A Pakistani engineer has designed a system to help developing countries avoid fuel imports by making ethanol with the millions of tons of straw that are wasted each year. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The U.S. “remains deeply concerned with China’s long-standing restrictions on freedom of expression online,” a State Department official said Thursday, reacting to Google’s reported plan to relaunch its search engine in China.

“We strongly object to all efforts by China to force U.S. companies to block or censor online content as a condition for market access,” the official said.

Google shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, citing government attempts to “limit free speech on the web.” But a company whistle-blower who spoke to the online publication The Intercept said Google was in the advanced stages of launching a custom Android search app in China that will comply with the Communist Party’s censorship policies on human rights, democracy, free speech and religion. 

The Intercept cited internal Google documents and people familiar with the rollout. The publication said the project, code-named Dragonfly, has been in development since 2017. It said the project began to progress more quickly following a December meeting between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and a senior Chinese government official.

According to the documents obtained by The Intercept, Google said it would automatically filter websites blocked by China’s so-called Great Firewall. Banned websites will be removed from the first page of search results with the disclaimer: “Some results may have been removed due to statutory requirements.”

Empty searches

The documents also say that Google’s app will “blacklist sensitive queries” by returning no results when people search for certain words or phrases.

“We provide a number of mobile apps in China … [to] help Chinese developers and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” a Google spokesman told VOA in a statement in response to the alleged plans.

China has 772 million internet users — more than any other country — and hundreds of millions of potential users who are not yet connected to the internet.

China’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has not commented on the plans.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and former presidential candidate, posted on Twitter that Google’s reported plans to set up “a censored search engine” in China were “very disturbing” and could help China “suppress the truth.”

VOA’s Nike Ching at the State Department contributed to this report.
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Apple made history Thursday when it became the first publicly listed U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion.

The tech giant’s share price climbed well over 2 percent in mid-session trading, boosting it about 9 percent higher since Tuesday, when it announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and a buyback of $20 billion worth of its own shares.

The Silicon Valley company’s stock has skyrocketed more than 50,000 percent since it went public in 1980, greatly exceeding the S&P 500’s impressive 2,000 percent gain during the same period.

Apple’s success was fueled in large part by its iPhone, which transformed it from a niche player in the burgeoning personal computer sector into a global technological powerhouse.

The company was co-founded by the late Steve Jobs, a product innovator who helped prevent the company’s collapse in the late 1990s.

As the company’s market value climbed over the decades, it revolutionized how consumers communicate with each other and how companies conduct business on a daily basis.

 
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One day after Facebook shut down 32 fake social media accounts that spewed politically divisive messages, U.S. lawmakers were warned that Russian efforts to confuse and polarize the American people are as robust and pernicious as ever. VOA Senate correspondent Michael Bowman reports both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are concerned.
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The U.S. Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military.       

The legislation, part of the Pentagon’s spending bill, was drafted after a Reuters investigation last year found software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and intelligence services.      

The final version of the bill was approved by the Senate in a 87-10 vote on Wednesday after passing the House last week. The spending bill is expected to be signed into law by Trump.      

Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to probe the internal workings of software, known as source code, could help Moscow discover vulnerabilities they could exploit to more easily attack U.S. government systems.      

The new rules were drafted by Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.

“This disclosure mandate is the first of its kind, and is necessary to close a critical security gap in our federal acquisition process,” Shaheen said in an emailed statement.

“The Department of Defense and other federal agencies must be aware of foreign source code exposure and other risky business practices that can make our national security systems vulnerable to adversaries,” she said.   

Disclosure + database   

The law would force U.S. and foreign technology companies to reveal to the Pentagon if they allowed cyber adversaries, like China or Russia, to probe software sold to the U.S. military.      

Companies would be required to address any security risks posed by the foreign source code reviews to the satisfaction of the Pentagon, or lose the contract.      

The legislation also creates a database, searchable by other government agencies, of which software was examined by foreign states that the Pentagon considers a cyber security risk.      

It makes the database available to public records requests, an unusual step for a system likely to include proprietary company secrets.       

Tommy Ross, a senior director for policy at the industry group The Software Alliance, said software companies had concerns that such legislation could force companies to choose between selling to the U.S. and foreign markets.

“We are seeing a worrying trend globally where companies are looking at cyber threats and deciding the best way to mitigate risk is to hunker down and close down to the outside world,” Ross told Reuters last week.

A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the legislation.      

Source code revealed

In order to sell in the Russian market, technology companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, SAP SE and McAfee have allowed a Russian defense agency to scour software source code for vulnerabilities, the Reuters investigation found last year.      

In many cases, Reuters found that the software companies had not informed U.S. agencies that Russian authorities had been allowed to conduct the source code reviews. In most cases, the U.S. military does not require comparable source code reviews before it buys software, procurement experts have told Reuters.

The companies had previously said the source code reviews were conducted by the Russians in company-controlled facilities, where the reviewer could not copy or alter the software. The companies said those steps ensured the process did not jeopardize the safety of their products.      

McAfee announced last year that it no longer allows government source code reviews. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has said none of its current software has gone through the process.      

SAP did not respond to requests for comment on the legislation. HPE and McAfee spokespeople declined further comment.    
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A little-known dispute over 3D-printed guns has morphed into a national legal debate in the last week, drawing attention to a technology that seems a bit of sci-fi fantasy and — to gun-control advocates — a dangerous way for criminals to get their hands on firearms that are easy to conceal and tough to detect.

The gun industry calls the outcry an overreaction that preys on unwarranted fears about a firearm that can barely shoot a round or two without disintegrating.

It also raises a host of constitutional questions involving First Amendment protections for free speech and Second Amendment rights to own guns.

Here are some questions and answers about the debate.

Q. What is behind the dispute?

A. Cody Wilson, the founder of Texas-based Defense Distributed, first posted downloadable blueprints for a handgun called the Liberator that could be made using a 3D printer in 2013. Within days it had been downloaded about 100,000 times until the State Department ordered him to cease, contending it violated federal export laws since some of the blueprints were saved by people outside the United States.

The dispute between Wilson and the federal government went on for years until this past June when they reached a settlement that paved the way for Wilson to resume posting the designs.

The State Department decision came amid an obscure administrative change — begun under the Obama administration — in how the weapons are regulated and administered. Military grade weapons remain under the purview of the State Department, while commercially available firearms fall under the Commerce Department. The settlement with Wilson determined that 3D-printed firearms are akin to more traditional firearms that aren’t subject to State Department regulations.

Wilson resumed sharing his blueprints for the gun the day the settlement went into effect last week.

​Q. Why does Wilson want the authority to post the designs on his website?

A. Wilson calls it a First Amendment issue. He believes the First Amendment gives him a constitutional right to disseminate the code to make a gun with a 3D printer.

“This is a very, very, very easy First Amendment question that I think people might be hesitant to accept because it involves guns and people don’t like guns,” said his lawyer, Josh Blackman.

And Wilson has a strong legal claim that distribution of the information is different than actually making an all-plastic firearm.

While it is a violation of the federal Undetectable Firearms Act to make, sell or possess a firearm that can’t be detected by magnetometers or metal detectors, what Wilson is doing is simply providing the information on how to make such a firearm.

“What Defense Distributed was doing was not making and then shipping the weapons overseas,” said Chuck James, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private lawyer with the Washington, D.C.-area firm of Williams Mullen. “They were making the data available on the web where it would be available to someone overseas.”

​Q. What kind of gun designs are available on the website?

A. Defense Distributed shows a variety of designs. The code for a 3D-printed gun is for what he calls the Liberator, which gets its name from a pistol American forces used during World War II.

His design includes a metal firing pin and a metal block. His site also includes blueprints to make various AR-platform long guns and some other handguns using more traditional means and materials.

Q. Are 3D-printed guns legal?

A. In 1988, the U.S. enacted the Undetectable Firearms Act, making it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess a firearm that couldn’t be detected by a metal detector. That law has been renewed several times by Congress and remains in effect.

If 3D-printed guns contain enough metal to be flagged by a metal detector, they are considered legal under U.S. law.

Gun-control advocates argue that the risks are too great to allow 3D-printed guns because even if they’re designed to include metal, it’s too easy for someone to not include those pieces or to remove them to skirt detection.

“It’s an absurdity. You can take the piece of metal out and put it back in at your own whims and you can take it out and walk through a metal detector undetected,” said Jonas Oransky, legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety.

Q. How well do 3D-printed guns work?

A. Gun experts and enthusiasts recoil at the suggestion that a 3D-printed gun is a true threat, calling the firearms mere novelties.

Unlike traditional firearms that can fire thousands of rounds in their lifetime, 3D-printed guns are notorious for usually lasting only a few rounds before they fall apart. They don’t have magazines that allow the usual nine or 15 rounds to be carried; instead, they usually hold a bullet or two and then must be manually loaded afterward. And they’re not usually very accurate either.

A video posted of a test by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2013 showed one of the guns produced from Wilson’s design — the Liberator — disintegrating into pieces after a single round was fired.

“People have got this Star Trek view” of the guns being futuristic marvels, said Chris Knox, communications director for The Firearms Coalition, a gun-rights group. “We’re not talking about exotic technology.”

Others are quick to point out that normal guns are readily available in the U.S. with little regulation, making 3D-printed guns a major hassle compared with regular weapons.

Q. What’s the status of the debate?

A. A federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order blocking Wilson from continuing to post the designs on his site. A hearing is to be held in that case next week.

In the meantime, President Donald Trump criticized the Department of Justice advising the State Department to reach a settlement with Wilson without first consulting with him.

Wilson’s website currently displays a banner asking people to help “to uncensor the site.” Clicking a link directs the person to a page to pay membership dues ranging from $5 a month to $1,000 for a lifetime.
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3-D printers are being used extensively in industry, research, teaching and hobbies, printing with metal, plastic and even edible material such as dough. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are experimenting with another kind of 3-D printing — with yarn. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Google declined Wednesday to confirm reports that it plans to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, where its main search platform was previously blocked, along with its YouTube video platform.

“We provide a number of mobile apps in China … [to] help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don’t comment on speculation about future plans,” a Google spokesperson told VOA in a statement.

The first report on the possible rollout came from The Intercept, and online news publication, which cited internal Google documents and people familiar with the purported plan.

The Intercept said the project, code-named Dragonfly, has been in development since last year. It said the project began to progress more quickly following a December meeting between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and a senior Chinese government official.

Search terms regarding democracy, human rights and peaceful protests will be among those blacklisted in the new search engine app, the report said. It added the search engine had already been demonstrated to Chinese government officials.

The report said a final version could be introduced within six to nine months, pending approval of Chinese officials.

China’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has not commented on the reported plans.

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican and former U.S. presidential candidate, posted on Twitter that Google should be given the “benefit of the doubt” but that the reported plans were still “very disturbing.”

​
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Top executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google will face lawmakers on Capitol Hill next month to explain what the social media giants are doing to combat foreign information operations.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Republican Sen. Richard Burr, and ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, made the announcement Wednesday, at the start of a hearing on how Russia and other countries and actors have been manipulating social media.

The goal of the September 5 hearing will be “to hear the plans they have in place, to press them to do more, and to work together to address this challenge,” Warner said.

“They can do better to protect our democracy,” he added. “I’m concerned that even after 18 months of study we are still only scratching the surface when it comes to Russia’s information warfare.”

Burr called the foreign information operations, like those being carried out by Russia, “an intolerable assault on the democratic foundation this republic was built on.”

“It’s also important that the American people know that these activities neither began nor ended with the 2016 elections” Burr said. He warned that activities like those identified recently by Facebook have been going beyond just social media, “creating events on our streets with real Americans unknowingly participating.”

Facebook Tuesday announced it had shut down 32 Facebook and Instagram accounts because they were “involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior,” much of it targeting left-wing American political groups.

Facebook said it was too early to say whether the accounts were being run by Russia, but an analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found signs pointing to “the Russian-speaking world.”

In a blog post, the lab noted similarities to activity by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), including “language patterns that indicate non-native English and consistent mistranslation, as well as an overwhelming focus on polarizing issues at the top of any given news cycle with content that remained emotive rather than fact-based.”

Facebook’s announcement followed a warning issued by Microsoft less than two weeks ago, which said hackers had targeted the campaigns of at least Congressional candidates in the upcoming election.

Microsoft said the phishing attacks, similar to ones employed by Russian-linked operatives to target the Republican and Democratic campaigns during the 2016 election, were thwarted.

Late last week, The Daily Beast reported one of the targets of those attacks was Missouri’s Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia.

During Wednesday’s senate hearing, a number of senators cautioned the issue is much bigger than the 2016 or 2018 elections.

“It is about the integrity of our society,” said Sen. Burr. “This is about national security.”

“It would be a mistake to think this is just about elections,” added Republican Sen. John Cornyn, noting similar techniques could be used to destroy reputations or tank stock prices.

Experts say some of that already is happening.

“On the state actor front we have seen evidence of campaigns targeting energy and agriculture,” said Renee DiResta, director of Research at New Knowledge.

“In agriculture, that’s taken the form of spreading fear about GMOs [genetically modified organisms],” she said.

“There’s a commercial dimension to this that’s underreported. There’s a lot more going on in the commercial space,” Graphika Founder and CEO John Kelly told lawmakers.

“Sometimes they’re tied, these political attacks and attack on corporations where corporations will be basically punished with falsely amplified boycott campaigns, and similar measures for doing something, which is politically not what Russia wants to see.”
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