Access to clean and drinkable water is challenging for residents in Lahore because the tap water in many parts of the Pakistani city is polluted. A team of engineering students is working hard to create an affordable filtration system so every home can have safe water. VOA’s Saman Khan visited their lab and filed this report. Miguel Amaya narrates.
…
Amid escalating trade friction with the United States, China appears to be courting Europe to fill the gaps in providing opportunities for technology transfers. Analysts, however, are urging Europe to be wary in its dealings with China. They say it will be political and economically unwise for Europe to take advantage of the Sino-U.S. dispute and allow China to continue unfair trade practices that include forced tech transfers and intellectual property theft.
The U.S. has accused China of using “state-led efforts to force, strong-arm and even steal U.S. technology and intellectual property.”
Rob Atkinson, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), says Europe should stop cutting deals with China that he says will offset the Trump administration’s efforts to punish Beijing.
In early July, the U.S. launched a first round of tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods. China’s tariffs on $34 billion of U.S. imports, including soybeans, also took effect at the same time. U.S. President Donald Trump last week vowed to impose tariffs on all $505 billion worth of Chinese imports. China has vowed to retaliate if the U.S. slaps more tariffs on Chinese goods in the coming months.
The U.S. and China are the world’s two biggest economies.
Made in China 2025
China’s tech ambition, unveiled in its “Made in China 2025” program, is believed to be at the core of its trade war with the U.S.
To avoid upsetting Washington, China has downplayed the initiative, which was first introduced in 2015 with the goal of comprehensively upgrading China’s high-tech industries at home. A recent official report, however, concluded that China is still far from being a global tech leader.
According to the South China Morning Post, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently learned that 30 of the country’s largest conglomerates rely heavily on imported components used in industries that produce rockets, large aircraft and even automobiles.
Exaggerated tech prowess
“The Chinese leadership wants to have it both ways. They want to tell their domestic population that they are [tech] leaders and they want to tell the rest of the world that they are not because they are afraid that, if they are seen as really big technology leaders or close to leaders, other countries will more actively push back against its unfair trade practices,” ITIF’s Atkinson said.
Chris Dong, director of China research at market intelligence firm IDC, called the tech gaps between the two economies “significant” in not only components, but also innovation competency, fundamental engineering and business-sector transformations. Dong says China focuses its IT spending on hardware and infrastructure buildouts while the U.S. spends mostly on software and service in transforming digital technology.
“The prosperity of China’s Internet economy, fueled by vast consumer technology adoptions, abundant capitals, and government’s policy and financial support, should not mislead domestic perception away from the true fact that China has an overall growing but weak technology strength,” Dong said in an email to VOA.
Forced tech transfer to continue
The U.S. boycott, however, is unlikely to stop China from advancing technological developments, according to an industry insider.
“China for sure will continue its technology development regardless, if [the U.S.] has turned hostile. We still hope to seek cooperation, whether it is cooperation between China and the U.S. or Europe. Collaboration will lead to a win-win situation,” the insider said on condition of anonymity.
“China still keeps a certain level of R&D capacity. [The trade dispute] will only slow down its pace of catching up. The U.S. is unfriendly now. But Europe still looks friendly. China may turn to Europe for [coveted] tech transfer as long as Europe isn’t as hostile as the U.S.,” said Kuo-yuan Liang, president of Taiwan-based Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute.
The economist said he expects China to continue its forced technology transfer practices from foreign investors to Chinese operations, using its market access as an incentive to achieve its technological goal.
Recent statistics released by the Baker McKenzie and Rhodium Groups also supported the trend.
China’s pivot to Europe
The firms’ research found that the value of China’s merger and acquisition activities in Europe reached $22 billion in the first half of this year – nine times of that in North America during the same period.
Adam Dunnett, secretary-general of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, believed the sharp ratio has more to do with a decrease in capital flows to the U.S. than an increase into the EU.
He added that investment intended to acquire technology isn’t problematic, but that what is at issue is the degree of state involvement and the true motivation behind certain investments.
“If these decisions are demonstrably driven by market forces, then Europe welcomes them; however, due to the lack of transparency of many Chinese investments, even perfectly legitimate capital flows are increasingly being scrutinized,” Dunnett wrote in an email to VOA.
He added that European businesses shared similar concerns with the U.S. about China’s “market-distorting actions” including forced tech transfer and infringements of intellectual property rights.
“China has …taken some action to improve the situation, but the overall actual impact has been very limited. Tensions will remain, and potentially worsen, until results are felt by international firms on the ground,” he concluded.
U.S. stock indexes dipped on Monday, led by losses in shares of Amazon and technology companies, as investors awaited quarterly reports from a host of marquee names to gauge the impact of an escalating trade conflict between the United States and China.
Amazon.com slipped 1.4 percent and was the biggest drag on the benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq after U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the online giant.
The S&P information technology sector fell 0.55 percent. Apple was down 0.83 percent, while Google-parent Alphabet dipped 0.4 ahead of results after markets close.
A drop in shares of chipmakers such as Intel, Nvidia, Micron also pressured the index, the biggest decliners among the 11 main S&P sectors.
Investors are also worried that the U.S.-Sino trade war could spill over to the currency markets. Trump has criticized the dollar’s strength, while accusing China of manipulating the yuan, which Beijing has denied.
“We have a whole plate of issues for investors to deal with, including currency manipulation, which is going to tie into the trade war,” said Andre Bakhos, managing director at New Vines Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey.
“Investors are waiting for more earnings news to create a convincing direction for the market.”
About 180 S&P companies, including Ford Motor, 3M Co and Boeing, as well as a host of high-flying technology names such as Facebook, Twitter and Intel will report later in the week.
Second-quarter earnings season has been healthy so far, with analysts’ profit growth forecast now at 22 percent, up from 20.7 percent on July 1, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Hasbro rose 11.1 percent, the most on the benchmark S&P 500, after the toymaker’s quarterly revenue and profit topped analysts’ estimates.
At 9:57 a.m. EDT the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 27.15 points, or 0.11 percent, at 25,030.97, the S&P 500 was down 4.76 points, or 0.17 percent, at 2,797.07 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 40.45 points, or 0.52 percent, at 7,779.75.
Investors are also tracking the bond market, where yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note hit a one-month high of 2.90 percent.
The financial sector rose 0.81 percent, the most among the three S&P sectors trading higher.
Among stocks, shares of Illinois Tool Works dropped 6.9 percent after the industrial company cut its full-year profit forecast and margins forecast, blaming the strong dollar.
Tesla’s shares fell 5.2 percent after a report that the electric car maker has turned to some suppliers for a refund of previously made payments in a bid to turn a profit.
Hospital operator LifePoint Health surged 33.8 percent on agreeing to be bought by Apollo Global Management LLC in a deal valued at about $5.6 billion.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.56-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 1.63-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded 10 new 52-week highs and three new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 40 new highs and 25 new lows.
…
Two-thirds of the world’s population currently lives with water shortages at least part of the year, according to one estimate. And climate change and growing populations are expected to stretch water supplies even further. Experts are looking for new ways to capture this precious resource. In some places, they are harvesting water from fog. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
…
The United States has some incredible natural geological features: towering mesas, tall spires of limestone rock, erupting geysers and gravity-defying stone sculptures. Faith Lapidus reports on efforts to ensure that if and when gravity starts to win, land managers are not taken by surprise.
…
Facebook says it has suspended working with Boston-based analytics firm Crimson Hexagon until it can determine how the firm collects and shares Facebook and Instagram user data.
Facebook announced the suspension Friday.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the suspension and said that one of Crimson Hexagon’s clients is a Russian nonprofit with ties to the Kremlin.
Facebook said that Crimson Hexagon is cooperating with the investigation and there is no evidence that Crimson Hexagon obtained Facebook or Instagram information inappropriately.
“We don’t allow developers to build surveillance tools using information from Facebook or Instagram,” Facebook said in a statement Friday. “We take these allegations seriously and have suspended these apps while we investigate.”
Chris Bingham, Crimson Hexagon’s, chief technology officer, said in a blog Friday his company “only collects publicly available social media data that anyone can access.”
He added, “Government entities that leverage the Crimson Hexagon platform do so for the same reasons as many of our other nongovernment customers: a broad-based and aggregate understanding of the public’s perception, preferences and sentiment about matters of concern to them.”
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica inappropriately obtained user data from millions of Facebook users.
…
For years denim jeans have been finished in foreign factories where workers use manual and automated techniques such as scraping with sandpaper or other abrasives to make the jeans appear worn and more comfortable to wear. But things are changing in the fashion world. As VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports, fashion companies are going digital to speed up the design and manufacturing process.
…
WhatsApp has announced changes for its 200 million users in India following the spread of viral messages via the app that resulted in deadly mob attacks.
India’s government has threatened to take WhatsApp to court, saying “…the medium used for such propagation cannot evade responsibility and accountability.” The information technology ministry said, “If they remain mute spectators they are liable to be treated as abettors and thereafter face consequent legal action.”
The Facebook-owned messaging app said it will limit Indian users’ ability to forward messages, allowing only five contacts at a time to receive them.
The firm said it will also remove the quick forward button placed next to media messages.
Both moves are designed to make stop the mass forwards that have resulted in the mob attacks.
India is WhatsApp’s largest market.
…
President Donald Trump lashed out Thursday after Brussels hit US tech giant Google with a record fine, and warned he would no longer allow Europe to take “advantage” of the United States.
“I told you so! The European Union just slapped a Five Billion Dollar fine on one of our great companies, Google,” Trump tweeted in reaction to the 4.34 billion euro penalty imposed on Google for abusing the dominance of its mobile operating system.
“They truly have taken advantage of the US, but not for long!” he said.
In announcing the fine on Wednesday, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager accused Google of using the Android system’s near-stranglehold on smartphones and tablets to promote the use of its own Google search engine while shutting out rivals.
The decision, which followed a three-year EU investigation, comes as fears of a transatlantic trade war mount because of President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports.
The new sanction nearly doubles the previous record EU antitrust fine of 2.4 billion euros, which also targeted Google, in that case for the Silicon Valley titan’s shopping comparison service in 2017.
Denmark’s Vestager ordered Google to “put an effective end to this conduct within 90 days or face penalty payments” of up to five percent of its average daily turnover.
The Google decision came one week before European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker was due to travel to the United States for crucial talks with the American president on the tariffs dispute and other issues.
Google chief Sundar Pichai immediately said the firm would appeal.
“Today’s decision rejects the business model that supports Android, which has created more choice for everyone, not less. We intend to appeal,” he said in a blog post.
Google provides Android free to smartphone manufacturers and generates most of its revenue from selling advertisements that appear along with search results.
The EU says Android is used on around 80 percent of mobile devices, both in Europe and worldwide.
The Android case originated when a lobbying group called FairSearch — with members then including huge tech companies like Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle — complained that Google was unfairly tilting the field of competition.
Google’s parent company Alphabet ranked as the fifth largest information technology company in the world in 2017, with global revenue of $111 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
That figure represented a doubling in global revenue in only four years.
…
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company shot a capsule higher into space Wednesday than it’s ever done before.
The New Shepard rocket blasted off from West Texas on the company’s latest test flight. Once the booster separated, the capsule’s escape motor fired, lifting the spacecraft to an altitude of 389,846 feet. That’s 74 miles or 119 kilometers.
It’s part of a safety system intended to save lives once space tourists and others climb aboard for suborbital hops.
Wednesday’s passenger was Mannequin Skywalker, an instrumented dummy in a blue flight suit that’s flown before, plus science experiments.
The booster and capsule, both repeat fliers, landed successfully. It was the ninth test flight and lasted 11 minutes.
“Crew Capsule looks great even after it was pushed hard by the escape test. Astronauts would have had an exhilarating ride and safe landing,” Bezos said in a tweet. “Great engineering and the lucky boots worked again.”
Blue Origin has yet to announce when it will start selling tickets or how much flights will cost. Launch commentator Ariane Cornell promised it would be soon. “It’s coming,” she said.
Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, aims to send people and payloads into orbit from Cape Canaveral. Those missions will rely on the bigger, more powerful New Glenn rocket still under development.
He’s named his rockets after NASA’s original Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
…
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has apologized for calling a British diver involved in the Thailand cave rescue a pedophile, saying he spoke in anger but was wrong to do so.
There was no immediate public reaction from diver Vern Unsworth to Musk’s latest tweets.
Musk’s initial tweet calling Unsworth a “pedo” was a response to a TV interview Unsworth gave. In it, he said Musk and SpaceX engineers orchestrated a “PR stunt” by sending a small submarine to help divers rescue the 12 Thai soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave. Unsworth said the submarine, which wasn’t used, wouldn’t have worked anyway.
“My words were spoken in anger after Mr. Unsworth said several untruths …” Musk tweeted.
“Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.”
Musk’s Sunday tweet, later deleted, had sent investors away from Tesla stock, which fell nearly 3 percent Monday but recovered 4.1 percent Tuesday. Unsworth told CNN earlier this week that he was considering legal action. He did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
In his latest tweets, Musk said the mini-sub was “built as an act of kindness & according to specifications from the dive team leader.”
Musk has 22.3 million followers and his active social media presence has sometimes worked well for Tesla. The company has said in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it doesn’t need to advertise because it gets so much free media attention.
But straying away from defending his companies into personal insult brought Musk some unfavorable attention at a time when Tesla, worth more than $52 billion, is deep in debt and struggling for profitability.
In northern Thailand on Wednesday, the 12 Thai soccer players and their coach answered questions from journalists, their first meeting with the media since their rescues last week. Doctors said all are healthy.
…
Known as the largest education, and research complex in the world, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is a collection of 19 museums that house more than 140 million unique items. It’s no wonder it’s been called “the nation’s attic.” But there’s a novel addition to the venerable complex — a smart new technology that interacts with visitors. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to the Smithsonian’s newest resident.
…
Known as the largest education, and research complex in the world, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is a collection of 19 museums that house more than 140 million unique items. It’s no wonder it’s been called “the nation’s attic.” But there’s a novel addition to the venerable complex — a smart new technology that interacts with visitors. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to the Smithsonian’s newest resident.
…
Facebook announced several new hires of top academics in the field of artificial intelligence Tuesday, among them a roboticist known for her work at Disney making animated figures move in more human-like ways.
The hires raise a big question — why is Facebook interested in robots, anyway?
It’s not as though the social media giant is suddenly interested in developing mechanical friends, although it does use robotic arms in some of its data centers. The answer is even more central to the problem of how AI systems work today.
Today, most successful AI systems have to be exposed to millions of data points labeled by humans — like, say, photos of cats — before they can learn to recognize patterns that people take for granted. Similarly, game-playing bots like Google’s computerized Go master AlphaGo Zero require tens of thousands of trials to learn the best moves from their failures.
Creating systems that require less data and have more common sense is a key goal for making AI smarter in the future.
“Clearly we’re missing something in terms of how humans can learn so fast,” Yann LeCun, Facebook’s chief AI scientist, said in a call with reporters last week. “So far the best ideas have come out of robotics.”
Among the people Facebook is hiring are Jessica Hodgins , the former Disney researcher; and Abhinav Gupta, her colleague at Carnegie Mellon University who is known for using robot arms to learn how to grasp things.
Pieter Abbeel, a roboticist at University of California, Berkeley and co-founder of the robot-training company Covariant.ai, says the robotics field has benefits and constraints that push progress in AI. For one, the real world is naturally complex, so robotic AI systems have to deal with unexpected, rare events. And real-world constraints like a lack of time and the cost of keeping machinery moving push researchers to solve difficult problems.
“Robotics forces you into many reality checks,” Abbeel said. “How good are these algorithms, really?”
There are other more abstract applications of learnings from robotics, says Berkeley AI professor Ken Goldberg. Just like teaching a robot to escape from a computerized maze, other robots change their behavior depending on whether actions they took got them closer to a goal. Such systems could even be adapted to serve ads, he said — which just happens to be the mainstay of Facebook’s business.
“It’s not a static decision, it’s a dynamic one,” Goldberg said.
In an interview, Hodgins expressed an interest in a wide range of robotics research, everything from building a “compelling humanoid robot” to creating a mechanical servant to “load and unload my dishwasher.”
While she acknowledged the need to imbue robots with more common sense and have them learn with fewer examples, she also said her work in animation could lead to a new form of sharing — one in which AI-powered tools could help one show off a work of pottery in 3-D, for example.
“One thing I hope we’ll be able to do is explore AI support for creativity,” she said.
For Facebook, planting a flag in the hot field also allows it to be competitive for AI talent emerging from universities, Facebook’s LeCun said.
Bart Selman, a Cornell computer science professor AI expert, said it’s a good idea for Facebook to broaden its reach in AI and take on projects that might not be directly related to the company’s business — something that’s a little more “exciting” — the way Google did with self-driving cars, for example.
This attracts not just attention, but students, too. The broader the research agenda, the better the labs become, he said.
…
Prototypes? Passe. Fashion company Betabrand saw that knitwear was a hot style in sneakers and wanted to quickly jump on the trend for dressier shoes. It put a poll up on its website asking shoppers what style they liked, and based on that had a shoe for sale online in just one week.
What web shoppers saw was a 3-D rendering — no actual shoe existed yet. Creating a traditional prototype, tweaking the design and making a sample would have taken six to nine months, and the company might have missed out on the interest in knit.
“The web attention span is short,” said Betabrand CEO Chris Lindland. “So if you can develop and create in a short time, you can be a real product-development machine.”
Shoppers looking at the shoe online could examine the peekaboo detail or check out how the sole was put together, as they would from photos of a real product. They don’t get the actual shoes instantaneously — they have to wait a few months. But the use of digital technology in designing and selling means hot trends are still getting to people far faster than under the old system.
“Retailers and brands who are embracing this are going to be winners of the future,” said David Bassuk, managing director of consulting group AlixPartners. “This is flipping the business model on its head.”
It’s a big cultural change for clothing makers. For decades, the process meant designers sketched ideas on paper, a design got approved, and the sketches went to a factory that created prototypes. Designers and product developers made tweaks and sent prototypes back and forth. Once a final version was approved, it was sent to the factory to be copied for mass production. Getting something from design to a store could take at least a year.
Now, some companies have designers sketching on high-resolution tablets with software that can email 3-D renderings of garments with specifications straight to factories, as better technology makes the images look real and the pressure to get shoppers new products swiftly intensifies. The goal is to reduce to six months or less the time it takes to get to store shelves.
Even chains like H&M, which once set the standard for speed by flying in frequent small batches, are realizing that’s not fast enough. H&M, which has seen sales slow, is starting to digitize certain areas of its manufacturing process.
For clothing makers and retailers, the shift means design decisions can happen closer to when the fashions actually hit the shelves or website. That means less guessing so stores aren’t stuck with piles of unsold clothes that need to be discounted.
The 3-D technology is used in just 2 percent of the overall supply networks, estimates Spencer Fung, group CEO of Li & Fung, which consults with more than 8,000 retailers including Betabrand and 15,000 suppliers globally. But he believes that will change as retailers begin prioritizing speed and realize that cutting down on design time and prototypes saves money.
“You can actually essentially create an entire collection before you even cut one garment,” said Whitney Cathcart, CEO of the Cathcart Technologies consulting firm. “So it reduces waste, it reduces lead times, it allows decision making in real time, so the entire process becomes more efficient.”
Fung imagines a scenario where a social media post with a celebrity in a red dress gets 500,000 “likes.” An alert goes to a retailer that this item is trending. Within hours, a digital sample of a similar dress is on its website. A factory can start to produce the dress in days.
“Consumers see it and they want it now,” says Michael Londrigan of fashion college LIM in New York. “How do you bring it to market so you don’t miss those dollars?”
Nicki Rector of the Sonoma Valley area in California bought a pair of Betabrand’s Western-style boots last summer based on the 3-D rendering.
“It looked real,” said Rector, who examined the images of the heel and the insoles. She didn’t worry about buying off a digital image, reasoning that if you’re buying online you can’t really know how something’s going to fit until you put it on your feet. She said knowing it was designed from customer input also helped make the wait OK.
Betabrand has sold 40,000 pairs of shoes priced from $128 to $168 over the past year, all from digital renderings, and plans to add 15 to 20 such projects this year.
At a Levi Strauss & Co. research and development facility in San Francisco, designers use programs that offer the look of a finished garment and let them make changes like adding pockets quickly, rather than requiring a new prototype. When they’re set, they can send a file to the factory for mass production. Using digital samples can shorten the design time to one week or less from an eight-week timeframe, Levi’s says.
Few companies are yet selling directly to shoppers off digital renderings like Betabrand, and are instead showing them to store buyers or to factories rather than using traditional samples.
Xcel Brands uses them for its own brand of women’s tops and for the company’s Judith Ripka jewelry line. The company, which also makes clothes for Isaac Mizrahi and Halston, will start using them for other brands within the year. CEO Robert D’Loren hopes to start putting 3-D samples on its website next year.
Tommy Hilfiger has an interactive touchscreen table where buyers can view every item in the collection and create custom orders. And Deckers Brands, the maker of Ugg boots, is using digital renderings of the classic boot in 10 colors, eliminating the need for 10 prototypes for store buyers. That helps reduce cost and increases speed.
Using digital designs also mean the exact specifications for different Levi’s design finishes can be uploaded to a machine that uses lasers to scrape away at jeans. No need to teach employees how to execute a designer’s vision, in a minute and a half the lasers have given the jeans the exact weathered look that took workers wielding pumice stones twenty minutes to half an hour.
“Thirty years ago, jeans were only available in three shades — rinse, stonewash and bleach,” said Bart Sights, head of the Levi’s Eureka lab. “Our company now designs 1,000 finishes per season.” Such a long lead time “pushes production and creation too far away.” Levi’s latest technology alleviates this issue, he said.
…
Twitter suspended at least 58 million user accounts in the final three months of 2017, according to data obtained by The Associated Press. The figure highlights the company’s newly aggressive stance against malicious or suspicious accounts in the wake of Russian disinformation efforts during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Last week, Twitter confirmed a Washington Post report that it had suspended 70 million accounts in May and June. The huge number of suspensions raises questions as to whether the crackdown could affect Twitter’s user growth and whether the company should have warned investors earlier. The company has been struggling with user growth compared with rivals like Instagram and Facebook.
The number of suspended accounts originated with Twitter’s “firehose,” a data stream it makes available to academics, companies and others willing to pay for it.
The new figure sheds light on Twitter’s attempt to improve “information quality” on its service, its term for countering fake accounts, bots, disinformation and other malicious occurrences. Such activity was rampant on Twitter and other social media networks during the 2016 campaign, much of it originating with the Internet Research Agency, a since-shuttered Russian “troll farm” implicated in election disruption efforts by the U.S. special counsel and congressional investigations.
Twitter declined to comment on the data. But its executives have said that efforts to clean up the platform are a priority, while acknowledging that its crackdown has affected and may continue to affect user numbers.
Twitter has 336 million monthly active users, which it defines as accounts that have logged in at least once during the previous 30 days. The suspensions do not appear to have made a large dent in this number. Twitter maintains that most of the suspended accounts had been dormant for at least a month, and thus weren’t included in its active user numbers.
Following the Post report, which caused Twitter’s stock to drop sharply, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal took to Twitter to reassure investors that this number didn’t count in the company’s user metrics. “If we removed 70M accounts from our reported metrics, you would hear directly from us,” he tweeted last Monday.
Shares recovered somewhat after that tweet. The stock has largely been on an upswing lately, and more than doubled its value in the past year.
Twitter is taking other steps besides account deletions to combat misuse of its service, working to rein in hate and abuse even as it tries to stay true to its roots as a bastion of free expression. Last fall, it vowed to crack down on hate speech and sexual harassment, and CEO Jack Dorsey echoed the concerns of critics who said the company hadn’t done enough to curb such abuse.
…
Egypt’s parliament has passed a law giving the state powers to block social media accounts and penalize journalists held to be publishing fake news.
Under the law passed on Monday social media accounts and blogs with more than 5,000 followers on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will be treated as media outlets, which makes them subject to prosecution for publishing false news or incitement to break the law.
The Supreme Council for the Administration of the Media, headed by an official appointed by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, will supervise the law and take action against violations.
The bill prohibits the establishment of websites without obtaining a license from the Supreme Council and allows it to suspend or block existing websites, or impose fines on editors.
The law, which takes effect after it is ratified by Sissi, also states that journalists can only film in places that are not prohibited, but does not explain further.
Supporters of Sissi say the law is intended to safeguard freedom of expression and it was approved after consultations with judicial experts and journalists.
But critics say it will give legal basis to measures the government has been taking to crack down on dissent and extend its control over social media.
Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the vague wording of the law allows authorities to interpret violations and control the media.
“That power of interpretation has been a constant powerful legal and executive tool that was used to justify excessive aggressive and exceptional measures to go after journalists,” he told Reuters.
Hundreds of news sites and blogs have been blocked in recent months and around a dozen people have been arrested this year and charged with publishing false news, many of them journalists or prominent government critics.
Twenty-first century technology has helped restore an 18th century Chinese pagoda in the heart of London. Faith Lapidus has the story.
…
Scientists from Cranfield University in Britain have teamed up with the engineering firm Siemens to retro-fit a classic 1965 Ford Mustang with driverless technology. They recently tested it on a racetrack at the Goodwood Festival of Speed — considered the largest motoring garden party in the world. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
…
British inventor Nik Spencer believes household garbage is a valuable and underrated resource. That’s because trash happens to be the perfect fuel for his latest invention: the Home Energy Resources Unit, or HERU. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
…
Football fans are watching the World Cup on multiple screens in bars, on their phones while they should be working, on TVs at home with their friends. One day, they could be following the action in 3D. Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a way to watch soccer games and other sporting matches as if you were in the stadium, by using augmented reality devices. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at the new technology in this report, narrated by Faith Lapidus.
…
Temperatures around the world are rising as humans burn coal, oil and other fossil fuels for energy. Burning those fuels releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But it does more than that. CO2 is vital for plant growth. While having more of it sounds like a good thing, scientists are finding it is not always that simple. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
…
Facebook will be facing its first fine in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the social media platform allowed the data mining firm to access the private information of millions of users without their consent or knowledge.
A British government investigative office, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), fined Facebook 500,000 pounds, or $663,000 – the maximum amount that can be levied for the violation of British data privacy laws. In a report, the ICO found Facebook had broken the law in failing to protect the data of the estimated 87 million users affected by the security breach.
The ICO’s investigation concluded that Facebook “contravened the law by failing to safeguard people’s information,” the report read. It also found that the company failed to be transparent about how people’s data was harvested by others on its platform.
Cambridge Analytica, a London firm that shuttered its doors in May following a report by The New York Times and The Observer chronicling its dealings, offered “tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior,” according to a March Times report.
“New technologies that use data analytics to micro-target people give campaign groups the ability to connect with individual voters,” Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement. “But this cannot be at the expense of transparency, fairness and compliance with the law.”
The firm, which U.S. President Donald Trump employed during his successful 2016 election campaign, was heavily funded by American businessman Robert Mercer, who is also a major donor to the U.S. Republican Party. Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon was also employed by the firm and has said he coined the company’s name.
Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower within the firm, told the Times in March that the firm aimed to create psychological profiles of American voters and use those profiles to target them via advertising.
“[Cambridge Analytica’s leaders] want to fight a culture war in America,” Wylie told the Times. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”
While this is the first financial penalty Facebook will be facing in the scandal, the fine will not make a dent in the company’s profits. The social media giant generated $11.97 billion in revenue in the first quarter, and generates the revenue needed to pay the fine about every 10 minutes.
Denham said the company will have an opportunity to respond to the fine before a final decision is made. Facebook has said it will respond to the ICO report soon.
“As we have said before, we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015,” said Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, in a statement. “We have been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office in their investigation of Cambridge Analytica, just as we have with authorities in the U.S. and other countries.”
The statement from the ICO also announced that the office would seek to criminally prosecute SCL Elections Ltd., Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, for failing to comply with a legal request from a U.S. professor to disclose what data the company had on him. SCL Elections also shut down in May.
“Your data is yours and you have a right to control its use,” wrote David Carroll, the professor.
The ICO said it would also be asking 11 political parties to conduct audits of their data protection processes, and compel SCL Elections to comply with Carroll’s request.
Further investigations by agencies such as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, and Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, are under way. In April, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before a U.S. Senate committee to testify on the company’s actions in the scandal.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” Zuckerberg told U.S. lawmakers in prepared remarks in April. He also said, “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry.”
…
A federal court has charged a former Apple engineer with stealing trade secrets related to a self-driving car and attempting to flee to China.
Agents in San Jose, California, arrested Xiaolang Zhang on Saturday, moments before he was to board his flight.
Zhang is said to have taken paternity leave in April, traveling to China just after the birth of a child.
When he returned, he informed his supervisors he was leaving Apple to join Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese company in Guangzhao, which also plans to build self-driving cars.
But security cameras caught Zhang allegedly entering Apple’s self-driving car lab and downloading blueprints and other information on a personal computer at the time he was supposed to be in China on paternity leave.
Neither the FBI nor Zhang’s lawyers have commented.
…