Twitter announced Wednesday it would be updating its services to make it easier for users to find content about major events such as natural disasters and the FIFA World Cup that begins on Thursday.

“We’re keeping you informed about what matters by showing the tweets, conversations and perspectives around topics you care about,” Keith Coleman, product vice president, said in a blog post.  “Our goal is to make following what’s happening as easy as following an account.”

Users will receive notifications about breaking news stories based on their personal interests — the accounts they follow or what they tweet about, Coleman explained. These notifications will become available in the coming weeks to users in the United States. When clicked, users will be taken to a specialized timeline about the topic.

“If someone uses Twitter all the time, they’ll have a perfectly curated timeline,” Twitter spokesperson Liz Kelley told VOA. “But if you don’t have those things in place, there’s maybe a better way for us to present that.”

The app will also link to related topics at the top of its search results. Another update includes a change in the format of the “Moments” tab, which will now be accessed by scrolling vertically rather than horizontally. The tab, which hosts collections of tweets about major events, is curated by a global team, Kelley said, and is available in five languages across 16 different countries.

Coleman also announced a dedicated page for the World Cup, which will be available in 10 languages and have individualized timelines for each game of the 32-team tournament. Kelley told VOA that users should be able to see every goal of the tournament through the app.

“Our long-term strategy is making it easier for people to see what’s happening on Twitter,” Kelley said. “Really, we’re organizing and presenting content in a way that’s easier to discover and consume.”
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By mixing dance with the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, an all-girl public school in New York encourages its students to go into the Stem fields. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, while women make up half of the college-educated workforce, less that 30 percent of science and engineering jobs are filled by women. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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By mixing dance with the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, an all-girl public school in New York encourages its students to go into the Stem fields. According to the U.S. National Science Foundation, while women make up half of the college-educated workforce, less that 30 percent of science and engineering jobs are filled by women. VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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Vietnamese lawmakers have approved a new cybersecurity law that human rights activists say will stifle freedom of speech.

The law will require online content providers such as Google and Facebook to remove content deemed offensive by authorities within 24 hours, and store the personal data of its customers on servers based in Vietnam, and to open offices in the Communist-run country.

Clare Agar, Amnesty International’s director of global operations, issued a statement denouncing Tuesday’s passage of the law. Agar said “the online space was a relative refuge” within Vietnam’s “deeply repressive climate” where people could go to share ideas and opinions “with less fear of censure by the authorities.”

The new law now means “there is no safe place left,” Agar said.

The United States and Canada urged Vietnam to delay passage of the bill, citing concerns it could pose “obstacles to Vietnam’s cybersecurity and digital innovation future.” 

The Vietnam Digital Communication Association says the law could reduce the country’s gross domestic product by 1.7 percent, and wipe out 3.1 percent of foreign investment.

Vo Trong Viet, the head of the government’s defense and security committee, acknowledged that requiring content providers to open data centers inside Vietnam would increase their costs, but said it was necessary ensure the country’s cybersecurity.
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The Boring Company, based in California, is close to opening its first exciting venture – a 3.2 kilometer underground tunnel designed to convince Californians that traveling underground at high speed may solve their state’s ubiquitous traffic jams. It is the brainchild of Elon Musk, the U.S. billionaire who founded the electric car company Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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The Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of the United States’ net neutrality rules — which mandated internet service providers to not discriminate in their handling of internet traffic — took effect Monday, reigniting fears from internet freedom advocates of potential manipulation of consumers’ internet access.

The FCC voted in December to overturn its net neutrality rule, first put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. With its repeal, the door is now open for internet service providers to block content, slow data transmission, and create “fast lanes” for consumers who pay premiums.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a staunch critic of net neutrality, wrote Sunday that while he “support[s] a free an open internet,” the overturning of the Obama-era rule will allow the FTC [Federal Trade Commission] to “once again be able to protect Americans consistently across the internet economy.”

In 2004, then-FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced the commission’s support of what he called the “four internet freedoms,” including the freedom of consumers to access content. Since 2005, the FCC had enforced net neutrality rules in some regard, with the support of both Republican and Democratic chairmen. In 2015, the regulations were codified into law. 

“We’re actually in a brave new world where no protections for a free internet currently exist, whereas they have for the majority of the history of the internet,” Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications of media watchdog Free Press, told VOA on Monday. 

Karr said based on the prior actions of internet service providers, he feared we could see restrictions placed on such free internet access.

In 2007, the Associated Press reported that telecommunications giant Comcast was stifling connection to file-sharing websites such as BitTorrent. In 2011, fellow communication company Verizon blocked the download of Google Wallet, a payment app, on its mobile devices.

Verizon spokesman Rich Young told VOA that the company “strongly supports open internet rules,” and the recent FCC decision does not change the company’s support of full internet access.

Since the December FCC decision, two states — Washington and Oregon — have passed their own net neutrality laws, whereas governors of five other states — Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Montana and Vermont — have issued executive orders mandating that internet service providers for government agencies abide by net neutrality regulations.

In May, the U.S. Senate voted 52-47 to reinstate the FCC’s 2015 net neutrality rules. Every Democratic senator voted for the proposal, as did three Republicans: John Kennedy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The bill is now in the House of Representatives, where outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, has not yet announced any plans to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Congressman Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, filed a petition in May to force a vote on the matter. Doyle spokesperson Matt Dinkel said of the 218 signees for the petition needed to force a vote, the petition currently has 170.

“If enough representatives sign the discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor, odds are that it will pass,” Dinkel told VOA.
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Despite astonishing advances in robotics, today’s machines often struggle to accomplish what insects do routinely. So robotics researchers are taking advantage of nature’s billions of years of experience. They are learning from bees to build flying machines that can learn and navigate their environments. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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Drones guided by artificial intelligence to catch boats netting fish where they shouldn’t were among the winners of a marine protection award on Friday and could soon be deployed to fight illegal fishing, organizers said.

The award-winning project aims to help authorities hunt down illegal fishing boats using drones fitted with cameras that can monitor large swaths of water autonomously.

Illegal fishing and overfishing deplete fish stocks worldwide, causing billions of dollars in losses a year and threatening the livelihoods of rural coastal communities, according to the United Nations.

The National Geographic Society awarded the project, co-developed by Morocco-based company ATLAN Space, and two other innovations $150,000 each to implement their plans as it marked World Oceans Day on Friday.

The aircraft can cover a range of up to 700 km (435 miles) and use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to drive them in search of fishing vessels, said ATLAN Space’s founder, Badr Idrissi.

“Once (the drone) detects something, it goes there and identifies what it’s seeing,” Idrissi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Idrissi said the technology, which is to be piloted in the Seychelles later this year, was more effective than traditional sea patrols and allowed coast guards to save money and time.

From satellites tracking trawlers on the high seas to computer algorithms identifying illegal behaviors, new technologies are increasingly coming to the aid of coast guards worldwide.

AI allows the drones to check a boat’s identification number, establish whether it is fishing inside a protected area or without permit, verify whether it is known to authorities and count people on board, Idrissi said.

If something appears to be wrong, it can alert authorities.

Other winners were Marine Conservation Cambodia, which uses underwater concrete blocks to impede the use of bottom-dragged nets, and U.S.-based Pelagic Data Systems, which plans to combat illegal fishing in Thailand with tracking technologies.

“The innovations from the three winning teams have the potential to greatly increase sustainable fishing in coastal systems,” National Geographic Society’s chief scientist Jonathan Baillie said in a statement.

Much of the world’s fish stocks are overfished or fully exploited, according the U.N. food agency, and fish consumption rose above 20 kilograms per person in 2016 for the first time.

Global marine catches have declined by 1.2 million tons a year since 1996, according to The Sea Around Us, a research initiative involving the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia.
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The very thought of visiting a hospital emergency department is stressful enough for many people, even without the discomfort or pain of an examination or treatment.

Enter an immersive virtual-reality program created by three graduates being used in France to relax patients and even increase their tolerance of pain, without resorting to drugs.

“What we offer is a contemplative world where the patient goes on a guided tour, in interactive mode, to play music, do a bit of painting or work out a riddle,” said Reda Khouadra, one of the 24-year-olds behind the project.

As patients are transported by chunky VR goggles into a three-dimensional world of Japanese zen gardens or snowy hillsides, they become more tolerant of minor but painful procedures such as having a cut stitched, a burn treated, a urinary catheter inserted or a dislocated shoulder pushed back into place.

“The virtual reality project … enables us to offer patients a technique to distract their attention and curb their pain and anxiety when being treated in the emergency room,” said Olivier Ganansia, head of the emergency department at the Saint-Joseph Hospital in Paris. “I think in 10 years, virtual reality won’t even be a question anymore, and will be used in hospitals routinely.”

The Healthy Mind startup is not a world first but has landed a $20,000 prize from a university in Adelaide, Australia — which will now pay for the three founders to present their project at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle.
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Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg didn’t shy away from her company’s ongoing privacy scandal in a Friday commencement speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead, she turned it into a lesson about accountability.

Sandberg, the company’s chief operating officer, repeatedly warned graduates that even technology created with the best intentions can be twisted to do harm, a lesson that she said hits close to home, “given some of the issues Facebook has had.”

“At Facebook, we didn’t see all the risks coming, and we didn’t do enough to stop them,” Sandberg said. “It’s hard when you know you let people down.”

Echoing previous comments from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Sandberg went on to emphasize the importance of taking full responsibility for mistakes.

“When you own your mistakes, you can work hard to correct them, and even harder to prevent the next ones,” she said at the campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That’s my job now. It won’t be easy, and it’s not going to be fast, but we will see it through.”

Facebook has faced backlash in the wake of a privacy scandal involving British data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica. In April, Zuckerberg appeared before Congress to apologize for the site’s role in foreign interference in the 2016 election.

The furor continued with recent revelations that Facebook shared user data with device makers including China’s Huawei, and that an unrelated software bug made some private posts public for up to 14 million users over several days in May.

Sandberg said she’s still proud of the company, noting its power to help organize movements like the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter. But she warned graduates that technology has a flipside, and isn’t always used for the sake of good.

“It also empowers those who would seek to do harm,” she said. “When everyone has a voice, some raise their voices in hatred. When everyone can share, some share lies. And when everyone can organize, some organize against the things we value the most.”

Sandberg, an alumna of Harvard University, is a former vice president at Google and was chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. She has written three bestselling books on leadership and resilience.

Much of her speech was about the role of technology in society, a common topic at MIT, a school known for its tech prowess. But her advice also drew on broader topics that have captured the nation’s attention, including tensions tied to race and gender.

“Build workplaces where everyone — everyone — is treated with respect,” she said. “We need to stop harassment and hold both perpetrators and enablers accountable. And we need to make a personal commitment to stop racism and sexism.”
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Chinese government hackers breached the computer system of a Navy contractor and stole large amounts of sensitive data, The Washington Post reports.

The Post said the hacking took place in January and February, according to U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

It said the stolen information amounted to 614 gigabytes of material, including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020.

Other information stolen included signal and sensor data for submarines, information relating to cryptographic systems, and a Navy electronic warfare library. The Post said details on hundreds of mechanical and software systems were compromised in the hacking.

The paper said the data was highly sensitive despite being on a contractor’s unclassified computer network. It said U.S. officials did not identify the contractor, but said he worked for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a U.S. military organization headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Navy is investigating the breach along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Post. Investigators told the paper the hack was carried out by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a civilian spy agency.

U.S. officials believe China has for years carried out hacking attacks on the U.S. military, the U.S. government and U.S. companies.

China has recently made it a priority to increase its development of undersea warfare to diminish the gap in the U.S. superiority in this area.
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North Korea’s senior leadership has been exploiting loopholes in international sanctions to obtain the U.S. technology that Pyongyang uses to conduct “destructive cyber operations,” according to a global cyberthreat intelligence company.

Recorded Future, based in Massachusetts, found that while export bans and restrictions are somewhat effective in keeping North Korea from acquiring technology for its nuclear weapons program, sanctions fail when it comes to regulating computer products from entering into North Korea.

“Because of the globalized nature of technology production and distribution, the traditional export control is not really working for [computer] technology,” said Priscilla Moriuchi, one of the authors of “North Korea Relies on U.S. Technology for Internet Operations.” “It may work quite well for ballistic missile parts or fissile material, but the system is not designed to limit technology transfer, and it’s not optimized for that.”

​Upcoming summit

In the report, Moriuchi and her co-author, Fred Wolens, call for a “globally robust unified effort to impose comprehensive sanctions” on North Korea, warning that without this Pyongyang “will be able to continue its cyberwarfare operations unabated with the aid of Western technology.”

The report was released days before North Korean leader Kim Jung Un and U.S. President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet in Singapore for a summit focused on ending the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic incentives and security guarantees.

But some consider North Korea’s cyberthreat capabilities as damaging as the threat of its nuclear weapons, Morgan Wright, a former a senior adviser in the U.S. State Department Antiterrorism Assistance Program, wrote in The Hill.

Even as advance teams prepared for the June 12 summit, North Korean cyberattacks continued, Moriuchi told Cyberscoop. On May 28, it reported the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released a joint alert about Hidden Cobra, which is associated with North Korea’s hacking activities.

FireEye, a Silicon Valley cybersecurity company, detected cyberattacks by Lazarus, the North Korean hacking effort responsible for stealing millions of dollars from the Bangladesh Central Bank in 2016. Lazarus is also believed responsible for the 2014 Sony Picture’s hack and last year’s WannaCry ransomware attack.

​Defining ‘luxury goods’

How did U.S. technology reach North Korea? Part of the answer lies in “international inconsistencies in the definition of the term ‘luxury goods,’” according to the Recorded Future report. The U.S. “effort to restrict technology exports at the national and international level” has not reaped results because of “varied definitions by nations and [their] inconsistent implementations,” said Moriuchi, a former East Asia analyst for the National Security Agency.

While the United Nations did not include electronics in Resolution 2321, which covered exports to North Korea, when it was issued in 2016, each member nation was allowed to interpret luxury goods. The U.S. has defined luxury goods to include laptop computers, digital music players, large flat-screen televisions and electronic entertainment software. China, in particular, does not “honor the luxury goods listed by other countries when it exports to” North Korea, according to the report.

US exports OK

Another factor is that for seven years in the period spanning 2002 to 2017, “the United States allowed the exportation of ‘computer and electronic products’ to North Korea,” according to the report. The total for those seven years was more than $430,000 of legal exports, and according to Recorded Future, “at its peak in 2014, the U.S. exported $215,862 worth of computers and electronic products to North Korea.”

The Recorded Future report, citing the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), said that category includes “computers, computer peripherals (including items like printers, monitors and storage devices), communications equipment (such as wired and wireless telephones), and similar components for these products.”

Much of that equipment remains in use, according to Recorded Future, and North Korea’s ruling elites, including party, military, and intelligence leaders and their families, have long been known to use products manufactured by U.S. companies such as Apple, Microsoft and IBM to access the internet.

A third element in how the U.S. tech went astray is what the report called North Korea’s “sophisticated sanctions evasion operation, which uses intermediaries and spoofs identities online.”

As an example, the study points to North Korea’s shell company Glocom with which Pyongyang “used a network of Asian-based front companies to buy computer components from electronic resellers, and the payment was even cleared through a U.S. bank account.” The United Nations found that Glocom was tied to Pan Systems Pyongyang, whose director, Ryang Su Nyo, reports to Liaison Office 519 in the North Korean intelligence agency’s Reconnaissance General Bureau.

​Just like us

North Korea’s elites surfed and browsed just like users outside North Korea until recently when the Recorded Future researchers found “a stark change” in the elite’s usage patterns as they “migrated almost completely” from Facebook, Google and Instagram “to their Chinese equivalents — Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu,” and over the course of a few months “dramatically increased” their use of internet obfuscation services, such as virtual private networks (VPN), virtual private servers (VPS), transport layer security (TLS) and the Onion Router (Tor).

While tracking the change in activity from December 2017 to April 2018, researchers found “the overwhelming presence of American hardware and software on North Korea networks and in daily use by senior North Korean leaders.”

While U.S. exporters are responsible for understanding and adhering to export regulations, the study indicates even the implementation of robust compliance procedures were insufficient in preventing banned U.S. computer products from reaching North Korea.

U.S. export enforcement rests with the Office of Foreign Asset Control, the Office of Export Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations. The U.S. is one of the only countries that enforces its export laws outside of its national boundaries, placing federal agents in foreign countries to work with local authorities.

Widespread international sanctions were imposed beginning in 2006, when North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test. In response, the U.N. passed two resolutions (Resolution 1695 and 1718) banning a broad range of exports to North Korea by any U.N. member states. The U.N. subsequently expanded those sanctions through a number of resolutions that prohibit and restrict exporting items ranging from missile material to oil to North Korea.

The case of ZTE

The Recorded Future report mentions Chinese manufacturer ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment) as a case where the implementation of export regulation failed, pointing out that the U.S. had the chance to enforce its export laws when the company was under Export Administration Regulation (EAR), a dense set of laws regulating exports.

ZTE was initially placed on the so-called Entities List for violating U.S. sanctions for selling products containing U.S. goods to Iran and North Korea in March 2016. For two years, the company and the U.S. government attempted to reach an agreement over penalties and how to verify that ZTE had stopped violating U.S. sanctions.

The Department of Commerce (DOC) ended the negotiations and imposed a denial order that banned U.S. companies from selling to ZTE for seven years.

In May, the DOC lifted the denial order, which would have put ZTE out of business, and allowed ZTE to purchase components from U.S. companies. The move came after threats of a trade war and Trump’s intervention.

Moriuchi said if the U.S. had let ZTE fail, it would have sent “a huge message to the rest of the world that there is no [company] too big to fail” and that “the U.S. government takes export control very seriously.”

In the end, “an opposite message ended up being sent with the administration’s deal with China, and that there are companies too big to fail especially if that company … has significant interest with the United States,” she said, adding the case demonstrated that “you can circumvent U.S. export control as a company and in the end, survive.”

The U.S. enforces its export laws through the DOC and regulates them through EAR, which not only restricts commercial goods and technologies from reaching hostile countries but also regulates the re-export of U.S. goods and technologies from one foreign country to another.

Until 2008, U.S. sanctions prohibiting exports to North Korea were implemented through the Trading with the Enemy Act, through which the U.S. government banned any exports to designated countries including North Korea.

Subsequently, the Obama administration issued the North Korea Sanctions Regulations and a number of Executive Orders (13551, 13570, 13687, and 13722) to further prohibit various measures, including exports of “goods, services or technology to North Korea.”

Additionally, numerous U.S. sanctions were imposed against North Korea under Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, especially in 2017 during Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles tests, which also saw the U.N. issue new sanctions.

VOA’s Christy Lee contributed to this report.
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