U.S. President Joe Biden’s order to secure semiconductor supply chains for high-tech hardware production offers a commercial boost to Taiwan, one of the world’s biggest providers of chips, and gives Taipei new weight in any free-trade talks, analysts say.Biden signed an executive order Feb. 24 for the United States to start overcoming a chip shortage that has hobbled the manufacturing of vehicles, consumer electronics and medical supplies. It will trigger a review process leading to policy recommendations on how to bolster supply chains.Taiwan comes into play as the home of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which spins out more chips than any other contract manufacturer in the world and has some of the most advanced production processes. Those advances generate semiconductors that run on relatively little power without sacrificing the speed of a device.Remote study and telework, two trends that exploded during the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, raised demand last year for chips that run notebook PCs, among other types of consumer hardware. World demand for chips should increase from $450 billion last year to about $600 billion in 2024, market research firm Gartner says.“This is good, and I think at this moment Taiwan finally can offer something concretely and to help the United States somehow, some way,” said Liu Yih-jiun, public affairs professor at Fo Guang University in Taiwan.Taiwan has tried off and on since 1994 to arrange a trade deal with the United States, which is its second-biggest trading partner after China. U.S.-Taiwan trade totaled $90.9 billion in 2020. Americans buy chips, computers and machinery, among other Taiwanese goods, resulting in a $29.3 billion trade surplus for the Asian manufacturing center last year.Starting in January, Taiwan began allowing shipments of American pork from pigs raised on the feed additive ractopamine, and U.S. officials lauded that step as progress in trade relations.The Biden administration has asked Taiwanese officials about pushing their chipmakers to step up semiconductor production amid a shortage of chips for automotive use, Bloomberg reported last month.American demand for semiconductors will help raise Taiwan’s position when negotiators meet again for trade talks, said John Brebeck, senior adviser at the Quantum International Corp. investment consultancy in Taipei.“Because of the [Sino-U.S.] trade war, and because of semiconductors, and because Taiwan did so well on COVID, and it’s a democracy they want to support, I think it moves forward,” Brebeck said.Trade talks will take place “in a much more balanced way” due to Taiwan’s weight in global semiconductors, Liu said.Trade deal or not, Taiwan’s chipmakers will get a surge in business because of the shortage, though they may struggle to prioritize customers, Brady Wang, an analyst in Taipei with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research, said.“There’s actually no risk to the companies, but you can say there’s the issue of how much they can spread out production and who they’re going to sacrifice,” Wang said.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. broke ground in 2018 on a $15 billion factory complex in Taiwan with volume production expected to reach full capacity this year. The complex will produce more than 1 million wafers per year and employ about 4,000 people. In December last year the 34-year-old firm got Taiwan government clearance to build a $12 billion factory in the U.S. state of Arizona. That plant will make up to 20,000 wafers per month.The project in Arizona and the new one in Taiwan are “well on track,” a spokesperson from the company’s headquarters said.Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. and United Microelectronics Corp. also make chips in Taiwan. A spokesperson for United Microelectronics said last month his company was doing all it can to meet demand for automotive chips.
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An international advocacy group’s claim that the Vietnamese government has tapped hackers to target activists shows that the communist Southeast Asian state is widening the use of technology to quash its biggest opponents, experts believe. Ocean Lotus, a shadowy group suspected of working with the Vietnamese government, is “behind a sustained campaign of spyware attacks,” London-based Amnesty International said in a statement on February 24 following two years of research. It says the attacks surfaced in 2014 and targeted rights activists and the private sector, inside Vietnam as well as abroad. The hack attacks would signal a growing use of technology to muzzle strong vocal opponents of Vietnam’s officials, country observers say. Police already use internet trolls and authorities have been known to damage people’s Facebook accounts, said James Gomez, regional director of the Asia Centre, a Bangkok-based think tank. The FILE – Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy spokesperson Ngo Toan Thang speaks to media in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 7, 2019.”This is groundless information,” deputy ministry spokesperson Ngo Toan Thang told a news conference in May, as quoted on the ministry’s website. “Vietnam strictly bans all cyber-attacks against organizations and individuals in any form.” The ministry’s English-language website does not address Amnesty International’s claims. Amnesty International’s Security Lab said in the February 24 statement it had found Ocean Lotus’s influence in phishing emails sent to two Vietnamese “human rights” advocates. One lives in Germany, the statement says, and the other was a Vietnamese nongovernmental organization in the Philippines. “The hacking group has been repeatedly identified by cybersecurity firms as targeting Vietnamese political dissidents, foreign governments and companies,” the statement adds.  Vietnam ‘cyber-troops’French journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said in 2018 Vietnam had appointed 10,000 “cyber-troops” to fight online dissent. The journalism group called the deployment an “army of internet trolls” aimed at attacking independent media outlets. Authorities showed last year they can quickly shutter social media accounts registered in foreign countries.  After Vietnamese blogger Bui Thi Minh Hang livestreamed an interview with a woman whose 3-year-old child was exposed to tear gas, her posts quickly disappeared from Facebook and YouTube and she was arrested hours later. She lost access to her accounts.Vietnam Pressures Social Media Platforms to Censor Vietnam’s laws and requests for content removal are stifling free speech, bloggers and rights organizations say Jack Nguyen, a partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City, suggests that internet commentators stick to issues rather than targeting the state or the Communist Party. Pollution and drought are acceptable topics, he said, and it’s even OK to suggest policy changes. “Don’t criticize the party,” Nguyen said. “You can criticize some of the policies but don’t do anything that they can say that it’s counterrevolutionary.” 
 
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From a smart dog collar that can tell you your pet’s emotional state to toys that automatically move, the pet tech industry is growing, especially during the pandemic when many people staying at home have been adopting dogs and cats.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has more on the latest tech devices for pets.Camera:  Elizabeth Lee, Sam Verma   
Producer: Elizabeth Lee
 
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There’s a new player in the social media webspace: it’s called Clubhouse. But unlike other social media platforms this one isn’t open to just anyone. Mariia Prus looked into why the platform got so popular so fast.
Camera: Oleksii Osyka
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A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who submitted claims will be affected.Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation.”It will put at least $345 into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” he wrote, calling it “a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy.”Jay Edelson, a Chicago attorney who filed the lawsuit, told the Chicago Tribune that the checks could be in the mail within two months unless the ruling is appealed.“We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” Facebook, which is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement.The lawsuit accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois privacy law by failing to get consent before using facial-recognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users to create and store faces digitally.The state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act allowed consumers to sue companies that didn’t get permission before harvesting data such as faces and fingerprints.The case eventually wound up as a class-action lawsuit in California.Facebook has since changed its photo-tagging system.
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With internet access increasing in many emerging democracies, use of social media is changing the ways that candidates and voters interact.  It’s also changing how the non-profit U.S.-based Carter Center assesses elections. As VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports, monitoring online disinformation and threats to prevent political violence is a new front in the center’s democracy initiatives and is a focus ahead of elections in Ethiopia.Camera: Kane Farabaugh    Producer: Kane Farabaugh
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U.S. lawmakers launched an investigation this week into the December 2020 SolarWinds hack that included a breach of many private and U.S. government computer systems. As VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, tech leaders are telling lawmakers the full scope of the breach is still not known.  Camera: Adam Greenbaum  Produced by: Katherine Gypson
  
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ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million class-action settlement over data privacy claims from some U.S. TikTok users, according to documents filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Illinois. ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the short video app that has more than 100 million U.S. users, agreed to the settlement after more than a year of litigation. “While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community,” TikTok said Thursday. The settlement still requires court approval. FILE – A man opens social media app TikTok on his cellphone, in Islamabad, Pakistan, July 21, 2020.The lawsuits claimed the TikTok app “infiltrates its users’ devices and extracts a broad array of private data including biometric data and content that defendants use to track and profile TikTok users for the purpose of, among other things, ad targeting and profit.” The settlement was reached after “an expert-led inside look at TikTok’s source code” and extensive mediation efforts, according to the motion seeking approval of the settlement. Separately, in Washington the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department are looking into allegations that TikTok failed to live up to a 2019 agreement aimed at protecting children’s privacy. 
 
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Australia has become the world’s first nation to make digital companies such as Facebook and Google pay domestic news outlets for their content.Parliament approved the law Thursday that would allow a government arbitrator to decide the price a digital company should pay news outlets if the two sides fail to reach an agreement.The final legislation includes a set of amendments as part of an agreement reached Tuesday between the Australian government and Facebook. The amendments include a two-month mediation period that would give social media giants and news publishers extra time to broker agreements before they are forced to abide by the government’s provisions.The agreements ended a stalemate that prompted Facebook to block all Australian news content last week, preventing them from being viewed or shared. The websites of several public agencies and emergency services were also blocked on Facebook, including pages that include up-to-date information on COVID-19 outbreaks, brushfires and other natural disasters.
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Facebook on Wednesday pledged to invest at least $1 billion to support journalism over the next three years as the social media giant defended its handling of a dispute with Australia over payments to media organizations.Nick Clegg, head of global affairs, said in a statement that the company was willing to support news media while reiterating its concerns about mandated payments.”Facebook is more than willing to partner with news publishers,” Clegg said after Facebook restored news links as part of a compromise with Australian officials. “We absolutely recognize quality journalism is at the heart of how open societies function — informing and empowering citizens and holding the powerful to account.”Clegg defended the U.S. social media giant in a blog post titled “The Real Story of What Happened With News on Facebook in Australia.”The social media platform came under fire after it blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.Clegg contended in his post that at the heart of the controversy was a misunderstanding about the relationship between Facebook and news publishers.’Free referrals’News groups share their stories at the social network or make them available for Facebook users to share with features such as buttons designed into websites, Clegg noted.Facebook drove some 5.1 billion such “free referrals” to Australian news publishers last year, worth an estimated 407 million Australian dollars, according to Clegg.”The assertions — repeated widely in recent days — that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always were and remain false,” Clegg said. “We neither take nor ask for the content for which we were being asked to pay a potentially exorbitant price.”Clegg said that to comply with the law as originally proposed in Australia, “Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to multinational media conglomerates under an arbitration system that deliberately misdescribes the relationship between publishers and Facebook.”He maintained that in blacking out all news in the country, “we erred on the side of overenforcement” and acknowledged that “some content was blocked inadvertently” before being restored.  
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Facebook Inc.’s oversight board has received a “user statement” for the case it is deciding about whether the social media company was right to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, a board spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday. Facebook handed the case to its independent board in January after it blocked Trump’s access to his accounts over concerns of further violent unrest following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by the former president’s supporters. The board’s process gave administrators of Trump’s page the option to submit a statement challenging Facebook’s decision. The spokeswoman said the board would have no further comment until it had issued a decision. The appeal was first reported by the UK’s Channel 4 News. Earlier this month, the oversight board said it was extending the public comment period on the case for a week, citing “high levels of interest.” The oversight board spokeswoman said the board had received more than 9,000 comments on the Trump case, the most the board has had for any case. Several academics and civil rights activists have publicly shared their letters urging the board to ban Trump permanently. Republican lawmakers have railed against the ban and demanded Trump’s accounts be reinstated. 
 
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For a brief time before Beijing banned the audio chat app Clubhouse, tech-savvy Chinese joined global discussions on taboo topics — Beijing’s placement of Uighurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — absorbing perspectives and information far outside the lines drawn by the Communist Party.Unlike Twitter posts, there was no public record of the app’s audio messages, which may complicate official monitoring efforts, according to In this file illustration photo taken on Jan. 25, 2021, shows the application Clubhouse on a smartphone in Berlin.Yu Ping, the former China country director of the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, told VOA that while only a few people with access to iPhones registered outside China can access Clubhouse, they are often members of “China’s intellectual class, and for the authorities these are people who need to be more controlled” than ordinary citizens.Ping pointed out that any authoritarian government like China’s wants to control information and public opinion. In China, if information is not effectively manipulated and public opinion is not well-directed, authorities see an intolerable existential threat to the regime.Banning Clubhouse and the virtual private networks (VPNs) that give users the ability to surmount the Great Firewall manifests Beijing’s fear, he said.June Dreyer, professor of political science at the University of Miami, said Chinese authorities removed Clubhouse because audio content is harder to control compared with text content. Dreyer said although Chinese people used the app to comment on current affairs and even criticize the government, authorities shouldn’t have blocked the app even though they can.Users are going to get angry because they enjoyed Clubhouse, she said. Blocking it will upset people even more and then they will “seek more ways to vent their grievances. Sometimes it’s just better to let people who want to complain, complain.” Dreyer said the damage that banning Clubhouse causes to people who want to voice their opinion is limited. “As I say, people who have things that they want to talk about will always find ways to talk about them,” she said. “They can be repressed or suppressed, but there are always ways around that.” There are also concerns that the app has security flaws that could provide Chinese authorities access to user information. The Stanford Internet Observatory believes Clubhouse chatroom metadata are relayed to servers hosted in China, so the Chinese government potentially has access to users’ raw audio.  In addition, the Stanford Internet Observatory blog confirmed that the software that supplies back-end infrastructure to Clubhouse is based in China and because a user’s unique Clubhouse ID number and chatroom ID are transmitted in plain text, it is possible to connect Clubhouse IDs with user profiles. Clubhouse told the Stanford Internet Observatory blog that it is “deeply committed to data protection and user privacy.”The app told the blog that when it launched, it was available to every country worldwide except China. Some people in China found a workaround to download the app, which meant that the conversations they were a part of could be transmitted via Chinese servers.“With the help of researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, we have identified a few areas where we can further strengthen our data protection.” 
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An international backlash was growing Thursday to Facebook blocking users of its platform in Australia from viewing or sharing links to domestic and international news stories, with the social media giant accused of behaving like a “bully.”
Facebook’s move to block the content ahead of Australian lawmakers approving a new measure forcing the company to pay media organizations is prompting widespread condemnation from politicians in Europe and North America.
They say the social media giant is being disrespectful of democracy and shamelessly exploiting its monopolistic commercial power.Campbell Brown, head of Facebook’s news partnerships team, introduces Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Paley Center, Oct. 25, 2019 in New York.”What the proposed law introduced in Australia fails to recognize is the fundamental nature of the relationship between our platform and publishers,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships, wrote in a post Wednesday. “I hope in the future, we can include news for people in Australia once again.”
Rights groups also joined in with scathing criticism. Amnesty International said it was “extremely concerning that a private company is willing to control access to information that people rely on.”
It added, “Facebook’s willingness to block credible news sources also stands in sharp distinction to the company’s poor track record in addressing the spread of hateful content and disinformation on the platform.”The ABC News Facebook page is seen on a screen in Canberra, Australia, Feb. 18, 2021.Access cut
Facebook’s action means that users located outside Australia are unable to access via the platform news produced by Australian broadcasters and newspapers, and people inside Australia cannot access any news content via Facebook at all.
Facebook’s move is not deterring the Australian Parliament from approving the new law — the world’s first to require social media companies to pay media outlets for using their content.FILE – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is pictured in Tokyo, Nov. 17, 2020.The law will likely come into force next week. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Facebook had “unfriended Australia.” He described the company as arrogant and bullying and warned that Facebook was stoking international fears about oversized technology companies.
Under Australia’s new media code, social media companies will be required to reach a payment deal for news content linked or shared on their platforms. If an agreement proves elusive, an independent arbitrator can set pricing.
Facebook’s block took effect overnight Wednesday, with the digital giant preventing the sharing of news, including content from the country’s public broadcasters, as well as government pages featuring weather and emergency service warnings. Sharing or linking to community, women’s health and domestic violence pages also disappeared.
Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said it was a “dangerous turn of events. Cutting off access to vital information to an entire country in the dead of the night is unconscionable.”
“We will not be intimidated by this act of bullying by Big Tech,” Morrison said in a statement.
He added, “These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behavior of Big Tech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them. They may be changing the world, but that doesn’t mean they should run it.”
Morrison’s remarks were echoed elsewhere.
In Britain, Facebook’s action was described by Conservative lawmaker Julian Knight, chairman of a parliamentary culture and media committee, as “one of the most idiotic but also deeply disturbing corporate moves of our lifetimes.
“Australia’s democratically elected government is democratically elected. And they have the right to make laws and legislation. And it’s really disrespecting democracy to act in this fashion,” he told British broadcaster Sky News.
In 2019, a British government review found that Facebook and Google had a damaging impact on Britain’s news media because they attracted the lion’s share of online advertising revenue, starving private sector broadcasters and newspapers of income. Researchers found that 61% of British media advertising goes to either Facebook or Google.
Google threatened to take similar action, but last week it began signing preemptive payment deals. Google also has been striking voluntary deals in Britain and some European countries.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition commissioner, said Facebook and Google, owner of the world’s most used search engine, act like “a de facto duopoly.”
In a post, Facebook told Australia’s 18 million users that it had acted reluctantly and argued the new law misunderstood the relationship between Facebook and publishers who use it to share news content.Facebook advocates
But Facebook also has defenders in the tech industry.
Mike Masnick, founder of the California-based blog Techdirt.com, said users are not being blocked from accessing news. “Contrary to the idea that this is an ‘attack’ on journalism or news in Australia, it’s not. The news still exists in Australia. News companies still have websites. People can still visit those websites,” he said in a blog post.
Australia’s move to tax links is alarming, Masnick adds. “This is fundamentally against the principles of an open internet. The government saying that you can’t link to a news site unless you pay a tax should be seen as inherently problematic for a long list of reasons. At a most basic level, it’s demanding payment for traffic.”
On Thursday, the tech giant started to allow access via its platform from public health websites.
Facebook’s move to block media content in Australia was lambasted by Britain’s News Media Association. Henry Faure Walker, chairman of the group, said the action showed why countries need to coordinate robust regulation. He said the action was “a classic example” of a monopoly power “trying to protect its dominant position with scant regard for the citizens and customers it supposedly serves.”
Facebook’s British critics also highlighted emerging news that the tech giant has accepted funding from China’s state-controlled media organizations, including the China Daily newspaper and China Global Television Network (CGTN), to promote Chinese government denials that Beijing has been targeting ethnic Uighur Muslims and other minorities in the northwest region of Xinjiang in what the U.S. government has labeled a “genocide.”
An investigation this week by Britain’s trade journal the Press Gazette unearthed details of payments being made by Chinese state-controlled media to Facebook to advertise and promote the stories dismissing international concerns over the plight of the Uighurs as Western “disinformation.” 
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Facebook is blocking Australian users from sharing or viewing news content amid a dispute over a proposed law.  Australia wants tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay for the content reposted from news outlets.“A bombshell decision” is how Facebook’s move is being reported in Australia.  The social media giant said it was banning Australians from sharing and reading news stories on its platform with a “heavy heart.”   The government in Canberra, though, has said it won’t back down.  Ministers have said the Facebook ban highlighted the “immense market power of these digital social giants.”  About 17 million Australians visit Facebook every month.The media bargaining code legislation has already been passed by the lower house of the Australian parliament and is expected to receive final approval by the upper chamber, the Senate, next week.  It would make Australia the first country to force big tech firms to pay for news content.  Communications Minister Paul Fletcher is scathing about Facebook’s actions.“Facebook needs to think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing,” Fletcher said. “They are effectively saying on our platform there will not be any information from organizations which employ paid journalists.  They are effectively saying any information that is available on our site does not come from these reliable sources.”The progress of Australia’s social media laws is reportedly being closely followed in other parts of the world, including Canada and the European Union.Facebook said the legislation “fundamentally misunderstands” the relationship between itself and publishers.  Large technology companies, including Google, have argued that by using stories from other publishers they generate more internet traffic and revenue for the websites run by traditional media outlets.   They have complained that as their advertising revenues have collapsed, social media platforms have benefited from their quality journalism without paying for it.  In contrast to Facebook, Google has this week signed multi-million dollar deals with three major Australian broadcasters and publishers.
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For two decades, global news outlets have complained internet companies are getting rich at their expense, selling advertising linked to their reports without sharing revenue.
Now, Australia is joining France and other governments in pushing Google, Facebook and other internet giants to pay. That might channel more money to a news industry that is cutting coverage as revenue shrinks. But it also sets up a clash with some of the tech industry’s biggest names.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., has announced agreements to pay publishers in Australia while Facebook said Thursday it has blocked users in the country from viewing or sharing news.  What Is Happening in Australia?  
Facing a proposed law to compel internet companies to pay news organizations, Google has announced deals with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and Seven West Media. No financial details were released. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. is in negotiations.  
Google accounts for 53% percent of Australian online advertising revenue and Facebook 23%, according to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.  
Google had threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia in response to the legislation, which would create a panel to make pricing decisions on news.  
On Thursday, Facebook responded by blocking users from accessing and sharing Australian news.
Facebook said the proposed law “ignores the realities” of its relationship with publishers that use its service to “share news content.” That was despite Frydenberg saying this week Google and Facebook “do want to enter into these commercial arrangements.”  What Is Happening in Other Countries?  
Australia’s proposed law would be the first of its kind, but other governments also are pressuring Google, Facebook and other internet companies to pay news outlets and other publishers for material.  
In Europe, Google had to negotiate with French publishers after a court last year upheld an order saying such agreements were required by a 2019 European Union copyright directive.
France is the first government to enforce the rules, but the decision suggests Google, Facebook and other companies will face similar requirements in other parts of the 27-nation trade bloc.
 
Google and a group of French publishers have announced a framework agreement for the American company to negotiate licensing deals with individual publishers. The company has deals with outlets including the newspaper Le Monde and the weekly magazine l’Obs.  
Last year, Facebook announced it would pay U.S. news organizations including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today for headlines. No financial details were released.  
In Spain, Google shut down its news website after a 2014 law required it to pay publishers.  Why Does This Matter?  
Developments in Australia and Europe suggest the financial balance between multibillion-dollar internet companies and news organizations might be shifting.
Australia is responding to complaints internet companies should share advertising and other revenue connected to news reports, magazine articles and other content that appears on their websites or is shared by users.  
The government acted after its competition regulator tried and failed to negotiate a voluntary payment plan with Google. The proposed law would create a panel to make binding decisions on the price of news reports to help give individual publishers more negotiating leverage with global internet companies.What Does This Mean for The Public?
Google’s agreement means a new revenue stream for news outfits, but whether that translates into more coverage for readers, viewers and listeners is unclear.
The union for Australian journalists is calling on media companies to make sure online revenue goes into news gathering.
“Any monies from these deals need to end up in the newsroom, not the boardroom,” said Marcus Strom, president of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. “We will be pressing the case for transparency on how these funds are spent.”
In the meantime, access occasionally could suffer: Facebook’s move Thursday initially blocked some Australian commercial and government communications pages.
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Facebook has blocked Australian account holders from viewing or sharing all news content over a dispute with a government proposal to make digital giants pay domestic news outlets for their content.Thursday’s move by the U.S.-based social media company was made despite ongoing negotiations between Facebook and rival Google with Australian media companies.Facebook regional director Will Easton said in a written statement that the proposed law “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.”Easton said the proposal left Facebook “facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”The websites of several public agencies and emergency services were also blocked on Facebook, including pages that include up-to-date information on COVID-19 outbreaks, brushfires and other natural disasters.Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tweeted Thursday that he and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had “a constructive discussion” in which Zuckerberg “raised a few remaining issues” with the government’s news media bargaining code.Australian media companies have seen their advertising revenue increasingly siphoned off by big tech firms like Google and Facebook in recent years.Google had also threatened to block news content if the law were passed, even warning last August that Australians’ personal information could be “at risk” if digital giants had to pay for news content.But the company has already signed a number of separate agreements with such Australian media giants as the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media.
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Facebook announced Thursday it has blocked Australians from viewing and sharing news on the platform because of proposed laws in the country to make digital giants pay for journalism.Australian publishers can continue to publish news content on Facebook, but links and posts can’t be viewed or shared by Australian audiences, the U.S.-based company said in a statement.Australian users cannot share Australian or international news.International users outside Australia also cannot share Australian news.”The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content,” Facebook regional managing director William Easton said.”It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter,” Easton added.The announcement comes a day after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg described as “very promising” negotiations between Facebook and Google with Australian media companies.Frydenberg said after weekend talks with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google, he was convinced that the platforms “do want to enter into these commercial arrangements.”Frydenberg said he had had a “a constructive discussion” with Zuckerberg after Facebook blocked Australian news.”He raised a few remaining issues with the Government’s news media bargaining code and we agreed to continue our conversation to try to find a pathway forward,” Frydenberg tweeted.But communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government would not back down on its legislative agenda.”This announcement from Facebook, if they were to maintain this position, of course would call into question the credibility of the platform in terms of the news on it,” Fletcher told Australian Broadcasting Corp.”Effectively Facebook is saying to Australians, ‘Information that you see on our platforms does not come from organizations that have editorial policies or fact-checking processes or journalists who are paid to do the work they do,’” Fletcher added.The Australian Parliament is debating proposed laws that would make the two platforms strike deals to pay for Australian news.The Senate will consider the draft laws after they were passed by the House of Representatives late Wednesday.Both platforms have condemned the proposed laws as unworkable. Google has also threatened to remove its search engine from the country.But Google is striking pay deals with Australian news media companies under its own News Showcase model.Seven West Media on Monday became the largest Australian news media business to strike a deal with Google to pay for journalism.Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has since announced a wide-ranging deal.Rival Nine Entertainment is reportedly close to its own pact and ABC is also in negotiations.News plays a larger part in Google’s business model than it does in Facebook’s.Easton said the public would ask why the platforms were responding differently to the proposed law that would create an arbitration panel to set a price for news in cases where the platforms and news businesses failed to agree.”The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news,” Easton said.Peter Lewis, director of the Australia Institute’s Center for Responsible Technology think tank, said Facebook’s decision “will make it a weaker social network.””Facebook actions mean the company’s failures in privacy, disinformation, and data protection will require a bigger push for stronger government regulation,” Lewis said. “Without fact-based news to anchor it, Facebook will become little more than cute cats and conspiracy theories.”  
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The U.S. Justice Department has indicted three North Korean computer programmers for trying to extort and steal more than $1.3 billion as part of a global cyber scheme that included the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment.A Canadian American who allegedly laundered some of the stolen money also pleaded guilty in the scheme.North Koreans Park Jin Hyok, Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.Park, a computer programmer for North Korea’s intelligence service, was charged two years ago for his role in the Sony hack.That hack erased corporate data, obtained sensitive company emails among top Hollywood executives and forced the company to rebuild its entire computer network.The motivation for the hack was believed to be retaliation for the 2014 movie “The Interview,” which ridiculed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and even portrayed an assassination plot against him.As part of the scheme, the Justice Department said, the three plotted to steal more than $1.2 billion from banks in Vietnam, Mexico, Malta and other places. They also stole $75 million from a Slovenian cryptocurrency company and $11.8 million of digital currency from a New York financial services company.”The scope of the criminal conduct by the North Korean hackers was extensive and long-running, and the range of crimes they have committed is staggering,” Tracy L. Wilkison, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime.”The three are also believed to have been behind the 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack, which affected computers in 150 countries and most notably crippled the computer network of Britain’s National Health Service.The three North Koreans are unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom.  
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The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday indicted three North Koreans for their alleged role in the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a scheme that involved efforts to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrency.A Canadian American who allegedly laundered some of the stolen money also pleaded guilty in the scheme.North Koreans Park Jin Hyok, Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il are charged with criminal conspiracy, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud.Park, a computer programmer for North Korea’s intelligence service, was charged two years ago for his role in the Sony hack.That hack erased corporate data, obtained sensitive company emails among top Hollywood executives and forced the company to rebuild its entire computer network.The motivation for the hack was believed to be retaliation for the 2014 movie “The Interview,” which ridiculed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and even portrayed an assassination plot against him.As part of the scheme, the Justice Department said, the three plotted to steal more than $1.2 billion from banks in Vietnam, Mexico, Malta and other places. They also stole $75 million from a Slovenian cryptocurrency company and $11.8 million of digital currency from a New York financial services company.”The scope of the criminal conduct by the North Korean hackers was extensive and long-running, and the range of crimes they have committed is staggering,” Tracy L. Wilkison, acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement. “The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime.”The three are also believed to have been behind the 2017 WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack, which affected computers in 150 countries and most notably crippled the computer network of Britain’s National Health Service.The three North Koreans are unlikely to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom.  
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A slew of attractive toy robots on the market today are teaching children important language and science, technology, engineering and math skills, while keeping them entertained. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.Producer: Julie Taboh/Adam Greenbaum     
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The information technology giant Google has agreed to pay an Australian media company to host news material ahead of a planned mandatory bargaining code. Google’s deal with Seven West Media, which publishes the Perth-based West Australian newspaper and other titles, is the first of seven such arrangements the tech giant is expected to make in Australia.  A law being introduced this week in federal parliament in Canberra would require large technology companies to pay to use Australian news stories.  The legislation would make Australia the first country to force big tech firms to pay for news content.  Google, which had called the law unworkable, and Facebook have threatened to downgrade their services to Australians or even walk away. They have argued that by using stories from other publishers they generate more internet traffic for the websites run by traditional media outlets.  But in an apparent softening of that stance, Google has reached an agreement with Seven West Media, reportedly worth $23 million a year.  Belinda Barnett is a lecturer in media at Swinburne University of Technology, a public research university based in Melbourne. She believes it is a good result for the Australian company. “It does sound like they have come up with a fairly lucrative deal for them, around AUD$30 million, but that figure has not been confirmed yet. Seven West owns quite a lot of regional outlets as well. So, it has the potential to benefit the regional news outlets that it owns and the journalists employed by them,” Barnett  said.The Australian government said a deal with Facebook was “very close.” As their advertising revenues collapsed, traditional broadcasting and publishing companies have for years complained that social media platforms have benefited from their quality reporting without paying for it.  
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Parler, a social media service popular with American right-wing users that virtually vanished shortly after the U.S. Capitol riot, relaunched on Monday and said its new platform was built on “sustainable, independent technology.”Known as an alternative to Twitter, Parler has struggled after Amazon stripped it of its web-hosting services on January 11 over Parler’s refusal to remove posts inciting violence. Citing the same reason, Google and Apple also removed the Parler app from their stores.  In a statement announcing the relaunch, Parler said it had appointed Mark Meckler as its interim chief executive, replacing John Matze who was fired by the board this month. Despite the relaunch, the website was still not opening for many users and the app was not available for download on mobile stores run by Apple and Alphabet-owned Google.  While several users took to rival Twitter to complain they were unable to access the service, a few others said they could access their existing account.Parler, which asserted it once had over 20 million users, said it would bring its current users back online in the first week and would be open to new users in the next week. Founded in 2018, the app has styled itself as a “free speech-driven” space and largely attracted U.S. conservatives who disagree with rules around content on other social media sites. On Monday, Parler said its new technology cut its reliance on “so-called Big Tech” for its operations. It’s unclear what company was hosting Parler.  “Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay,” said Meckler, who had co-founded the Tea Party Patriots, a group that emerged in 2009 within the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement and helped elect dozens of Republicans. It is also backed by hedge fund investor Robert Mercer, his daughter Rebekah Mercer and conservative commentator Dan Bongino. 
 
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When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, hits the final stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it is set to emit a radio alert as it streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere.   By the time that signal reaches mission managers some 204 million kilometers away at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, Perseverance will already have landed on the Red Planet — hopefully in one piece.   The six-wheeled rover is expected to take seven minutes to descend from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the planet’s surface in less time than the 11-minute-plus radio transmission to Earth. Thus, Thursday’s final, self-guided descent of the rover spacecraft is set to occur during a white-knuckled interval that JPL engineers affectionately refer to as the “seven minutes of terror.”   Al Chen, head of the JPL descent and landing team, called it the most critical and most dangerous part of the $2.7 billion mission.   “Success is never assured,” Chen told a recent news briefing. “And that’s especially true when we’re trying to land the biggest, heaviest and most complicated rover we’ve ever built to the most dangerous site we’ve ever attempted to land at.”   Much is riding on the outcome. Building on discoveries of nearly 20 U.S. outings to Mars dating back to Mariner 4’s 1965 flyby, Perseverance may set the stage for scientists to conclusively show whether life has existed beyond Earth, while paving the way for eventual human missions to the fourth planet from the sun. A safe landing, as always, comes first.   Success will hinge on a complex sequence of events unfolding without a hitch — from inflation of a giant, supersonic parachute to deployment of a jet-powered “sky crane” that will descend to a safe landing spot and hover above the surface while lowering the rover to the ground on a tether.   “Perseverance has to do this all on her own,” Chen said. “We can’t help it during this period.”   If all goes as planned, NASA’s team would receive a follow-up radio signal shortly before 1 p.m. Pacific time confirming that Perseverance landed on Martian soil at the edge of an ancient, long-vanished river delta and lakebed.   Science on the surface From there, the nuclear battery-powered rover, roughly the size of a small SUV, will embark on the primary objective of its two-year mission — engaging a complex suite of instruments in the search for signs of microbial life that may have flourished on Mars billions of years ago.   Advanced power tools will drill samples from Martian rock and seal them into cigar-sized tubes for eventual return to Earth for further analysis — the first such specimens ever collected by humankind from the surface of another planet.   Two future missions to retrieve those samples and fly them back to Earth are in the planning stages by NASA, in collaboration with the European Space Agency.   Perseverance, the fifth and by far most sophisticated rover vehicle NASA has sent to Mars since Sojourner in 1997, also incorporates several pioneering features not directly related to astrobiology.   Among them is a small drone helicopter, nicknamed Ingenuity, that will test surface-to-surface powered flight on another world for the first time. If successful, the four-pound (1.8-kg) whirlybird could pave the way for low-altitude aerial surveillance of Mars during later missions.   Another experiment is a device to extract pure oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, a tool that could prove invaluable for future human life support on Mars and for producing rocket propellant to fly astronauts home.   ‘Spectacular’ but treacherous The mission’s first hurdle after a 293-million-mile (472-million-km) flight from Earth is delivering the rover intact to the floor of Jerezo Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-km-wide) expanse that scientists believe may harbor a rich trove of fossilized microorganisms.   “It is a spectacular landing site,” project scientist Ken Farley told reporters on a teleconference.   What makes the crater’s rugged terrain — deeply carved by long-vanished flows of liquid water — so tantalizing as a research site also makes it treacherous as a landing zone.   The descent sequence, an upgrade from NASA’s last rover mission in 2012, begins as Perseverance, encased in a protective shell, pierces the Martian atmosphere at 12,000 miles per hour (19,300 km per hour), nearly 16 times the speed of sound on Earth.   After a parachute deployment to slow its plunge, the descent capsule’s heat shield is set to fall away to release a jet-propelled “sky crane” hovercraft with the rover attached to its belly.   Once the parachute is jettisoned, the sky crane’s jet thrusters are set to immediately fire, slowing its descent to walking speed as it nears the crater floor and self-navigates to a smooth landing site, steering clear of boulders, cliffs and sand dunes.   Hovering over the surface, the sky crane is due to lower Perseverance on nylon tethers, sever the chords when the rover’s wheels reach the surface, then fly off to crash a safe distance away.   Should everything work, deputy project manager Matthew Wallace said, post-landing exuberance would be on full display at JPL despite COVID-19 safety protocols that have kept close contacts within mission control to a minimum.   “I don’t think COVID is going to be able to stop us from jumping up and down and fist-bumping,” Wallace said.   
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The Biden administration asked a U.S. court Thursday to suspend litigation connected to former President Donald Trump’s proposed ban on WeChat while it reviews the policy. The Justice Department filed a request with the U.S. Court of Appeals seeking a suspension of the case. That followed action Wednesday in which the department asked a federal court for a pause on proceedings aimed at banning TikTok. Newly installed Commerce Department officials have begun a review of the prior administration’s actions on WeChat, including “an evaluation of the underlying record justifying those prohibitions,” the DOJ said in the filing. “The government will then be better positioned to determine” whether “the regulatory purpose of protecting the security of Americans and their data continues to warrant the identified prohibitions,” the filing added. Trump issued an executive order last August declaring both WeChat and TikTok as threats to national security because of data collection practices affecting Americans. However, U.S. courts have blocked the bans from going into effect, leading to appeals lodged in the final months of the Trump administration seeking to override the lower courts. The DOJ said the Commerce Department “remains committed to a robust defense of national security as well as ensuring the viability of our economy and preserving individual rights and data.” 
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