The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it will bar drone flights over seven major U.S. nuclear sites, including Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The move is the latest in a series of growing restrictions on unmanned aerial vehicles over U.S. sites that have national security implications.

The new restrictions begin Dec. 29 and include the Hanford Site in Washington State, Idaho National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, Pantex Site in Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Site and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

The FAA said it is considering additional requests from other federal security agencies to bar drones.

Earlier this year, the FAA banned drone flights over 133 U.S. military facilities. The Pentagon said in August that U.S. military bases could shoot down drones that endanger aviation safety or pose other threats.

The FAA also banned drone flights over 10 U.S. landmarks in September, including the Statue of Liberty in New York and Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, at the request of national security and law enforcement agencies.

It separately barred drone flights over the USS Constitution in Boston, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The list also includes Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, Hoover Dam in Nevada and Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board said a September collision between a small civilian drone and a U.S. Army helicopter was caused by the drone operator’s failure to see the helicopter because he was intentionally flying the drone out of visual range.

The incident between a U.S. Army UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter and a DJI Phantom 4 drone near Staten Island, New York, occurred as concerns mount over the rising number of unmanned aircraft in U.S. airspace.

The helicopter landed safely, but a 1 1/2-inch (3.8-cm) dent was found on the leading edge of one of its four main rotor blades and parts of the drone were found lodged in its engine oil cooler fan. The Army said previously the helicopter was not targeted and that it was struck by a drone being operated by a hobbyist.

Government and private-sector officials are concerned that dangerous or even hostile drones could get too close to places like military bases, airports and sports stadiums.
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Twitter suspended the accounts of well-known white nationalists Monday, moving swiftly after putting into place new rules on what it sees as abusive content.

The account of far-right group Britain First, a small group that regularly posts inflammatory videos purporting to show Muslims engaged in acts of violence, was among the first to go dark. The individual accounts of two of its leaders, Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding, were also suspended.

President Donald Trump caused a stir last month when he retweeted a post by Fransen, drawing criticism from British Prime Minister Theresa May. Fransen and Golding were arrested in Belfast last week for allegedly stirring up hatred.

The guidelines, announced a month ago and put into force this week, address hateful images or symbols, including those attached to user profiles.

Monitors at the company will weigh hateful imagery in the same way they do graphic violence and adult content.

If a user wants to post symbols or images that might be considered hateful, the post must be marked “sensitive media.” Other users would then see a warning that would allow them to decide whether to view the post.

Twitter is also prohibiting users from abusing or threatening others through their profiles or usernames.

The account for American Renaissance, a white nationalist online magazine run by Jared Taylor, was among those suspended. The magazine responded to the Twitter ban with the terse message, “this isn’t goodbye” and referred readers to a chat site frequented by white nationalists. Brad Griffin, who blogs under the name Hunter Wallace on the website Occidental Dissent, said in blog post that he was also suspended, along with Michael Hill of the Traditionalist Workers Party and others.

The white nationalist Richard Spencer, whose account was not suspended, tweeted that he had lost more than a hundred followers in the past 24 hours and noted that he didn’t “see any systematic method to the (hash)TwitterPurge.”

There appeared to be some inconsistencies in the enforcement. Still on Twitter was David Duke, with some of his posts hidden behind the “sensitive material” warning. However, Twitter allowed him to keep the message “It’s Ok To Be White” as his header, even though the same phrase was hidden by the warning on his pinned tweet.

Twitter said it would not comment on individual accounts.

While the new guidelines are now in play, the social media company continues to work out internal monitoring tools and it is revamping the appeals process for banned or suspended accounts. But Twitter will begin accepting reports from users.

Users can report profiles, or users, that they consider to be in violation of Twitter policy. Previously, users could only report individual posts they deemed offensive.

Now being targeted are “logos, symbols, or images whose purpose is to promote hostility and malice against others based on their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.”

There is no specific list, however, of banned symbols or images. Rather, the company will review complaints individually to consider the context of the post or profile, including cultural and political considerations.

It is also broadening existing policies intended to reduce threatening content, to include imagery that glorifies or celebrates violent acts. That content will be removed and repeat offenders will be banned. Beginning Monday, the company will ban accounts affiliated with “organizations that use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.”

While more content is banned, the company has provided more leeway for itself after it was criticized for strict rules that resulted in account suspensions.

There was a backlash against Twitter after it suspending the account of actress Rose McGowan who opened a public campaign over sexual harassment and abuse, specifically naming Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Twitter eventually reinstated McGowan’s account and said that it had been suspended because of a tweet that violated its rules on privacy.

“In our efforts to be more aggressive here, we may make some mistakes and are working on a robust appeals process,” Twitter said in its blog post.

Twitter relies in large part on user reports to identify problematic accounts and content, but the company said it is developing “internal tools” to bolster its ability to police content.

Twitter also seeks to improve communications with users about the decisions it makes. That includes telling those who have been suspended which rules they had violated.
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Google and Facebook will have to accept China’s censorship and tough online laws if they want access to its 751 million internet users, Chinese regulators told a conference in Geneva on Monday.

Google and Facebook are blocked in China, along with Twitter Inc and most major Western news outlets.

“That’s a question maybe in many people’s minds, why Google, why Facebook are not yet working and operating in China,” said Qi Xiaoxia, director general of the Bureau of International Cooperation at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). In Google’s case, it left China of its own accord in 2010.

“If they want to come back, we welcome,” Qi told the Internet Governance Forum at the U.N.’s European headquarters.

“The condition is that they have to abide by Chinese law and regulations. That is the bottom line. And also that they would not do any harm to Chinese national security and national consumers’ interests.”

China’s Communist Party has tightened cyber regulation in the past year, formalizing new rules that require firms to store data locally and censor tools that allow users to subvert the Great Firewall that blocks sites including Facebook and Google.

Their rival Apple operates subject to strict censorship, having removed dozens of popular messaging and virtual private network (VPN) apps from its China App Store this year to comply with government requests.

In June, China introduced a new national cybersecurity law that requires foreign firms to store data locally and submit to data surveillance measures.

“We are of the idea that cyberspace is not a space that is ungoverned. We need to administer, or supervise, or manage, the internet according to law,” Qi said.

“Can you guess the number of websites in China? We have five million websites. That means that the Chinese people’s rights of speech and rights of expression are fully ensured.”

It was not clear what her figure of five million was based on. According to the website internetlivestats.com, there are 1.3 billion websites on the World Wide Web, defining a website as a unique hostname which can be resolved, using a name server, into an IP address.

Reporting by Tom Miles, additional reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing, Editing by William Maclean.
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It’s all fun and games until a family gets behind the wheel. That’s the whole idea behind Volvo’s Drive Me project. Automated vehicles are now being test driven by families as part of a multi-stage experiment that’s taking place in Norway. VOA’s Steve Redisch reports.
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A boom in production of Apple iPhones is helping lift the economy of Taiwan, an industrial center that still relies on high-tech manufacturing contracts despite increasing competition from offshore.

Apple’s phone sales in the third quarter this year grew 5.7 percent over the same period of 2016, ahead of a cross-brand increase of 3 percent to 383 million units, market research firm Gartner says.

Orders for older iPhones as well as the iPhone X, which is seen taking off next year, have solidified orders for parts supplied by tech firms in Taiwan, analysts say.

Tech specialists say the Silicon Valley icon is looking this year to Taiwanese firms for chip production, camera modules, displays and final assembly.

Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology often assembles Apple gear at sprawling factories in China, for example. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s biggest chipmaker, is building the A11 processor for the iPhone 8, local media reports say.

“It’s a good shot in the arm,” said John Brebeck, Taipei-based managing director of the Hong Kong investment consultancy Peace Field. “If you’ve got Apple making a new chip, if you’ve got the OLED (display) guys and if you’ve got Foxconn with the assembly, the camera module guys, that’s a pretty big chunk of Taiwan GDP.”

A reprieve as offshore competition intensifies

Officials in Taipei worry that China will take a growing share of the world’s hardware manufacturing business, a trend spotted in 2013 when Taiwan’s tablet PC assembly began moving across the strait. China’s costs are generally lower and production scales higher.

Taiwanese high-tech, an aging industry worth about one-fifth of the island’s $528 billion GDP, has long depended on Apple among other developers for orders.

Tech hardware contracts often follow from years of trusted relationships based on quality supplies or assembly, Gartner’s Taipei-based research vice president Tracy Tsai said, citing orders for Macs as an example.

Mac shipments should grow 4 percent this year and 3 percent in 2018 as users replace older devices, she said.

“Notebooks are a something that’s very focused on previous quality and the numerous standards maintained by suppliers, what they measure up to,” Tsai said. “It’s not so easy to change it all, so (it’s) still mainly about Taiwan.”

Apple declined to comment for this report, and its Taiwanese contractors seldom discuss the sources of their business.

Cycles in global demand for consumer electronics highlight Taiwan’s dependence on high-tech. When demand sagged in 2015 and early 2016, Taiwan’s income from exports shrank for 17 straight months. It has stabilized since then.

A tale of cameras and displays

Taiwan-based Largan Precision has made iPhone modules over at least the past six years, analysts believe. But the iPhone X comes with three-dimensional cameras equipped for face recognition, and given the depth of that new technology Largan may share orders.

Apple is expected to tap several suppliers for the related parts, said Bryan Ma, devices analysis vice president with market research firm IDC in Singapore.

Production of smartphone displays also shows pressure from China. Taiwanese display makers AU Optronics and Innolux ranked among IDC’s top five firms for market share in the third quarter.

But BOE Technology of Beijing reached the top spot with a 23.5 percent market share.

BOE gets subsidies from local government in China. It has held prices down and splits its business between higher-end OLED smartphone screens and the basic LCD type used by a range of consumer electronics, said Hattie He, an analyst for mobility service at Canalys in Shanghai. The Apple X uses OLED displays.

“To many Chinese vendors, BOE provides an affordable alternative to the international suppliers, gaining an edge in the OLED transition phase,” He said. “As display is part of the solution, being a leading provider will help BOE continue its growth.”

Chinese PC maker Lenovo and telecom equipment manufacturers Huawei Technologies and ZTE are reaching “sufficient scale to take their businesses worldwide,” Strategy&, a consulting group under PwC, said in a report. “They will be joined, in turn, by hundreds and then thousands more.”

Gains in 2018 from the iPhone X

Apple’s iPhone shipments next year will rise 8 percent to 240 million largely because of the X model, Ma with IDC says.

Apple had already returned to growth in China in the third quarter while posting “strong sales” in emerging markets such as India, Gartner says. The iPhone X got off to a late start, extending benefits to suppliers into next year.

“The expectation always has been that this 10th anniversary edition is going to hit big and clearly as the product came out it was obvious that they had done a lot in the product to make it dramatically different from generations of the past,” Ma said.
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With people coming from around the world to work in Silicon Valley, some struggle with the best ways to care for their aging parents.

Increasingly, the solution is an “affinity” retirement community, where older people from places like India and China can live near — but not with — their adult children. These communities break from traditional custom that parents and children live together.

“The children are so busy these days, they are all the time working, taking care of their kids, so we do not want to interfere in their lives,” said Asha RaoRane, an Indian national who wanted to move to the U.S. to be near her three daughters who had immigrated to San Francisco.

Her daughters started exploring the idea of a traditional senior retirement community, but were having trouble finding an American community they thought their mother would fit into.

In July, RaoRane, 70, moved into Priya Living, an affinity-living community, meaning it caters to people with similar interests, such as yoga and meditation.

Arun Paul founded Priya Living as a place for his parents to live. The couple moved from Los Angeles four years ago and are still in a ground floor apartment.

“In living here in America, as the son of immigrants, I’ve realized that there’s very unique needs that immigrants have,” said Paul, a real-estate developer.

“That old system was based on a different time when women were in the house, really taking care, in many cultures, of their husband’s parents,” Paul said. “Obviously the role of women in society has changed globally.”

New friends

For Bhagyashree RaoRane, 38, finding Priya Living for her mother has been a dream come true.

“We walked in and instantly it was like walking into an Indian community in India,” said RaoRane, a filmmaker. “Even the building is painted the same color as so many of the buildings in India are painted.”

This type of independent senior community came as a shock to Nagendra Prasad, 62, and Manjula Neelakantaiah, 53, who came to Priya on a two-month visit from Bangalore, India, to see their daughter, an intern at Google.

“Really, in the beginning we were surprised,” Neelakantaiah said. “In India the younger people, they definitely take care of the aged people.”

Not always a good fit

For a few residents, Priya is not the perfect fit. Dr. Byravan Viswanathan and his wife, Lakshmi, were born and raised in India but spent much of their adult lives in a small town in Pennsylvania.

“We had oodles and oodles of good friends and they were not Indians — regular Americans,” he said. “We had become so Westernized, we have to adapt to Indian living again. Look around. There are six different Indian languages spoken right now at this table, languages I have never spoken or haven’t spoken in decades.” Viswanathan’s daughter is looking into finding a more American community for them.

All are welcome

While the vast majority of residents are from India, Paul stressed that Priya Living welcomes people of all backgrounds. There are a few non-Indians who call Priya home.

Carlos McCann, an 89-year-old WW II veteran, has been living in the complex for almost 20 years, long before it was purchased and remodeled to become the primarily Indian community.

“Everything has sort of come together at this location it’s like it’s the center of the world,” he said.
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Young people come from around the world to work in Silicon Valley, California. As these workers build a life away from home, many struggle with how to bring their aging parents to their new community. But what happens to foreign parents entering their later years in a new country? VOA’s Deana Mitchell visits a unique community in Silicon Valley that caters to retirees from India.
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With nearly 2 billion users, Facebook’s survival depends on people continuing to use its service. 

That’s why observers were surprised by an unusual company blog post Friday that highlighted some of the potential harm of using the social media service. 

Titled Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?,

the company cited studies that suggested some of the possible downsides of using social media. 

In one study, people who passively read about others’ lives reported feeling worse about themselves. One possibility is “negative social comparison” when reading about others online, the company said, because “people’s posts are often more curated and flattering” than how they are in their real, offline lives. 

But there’s a potential solution, according to Facebook, which reported $10 billion in revenue — its highest ever — in the last quarter: Don’t be a bystander to others’ lives. Use Facebook more and with friends and family.

Facebook users who spend more time on Facebook — actually post and interact with close friends — experienced more positive effects, according to a company study conducted with Carnegie Mellon University.

“Simply broadcasting status updates wasn’t enough,” the post said. “People had to interact one-on-one with others in their network.”

New features

The Facebook post came as some former top executives have spoken about Facebook’s potential negative effects on society and individuals. Facebook exploits a “vulnerability in human psychology,” Sean Parker, Facebook’s founding president, said recently.

To aid in supporting people’s well-being while using its service, the company recently tweaked its News Feed — what people see when they sign on — to promote friendships and demote what the firm called “clickbait headlines.” 

Also, it launched a new feature called “Snooze” that lets a user hide a person, Facebook page or group for 30 days without having to “unfollow.” It gives a Facebook user more control of what he or she sees, the company said. 

Effects on kids

The company acknowledged that people are worried about the short- and long-term effects of Facebook use on young people. It pledged $1 million toward research to “better understand the relationship between media technologies, youth development and well-being.”

Observers praised the company for acknowledging that using social media may have unintended, negative consequences, but noted that it was unusual for a corporation, one that typically presents itself as a force for good, to point out some of the risks of using its service. 

One unanswered question is whether Facebook with new features and tweaks can offset potential negative effects. 

Or will people put a Snooze button on Facebook? 
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U.S. attorneys in Utah prosecuting a multimillion-dollar opioid drug-ring are moving quickly to sell seized bitcoin that’s exploded in value to about $8.5 million since the alleged ringleader’s arrest a year ago.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah cites the digital currency’s volatility in court documents pressing for the sale. The bitcoin cache was worth less than $500,000 when Aaron Shamo was arrested on drug charges, but the value of the digital currency has skyrocketed since then.

Bitcoin was created as a digital alternative to the traditional banking system, and is prone to swings in value based on what people believe its worth.

For federal prosecutors in Utah, sales of seized assets like cars are routine, but bitcoin is new territory, spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said Thursday.

Shamo is accused of selling pills containing the powerful opioid fentanyl on the dark web — an area of the internet often used for illegal activity — to thousands of people all over the U.S., at one point raking in $2.8 million in less than a year.

The 500,000-pill bust ranked among the largest of its kind in the country, and authorities also found $1 million of cash stuffed into trash bags.

Shamo has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges.

The proceeds of the bitcoin sale will be held until the case is resolved, and then decisions will be made about where the money goes, Rydalch said. Seized asset sale proceeds usually goes to the agency that investigated, like the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Defense attorney Greg Skordas is not contesting the sale of his client’s bitcoins.

Although there’s no global consensus over the status of bitcoin — debate rages whether the virtual money is an asset or a currency — that hasn’t stopped officials in the U.S. and elsewhere from cashing in on the digital hauls seized from cybercriminals.

In 2014 the U.S. Marshals Service announced the auction of nearly 30,000 bitcoins seized from notorious dark web drug marketplace Silk Road. Other seizures have since netted the American government millions of dollars in a series of sales.

Other governments — from Australia to South Korea — have set up similar auctions over the years.

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
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The German government says it backs an “open and free internet” following the U.S. decision to repeal net neutrality rules.

A spokeswoman for the Economy Ministry said Friday that Germany had “taken note” of the U.S. move but declined to comment directly on it.

However, spokeswoman Beate Baron said the German government supports rules introduced across the European Union last year forbidding discriminatory access to the internet.

Baron told reporters in Berlin that “an open and free internet is indispensable for the successful development of a digital society that everyone wants to take part in.”

The Republican-controlled U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday repealed Obama-era rules requiring all web traffic to be treated equally.
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Charged particles from the sun are responsible for the brilliant auroras at the earth’s poles. But there can be cases of too much of a good thing. When huge solar storms push massive waves of energized particles into Earth’s path, they can wreak havoc on our satellites and electric grid. That is why researchers are trying to figure out what causes solar storms. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has touted progress on slashing federal regulations, which he says cost America trillions with no benefit. Speaking Thursday from the White House, the president said his administration had exceeded its goal of removing two federal regulations for every new one, by removing 22 for every new one. Opponents have criticized some of the deregulation, especially dismantling of the net neutrality rules that guarantee equal access to the internet. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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