Three years ago, a Dutchman climbed into his electric car and set out on a journey. Sunday, a motorcade of electric vehicles escorted him and his converted Volkswagen across an iconic bridge in Australia as he finished his record-setting adventure. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us for a ride.
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Ever since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, the world has been fascinated with the idea of creating life in a lab. But it remained in the realm of fiction… until it became a bit closer to reality with genetic engineering work in a Swiss lab. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio are working on the next generation of batteries — a power supply that could theoretically almost never need to be recharged. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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MacKenzie Bezos, ex-wife of Amazon.com Inc founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos, will give 75 percent of their stake in the company and all voting rights to the billionaire entrepreneur.

MacKenzie Bezos will also relinquish all her interests in the Washington Post newspaper and rocket company Blue Origin, she said in a tweet on Thursday.

The announcement resolves questions about the direction of the world’s largest online retailer that have abounded since the couple announced their divorce in January.

Jeff Bezos, widely viewed as a management guru whose long-term focus has been essential to Amazon’s meteoric stock rise, will retain company control.

The settlement also suggests that Amazon will be spared the kind of boardroom battle that has plagued other companies whose owners are dealing with family rifts.

“Happy to be giving him all of my interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, and 75 percent of our Amazon stock,” MacKenzie Bezos said in the tweet.

Her remaining stake is worth about $36 billion at current market prices. The couple’s total stake of $143 billion had made them the richest in the world.

“Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff with support from each other and everyone who reached out to us in kindness, and looking forward to next phase as co-parents and friends,” MacKenzie Bezos wrote.
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Facebook Inc’s messaging app WhatsApp on Thursday launched its WhatsApp Business app for Apple Inc’s iOS operating system, allowing small businesses to communicate with customers through the platform.

WhatsApp Business will be available for free download from the App Store in Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, India, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S. starting Thursday and will be rolled out around the world in the coming weeks, WhatsApp said.

The service has been available on Android since last year and has over 5 million users.

 
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South Korea launched the world’s first nationwide 5G mobile networks two days early, its top mobile carriers said Thursday, giving a handful of users access in a late-night scramble to be the first providers of the super-fast wireless technology.

Three top telecom providers — SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus — began their 5G services at 11 pm local time Wednesday, despite previously announcing the launch date would be April 5.

Hyper-wired South Korea has long had a reputation for technical prowess, and Seoul had made the 5G rollout a priority as it seeks to stimulate stuttering economic growth.

Along with the US, China and Japan, South Korea had been racing to claim the title as the world’s first provider of the ultra-fast network.

But speculation that US mobile carrier Verizon might start its 5G services early forced South Korean providers to hastily organize a late-night launch, Yonhap news agency reported.

In the event, Verizon began rolling out its 5G services in Chicago and Minneapolis on Wednesday in the US, a week ahead of schedule.

But according to Yonhap, the South Korean launches came two hours earlier.

“SK Telecom today announced that it has activated 5G services for six celebrities representing Korea as of 11 pm April 3, 2019,” the country’s biggest mobile operator said in a news release Thursday.

The celebrities — including two members of K-pop band EXO and Olympic ice-skating heroine Kim Yu-na — were “the world’s first 5G smartphone subscribers”, it said.

Both KT and LG Uplus said they also went live at the same time, with a total of three specially-selected users: KT offered it to the wife of a technician setting up its network on the disputed island of Dokdo, while LG Uplus provided it to a television personality and her racing-driver husband.

For general customers, the services will be available from Friday — the original launch date — when Samsung Electronics rolls out the Galaxy S10 5G, the world’s first available smartphone with the technology built in.

Verizon’s network will work with Lenovo’s Moto Z3 smartphone fitted with a special accessory, while rival US carrier AT&T launched a 5G-based system in parts of 12 cities in December — although it is only accessible to invited users through a free hotspot device, rather than paying customers with mobiles.

Qatari firm Ooredoo said it offers 5G services in and around Doha — but does not have devices available to use them — while Japan is also expected to roll out a limited deployment in 2019 before full services start in time for next year’s Tokyo Olympics.

Bitter standoff

Experts say 5G will bring smartphones near-instantaneous connectivity — 20 times faster than 4G — allowing users to download entire movies in less than a second.

The technology is crucial for the future development of devices such as self-driving vehicles and is expected to bring about $565 billion in global economic benefits by 2034, according to the London-based Global System for Mobile Communications, an industry alliance.

The implications of the new network have pitted Washington against Beijing — whose firms dominate 5G technology — in an increasingly bitter standoff.

The US has pressed its allies and major economies to avoid 5G solutions from Chinese-owned telecom giant Huawei, citing security risks that technological backdoors could give Beijing access to 5G-connected utilities and other components.

Chinese entities, including 1,529 5G patents registered by Huawei, own a total of 3,400 patents — more than a third of the total, according to data analysis firm IPlytics.

South Korea comes next, with its companies holding 2,051 patents, while US firms have 1,368 together.

Neither KT nor SK Telecom use Huawei technology in their 5G networks, but it is a supplier to LG UPlus, the companies told AFP.

 
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Facebook Inc’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is confident the world’s biggest social network will do better in 2020 at stopping “bad actors” from manipulating the U.S. presidential election.

“We’ve learned a lot since 2016, where, obviously, we were behind where we needed to be on defenses for nation states trying to interfere,” he said in a “Good Morning America” interview released on Thursday.

“These aren’t things that you ever fully solve, right? They’re ongoing arms races, where we need to make sure that our systems stay ahead of the sophisticated bad actors, who are just always going to try to game them.”

U.S. intelligence agencies say there was an extensive Russian cyber-influence operation during the 2016 campaign aimed at helping Donald Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Zuckerberg said the social media giant had implemented a lot of different measures since 2016 to verify any advertiser who is running a political ad and create an archive so anyone could see what advertisers are running, who they are targeting and how much they are paying.

Advertising practices at Facebook, the world’s largest social network with 2.7 billion users and $56 billion in annual revenue, have been in the spotlight for two years amid growing discontent over its approach to privacy and user data.

The company said in a congressional testimony last year that Russian agents created 129 events on the network during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, shedding more light on Russia’s purported disinformation drive aimed at voters.

“At this point, (we) have probably some of the most-advanced systems of any company or government in the world for preventing the kind of tactics that Russia and now other countries, as well, have tried,” Zuckerberg said.

Asked if he could guarantee that there would not be interference in the election, Zuckerberg said, “What I can guarantee is that they’re definitely going to try.”

 
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South Korea on Friday launches the world’s first nationwide 5G mobile networks, a transformational leap that has superpowers sparring for control of an innovation that could change the day-to-day lives of billions of people.

The fast communications heralded by fifth-generation wireless technology will ultimately underpin everything from toasters to telephones, from electric cars to power grids. 

But while Seoul has won the race to be first to provide the user experience, that is only one part of a wider battle that has pitted the United States against China and ensnared giants including Huawei. 

Hyper-wired South Korea has long had a reputation for technical prowess, and Seoul has made the 5G rollout a priority as it seeks to stimulate stuttering economic growth. 

The system will bring smartphones near-instantaneous connectivity — 20 times faster than existing 4G — allowing users to download entire movies in less than a second. 

In the same way that 3G enabled widespread mobile web access and 4G made new applications work ranging from social media to Uber, 5G will herald a new level of connectivity, empowered by speed. 

It is crucial for the future development of devices ranging from self-driving vehicles that send data to one another in real time to industrial robots, drones and other elements of the Internet of Things.  

That makes it a vital part of the infrastructure of tomorrow, and the 5G standard is expected to bring about $565 billion in global economic benefits by 2034, according to the London-based Global System for Mobile Communications, an industry alliance. 

‘1 million devices’

But the implications of the new technology have pitted Washington against Beijing in an increasingly bitter standoff. 

The U.S. has pressed its allies and major economies to avoid 5G solutions from Chinese-owned telecom giant Huawei, citing security risks that technological back doors could give Beijing access to 5G-connected utilities and other components. 

But Chinese firms dominate 5G technology.  

Huawei, the global leader, has registered 1,529 5G patents, according to data analysis firm IPlytics. 

Combined with manufacturers ZTE and Oppo, plus the China Academy of Telecommunications Technology, Chinese entities own a total of 3,400 patents, more than a third of the total, according to the research firm.    

South Korea comes next, with its companies holding 2,051 patents. 

In contrast, U.S. firms have 1,368, IPlytics said, 29 fewer than Finland’s Nokia alone. 

All three of South Korea’s mobile operators — KT, SK Telecom and LG UPlus — will go live with their 5G services on Friday. 

“5G’s hyperspeed can connect 1 million devices within a 1-square-kilometer zone simultaneously,” KT said in a report. 

Neither KT nor SK Telecom uses Huawei technology in its 5G network, but Huawei is a supplier to LG UPlus, the companies told AFP. 

On the same day, Samsung Electronics will release the Galaxy S10 5G, the world’s first available smartphone using the technology, and rival phonemaker LG will follow with the V50s two weeks later. 

Deployment in US

Until now, no mobile networks have offered nationwide 5G access.  

U.S. network carrier Verizon said Wednesday that it had become the first carrier in the world to deploy a 5G network — in Chicago and Minneapolis, with more cities due to follow this year.  The system will work with Lenovo’s Moto Z3 smartphone. 

“Verizon customers will be the first in the world to have the power of 5G in their hands,” said Hans Vestberg, Verizon’s chairman and chief executive officer. “This is the latest in our string of 5G firsts.” 

Rival US carrier AT&T deployed what it called its 5G E network in 12 cities last year with speeds faster than 4G networks but below those being deployed in other fifth-generation systems. 

Andre Fuetsch, president of AT&T Labs, said in a statement Wednesday that independent testing shows “that we are the fastest wireless network nationwide.” 

Qatari firm Ooredoo says it offers 5G services in and around Doha but does not have devices available to use them. 

Japan is also expected to roll out a limited deployment in 2019 before full services start in time for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. 

Cost barrier

More than 3 million South Koreans will switch to 5G by the end of this year, predicted KT Vice President Lee Pil-jae. 

Cost is likely to be a barrier initially for users, analysts say, as the cheapest version of the new Galaxy handset will be priced at 1.39 million won ($1,200). 

“While there are many cheap 4G smartphones under $300, Samsung’s 5G phones are well over $1,000, which could be a major minus point for cost-savvy consumers,” a KT representative told AFP.  

None of South Korea’s three network operators would say how much they have invested in 5G, but Seoul’s Economy Minister Hong Nam-ki estimated it would be at least $2.6 billion this year alone. 

“If 5G is fully implemented,” he said, “it will greatly improve people’s lives.”
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Facebook Inc on Wednesday changed the privacy settings on its WhatsApp messaging platform, allowing users to decide who can add them to chat groups, as it tries to revamp its image after growing privacy concerns among users.

WhatsApp, which has about 1.5 billion users, has been trying to find ways to stop misuse of the app, following global concerns that the platform was being used to spread fake news, manipulated photos, videos without context and audio hoaxes, with no way to monitor their origin or full reach.

The messaging service said in January it would limit the number of times a user could forward a message to five in a bid to fight “misinformation and rumors.”

Concerns about Facebook’s handling of personal information have grown since the world’s largest social network admitted in March that data of millions of users was wrongly harvested by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

In a blog post, WhatsApp said a user inviting another to a group will be prompted to send a private invite through an individual chat, giving the recipient the choice of joining the group. The request will expire in three days.

The setting will be rolled out Wednesday for some users and be available worldwide in the coming weeks.

WhatsApp, seen as a key tool for communications and commerce in many countries, was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion.
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Digital mapping technology has been around for awhile, but it’s only recently that it’s been applied to art history. University researchers are receiving grants from sources such as the Getty Foundation to build web applications for users to explore and research historic sites. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains how technology is allowing art historians to better understand the past.
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Hundreds of ads on Facebook promised U.S. homeowners that they were eligible for huge state tax breaks if they installed new solar-energy panels. There was just one catch: None of it was true.

The scam ads used photos of nearly every U.S. governor — and sometimes President Donald Trump — to claim that with new, lucrative tax incentives, people might actually make money by installing solar technology on their homes. Facebook users only needed to enter their addresses, email, utility information and phone number to find out more.

Those incentives don’t exist.

While the ads didn’t aim to bilk people of money directly — and it wasn’t possible to buy solar panels through these ads — they led to websites that harvested personal information that could be used to expose respondents to future come-ons, both scammy and legitimate. It’s not clear that the data was actually used in such a manner.

Facebook apparently didn’t take action until notified by state-government officials who noticed the ads.

The fictitious notices reveal how easily scammers can pelt internet users with misinformation for months, undetected. They also raise further questions about whether big tech companies such as Facebook are capable of policing misleading ads, especially as the 2020 elections — and the prospect of another onslaught of online misinformation — loom.

“This is definitely concerning — definitely, it’s misinformation,” said Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studied 5 million Facebook ads during the 2016 elections. “I keep telling people: We don’t have any basis to regulate such a thing.”

Experts say websites and apps need to be more transparent about the ads that run on their platforms.

Last year, Facebook launched a searchable database that provides details on political ads it runs, including who bought them and the age and gender of the audience. But it doesn’t make that information available for other ads. Twitter offers its own database of ads and promoted tweets. Google has an archive for political ads only.

The partial approaches allow misleading ads to fester. One problem is the fact that ads can be targeted so narrowly that journalists and watchdog groups often won’t see them.

“That allows people to do more dirty tricks,” said Ian Vanderwalker, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program.

In mid-March, some websites linked in the fake solar-energy ads disappeared. After complaints from governors’ offices, Facebook inactivated nearly all of the ads and several pages affiliated with them.

“These scammy ads have no place on Facebook,” company spokeswoman Devon Kearns said in a statement. “We removed these pages and disabled these ad accounts recently and will continue to take action.”

Facebook says it uses an automated process to review the images, text, targeting and position of ads posted to its site. In some cases, employees review the ads. Users can also give feedback if they believe the ads violate company policies.

Governors’ offices were alarmed to see photos of top politicians featured alongside claims such as “you can get paid to go solar.”  

Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, said she notified Facebook last month after staffers saw them.

Facebook took them down days later, although some continued to re-appear days after that complaint. Facebook also yanked ads featuring images of governors in Texas, Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, South Carolina and other states. But the ads had already been running for some time.

After researching solar-panel options for his two-story home in Mount Tabor, New Jersey, 37-year-old Chris Fitzpatrick saw an ad claiming he might qualify for “free” solar panels because Gov. Phil Murphy planned to release “$100 million solar incentives.” He was skeptical because none of the solar companies he worked with mentioned such incentives, but worried others might not be.

“It’s very frustrating because it preys upon innocent people,” Fitzpatrick said.

The Associated Press found that some of these ads directed people to solar-energy websites that listed the same business address — a mailbox in Carlsbad, California — that had been used by a company once under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, the government’s consumer protection agency. In 2012, the FTC sued Jason Akatiff and his company — then called Coleadium, also known as Ads 4 Dough — for running fake news websites that marketed unfounded health benefits of colon cleanse and acai berry products, according to court records.

Akatiff settled the allegations without admitting guilt and agreed to a $1 million fine. Akatiff changed his company’s name to A4D Inc. in 2015, according to California business filings.

Akatiff did not respond to messages left with his California business.  

Though the FTC can investigate fake ads, sue to stop them and seek compensation for victims, thousands of ads targeting select groups run online daily, making it harder to catch suspect advertisers.  

Scam ads are popular in certain industries, such as insurance or solar power, where companies are looking for people they can target later for products and services, said Peter Marinello, vice president of the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc.

The scammers sell the personal information they collect to other companies looking for potential customers, Marinello said. “That’s how this whole process plays out.”

 
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Singapore submitted wide-ranging fake news legislation in parliament on Monday, stoking fears from internet firms and human rights groups that it may give the government too much power and hinder freedom of speech.

The law would require social media sites like Facebook to carry warnings on posts the government deems false and remove comments against “public interest.”

The move came two days after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said governments should play a more active role in regulating the online platform.

But Simon Milner, who works on Facebook’s public policy in Asia, said after the law was tabled, the firm was “concerned with aspects of the law that grant broad powers to the Singapore executive branch to compel us to remove content they deem to be false and proactively push a government notification to users.”

“As the most far-reaching legislation of its kind to date, this level of overreach poses significant risks to freedom of expression and speech, and could have severe ramifications both in Singapore and around the world,” said Jeff Paine, managing director of the Asia Internet Coalition, an industry association of internet and technology companies in the region.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Singapore’s Law Minister K. Shanmugam said the new legislation would not hinder free speech.

“This legislation deals with false statements of facts. It doesn’t deal with opinions, it doesn’t deal with viewpoints. You can have whatever viewpoints however reasonable or unreasonable,” he said.

Tech giants Facebook, Twitter and Google all have their Asia headquarters in the city-state, a low-tax finance hub seen as a island of stability in the middle of the fast-growing but often-turbulent Southeast Asia region.

“Malicious actors”

Singapore, which has been run by the same political party since independence from Britain more than 50 years ago, says it is vulnerable to fake news because of its position as a global financial hub, its mixed ethnic and religious population and widespread internet access.

It is ranked 151 among 180 countries rated in the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, a non-government group that promotes freedom of information, below the likes of Russia and Myanmar.

The new bill proposes that the government get online platforms to publish warnings or “corrections” alongside posts carrying false information, without removing them.

This would be the “primary response” to counter falsehoods online, the Law Ministry said.

“That way, in a sense, people can read whatever they want and make up their minds. That is our preference,” Law Minister K. Shanmugam told reporters on Monday.

Under the proposals, which must be approved by parliament, criminal sanctions including hefty fines and jail terms will be imposed if the falsehoods are spread by “malicious actors” who “undermine society”, the ministry said, without elaborating.

It added that it would cut off an online site’s “ability to profit”, without shutting it down, if the site had published three falsehoods that were “against the public interest” over the previous six months.

It did not say how it would block a site’s profit streams.

The bill came amid talk of a possible general election this year. Law Minister Shanmugam declined to comment when asked if the new legislation was related to a vote.

“This draft law will be a disaster for human rights, particularly freedom of expression and media freedom,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director, Asia division, at Human Rights Watch.

“The definitions in the law are broad and poorly defined, leaving maximum regulatory discretion to the government officers skewed to view as “misleading” or “false” the sorts of news that challenge Singapore’s preferred political narratives.”
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