Computers have become so smart during the past 20 years that people don’t think twice about chatting with digital assistants like Alexa and Siri or seeing their friends automatically tagged in Facebook pictures.

But making those quantum leaps from science fiction to reality required hard work from computer scientists like Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun. The trio tapped into their own brainpower to make it possible for machines to learn like humans, a breakthrough now commonly known as “artificial intelligence,” or AI.

Their insights and persistence were rewarded Wednesday with the Turing Award, an honor that has become known as technology industry’s version of the Nobel Prize. It comes with a $1 million prize funded by Google, a company where AI has become part of its DNA.

The award marks the latest recognition of the instrumental role that artificial intelligence will likely play in redefining the relationship between humanity and technology in the decades ahead.

“Artificial intelligence is now one of the fastest-growing areas in all of science and one of the most talked-about topics in society,” said Cherri Pancake, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, the group behind the Turing Award.

Although they have known each other for than 30 years, Bengio, Hinton and LeCun have mostly worked separately on technology known as neural networks. These are the electronic engines that power tasks such as facial and speech recognition, areas where computers have made enormous strides over the past decade. Such neural networks also are a critical component of robotic systems that are automating a wide range of other human activity, including driving.

Their belief in the power of neural networks was once mocked by their peers, Hinton said. No more. He now works at Google as a vice president and senior fellow while LeCun is chief AI scientist at Facebook. Bengio remains immersed in academia as a University of Montreal professor in addition to serving as scientific director at the Artificial Intelligence Institute in Quebec.

“For a long time, people thought what the three of us were doing was nonsense,” Hinton said in an interview with The Associated Press. “They thought we were very misguided and what we were doing was a very surprising thing for apparently intelligent people to waste their time on. My message to young researchers is, don’t be put off if everyone tells you what are doing is silly.”

Now, some people are worried that the results of the researchers’ efforts might spiral out of control.

While the AI revolution is raising hopes that computers will make most people’s lives more convenient and enjoyable, it’s also stoking fears that humanity eventually will be living at the mercy of machines.

Bengio, Hinton and LeCun share some of those concerns — especially the doomsday scenarios that envision AI technology developed into weapons systems that wipe out humanity.

But they are far more optimistic about the other prospects of AI — empowering computers to deliver more accurate warnings about floods and earthquakes, for instance, or detecting health risks, such as cancer and heart attacks, far earlier than human doctors.

“One thing is very clear, the techniques that we developed can be used for an enormous amount of good affecting hundreds of millions of people,” Hinton said.
…

India says it has successfully tested a new anti-satellite missile, marking another major development in its budding space program.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Wednesday in a nationally televised address that scientists had destroyed a satellite orbiting about 300 kilometers above Earth’s atmosphere in a mission that lasted only three minutes. The prime minister said the country has now “registered its name as a space power” alongside the United States, China and Russia, the only other nations to achieve such a feat.

The United States and the former Soviet Union conducted anti-satellite tests from the early days of the space age, with the U.S. successfully shooting down a satellite in 1985. China achieved the feat in 2007.

Modi insisted that Wednesday’s test did not violate any international treaties, and was conducted purely in the interest of national security.

The test was conducted as Modi leads his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party into parliamentary elections on April 11 in his quest for a second term. It is also the latest demonstration of India’s military capabilities since 40 Indian soldiers were killed in February in a suicide bombing attack in the disputed region of Kashmir.

New Delhi retaliated with airstrikes on a suspected militant camp in Pakistan, its bitter rival and nuclear-armed neighbor.

An Indian fighter jet was shot down and its pilot briefly held captive after the two sides engaged in a subsequent aerial dogfight over Kashmir.
…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi says the country has shot down a satellite in low orbit, entering an exclusive club of nations that have developed anti-satellite weapons.

In an unexpected address to the nation Wednesday, Modi called it a major breakthrough in the country’s space capability. A missile fired from eastern India brought down the satellite in low Earth orbit about 300 kilometers away in an operation that lasted “three minutes,” he said.

Modi said the test was not designed to create “an atmosphere of war.”

“I want to assure the world community that the new capability is not against anyone. This is to secure and defend fast-growing India,” he said.

India is the fourth country after the United States, China and Russia to have used an anti-satellite weapon.

“India has registered its name in the list of space superpowers. Until now, only three countries in the world had achieved this feat. There can be no prouder moment for any Indian,” Modi said.

The satellite interceptor was designed domestically by Indian space scientists.

India’s foreign ministry said the test is not directed against any country, but meant to provide the nation with “credible deterrence against threats to our growing space-based assets from long-range missiles and proliferation in the types and numbers of missiles.”

The statement also said that India “has no intention of entering into an arms race in outer space.”

Disputes with China, Pakistan

Security experts in New Delhi called the test significant and said it had been developed with an eye on China, which carried out an anti-satellite test a decade ago.

“Low Earth orbit satellites are usually used by the adversary state for tactical information,” said Bharat Karnad, a security analyst with the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “We essentially are signaling to China that we can take out your satellites that might be transmitting all kinds of data from onboard sensors, and that China therefore will not have the edge it had until we tested and proved our capability for pre-emption.”

Satellites provide crucial intelligence and communications in modern warfare, and the ability to destroy them is considered an advanced capability.

India has border disputes with both China and Pakistan, and is also wary of the close defense partnership between its two neighbors. It fought a brief war with China in 1963 and three with Pakistan, the last in 1971.

The announcement of the anti-satellite test comes a month after spiraling tensions with archrival Pakistan had raised fears of another conflict between the two countries. The hostilities erupted after unprecedented airstrikes by India inside Pakistan to target a suspected militant camp led to an aerial confrontation between the rivals.​

Militarization of space

Experts say previous governments had hesitated from conducting a live anti-satellite test fearing an adverse reaction from major powers, but Modi has taken a tougher line on national security issues.

Security experts in India shrugged aside concerns that have been raised about militarization of space with the development of anti-satellite missiles. “If all the countries are doing it, then India with proven capabilities is not going to fall behind, is it?” according to Karnad.

India’s space program has developed launchers and satellites, and carried out missions to the moon and Mars.

New Delhi also tried to address concerns the debris from such tests can harm civilian and military satellite operations. The foreign ministry statement said India carried out its test in the lower atmosphere to ensure there was no debris and whatever was generated would “decay and fall back onto the Earth within weeks.”

Meanwhile, Modi, who faces elections in two weeks, came under attack from the opposition for trying to score a political point by announcing the test in a nationwide address.
…

Mounting public concern over data privacy is pushing tech giants to change their ways, industry experts said on Tuesday, a day after Apple unveiled a series of new products, stressing their privacy-friendly features.

The world’s second-most valuable technology company will now offer a credit card, a news service called Apple News+ and a TV service with original programming, all designed to keep users’ information private and secure, it said on Monday.

Apple’s announcements come on the heels of user privacy scandals that have rocked tech companies over the last several years.

Such clarity is welcome in a digital environment that lacks transparency and where people are sometimes unaware of what happens to their data, said Hielke Hijmans, a law expert at the Brussels Privacy Hub, a Belgian research center.

“This empowers the users and helps to give them a genuine choice,” he said.

Earlier this month, rivals like Google and Facebook said they were making changes to boost user privacy.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to encrypt more of the conversations happening on its messaging services, which could limit Facebook’s ability to parse those conversations.

Google said it is working on privacy enhancements for the Android operating system that powers most of the world’s mobile phones, such as locking down access to phone cameras and microphones.

At the launch event in California, Apple executives said the company will not allow advertisers to track what users read on its news service and it will not itself have that data.

Consumer data from its credit card will not be shared or sold to third parties for marketing, and the company will not know where a purchase was made, what was bought or how much it cost, Apple said.

Yet, Apple’s privacy moves aren’t likely to be mimicked by everyone, said Jan Penfrat, a senior policy advisor at advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Assembling profiles of consumers for the purpose of targeting advertisements is at the heart of how Google and Facebook made money, he said.

Unlike those companies, Apple’s business model is not largely dependent on advertising.

“Apple is rather the exception, not the norm,” Penfrat added.
…

The U.S. government’s multi-pronged effort to persuade European allies to bar the Chinese firm Huawei from supplying key elements of state-of-the-art 5G mobile data networks appears to have foundered, raising questions not only about the future of key intelligence-sharing relationships but also about the future of mobile technology in the U.S. itself.

U.S. officials used warnings of potential “backdoor” technology that could give Chinese intelligence services access to critical telecommunications infrastructure to try to warn allies away from Huawei equipment. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went as far as warning allies that the U.S. would have no choice but to restrict the information it shares with key allies.

In the end, the push appears to have been in vain. The EU announced Tuesday that it will allow carriers to move forward with the installation of Huawei equipment. Officials said EU countries’ sharing information about 5G security threats will be sufficient to safeguard their high-tech communication networks.  

Some of the United States’ staunchest allies have made it plain that they do not see the Huawei threat as Washington does. Germany has announced that it will not ban the Chinese firm from its networks, and regulators in Britain have said that they are satisfied that any threat can be mitigated by inspection and monitoring.

Last month, an effort to block Huawei from participating in the 5G rollout in France died in the Senate, and Italy has not only embraced Huawei, but has become the first European country to accept funding from Beijing as part of China’s “Belt and Road” program of infrastructure investment. 

This is not to say that Europe is ignoring potential security threats from Huawei. On March 12, the European Parliament passed a new Cybersecurity Act, creating standards for telecommunications equipment. While it did not single out Chinese firms, the language of the new law makes it clear that equipment from companies located in countries that pose potential security threats will receive extra attention. 

On Tuesday, the EU’s digital chief said EU countries will have until the end of June to assess cybersecurity risks related to 5G, leading to a bloc-wide assessment by October. In the Pacific, U.S. allies in closer proximity to China have been more aggressive in taking action against Huawei. The governments of both Australia and New Zealand have already barred their domestic carriers from using Huawei equipment in their 5G networks. 

Washington’s inability to create consensus among its allies on such a critical issue has puzzled many experts. Key sectors of the U.S. intelligence community identified Huawei as a major national security concern at least a decade ago. However, the concerted effort to go public with concerns about allowing the company to participate in the rollout of 5G technology only came to the fore within the past year — long after many say such conversations ought to have taken place.

“It is late in the game,” said Paul Triolo, practice head for Geo-Technology at the Eurasia Group and China Digital Economy Fellow at the New America Foundation. “I was in Europe last week and I had a German official say, ‘Gosh, I wish we’d had this debate three years ago.’ That’s the problem. The industry has moved in this direction in lockstep for the past seven or eight years and now, you’re throwing, from the sidelines, a big smoke bomb.” 

Industry insiders in Europe reacted with a mix of incredulity and alarm to the U.S. proposals. Vodafone’s chief technology officer, Scott Petty, last week told the BBC that a ban on Huawei wouldn’t just be forward-looking. It would require tearing out the company’s equipment already incorporated into existing mobile networks. “The cost of doing that runs into the hundreds of millions and will dramatically affect our 5G business case,” he told the news service. “We would have to slow down the deployment of 5G very significantly.”

Concerns about Huawei

The rise of Huawei to global prominence, considered a major success story in China, has not come without controversy. The company has a documented history of industrial espionage, and benefits significantly from close connections to the Chinese government, which provides various subsidies generally unavailable to Huawei’s foreign competitors. There has also long been suspicion, bordering on certainty in some sectors, that the company cooperates with Chinese intelligence services. 

“I mean they are clearly malicious actors — I don’t think there’s any doubt about this,” said Trae Stephens, a former U.S. intelligence officer, and a founder of Anduril Industries, which sells technology to the U.S. departments of Defense and Homeland Security. “The evidence has been presented over and over and over again. The intelligence community doesn’t make spurious accusations that have no backing.”

The certainty with which current and former U.S. officials accuse Huawei of being a pawn of Beijing makes the decision to wait until the last minute to try to block the firm from the 5G rollout hard to understand — especially given how long the company has been on the intelligence community’s radar. 

At least as early as the first years of the Obama administration, officials were expressing concern about allowing Huawei to provide sensitive infrastructure to the U.S. telecommunications industry. By 2012, that had hardened into specific warnings. 

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2012 completed a year-long investigation into Huawei and ZTE, a smaller Chinese telecom firm, and left no doubt about its members concerns. Among other things, the investigation concluded that “the risks associated with Huawei’s and ZTE’s provision of equipment to U.S. critical infrastructure could undermine core U.S. national-security interests.”

However, in the intervening years, one thing the U.S. never did was present clear and convincing evidence that Huawei was conspiring with the Chinese government in terms of ongoing espionage.

Even after the Chinese legislature passed a new law requiring companies operating in the country to cooperate, if asked, with intelligence-collecting agencies, warnings from the U.S. were all prospective — claims about what Huawei might do in the future, rather than evidence of actual espionage.

Fractured 5G future

While the late push by the U.S. to keep Huawei out of the rollout of 5G worldwide may have failed, years of warnings about doing business with the company have not gone unheeded in the United States. While Huawei equipment is not officially banned in the U.S., the 2012 report from the House Intelligence committee got the attention of domestic carriers, and Huawei has been all but shut out of the market. 

A law signed by President Donald Trump last year blocking government agencies from purchasing any equipment from the company only made it more difficult for the firm to play in the U.S. market. 

However, even without access to U.S. markets, Huawei remains the largest provider of telecommunications infrastructure equipment in the world. It also spends lavishly on research and development: It’s R&D budget was nearly $14 billion in 2017, more than twice as much as either of the two other major 5G players, Ericsson and Nokia, spent that year. 

The combination of these two factors means that Huawei products are not only being used worldwide, but that they are often the most advanced and innovative equipment available. 

Huawei, according to Paul Triolo of the Eurasia Group, is the “most competitive, lowest-cost, high performance, high-service and, critically, high-innovation” company in the mobile telecommunications infrastructure market. 

This has some experts concerned about a future in which the U.S. walls itself off from the technology that the rest of the world is adopting.

Lester Ross, the partner-in-charge of the WilmerHale law firm’s Beijing office, said he believes the U.S. effort to stymie Huawei in Europe and at home will only “intensify” the company’s drive to expand to other countries around the world. 

“So if the United States and perhaps a few other countries are just left then to be islands in an ocean of Chinese-led telecommunications infrastructure, what implications does that have for the world?” he asked.

Michelle Quinn contributed to this report.
…

Facebook said Tuesday it shut down more than 2,600 fake accounts linked to Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo and aiming to influence political sentiment in various parts of the world.

It was the latest effort by the leading social network to shut down “inauthentic” accounts on Facebook and Instagram seeking to influence politics in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Facebook said the accounts blocked in the four countries were not necessarily centrally coordinated but “used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy for the company.

“We are constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Gleicher said in a blog post.

“In each case, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.”

Gleicher said Facebook — which has made similar moves in recent months — was making progress in rooting out fake accounts but noted that “it’s an ongoing challenge because the people responsible are determined and well-funded. We constantly have to improve to stay ahead.”

Links to Iran

In the latest action, Facebook said it removed 513 pages, groups and accounts tied to Iran and operating in Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kashmir, Kazakhstan and various areas of the Middle East and North Africa.

Similar to other manipulation campaigns, the users posed as locals and “made-up media entities” and posted news stories about topics including sanctions against Iran, tensions between India and Pakistan, issues in the Middle East and the crisis in Venezuela.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review linked these accounts to Iran,” Gleicher said.

Links to Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo

Another 1,907 accounts linked to Russia were also blocked. These sought to influence sentiment related to Ukrainian news and politics, the situation in Crimea and corruption.

Facebook said 212 Facebook accounts originating in Macedonia and Kosovo were shut down for misrepresenting themselves as users in Australia, the United States and Britain and sharing content about politics, astrology, celebrities and beauty tips.

Other issues

Earlier this month, Facebook said it blocked online manipulation efforts in Britain and Romania from users seeking to spread hate speech and divisive comments.

In January, Facebook took down hundreds of accounts from Iran that were part of a vast manipulation campaign operating in more than 20 countries.
…

It took a while, but finally — and with the carefully curated help of Oprah, Big Bird and Goldman Sachs — Apple has at last unveiled a new streaming TV service, its own branded credit card and a news subscription product.

The moves have been largely expected and so far don’t appear to drastically alter the competitive landscape the way Apple has done with previous products such as the iPhone and the iPad.

Still, the announcements represent an important step for the company as it seeks to diversify how it makes money amid declining sales of the iPhone, even if by themselves they are unlikely to turn Apple’s big ship either way. But it’s a way to keep fans sticking with Apple even when they aren’t buying a new iPhone every year.

Monday’s announcements lacked some key details, such as pricing of the TV service. Here’s a rundown on what Apple unveiled — what’s good, what’s not so good and what we still don’t know.

APPLE TV PLUS

The good: Oprah, Jason Momoa, Big Bird, Steven Spielberg and a host of other stars have lent themselves to original Apple shows that range from documentaries to science fiction, drama and preschool television programming. The focus on “quality storytelling” is consistent with Apple’s image and analysts say is likely to produce some hit shows.

The bad: Even so, “it will lack the full range and diversity of content available through Netflix, Amazon and others, and that is set to limit its appeal,” said Martin Garner, an analyst at CCS Insight. Apple also joins a crowded market and it’s not clear how many more monthly subscriptions people have the money and the bandwidth for.

The unknown: Apple hasn’t said how much it’s going to cost.

APPLE NEWS PLUS

The good: The price, $10 per month, looks like a good deal compared to separate subscriptions for newspapers and magazines (Apple will include more than 300 of the latter, including The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated). Apple is touting “richly designed articles” that let people read publications tailored to Apple devices in all their glory. Apple has also included privacy protections, and says it will collect data about what people read in a way that it won’t know who read what — just how much total time is spent on different articles.

The bad: While The Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal have signed on, other big-name news publishers, such as The New York Times, have not. Nor have, in fact, most other major U.S. newspapers.

The unknown: It’s not entirely clear how much news you’re getting for your money. The Journal, famous for its business and industry coverage and commanding nearly $40 a month, will make “specially curated” general-interest news available for Apple customers, for example. Other stories will still be there — but Apple says users will have to search for the articles themselves.

APPLE CARD

The good: Security and privacy, two areas Apple prides itself on, are a clear focus. The physical version of the card has no numbers, and the digital version lives in your Apple Wallet on your phone, where it’s protected by Face ID or Touch ID so even if someone steals your phone they won’t be able to use the card to buy things. Apple says it won’t get information on what you buy with the card or where or for how much. There are no late fees.

The bad: The rewards (2 percent cash back for all purchases using the digital version of the card, 1 percent using the physical version and 3 percent cash back at Apple stores) are nothing to write home about. The card is meant for Apple users, so if you aren’t, it’s probably not for you.

The unknown: What sort of credit score you need to get approved, as well as exact interest rates.

APPLE ARCADE

The good: Apple’s new game subscription service, which will launch this fall, will be free of ads and in-app purchases, which can quickly add up and have become common in mobile games. Apple promises more than 100 games, and they will be exclusive to the service, so there will be plenty of fresh adventures.

The bad: The service will only be available on Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple TVs. That could be frustrating for those who don’t own Apple products.

Unknown: Apple said all games would be available with one subscription, but did not say how much it would cost or when exactly the service will launch. It has partnered with a few well-known game creators, including Hironobu Sakaguchi of “Final Fantasy” fame, but it’s unclear how well all the new games will work or how fun they’ll be to play.
…

Software engineers, entrepreneurs and product managers huddle in small groups, brainstorming ideas and scrawling thoughts onto Post-it Notes on a wall. The project leader exhorts them to “think of products around these themes.”

It’s not a startup but a grassroots band of volunteers from London’s tech industry developing websites to prevent Brexit, Britain’s departure from the European Union that has fallen into complete disarray. They hope to put public pressure on politicians to give people a second vote. While the group is small, their engagement in politics underscores the concerns among businesses and entrepreneurs who stand to suffer from tariffs and border checks.

“I’ve never been a political person before, really,” said German-born venture capitalist Andreas Cser. A longtime London resident, he joined the group, Tech For U.K., after he found Brexit made Britain less welcoming for foreigners and exposed the “incompetence and brazen political hypocrisy” of its political leaders.

Cser, whose firm, Automat Ventures, invests in companies that use artificial intelligence, helped connect Tech For U.K. to computer scientists. “What I know about is how companies develop tech products,” and how they scale them up, he said.

Since its launch last year, Tech For U.K. has rolled out a dozen mobile-friendly websites. They help users automatically send anti-Brexit messages by postcard or voicemail to their politicians or spotlight the EU’s benefits to Britain. Volunteers donate their time and the group also gets limited funding from anti-Brexit campaign group Best For Britain, which vets the digital tools before they go live. The latest, launched on the weekend, lets Facebook and Instagram users add an augmented reality “Stop Brexit” button to photos and videos.

Britain was due to depart the EU on Friday but the process has been delayed after Parliament rejected the Brexit deal Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated with the EU. The House of Commons took control late Monday of the stalled process and plans to vote this week on alternatives to May’s deal.

One of the group’s goals is to rally support for a second referendum on Brexit. There’s no majority for that in Parliament, but a big march in London on Saturday to demand one suggests momentum is growing. A retired academic’s online petition went viral last week, receiving over 5.6 million signatures in favor of revoking Brexit altogether.

With many outcomes to Brexit still open, Tech for U.K.’s aim is to persuade those on the fence about the benefits of EU membership and give people who are opposed to leaving a way to express their views.

“At the end of the day, it’s for those who might change their mind,” said Kiyana Katebi, founder of an IT consultancy.

Katebi helped develop the group’s first site, MyEU.uk , which shows people EU-funded projects in their neighborhood based on their post code. The site had around 100,000 visitors in the first two days after its September launch.

Another site, Finalsay.app, let British residents leave a voice message for their parliamentary representative with their “final say” against Brexit. Hey MP! lets people automatically send postcards to their lawmaker asking for another vote.

It Costs EU reveals the portion of income tax going to the bloc while EU Worth It shows the amount of EU funding British districts receive, to counter claims Brits pay too much to the EU.

Can I Move To Barcelona simply explains how Brits can still move to the Spanish city, or dozens of other EU destinations, under the bloc’s freedom of movement rules — a benefit that likely ends across the British border if Brexit happens.

The group, while small, says they’ve have had an impact on sentiment but didn’t provide any numbers on site traffic or messages sent.

“The point is to ask people the question: Do they really want this?” and then show them how Brexit will affect them, said Mike Butcher, Tech For U.K.’s co-founder.

About 200-300 people have joined the group, Butcher said. They work on the projects on evenings and weekends and collaborate remotely.

The group is using technology to counter what they see as misinformation surrounding Britain’s EU membership that may have contributed to the 2016 referendum vote result to leave.

Since the referendum, Brexit opponents have raised concerns about the influence of Russian meddling and the role of social-media advertising using data harvested from Facebook.

“One of the reasons that we lost in 2016 was that (the pro-Brexit camp’s) digital game was far superior to the people fighting to stay in. We’re playing catch-up,” said Eloise Todd, CEO of Best For Britain.

On the other side of the argument, pro-Brexit groups flourish online, with names such as Get Britain Out, Stand Up 4 Brexit and Leavers of Britain using social media to promote their views.

More than 1,100 U.K.-based tech executives signed Tech For U.K.’s open letter last year to May, warning that Brexit risks making it harder to hire tech talent and crimping funding from Europe. But for many volunteers, Brexit’s impact on the country transcends those concerns.

At one of the group’s recent weekly evening meetups, in a tech company’s basement meeting room in Central London, the crowd of about 20 split into three groups.

They ran through ideas and themes. Would Brexit make it harder for European musicians to play at Britain’s Glastonbury music festival? Could they build a site to get people in Ireland to write letters to relatives in Britain? Would microbreweries still be able to get imported hops?

“We just need to think about various members of the public, what might tick their buttons,” startup founder James Tabor told his group. “This is about getting into the minds of the general public.”
…

An Ethiopian official said a preliminary report on the plane crash that killed 157 people on March 10 will be made public later this week.

Mussie Yiheyis, spokesman for the government’s transport ministry, told The Associated Press Tuesday that a date has not yet been set but it will be released later this week. He said that a high ranking government official will announce the preliminary result.

The final report may take months to complete but a preliminary report may be released “anytime soon,” said the spokesman.

On Monday, Ethiopian Airlines’ CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said the pilots of the plane that crashed on the outskirts of the capital, Addis Ababa, had trained on “all appropriate simulators,” rejecting reports that they had not been adequately prepared to handle the new aircraft.
…

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots warns chances of achieving a U.N. treaty banning the development, production and use of fully autonomous lethal weapons, also known as killer robots, are looking increasingly remote.  Experts from some 80 countries are attending a weeklong meeting to discuss the prospect of negotiating an international treaty. 

Representatives from about 80 countries have been meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems since 2014.  They have to decide by November to begin negotiations on a new treaty to regulate killer robots. 

Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams says Russia has been in the forefront of a group of countries, including the United States and Australia, trying to block movement in this direction.  At the opening session, she tells VOA that Russia argued for drastically limiting discussions on the need for meaningful human control over lethal autonomous weapons.

“It is very unlikely as they finish up this year that there will be a mandate to meaningfully deal with meaningful human control, which is fundamental in our view to how you deploy such systems,” Williams said. “There would be no utility in continuing to come here and hear the same blah, blah, blah over and over again.” 

Williams said the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots may have to resort to civil activism to get an accord banning killer robots.  She said such tactics successfully achieved international treaties banning land mines and cluster munitions outside the United Nations framework.

But for now, the activists are not giving up on persuading U.N. member countries to take the right course.  They said delegating life-and death decisions to machines crosses what they call a moral red line and should not be allowed to happen.  

They said they have strong support for their stance from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. In a statement to delegates attending the meeting, he warned of the dangers of giving machines the power and discretion to take lives without human involvement.

He called this morally repugnant and politically unacceptable.  He said these weapons should be prohibited by international law.

 
…

Apple attempted to reintroduce itself on Monday as an entertainment and financial services company that also makes iPhones as it launched a streaming television service, a credit card and an online gaming arcade.

The world’s second-most valuable technology company lifted the curtain on a television and movie service called Apple TV+ that will stream original television shows and movies to a television-watching app for users of its 1.4 billion gadgets worldwide, as well as owners of smart TVs and other devices.

But Apple, known in the tech industry for keeping its products secret until they are finished, left out key pricing details for several of its new services, unnerving investors and sending its shares down slightly.

The move could be seen as a first step to challenging streaming video leaders Netflix and Amazon, although Apple is taking a different approach by offering paid “channels” from HBO, Starz and Showtime alongside its own content.

Its revamped app for subscribing to channels from others will come out in May, but Apple’s own original shows will not arrive until autumn, with pricing not yet announced. Apple said both its TV+ shows and the new version of the TV app will be available in more than 100 countries.

Apple also introduced a credit card, a video game arcade, and added hundreds of magazines to its news app at an event at its Cupertino, California, headquarters.

As Apple struggles with saturated markets and sales of its iPhone fall, the company is turning more of its attention to services that provide regular subscription revenue.

Hollywood celebrities helped debut the revamped television offering. Apple has commissioned programming from Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.

Throughout the presentation, Apple executives stressed privacy protections for consumers as they shop and consume content across a range of Apple phones, iPads or other hardware.

They also emphasized content that would appeal to young audiences, potentially setting the stage for a rivalry with Walt Disney Co. Winfrey announced a global book club.

The company, second only to Microsoft in market value among tech giants, led off the event with an announcement that its free news app will now come in a paid-subscription version, called Apple News+, which curates a range of news articles and will include 300 magazines including National Geographic, People, Popular Science, Billboard and the New Yorker. Apple said it would cost $9.99 a month.

Apple also introduced a titanium, laser-etched Apple Card backed by Goldman Sachs Group and Mastercard that can track spending across devices and pay daily cash back on purchases.

Cook also said Apple Pay, its digital wallet, will soon be usable on public transit systems in Portland, Oregon, Chicago and New York City. Apple Pay will be available in more than 40 countries by the end of the year.

Crowded Field

With its new media push, Apple joins a crowded field where rivals such as Amazon.com’s Prime Video and Netflix have spent heavily to capture viewer attention and dollars with award-winning series and films.

The big tech war for viewers ignited a consolidation wave among traditional media companies preparing to join the fray.

Walt Disney Co., which bought 21st Century Fox, and AT&T, which purchased Time Warner Inc, plan to launch or test new streaming video services this year.

Revenue from its “services” segment – which includes the App Store, iCloud and content businesses such as Apple Music – grew 24 percent to $37.1 billion in fiscal 2018. The segment accounted for only about 14 percent of Apple’s overall $265.6 billion in revenue, but investors have pinned their hopes for growth on the segment.

The company also introduced Apple Arcade, a game subscription service that will work on phones, tablets and desktop computers and include games from a range of developers.

Apple said the gaming service will feature more than 100 exclusive titles from gaming partners such as Annapurna Interactive and that the service will arrive this autumn.

But as with its original content service, Apple did not say how much its gaming service will cost consumers. With details about the new services missing, Apple shares fell 1.7 percent on Monday.
…

The head of Ethiopian Airlines said “many questions on the B-737 MAX airplane remain without answers” and he pledged “full and transparent cooperation to discover what went wrong.”

“Until we have answers, putting one more life at risk is too much,” CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said Monday in a statement.

“Immediately after the crash and owing to the similarity with the Lion Air Accident, we grounded our fleet of Max 8s. Within days, the plane had been grounded around the world. I fully support this,” Gebremariam said.

A March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash and Indonesia’s Lion Air crash in October were both Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes. Everyone on board the two flights was killed.

The Ethiopian Airlines flight data recorders revealed that there were “clear similarities” between the two doomed flights.

Gebremariam asserted that his crews were “well trained” on this aircraft.

“We are the the only airline in Africa, among the very few in the world, with the B-737 full flight Simulator,” he said. “Contrary to some media reports, our pilots who fly the new model were trained on all appropriate simulators.”

“In a nation that sometimes is saddled with negative stereotypes, accidents like this affect our sense of pride,” Gebremariam said. “Yet this tragedy won’t define us. We pledge to work with Boeing and our colleagues in all the airlines to make air travel even safer.”

 
…