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. 
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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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Apple is blaming a software bug and other issues tied to popular apps such as Instagram and Uber for causing its recently released iPhone 15 models to heat up and spark complaints about becoming too hot to handle.

The Cupertino, California, company said Saturday that it is working on an update to the iOS17 system that powers the iPhone 15 lineup to prevent the devices from becoming uncomfortably hot and is working with apps that are running in ways “causing them to overload the system.”

Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms, modified its social media app earlier this week to prevent it from heating up the device on the latest iPhone operating system.

Uber and other apps such as the video game Asphalt 9 are in the process of rolling out their updates, Apple said. It didn’t specify a timeline for when its own software fix would be issued but said no safety issues should prevent iPhone 15 owners from using their devices while awaiting the update.

“We have identified a few conditions which can cause iPhone to run warmer than expected,” Apple in a short statement provided to The Associated Press after media reports detailed overheating complaints that are peppering online message boards.

The Wall Street Journal amplified the worries in a story citing the overheating problem in its own testing of the new iPhones, which went on sale a week ago.

It’s not unusual for new iPhones to get uncomfortably warm during the first few days of use or when they are being restored with backup information stored in the cloud — issues that Apple already flagged for users. The devices also can get hot when using apps such as video games and augmented reality technology that require a lot of processing power, but the heating issues with the iPhone 15 models have gone beyond those typical situations.

In its acknowledgement, Apple stressed that the trouble isn’t related to the sleek titanium casing that houses the high-end iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max instead of the stainless steel used on older smartphones.

Apple also dismissed speculation that the overheating problem in the new models might be tied to a shift from its proprietary Lightning charging cable to the more widely used USB-C port that allowed it to comply with a mandate issued by European regulators.

Although Apple expressed confidence that the overheating issue can be quickly fixed with the upcoming software updates, the problem still could dampen sales of its marquee product at a time when the company has faced three consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in overall sales.
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The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether state laws that seek to regulate Facebook, TikTok, X and other social media platforms violate the Constitution.

The justices will review laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by Republican governors in Florida and Texas. While the details vary, both laws aim to prevent social media companies from censoring users based on their viewpoints.

The court’s announcement, three days before the start of its new term, comes as the justices continue to grapple with how laws written at the dawn of the digital age, or earlier, apply to the online world.

The justices had already agreed to decide whether public officials can block critics from commenting on their social media accounts, an issue that previously came up in a case involving then-President Donald Trump. The court dismissed the Trump case when his presidential term ended in January 2021.

Separately, the high court also could consider a lower-court order limiting executive branch officials’ communications with social media companies about controversial online posts.

The new case follows conflicting rulings by two appeals courts, one of which upheld the Texas law, while the other struck down Florida’s statute. By a 5-4 vote, the justices kept the Texas law on hold while litigation over it continues.

But the alignment was unusual. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to grant the emergency request from two technology industry groups that challenged the law in federal court.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to remain in effect. In dissent, Alito wrote, “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news.”

Proponents of the laws, including Republican elected officials in several states that have similar measures, have sought to portray social media companies as generally liberal in outlook and hostile to ideas outside of that viewpoint, especially from the political right.

The tech sector warned that the laws would prevent platforms from removing extremism and hate speech.

Without offering any explanation, the justices had put off consideration of the case even though both sides agreed the high court should step in.

The justices had other social media issues before them last year, including a plea the court did not embrace to soften legal protections tech companies have for posts by their users.
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On the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang delivered a speech at the Concordia Annual Summit on digital democracy and artificial intelligence. VOA spoke with Tang about how AI might help break through China’s censorship and the challenges and opportunities the technology brings to global democracy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VOA: You mentioned the concept of AI governance in your speech. In addition to being applied to democratic countries, can this concept also be applied to totalitarian countries?

Tang: From 2010 to 2012 and 2013, consultative democracy was also studied in some places in the CCP [Chinese Communist Party], but not at the central level. Later, including freedom of the press, assembly, association and expression, all aspects were restricted. If you look at the papers, there have been very few studies promoting consultative democracy through the internet in recent years. Conceptually and theoretically, if we look at the situation in 2000, it seemed possible. But if we look at the situation in recent years, there seems to be no research on this. Maybe the premise is freedom of the press, and people must fully understand what the truth is. Regardless of consultation or deliberation, this foundation is needed. If freedom of the press is deprived, it will not be easy to develop further.

VOA: What do you think of the potential and limitations of artificial intelligence in China?

Tang: Artificial intelligence technology can turn public information on the entire Internet into material. After the [open-source] model is successfully created, it can actually be saved on a USB flash drive. Anyone can run this model on a laptop or personal computer, which greatly challenges censorship. In the past, as long as a comprehensive totalitarian government guarded access to Google, Wikipedia or other websites, it would make it difficult for their people to get the truth. But now, as long as netizens can get the [open-source] language models on a flash drive … they will no longer need an internet connection, and they can always find out what happened and when exactly did it happen.

VOA: Former White House deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger has proposed punching holes in China’s Great Firewall. Is that possible?

Tang: If the holes are temporary, they will be repaired once people find them. The language models I just mentioned don’t mean that there needs to be holes continuously, but that if there is a certain way to send information in, there is no need to connect to the outside anymore. The bad use is that if a Trojan horse is sent in, there is no need to control the computer anymore, and it can conduct network attacks by itself. This is a bad use. But there is another use, which is to send in the truth, and after that, it can even tell the users in the interactive Q&A format, including showing contemporaneous photos and videos from the time.

VOA: Does your upbringing and way of thinking help you with your current work?

Tang: I am nonbinary not only in terms of gender but also in terms of ideology. Many people have to make choices, such as the left and the right [politically]. For me, they all coexist. I don’t particularly feel I’m very close to or very far from half of the people because they are rightists or leftists. I don’t think that way. Everyone is at the same distance. If I can’t understand the ideas of a certain side, I will feel I’m not plural enough, and I should be in touch with them more.
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Iran claimed on Wednesday it successfully launched an imaging satellite into space, a move that could further ratchet up tensions with Western nations that fear its space technology could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

Iranian Communication Minister Isa Zarepour said the Noor-3 satellite had been put in an orbit 450 kilometers (280 miles) above Earth’s surface, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. It was not clear when the launch took place.

There was no immediate acknowledgment from Western officials of the launch or of the satellite being put into orbit. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran has had a series of failed launches in recent years.

The most recent launch was carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has had more success. Gen. Hossein Salami, the top commander of the Guard, told state TV that the launch had been a “victory” and that the satellite will collect data and images.

Authorities released footage of a rocket taking off from a mobile launcher without saying where the launch occurred. Details in the video corresponded with a Guard base near Shahroud, some 330 kilometers (205 miles) northeast of the capital, Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran’s civilian space program operates.

The Guard operates its own space program and military infrastructure parallel to Iran’s regular armed forces and answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It launched its first satellite into space in April 2020. But the head of the U.S. Space Command later dismissed it as a “tumbling webcam in space” that would not provide vital intelligence. Western sanctions bar Iran from importing advanced spying technology.

The United States has alleged that Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community’s 2022 threat assessment claims the development of satellite launch vehicles “shortens the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.

Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003.

Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. The program has seen recent troubles, however. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, another satellite-carrying rocket.

A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 killed three researchers, authorities said at the time. A launchpad rocket explosion later that year drew the attention of then-President Donald Trump, who taunted Iran with a tweet showing what appeared to be a U.S. surveillance photo of the site.

Tensions are already high with Western nations over Iran’s nuclear program, which has steadily advanced since Trump five years ago withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and restored crippling sanctions on Iran.

Efforts to revive the agreement reached an impasse more than a year ago. Since then, the IAEA has said Iran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels to build “several” nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so. Iran is also building a new underground nuclear facility that would likely be impervious to U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. Both countries have said they would take military action if necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Iran has expressed willingness to return to the 2015 nuclear deal but says the U.S. should first ease the sanctions.
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In Goma, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, residents say plastic and other waste is increasingly polluting Lake Kivu. A new initiative is keeping some of that waste out of the lake. Austere Malivika has this report from Goma, narrated by Aida Issa.
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Wildfires fueled by climate change have ravaged communities from Maui to the Mediterranean this summer, killing many people, exhausting firefighters and fueling demand for new solutions. Enter artificial intelligence.

Firefighters and startups are using AI-enabled cameras to scan the horizon for signs of smoke. A German company is building a constellation of satellites to detect fires from space. And Microsoft is using AI models to predict where the next blaze could be sparked.

With wildfires becoming larger and more intense as the world warms, firefighters, utilities and governments are scrambling to get ahead of the flames by tapping into the latest AI technology — which has stirred both fear and excitement for its potential to transform life. While increasingly stretched first responders hope AI offers them a leg up, humans are still needed to check that the tech is accurate.

California’s main firefighting agency this summer started testing an AI system that looks for smoke from more than 1,000 mountaintop camera feeds and is now expanding it statewide.

The system is designed to find “abnormalities” and alert emergency command centers, where staffers will confirm whether it’s indeed smoke or something else in the air.

“The beauty of this is that it immediately pops up on the screen and those dispatchers or call takers are able to interrogate that screen” and determine whether to send a crew, said Phillip SeLegue, staff chief of intelligence for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The cameras, part of a network that workers previously had to watch, provide billions of bytes of data for the AI system to digest. While humans still need to confirm any smoke sightings, the system helps reduce fatigue among staffers typically monitoring multiple screens and cameras, alerting them to look only when there’s possible fire or smoke, SeLegue said.

It’s already helped. A battalion chief got a smoke alert in the middle of the night, confirmed it on his cellphone and called a command center in San Diego to scramble first responders to the remote area.

The dispatchers said that if they hadn’t been alerted, the fire would have been much larger because it likely wouldn’t have been noticed until the next morning, SeLegue said.

San Francisco startup Pano AI takes a similar approach, mounting cameras on cell towers that scan for smoke and alert customers, including fire departments, utility companies and ski resorts.

The cameras use computer vision machine learning, a type of AI.

“They’re trained very specifically to detect smoke or not, and we train them with images of smoke and images of not smoke,” CEO Sonia Kastner said.

The images are combined with feeds from government weather satellites that scan for hotspots, along with other data sources, such as social media posts.

The technology gets around one of the main problems in the traditional way of detecting wildfires — relying on 911 calls from passers-by that need confirmation from staffers before crews and water-dropping planes can be deployed.

“Generally, only one in 20 of these 911 calls are actually a wildfire. Even during fire season, it might be a cloud or fog or a barbecue,” Kastner said.

Pano AI’s systems do still rely on final confirmation, with managers playing a time lapse of the camera feed to ensure it’s smoke rising.

For fighting forest fires, “technology is becoming really essential,” said Larry Bekkedahl, senior vice president of energy delivery at Portland General Electric, Oregon’s largest utility and a Pano AI customer.

Utility companies sometimes play a role in sparking wildfires, when their power lines are knocked down by wind or struck by falling trees. Hawaii’s electric utility acknowledged that its power lines started a devastating blaze in Maui this summer after apparently being downed by high winds.

PGE, which provides electricity to 51 cities in Oregon, has deployed 26 Pano AI cameras, and Bekkedahl said they have helped speed up response and coordination with emergency services.

Previously, fire departments were “running around looking for stuff and not even really knowing exactly where it’s at,” he said. The cameras help detect fires quicker and get teams on the ground faster, shaving up to two hours off response times.

“That’s significant in terms of how fast that fire can can spread and grow,” Bekkedahl said.

Using AI to detect smoke from fires “is relatively easy,” said Juan Lavista Ferres, chief data scientist at Microsoft.

“What is not easy is to have enough cameras that cover enough places,” he said, pointing to vast, remote areas in northern Canada that have burned this summer.

Ferres’ team at Microsoft has been developing AI models to predict where fires are likely to start. They have fed the model with maps of areas that burned previously, along with climate and geospatial data.

The system has its limitations — it can’t predict random events like a lightning strike. But it can sift through historical weather and climate data to identify patterns, such as areas that are typically drier. Even a road, which indicates people are nearby, is a risk factor, Ferres said.

“It’s not going to get it all perfectly right,” he said. “But what it can do is it can build a probability map (based on) what happened in the past.”

The technology, which Microsoft plans to offer as an open-source tool, can help first responders trying to figure out where to focus their limited resources, Ferres said.

Another company is looking to the heavens for a solution. German startup OroraTech analyzes satellite images with artificial intelligence.

Taking advantage of advances in camera, satellite and AI technology, OroraTech has launched two mini satellites about the size of a shoebox into low orbit, about 550 kilometers above Earth’s surface. The Munich-based company has ambitions to send up eight more next year and eventually put 100 into space.

As wildfires swept central Chile this year, OroraTech said it provided thermal images at night when aerial drones are used less frequently.

Weeks after OroraTech launched its second satellite, it detected a fire near the community of Keg River in northern Alberta, where flames burned remote stretches of boreal forest repeatedly this summer.

“There are algorithms on the satellite, very efficient ones to detect fires even faster,” CEO Thomas Gruebler said.

The AI also takes into account vegetation and humidity levels to identify flare-ups that could spawn devastating megafires. The technology could help thinly stretched firefighting agencies direct resources to blazes with the potential to cause the most damage.

“Because we know exactly where the fires are, we can see how the fires will propagate,” Gruebler said. “So, which fire will be the big fire in one day and which will stop on their own.”
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NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.

Scientists estimate the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu but won’t know for sure until the container is opened. Some spilled and floated away when the spacecraft scooped up too much and rocks jammed the container’s lid during collection three years ago.

Japan, the only other country to bring back asteroid samples, gathered about a teaspoon in a pair of asteroid missions.

The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the biggest haul from beyond the moon. Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, the samples will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed.

Osiris-Rex, the mothership, rocketed away on the $1 billion mission in 2016. It reached Bennu two years later and, using a long stick vacuum, grabbed rubble from the small roundish space rock in 2020. By the time it returned, the spacecraft had logged 4 billion miles (6.2 billion kilometers).

NASA’s recovery effort in Utah included helicopters as well as a temporary clean room set up at the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range. The samples will be flown Monday morning to a new lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The building already houses the hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of moon rocks gathered by the Apollo astronauts more than a half-century ago.

The mission’s lead scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, will accompany the samples to Texas. The opening of the container in Houston in the next day or two will be “the real moment of truth,” given the uncertainty over the amount inside, he said ahead of the landing.

Engineers estimate the canister holds 250 grams (8.82 ounces) of material from Bennu, plus or minus 100 grams (plus or minus 3.53 ounces). Even at the low end, it will easily surpass the minimum requirement of the mission, Lauretta said.

It will take a few weeks to get a precise measurement, said NASA’s lead curator Nicole Lunning.

NASA plans a public show-and-tell in October.

Currently orbiting the sun 50 million miles (81 million kilometers) from Earth, Bennu is about one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometer) across, roughly the size of the Empire State Building but shaped like a spinning top. It’s believed to be the broken fragment of a much larger asteroid.

During a two-year survey, Osiris-Rex found Bennu to be a chunky rubble pile full of boulders and craters. The surface was so loose that the spacecraft’s vacuum arm sank a foot or two (0.5 meters) into the asteroid, sucking up more material than anticipated and jamming the lid.

These close-up observations may come in handy late in the next century. Bennu is expected to come dangerously close to Earth in 2182 — possibly close enough to hit. The data gleaned by Osiris-Rex will help with any asteroid-deflection effort, according to Lauretta.

Osiris-Rex is already chasing after the asteroid Apophis and will reach it in 2029.

This was NASA’s third sample return from a deep-space robotic mission. The Genesis spacecraft dropped off bits of solar wind in 2004, but the samples were compromised when the parachute failed, and the capsule slammed into the ground. The Stardust spacecraft successfully delivered comet dust in 2006.

NASA’s plans to return samples from Mars are on hold after an independent review board criticized the cost and complexity. The Martian rover Perseverance has spent the past two years collecting core samples for eventual transport to Earth.
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