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2021 was a historic year for all-things space … from the success of private spaceflight companies to robots exploring Mars in a road trip for the ages. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi beams us through the Year in Space.
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The White Fox restaurant in Mosul, Iraq, isn’t known for its comfortable atmosphere or its great food and drinks. It’s known for its servers. VOA’s Kawa Omar filed this report, narrated by Rikar Hussein.

Producer and camera: Kawa Omar.
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“White-knuckle” — That’s how Rusty Whitman describes the month ahead, after the launch of the historic James Webb Space Telescope, now tentatively set for Saturday. 

From a secure control room in Baltimore, Maryland, Whitman and his colleagues will hold their breath as Webb comes online. But that’s just the beginning. 

For the first six months after Webb’s launch, Whitman and the team at the Space Telescope Science Institute will monitor the observatory around the clock, making tiny adjustments to ensure it is perfectly calibrated for astronomers across the world to explore the universe.

The most crucial moments will come at the beginning of the mission: the telescope must be placed on a precise trajectory, while at the same time unfurling its massive mirror and even larger sun-shade — a perilous choreography.   

“At the end of 30 days, I will be able to breathe a sigh of relief if we’re on schedule,” said Whitman, flight operations system engineering manager. 

He leads the team of technicians who set up Webb’s control room — a high-tech hub with dozens of screens to monitor and control the spacecraft. 

In the first row, one person alone will have the power to send commands to the $10 billion machine, which will eventually settle into an orbit over 1.5 million kilometers away. 

In other stations, engineers will monitor specific systems for any anomalies. 

After launch, Webb’s operations are largely automated, but the team in Baltimore must be ready to handle any unexpected issues.   

Luckily, they have had lots of practice. 

Over the course of a dozen simulations, the engineers practiced quickly diagnosing and correcting malfunctions thought up by the team, as well as experts flown in from Europe and California.   

During one of those tests, the power in the building cut out. 

“It was totally unexpected,” said Whitman. “The people who didn’t know — they thought it was part of the plan.” 

Fortunately, the team had already prepared for such an event: a back-up generator quickly restored power to the control room.   

Even with the practice, Whitman is still worried about what could go wrong: “I’m nervous about the possibility that we forgot something. I’m always trying to think ‘what did we forget?”

In addition to its job of keeping Webb up and running, the Space Telescope Science Institute — based out of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University — manages who gets to use the pricey science tool. 

While the telescope will operate practically 24/7, that only leaves 8,760 hours a year to divvy up among the scientists clamoring for their shot at a ground-breaking discovery. 

Black holes, exoplanets, star clusters — how to decide which exciting experiment gets priority? 

By the end of 2020, researchers from around the world submitted over 1,200 proposals, of which 400 were eventually chosen for the first year of operation. 

Hundreds of independent specialists met over two weeks in early 2021 — online due to the pandemic — to debate the proposals and pare down the list. 

The proposals were anonymized, a practice the Space Telescope Science Institute first put in place for another project it manages, the Hubble Telescope. As a result, many more projects by women and early-career scientists were chosen. 

“These are exactly the kind of people we want to use the observatory, because these are new ideas,” explained Klaus Pontoppidan, the science lead for Webb.   

The time each project requires for observations varies in length, some needing only a few hours and the longest needing about 200.   

What will be the first images revealed to the public? “I can’t say,” said Pontoppidan, “that is meant to be a surprise.” 

The early release of images and data will quickly allow scientists to understand the telescope’s capacities and set up systems that work in lock step.    

“We want them to be able to do their science with it quickly,” Pontoppidan explained. “Then they can come back and say ‘hey – we need to do more observations based on the data we already have.'” 

Pontoppidan, himself an astronomer, believes Webb will lead to many discoveries “far beyond what we’ve seen before.”  

“I’m most excited about the things that we are not predicting right now,” he said. 

Before the Hubble launched, no exoplanets — planets that orbit stars outside our solar system — had been discovered. Scientists have since found thousands. 
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Polish Senator Krzysztof Brejza’s mobile phone was hacked with sophisticated spyware nearly three dozen times in 2019 when he was running the opposition’s campaign against the right-wing populist government in parliamentary elections, an internet watchdog found.

Text messages stolen from Brejza’s phone — then doctored in a smear campaign — were aired by state-controlled TV in the heat of that race, which the ruling party narrowly won. With the hacking revelation, Brejza now questions whether the election was fair. 

It’s the third finding by the University of Toronto’s nonprofit Citizen Lab that a Polish opposition figure was hacked with Pegasus spyware from the Israeli hacking tools firm NSO Group. Brejza’s phone was digitally broken into 33 times from April 26, 2019, to October 23, 2019, said Citizen Lab researchers, who have been tracking government abuses of NSO malware for years. 

The other two hacks were identified earlier this week after a joint Citizen Lab-Associated Press investigation. All three victims blame Poland’s government, which has refused to confirm or deny whether it ordered the hacks or is a client of NSO Group. State security services spokesman Stanislaw Zaryn insisted Thursday that the government does not wiretap illegally and obtains court orders in “justified cases.” He said any suggestions the Polish government surveils for political ends were false. 

NSO, which was blacklisted by the U.S. government last month, says it sells its spyware only to legitimate government law enforcement and intelligence agencies vetted by Israel’s Defense Ministry for use against terrorists and criminals. It does not name its clients and would not say if Poland is among them.

Citizen Lab said it believes NSO keeps logs of intrusions so an investigation could determine who was behind the Polish hacks.

EU response 

In response to the revelations, European Union lawmakers said they would hasten efforts to investigate allegations that member nations such as Poland have abused Pegasus spyware.

The other two Polish victims are Ewa Wrzosek, an outspoken prosecutor fighting the increasingly hardline government’s undermining of judicial independence, and Roman Giertych, a lawyer who has represented senior leaders of Brejza’s party, Civic Platform, in sensitive cases. 

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday dismissed revelations that Giertych and Wrzosek were hacked as “fake news.” Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said he had no knowledge of “illegal actions aimed at the surveillance of citizens” but also said Poland was “not helpless” in taking action against people suspected of crimes. 

Giertych was hacked 18 times, also in the run-up to 2019 parliamentary elections that the ruling Law and Justice party won by a razor-thin margin. That victory has continued an erosion of democracy in the nation where the popular 1980s protest movement Solidarity presaged the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire. 

The intense tempo of the hacks of Brejza and Giertych “indicates an extreme level of monitoring” that raises pressing questions about abuses of power, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton said. Pegasus gives its operators complete access to a mobile device: They can extract passwords, photos, messages, contacts and browsing history, and activate the microphone and camera for real-time eavesdropping. 

“My heart sinks with each case we find,” Scott-Railton added. “This seems to be confirming our worst fear: Even when used in a democracy, this kind of spyware has an almost immutable abuse potential.”

Other confirmed victims have included Mexican and Saudi journalists, British attorneys, Palestinian human rights activists, heads of state and Uganda-based U.S. diplomats. 

An NSO spokesperson said Thursday that “the company does not and cannot know who the targets of its customers are, yet implements measures to ensure that these systems are used solely for the authorized uses.” The spokesperson said there is zero tolerance for governments that abuse the software; NSO says it has terminated multiple contracts of governments that have abused Pegasus, although it has not named any publicly. 

Despite any measures NSO might be taking, Citizen Lab notes, the list of abuse cases continues to grow. 

Doctored texts

Brejza, a 38-year-old attorney, told the AP that he has no doubt data stolen from his phone while he was chief of staff of the opposition coalition’s parliamentary campaign provided critical strategy insights. Combined with the smear effort against him, he said, it prevented “a fair electoral process.”

Text messages stolen from Brejza’s phone were doctored to make it appear as if he created an online group that spread hateful anti-government propaganda; reports in state-controlled media cited the altered texts. But the group didn’t exist. 

Brejza says he now understands where TVP state television got them. 

“This operation wrecked the work of staff and destabilized my campaign,” he said. “I don’t know how many votes it took from me and the entire coalition.” 

Brejza won his Senate seat in that October 2019 race. But since the ruling party held on to the more powerful lower house of parliament, it has steered Poland further away from EU standards of liberal democracy. 

Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said at the time that control of state media gave the ruling party an unfair advantage but called the elections essentially free. They were unaware of the hacking. 

Brejza has been a Law and Justice party critic since it won power in 2015. For example, he has exposed large bonuses paid to senior government officials. In another case, he revealed that the postal service sent tens of thousands of dollars to a company tied to ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Brejza fears the hacking could have compromised whistleblowers who had reached out to him with evidence. 

NSO Group is facing daunting financial and legal challenges — including the threat of default on more than $300 million in debt — after governments used Pegasus spyware to spy on dissidents, journalists, diplomats and human rights activists from countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and the United States. The U.S. blacklisting of NSO has effectively barred U.S. companies from supplying technology to the Israeli firm.
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U.S. chipmaker Intel is facing criticism in China after it apologized Thursday for a letter the firm sent to suppliers asking them “to ensure that its supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.”

On Thursday, Intel posted a Chinese-language message on its WeChat and Weibo accounts apologizing for “trouble caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners and the public. Intel is committed to becoming a trusted technology partner and accelerating joint development with China.”

Intel’s apology came as U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans the import of goods produced by Uyghur slave labor. Under the measure, a company is prohibited from importing from China’s Xinjiang region unless it can prove that its supply chains have not used labor from Uyghurs, ethnic Muslims reportedly enslaved in Chinese camps.

Beijing denies complaints of abuses in the mostly Muslim region.

Intel is just the latest multinational firm to be caught up in the struggle over the Uyghurs issue as China prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February. Intel is among the International Olympic Committee sponsors. According to Reuters, 26% of Intel’s 2020 total revenue was earned in China.

Earlier this month, Intel’s letter to suppliers asking them to be sure not to use labor, products or services from Xinjiang cited restrictions imposed by “multiple governments.”

That sparked a backlash in China, with calls for a boycott and criticism of the company in state and social media. Global Times, a Chinese state-run newspaper, called Intel’s request to suppliers “arrogant and vicious,” according to reports.

Wang Junkai, also known as Karry Wang, a singer with the popular boy band TFBOYS, said on Weibo on Wednesday that he would not serve as an Intel brand ambassador. “National interests exceed everything,” he said, according to wire service reports.

Chinese officials acknowledged Intel’s apology.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a daily briefing in Beijing that “we note the statement and hope the relevant company will respect facts and tell right from wrong,” according to Reuters.

The White House also appeared to note the company’s apology.

Without naming Intel, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a briefing Thursday that U.S. companies “should never feel the need to apologize for standing up for fundamental human rights or opposing repression,” according to reports.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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Under pressure from U.S. auto safety regulators, Tesla has agreed to stop allowing video games to be played on center touch screens while its vehicles are moving. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the company will send out a software update over the Internet so the function called “Passenger Play” will be locked and won’t work while vehicles are in motion. 

The move comes one day after the agency announced it would open a formal investigation into distracted driving concerns about Tesla’s video games, some of which could be played while cars are being driven. 

An agency spokeswoman says in a statement Thursday that the change came after regulators discussed concerns about the system with Tesla.

The statement says NHTSA regularly talks about infotainment screens with all automakers. A message was left Thursday seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department. 

The agency says its investigation of Tesla’s feature will continue even with the update. 

“The Vehicle Safety Act prohibits manufacturers from selling vehicles with defects posing unreasonable risks to safety, including technologies that distract drivers from driving safely,” NHTSA’s statement said. The agency said it assesses how manufacturers identify and guard against distraction hazards through misuse or intended use of screens and other convenience technology. 

The agency announced Wednesday that it would formally investigate Tesla’s screens after an owner from the Portland, Oregon, area filed a complaint when he discovered that a driver could play games while the cars are moving. 

The agency said that the “Passenger Play” feature could distract the driver and increase the risk of a crash. 

The probe covers about 580,000 Tesla Models S, X, Y and 3 from the 2017 through 2022 model years. 
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declined an effort by Apple Inc. to skip a shareholder proposal asking the iPhone maker to provide greater transparency in its efforts to keep forced labor out of its supply chain. 

A group of shareholders earlier this year asked Apple’s board to prepare a report on how the company protects workers in its supply chain from forced labor. The request for information covered the extent to which Apple has identified suppliers and sub-suppliers that are a risk for forced labor, and how many suppliers Apple has taken action against. 

In a letter from the SEC reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, regulators denied Apple’s move to block the proposal, saying that “it does not appear that the essential objectives of the proposal have been implemented” so far. 

The letter means that Apple will have to face a vote on the proposal at its annual shareholder meeting next year, barring a deal with the shareholders who made it. 

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

American lawmakers last week passed a bill banning imports from China’s Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor. 

“There’s rightfully growing concern at all levels of government about the concentration camplike conditions for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims living under Chinese government rule,” Vicky Wyatt, campaign director for SumOfUs, a group supporting the shareholder proposal, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

Apple routinely asks the SEC to skip shareholder proposals, and the requests are granted about half the time. 

The SEC also denied Apple’s request to skip a shareholder proposal that would give investors more information about the company’s use of nondisclosure agreements.
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New York’s largest convention center hosts about 175 events each year that draw hundreds of thousands of people to the city. To help offset the environmental impact, the owners have installed an urban farm and solar farm…on the building’s roof. Tina Trinh reports.
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In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn’t been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But that’s small comfort to Ken Trzaska.

Trzaska is president of Lewis & Clark Community College, a small Illinois school that canceled classes for days after a ransomware attack last month that knocked critical computer systems offline.

“That first day,” Trzaska said, “I think all of us were probably up 20-plus hours, just moving through the process, trying to get our arms around what happened.”

Even if the United States isn’t currently enduring large-scale, front-page ransomware attacks on par with ones earlier this year that targeted the global meat supply or kept millions of Americans from filling their gas tanks, the problem hasn’t disappeared. In fact, the attack on Trzaska’s college was part of a barrage of lower-profile episodes that have upended the businesses, governments, schools and hospitals that were hit.

The college’s ordeal reflects the challenges the Biden administration faces in stamping out the threat — and its uneven progress in doing so since ransomware became an urgent national security problem last spring.

Smaller-scale attacks continue

U.S. officials have recaptured some ransom payments, cracked down on abuses of cryptocurrency, and made some arrests. Spy agencies have launched attacks against ransomware groups and the U.S. has pushed federal, state and local governments, as well as private industries, to boost protections.

Yet six months after Biden’s admonitions to Putin, it’s hard to tell whether hackers have eased up because of U.S. pressure. Smaller-scale attacks continue, with ransomware criminals continuing to operate from Russia with seeming impunity. Administration officials have given conflicting assessments about whether Russia’s behavior has changed since last summer. Further complicating matters, ransomware is no longer at the top of the U.S.-Russia agenda, with Washington focused on dissuading Putin from invading Ukraine.

The White House said it was determined to “fight all ransomware” through its various tools but that the government’s response depends on the severity of the attack.

“There are some that are law enforcement matters and others that are high impact, disruptive ransomware activity posing a direct national security threat that require other measures,” the White House statement said.

Ransomware attacks — in which hackers lock up victims’ data and demand exorbitant sums to return it — surfaced as a national security emergency for the administration after a May attack on Colonial Pipeline, which supplies nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast.

The attack prompted the company to halt operations, causing gas shortages for days, though it resumed service after paying more than $4 million in ransom. Soon after came an attack on meat processor JBS, which paid an $11 million ransom.

Biden met with Putin in June in Geneva, where he suggested critical infrastructure sectors should be “off limits” for ransomware and said the U.S. should know in six months to a year “whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order.”

He reiterated the message in July, days after a major attack on a software company, Kaseya, that affected hundreds of businesses, and said he expected Russia to take action on cybercriminals when the U.S. provides enough information to do so.

Since then, there have been some notable attacks from groups believed to be based in Russia, including against Sinclair Broadcast Group and the National Rifle Association, but none of the same consequence or impact of those from last spring or summer.

‘Whole-of government’ effort

One reason may be increased U.S. government scrutiny, or fear of it.

The Biden administration in September sanctioned a Russia-based virtual currency exchange that officials say helped ransomware gangs launder funds. Last month, the Justice Department unsealed charges against a suspected Ukrainian ransomware operator who was arrested in Poland and has recovered millions of dollars in ransom payments. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, told The New York Times his agency has begun offensive operations against ransomware groups. The White House says that “whole-of-government” effort will continue.

“I think the ransomware folks, the ones conducting them, are stepping back like, ‘Hey, if we do that, that’s going to get the United States government coming after us offensively,'” Kevin Powers, security strategy adviser for cyber risk firm CyberSaint, said of attacks against critical infrastructure.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, have shared a small number of names of suspected ransomware operators with Russian officials, who have said they have started investigating, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

It’s unclear what Russia will do with those names, though Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov insisted the countries have been having a useful dialogue and said “a working mechanism has been established and is actually functioning.”

It’s also hard to measure the impact of individual arrests on the overall threat. Even as the suspected ransomware hacker awaits extradition to the U.S. following his arrest in Poland, another who was indicted by federal prosecutors was later reported by a British tabloid to be living comfortably in Russia and driving luxury cars.

Some are skeptical about attributing any drop-off in high-profile attacks to U.S. efforts.

“It could have just been a fluke,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. He said asking Russia to crack down on large-scale attacks won’t work because “it’s way too granular of a request to calibrate criminal activity they don’t even fully control.”

Top American officials have given conflicting answers about ransomware trends since Biden’s discussions with Putin. Some FBI and Justice Department officials say they’ve seen no change in Russian behavior. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said there’s been a discernible decrease in attacks but that it was too soon to say why.

It’s hard to quantify the number of attacks given the lack of baseline information and uneven reporting from victims, though the absence of disruptive incidents is an important marker for a White House trying to focus its attention on the most significant national security risks and catastrophic breaches.

Victims of ransomware attacks in the past few months have included hospitals, small businesses, colleges like Howard University — which briefly took many of its systems offline after discovering a September attack — and Virginia’s Legislature.

Not if, but when

The attack at Lewis & Clark, in Godfrey, Illinois, was discovered two days before Thanksgiving when the school’s IT director detected suspicious activity and proactively took systems offline, said Trzaska, the president.

A ransom note from hackers demanded a payment, though Trzaska declined to reveal the sum or identify the culprits. Though many attacks come from hackers in Russia or Eastern Europe, some originate elsewhere.

With vital education systems affected, including email and the school’s online learning platform, administrators canceled classes for days after the Thanksgiving break and communicated updates to students via social media and through a public alert system.

The college, which had backups on the majority of its servers, resumed operations this month.

The ordeal was daunting enough to inspire Trzaska and another college president who he says endured a similar experience to plan a cybersecurity panel.

“The stock quote from everyone,” Trzaska said, “is, ‘Not if it’s going to happen, but when it’s going to happen.’” 
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After internal Facebook documents were shared widely with news organizations, the question remains whether and how Facebook will change. Michelle Quinn reports.
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China and Russia have begun collaborating on technology to rival the United States’ GPS and European Galileo satellite navigation systems, as the two countries pursue closer military and strategic ties.

Earlier this year, China agreed to host ground monitoring stations for Russia’s GLONASS positioning system on its soil, which improves global range and accuracy but can pose a security risk. In turn, Russia agreed to host ground stations for China’s BeiDou system.

The reciprocal agreement indicates a growing level of trust and cooperation between Moscow and Beijing, says analyst Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“Russia’s schism with the West and deepening confrontation and competition between China and the U.S. as two superpowers is definitely contributing to rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. There is a natural economic complementarity where Russia has (an) abundance of natural resources, and China has capital and technology to develop those resources. And finally, both are authoritarian states, so they don’t have this allergy when talking domestic political setup, or the poisoning of (Russian opposition leader) Alexi Navalny, or issues like Hong Kong or human rights in Xinjiang,” Gabuev told VOA.

It will take some time for the collaboration on satellite navigation systems to be felt on the ground.

“So far, we have yet to see important results, because in Russia, Russia still relies increasingly on GLONASS but also on GPS. We don’t have major BeiDou-linked projects,” Gabuev added.

Satellites

Satellites are seen as a crucial component of 21st century military power. Last month, Russia tested a missile against one of its own satellites. The U.S. said the resulting debris threatened astronauts on the International Space Station.

“What’s most troubling about that is the danger that it creates for the international community. It undermines strategic stability,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters Nov. 17.

Russia, China and the U.S. are among several nations developing hypersonic missiles, which travel through the upper atmosphere at up to five times the speed of sound.

Space treaty

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S. had failed to engage on a joint Russian-Chinese space treaty.

“They have ignored for many years the initiative of Russia and China to prepare a treaty to prevent an arms race in space. They simply ignore it, insisting instead on developing some sort of universal rules,” Lavrov said.

In an interview June 11 with U.S. broadcaster NBC, Russian President Vladimir Putin said cooperation with Beijing was deepening.

“We have been working and will continue to work with China, which applies to all kinds of programs, including exploring deep space. And I think there is nothing but positive information here. Frankly, I don’t see any contradictions here,” Putin said.

There are limits to Russian and Chinese cooperation, Gabuev said.

“Both Russia and China are religious about their strategic autonomy. There is deep-seated nationalism, there is some level of mistrust and some level of competition in many of those areas where there is seeming complementarity, like space programs. I think that these advances in military technology is happening mostly in parallel, but not jointly.”

India

Gabuev notes that Russia has worked more closely with India than China, including on the development of the joint BrahMos cruise missile system since the 1990s.

“Russia felt secure enough to develop BrahMos missiles together with Indian colleagues. So, this military cooperation between Russia and China is deepening, it’s definitely causing a significant challenge to the West, particularly because it helps the PLA (China’s People’s Liberation Army) to become a really 21st century fighting power and a global military power. But at the same time, we don’t see the depth that exists between, for example, the U.S. and America’s allies,” Gabuev said.

India has also purchased Russia’s S-400 missile defense system, an attempt to counter China’s military might that also risks angering Delhi’s ally, the United States, and an indication of the complexity of strategic relations in a changing world order. 

 
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Airbus is set to deliver the final A380 superjumbo to Dubai’s Emirates on Thursday, marking the end of a 14-year run that gave Europe an instantly recognized symbol across the globe but failed to fulfil the commercial vision of its designers. 

Production of the world’s largest airliner — capable of seating 500 people on two decks together with perks like showers in first class — has ended after 272 were built compared with the 1,000 or more once predicted. 

Airbus, a planemaking conglomerate drawn together from separate entities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain to carry out their brainchild of mega-jets to beat congestion, pulled the plug in 2019 after airlines went for smaller, leaner models. 

Thursday’s handover is expected to be low key, partly because of COVID restrictions and also because Airbus is these days focusing its PR on environmental benefits of smaller jets. 

That’s in stark contrast to the spectacular light show that revealed the new behemoth in front of European leaders in 2005. 

Emirates is by far the largest buyer and still believes in the superjumbo’s ability to lure passengers. Even though no more A380s will be built, it will keep flying them for years. Many airlines disagree and have axed the A380 during the pandemic. 

Airline president Tim Clark refuses to bow to sceptics who say the days of spacious four-engined jets like the A380 are numbered as an airline seat becomes a commodity like any other. 

“I don’t share that view at all … And I still believe there is a place for the A380,” Clark recently told reporters. 

“Technocrats and accountants said it was not fit for purpose … That doesn’t resonate with our travelling public. They absolutely love that airplane,” he said. 

Shower talks

 The A380’s demise left deserted one of the world’s largest buildings, a 122,500-square-metre assembly plant in Toulouse. 

Airbus plans to use part of it to build some of the bread-and-butter narrowbody models that dominate sales like a deal with Qantas announced earlier on Thursday. 

But it is in Hamburg that some of the most striking features of the A380 evolved. 

Clark recalled how he huddled with Airbus developers in northern Germany to persuade Airbus chiefs in France to pay for the engineering needed to make in-flight showers a reality. 

“There was a lot of arm-folding and my friends in France were a little circumspect,” Clark said. 

“I had to sit with friends in the development unit in Hamburg having to build the showers, and then asked Toulouse management to see how it could be done, and so they bought in.” 

That innovation generated headlines but did not translate into sales needed to keep the A380 going. 

The plane was designed in the 1990s when travel demand was soaring and China offered seemingly unlimited potential. 

By the time the first delivery came in 2007, the plane was more than two years late. And when Emirates got its first A380 a year later, the emerging financial crisis was already forcing analysts to trim their forecasts for the biggest jets. 

Boeing was meanwhile capturing orders for a revolutionary new 787 Dreamliner, to be followed by the Airbus A350. 

“There was a slowing down of appetite and enthusiasm. We didn’t share that view; we put this great [A380] aircraft to work,” Clark said on the sidelines of an airlines meeting. 

“We have what I think is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever flown.” 
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The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has consistently claimed it does not actively partner with the Chinese government in gathering intelligence on individuals within China, but a report by The Washington Post this week showing the company appears to have marketed surveillance technology to government customers calls the company’s assertions into question.

The report comes as major parts of the large company’s operations remain severely restricted by sanctions imposed by the United States under former President Donald Trump, which were renewed, and in some cases tightened, by President Joe Biden.

The newspaper obtained more than 100 PowerPoint presentations that were briefly posted to a public page of the company’s website. The trove of documents suggests the company was marketing various surveillance-related services, including voice recognition technology, location tracking and facial-recognition-based area surveillance.

The presentations indicate the company also marketed systems meant to monitor prisons, like those in which China is currently believed to be holding an untold number of Uyghurs in the Western province of Xinjiang. The system tracked prisoners’ labor productivity, as well as their time spent in reeducation classes and data that might indicate the effectiveness of those classes.

Additionally, the materials appeared to market workplace surveillance tools, meant to monitor employees’ workplace performance and to spot workers who spend time resting or using personal electronics on the clock.

Huawei denial

In a statement provided to VOA, a Huawei spokesperson said, “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in The Washington Post report.”

It continued, “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards. Huawei does not develop or sell systems that target any specific group of people and we require our partners comply with all applicable laws, regulations and business ethics. Privacy protection is our top priority and we require that all parts of our business comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate.”

The Post, in its article, noted the company’s official watermark appeared on the pages of the PowerPoint presentation, and that several included a page noting a “Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.” copyright.

Electronic security experts said the revelation of the PowerPoint presentations linking Huawei to state security wasn’t surprising, despite the company’s denials.

“Huawei has been closely linked to the security services from the start,” Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

Lewis said the warnings about the company have been coming from American officials since George W. Bush was president but had not been taken seriously until the past few years, when China became more aggressive about asserting itself on the world stage.

“What’s changed is the audience,” Lewis said. Between China’s and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s behavior, people are willing to hear now about the problems with Huawei in a way they weren’t before.”

Punishing sanctions

The United States has, for several years, been warning that Huawei represents a security risk to the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Despite the company’s claims to the contrary, U.S. officials say they believe the company has close ties to Chinese state security agencies and that its telecommunications products could be used to gather information on, or disrupt the activities of, China’s rivals.

Officials also point to a law in China that obligates private companies to cooperate with government agencies in the collection of data deemed important to state security.

In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. began aggressively moving against Huawei on a number of fronts.

The Trump administration fought against the company’s effort to market the networking equipment necessary to roll out 5G wireless technology. 5G is the next generation of mobile connectivity and is expected to greatly enhance the ability of internet-connected devices to communicate, facilitating everything from self-driving vehicles to remote surgery.

The U.S. declared, among other things, it would cease sharing intelligence with allies who allow Huawei to supply critical pieces of their nations’ telecommunications infrastructure, arguing the company presented too much of a security risk.

As a result, a number of countries have barred the company’s technology from their 5G systems and others, including Britain, have begun the expensive process of removing Huawei equipment that already had been installed.

Smartphone setback

Until recently, Huawei was one of the biggest sellers of smartphones in the world and enjoyed near-complete dominance in the Chinese market. Other sanctions levied against the company, however, have severely damaged that business.

The U.S. barred firms from licensing or selling the company technology critical to some of its products. That included Google, which in 2019 said it would no longer license its Android operating system — the world’s most popular — for use in new phones made by the company.

Intel and Qualcomm, two major makers of microchips, were banned from selling their most advanced technology to Huawei. The ban extended to contract chipmakers, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest.

The result has been a drastic decline in the sale of Huawei smartphones, both globally and within China.

“The core of their devices business was smartphones, and their market share has just continued to decline,” Ryan Reith, a vice president with International Data Corporation, told VOA.

Reith said the prospects for recovery do not look good for the company’s smartphone business.

“We don’t see any way that the brand itself turns around,” he said. “So, it’s probably on its way out.”
…

The U.S. space agency NASA says its Parker Solar Probe this week became the first spacecraft to enter the Sun’s atmosphere, also known as the corona. 

The space agency announced the news Tuesday at a press conference during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. 

In a statement, NASA scientists said the probe actually entered the Sun’s corona April 18, but it took until now to get the data and examine it to confirm it had accomplished its mission. 

NASA said while the Sun doesn’t have a solid surface, it does have a superheated corona made of solar material bound to the Sun by gravity and magnetic forces. The point at which those forces are too weak to contain material ejected from the sun is considered the edge of the corona, an area scientists call the Alfvén critical surface. 

NASA says the Parker probe crossed this boundry about 13 million kilometers above the surface of the sun. Until they were able to examine the data from the probe, scientists were not exactly sure where the area was. 

The scientists say during the flyby, which lasted only a few hours, the solar probe passed into and out of the corona several times. The data it gathered in doing so proved what some had predicted — that the Alfvén critical surface isn’t shaped like a smooth ball, but has it has spikes and valleys that wrinkle the surface. 

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and was intended to exactly what it is doing: flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft has done before. NASA scientists compare what the probe has accomplished to landing on the moon. As the mission continues, the agency says, it will help scientists uncover critical information about Earth’s closest star and its influence on the solar system. 

A paper on the achievement was also published Tuesday in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. 

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
…

China’s advances in quantum computing will give a new advantage to its armed forces, already the world’s third strongest, analysts say.

Quantum refers to a type of computing that lets high-powered machines make calculations that are too complex for ordinary devices. 

The concept discovered by American physicist Richard Feynman in 1980 has two key military uses, the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a 2019 paper. It can decrypt encoded messages and send cryptographic keys that intercept otherwise secure communication chains, the study says.

“I think the challenge is basically in the dual civilian-military strategy of China where the government will enlist the private sector into its military modernization program,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii. “Also, the government of China spends a lot of money in research and development.”

China’s name surfaced last month when IT consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton said that within a decade Chinese “threat groups will likely collect data that enables quantum simulators to discover new economically valuable materials, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals.” 

China on the move

It’s unclear how far Chinese researchers have advanced quantum computing, but the Pentagon’s 2021 report to Congress on China says the Asian superpower “continues its pursuit of leadership in key technologies with significant military potential.”

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, an economic blueprint, prioritizes quantum technology among other new fields, the report to Congress adds, and it intends to install satellite-enabled, global “quantum-encrypted communications capability” by 2030.

Quantum could help detect submarines and stealth aircraft among other “military vehicles,” said Heather West, a senior research analyst with market research firm IDC in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Quantum computing can break “classical algorithms” to check on another country’s military, she told VOA.

The University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei last year made the first “definitive demonstration” of exploiting quantum mechanics for computations that would be “prohibitively slow on classical computers,” the science journal Nature reported. Google and NASA had claimed “quantum supremacy” in 2019. 

The state-run China Daily news website said in September the country had “achieved a series of breakthroughs in quantum technology including the world’s first quantum satellite, a 2,000-km quantum communication line between Beijing and Shanghai, and the world’s first optical quantum computing machine prototype.” China Daily did not mention military use.

China has alarmed other countries in the past by merging civilian and military infrastructure, part of a Military-Civil Fusion Development Strategy that makes it hard for the outside world to judge when academic research will become an asset of the People’s Liberation Army.

Although quantum computing worldwide remains at a “nascent stage,” multiple countries are in a race to develop it, Vuving said. He points to the United States, India, Japan and Germany, in addition to China. Any frontrunners are unlikely to last long, he said, as rivals would quickly copy their breakthroughs.

Multiple countries at risk?

The Booz Allen Hamilton report says many organization leaders and chief information security officers “lack insight into the practical importance of quantum computing and how to manage related risks.”

“They don’t know how and when the technology might become useful — and how it might shape the behavior of threat actors such as China, a persistent cyber adversary of government and commercial organizations globally and a major developer of quantum-computing technology,” the report says.

The People’s Liberation Army maintains the world’s third-strongest armed forces after the United States and Russia, according to the GlobalFirePower.com database. Japan, Taiwan and other Southeast Asian countries fret particularly over the expansion of the PLA Navy in disputed tracts of sea. Washington has stepped up military movement in the same seas since 2019 to monitor China’s activities.

“Taiwan, the United States or the European Union are all likely targets for China to launch quantum computing attacks as long as countries do not have robust quantum cryptography to defend,” said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

China is already suspected of using cyberattacks against Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing says is part of its territory.

In the military realm outside China, quantum computing forms part of the AUKUS military technology sharing deal among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. announced in September over Beijing’s objections.

In August 2020, the White House, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced it would award $625 million over five years for quantum R&D, the National Defense Industrial Association says.

“We’re seeing a lot of research and development going into the Department of Defense in the U.S.,” West said. “I don’t think they would be pouring the money into it if they didn’t think there was that potential.”

Researchers in Singapore, a well-off city-state, and Taiwan, a world tech hub, are exploring quantum technology as well. 

Smaller countries couldn’t compete with China’s quantum computing resources, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. They would need engineers, technicians and money, he said.

“That’s for the big boys, for the people with money, sophistication, knowledge. Other countries could toy around, but they wouldn’t have the ability to go very far with it, I think,” Thayer said.

 
…

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday unveiled a White House plan to build 500,000 new electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, part of President Joe Biden’s goal of making the vehicles more accessible for both local and long-distance trips. 

Harris made the announcement during a ceremony at an EV charging facility in suburban Maryland outside the U.S. capital, Washington.

“There can be no doubt: The future of transportation in our nation and around the world, is electric,” Harris said, adding that the nation’s ability to manufacture, charge and repair electric vehicles will help determine the health of U.S. communities, the strength of the nation’s economy and the sustainability of the planet. 

The EV Charging Plan takes $5 billion from the infrastructure law signed last month and allocates it to states to build a nationwide network of charging stations. The law also provides an additional $2.5 billion for local grants to support charging stations in rural areas and in disadvantaged communities. 

In a statement, the White House also announced it will establish on Tuesday a Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, leveraging the resources from each of the departments to implement the EV charging network and other electrification provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

The White House says the goal of the plan is to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles for consumers and commercial fleets. They network as planned would reduce emissions and help meet the goal of net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.

Biden has established another ambitious goal of having electric vehicles account for 50% of all vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030. Last year, industry experts said sales of fully electric vehicles accounted for about 2% of vehicles sold in the U.S. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 

 
…

The United States, Australia and Japan said Sunday they will jointly fund the construction of an undersea cable to boost internet access in three tiny Pacific countries, as the Western allies seek to counter rising Chinese influence in the region.

The three Western allies said they would develop the cable to provide faster internet to Nauru, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia.

“This will support increased economic growth, drive development opportunities, and help to improve living standards as the region recovers from the severe impacts of COVID-19,” a joint statement from the United States, Japan and Australia said.

The three allies did not specify how much the project will cost.

The development of the undersea cable is the latest funding commitment from the Western allies in the telecommunications sector of the Pacific.

The United States and its Indo-Pacific allies are concerned that cables laid by the People’s Republic of China could compromise regional security. Beijing has denied any intent to use commercial fiber-optic cables, which have far greater data capacity than satellites, for spying.

Australia in 2017 spent about A$137 million ($98.2 million) to develop better internet access for the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. 
…

A self-driving flying taxi. A super-fast land-based transport vehicle. A sustainable floating city.

Science fiction, or the wave of the future?

The “Futures” exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, open Nov. 20, 2021, through July 6, 2022, gives visitors a peek at what may happen in the years to come.

The exhibit opened as part of the 175th anniversary of the Smithsonian and is being held at the Arts and Industries Building, which reopened in November after being closed for almost two decades.

With more than 150 ideas, innovations, technologies and artifacts, the exhibit invites visitors to think about the kind of future in which they want to live.

It also provides food for thought by looking back to past innovations, like an 1800s experimental telephone and a spacesuit-testing android.

The exhibit was designed by the Lab of Rockwell Group, an architecture and exhibit design firm in New York.

“The exhibition opens up many different possible forms that the future can take, capturing a number of small glimpses of conceivable futures,” said David Tracy, director of creative technology at Rockwell.

The company designed cutting-edge installations called beacons that contain multiple- choice questions that “prompt people’s imaginations and get them to think about the kind of future they want to see,” Tracy told VOA. 

To answer the questions, people use hand gestures or hover over an answer, Tracy said, which also provides “health and safety measures, since you don’t have to touch a screen.”

Not surprisingly, there are more questions than answers.

It’s difficult for people “to imagine how the future may be different and the technologies that might make it different,” said Jane McGonigal, director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California.

McGonigal provided the questions for visitors to ponder “to help them imagine the future more vividly and optimistically,” she said during an interview with VOA. 

Questions include, “When might moon tourism become a real reality?” Another looks at what the future might be like if meat doesn’t come from an animal but is grown in a laboratory. 

Visitor Raj Goel from New York got a taste of what that might be like as he peered into a display that was set up like a deli counter with possible food in the future. 

Goel said he’s concerned about meat being grown in a lab. But he said he liked the idea of mushrooms being used as a sort of meatless meat. 

“It’s supposed to taste like bacon and would be a lot healthier,” he said.

Goel said “Futures” makes him feel a bit like he’s walked into a science fiction movie.

“It’s like a giant arcade of futuristic toys and ideas,” he told VOA. 

Those ideas include a BioSuit, a skintight spacesuit that provides astronauts with greater mobility, and an environmentally friendly cleaning system that washes clothes using water from wetlands.

Human remains can also be put to good ecological use. 

A biodegradable underground burial capsule offers a sustainable way to use human remains to grow a tree.

With concern over climate change, cleaner transportation ideas are presented.

Among them, the Virgin Hyperloop, a futuristic transport tube that could become a new mode of train-like transportation and have “a lower environmental impact than other modes of mass transportation,” Virgin said on its hyperloop website. The system could propel passenger or cargo pods at speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers per hour, Virgin said, three times faster than high-speed rail. 

Another possible innovation is an autonomous flying machine. 

The Bell Nexus company has an idea for a flying taxi, especially for use in crowded cities. 

The air taxi, powered by hybrid-electric propulsion, resembles a helicopter and has six tilting round fans that enable it to take off and land vertically from a rooftop or a launch pad.

The interactive displays were especially popular with visitors. 

A robotic art installation called “Do Nothing with Al” mimics the slow moves of a person standing in front of it. The idea is to encourage people to slow down and relax in this era of technological overload.

“It’s really fascinating,” said Jan Myers from Denver. “It reminds me of a human torso with needles,” she said, as she moved back and forth, watching the robot follow her movements. 

At a portal called “Hi! How r u?” visitors can strike up holographic conversations by using an avatar to leave personal messages for people in the future. They can also interact in real time with people at a paired portal site in Doha, Qatar.

Tracy said he hoped the exhibit “empowered visitors with a sense of optimism about our future.” 

Goel said he was encouraged “because many things I saw here made me think the future is bright.” 

 
…

A software vulnerability exploited in the online game Minecraft is rapidly emerging as a major threat to internet-connected devices around the world.

“The internet’s on fire right now,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. “People are scrambling to patch and there are … all kinds of people scrambling to exploit it.”

In the 12 hours since the bug’s existence was disclosed, he said Friday morning, it had been “fully weaponized,” meaning that malefactors have developed and distributed tools to exploit.

The flaw may be the worst computer vulnerability discovered in years. It opens a loophole in software code that is ubiquitous in cloud servers and enterprise software used across industry and government. It could allow criminals or spies to loot valuable data, plant malware or erase crucial information, and much more.

“I’d be hard-pressed to think of a company that’s not at risk,” said Joe Sullivan, chief security officer for Cloudflare, whose online infrastructure protects websites from malicious actors. Untold millions of servers have it installed, and experts said the fallout would not be known for several days.

Amit Yoran, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Tenable, called it “the single biggest, most critical vulnerability of the last decade” — and possibly the biggest in the history of modern computing.

The vulnerability, dubbed “Log4Shell,” was rated 10 on a scale of one to 10 by the Apache Software Foundation, which oversees development of the software. Anyone with the exploit can obtain full access to an unpatched computer that uses the software.

New Zealand’s computer emergency response team was among the first to report that the flaw was being “actively exploited in the wild” just hours after it was publicly reported Thursday and a patch released.

The vulnerability, in open-source Apache software used to run websites and other web services, was discovered Nov. 24 by the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, the foundation said.

Finding and patching the software could be a complicated task. While most organizations and cloud providers should be able to update their web servers easily, the same Apache software is also often embedded in third-party programs, which often can only be updated by their owners.

Yoran, of Tenable, said organizations need to presume they’ve been compromised and act quickly.

The flaw’s exploitation was apparently first discovered in Minecraft, an online game hugely popular with kids and owned by Microsoft.

Meyers and security expert Marcus Hutchins said Minecraft users had been using it to execute programs on the computers of other users by pasting a short message in a chat box.

Microsoft said it had issued a software update for Minecraft users. “Customers who apply the fix are protected,” it said.

Researchers reported finding evidence the vulnerability could be exploited in servers run by companies such as Apple, Amazon, Twitter and Cloudflare.

Cloudflare’s Sullivan said there we no indication his company’s servers had been compromised. Apple, Amazon and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 
…

As the two-day virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by President Joe Biden wrapped up on Friday, the U.S., Australia, Denmark and Norway announced an export control program to monitor and restrict the spread of technologies used to violate human rights. The U.S. is also launching programs to support independent media and anti-corruption efforts and defend free and fair elections. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has more.
…

Robotic vacuum cleaners halted in their tracks. Doorbell cameras stopped watching for package thieves, though some of those deliveries were canceled anyway. Netflix and Disney movies were interrupted, and The Associated Press had trouble publishing the news.

A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for hours, raising questions about the vulnerability of the internet and its concentration in the hands of a few firms. 

How did it happen? 

Amazon has said nothing about exactly what went wrong. The company limited its communications Tuesday to terse technical explanations on an Amazon Web Services dashboard and a brief statement delivered via spokesperson Richard Rocha that acknowledged the outage had affected Amazon’s own warehouse and delivery operations but said the company was “working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.” It didn’t immediately respond to further questions Wednesday. 

The incident at Amazon Web Services mostly affected the eastern U.S., but still impacted everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services to Amazon’s own massive e-commerce operation. 

What is AWS? 

Amazon Web Services is a cloud-service operation — it stores its customers’ data, runs their online activities and more — and a huge profit center for Amazon. It holds roughly a third of the $152 billion market for cloud services, according to a report by Synergy Research Group — a larger share than its closest rivals, Microsoft and Google, combined. 

It was formerly run by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos in July. 

Too many eggs in one basket? 

Some cybersecurity experts have warned for years about the potentially ugly consequences of allowing a handful of big tech companies to dominate key internet operations. 

“The latest AWS outage is a prime example of the danger of centralized network infrastructure,” said Sean O’Brien, a visiting lecturer in cybersecurity at Yale Law School. “Though most people browsing the internet or using an app don’t know it, Amazon is baked into most of the apps and websites they use each day.” O’Brien said it’s important to build a new network model that resembles the peer-to-peer roots of the early internet. Big outages have already knocked huge swaths of the world offline, as happened during an October Facebook incident.

Even under the current model, companies do have some options to split their services between different cloud providers, although it can be complicated, or to at least make sure they can move their services to a different region run by the same provider. Tuesday’s outage mostly affected Amazon’s “US East 1” region. 

“Which means if you had critical systems only available in that region, you were in trouble,” said Servaas Verbiest, lead cloud evangelist at Sungard Availability Services. “If you heavily embraced the AWS ecosystem and are locked into using solely their services and functions, you must ensure you balance your workloads between regions.” 

Hasn’t this happened before? 

Yes. The last major AWS outage was in November 2020. There have been numerous other disruptive and lengthy internet outages involving other providers. In June, the behind-the-scenes content distributor Fastly suffered a failure that briefly took down dozens of major internet sites including those of CNN and The New York Times, plus the British government home page. Another that month affected provider Akamai during peak business hours in Asia in June.

In the October outage, Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — blamed a “faulty configuration change” for an hourslong worldwide outage that took down Instagram and WhatsApp in addition to its titular platform. 

What about the government? 

It was unclear how, or whether, Tuesday’s outage affected governments, but many of them also rely on Amazon and its rivals. 

Among the most influential organizations to rethink its approach of depending on a single cloud provider was the Pentagon, which in July canceled a disputed cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that could eventually have been worth $10 billion. It will instead pursue a deal with both Microsoft and Amazon and possibly other cloud service providers such as Google, Oracle and IBM. 

The National Security Agency earlier this year awarded Amazon a contract with a potential estimated value of $10 billion to be the sole manager of the NSA’s own migration to cloud computing. The contract is known by its agency code name “Wild and Stormy.” The General Accountability Office in October sustained a bid protest by Microsoft, finding that certain parts of the NSA’s decision were “unreasonable,” although the full decision is classified. 
…

While the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on, one might not know it by looking at 2021’s most searched items on Google. 

According to the list released by Google Wednesday, “NBA” was the most searched term in the U.S., but it’s unclear why. 

Other most searched topics were rapper DMX, who died; Gabby Petito, an apparent murder victim who died during a cross-country trip with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, who was also on the most searched list. Laundrie was declared a person of interest in Petito’s death, but he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Also on the list is Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted last month of killing two protesters and wounding a third during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. 

The most searched news item was “mega millions” as people were curious about record-sized lottery jackpots. 

The most searched person was Kyle Rittenhouse, the most searched actor was Alec Baldwin, who was involved in a shooting death on a movie set, and the most searched athlete was Tiger Woods, who was severely injured in a car accident earlier in the year, Google said. 

The most searched movie was Black Widow, and the most searched musician/band was rapper Travis Scott. Scott was recently the subject of interest as 10 people were killed and hundreds more wounded at one of his concerts in November. 

While 2020 searches were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, it barely registered on this year’s list. “COVID vaccine near me” was the most popular “near me” search, with “COVID testing near me” coming in at number two.
…

A major outage disrupted Amazon’s cloud services on Tuesday, temporarily knocking out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, a wide range of apps, and Amazon.com Inc.’s e-commerce website as consumers shopped ahead of Christmas. 

“Many services have already recovered; however, we are working towards full recovery across services,” Amazon said on its status dashboard. 

Amazon’s Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, which use Amazon Web Services (AWS), reported issues, according to their social media pages. 

Trading app Robinhood and Walt Disney’s streaming service Disney+ and Netflix were also down, according to Downdetector.com. 

“Netflix, which runs nearly all of its infrastructure on AWS, appears to have lost 26% of its traffic,” said Doug Madory, head of internet analysis at analytics firm Kentik. 

Amazon said the outage was related to network devices and linked to application programming interface, or API, which is a set of protocols for building and integrating application software. 

Downdetector.com showed more than 24,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Amazon, including Prime Video and other services. The outage tracking website collates status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted errors, on its platform. 

Users began reporting issues around 10:40 a.m. ET on Tuesday, and the outage might have affected a larger number of users. 

Amazon has experienced 27 outages over the past 12 months related to its services, according to web tool-reviewing website ToolTester. 

In June, websites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, PayPal, Spotify, Al Jazeera Media Network and The New York Times were hit by a widespread hourlong outage linked to U.S.-based content delivery network provider Fastly Inc., a smaller rival of AWS.

 
…

Two computer scientists at the University of Maryland have developed a new artificial intelligence system that evolves to detect and evade internet censorship in repressive countries. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
…

Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are suing Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, for $150 billion over allegations that the social media company did not take action against anti-Rohingya hate speech that contributed to violence. 

A U.S. class-action complaint, filed in California on Monday by law firms Edelson PC and Fields PLLC, argues that the company’s failures to police content and its platform’s design contributed to real-world violence faced by the Rohingya community. In a coordinated action, British lawyers also submitted a letter of notice to Facebook’s London office. 

Facebook did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the lawsuit. The company has said it was “too slow to prevent misinformation and hate” in Myanmar and has said it has since taken steps to crack down on platform abuses in the region, including banning the military from Facebook and Instagram after the February 1 coup. 

Facebook has said it is protected from liability over content posted by users by a U.S. internet law known as Section 230, which holds that online platforms are not liable for content posted by third parties. The complaint says it seeks to apply Burmese law to the claims if Section 230 is raised as a defense. 

Although U.S. courts can apply foreign law to cases where the alleged harms and activity by companies took place in other countries, two legal experts interviewed by Reuters said they did not know of a successful precedent for foreign law being invoked in lawsuits against social media companies where Section 230 protections could apply. 

Anupam Chander, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said that invoking Burmese law wasn’t “inappropriate.” But he predicted that “It’s unlikely to be successful,” saying that “It would be odd for Congress to have foreclosed actions under U.S. law but permitted them to proceed under foreign law.” 

More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state in August 2017 after a military crackdown that refugees said included mass killings and rape. Rights groups documented killings of civilians and burning of villages. 

Myanmar authorities say they were battling an insurgency and deny carrying out systematic atrocities. 

In 2018, U.N. human rights investigators said the use of Facebook had played a key role in spreading hate speech that fueled the violence. A Reuters investigation hat year, cited in the U.S. complaint, found more than 1,000 examples of posts, comments and images attacking the Rohingya and other Muslims on Facebook. 

The International Criminal Court has opened a case into the accusations of crimes in the region. In September, a U.S. federal judge ordered Facebook to release records of accounts connected to anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar that the social media giant had shut down. 

The new class-action lawsuit references claims by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked a cache  of internal documents this year, that the company does not police abusive content in countries where such speech is likely to cause the most harm. 

The complaint also cites recent media reports, including a Reuters report last month, that Myanmar’s military was using fake social media accounts to engage in what is widely referred to in the military as “information combat.” 
…

In the shadows of the coronavirus pandemic, violence against women has been on the rise around the world, including in South Africa, where half of the country’s women report at least one incident of violence in their lifetime. Now, a local tech company has developed an alarm system to help stop the abuse. For VOA, Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg. Camera – Zaheer Cassim.
…

As the world races to vaccinate billions more people against COVID-19 while the virus’ new omicron variant spreads, India is testing using drones to deliver vaccines to people in mountainous Jammu and Kashmir, where more than 70% of the population lives in rural areas.

It typically takes a couple hours by road to deliver vaccines from one of the region’s main medical centers in Jammu to a hospital located in Marh, a village in mountains nearby. Last month, officials said the delivery took just 20 minutes by the “Octacopter” drone.

Doctors say immunization campaigns have long been challenged by the region’s mountains and weather, which can thwart efforts to reach those living in remote areas.

Director of Health Services Jammu, Dr. Renu Sharma, told VOA that the trial last month delivering 200 doses gave hope that drones could be a useful delivery option.

“If the project is given [approved] it will be very helpful for remote areas especially in Jammu division given the difficult terrain,” Sharma said.

Other parts of Kashmir remain inaccessible for vehicles at times, making drones a better option.

“The areas like Sikardar, Safaid Aab, and Marno are challenging especially in winters. It takes us six to eight hours on foot from Dawar to reach to these areas,” Bashir Ahmad Peroo, a health worker from Gurez area, told VOA.

A spokesperson for the Directorate of Health Services Kashmir, Dr. Mir Mushtaq, told VOA that doctors now often stock enough medicine in the summer to last the local population all winter. Drones could help bolster supplies during the cold months.

Its creators say the Octacopter can carry a payload of 10 kilograms, with a range of 20 kilometers, and a maximum speed of 36 kph.

India’s CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories developed the Octocopter drones and the country’s minister of state for science and technology, Dr. Jitendra Singh, said they hope they will be able to deliver more than just COVID-19 vaccines, including medical supplies, equipment, and critical packages to remote communities.

Indian health statistics indicate more than 4,400 people have died from coronavirus in Jammu and Kashmir, and doctors say since late last month there has been a rise in the number of new positive tests each day, making the vaccination campaign ever more important. 

 
…

Apple Inc. iPhones of at least nine U.S. State Department employees were hacked by an unknown assailant using sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The hacks, which took place in the last several months, hit U.S. officials either based in Uganda or focused on matters concerning the East African country, two of the sources said.

The intrusions, first reported here, represent the widest known hacks of U.S. officials through NSO technology.

Previously, a list of numbers with potential targets including some American officials surfaced in reporting on NSO, but it was not clear whether intrusions were always tried or succeeded.

Reuters could not determine who launched the latest cyberattacks.

NSO Group said in a statement Thursday that it did not have any indication their tools were used but canceled access for the relevant customers and would investigate based on the Reuters inquiry.

“If our investigation shall show these actions indeed happened with NSO’s tools, such customer will be terminated permanently and legal actions will take place,” said an NSO spokesperson, who added that NSO will also “cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have.”

NSO has long said it only sells its products to government law enforcement and intelligence clients, helping them to monitor security threats, and is not directly involved in surveillance operations.

Officials at the Uganda Embassy in Washington did not comment. A spokesperson for Apple declined to comment.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the intrusions, instead pointing to the Commerce Department’s recent decision to place the Israeli company on an entity list, making it harder for U.S. companies to do business with them.

NSO Group and another spyware firm were “added to the Entity List based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers,” the Commerce Department said in an announcement last month.

Easily identifiable

NSO software is capable of not only capturing encrypted messages, photos and other sensitive information from infected phones, but also turning them into recording devices to monitor surroundings, based on product manuals reviewed by Reuters.

Apple’s alert to affected users did not name the creator of the spyware used in this hack.

The victims notified by Apple included American citizens and were easily identifiable as U.S. government employees because they associated email addresses ending in state.gov with their Apple IDs, two of the people said.

They and other targets notified by Apple in multiple countries were infected through the same graphics processing vulnerability that Apple did not learn about and fix until September, the sources said.

Since at least February, this software flaw allowed some NSO customers to take control of iPhones simply by sending invisible yet tainted iMessage requests to the device, researchers who investigated the espionage campaign said.

The victims would not see or need to interact with a prompt for the hack to be successful. Versions of NSO surveillance software, commonly known as Pegasus, could then be installed.

Apple’s announcement that it would notify victims came on the same day it sued NSO Group last week, accusing it of helping numerous customers break into Apple’s mobile software, iOS.

In a public response, NSO has said its technology helps stop terrorism and that they’ve installed controls to curb spying against innocent targets.

For example, NSO says its intrusion system cannot work on phones with U.S. numbers beginning with the country code +1.

But in the Uganda case, the targeted State Department employees were using iPhones registered with foreign telephone numbers, said two of the sources, without the U.S. country code.

Uganda has been roiled this year by an election with reported irregularities, protests and a government crackdown. U.S. officials have tried to meet with opposition leaders, drawing ire from the Ugandan government. Reuters has no evidence the hacks were related to current events in Uganda.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said the threat to U.S. personnel abroad was one of the reasons the administration was cracking down on companies such as NSO and pursuing new global discussion about spying limits.

The official added that the government has seen “systemic abuse” in multiple countries involving NSO’s Pegasus spyware.

Sen. Ron Wyden, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: “Companies that enable their customers to hack U.S. government employees are a threat to America’s national security and should be treated as such.”

Historically, some of NSO Group’s best-known past clients included Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense must approve export licenses for NSO, which has close ties to Israel’s defense and intelligence communities, to sell its technology internationally.

In a statement, the Israeli Embassy in Washington said that targeting American officials would be a serious breach of its rules.

“Cyber products like the one mentioned are supervised and licensed to be exported to governments only for purposes related to counter-terrorism and severe crimes,” an embassy spokesperson said. “The licensing provisions are very clear and if these claims are true, it is a severe violation of these provisions.” 

 
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