addis Ababa to discuss technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Speaking at the two-day event, Ethiopian State Minister of Labor and Skills Nigussu Tilahun emphasized the important role of the government in clearing a path for job creation in the country.

Nigussu said government’s role in building the entrepreneurship ecosystem is to create and facilitate a conducive environment for it.

The event, which was October 12 and 13, had 150 speakers from sectors like fintech, health care and agriculture.

Feven Tsehaye, founder and CEO of Chakka Origins — which sources natural ingredients in biodiversity hotspots — said land management is crucial to the work the company does in Ethiopia.

She said working with small holder farmers is essential.

“It makes sense to work with them and more efficiently utilizing their space instead of engaging in land clearing or displacing people,” Feven said.

Sessions during the two-day summit also explored the role of AI in agriculture, and sustainable farming in Ethiopia.

Abrhame Endrias leads Lersha, which provides digital services to farmers. He said making technology accessible to farmers encourages tech adoption.

Lersha provides climate and pest control advisories, farming inputs and options for mechanization.

Abrhame said Lersha translates information into local languages so farmers can understand the information and make decisions. The information comes to the farmers via text message.

While Lersha focuses on small holder famers, there were startups at the summit that focused on Ethiopia’s commercial farmers.

Semegn Tadesse, CEO of ARMADA AgriTech, said working with commercial farmers promises to deliver a more radical change.

“If you want to show progress, here is a big room for improvement in commercial farmers,” Semegn said. “They are also underserved even though they have financial capacity.”

The summit, funded by the United Nations Development Program, and other partners is expected to be held every year.
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Settlement talks have collapsed between Facebook’s parent company Meta and Kenyan content moderators over a lawsuit alleging unfair dismissal, a tech rights group working with the moderators said on Monday. 

The 184 moderators sued Meta and two subcontractors earlier this year after they said they lost their jobs with one of the subcontractors, Sama, for organizing a union. They said they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at a second firm, Majorel, after Facebook changed contractors. 

In August, the court asked the parties to hold out-of-court settlement talks and said the case would proceed if those failed. 

British tech rights group Foxglove said in a statement on Monday that the negotiations had broken down, accusing Meta and Sama of making “very little attempt to address core issues raised by the petitioners.” 

“The respondents were buying time and not being genuine. We kept waiting for them to participate … only for them to keep asking for an extension of time and then come back every time to refuse to take accountability,” the statement quoted Mercy Mutemi, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, as saying. 

Sama said it was disappointed the mediation had failed and would not comment further on the case. 

“We have been successful in coming to a mutually agreed resolution with about 60 moderators outside of the mediation process, demonstrating our commitment and willingness to find an amicable, beneficial solution,” it said in a statement, adding it was fully complying with all court orders. 

Meta declined to comment. There was no immediate comment from Majorel. 

Meta has previously responded to allegations of a poor working environment in Kenya by saying it requires partners to provide industry-leading conditions. 

Sama has said it has always followed Kenyan law and provided mental health services to its employees. In August, Majorel said it does not comment on matters involving pending or active litigation. 

The moderators also allege that Meta is trying to terminate their contracts in defiance of an earlier court order. A hearing on their petition to find Meta and Sama in contempt of court is scheduled for October 31, Foxglove said. 

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.

In response, Meta said last December that hate speech and incitement to violence were against the rules of its Facebook and Instagram platforms. 
…

Paul Lane uses his mouth, cheek and chin to push buttons and guide his virtual car around the Gran Turismo racetrack on the PlayStation 5. It’s how he’s been playing for the past 23 years, after a car accident left him unable to use his fingers.

Playing video games has long been a challenge for people with disabilities, chiefly because the standard controllers for the PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo can be difficult, or even impossible, to maneuver for people with limited mobility. And losing the ability to play the games doesn’t just mean the loss of a favorite pastime, it can also exacerbate social isolation in a community already experiencing it at a far higher rate than the general population.

As part of the gaming industry’s efforts to address the problem, Sony has developed the Access controller for the PlayStation, working with input from Lane and other accessibility consultants. Its the latest addition to the accessible-controller market, whose contributors range from Microsoft to startups and even hobbyists with 3D printers.

“I was big into sports before my injury,” said Cesar Flores, 30, who uses a wheelchair since a car accident eight years ago and also consulted Sony on the controller. “I wrestled in high school, played football. I lifted a lot of weights, all these little things. And even though I can still train in certain ways, there are physical things that I can’t do anymore. And when I play video games, it reminds me that I’m still human. It reminds me that I’m still one of the guys.”

Putting the traditional controller aside, Lane, 52, switches to the Access. It’s a round, customizable gadget that can rest on a table or wheelchair tray and can be configured in myriad ways, depending on what the user needs. That includes switching buttons and thumbsticks, programming special controls and pairing two controllers to be used as one. Lane’s Gran Turismo car zooms around a digital track as he guides it with the back of his hand on the controller.

“I game kind of weird, so it’s comfortable for me to be able to use both of my hands when I game,” he said. “So I need to position the controllers away enough so that I can be able to to use them without clunking into each other. Being able to maneuver the controllers has been awesome, but also the fact that this controller can come out of the box and ready to work.”

Lane and other gamers have been working with Sony since 2018 to help design the Access controller. The idea was to create something that could be configured to work for people with a broad range of needs, rather than focusing on any particular disability.

“Show me a person with multiple sclerosis and I’ll show you a person who can be hard of hearing, I can show someone who has a visual impairment or a motor impairment,” said Mark Barlet, founder and executive director of the nonprofit AbleGamers. “So thinking on the label of a disability is not the approach to take. It’s about the experience that players need to bridge that gap between a game and a controller that’s not designed for their unique presentation in the world.”

Barlet said his organization, which helped both Sony and Microsoft with their accessible controllers, has been advocating for gamers with disabilities for nearly two decades. With the advent of social media, gamers themselves have been able to amplify the message and address creators directly in forums that did not exist before.

“The last five years I have seen the game accessibility movement go from indie studios working on some features to triple-A games being able to be played by people who identify as blind,” he said. “In five years, it’s been breathtaking.”

Microsoft, in a statement, said it was encouraged by the positive reaction to its Xbox Adaptive controller when it was released in 2018 and that it is “heartening to see others in the industry apply a similar approach to include more players in their work through a focus on accessibility.”

The Access controller will go on sale worldwide on Dec. 6 and cost $90 in the U.S.

Alvin Daniel, a senior technical program manager at PlayStation, said the device was designed with three principles in mind to make it “broadly applicable” to as many players as possible. First, the player does not have to hold the controller to use it. It can lay flat on a table, wheelchair tray or be mounted on a tripod, for instance. It was important for it to fit on a wheelchair tray, since once something falls off the tray, it might be impossible for the player to pick it up without help. It also had to be durable for this same reason — so it would survive being run over by a wheelchair, for example.

Second, it’s much easier to press the buttons than on a standard controller. It’s a kit, so it comes with button caps in different sizes, shapes and textures so people can experiment with reconfiguring it the way it works best for them. The third is the thumbsticks, which can also be configured depending on what works for the person using it.

Because it can be used with far less agility and strength than the standard PlayStation controller, the Access could also be a gamechanger for an emerging population: aging gamers suffering from arthritis and other limiting ailments.

“The last time I checked, the average age of a gamers was in their forties,” Daniel said. “And I have every expectation, speaking for myself, that they’ll want to continue to game, as I’ll want to continue to game, because it’s entertainment for us.”

After his accident, Lane stopped gaming for seven years. For someone who began playing video games as a young child on the Magnavox Odyssey — released in 1972 — “it was a void” in his life, he said.

Starting again, even with the limitations of a standard game controller, felt like being reunited with a “long-lost friend.”

“Just the the social impact of gaming really changed my life. It gave me a a brighter disposition,” Lane said. He noted the social isolation that often results when people who were once able-bodied become disabled.

“Everything changes,” he said. “And the more you take away from us, the more isolated we become. Having gaming and having an opportunity to game at a very high level, to be able to do it again, it is like a reunion, (like losing) a close companion and being able to reunite with that person again.”
…

In what Guatemalan authorities described as a national security incident, hackers affiliated with the activist group Anonymous disabled multiple government webpages Saturday.

The attacks were in support of demonstrations led by Indigenous organizations in the Central American country.

For almost two weeks, demonstrators have been calling for the resignation of Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras, saying she has tried to undermine the popular vote that made progressive Bernardo Arévalo the president-elect.

Posting on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter, hackers under the handle @AnonGTReloaded announced, “This October 14 #Anonymous will attack the Government of Guatemala, but this time we do not come alone.”

The hackers targeted government webpages with floods of automated traffic until they crashed, a technique known as distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Webpages for Guatemala’s judicial branch, Department of Agriculture and the General Secretary of the president were targeted, among others. Some pages were quickly reinstated, but others remained down.

Guatemalan authorities said the hacking was a matter of “national security” and they are responding.

The attacks come after 13 days of protests and road closures. Thousands of Indigenous people have demanded that Porras and prosecutors Rafael Curruchiche and Cinthia Monterroso, as well as Judge Fredy Orellana, all resign, accusing them of endangering the country’s democracy.

Demonstrators maintain that after Arévalo’s victory in the August runoff election, Porras mounted an undemocratic challenge against Arévalo, his left-wing Seed Movement party and electoral authorities.

A representative of Anonymous involved in the cyberattack, who agreed to talk about the hacking only if not identified to avoid legal repercussions, said, “Everything we do is to support humanity and, now in Guatemala, in support of the people who are in the streets, fighting against corruption and impunity.”

Also on Saturday morning, Miguel Martínez, former official and personal friend of current President Alejandro Giammattei, was surrounded by a throng of protesters as security officers escorted him from a Mass in Antigua, Guatemala.

In footage posted on social media, protesters appeared to accuse Martínez of corruption. He is not currently known to be under investigation by the prosecutor’s office.
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Malawi launched its first-ever Centre for Artificial Intelligence and STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — Friday at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. Established with support from various U.S.-based universities, the center aims to provide solutions to the country’s innovation and technology needs.

The project’s leader, Zipangani Vokhiwa, a science professor at Mercer University in the U.S. and a Fulbright scholar, says the center will help promote the study and use of artificial intelligence, or AI, and STEAM for the socioeconomic development of Malawi and beyond.

“Economic development that we know cannot go without the modern scientific knowledge and aspect so the center will complement vision 2063 for Malawi as a country that needs to be moving together with the country developments in science,” Vokhiwa said. “Not to be left behind.”

Vokhiwa said the center, known by its acronym, CAIST, will offer educational, technical, policy, and strategy products and services in emerging technologies such as AI.

He said it will also offer machine learning, deep learning, data science, data analytics, internet of things and more that are based on humanistic STEAM education and research.

A consortium of various U.S. universities provided the center with pedagogical and technical support.

These include Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Tech University, Morehouse College, Colorado University, Georgia Southern University, Clemson University, New York University and Mercer University.

There are fears worldwide, however, that the introduction of AI will result in loss of jobs.

CBS news reported  that AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in the U.S. in May.

But Vokhiwa said the advantages and disadvantages of AI are still debatable.

“As has been said by the experts, AI has both positive elements and negative elements,” he said. “But knowing fairly well that we cannot run away from digitization of what we do, AI will be needed, and Malawi does not need to lag behind.”

Vokhiwa said AI has helped create employment because it needs people to run the AI machines.

Malawi’s Minister of Education, Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima, officially opened the AI center at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.

She said the launch of the AI center has set the tone and laid the foundation for the country to explore the opportunities that come with new technologies.

However, she said, while AI has the potential to transform the country, there is also a need to address its downside.

“For this to happen, the government will be looking to CAIST for knowledge and expertise so that we can together facilitate the development of the necessary policy and regulatory frameworks governing responsible use of AI,” she said. “The earlier we do this the better, because AI is already here, and we are all using it. Some of us with enough knowledge, but many of us surely without full knowledge of it.”

Kambauwa Wirima said that whatever the case, AI is something that Malawi cannot avoid, mentioning that the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community is already addressing the issue.

“We adopted a decision to develop regional guidelines on the ethics of artificial intelligence to be domesticated and implemented by member states,” she said. “Therefore, Malawi cannot sit on the fence.”

Address Malata, the vice chancellor for Malawi University of Science and Technology, said the university is strategizing its operations to align them to various development agendas including Malawi 2063, Africa Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, so that whatever the center does, it should benefit everyone.
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The U.S. space agency, NASA, launched a rocket Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket carried a probe designed to study a metal-rich asteroid that scientists think might be the remnants of small planet or planet-like object. 

The rocket, built by the private space company SpaceX, took off early Friday, starting NASAs Psyche probe on a 3.5-billion kilometer, six-year journey to the asteroid of the same name, orbiting between the planets Mars and Jupiter. 

Using Earth-based radar and optical telescope data, scientists hypothesize that the asteroid Psyche could be part of the metal-rich interior of a “planetesimal,” a building block of a rocky planet that never formed.  

NASA scientists say Psyche may have collided with other large bodies during its early formation and lost its outer rocky shell. Examining such an asteroid could provide unprecedented insights into the history of violent collisions and the accumulation of matter that created planets like Earth. 

The probe is powered by a pair of massive solar arrays which unfurled after the craft reached space and was released from the launch vehicle. Its unique solar electric propulsion system creates thrust by creating electric and magnetic fields, which accelerate and expel charged atoms, or ions, of a propellant called xenon at a high rate of speed. 

Xenon is a gas used in automobile headlights and plasma televisions and will emit a blue glow behind the probe as it travels through space. The voyage to Psyche marks the first mission to use the propulsion system — known as Hall-effect thrusters — in deep space.  

NASA expects the probe to reach its namesake asteroid in 2029.  

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
…

Africa is the site of a new battle for influence as Washington ramps up efforts to build an alternative critical minerals supply chain to avoid reliance on China. Beijing dominates the processing of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other resources from the continent that are needed for the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles.

But at the Green Energy Africa Summit this week in Cape Town, which was held on the sidelines of Africa Oil Week, few were willing to talk about it directly.

Asked whether the U.S. was playing catch-up with China, one of the panel’s speakers, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources Kimberly Harrington, said simply that Washington was looking to “diversify.”

For his part, fellow panelist Chiza Charles Newton Chiumya, the African Union’s director for industry, minerals, entrepreneurship and tourism, told VOA he didn’t want to use the term “competing” to describe the relative approaches of the West and China but agreed there is “lots of interest” in Africa’s critical minerals.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington was also circumspect when asked whether it sees itself in competition with the U.S. for the natural resources.

“The tangible outcomes of China-Africa practical cooperation throughout the years are there for all to see,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu wrote in an emailed response.

“Supporting Africa’s development is the common responsibility of the international community. We welcome stronger interest and investment in Africa from all quarters to help increase the continent’s capability to achieve self-driven sustainable growth and move forward towards modernization and prosperity.”

Independent analysts, however, had a different take. The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt,” said Tony Carroll, adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA earlier this year.

“The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since.”

Part of that response has been the Minerals Security Partnership set up by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

“We see anywhere from three to six times demand growth for critical minerals across the world. … So, I think our sense is that no single government, no single company, can create resilient supply chains,” said Harrington at the Green Energy Africa Summit.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything…one of the primary things it showed us is that if we are too overly reliant on any one source in a supply chain … it creates vulnerabilities, and so I think our approach overall on this issue is to make sure that we have diversity,” she told VOA during a Q&A after the panel.  

“When it comes to China in general, our secretary of state has been crystal clear, we have areas in which we cooperate with China, we have areas in which we compete with China, and that’s not going to change,” she said. “This is a complex and consequential relationship and we see it as such.”

The view from Africa

While he didn’t want to use the word “competition” to describe the outside interest in Africa’s critical minerals, the AU’s Chiumya stressed during the panel discussion that Africa must benefit from its mineral wealth.

“This is not the first time that Africa is sitting at the frontier of having critical minerals. … In the past we have lost a chance,” he said, referring to the continent’s vast gold and diamond deposits. “This time around we want to do things different.”

“For a long time, our governments have not been able to effectively exploit the mineral wealth that is there and ended up effectively going into very bad deals” which have not contributed to the social and economic development of the African people, Chiumya added.

Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has been among the African leaders demanding better terms from China for several years. His country produces some 70% of the world’s cobalt but remains one of the world’s least developed nations.

Tshisekedi complained in January that the Congolese people have not benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China that was signed by his predecessor.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, which has large lithium deposits, the government has imposed a ban on exports of raw lithium ore, insisting that it be processed at home. A Chinese company has since built a large lithium processing plant in the country.

U.S. critical mineral plans

Washington says environmental, social and governance standards are a key consideration for the U.S. when it comes to its dealings with the continent regarding critical minerals.

“We want to do our part to ramp up our efforts with like-minded partners in Africa to promote sustainable clean energy supply chains in mining,” said Harrington. She said it is also important to help countries “do some domestic processing and refining, because it’s really the value-added, that’s how you create jobs, that’s how you create local capacity.”

At the U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington in December, the DRC, the U.S. and Zambia — another major source of minerals — signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a supply chain for electric car batteries, in what was widely seen by analysts as a move to counter China.

Harrington said the MOU had “the overall goal of a lot of an EV (electric vehicle) battery being processed and refined locally,” even if some further refinement might need to be done in a third country. 

Additionally, on the sidelines of last month’s G20 summit, the U.S. and E.U. pledged to develop the partially existing Lobito Corridor — a railway connecting the DRC’s cobalt belt to Zambia’s copper belt and on to Angola’s port of Lobito, from where it can be shipped to international markets.
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As Hamas militants and rockets entered Israel Saturday, so too did a barrage of disinformation. The conflict is being fought not only on the ground but also on the internet. VOA’s Robin Guess has the story. Liam Scott contributed to this report.
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Utah on Tuesday became the latest U.S. state to sue TikTok, alleging the company is “baiting” children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits.

TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app’s safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit.

“We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City.

Arkansas and Indiana have filed similar lawsuits, while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether state attempts to regulate social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok violate the U.S. Constitution.

Public health concerns are cited in the Utah lawsuit. Research has shown that children who spend more than three hours a day on social media double their risk of poor mental health, including anxiety and depression, the lawsuit alleges.

“TikTok designed and employs algorithm features that spoon-feed kids endless, highly curated content from which our children struggle to disengage. TikTok designed these features to mimic a cruel slot machine that hooks kids’ attention and does not let them go,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said at the news conference.

The lawsuit seeks to force TikTok to change its “destructive behavior” while imposing fines and penalties to fund education efforts and otherwise address damage done to Utah children, Reyes said.

TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide did not immediately return an email message seeking comment on the lawsuit.

Utah earlier this year became the first state to pass laws that aim to limit the use of social media apps such as TikTok by children and teens. The laws are set to take effect next year.

They will impose a digital curfew on people under 18, which will require minors to get parental consent to sign up for social media apps and force companies to verify the ages of all their Utah users.

They also require tech companies to give parents access to their kids’ accounts and private messages, raising concern among some child advocates about further harming children’s mental health. Depriving children of privacy, they say, could be detrimental for LGBTQ+ kids whose parents are not accepting of their identity.
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“Digital currencies have played a pivotal role in backing Myanmar’s Spring Revolution,” following a military takeover of the government in February 2021, said NUG Deputy Minister of Planning, Finance and Development Min Zayar Oo, in a statement to VOA.

The minister was appointed by the National Unity Government, or NUG, made up of members of Myanmar’s former democratically elected government and other opponents of the junta.

Centralized digital currencies, however, can be a double-edged sword, with authoritarian regimes seeking to use them as a tool for financial surveillance and censorship. 

“The primary advantage for pro-democracy activists lies in the fact that these currencies operate independently of government control, enabling individuals to offer support to their chosen recipients discreetly, without disclosing their identities,” said Aung Paing, an expert on digital currencies living in exile from Myanmar.

The NUG introduced its own digital currency, the DMMK (Digital Myanmar Kyat), last year as a creative means to bypass banks controlled by the junta. According to a recent statement, the NUG is on the verge of establishing its own online bank, the Spring Development Bank, using digital currency and targeting NUG supporters and the Myanmar diaspora as customers.

The DMMK is tied to the value of the Myanmar kyat one-to-one, much like higher classes of cryptocurrencies, such as Tether (USDT), are tied to the value of the dollar. This class of cryptocurrency is known as “stablecoins.” 

DMMK is used both locally and internationally via a mobile wallet app, NUGPay. In June 2023, NUGPay released its first annual report stating that, one year after launch, total transactions in the app had reached over 300 billion kyats (nearly $150 million). 

“The total amount in the DMMK system reflects that the cash flow is running well and that the number of NUGPay customers is growing,” the report said; a statement reaffirmed by Min Zayar Oo several months after the report was released.

“Since the launch of DMMK, a total of over 600 billion kyat (nearly $300 million) has been circulated so far,” he told VOA on Sunday.

Tool of liberation or oppression

While digital currencies are becoming a useful means for pro-democracy movements to circumvent controls by authoritarian regimes, they can also be an extremely useful tool for those regimes as well, according to Win Ko Ko Aung, Myanmar Human Rights Fellow at Bitcoin Policy Institute. “Globally, tyrannies have used legacy financial systems to suppress activists and civilians,” Aung told VOA by phone. 

“Central bank digital currencies, like the DMMK, have the potential to further empower authoritarian agendas,” he added.

Privacy concerns have kept countries like the U.S. from adopting a centralized digital version of its currency, but countries like China have doubled down on its use of digital currencies to surveil individual transactions in an increasingly connected society.

“I think people underestimate exactly how much power financial surveillance can have over your life,” said Chris Meserole, director of the Brookings Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative, at an event in Washington on September 27.

“They [authoritarian governments] can basically turn your house into a prison,” he continued. “Because if you can’t … go anywhere and transact in the world, they basically have … incarcerating power over everyone.”

“The flip side … is that there is this tremendous capability and feature set of this technology,” he said. “Whether it’s bitcoin, or some of the other digital assets out there … it’s fundamentally a messaging network that cannot be censored; and I think it’s incumbent upon democratic regimes and institutions to try and safeguard that technology.” 

Grant McCarty, co-executive director of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, which co-organized the event, told VOA after the panel discussion that what cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are allowing people to do, “is actually evade some of these totalitarian powers that exist within authoritarian and anti-democratic regimes. If they want to send money to another country, if they want to send money to a pro-democracy group, they can do that. We’ve seen this in parts of Africa, we’ve seen this in Asia, around the world, people are using bitcoin to circumvent authoritarianism and totalitarian regimes and fight for freedom, fight for free speech and democracy in their country.”

Bitcoin vs own currency 

The question arises: Why would the NUG adopt its own digital currency rather than using a more widely known cryptocurrency such as bitcoin, like they’re doing in Ukraine and other parts of the world struggling under similar circumstances? According to cryptocurrency expert, Win Ko Ko Aung, bitcoin is a better bet for those facing an authoritarian regime like the one in Myanmar. 

“The bitcoin protocol runs on over 70,000 computers around the world, and not a single person or government controls that network. DMMK is a type of CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currencies], according to the definition. Whoever controls the money, controls the system. I understand the Myanmar exile government’s ultimate goal in launching DMMK, but my concern is why they pegged the currency standard to the Myanmar kyat, which has been constantly dropping in value and being debased by the Myanmar military.”

While bitcoin is an effective way to quickly transfer dollars, essential in a situation like the one in Ukraine, “Myanmar is different,” said Aung Paing, one of the analysts who helped launch DMMK. 

“Ukraine is seeking support from all over the world, and using bitcoin, yes, they can transfer money quickly and freely. However, bitcoin’s value depends on supply and demand and can fluctuate wildly, so it’s not a stable currency for the long term. It may be a good option for investors and others willing to accept that risk, but not for a government like the NUG, planning logistics for a revolution and supporting the people. The people of Myanmar want to be able to transfer money to buy property freely, safely, quickly and with a stable value. A central bank digital currency like the DMMK provides that type of stability,” he said.

“It normally takes a lot of time to get people to accept a new currency,” Paing continued. “However, when the DMMK came out during the Burma [Myanmar] Spring Revolution, the people immediately accepted and used the value as set by the NUG. In a time of upheaval and struggle, this digital currency has proven to be more than just a financial tool. It is a symbol of resilience, empowerment, and the unyielding spirit of those fighting for change.” 
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As Indonesia celebrates the launch of its first high-speed railway, the government is dealing with cost overruns and Chinese bank loans with high interest rates. In Jakarta, Devianti Faridz has the story. Camera: Ahadian Utama
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Vodafone underlined its commitment to Open RAN networks on Monday by confirming it would create purpose-built chipset architecture for the nascent technology with Intel INTC.O.

The European operator also said it had made its first 4G calls using Open RAN over network sites shared with Orange ORAN.PA in Romania, and it was partnering with Nokia NOKIA.HE to pilot the technology in Italy.

Open RAN allows mobile operators to mix and match equipment from various suppliers, potentially increasing flexibility.

Progress has been slow, however, and the market remains dominated by proprietary solutions from Ericsson, Nokia, and Huawei, although the latter has been hit by government restrictions in countries including Britain.

Vodafone agreed in 2022 to work with U.S. chipmaker Intel on the potential to design its own chip architecture.

The company’s director of network architecture Santiago Tenorio confirmed the partners would jointly create chipsets at its campus in Malaga, Spain.

The chipsets will be available to smaller third-party vendors to test their own algorithms without a large financial outlay in silicon, Tenorio said at the FYUZ industry event in Madrid.

He said the ability to produce silicon designs in testing sample quantities would significantly speed up the time to deliver innovation.

“Combining Vodafone’s networking expertise with Intel’s strength in silicon architecture design will enable rapid prototyping, verification and testing, eventually leading to a faster mass production of the chips the industry needs to accelerate,” he said.

Vodafone and Orange said on Monday they had successfully made 4G calls over a cluster of sites in a rural area near Bucharest based on Open RAN technology.

The two companies used hardware and software provided by Samsung, Wind River and Dell in the pilot, they said.

In Italy, Vodafone said a pilot with Nokia aimed to prove that Nokia’s Open RAN solution could achieve the same functionality and performance as its purpose built RAN.
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Amazon launched the first test satellites for its planned internet service Friday as a rival to SpaceX’s broadband network.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket blasted off with the pair of test satellites, kicking off a program that aims to improve global internet coverage with an eventual 3,236 satellites around Earth.

Amazon plans to begin offering internet service by the end of next year.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has a huge head start over Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, who has his own rocket company, Blue Origin.

SpaceX flew its first test Starlink satellites in 2018 and the first operational satellites in 2019. It has since launched more than 5,000 Starlinks from Florida and California, using its own Falcon rockets.

Europe’s Eutelsat OneWeb also is launching internet satellites, with around 600 in orbit.

Amazon originally agreed to put the satellites on the debut launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket. But with the Vulcan grounded by problems until at least the end of this year, Amazon switched to the long-established Atlas V.

When licensing the program, the Federal Communications Commission stipulated that at least half of the planned satellites be operating by 2026 and all of them by 2029.

Amazon has reserved 77 launches from ULA, Blue Origin and Europe’s Arianespace to get everything up and orbiting before the deadline.
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An Ethiopian digital app inventor has been given a prestigious award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for creating an application designed to link refugees with employers.

Last week in New York, Eden Tadesse accepted a Goalkeepers Global Goals Award at a ceremony attended by Kenyan President William Ruto, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Bill and Melinda Gates, among others.

Eden was given the award for her digital app Invicta, which connects refugees seeking jobs with employers. Invicta is credited with helping 2,500 refugees find employment, most of them in Africa and the Middle East.

Through the app, 7,000 refugees have been able to continue their education by completing online courses.

Mohammad Jamalaldeen, who left his hometown of Khartoum following the outbreak of war in Sudan, used Invicta to find work with a company in his profession of software and web development.

“She told me that I could look into working as a software engineer and has been actively searching for opportunities for me,” Jamalaldeen said. “Every member of Invicta has been so friendly towards me.”

Refugees or internally displaced people register with Invicta by filling out a form. The applications are assessed by a team, and selected candidates are trained and introduced to companies looking to fill positions.

Eden said she came up with Invicta after her work supporting education at a refugee camp.

“Once I arrived, I saw that refugees were incredibly talented and hardworking, and what they really needed was access to labor markets,” she said. “So that’s what I wanted to do and wanted to help with.”

The Goalkeepers Initiative is a campaign at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that promotes progress toward U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.

Blessing Omakwu, who leads the Goalkeepers Initiative, said the aim is to highlight people who are doing amazing work and to showcase progress.

“That’s our goal, is for people to come here and know that the work that you do, are doing, is seen and matters, is valuable and is accelerating progress,” Omakwu said. “So first, it’s really a source of inspiring the people who are doing the work with those we award.”

For Eden, the honor also brought a personal reward — a prize of $20,000.
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An updated rule curbing exports of U.S. chipmaking equipment to China is in the final stages of review, according to a government posting and a source, a sign the Biden administration is poised to soon tighten restrictions on Beijing. 

Reuters exclusively reported Monday that U.S. officials had warned China in recent weeks to expect rules restricting shipments of semiconductor equipment and advanced AI chips to China to be updated this month. 

The updates would add restrictions and close loopholes in rules first unveiled on October 7, 2022, sources say. Those rules angered Beijing and further strained relations with Washington. 

A regulation titled “Export Controls to Semiconductor Manufacturing Items, Entity List Modifications” was posted on the Office of Management and Budget website on Wednesday. 

A person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity, confirmed the posting refers to the expected restriction on sending chipmaking tools to China. 

Export control rules are generally not posted by OMB until there is agreement between the State, Defense, Commerce and Energy departments on their content, former officials said.  

The government has yet to post an anticipated companion rule updating restrictions on exports of high-end chips used for artificial intelligence.

A source said the Biden administration is seeking to publish both rules simultaneously. A spokesperson for the Department of Commerce declined to comment.
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In less than a year, ChatGPT — the AI-powered chatbot — has altered the way people use and abuse artificial intelligence. And while some educators are working to keep it out of the classroom, some say it’s welcome. Karina Bafradzhian has the story. Camera — David Gogokhia.
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As the U.S. government seemed headed for a possible shutdown last week, cybersecurity firms began picking up on an alarming trend: a spike in cyberattacks targeting government agencies and the U.S. defense industry.

It has some analysts concerned that U.S. adversaries and criminal hackers might have been preparing to take advantage of weaker-than-usual cybersecurity if lawmakers had not been able to reach a deal to keep U.S. agencies open past September 30.

Check Point Software last week said it had detected an 18% increase in cyberattacks against U.S. agencies and U.S. defense companies during the previous 30 days, compared with weekly averages for the first half of the year.

The attacks, according to Check Point, focused on using malware programs designed to steal information and credentials, as well as a focus on exploiting known vulnerabilities.

A second cybersecurity company, Trellix, told VOA that it too saw “a significant spike” in ransomware attacks on U.S. government agencies over the past 30 days.

Trellix attributed 45% of the malicious cyber activity to Royal ransomware, which previously had been used to target a variety of U.S. manufacturing, health care and education sectors.

Agencies would be affected

A surge in the use of Royal ransomware earlier this year prompted the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue an advisory this past March. And some cybersecurity analysts have linked Royal ransomware to Russian cybercriminals.

As for the recent spike in attacks, using Royal and other malware, analysts are concerned.

“I can’t state this is related to the impending shutdown,” Patrick Flynn, head of the Advanced Programs Group at Trellix, told VOA via email. “But one could speculate it probably has something to do with it.”

Concerns

While refusing to comment directly on the pace of cyberattacks as it related to the potential shutdown, U.S. government agencies did express concern.

“[The] Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) capacity to provide timely and actionable guidance to help partners defend their networks would be degraded,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a fact sheet before the shutdown was averted.

“CISA would also be forced to suspend both physical and cybersecurity assessments for government and industry partners, including election officials as well as target rich, cyber poor sectors like water, K-12, and health care, which are prime targets for ransomware,” it added.

DHS did say that had there been a shutdown, some of its employees who specialize in cybersecurity would have been required to work without pay.

While not commenting directly on the question of cybersecurity, the FBI told VOA in a statement that some of its personnel would also have been required to work in the case of a shutdown to support bureau activities that “involve protecting life and property.”

For now, some of those fears have been put aside after lawmakers agreed on a bill that will fund the U.S. government until November 17.

But if ongoing talks on legislation to fully fund the government for the coming year stall, it could again put U.S. government networks in the crosshairs.

Attacks seem part of trend

Not all cybersecurity analysts are convinced a government shutdown would make the U.S. more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Trellix told VOA that while malicious cyber activity spiked in the month leading up to passage of the temporary funding bill, the attacks seemed to be part of a larger, months-long trend that has seen cyber actors increasingly target governments across the globe.

Other cybersecurity firms caution that other recent U.S. government shutdowns, including those in 2013 and in late 2018 to early 2019, have not led to a jump in attacks.

“Mandiant hasn’t historically seen any upward trends of cyberattacks tied to government shutdown,” said Ben Read, the head of cyber espionage analysis at Mandiant-Google Cloud.
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Meta is proposing to offer European users subscription-based versions of Instagram and Facebook if they would rather not be tracked for ads, a source said on Tuesday.

The idea, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as the social media giant seeks to comply with a growing list of EU regulations designed to curb the power of U.S. big tech.

The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg makes its billions of dollars in profit by offering advertisers highly individualized data on users, but new European regulations and EU court decisions have made that practice harder to do.

The proposal has been put to EU regulators and is another example of big tech companies having to adapt long-held practices to meet oncoming EU rules.

The source close to the matter said subscribers in Europe could pay $10.50 a month for a desktop version of Instagram or Facebook, or $13.50 a month for Instagram on their phones.

Social media platforms have increasingly floated the idea of charging users for access to their sites, whether to comply with data privacy regulations or better guarantee the identity of users.

But the practice would be a major shift for the social media industry that grew exponentially over the past decade on an advertising model that made the site free for users in return for being tracked and seeing highly personalized ads.

The proposal could help meet several regulations, including the Digital Markets Act, which imposes a list of do’s and don’ts on big tech companies in Europe, including a ban on tracking users when they surf other sites if their consent hasn’t been clearly granted.

It also follows the recommendation of the EU’s highest court, which in a July decision said that Meta platform users who declined to be tracked should be offered an ad-free alternative “for an appropriate fee.”

That ruling echoed many previous rulings against Meta and other big tech firms in which the court ruled that the U.S. company must ask for permission to collect large amounts of personal data, striking down various workarounds that Meta had offered.

Meta declined to comment directly on the Wall Street Journal report but said in a statement that it still “believes in the value of free services which are supported by personalized ads.”

“However, we continue to explore options to ensure we comply with evolving regulatory requirements.”

Meta reported second-quarter revenues of $32 billion, of which $31.5 billion came from advertising. Some $7.2 billion of that came from Europe.
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New technologies are giving bionic hands some of the more complex features of human hands. Genia Dulot reports on a California company that is using touch feedback to give users a sense of the objects they are holding or interacting with
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A Kenyan parliamentary panel called on the country’s information technology regulator on Monday to shut down the operations of cryptocurrency project Worldcoin within the country until more stringent regulations are put in place.

The government suspended the project in early August following privacy objections over its scanning of users’ irises in exchange for a digital ID to create a new “identity and financial network.”

Worldcoin was rolled out in various countries around the world by Tools for Humanity, a company co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. It has also come under scrutiny in Britain, Germany and France.

The project still has a virtual presence in Kenya and can be accessed via the internet, even after the August suspension.

The regulatory Communications Authority of Kenya should “disable the virtual platforms of Tools for Humanity Corp and Tools for Humanity GmbH Germany [Worldcoin] including blacklisting the IP addresses of related websites,” the ad hoc panel of 18 lawmakers said in a report.

It also called for the suspension of the companies’ “physical presence in Kenya until there is a legal framework for regulation of virtual assets and virtual services providers.”

Worldcoin’s press office said it had “not seen anything official announced by the Committee directly.”

The panel’s report will be tabled at the National Assembly for consideration and adoption at a later date.

During the suspension of data collection in August, authorities said the project’s method of obtaining consumer consent in return for a monetary award of just over $50 at the time bordered on inducement.

Registering to use the platform involved long lines of people queuing to get their irises scanned. The parliamentary panel’s investigation found that Worldcoin may have scanned the eyes of minors as there was no age-verification mechanism during the exercise, its report said.

The panel also asked government ministries to develop regulations for crypto assets and firms that provide crypto services and called on the police to investigate Tools for Humanity and take any necessary legal action.
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A Swiss-led team has driven electric vans across Europe and the Arabian Peninsula to Qatar to showcase zero-emission battery powered vehicles, organizers said Sunday.

The five-strong Swiss and German team set out from Geneva on August 28 in two electric Volkswagen vans on a 6,500 kilometer (4,000 mile) journey that ended in Doha on Saturday.

“The motivation was really to do something unusual,” the group’s leader Frank Rinderknecht told AFP. “Certainly we did have the risk of not arriving — technical issues, health issues or an accident.”

The journey aimed to raise awareness about the environmental benefits of electric vehicles, he said. “If our trip put just a little bit of rethinking, of initiative, into people’s minds then I am not unhappy.”

The journey started with a crossing of the Swiss Alps and included what organizers believe was the first west-to-east crossing of Saudi Arabia with electric vehicles.

The team’s ID. Buzz VW vans — modelled on the German manufacturer’s Combi campervan — travelled across 12 countries, reaching Aqaba in Jordan from Turkey by ship.

However, the trip highlighted shortcomings of the charging infrastructure, Rinderknecht said, comparing the mismatch of technologies to the “early days of telecommunication.”

In Europe, the team had to use numerous apps to pay for charging points across different regions. In Jordan, they had to adapt their European systems to the Chinese hardware they found.

The journey to Doha was completed in partnership with the Geneva International Motor Show, which is being held outside the Swiss city for the first time since its inception in 1905.

The 10-day motor show to be held in Qatar from October 5 will feature 31 automotive brands and overlap with the October 8 Qatar Grand Prix at the Lusail International Circuit on Doha’s northern outskirts.

Saad Ali Al Kharji, deputy chairman of Qatar Tourism, said holding events like the motor show was part the gas-rich Gulf state’s “strategic vision of becoming the fastest-growing destination in the Middle East by 2030.”
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