Space scientists say the satellites and other spacecraft orbiting the Earth, including the International Space Station, are in increasing danger of collision with pieces of junk. Engineers are working hard to solve the problem of removing the trash that threatens functioning satellites worth millions of dollars. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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French President Emmanuel Macron pledged over $850 million for solar projects in emerging economies, as both India and France called for affordable solar technology for emerging nations at the first conference of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) held in New Delhi.

The alliance was co-founded by both countries two years ago on the sidelines of the Paris climate summit to boost the use of solar power, countering the impact of climate change.

Dozens of country leaders, including many from Africa, attended the meeting in the Indian capital and emphasized the need for access to solar technology and concessional financing to address massive energy shortages in many of their sun-drenched nations.

Promising more loans and donations for solar projects by 2022, Macron stressed the need to remove obstacles in scaling up clean energy.

“We only have one planet, and we are sharing it,” he said.

Pointing to African women called “solar mamas” who are trained in India to use solar technology to light up homes and villages, Macron said they had continued their mission, even after “some countries decided just to leave the floor and leave the Paris agreement” — apparently alluding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to quit the Paris climate accord.

“Because they decided it was good for them, for their children, their grandchildren. They decided to act and keep acting, and that’s why we are here, in order to act very concretely,” Macron said amid applause.

One hundred and twenty-one countries, situated between the tropics, have signed on to the ISA. Backed by the World Bank and other multilateral agencies, it aims to raise $1 trillion for projects by 2030 for a massive deployment of solar energy.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who is chairman of the African Union, pointed out that half the members of the ISA are African countries.

“The sunniest countries in the world should not lack for energy,” he said. “The fact that they do is an unacceptable irony.”

The solar alliance initiative is seen as a bid by India to be at the forefront of countries addressing the challenge of climate change — a departure from its stand some years ago that developed economies should cut their emissions more drastically, rather than pressure developing countries.  

After the U.S. walked out of the Paris accord, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to abide by it. India, which is the world’s third largest polluter, is ramping up solar energy rapidly in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint. The country plans to source at least 40 percent of its energy from renewables by 2030.

“If you want all of humanity to benefit, then I am confident that we all will come together and think like one family, so that we are able to bring unity in our objectives and efforts,” said Modi, advocating a solar revolution worldwide.

United Nations environment chief Erik Solheim, who attended the meeting in New Delhi, called the ISA a “milestone” in the fight against climate change and pollution.

 
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A quick and reliable way of detecting carbon monoxide gas in the bloodstream could act as an early warning system for doctors trying to diagnose diseases. Faith Lapidus reports.
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Technology increasingly relies on rechargeable batteries as a source of energy. Today’s batteries are better and last longer, but when their capacity drops under a certain level they have to be replaced. Some experts say that, even with a half of their capacity, batteries can be used for less critical purposes. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Facebook is getting deeper into the professional sports streaming game, partnering with Major League Baseball to air 25 weekday afternoon games in an exclusive deal.

The games will be available to Facebook users in the U.S. on Facebook Watch, the company’s video feature announced last August, via the MLB Live show page. Facebook said Friday that recorded broadcasts will also be available globally, excluding select international markets.

The package, MLB’s first digital-only national broadcast agreement, precludes teams from televising those games on their regional sports networks. The concept is similar to the exclusive package of Sunday night games on ESPN.

Facebook, Twitter and Amazon and other tech companies are in a race to acquire sports streaming rights, which can be lucrative and potentially boost user loyalty. The deal comes at a time when leagues are worrying about cord-cutters causing a decrease in viewers among cable television networks.

Verizon signed a deal with the NBA to stream eight basketball games on Yahoo, and Amazon paid $50 million to stream NFL games to Prime members last season.

The games will be produced by the MLB Network for Facebook Watch, with interactive and social elements that differentiate them from live streaming.

Facebook’s first-month schedule includes Philadelphia-New York Mets on April 4, Milwaukee-St. Louis on April 11, Kansas City-Toronto on April 18 and Arizona-Philadelphia on April 26.

Facebook had a package of 20 non-exclusive Friday night games last year that began in mid-May and used broadcast feeds from the participating teams.
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Researchers in Sweden have embarked on a four-year project whose aim is to understand one of the most complex animal “languages” — the one dolphins use to communicate with each other. VOA’s George Putic has details.
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A Canadian company’s hardware is being used to hack internet users along Turkey’s border with Syria, researchers said Friday, adding that there were signs that Kurdish forces aligned with the United States might have been targeted.

The revelation comes as Turkey presses its offensive against the Kurds dug in along the country’s frontier with northwestern Syria, a conflict that threatens to disrupt the American-led effort to extinguish the Islamic State group. The apparent use of Canadian technology to target a U.S. ally was an irony underlined by Ron Deibert, the director of the internet watchdog group Citizen Lab, which published a report on the spying.

“These companies are not closely regulated, and that can lead to a lot of unintended consequences, including consequences that harm our foreign policy interests and human rights interest as well,” Deibert said. “It’s a strong argument for government control over this kind of technology.”

Canadian tech

Citizen Lab identified the hardware behind the hacking as PacketLogic devices produced by Procera, a Fremont, California-based company that was recently folded into Canada-based network management firm Sandvine, which is owned by American private equity group Francisco Partners. 

In a statement issued before the report’s release, Sandvine said it investigates all allegations of abuse but said it had been unable to complete its inquiry because Citizen Lab refused to provide the company with its findings in full. 

“Once we have the necessary data, we will conduct a full investigation and take appropriate action,” Sandvine said.

The statement also said Citizen Lab’s allegations were “technically inaccurate and intentionally misleading,” but a representative for the company has yet to supply an example of a misleading or inaccurate claim.

Government spying

Citizen Lab said it discovered the hacking after a European cybersecurity company reported that network service providers in two unidentified countries were trying to compromise their users using a powerful hacking technique known as network injection. Citizen Lab scoured the internet for signs of the spying and eventually traced the activity to the Turkish provinces of Adana, Hatay, Gaziantep, Diyarbakir and to the Turkish capital, Ankara, as well as parts of northern Syria and Egypt. 

Network injection — so-called because malicious software is injected into everyday internet traffic by whoever controls the network — has long been feared as a particularly powerful form of government spying.

“This can potentially be used to target anyone in the country with the click of the button,” said Bill Marczak, the lead author of the report.

Although the identities of those being spied on in Turkey and Egypt aren’t clear, Marczak said that the devices appeared to be installed on the network belonging to Turk Telekom, a leading phone and internet provider in Turkey as well as parts of northern Syria. He said there were hints suggesting some of the targets are affiliated with the YPG, the Kurdish Marxist rebel group which is fighting Turkish forces for control of the northwestern Syrian province of Afrin. Although Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist organization, the group provides the backbone of the U.S.-backed operations against the Islamic State in eastern Syria.

American officials acknowledged Monday that ground operations against the jihadist group’s remnants in eastern Syria were on hold because Kurdish fighters were being diverted to the battle against Turkey. 

Turk Telekom statement

Turk Telekom said in a statement that it complies with Turkish law and doesn’t interfere with internet users’ access. It added that the company “does not redirect any internet user to receive malicious downloads of popular software applications.” A representative for the company did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.

Sandvine’s ties to the Turkey government have been the subject of previous reporting. In 2016, Forbes reported that engineers at Procera were so troubled at the prospect of supplying surveillance hardware for use by Turk Telekom that six of them quit in protest. 

“I do not wish to spend the rest of my life with the regret of having been a part of (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan’s insanity, so I’m out,” one the engineers said in a letter of resignation quoted by Forbes.

LinkedIn shows at least 16 Procera-Sandvine employees listed as working in Egypt or Turkey. One Sandvine engineer based in Cairo listed “lawful interception” — a commonly used euphemism for state-sanctioned surveillance — as one of his interests.
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Students around the United States are creating virtual businesses that produce simulated products, which are marketed and sold for virtual money. Mike O’Sullivan reports that hundreds of student entrepreneurs came to Pasadena, California, to promote the virtual companies they have created.
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A federal judge is expected to hear arguments on Thursday about whether President Donald Trump violated Twitter users’ free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution by blocking them from his account.

The arguments before U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald in Manhattan are part of a lawsuit brought last July by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and several individual Twitter users.

Trump and the plaintiffs are seeking summary judgment, asking Buchwald to decide the case in their favor without a trial.

Twitter lets users post short snippets of text, called tweets. Other users may respond to those tweets. When one user blocks another, the blocked user cannot respond to the blocker’s tweets.

The plaintiffs have accused Trump of blocking a number of accounts whose owners criticized, mocked or disagreed with him in replies to his tweets.

They argued that Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, is a public forum, and that denying them access based on their views violates the First Amendment.

Trump in court papers countered that his use of Twitter is personal, not a “state action.”

Even if it were a state action, he said, his use of Twitter was a form of “government speech,” not a public forum.

Trump’s Twitter use draws intense interest for his unvarnished commentary, including attacks on critics. His tweets often shape news and are retweeted tens of thousands of times.
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Nine teams with members from 25 countries entered the final phase of the $7 million Ocean Discovery XPRIZE competition for technologies that could cheaply and efficiently map the floors of the world’s oceans.  Using current technology this feat would take up to 600 years. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The FBI views companies hit by cyberattacks as victims and will not rush to share their information with other agencies investigating whether they failed to protect customer data, its chief said Wednesday. Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, encouraged companies to promptly report when they are hacked to help the FBI investigate and prevent future data breaches.

He contrasted the FBI’s approach to that of other regulators and state authorities. Without naming other agencies, Wray referred to “less-enlightened enforcement agencies,” some of which he said take a more adversarial approach.

“We don’t view it as our responsibility when companies share information with us to turn around and share that information with some of those other agencies,” Wray said in response to an audience question at a cybersecurity conference at Boston College.

Amid a wave of high-profile data breaches at major corporations, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general are investigating how many of them secured consumer data before they were hacked.

Equifax Inc, which suffered a breach in 2017 that compromised the data of more than 147 million consumers, is fighting a lawsuit by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and faces probes by over 40 other states and the FTC.

Ride-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc is also facing investigations by state attorneys general after a data breach of 57 million accounts. Uber has been sued by the states of Washington and Pennsylvania, and like Equifax faces private class action lawsuits over the breach.

Speaking at the conference, Wray said the FBI needed to partner with the private sector to combat an evolving threat that has “turned into full-blown economic espionage and extremely lucrative cybercrime.”

Wray, who took over as director in August, said in order to prevent cyber threats, companies should approach the FBI as soon as they see signs of unauthorized access to their computer systems or malware infesting them.

“At the FBI, we treat victim companies as victims,” he said.

 
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The South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, starts Friday. It’s grown from a grassroots event to a phenomenon that attracts 400,000 people.

For attendees, it can feel overwhelming. What’s worth your time? Where’s the buzz?

The latest AP Travel “Get Outta Here” podcast offers strategies for conquering FOMO (fear of missing out) at SXSW.

One approach is to let the nostalgia acts go – the former big-name bands promoting comebacks. Instead, pack your schedule with artists that have their best years ahead of them.

And you need a plan. You can’t just wing it. Be ready for long lines. But have some backups. Consider less-crowded venues outside downtown. Film screenings take place at theaters all over, and up-and-coming bands play a lot of shows.
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