Street violence and gang shootings are on the rise in many big cities worldwide. Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro sees an average of 15 gun battles a day, and innocent bystanders are often caught in the crossfire. But people in Rio can now avoid street violence thanks to several smartphone apps. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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While our fossil fuel-dependent civilization keeps releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, scientists are racing to find a viable method for lowering the emission of the most harmful one — carbon dioxide. It can be captured and stored underground, or it can be turned into a harmless rock. The price is steep, but the cost of not doing something could be higher. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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A U.S. judge ruled on Thursday that Twitter could move forward with a lawsuit that aims to free technology companies to speak more openly about surveillance requests they receive from the U.S. government.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, said in a written order that the U.S. government had failed to show the kind of “clear and present danger” that could possibly justify restraints on the right of Twitter to talk about surveillance requests.

“The government’s restrictions on Twitter’s speech are content-based prior restraints subject to the highest level of scrutiny under the First Amendment,” Rogers wrote.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees certain rights including freedom of speech.

Twitter filed the lawsuit in 2014 after revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the extent of U.S. spying.

The detail that tech companies can provide about U.S. national security requests is limited, so that companies can release the number of requests only within a range, such as 0-499 in a six month period.

Rogers scheduled a hearing in Twitter’s case for next month.
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Microsoft is laying off thousands of employees in a shake-up aimed at selling more subscriptions to software applications that can be used on any internet-connected device.

Most of the people losing their jobs work in sales and are located outside the U.S. The Redmond company confirmed that it began sending the layoff notices Thursday, but declined to provide further specifics, except that thousands of sales jobs would be cut.

“Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis,” Microsoft said in a statement. “This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others.”

Microsoft Corp. employs about 121,500 people worldwide. Nearly 71,600 of them work in the U.S.

Software subscriptions

The job cuts are part of Microsoft’s shift away from its traditional approach of licensing its Office software and other programs for a one-time fee tied to a single computer. The company is now concentrating on selling recurring subscriptions for software accessible on multiple devices, a rapidly growing trend known as “cloud computing.”

That part of Microsoft’s operations has been playing an increasingly important role, especially among corporate and government customers, since Satya Nadella replaced Steve Ballmer as the company’s CEO in 2014.

Microsoft’s “commercial cloud” segment is on a pace to generate about $15 billion in annual revenue. More than 26 million consumers subscribe to Microsoft’s Office 365 service that includes its Word, Excel and other popular programs. That number has more than doubled in the past two years.

Meanwhile, revenue from licensing of Microsoft’s Windows operating system has been increasing by 5 percent or less in the past three quarters.
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There is a happy ending for a team of Gambian students who planned to compete in a major global robotics contest in Washington later this month.

The five-members were granted visas Thursday to come to the United States after being turned down earlier this week.

They say they are still disappointed that their mentor, education and science ministry director, Mucktarr Darboe, was not granted a visa.

But the Gambian American Association will escort the students around Washington.

Gambia and Afghanistan were the only two countries whose robotics teams were initially denied visas. Neither were given any reason.

The Afghan students had planned to try again this week.

The Gambian and Afghan students were especially puzzled because teams from Iran and Sudan, and a group of Syrian refugees were given visas. All three Muslim-majority countries are on President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Afghanistan and Gambia are not.

Lida Azizi, a 17-year old from Herat, calls the visa rejection “a clear insult for the people of Afghanistan.”

The group called FIRST Global Challenge holds the yearly robotics competition to build up interest in science, technology, engineering and math across the world.

The group says the focus of the competition is finding solutions to problems in such fields as water, energy, medicine and food production.
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While the public contemplates how to protect large computer systems, such as banks and voting machines, from hacking, experts warn that another critical part of the data-based world may be vulnerable. Robots are rapidly entering everyday life, and they also rely on a connection to the internet and thus are potentially open to malware. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Swedish carmaker Volvo says it is phasing out the internal combustion engine in favor of electric motors by 2019.

Volvo, which is Chinese owned, is the first traditional carmaker to announce the move.

“This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car,” said Volvo’s president Håkan Samuelsson in a statement Wednesday. “People increasingly demand electrified cars, and we want to respond to our customers’ current and future needs.”.

The company, which made a name for itself for emphasizing passenger safety, said it will offer five electric cars between 2019 and 2021. Three will be branded as Volvo and the others will be labeled as Polestar, the company’s high-end brand.

The company said it will also offer plug-in hybrid or other hybrid-type cars, some of which do use a small gas engine along with a rechargeable battery.

The company says it will continue to make pure combustion engine cars launched prior to 2019.

Geely, the Chinese company which has owned Volvo since 2010, was likely an impetus for the move as electric vehicles have been eagerly adopted in China due to high levels of air pollution.

According to Center for Automotive Research at Germany’s University of Duisberg-Essen, the country is home to half the world’s electric cars. China has said it wants 5 million electric cars on Chinese roads by 2020.

Electric carmaker Tesla recently announced it was in talks to build a plant near Shanghai.
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A British hospital trust misused patient data when it shared information with Google for work on a smartphone app to help detect kidney injuries, a British data protection watchdog said Monday.

The Royal Free NHS Trust failed to comply with the Data Protection Act when it passed on personal information of around 1.6 million patients to Google’s DeepMind.

“There’s no doubt the huge potential that creative use of data could have on patient care and clinical improvements, but the price of innovation does not need to be the erosion of fundamental privacy rights,” Elizabeth Denham, head of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), said in a statement.

The data was provided in a medical trial that integrated information from existing systems used by the Royal Free to alert clinicians when signs of deterioration in a patient with Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) were found.

The investigation found that many patients did not know their data was being used as part of a test.

“We accept the ICO’s findings and have already made good progress to address the areas where they have concerns,” the trust said in a statement.

As a result, the trust has signed a document agreeing to make change to the way it handles data.

Although the ICO’s findings related to the hospital, Google’s artificial intelligence arm has also taken responsibility, admitting it underestimated the complexity of Britain’s state-run National Health Service and the rules around patient data.

“We were almost exclusively focused on building tools that nurses and doctors wanted, and thought of our work as technology for clinicians rather than something that needed to be accountable to and shaped by patients, the public and the NHS as a whole,” Google DeepMind said in a statement.

“We got that wrong, and we need to do better.”
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Samsung Electronics said Sunday its recalled Galaxy Note 7 phones will be recycled and sold starting this week in South Korea. 

The Galaxy Note FE phone, using unused parts in the recalled Note 7 smartphones, will go on sale in South Korea Friday at 700,000 won ($611), about three quarters of its original price. 

The company said the supply will be limited to 400,000 units. Overseas sales plans will be determined later, it said in a statement. 

Samsung said the Note FE has “perfect safety.”

Black eye for Samsung

The original Note 7 was one of the biggest black eyes in Samsung’s history. When it was launched in August 2016, the Note 7 was Samsung’s answer to Apple’s upcoming iPhone. It was also one of the most expensive Samsung phones with the price starting at $850. 

But after reports emerged that its batteries were prone to overheat and catch fire, Samsung recalled the phone in less than a month of its launch and released another one with replaced batteries. But the second batch also tended to overheat, prompting Samsung to discontinue the Note 7. 

The debacle dealt a blow to Samsung’s corporate image. Aviation authorities around the world banned the pricy phone on flights and photos of scorched Note 7s circulated on social media. Samsung spent billions of dollars to recall the Note 7 and fix its damaged brand. 

Earlier this year, the company released the investigation results and blamed flaws in design and production of batteries supplied by two battery makers.

Environmentalists urged reuse of parts

After Samsung recalled millions of Note 7 phones, environmental activists have pressured the South Korean tech giant to reuse the electronics parts to reduce waste. Samsung said the Note FE is part of its efforts to minimize waste.

The Note FE, short for “Fan Edition,” features the screen measuring 5.7 inches (14.48 centimeters) diagonally and the stylus pen.
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When Goktug Yilmaz, a game developer in Ankara, Turkey, wanted help with his business, he turned to Y Combinator, a prestigious startup accelerator firm in Mountain View, California.

Yilmaz recently completed Y Combinator’s first free online course, called Startup School. He was among 7,000 founders from more than 140 countries who participated.

“You talk, you get feedback,” he said, about why he wanted to be part of Startup School. “Just seeing this process would help us get better on focusing on our goals.”

Y Combinator is known for its competitive twice-yearly program that brings companies to Mountain View, California, for 10 intensive weeks of training and advice. Founders receive mentoring from its alumni network that includes such companies as Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit and Instacart.

YC arrangement for startups

As part of the arrangement, YC, as it is known, invests $120,000 in each startup for 7 percent of common stock. The program culminates in Demo Day, when participants give their pitches to a room full of potential investors.

Since it was founded in 2005, Y Combinator has worked with more than 4,000 founders.

But just 2 percent of applicants make it into Y Combinator’s program. Yilmaz was one of those who tried but didn’t make it.

Then, Yilmaz heard about Y Combinator’s effort to expand its reach with Startup School. He signed up.

Steven Pham, who helps run Startup School, said the firm wanted to reach entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley.

“Internet access has been only something people have access to very recently in a lot of these markets,” Pham said. “In a lot of these communities where startups are super, super early, we wanted to get in there and help them learn best practices … best ways to think about building their product, best ways to think about sales strategies and market.”

The demand for Startup School surprised Y Combinator, Pham said. More than 13,000 companies and nearly 20,000 founders applied. The firm had to limit the first class to 3,000 companies and about 7,000 founders so that it could provide enough alumni advisers.

Ti Zhao, a Y Combinator alumnus, was a mentor to 30 companies during Startup School.

“People kind of have this idea of Silicon Valley as where the startups are at and it’s really cool for me to see so many diverse companies from so many places around the world,” she said.

Online pitches

Startup School culminates with Presentation Day, when entrepreneurs around the world make their pitches online. The aim isn’t necessarily to woo investors but to present a prototype of an idea in a clear and succinct way.

It included pitches from war-torn Syria, where one group is teaching children how to create circuits.

Others applied technology to fields such as transportation, travel and education. SocialEyeze, based in Sudan, is trying to help the blind engage on social media more easily. 

“I’ve learned many useful skills, and those skills appeared in the modifications we made on our solution,” Hussam Eldeen Hassan with Socialeyeze said.

In the end, about 56 percent of the first Startup School class, or 1,580 firms, completed the course.

Y Combinator plans to expand the number of companies it can include when it does Startup School again, currently slated for early next year.

“In Startup School, we made a bunch of friends from the online chat,” Yilmaz said. “We are probably going to continue those friendships with other founders.”
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The U.S government warned industrial firms this week about a hacking campaign targeting the nuclear and energy sectors, the latest event to highlight the power industry’s vulnerability to cyberattacks.

Since at least May, hackers used tainted “phishing” emails to “harvest credentials” so they could gain access to networks of their targets, according to a joint report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The report provided to the industrial firms was reviewed by Reuters Friday. While disclosing attacks, and warning that in some cases hackers succeeded in compromising the networks of their targets, it did not identify any specific victims.

Industry looking into intrusions

“Historically, cyber actors have strategically targeted the energy sector with various goals ranging from cyber espionage to the ability to disrupt energy systems in the event of a hostile conflict,” the report said.

Homeland Security and FBI officials could not be reached for comment on the report, which was dated June 28. The report was released during a week of heavy hacking activity.

A virus dubbed “NotPetya” attacked Tuesday, spreading from initial infections in Ukraine to businesses around the globe. It encrypted data on infected machines, rendering them inoperable and disrupting activity at ports, law firms and factories.

On Tuesday the energy-industry news site E&E News reported that U.S. investigators were looking into cyber intrusions this year at multiple nuclear power generators.

Reuters has not confirmed details of the E&E News report, which said there was no evidence safety systems had been compromised at affected plants.

Worry since 2016

Industrial firms, including power providers and other utilities, have been particularly worried about the potential for destructive cyber attacks since December 2016, when hackers cut electricity in Ukraine.

U.S. nuclear power generators PSEG, SCANA Corp and Entergy Corp said they were not affected by the recent cyberattacks. SCANA’s V.C. Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina shut down Thursday because of a problem with a valve in the non-nuclear portion of the plant, a spokesman said.

Another nuclear power generator, Dominion Energy, said it does not comment on cyber security.

Two cyber security firms said June 12 that they had identified the malicious software used in the Ukraine attack, which they dubbed Industroyer, warning that it could be easily modified to attack utilities in the United States and Europe.

Industroyer is the second piece of malware uncovered to date that is capable of disrupting industrial processes without the need for hackers to manually intervene.

The first, Stuxnet, was discovered in 2010 and is widely believed by security researchers to have been used by the United States and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.S. government report said attackers conducted reconnaissance to gain information about the individuals whose computers they sought to infect so that they create “decoy documents” on topics of interest to their targets.

In an analysis, it described 11 files used in the attacks, including malware downloaders and tools that allow the hackers to take remote control of victims’ computers and travel across their networks.

Chevron Corp, Exxon Mobil Corp and ConocoPhillips, the three largest U.S. oil producers, declined to comment on their network security.
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Biodiesel made from microalgae could power buses and trucks and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 80 percent, Chilean scientists said, possibly curbing pollution in contaminated cities like Santiago.

Experts from the department of Chemical Engineering and Bioprocesses at Chile’s Catholic University said they had grown enough algae to fragment it and extract the oil which, after removing moisture and debris, can be converted into biofuel.

“What is new about our process is the intent to produce this fuel from microalgae, which are microorganisms,” researcher Carlos Saez told Reuters.

Most of the world’s biodiesel, which reduces dependence on petroleum, is derived from soybean oil. It can also be made from animal fat, canola or palm oil.

Saez said a main challenge going forward would be to produce a sufficient volume of microalgae. A wide variety of fresh and salt water algaes are found in Chile, a South American nation with a long Pacific coast.

The scientists are trying to improve algae growing technology to ramp up production at a low cost using limited energy, Saez said.
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