YCLOAK

SpaceX’s uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, was presumed to have failed in space minutes after lifting off on Saturday in a second test after its first attempt to reach space ended in an explosion.

The two-stage rocket ship blasted off from the Elon Musk-owned company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica, Texas, soaring roughly 90 kilometers (55 miles) above ground on a planned 90-minute flight into space.

But the rocket’s Super Heavy first stage booster, though it appeared to achieve a crucial maneuver to separate with its core stage, exploded over the Gulf of Mexico shortly after detaching.

Meanwhile, the core Starship booster carried further toward space, but roughly 10 minutes into the flight a company broadcaster said that SpaceX mission control suddenly lost contact with the vehicle.

“We have lost the data from the second stage. … We think we may have lost the second stage,” SpaceX’s livestream host John Insprucker said.

The launch was the second attempt to fly Starship mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, following an April attempt that ended in failure about four minutes after liftoff.

A live SpaceX webcast of Saturday’s launch showed the rocket ship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy’s cluster of powerful Raptor engines thundered to life.

The test flight’s principal objective was to get Starship off the ground and into space just shy of Earth’s orbit. Doing so would have marked a key step toward achieving SpaceX’s goal of producing a large, multipurpose spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo back to the moon later this decade for NASA, and ultimately to Mars.

Musk — SpaceX’s founder, chief executive and chief engineer — also sees Starship as eventually replacing the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket as the centerpiece of its launch business, which already takes most of the world’s satellites and other commercial payloads into space.

NASA, SpaceX’s primary customer, has a considerable stake in the success of Starship, which the U.S. space agency is counting on to play a central role in its human spaceflight program, Artemis, successor to the Apollo missions of more than a half century ago that put astronauts on the moon for the first time.

The mission’s objective was to get Starship off the ground in Texas and into space just shy of reaching orbit, then plunge through Earth’s atmosphere for a splashdown off Hawaii’s coast. The launch had been scheduled for Friday but was pushed back by a day for a last-minute swap of flight-control hardware.

During its April 20 test flight, the spacecraft blew itself to bits less than four minutes into a planned 90-minute flight that went awry from the start. SpaceX has acknowledged that some of the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines malfunctioned on ascent, and that the lower-stage booster rocket failed to separate as designed from the upper-stage Starship before the flight was terminated. 
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Leaders of the union representing Hollywood actors announced a tentative deal recently with film and television studios to end a strike that started in July. It includes pay raises, streaming bonuses for actors, and the industry’s first protections against the use of artificial intelligence. From Los Angeles, Genia Dulot has our story.
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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday granted Elon Musk’s SpaceX a license to launch the company’s second test flight of its next-generation Starship and heavy-lift rocket from Texas, the agency said. 

SpaceX said it was targeting Friday for a launch, saying a two-hour launch window opens at 7 a.m. Central Time (1300 GMT) and that local residents “may hear a loud noise” during the rocket’s ascent toward space. 

“The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency, which oversees commercial launch sites, said in a statement. 

SpaceX’s first attempt to send Starship to space was in April, when the rocket exploded mid-air four minutes after a liftoff that pulverized the company’s launchpad and flung sand and concrete chunks for miles. 

Though Musk, SpaceX’s CEO and founder, hailed the Starship launch attempt as exceeding his expectations, it fell far short of its overall test objectives to reach space, complete nearly a full revolution around Earth, and reenter the atmosphere for a splashdown off a Hawaiian coast. 

First the moon, eventually Mars

Starship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 120 meters and designed to be fully reusable, represents SpaceX’s next-generation workhorse rocket system capable of ferrying some 150 tons of satellites into space. Plans also call for the rocket system to be used to carry crews of humans to the moon, and eventually Mars. 

The rocket is crucial for SpaceX’s increasingly dominant launch business. NASA, under a roughly $4 billion development contract with SpaceX, plans to use Starship around 2026 to land the first crew of humans on the moon’s surface since 1972. 

Hundreds of fixes before launch

The upcoming Starship flight will have the same test objectives as the first attempt. SpaceX made hundreds of fixes to the rocket’s design based on the April failure. The FAA required SpaceX to make dozens of fixes before allowing another Starship flight. 

SpaceX determined that an onboard fire prevented Starship — the rocket system’s upper stage — from separating from its Super Heavy first stage booster as planned. The rocket’s explosion was the result of an automated destruction command, which triggered some 40 seconds late. 
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Nepal’s government decided to ban the popular social media app TikTok, saying Monday it was disrupting “social harmony” in the country.

The announcement was made following a Cabinet meeting. Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud said the app would be banned immediately.

“The government has decided to ban TikTok as it was necessary to regulate the use of the social media platform that was disrupting social harmony, goodwill and flow of indecent materials,” Saud said.

He said that to make social media platforms accountable, the government has asked the companies to register and open a liaison office in Nepal, pay taxes and abide by the country’s laws and regulations.

It wasn’t clear what triggered the ban or if TikTok had refused to comply with Nepal’s requests. The company did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has faced scrutiny in several countries because of concerns that Beijing could use the app to harvest user data or advance its interests. Countries including the United States, Britain and New Zealand have banned the app on government phones despite TikTok repeatedly denying that it has ever shared data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked.

Nepal has banned all pornographic sites in 2018.
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Several major Australian ports are resuming operations after shutting down due to a cyberattack. The ports are run by DP World Australia, one of the country’s biggest logistics companies. Authorities have not said who might be to blame.

The shutdown of several terminals followed a cyberattack on Australia’s second largest port operator. DP World Australia said it was aware of malicious activity inside its computer network last Friday and shut down its systems in response.

The logistics company handles about 40% of all freight into and out of Australia. Terminals in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Fremantle in Western Australia have been affected, leaving cargo and containers stranded on the docks.

The specific nature of the intrusion has not been made public, but experts have suggested that hackers would have demanded a ransom. Authorities say that finding out who is responsible will take time.

Australia’s National Cyber Security coordinator says the flow of goods into and out of the country is likely to be disrupted for days. Authorities have said a national crisis management response used during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been activated in response to the breach.

The home affairs and cyber security minister, Clare O’Neil, told local media Monday that efforts are being made to ensure the company’s computer network can safely be reactivated.

“DP World have been working with government to try to resolve this and in ways that will make sure that this does not impact as much as possible on Australians. It does show how vulnerable we have been in this country to cyber incidents,” said O’Neil.

Last year, major health care and telecommunications companies were the victims of two of the most significant data breaches in Australian history.

Research published in November 2022 found that a third of Australian adults had been victims of data breaches in the previous year. A study by the Australian National University showed that cyberattacks were one of the fastest growing types of crime in the country.

The Australian Taxation Office has previously reported that it receives 3 million attempted hacks on its system every month.

The Australian Banking Association said cybercrime was “potentially a significant threat to … national security.”

In April 2023, the government in Canberra enlisted major banks and financial services to take part in ‘wargaming’ exercises to test how they would respond to cyberattacks.

 
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Russia plans to block certain Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and protocols that are deemed by a commission of experts to pose a threat, state news agency RIA reported, citing correspondence from the digital ministry.

Demand for VPN services soared after Russia restricted access to some Western social media after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

A 2017 Russian law obliged providers of VPN technology to cooperate with the Russian authorities and to restrict access to content banned by Russia or be banned themselves.

Many VPN services remain widely in use throughout Russia and there has been a public debate among lawmakers about how much further to go in blocking VPN services that still allow access to banned information but also a host of other information.

RIA quoted a reply from the digital ministry to an address by lawmaker Anton Tkachev who had raised concerns about what he said were plans to essentially block all VPNs, a step he said would increase pressure on Russians by cutting them off from using some simple household appliances.

“On the basis of a decision by the expert commission… the filtration of certain VPN services and VPN protocols can be carried out on the mobile communication network for foreign traffic which is identified as a threat,” RIA quoted the ministry as saying.

RIA said that the ministry said that circumvention of restrictions on certain information was considered a threat.
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The Australian government on Sunday described as “serious and ongoing” a cybersecurity incident that forced ports operator DP World Australia to suspend operations at ports in several states since Friday.

DP World Australia, which manages nearly half of the goods that flow in and out of the country, said it was looking into possible data breaches as well as testing systems “crucial for the resumption of normal operations and regular freight movement.”

The breach halted operations at container terminals in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Western Australia’s Fremantle since Friday.

“The cyber incident at DP World is serious and ongoing,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

A DP World spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on when normal operations would resume. The company, part of Dubai’s state-owned DP World, is one of a handful of stevedore industry players in the country.

The Australian Federal Police said they were investigating the incident but declined to elaborate.

Late Saturday, National Cyber Security Coordinator Darren Goldie, appointed this year in response to several major data breaches, said the “interruption” was “likely to continue for a number of days and will impact the movement of goods into and out of the country.”

In the Asia-Pacific region, DP World says it employs more than 7,000 people and has ports and terminals in 18 locations.
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Internet access across the war-torn nation of Yemen collapsed Friday and stayed down for hours, with officials later blaming unannounced “maintenance work” for an outage that followed attacks by the country’s Houthi rebels on both Israel and the U.S.

The outage began early Friday and halted all traffic at YemenNet, the country’s main provider for about 10 million users which is now controlled by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthis.

Both NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages, and the internet services company CloudFlare reported the outage. The two did not offer a cause for the outage.

“Data shows that the issue has impacted connectivity at a national level as well,” CloudFlare said.

Several hours later, some service was restored, though access remained troubled.

In a statement to the Houthi-controlled SABA state news agency, Yemen’s Public Telecom Corp. blamed the outage on maintenance.

“Internet service will return after the completion of the maintenance work,” the statement quoted an unidentified official as saying.

An earlier outage occurred in January 2022 when the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis in Yemen bombed a telecommunications building in the Red City port city of Hodeida. There was no immediate word of a similar attack.

The undersea FALCON cable carries the internet into Yemen through the Hodeida port along the Red Sea for TeleYemen. The FALCON cable has another landing in Yemen’s far eastern port of Ghaydah as well, but the majority of Yemen’s population lives in its west along the Red Sea.

GCX, the company that operates the cable, did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

The outage came after a series of recent drone and missile attacks by the Houthis targeting Israel during its campaign of airstrikes and a ground offensive targeting Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That includes a claimed strike Thursday targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat on the Red Sea. The Houthis also shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone this week with a surface-to-air missile, part of a wide series of attacks in the Mideast raising concerns about a regional war breaking out.

Yemen’s conflict began in 2014 when the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of the country’s north. The internationally recognized government fled to the south and then into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The Houthi takeover prompted a Saudi-led coalition to intervene months later and the conflict turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the U.S. long involved on the periphery, providing intelligence assistance to the kingdom.

However, international criticism over Saudi airstrikes killing civilians saw the U.S. pull back its support. The U.S. is suspected of still carrying out drone strikes targeting suspected members of Yemen’s local al-Qaida branch.

The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more. A cease-fire that expired last October largely has held in the time since, though the Houthis are believed to be slowly stepping up their attacks as a permanent peace has yet to be reached.
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An industrial robot grabbed and crushed a worker to death at a vegetable packaging plant in South Korea, police said Thursday, as they investigated whether the machine was defective or improperly designed.

Police said early evidence suggests that human error was more likely to blame rather than problems with the machine itself. But the incident still triggered public concern about the safety of industrial robots and the false sense of security they may give to humans working nearby in a country that increasingly relies on such machines to automate its industries.

Police in the southern county of Goseong said the man died of head and chest injuries Tuesday evening after he was snatched and pressed against a conveyor belt by the machine’s robotic arms.

Police did not identify the man but said he was an employee of a company that installs industrial robots and was sent to the plant to examine whether the machine was working properly.

South Korea has had other accidents involving industrial robots in recent years. In March, a manufacturing robot crushed and seriously injured a worker who was examining it at an auto parts factory in Gunsan. Last year, a robot installed near a conveyor belt fatally crushed a worker at a milk factory in Pyeongtaek.

The machine that caused the death on Tuesday was one of two pick-and-place robots used at the facility, which packages bell peppers and other vegetables exported to other Asian countries, police said. Such machines are common in South Korea’s agricultural communities, which are struggling with a declining and aging workforce.

“It wasn’t an advanced, artificial intelligence-powered robot, but a machine that simply picks up boxes and puts them on pallets,” said Kang Jin-gi, who heads the investigations department at Gosong Police Station. He said police were working with related agencies to determine whether the machine had technical defects or safety issues.

Another police official, who did not want to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters, said police were also looking into the possibility of human error. The robot’s sensors are designed to identify boxes, and security video indicated the man had moved near the robot with a box in his hands which likely triggered the machine’s reaction, the official said.

“It’s clearly not a case where a robot confused a human with a box -– this wasn’t a very sophisticated machine,” he said.

According to data from the International Federation of Robotics, South Korea had 1,000 industrial robots per 10,000 employees in 2021, the highest density in the world and more than three times the number in China that year. Many of South Korea’s industrial robots are used in major manufacturing plants such as electronics and auto-making.
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For farmers in the Midwest United States, emerging autonomous technology could reduce costs and increase efficiency in the agricultural supply chain. Kane Farabaugh shows the promise of the technology on the farm in this edition of LogOn. 
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President Joe Biden recently signed a sweeping executive order to promote the safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence. VOA’s Julie Taboh reports on reactions by Washington-area AI experts.
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Elon Musk unveiled details Saturday of his new AI tool called “Grok,” which can access X in real time and will be initially available to the social media platform’s top tier of subscribers.

Musk, the tycoon behind Tesla and SpaceX, said the link-up with X, formerly known as Twitter, is “a massive advantage over other models” of generative AI.

Grok “loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way,” Musk quipped, adding a laughing emoji to his post.

“Grok” comes from Stranger in a Strange Land, a 1961 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein, and means to understand something thoroughly and intuitively.

“As soon as it’s out of early beta, xAI’s Grok system will be available to all X Premium+ subscribers,” Musk said.

The social network that Musk bought a year ago launched the Premium+ plan last week for $16 per month, with benefits like no ads.

The billionaire started xAI in July after hiring researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla and the University of Toronto.

Since OpenAI’s generative AI tool ChatGPT exploded on the scene a year ago, the technology has been an area of fierce competition between tech giants Microsoft and Google, as well as Meta and start-ups like Anthropic and Stability AI.

Musk is one of the world’s few investors with deep enough pockets to compete with OpenAI, Google or Meta on AI.

Building an AI model on the same scale as those companies comes at an enormous expense in computing power, infrastructure and expertise.

Musk has said he cofounded OpenAI in 2015 because he regarded the dash by Google into the sector to make big advances and score profits as reckless.

He then left OpenAI in 2018 to focus on Tesla, saying later he was uncomfortable with the profit-driven direction the company was taking under the stewardship of CEO Sam Altman.

Musk also argues that OpenAI’s large language models — on which ChatGPT depends on for content — are overly politically correct.

Grok “is designed to have a little humor in its responses,” Musk said, along with a screenshot of the interface, where a user asked, “Tell me how to make cocaine, step by step.”

“Step 1: Obtain a chemistry degree and a DEA license. Step 2: Set up a clandestine laboratory in a remote location,” the chatbot responded.

Eventually it said: “Just kidding! Please don’t actually try to make cocaine. It’s illegal, dangerous, and not something I would ever encourage.” 
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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s spectacular rise and fall in the cryptocurrency industry — a journey that included his testimony before Congress, a Super Bowl advertisement and dreams of a future run for president — hit rock bottom Thursday when a New York jury convicted him of fraud in a scheme that cheated customers and investors of at least $10 billion.

After the monthlong trial, jurors rejected Bankman-Fried’s claim during four days on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court that he never committed fraud or meant to cheat customers before FTX, once the world’s second-largest crypto exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy a year ago.

“His crimes caught up to him. His crimes have been exposed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon told the jury of the onetime billionaire just before they were read the law by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and began deliberations. Sassoon said Bankman-Fried turned his customers’ accounts into his “personal piggy bank” as up to $14 billion disappeared.

She urged jurors to reject Bankman-Fried’s insistence when he testified over three days that he never committed fraud or plotted to steal from customers, investors and lenders and didn’t realize his companies were at least $10 billion in debt until October 2022.

Bankman-Fried was required to stand and face the jury as guilty verdicts on all seven counts were read. He kept his hands clasped tightly in front of him. When he sat down after the reading, he kept his head tilted down for several minutes.

After the judge set a sentencing date of March 28, Bankman-Fried’s parents moved to the front row behind him. His father put his arm around his wife. As Bankman-Fried was led out of the courtroom, he looked back and nodded toward his mother, who nodded back and then became emotional, wiping her hand across her face after he left the room.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams told reporters after the verdict that Bankman-Fried “perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the king of crypto.”

“But here’s the thing: The cryptocurrency industry might be new. The players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new. This kind of fraud, this kind of corruption is as old as time, and we have no patience for it,” he said.

Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Mark Cohen, said in a statement they “respect the jury’s decision. But we are very disappointed with the result.”

“Mr. Bankman Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him,” Cohen said.

The trial attracted intense interest with its focus on fraud on a scale not seen since the 2009 prosecution of Bernard Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme over decades cheated thousands of investors out of about $20 billion. Madoff pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 150 years in prison, where he died in 2021.

The prosecution of Bankman-Fried, 31, put a spotlight on the emerging industry of cryptocurrency and a group of young executives in their 20s who lived together in a $30 million luxury apartment in the Bahamas as they dreamed of becoming the most powerful player in a new financial field.

Prosecutors made sure jurors knew that the defendant they saw in court with short hair and a suit was also the man with big messy hair and shorts that became his trademark appearance after he started his cryptocurrency hedge fund, Alameda Research, in 2017 and FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange, two years later.

They showed the jury pictures of Bankman-Fried sleeping on a private jet, sitting with a deck of cards and mingling at the Super Bowl with celebrities including the singer Katy Perry. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos called Bankman-Fried someone who liked “celebrity chasing.”

In a closing argument, defense lawyer Mark Cohen said prosecutors were trying to turn “Sam into some sort of villain, some sort of monster.”

“It’s both wrong and unfair, and I hope and believe that you have seen that it’s simply not true,” he said. “According to the government, everything Sam ever touched and said was fraudulent.”

The government relied heavily on the testimony of three former members of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, his top executives including his former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, to explain how Bankman-Fried used Alameda Research to siphon billions of dollars from customer accounts at FTX.

With that money, prosecutors said, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate gained influence and power through investments, contributions, tens of millions of dollars in political contributions, congressional testimony and a publicity campaign that enlisted celebrities like comedian Larry David and football quarterback Tom Brady.

Ellison, 28, testified that Bankman-Fried directed her while she was chief executive of Alameda Research to commit fraud as he pursued ambitions to lead huge companies, spend money influentially and run for U.S. president someday. She said he thought he had a 5% chance to be U.S. president someday.

Becoming tearful as she described the collapse of the cryptocurrency empire last November, Ellison said the revelations that caused customers collectively to demand their money back, exposing the fraud, brought a “relief that I didn’t have to lie anymore.”

FTX cofounder Gary Wang, who was FTX’s chief technology officer, revealed in his testimony that Bankman-Fried directed him to insert code into FTX’s operations so that Alameda Research could make unlimited withdrawals from FTX and have a credit line of up to $65 billion. Wang said the money came from customers.

Nishad Singh, the former head of engineering at FTX, testified that he felt “blindsided and horrified” at the result of the actions of a man he once admired when he saw the extent of the fraud as the collapse last November left him suicidal.

Ellison, Wang and Singh all pleaded guilty to fraud charges and testified against Bankman-Fried in the hopes of leniency at sentencing.

Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas in December and extradited to the United States, where he was freed on a $250 million personal recognizance bond with electronic monitoring and a requirement that he remain at the home of his parents in Palo Alto, California.

His communications, including hundreds of phone calls with journalists and internet influencers, along with emails and texts, eventually got him into trouble when the judge concluded he was trying to influence prospective trial witnesses and ordered him jailed in August.

During the trial, prosecutors used Bankman-Fried’s public statements, online announcements and his congressional testimony against him, showing how the entrepreneur repeatedly promised customers that their deposits were safe and secure as late as last Nov. 7 when he tweeted, “FTX is fine. Assets are fine” as customers furiously tried to withdraw their money. He deleted the tweet the next day. FTX filed for bankruptcy four days later.

In his closing, Roos mocked Bankman-Fried’s testimony, saying that under questioning from his lawyer, the defendant’s words were “smooth, like it had been rehearsed a bunch of times?”

But under cross examination, “he was a different person,” the prosecutor said. “Suddenly on cross-examination he couldn’t remember a single detail about his company or what he said publicly. It was uncomfortable to hear. He never said he couldn’t recall during his direct examination, but it happened over 140 times during his cross-examination.”

Former federal prosecutors said the quick verdict — after only half a day of deliberation — showed how well the government tried the case.

“The government tried the case as we expected,” said Joshua A. Naftalis, a partner at Pallas Partners LLP and a former Manhattan prosecutor. “It was a massive fraud, but that doesn’t mean it had to be a complicated fraud, and I think the jury understood that argument.”
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World leaders have agreed on the importance of mitigating risks posed by rapid advancements in the emerging technology of artificial intelligence, at a U.K.-hosted safety conference.

The inaugural AI Safety Summit, hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Bletchley Park, England, started Wednesday, with senior officials from 28 nations, including the United States and China, agreeing to work toward a “shared agreement and responsibility” about AI risks. Plans are in place for further meetings later this year in South Korea and France.

Leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, discussed each of their individual testing models to ensure the safe growth of AI.

Thursday’s session included focused conversations among what the U.K. called a small group of countries “with shared values.” The leaders in the group came from the EU, the U.N., Italy, Germany, France and Australia.

Some leaders, including Sunak, said immediate sweeping regulation is not the way forward, reflecting the view of some AI companies that fear excessive regulation could thwart the technology before it can reach its full potential.

At at a press conference on Thursday, Sunak announced another landmark agreement by countries pledging to “work together on testing the safety of new AI models before they are released.”

The countries involved in the talks included the U.S., EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada and Australia. China did not participate in the second day of talks.

The summit will conclude with a conversation between Sunak and billionaire Elon Musk. Musk on Wednesday told fellow attendees that legislation on AI could pose risks, and that the best steps forward would be for governments to work to understand AI fully to harness the technology for its positive uses, including uncovering problems that can be brought to the attention of lawmakers.

Some information in this report was taken from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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India’s cybersecurity agency is investigating complaints of mobile phone hacking by senior opposition politicians who reported receiving warning messages from Apple, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

Vaishnaw was quoted in the Indian Express newspaper as saying Thursday that CERT-In, the computer emergency response team based in New Delhi, had started the probe, adding that “Apple confirmed it has received the notice for investigation.”

A political aide to Vaishnaw and two officials in the federal home ministry told Reuters that all the cyber security concerns raised by the politicians were being scrutinized.

There was no immediate comment from Apple about the investigation.

This week, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of trying to hack into opposition politicians’ mobile phones after some lawmakers shared screenshots on social media of a notification quoting the iPhone manufacturer as saying: “Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID.”

A senior minister from Modi’s government also said he had received the same notification on his phone.

Apple said it did not attribute the threat notifications to “any specific state-sponsored attacker,” adding that “it’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected.”

In 2021, India was rocked by reports that the government had used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to snoop on scores of journalists, activists and politicians, including Gandhi.

The government has declined to reply to questions about whether India or any of its state agencies had purchased Pegasus spyware for surveillance.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris says leaders have “a moral, ethical and societal duty” to protect humans from dangers posed by artificial intelligence, and is pushing for a global road map during an AI summit in London. Analysts agree and say one element needs to be constant: human oversight. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is bringing together government officials, academics and tech moguls from around the world for a two-day AI Safety Summit Wednesday and Thursday at Bletchley Park, the once top-secret headquarters of World War II-era codebreakers.

The inaugural symposium is a moment for key players in global affairs to spar over the future of frontier AI, specifically whether the technology represents a danger to humanity and what can be done to mitigate that potential threat. Frontier AI is a broad term for general-purpose systems that can operate on the very cutting-edge of today’s software.

The 100-person guest list includes Elon Musk, the richest man on earth; Sam Altman, the brain behind ChatGPT; and a host of prominent professors and researchers.

World leaders are among those in attendance, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris; China’s Vice Minister of Science and Technology Wu Zhaohui; U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres; and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

China, a frontrunner in AI development, has a key role in the forum as Sunak attempts to position himself as a middleman between East and West. The decision to invite China was met with mixed reactions at home in the British Parliament and abroad.

Jane Hartley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, made clear that the White House had no part in bringing China to the table.

“This is the U.K. invitation, this is not the U.S.,” Hartley told Reuters. “When the U.K. government was talking to us, we said it’s your summit. So, if you want to invite them, invite them.”

Last week, top officials with the Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance that includes the U.K. and the U.S., banded together for an unprecedented public appearance in which they accused China of stealing tech secrets from Western nations on a massive scale.

As concerns over China’s influence on Big Tech mount, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law an executive order on Monday giving the federal government greater regulatory power over AI where it may endanger national security, public health or the economy.

On Wednesday, Kamala Harris delivered a speech at the summit outlining her administration’s efforts in curbing the risks of generative AI. Harris announced the creation of The United States AI Safety Institute, a new task force on AI to recommend guidelines and identify risk factors.

Harris also urged other nations to sign on to a U.S.-sponsored pledge for the “responsible and ethical” use of AI in the military.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
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Drivers in Malawi are getting an opportunity to purchase electric vehicles through a local startup company. The handful of buyers so far say they no longer have to struggle daily to get fuel at pump stations. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre.
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The world’s first major summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety opens in Britain Wednesday, with political and tech leaders set to discuss possible responses to the society-changing technology.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will all attend the two-day conference, which will focus on growing fears about the implications of so-called frontier AI.

The release of the latest models has offered a glimpse into the potential of AI, but has also prompted concerns around issues ranging from job losses to cyber-attacks and the control that humans actually have over the systems.

Sunak, whose government initiated the gathering, said in a speech last week that his “ultimate goal” was “to work towards a more international approach to safety where we collaborate with partners to ensure AI systems are safe before they are released.

“We will push hard to agree the first ever international statement about the nature of these risks,” he added, drawing comparisons to the approach taken to climate change.

But London has reportedly had to scale back its ambitions around ideas such as launching a new regulatory body amid a perceived lack of enthusiasm.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is one of the only world leaders, and only one from the G7, attending the conference.

Elon Musk is due to appear, but it is not clear yet whether he will be physically at the summit in Bletchley Park, north of London, where top British codebreakers cracked Nazi Germany’s “Enigma” code.

‘Talking shop’

While the potential of AI raises many hopes, particularly for medicine, its development is seen as largely unchecked.

In his speech, Sunak stressed the need for countries to develop “a shared understanding of the risks that we face.”

But lawyer and investigator Cori Crider, a campaigner for “fair” technology, warned that the summit could be “a bit of a talking shop.

“If he were serious about safety, Rishi Sunak needed to roll deep and bring all of the U.K. majors and regulators in tow and he hasn’t,” she told a press conference in San Francisco.

“Where is the labor regulator looking at whether jobs are being made unsafe or redundant? Where’s the data protection regulator?” she asked.

Having faced criticism for only looking at the risks of AI, the U.K. Wednesday pledged $46 million to fund AI projects around the world, starting in Africa.

Ahead of the meeting, the G7 powers agreed on Monday on a non-binding “code of conduct” for companies developing the most advanced AI systems.

The White House announced its own plan to set safety standards for the deployment of AI that will require companies to submit certain systems to government review.

And in Rome, ministers from Italy, Germany and France called for an “innovation-friendly approach” to regulating AI in Europe, as they urged more investment to challenge the U.S. and China.

China will be present, but it is unclear at what level.

News website Politico reported London invited President Xi Jinping, to signify its eagerness for a senior representative.

Beijing’s invitation has raised eyebrows amid heightened tensions with Western nations and accusations of technological espionage. 

 
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President Joe Biden on Monday signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence, covering topics as varied as national security, consumer privacy, civil rights and commercial competition. The administration heralded the order as taking “vital steps forward in the U.S.’s approach on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI.”

The order directs departments and agencies across the U.S. federal government to develop policies aimed at placing guardrails alongside an industry that is developing newer and more powerful systems at a pace rate that has many concerned it will outstrip effective regulation.

“To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology,” Biden said during a signing ceremony at the White House. The order, he added, is “the most significant action any government anywhere in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security and trust.” 

‘Red teaming’ for security 

One of the marquee requirements of the new order is that it will require companies developing advanced artificial intelligence systems to conduct rigorous testing of their products to ensure that bad actors cannot use them for nefarious purposes. The process, known as red teaming, will assess, among other things, “AI systems threats to critical infrastructure, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and cybersecurity risks.” 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology will set the standards for such testing, and AI companies will be required to report their results to the federal government prior to releasing new products to the public. The Departments of Homeland Security and Energy will be closely involved in the assessment of threats to vital infrastructure. 

To counter the threat that AI will enable the creation and dissemination of false and misleading information, including computer-generated images and “deep fake” videos, the Commerce Department will develop guidance for the creation of standards that will allow computer-generated content to be easily identified, a process commonly called “watermarking.” 

The order directs the White House chief of staff and the National Security Council to develop a set of guidelines for the responsible and ethical use of AI systems by the U.S. national defense and intelligence agencies.

Privacy and civil rights

The order proposes a number of steps meant to increase Americans’ privacy protections when AI systems access information about them. That includes supporting the development of privacy-protecting technologies such as cryptography and creating rules for how government agencies handle data containing citizens’ personally identifiable information.

However, the order also notes that the United States is currently in need of legislation that codifies the kinds of data privacy protections that Americans are entitled to. Currently, the U.S. lags far behind Europe in the development of such rules, and the order calls on Congress to “pass bipartisan data privacy legislation to protect all Americans, especially kids.”

The order recognizes that the algorithms that enable AI to process information and answer users’ questions can themselves be biased in ways that disadvantage members of minority groups and others often subject to discrimination. It therefore calls for the creation of rules and best practices addressing the use of AI in a variety of areas, including the criminal justice system, health care system and housing market.

The order covers several other areas, promising action on protecting Americans whose jobs may be affected by the adoption of AI technology; maintaining the United States’ market leadership in the creation of AI systems; and assuring that the federal government develops and follows rules for its own adoption of AI systems.

Open questions

Experts say that despite the broad sweep of the executive order, much remains unclear about how the Biden administration will approach the regulations of AI in practice.

Benjamin Boudreaux, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, told VOA that while it is clear the administration is “trying to really wrap their arms around the full suite of AI challenges and risks,” much work remains to be done.

“The devil is in the details here about what funding and resources go to executive branch agencies to actually enact many of these recommendations, and just what models a lot of the norms and recommendations suggested here will apply to,” Boudreaux said.

International leadership

Looking internationally, the order says the administration will work to take the lead in developing “an effort to establish robust international frameworks for harnessing AI’s benefits and managing its risks and ensuring safety.”

James A. Lewis, senior vice president and director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA that the executive order does a good job of laying out where the U.S. stands on many important issues related to the global development of AI.

“It hits all the right issues,” Lewis said. “It’s not groundbreaking in a lot of places, but it puts down the marker for companies and other countries as to how the U.S. is going to approach AI.”

That’s important, Lewis said, because the U.S. is likely to play a leading role in the development of the international rules and norms that grow up around the technology.

“Like it or not — and certainly some countries don’t like it — we are the leaders in AI,” Lewis said. “There’s a benefit to being the place where the technology is made when it comes to making the rules, and the U.S. can take advantage of that.”

‘Fighting the last war’ 

Not all experts are certain the Biden administration’s focus is on the real threats that AI might present to consumers and citizens. 

Louis Rosenberg, a 30-year veteran of AI development and the CEO of American tech firm Unanimous AI, told VOA he is concerned the administration may be “fighting the last war.”

“I think it’s great that they’re making a bold statement that this is a very important issue,” Rosenberg said. “It definitely shows that the administration is taking it seriously and that they want to protect the public from AI.”

However, he said, when it comes to consumer protection, the administration seems focused on how AI might be used to advance existing threats to consumers, like fake images and videos and convincing misinformation — things that already exist today.

“When it comes to regulating technology, the government has a track record of underestimating what’s new about the technology,” he said.

Rosenberg said he is more concerned about the new ways in which AI might be used to influence people. For example, he noted that AI systems are being built to interact with people conversationally.

“Very soon, we’re not going to be typing in requests into Google. We’re going to be talking to an interactive AI bot,” Rosenberg said. “AI systems are going to be really effective at persuading, manipulating, potentially even coercing people conversationally on behalf of whomever is directing that AI. This is the new and different threat that did not exist before AI.” 
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Elon Musk has said that corrections to posts on X would no longer be eligible for payment as the social network comes under mounting criticism as becoming a conduit for misinformation.

In the year since taking over Twitter, now rebranded as X, Musk has gutted content moderation, restored accounts of previously banned extremists, and allowed users to purchase account verification, helping them profit from viral — but often inaccurate — posts.

Musk has instead promoted Community Notes, in which X users police the platform, as a tool to combat misinformation. 

But on Sunday, Musk tweeted a modification in how Community Notes works.

“Making a slight change to creator monetization: Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share,” he wrote.  

“The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism,” he added. 

X pays content creators whose work generates lots of views a share of advertising revenue. 

Musk warned against using corrections to make X users ineligible for receiving payouts.

“Worth ‘noting’ that any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open source,” he posted.

Musk’s announcement follows the unveiling Friday of a $16-a-month subscription plan that users who pay more get the biggest boost for their replies. Earlier this year it unveiled an $8-a-month plan to get a “verified” account.

A recent study by the disinformation monitoring group NewsGuard found that verified, paying subscribers were the big spreaders of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war. 

“Nearly three-fourths of the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War are being pushed by ‘verified’ X accounts,” the group said.

It said the 250 most-engaged posts that promoted one of 10 prominent false or unsubstantiated narratives related to the war were viewed more than 100 million times globally in just one week. 

NewsGuard said 186 of those posts were made from verified accounts and only 79 had been fact-checked by Community Notes. 

Verified accounts “turned out to be a boon for bad actors sharing misinformation,” said NewsGuard.

“For less than the cost of a movie ticket, they have gained the added credibility associated with the once-prestigious blue checkmark and enabling them to reach a larger audience on the platform,” it said.

While the organization said it found misinformation spreading widely on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Telegram, it added that it found false narratives about the Israel-Hamas war tend to go viral on X before spreading elsewhere. 
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Elon Musk said on Saturday that SpaceX’s Starlink will support communication links in Gaza with “internationally recognized aid organizations.”

A telephone and internet blackout isolated people in the Gaza Strip from the world and from each other on Saturday, with calls to loved ones, ambulances or colleagues elsewhere all but impossible as Israel widened its air and ground assault.

International humanitarian organizations said the blackout, which began on Friday evening, was worsening an already desperate situation by impeding lifesaving operations and preventing them from contacting their staff on the ground.

Following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Starlink satellites were reported to have been critical to maintaining internet connectivity in some areas despite attempted Russian jamming.

Since then, Musk has said he declined to extend coverage over Russian-occupied Crimea, refusing to allow his satellites to be used for Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces there.
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Brinc Drones is one of the U.S. companies shipping hundreds of drones to Ukraine. These drones are designed to help first responders survey the impacted areas of Russian shelling and find survivors. Adriy Borys visited the Brink manufacturing facility. Anna Rice narrates his story. Camera — Dmitriy Savchuk.
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Zara-owner Inditex, the world’s biggest clothing retailer, has agreed to buy recycled polyester from a U.S. start-up as it aims for 25% of its fibers to come from “next-generation” materials by 2030.

As fast-fashion retailers face pressure to reduce waste and use recycled fabrics, Inditex is spending more than $74 million to secure supply from Los Angeles-based Ambercycle of its recycled polyester made from textile waste.

Polyester, a product of the petroleum industry, is widely used in sportswear as it is quick-drying and durable.

Under the offtake deal, Inditex will buy 70% of Ambercycle’s production of recycled polyester, which is sold under the brand cycora, over three years, Inditex CEO Oscar Garcia Maceiras said at a business event in Zaragoza, Spain.

Garcia Maceiras said Inditex is also working with other companies and start-ups in its innovation hub, a unit looking for ways to curb the environmental impact of its products.

“The sustainable transformation of Inditex … is not possible without the collaboration of the different stakeholders,” he said.

The Inditex investment will help Ambercycle fund its first commercial-scale textile recycling factory. Production of cycora at the plant is expected to begin around 2025, and the material will be used in Inditex products over the following three years.

Zara Athleticz, a sub-brand of sportswear for men, launched a collection on Wednesday of “technical pieces” containing up to 50% cycora. Inditex said the collection would be available from Zara.com.

Some apparel brands seeking to reduce their reliance on virgin polyester have switched to recycled polyester derived from plastic bottles, but that practice has come under criticism as it has created more demand for used plastic bottles, pushing up prices.

Textile-to-textile polyester recycling is in its infancy, though, and will take time to reach the scale required by global fashion brands.

“We want to drive innovation to scale-up new solutions, processes and materials to achieve textile-to-textile recycling,” Inditex’s chief sustainability officer Javier Losada said in a statement.

The Ambercycle deal marks the latest in a series of investments made by Inditex into textile recycling start-ups.

Last year it signed a $104 million, three-year deal to buy 30% of the recycled fiber produced by Finland’s Infinited Fiber Co., and also invested in Circ, another U.S. firm focused on textile-to-textile recycling.

In Spain, Inditex has joined forces with rivals, including H&M and Mango, in an association to manage clothing waste, as the industry prepares for EU legislation requiring member states to separately collect textile waste beginning January 2025.
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