The president of the European Commission is warning EU citizens to beware of on-line scams, particularly for counterfeit medical products and medicines during the coronavirus crisis. In a video message released Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said with more people working from home and spending time online, they have become more susceptible to cyber criminals, particularly those exploiting fears about the virus. She says European law-enforcement agencies have seized 4.4 million units of illicit pharmaceuticals in recent weeks, seven organized crime groups were dismantled, and 121 arrests were made. Von der Leyen said that 2,500 fake links, websites and social media profiles have also been taken down. She urged citizens to double check all websites they visit are maintained by a trusted entity.  Von der Leyen said that if and when actual vaccines or other medicines are proven effective in treating the coronavirus, official government and public institutions will announce it.  
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Trexo Robotics is the invention of two passionate robotics engineers who decided they wanted to help those who cannot walk or otherwise move independently. Angelina Bagdasaryan has the story narrated by Anna Rice.
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A Washington-based software developer is recruiting other techies to combat the spread of the new coronavirus in his native Ethiopia, following the lead of countries such as China and South Korea with early experience in what is now a global pandemic.“We need an army of tech volunteers to help the Ethiopian Ministry of Health collect, analyze and report to the agency so that we can assist them in the time of need,” Mike Endale wrote in The 38-year-old Endale came to the United States in 2000 and is a principal in BlenCorp, a small information technology firm in Washington. Its portfolio includes projects for the District of Columbia and federal governments, business, industry and advisory groups. Endale said the volunteers, mostly from the United States, Canada and Europe, are writing open-source code to create tools that could be used to raise public awareness of coronavirus risks and for contact tracing. “How do you push information out to the public? Things need to be built,” he said, citing social media messenger bots for Facebook, WhatsApp and other platforms. He added that some volunteers are working on an emergency response for contact tracing, which identifies an infected person and follows up with those who might have been near that person.Software’s role in the coronavirus public health emergency has bumped up against privacy concerns. In China, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, governments are using GPS phone tracking software to track people’s movement, retrace the movement of an infected person before diagnosis or to make sure a patient does not break quarantine, according to the Morning Brew business newsletter. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit watchdog for civil liberties in the digital world, last week laid out principles for “data collection and digital monitoring of potential carriers of COVID-19.” It said data collection “privacy intrusions” should be proportionate, science-based, transparent and finite, ending after the crisis has been contained.Endale acknowledged privacy concerns in gathering information for Ethiopia’s government. But, he said, “the data collection part is administered by the folks in the health ministry. … They house the data. We’re just building the tools.”
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No more rallies. No more door-knocking. And no more in-person fundraisers, raking in dollars from dozens of millionaires at once.  
The coronavirus has disrupted American life, and the 2020 presidential campaign is no exception. Amid calls for social distancing to stop the pandemic’s spread, President Donald Trump and Democrats Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have had little choice but to call off large-scale public events in favor of politicking online and over the airwaves.  
Gone are the rope lines, selfies with supporters and entourages of traveling press. They’re being replaced — for now — with tools of the digital world: tele-town halls, virtual fundraisers and live streamed speeches from candidates’ homes, sometimes with awkward results.  
The abrupt shift has infused the contest with an added degree of uncertainty.  
With control of the White House at stake, candidates have been forced to ditch well-honed strategies in favor of untested tactics. There are doubts about whether they will be able to continue raising crucial cash as unemployment soars and the economy sputters. There are also concerns that a virtual campaign could foster the spread of misinformation and maybe even force the cancellation of the major party conventions this summer.  
“Nobody’s had to put together a general election strategy in the circumstances we face today,” Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser, told The Associated Press. “I like to say every election is different. This election is really, really, really different.”
Digital advertising and online outreach were always going to play a major role in the election. But no one could anticipate that tactile politics would be completely put on hold.  
Since events halted earlier this month, Sanders has held a virtual rally featuring rocker Neil Young and appeared via live stream for a “fireside chat.” But any momentum he’s sought to build has been sapped, as Biden, the former vice president, has won a string of contests that put the nomination within his grasp.
Sanders’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.  
The pause has provided Biden the opportunity to retool his campaign, which was running on fumes before his massive win in South Carolina last month reset the race. But he lacks the robust digital operation that Sanders and Trump have. And his early experiments in online campaigning have had mixed results.  
Biden aimed to appear presidential during a live stream Tuesday night, when he won primaries in Florida, Illinois and Arizona. Standing before a podium with an austere backdrop from his home state of Delaware, he called on the nation to put politics aside to fight the coronavirus because it “doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
Yet an earlier event was marred by technical glitches. At one point, Biden wandered off-camera. The campaign later apologized for the difficulties, and Rob Flaherty, Biden’s digital director, acknowledged live stream technology is “one of the things that we’re struggling with.”
“He’s the best retail politician in the entire world, right? So how do we build systems where he can go out and meet people, still talk to people, get those one-on-one engagements, and also make people feel like they’re a part of something?” Flaherty said.
The campaign is also looking into adopting the use of Slack, a popular group communication platform, now that staffers are working from home.  
Trump, too, is not immune from the effects. Though the Republican has the megaphone of the presidency, his dismissive early response to the virus and denials that a pandemic was spreading have been largely panned.  
At the same time, he’s being denied the ability to hold the freewheeling rallies that are a staple of his presidency and that allow him to blow off steam, attack rivals and often shift the media narrative.  
As campaign offices have emptied out and workers telecommute from home, trainings for his reelection effort are now being done virtually, as are all voter contacts.
Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for Trump’s reelection campaign, said the campaign is “best equipped” for the pivot to virtual campaigning. But no amount of technology can replicate the arena rallies that have served as mass organizing and communication events for his reelection.
Murtaugh said the campaign hopes to roll out “live and interactive” events with surrogates online in the coming days. Still, don’t expect to see Trump participating in them.  
Murtaugh said that as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence hold televised briefings daily, the campaign’s role is to amplify their message.
“Americans want to see that their president and their government is on the case,” he said.
While Biden has called for the country to come together for a moment of bipartisanship to address the crisis, other Democrats are itching to use Trump’s handling of it as an election-year attack.  
“Using Trump’s own words and actions to remind people of his failures while he tries to rewrite history is essential,” tweeted David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager.
So far, at least, a political committee affiliated with Trump’s reelection has opted against taking the same course. America First Action, a super PAC sanctioned by Trump, has postponed plans to spend millions attacking Biden in TV ads while the crisis in ongoing.  
Another area of uncertainty is whether any of the contenders will still be able to rake in gobs of money, the lifeblood of any campaign.  
With big-dollar events on hold, the candidates and the parties could struggle to bring in large checks. The financial uncertainty could also depress grassroots donations from those who give small amounts online.  
“We have to be thoughtful about how we ask people for money,” Flaherty said. “We’re moving into a space where the economy is going to be tougher.”  
Not everyone is concerned, though.  
“Any Democratic Party official who’s agonizing over what type of fundraising we do or what type of convention we’re going to have should get out of group therapy, go to JoeBiden.com and make a donation,” said Robert Zimmerman, a prominent New York donor and Democratic National Committee member who said he would be fine casting his ballot for Biden during a virtual convention. “The pandemic that we’re facing and the threat it represents puts everything in the proper perspective.”
But it’s not just the presidential candidates who will have to grapple with this new reality. Down-ballot candidates could find the shift to an all-digital campaign particularly challenging because many of them are running on much thinner budgets and have less money to spend on ads and staff to make up for the loss of in-person interaction.
“If you have no money, and you’re dependent on meeting people out in organic environments, the challenges you now face are huge,” said Kelly Dietrich, CEO of the National Democratic Training Committee, a group that trains Democrats who want to run for office or work on a campaign.  
Even well-funded players in the presidential race are feeling the pinch. And the holding pattern gripping the contest is delaying on-the-ground organizing efforts that will be key to winning battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.  
“Everyone is hitting pause and thinking about how we engage in field activities and organizing. Hopefully we’ll get to a place where that can happen,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, the largest outside Democratic group. “But the reality is that until we see changes, we’re just going to have to put those things on hold.”
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Not everyone who wanted to buy the bank cards stolen from Southeast Asian owners would pay the same price: The higher the amount of money left on the card, the higher the price. That’s according to Technisanct, a cybersecurity company based in India, which said it found the data for hundreds of thousands of cards for sale online, taken from citizens in the six largest nations in Southeast Asia.The card theft comes as statistics show cybercrime is on the rise across all the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, prompting local calls for more stringent regulations and protocols to fight the trend. “The results are alarming as it seems no one is aware that such a huge volume of payment card details, including the CVV (card verification value) and PIN, are available,” said Nandakishore Harikumar, chief executive officer of Technisanct.The company said its researchers found that more than 300,000 stolen card accounts were being sold on the internet last month. It said the accounts belonged to customers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. FILE – An interior view of the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation (IGCI) Cyber Fusion Centre, which brings together cybersecurity experts, is seen in Singapore, April 13, 2015.The leaked information is just the latest instance of a region-wide trend, and ASEAN is paying the price. IBM Security commissioned research, released in the 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report, which assessed impacts for the global economy.Between 2018 and 2019, the ASEAN region saw a cost increase in all of the key indicators measured by the researchers, namely the average size of data breaches, the average total cost, and the average cost per piece of data that is breached. Exploiting COVID-19The leak also coincides with what security researchers say is an increase in global cyberfraud by criminals exploiting the COVID-19 virus emergency. Hackers this month went after the website of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, as well as targeting the increasing number of people now working from home with unsecured wireless internet. Southeast Asians’ increasing awareness of cyberthreats in recent years has led to increasing regulation aimed at increasing data protection. This year, Singapore criminalized “doxxing,” which refers to posting other people’s personal information online, usually to threaten or embarrass them. Indonesia has proposed its first-ever data privacy law, which includes punishment of up to seven years in jail and $5 million in fines for sharing private data without consent.Vietnam already had a cybersecurity law but has released new subsidiary regulations under that law with further guidelines. They include specifics about when websites must take down information considered to be violating the law, and which organizations must store data domestically.”Vietnam witnessed an increase in the number of cyberattacks and data leakages in 2019, and the country has been among the top targets for cyberattacks in recent years,” Pho Duc Giang, director at PwC Vietnam Cybersecurity Services Company, said. “To leverage on growing business opportunities in the digital economy’s booming period, Vietnam enterprises need to actively prepare for new challenges by adapting and complying with up-to-date” standards, he said. Security recommendationsSuch standards go beyond what is required by the law. Security researchers recommend companies and individuals think more carefully about their behavior on the internet.They can use software to manage their passwords —so they don’t have to memorize ones that are easy for hackers to crack—as well as change the passwords for devices like their wireless routers and smart plugs, rather than use the default settings set by the manufacturer.And as employees are working from home to combat the coronavirus, there are reports that hackers have been sending phishing emails posing as managers seeking employee log-in credentials, or as officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offering information. During this emergency and beyond, the recommendations for better online behavior could be useful both inside and outside Southeast Asia. 
 
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A father in quarantine on a Marine base in California was able to attend his daughter’s wedding hundreds of kilometers away in Arizona. He did so through a “telepresence robot,” directing its movements, mingling with guests and watching from the sidelines as his daughter danced at the wedding party.
With more people worldwide severely curtailing their movements to fight the coronavirus, they are also getting creative about how to still be part of big moments in their lives. Among the thousands of people stuck on the Grand Princess cruise ship when it faced the coronavirus quarantine was Joel Young, a lighting contractor. He passed the time in his small cabin playing video games. He hoped to be home in Arizona for one thing — his daughter’s wedding.    Then he was quarantined in San Diego.   “When I called her and talked to her, and told her that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to make it, there were a lot of tears there,”  he said.Friends and colleagues rallied and found Young a way to be there by using a robot telepresence that is controlled remotely by the user. It was shipped to his mother’s house in Phoenix. They called it the “Papabot,” and put a tie on it.   
“With this device, it allows me to control what I’m looking at, where I’m going,” he said. The outdoor wedding went beautifully. Young didn’t get to walk his daughter down the aisle as planned, but he was there mingling with guests, watching her happiness from the sidelines.   “You meet a challenge, you find the best solution you can. And you accept what it is, and you move on,”  he said.
 
As the world struggles with the new normal of living through a pandemic, technology helped one father be where he was needed.      
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School closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic are creating stress for many parents trying to teach and entertain their children at home. While many online educational options provide help, some parents worry about too much screen time while their kids are away from school. General view of a sign outside the Parkside Community Primary School in Borehamwood as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Borehamwood, Britain, March 18, 2020.“If you’re wasting your time on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, that’s the bad kind of screen time that we want to eliminate,” said David Drobik, co-founder of Vividbooks, an application that uses augmented reality to make physics concepts come to life. His app is among those that aim to combine the real and digital worlds to help children stay mentally active and engaged. Augmented reality physicsTraditional physics textbooks, Drobik said, contain illustrations, diagrams and lots of text to describe concepts that might be easier to understand if explained through a more visual medium.“Physics has a lot of caveats and a lot of concepts that are very visual in the sense that if you apply a digital layer with an animation that explains different concepts, it’s much easier to explain rather than having to read a lot of text,” Drobik said. Through a desktop or mobile device, a user first prints out Vividbooks pages. Once in the app, holding the mobile device over a Vividbooks page will animate what is on the page on the screen of the device.“The device recognizes the image on the worksheet, and that’s how it knows that it should play a certain type of animation,” Drobik said.Certain pages include sound when explaining concepts such as how a steam engine works or the mechanical properties of gases with the sound of blowing up a balloon. Other topics include energy, optics, Newton’s law and friction. An empty classroom is seen at a closed school in Paris, March 16, 2020. The app is currently available only for Apple mobile devices. Web and Android versions are expected in June. During the pandemic, parents can access Vividbooks pages for free. The target age range for the product is 10 to 12 years old. The company plans to add chemistry and biology content and to expand the material for a wider age range.Creativity and imagination Another app attempts to avoid the passivity that causes many children and young adults to be glued to screens.“Technology is great. It’s all around us and there’s so many fantastic things out there,” Martin Horstman, founder of Tink Digital, the company that created the app DoodleMatic, said. But, he added, the way children use it can be passive.Horstman considers social media and video games to be passive because the user is consuming other people’s ideas.He developed DoodleMatic so that users 6 years old and older could express their own ideas by combining real-world skills with technology.With the software, a user designs and draws a game on paper, using specific colors that tell the app whether something is an avatar, a goal, a hazard, or is something that can make an object move. The user then takes a photo of the picture with a mobile device through the app, and what was on paper becomes a video game.Through trial and error, young game developers learn how to avoid past mistakes and develop more complex games, which Horstman said can teach important life skills.“We believe strongly that creativity and imagination is such an important skill for every career path that you might end up taking,” Horstman said.Kids can design and animate two games for free. A package costs $29.99, which includes markers, design ideas and a code providing access to create 1,000 additional animated games.
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School closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic mean many parents are trying to come up with ways to educate and entertain their children at home. While there are many online options, some parents worry about too much screen time. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details on a couple of applications that combine the physical and digital so students learning at home get the best of both worlds.
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Technology and spirituality normally don’t go together. But at a recent conference in San Francisco there were tips on how to use technology to achieve more inner peace. Deana Mitchell went to see if it was possible.
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Chinese social video app TikTok named the initial members of a U.S.-focused content moderation committee to advise on its policies on Wednesday, as it faces U.S. scrutiny over data-sharing and censorship concerns.The council, which it announced in October, will meet every few months to give “unvarnished views” and advice on content moderation policies and evaluate the company’s actions.TikTok, owned by Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance, has made a series of bids to boost transparency as it faces scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers over its data security practices and concerns it engages in censorship at the behest of the Chinese government.The company, which has been criticized after former guidelines to suppress users’ content based on their physical appearance were leaked to media outlets, has also come under pressure to curb misinformation ahead of the U.S. presidential election and during the coronavirus pandemic.A Reuters search found TikTok videos repeating debunked false claims, including that the coronavirus might have come from a bioweapons ‘super laboratory.’The company has said U.S. user data is stored in the United States and that China does not have jurisdiction over content outside China.TikTok said its ‘Content Advisory Council,’ will grow to about a dozen members.The council’s first meeting at the end of March will focus on topics around “platform integrity, including policies against misinformation and election interference.”The group will be chaired by Dawn Nunziato, a professor at George Washington University Law School and co-director of the Global Internet Freedom Project.The other six founding members include Hany Farid, an expert on deepfakes and digital image forensics, tech ethicist David Ryan Polgar, and experts on issues from child safety to voter information.Last week, TikTok announced it had set up a “transparency center” in Los Angeles to show regulators and the public how it how it reviews content.In November, the U.S. government launched a national security review of TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly. Two senators have also introduced a bill to ban federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued phones.Facebook Inc is currently in the process of creating an independent oversight board to review appealed content decisions. In 2016, Twitter Inc formed a ‘Trust and Safety Council’ of groups and experts to provide advice.
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Technology and spirituality normally don’t go together. But at a recent conference in San Francisco there were tips on how to use technology to achieve more inner peace. Deana Mitchell went to see if it was possible.
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Technology and spirituality normally don’t go together. But at a recent conference in San Francisco there were tips on how to use technology to achieve more inner peace. Deana Mitchell went to see if it was possible.
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Motion capture technology is no longer just available for filmmakers and video game makers to transform human actors into other creatures. With the smartphone and other technologies, anyone can have their movements captured and analyzed to learn about how the body is moving for better physical performance and to avoid injuries.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details. 
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A virtual library housing censored articles from around the world has been created within the hugely popular video game Minecraft by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).   Minecraft, with its signature pixelated graphics, enables players to build entire universes from Lego-like digital blocks, either alone or with others online.   RSF said it had put work by banned, exiled or killed journalists in five countries — Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Vietnam — on an open server, making it available for players to view despite local censorship laws.   “In these countries, where websites, blogs and free press in general are strictly limited, Minecraft is still accessible by everyone,” the group said in a press release.   “These articles are now available again within Minecraft, hidden from government surveillance technology inside a computer game. The books can be read by everyone on the server, but their content cannot be changed,” it said.   In May last year, Minecraft said 176 million copies of the game have been sold since its launch a decade ago.   The project, announced on Thursday to mark the World Day Against Cyber Censorship, is called the “Uncensored Library” and takes the form of a large neoclassical-style building in the game.   RSF said the library was growing, with more texts being added both in English and their original language.   Already available in the game are articles by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and from Egyptian online newspaper Mada Masr, which has been blocked in the North African country since 2017. 
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Apple Inc said late on Friday it will close all its retail stores, except those in Greater China, for the next two weeks to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission.”We will be closing all of our retail stores outside of Greater China until March 27,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a letter posted on the company’s website.”In all of our offices, we are moving to flexible work arrangements worldwide outside of Greater China,” he added. “That means team members should work remotely if their job allows.”Apple reopened all 42 of its branded stores in China on Friday.The company’s donations to the global coronavirus response, to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts, reached $15 million on Friday, Cook wrote in the letter.More than 138,000 people have been infected worldwide and over 5,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally of government announcements.
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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Friday he is stepping down from the company’s board to focus on philanthropy.Gates was Microsoft’s CEO until 2000 and since then has gradually scaled back his involvement in the company he started with Paul Allen in 1975.He transitioned out of a day-to-day role in Microsoft in 2008 and served as chairman of the board until 2014.The billionaire announced Friday that he’s leaving the Microsoft board entirely as well as his seat on the board of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate headed by fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.Gates said he plans to dedicate more time to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He will also remain a technology adviser to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other company leaders.
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A federal jury Wednesday decided that Apple Inc. and Broadcom Inc. must pay $1.1 billion to the California Institute of Technology for infringing on patents.Apple was on the hook for nearly $838 million of the damages awarded in a lawsuit that said Broadcom used its patented Wi-Fi data transmission technology in computer chips that went into iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and other Apple devices.Caltech, the superstar tech school based in Pasadena, said it was pleased by the verdict of the Los Angeles jury.“As a nonprofit institution of higher education, Caltech is committed to protecting its intellectual property in furtherance of its mission to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education,” a school statement said.Emails seeking comment from Cupertino-based Apple and Broadcom weren’t immediately returned Wednesday night but they are expected to appeal.Last week, San Jose-based Broadcom announced it had reached agreements to supply components to Apple devices released for the next three years.It wasn’t immediately clear what impact the lawsuit award would have on those deals, which Broadcom said could generate $15 billion in revenues.
 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned that the United States will only pass information across what he termed “trusted networks” and criticized close ally Britain over its decision to allow the Chinese firm Huawei to build parts of the country’s 5G mobile network.  Speaking to reporters Wednesday en route to London, where he is due to meet Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Pompeo said putting Huawei into the British system “creates a real risk.”The top U.S. diplomat described Huawei as an extension of China’s communist party that is obligated to hand over information to the party, adding that the Trump administration will evaluate Britain’s decision. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to reporters aboard his plane en route to London, Jan. 29, 2020.”We will make sure that when American information passes across a network, we are confident that that network is a trusted one. We’ll work with the United Kingdom. We were urging them to make a decision that was different than the one they made and we’ll have a conversation about how to proceed,” Pompeo said.Britain had been agonizing over whether to allow Huawei to be part of its 5G rollout, twice postponing the decision since July last year. In the end, the government said it would allow the Chinese firm restricted access to a 35 percent market share of the periphery of the network, rather than the core elements.  Johnson told lawmakers Wednesday the decision offered the best of both worlds.Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves 10 Downing Street to attend the weekly session of Prime Ministers Questions in Parliament in London, Jan. 29, 2020.”I think it is absolutely vital that people in this country do have access to the best technology available. But that we also do absolutely nothing to imperil our relationship with the United States, to do anything to compromise our critical national security infrastructure,” Johnson said at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament.The announcement comes just days before Britain is set to formally leave the European Union on Jan. 31. Some lawmakers fear the Huawei decision could compromise the transatlantic relationship just as Britain seeks to build on its links beyond Europe after Brexit, with a group of Conservative MPs threatening to vote against the government’s 5G plans.”Certainly, U.S. politicians have made some bold threats over the last couple of weeks, but I think this storm will blow over,” said James Sullivan, head of cybersecurity at the London-based Royal United Services Institute. “From the UK’s perspective, this has been a risk-management decision based on technical assessments.”However, in Washington, Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner says there is bipartisan agreement that Britain has made the wrong choice.FILE – Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 28, 2020.”Huawei has been and will continue to be a national security threat,” Warner said. “The Brits are our strongest allies. We’ve got to find a way to work through this. I do recognize as well that in Huawei we’ve got an equipment vendor that while as a national security threat is also a lot cheaper than any of the other Western alternatives.”Those Western alternatives are lagging behind, notes cyber industry expert Mark Skilton of Britain’s Warwick Business School.”The issue just in a nutshell is whether you want to continue the economic growth 5G can create because of the speed and power of it, versus the national interests of the U.S., particularly over the Chinese dominating the market,” Skilton said. “5G networks promise to transform our lives through the so-called ‘internet of things.’ Everything from domestic refrigerators to critical national infrastructure will be connected through near-instantaneous networks. That presents many more ‘attack points.'”There is a threat of potentially embedding ‘Trojans’ or malware into these devices,” he added. “Now, if Huawei is the choice of hardware, then they could embed — and I’m not saying they are, but they could — embed this kind of surveillance technology or stealth technology.”  The European Union on Wednesday adopted similar guidelines to Britain, stopping short of banning Huawei but imposing strict security rules.For its part, Huawei welcomed the British decision Wednesday and insisted it does not “take orders” from the Chinese government.
 
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Barbara Birungi Mutabazi has a vision: Train Ugandan women to code and do other technology work.”The beauty of this is that even if there are not enough jobs in Uganda, if you have the right skills, you can work for any organization around the world,” said Mutabazi, who runs Women in Technology, a skills-training organization in Uganda.Mutabazi recently attended the African Diaspora Investment Symposium to find investors and possible employers for the young women she trains. The event brought together entrepreneurs, investors and businesses to talk about the future of Africa business.”The African Diaspora Network is trying to bring Africans and friends of Africa together to collaborate, create and to imagine possibilities for the continent,” said Almaz Negash, the founder and executive director of the African Diaspora Network and the event’s organizer.One theme of the symposium was money — how to tap into the African diaspora to fund small, medium and large companies on the continent.’Scaling’ remittancesRemittances — money sent by people living in the U.S. to family in Africa — has long been a key way to support people. More than $40 billion in remittances goes to sub-Sahara Africa, mostly to Nigeria, Negash said. This is a powerful source of support for families, but some speakers wondered if there are other ways to help spur growth.”How do we scale remittances so that it can also be invested in other people than our family,” Negash said. “Supporting startups.”Another area of support could be to create a fund to help African entrepreneurs and businesses protect their intellectual property, said Joseph Mucheru, Google’s first sub-Sahara Africa lead and now a minister in the Kenyan government.An IP fundAfrican leaders need to find ways to attract investors and businesses “to invest and come in and work with our startups, protect our startups, ensure that the intellectual property that they build can be retained in the continent,” he said.   For the roughly 50 African entrepreneurs attending the event, this was an opportunity to pitch their businesses. The kinds of businesses varied widely.Aboubacar Komara, an architect from Guinea, is working on a housing startup.
“We’re implicating people in the process of actually building their homes. You know, we want to change the concept of what is architecture, because architecture has a lot to do with your identity,” he said.
 
Neile Nkholise is the chief executive of 3DIMO, a sports technology company in South Africa. Sensors are sewn into sports garments, which send data that indicates whether an athlete is at risk of an injury. At the moment, she is focused on football, rugby and basketball.She is raising her seed round of investment but is also looking for investors who can be partners, “people who unlock access to networks” and expertise “that enable us to scale much faster,” she said.For many of the attendees, the event was a welcomed chance to talk about Africa successes. Thelma Ekiyor runs a Nigeria-based business accelerator and an investment fund for women-run businesses.There is no doubt there are problems in Africa, she said, but “for the diaspora, the lens through which you look at these problems must be different. For the diaspora, these problems are opportunities. For the diaspora, they are entry points.”Women in ‘the box’ of micro-lendingShe said one of the challenges has been that the structure of financing women entrepreneurs in Africa and other developing regions has been “micro.””Most of the funds available to women are micro-lending, as if women don’t know what to do with big money,” she told the attendees. “And so the first thing that I knew we had to do was change that and ensure that how we finance women was aspirational. We would start them at them micro-level and support them to grow.”The power of the symposium doesn’t stop after everyone goes home, said Negash of the African Diaspora Network.Over the coming months, connections made may turn into something else — a new business, a customer or partnership — all with a focus on the African continent.
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In a 2017 episode of the TV show “The Good Wife,” a doctor in Chicago is seen advising a dental surgery in Syria, over Skype. Such remote operations, part of an emerging sector known as telemedicine, is not only the stuff of televised fiction, but a real technology that is attracting increasing attention from business and government. That includes Singapore, which has introduced telemedicine legislation in a nation whose medical research and development already has impacts across borders.Telemedicine lawSingapore will regulate telemedicine businesses as part of its upcoming Healthcare Services Act 2020.These services already “have become increasingly popular and are poised to become a key feature of Singapore’s health care system,” said Marian Ho, a senior partner in the corporate division of Dentons Rodyk Singapore, a law firm.Regulate medical services not premisesShe said in a legal briefing that what makes the new law significant is that Singapore will focus on the types of medical services provided, rather than on the premises where they’re provided. For instance, if a patient only needs to refill his painkiller prescription, it is less important that he is on the premises of a hospital, and more important that he is receiving consultation services from a doctor, even if it is over Skype.Citizens of Singapore are readySingaporeans have already started using smartphone apps for simple check-ins with their doctors, using text messages and video calls. The apps range from Doctor Anywhere to MaNaDr. However the new law will be the overarching framework that the island nation uses to regulate this business, including to authorize the Ministry of Health to issue licenses for new services.As businesses develop new ways to provide health services over the internet, the impacts are likely to spread beyond Singapore. The rich micro-state is already a world leader in biomedical science, manufacturing four out of the world’s top 10 drugs, for instance, according to a 2019 report from consulting firm TMF Group and Singapore’s Economic Development Board, a government board.RisksHowever the new technology also comes with risks, such as a doctor’s accuracy rate over a video call versus in person, whether personal data will be protected as it is handed over to apps, and insurance and liability questions in case of malpractice.“My understanding is that out of 10 startups, maybe one survives,” gastroenterologist Desmond Wai told Singapore’s Business Times. “When the rest close down, who will be keeping the patient records?”Large part of the Singapore economyThe Healthcare Services Act, approved by parliament this month, will regulate one of Singapore’s biggest sectors.  National manufacturing decreased overall from December to January, yet biomedical production increased 10.3% annualized, including a 20% increase in medical technology production, according to research from Singapore’s OCBC Bank.That makes medtech a significant part of the Southeast Asian economy, one that will see even more telemedicine in the future.“Singapore’s strong digital capabilities and vibrant research ecosystem aided by close collaboration between the public, private and academic sectors make it the region’s leading center for biomedical sciences,” the TMF-EDB report said. “Over 30 of the world’s major biomedical science and pharmaceutical companies have established their regional clinical trial centers in Singapore.”   
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The United Nations has been hacked.An internal confidential document from the United Nations, leaked to The New Humanitarian and seen by The Associated Press, says that dozens of servers were “compromised” at offices in Geneva and Vienna.Those include the U.N. human rights office, which has often been a lightning rod of criticism from autocratic governments for its calling-out of rights abuses.One U.N. official told the AP that the hack, which was first detected over the summer, appeared “sophisticated” and that the extent of the damage remains unclear, especially in terms of personal, secret or compromising information that may have been stolen. The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the episode, said systems have since been reinforced.The level of sophistication was so high that it was possible a state-backed actor might have been behind it, the official said.There were conflicting accounts about the significance of the incursion.“We were hacked,” U.N. human rights office spokesman Rupert Colville. “We face daily attempts to get into our computer systems. This time, they managed, but it did not get very far. Nothing confidential was compromised.”The breach, at least at the human rights office, appears to have been limited to the so-called active directory – including a staff list and details like e-mail addresses – but not access to passwords. No domain administration’s account was compromised, officials said.The United Nations headquarters in New York as well as the U.N.’s sprawling Palais des Nations compound in Geneva, its European headquarters, did not immediately respond to questions from the AP about the incident.Sensitive information at the human rights office about possible war criminals in the Syrian conflict and perpetrators of Myanmar’s crackdown against Rohingya Muslims were not compromised, because it is held in extremely secure conditions, the official said.The internal document from the U.N. Office of Information and Technology said 42 servers were “compromised” and another 25 were deemed “suspicious,” nearly all at the sprawling United Nations offices in Geneva and Vienna. Three of the “compromised” servers belonged to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is located across town from the main U.N. office in Geneva, and two were used by the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe.Technicians at the United Nations office in Geneva, the world body’s European hub, on at least two occasions worked through weekends in recent months to isolate the local U.N. data center from the Internet, re-write passwords and ensure the systems were clean.The hack comes amid rising concerns about computer or mobile phone vulnerabilities, both for large organizations like governments and the U.N. as well as for individuals and businesses.Last week, U.N. human rights experts asked the U.S. government to investigate a suspected Saudi hack that may have siphoned data from the personal smartphone of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post, in 2018. On Tuesday, the New York Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, Ben Hubbard, said technology researchers suspected an attempted intrusion into his phone around the same time.The United Nations, and its human rights office, is particularly sensitive, and could be a tempting target. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and her predecessors have called out, denounced and criticized alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and less severe rights violations and abuses in places as diverse as Syria and Saudi Arabia.Dozens of independent human rights experts who work with the U.N. human rights office have greater leeway – and fewer political and financial ties to the governments that fund the United Nations and make up its membership – to denounce alleged rights abuses.Jake Williams, CEO of data firm Rendition Infosec and former U.S. government hacker, said of the U.N. report: “The intrusion definitely looks like espionage.”He noted that accounts from three different domains were compromised. “This, coupled with the relatively small number of infected machines, is highly suggestive of espionage,” he said after viewing the report.“The attackers have a goal in mind and are deploying malware to machines that they believe serve some purpose for them,” he added.The U.N. document highlights a vulnerability in the software program Microsoft Sharepoint, which could have been used for the hack.Matt Suiche, a French entrepreneur based in Dubai who founded cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies, said that based on the report from September: “It is impossible to know if it was a targeted attack or just some random internet scan for vulnerable SharePoints.”But the U.N. official, speaking to The Associated Press on Tuesday, said that since then, the intrusion appeared sophisticated.“It’s as if someone were walking in the sand, and swept up their tracks with a broom afterward,” the official said. “There’s not even a trace of a clean-up.”
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Britain will allow China’s Huawei Technologies Co. to help build the country’s next-generation cellular network, dealing a blow to a U.S. campaign to launch a worldwide boycott of the telecom equipment giant.The British government said Tuesday it would permit Huawei to build less critical parts of the country’s new high-speed 5G wireless network.The U.S. has campaigned against Huawei for more than a year, noting concerns about national security and the Chinese firm’s relations with the country’s Communist Party. On Tuesday, the White House said U.S. President Donald Trump discussed “critical regional and bilateral issues, including telecommunications security,” during a phone call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.”The United States is disappointed by the U.K.’s decision,” said a senior Trump administration official Tuesday. “There is no safe option for untrusted vendors to control any part of a 5G network.”The U.S. official said the U.S. is willing to work with Britain to exclude “untrusted vendor components from 5G networks.”Mobile network phone masts are visible in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, Jan. 28, 2020. The Chinese tech firm Huawei will be given the opportunity to build non-core elements of Britain’s 5G network, the government announced.Without mentioning any companies, Britain said it would exclude “high-risk” companies from providing “core” components of the new network. It also said it would permit high-risk suppliers to supply up to 35-percent of the new network’s less risky parts of its infrastructure.Britain’s announcement comes a day before U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to meet in London with Johnson. The announcement puts Johnson in an awkward position, as he needs the Trump administration to quickly reach a trade agreement after Brexit.The 5G rollout is particularly critical for Britain, as it leaves the European Union with hopes of positioning its economy as a beneficiary of technological innovation.  U.S. officials have also voiced frustration with decisions by some European nations to grant Huawei some access in the rollout of their 5G network.Under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, the U.S. defense secretary should brief Congressional defense committees by March 15 on the implementation of plans for fifth-generation information and communications technologies, including steps to work with U.S. allies and partners to protect critical networks and supply chains.VOA’s Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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The U.S. Federal Communications Commission estimates that about 19 million Americans still don’t have access to broadband internet. Most of those people live in rural parts of the country. But little by little, individuals, companies and the government are changing that. VOA’s Calla Yu reports.
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Despite the U.S.-China trade deal signed last week, the two countries appear headed for more confrontation, especially over high tech.One of China’s highest-profile tech executives, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, told the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday that he expects the U.S. to escalate its crackdown on Huawei. But he vowed that the world leader in building 5G networks is prepared to withstand further restrictions on its foreign markets and suppliers.Analysts say his remarks suggest that the Chinese may be ready to directly confront Americans in the global competition for high-tech advancements, which are seen at the core of trade frictions.Tech war is on”He [Ren] is fully aware that the tech competition between the U.S. and China will escalate. The U.S. has no plan to cut China some slack simply because they have just signed the Phase 1 deal. Both are now entering the battleground of their tech disputes,” said Lin Tsung-nan, professor of electrical engineering at National Taiwan University in Taipei.Beijing’s critics say Huawei acts as a virtual arm of the Chinese government, benefitting from favorable policies and funding that have sped its expansion around the world. They warn countries that allow Huawei to build their new wireless data networks that they are giving Beijing’s authoritarian government enormous influence over their security. Instead, U.S. officials argue, countries should trust American, European, Korean and other companies.Ren Zhengfei, founder and chief executive officer of Huawei Technologies, gestures during a session at the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 21, 2020.Provisions in the U.S.-China Phase 1 trade agreement aim to root out Chinese state policies that encourage intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. However the deal leaves open questions about enforcement. Many, including Huawei chief Ren, remain skeptical that the countries will reach an agreement on such issues.Speaking to the audience in Davos, Ren said he believes the United States will escalate its crackdown on Huawei, but that the impact will be minimal as the company has adapted to restrictions imposed since last year.Huawei and its 46 affiliates were targeted in 2019 after the U.S. government concluded that the company has long engaged in activities contrary to U.S. national security. Ren’s daughter, Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, is fighting an extradition case in Canada stemming from allegations she committed fraud by lying about Huawei’s relationship with an affiliate doing business in Iran.Huawei’s Plan BAnalysts have mixed views about the long-term impact of the blacklisting on Huawei. Ren said he is optimistic because Huawei has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in its own core technology over the past few years, including chips and software. Last year, the company released its own operating system, called HarmonyOS, though, so far, it hasn’t been installed in any of the company’s smartphones.It has also released a flagship smartphone, the Mate 30, without licensed Google Android software. Sales in China have been in line with expectations, although its global sales target of 20 million units is yet to be met.FILE – Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer business group, speaks on stage during a presentation to reveal Huawei’s latest smartphones Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro in Munich, Germany, Sept. 19, 2019.But Professor Lin said the ultimate challenge facing Huawei lies ahead.”The real test will come after the U.S. completely cuts off [Huawei’s] access to American technology and relevant exchanges. Huawei will then have to prove if its products, manufactured based on its so-called plan B, will continue to be competitive in overseas markets,” the professor said.More tech restrictionsAfter having restricted Huawei’s access to American technology, the United States is reportedly looking to introduce a stricter rule that could block Huawei’s access to an increased number of foreign-made goods.Media reports said the United States plans, among other things, to force Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to limit its supplies of 14 nanometer chips to Huawei.  Washington is also lobbying other countries, such as Britain and Germany, to bar Huawei — which it accuses of spying for the Chinese government — from the buildup of their next-generation mobile networks known as 5G.  Whether U.S. allies will be persuaded to block Huawei from building their 5G networks remains uncertain, but Lin said the stakes in the standoff are clear.”If China succeeds in using Huawei to dominate [the global 5G network], the free world will gradually fall into China’s high-tech iron curtain. That’s why the U.S. has turned aggressive in blocking Huawei, which has strived after having had copied code from Cisco’s [router software] technology a decade ago,” Lin said.Escalating tensionsSong Hong at the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said he’s worried the U.S. may widen its target to include more Chinese tech firms.But he said Beijing is adapting to the new reality by gradually cutting its dependence on the U.S. technology.”China has greatly strengthened its tech capabilities. I think Huawei’s [Ren] speaks on behalf of most Chinese businesses. That is, if you try to block me, I have no choice but to work to find other solutions,” he said.An executive from China’s tech sector, who spoke to VOA on the condition of anonymity, said he’s not worried that the U.S.-China tech war will escalate. But he said China should respond to U.S. concerns.”The U.S. has made a great contribution [to the world’s tech development] and now come up with some requests. I find that reasonable, right? I think China, as a responsible country, should respect and communicate well [with the U.S.] on a reasonable basis,” he said.  Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou leaves her Vancouver home with her security detail for an extradition hearing in British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, British Colombia, Jan. 21, 2020.Warning from Meng’s caseWhile tech executives look at how the long-term competition between the two countries will play out, the fate of Meng — the daughter of Huawei’s founder — will impact relations in the short term. Canada has begun week-long court hearings to determine whether to extradite Meng to the United States to stand trial on fraud charges linked to the alleged violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran.Meng, who was arrested in late 2018 in Canada, denies any wrongdoing.Regardless of the outcome of the case, said Lin of National Taiwan University, the United States has succeeded in sending a warning to those who have harmed or plan to go against U.S. tech interests.  
 
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