NASA is preparing to send a new rover to Mars for a human exploration mission of the Red Planet. Voice of America reporter Verónica Villafañe saw the space vehicle up close and spoke with members of the mission.
 
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Huawei will build its first European manufacturing plant in France, its chairman said Thursday, as the Chinese telecom giant seeks to ease worldwide concerns stoked by U.S. charges that Beijing could use its equipment for spying. Liang Hua said Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecom equipment, would invest 200 million euros ($217 million) in the first phase of setting up the mobile base station plant. He said it would create 500 jobs. Huawei, which denies its equipment poses a security risk, is at the center of a storm pitting the United States against China over 5G, the next-generation mobile technology. Europe has become a major battleground. Continental market”This site will supply the entire European market, not just France’s,” Liang said at a news conference. “Our group’s activities are worldwide and for this we need a global industrial footprint.” 5G technology is expected to deliver a huge leap in the speed and capacity of communications and an exponential spike in connections between billions of devices, from smart refrigerators to driverless cars, that are expected to run on 5G networks. It was not immediately clear whether Huawei’s decision had the blessing of French President Emmanuel Macron, who has courted foreign investors but also led warnings about Chinese encroachment into the European Union’s economy. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. Chairman Liang Hua speaks during a news conference in Paris, France, Feb. 27, 2020.Liang said Huawei had outlined the group’s plans to the French government. “This is not a charm offensive,” he said. There was no immediate reaction from Macron’s office. Early stages The United States has repeatedly warned European allies against allowing the Chinese firm into the continent’s 5G infrastructure. But European capitals are divided about how to deal with Huawei. France has yet to start rolling out its 5G networks but the top French mobile operator, state-controlled Orange, has already chosen Huawei’s European rivals, Nokia and Ericsson. Smaller operators Bouygues Telecom and Altice Europe’s SFR, whose existing networks rely heavily on Huawei, are urging Paris to clarify its position on Huawei. France says it will not discriminate against any vendor but requires all suppliers to be screened so they can secure a green light from the cybersecurity agency, which is examining Huawei equipment. Sources close to the French telecom industry say they fear Huawei will be barred in practice even if no formal ban is announced. Neighboring Germany is also struggling to reach consensus on the way forward. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling conservatives back tougher rules on foreign vendors but have stopped short of an outright ban on Huawei. British planBritain has defied the United States by allowing “high-risk vendors” such as Huawei into nonsensitive parts of its 5G network but not what it describes as “core” components. Washington has pressed London to reconsider. The mobile base stations that will be manufactured in France are not considered core to 5G network infrastructure. Huawei accuses the United States of seeking to frustrate its growth because no U.S. company can offer the same range of technology at a competitive price. The French plant will be Huawei’s second manufacturing facility outside China. It has a plant making smartphones in India but only has assembly plants elsewhere. The plant in France will generate 1 billion euros a year in sales. 
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Imagine how life would change for so many people who need a replacement organ if scientists could just print a new one that works. That’s exactly one of the projects scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are working on – 3D bio printed human organs. They’re also working to develop artificial blood vessels and miniature models of a human body using 3d bio printing.  Lesia Bakalets has the story from Winston-Salem, North Carolina in this report narrated by Anna Rice.
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Imagine how life would change for so many people who need a replacement organ if scientists could just print a new one that works. That’s exactly one of the projects scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are working on – 3D bio printed human organs. They’re also working to develop artificial blood vessels and miniature models of a human body using 3d bio printing.  Lesia Bakalets has the story from Winston-Salem, North Carolina in this report narrated by Anna Rice
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Technology is finally able to make food appear. With help from a local NGO, hungry kids in Kenya can now get a hot lunch for a few pennies with just a tap of their wrists. It happens using short-range Wi-Fi, as VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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NASA says Katherine Johnson, a mathematician who worked on NASA’s early space missions and was portrayed in the film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, has died.
   
In a Monday morning tweet, the space agency said it celebrates her 101 years of life and her legacy of excellence and breaking down racial and social barriers.
   
Johnson was one of the so-called “computers” who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits by hand during NASA’s early years.
   
Until 1958, Johnson and other black women worked in a racially segregated computing unit at what is now called Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Their work was the focus of the Oscar-nominated 2016 film.
   
In 1961, Johnson worked on the first mission to carry an American into space. In 1962, she verified computer calculations that plotted John Glenn’s earth orbits.
   
At age 97, Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
   
Johnson focused on airplanes and other research at first. But her work at NASA’s Langley Research Center eventually shifted to Project Mercury, the nation’s first human space program.
   
“Our office computed all the [rocket] trajectories,” Johnson told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it.”
   
In 1961, Johnson did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space. The next year, she manually verified the calculations of a nascent NASA computer, an IBM 7090, which plotted John Glenn’s orbits around the planet.
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Britain’s most senior police officer on Monday called on the government to create a legal
framework for police use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence.Speaking about live facial recognition, which police in London started using in January, London police chief Cressida Dick said that she welcomed the government’s 2019 manifesto pledge to create a legal framework for the police use of new technology like AI, biometrics and DNA.”The best way to ensure that the police use new and emerging tech in a way that has the country’s support is for the government to bring in an enabling legislative framework that is debated through Parliament, consulted on in public and which will outline the boundaries for how the police should or should not use tech,” Dick said.”Give us the law and we’ll work within it,” she added. Dick rejected evidence that facial recognition algorithms are racially discriminatory in that their accuracy rates vary depending on the skin colour of the person they detect.”We know there are some cheap algorithms that do have ethnic bias but, as I’ve said, ours doesn’t and currently the only bias in it is that it shows it is slightly harder to identify a wanted woman than a wanted man,” she said. The London police’s facial recognition technology is provided by NEC, a Japanese company.
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New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google Thursday over allegations the tech company is illegally collecting personal data generated by children in violation of federal and state laws.The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque claims Google is using its education services package that is marketed to school districts, teachers and parents as a way to spy on children and their families.Attorney General Hector Balderas said that while the company touts Google Education as a valuable tool for resource-deprived schools, it is a means to monitor children while they browse the internet in the classroom and at home on private networks. He said the information being mined includes everything from physical locations to websites visited, videos watched, saved passwords and contact lists.The state is seeking unspecified civil penalties.“Student safety should be the number one priority of any company providing services to our children, particularly in schools,” Balderas said in a statement. “Tracking student data without parental consent is not only illegal, it is dangerous.”Google dismissed the claims as “factually wrong,” saying the G Suite for Education package allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary.“We do not use personal information from users in primary and secondary schools to target ads,” said company spokesman Jose Castaneda.“School districts can decide how best to use Google for education in their classrooms and we are committed to partnering with them.”Unlike Europe, the U.S. has no overarching national law governing data collection and privacy. Instead, it has a patchwork of state and federal laws that protect specific types of data, such as consumer health, financial information and the personal data generated by younger children.New Mexico’s claim cites violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites and online services to obtain parental consent before collecting any information from children under 13.In a separate case, Google already has agreed to pay $170 million combined to the Federal Trade Commission and New York state to settle allegations its YouTube video service collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent.According to the New Mexico lawsuit, outside its Google Education platform, the company prohibits children in the U.S. under the age of 13 from having their own Google accounts. The state contends Google is attempting to get around this by using its education services to “secretly gain access to troves of information” about New Mexico children.The attorney general’s office filed a similar lawsuit against Google and other tech companies in 2018, targeting what Balderas described as illegal data collection from child-directed mobile apps. That case still is pending in federal court, but the companies have denied wrongdoing.The latest lawsuit claims more than 80 million teachers and students use Google’s education platform. Balderas said in a letter to New Mexico school officials that there was no immediate harm if they continue using the products and that the lawsuit shouldn’t interrupt activities in the classroom. 
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Google is attempting to make sure people know exactly what they’re signing up for when they use its online services — though that will still mean reading a lengthy document.The company updated its terms of service on Thursday — its largest update to the general use contract since 2012 — in response to a pair of court orders in Europe.Google has been updating its policies and tweaking what is and isn’t allowed on its sites for the past couple of years as scrutiny of the tech industry heats up across the U.S. and Europe. Google, Facebook, Twitter and other digital companies have been forced under a spotlight as regulators and customers examine just how much the companies know about their users and what they do with that information.Facebook last year updated its terms of service to clarify how it makes money from user data.Google says it hasn’t changed anything significant in the document, but rather used plain language to describe who can use its products and what you can post online.“Broadly speaking, we give you permission to use our services if you agree to follow these terms, which reflect how Google’s business works and how we earn money,” the document reads.The document is now about 2,000 words longer than it was before, in part because Google included a list of definitions and expanded it to cover Google Drive and Chrome. The new terms take effect in March.Google’s privacy policy is separate and was substantially updated in 2018 after Europe enacted broad-reaching privacy laws.The company also separately updated its “About Google” page to explain how it makes money from selling advertisements, often informed by the vast amount of customer information it collects.As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, Google also announced it is switching the service provider for U.K. customers from one based in Ireland to its main U.S. provider. The company says that it won’t change how U.K. customers’ data is protected or used. 
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday questioned whether Facebook, Google and other major online platforms still need the immunity from legal liability that has prevented them from being sued over material their users post. “No longer are tech companies the underdog upstarts. They have become titans,” Barr said at a public meeting held by the Justice Department to examine the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “Given this changing technological landscape, valid questions have been raised about whether Section 230’s broad immunity is necessary, at least in its current form,” he said. Section 230 says online companies such as Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Twitter Inc. cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of information they provide. This largely exempts them from liability involving content posted by users, although they can be held liable for content that violates criminal or intellectual property law.  FILE – U.S. Attorney General William Barr is pictured in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Feb. 4, 2020.Barr’s comments offered insight into how regulators in Washington are reconsidering the need for incentives that once helped online companies grow but are increasingly viewed as impediments to curbing online crime, hate speech and extremism. The increased size and power of online platforms has also left consumers with fewer options, and the lack of feasible alternatives is a relevant discussion, Barr said, adding that the Section 230 review came out of the Justice Department’s broader look at potential anticompetitive practices at tech companies. Lawmakers from both major political parties have called for Congress to change Section 230 in ways that could expose tech companies to more lawsuits or significantly increase their costs. Lawmakers’ concernsSome Republicans have expressed concern that Section 230 prevents them from taking action against internet services that remove conservative political content, while a few Democratic leaders have said the law allows the services to escape punishment for harboring misinformation and extremist content. Barr said the department would not advocate a position at the meeting. But he hinted at the idea of allowing the U.S. government to act against recalcitrant platforms, saying it was “questionable” whether Section 230 should prevent the American government from suing platforms when it is “acting to protect American citizens.” Others at the meeting floated different ideas. FILE – Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson with a bipartisan group of state attorneys general speaks to reporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sept. 9, 2019.The attorney general of Nebraska, Doug Peterson, noted that the law does not shield platforms from federal criminal prosecution; the immunity helps protect against civil claims or a state-level prosecution. Peterson said the exception should be widened to allow state-level action as well. Addressing the tech industry, he called it a “pretty simple solution” that would allow local officials “to clean up your industry instead of waiting for your industry to clean up itself.” Matt Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which counts Google and Facebook among its members, said such a solution would result in tech giants having to obey 50 separate sets of laws governing user content. He suggested law enforcement’s energies might be better spent pursuing the millions of tips that the tech industry sent over every year, only a small fraction of which, he noted, resulted in investigations. “There appears to be some asymmetry there,” he said. Others argued that different rules should apply to different platforms, with larger websites enjoying fewer protections than internet upstarts. “With great scale comes great responsibility,” said David Chavern, of the News Media Alliance, whose members have bristled as Google and Facebook have gutted journalism’s business model. How to distinguishBut other panelists argued that distinguishing one site from another might be tricky. For example, would platforms like Reddit or Wikipedia, which have large reach but shoestring staffs, be counted as big sites or small ones? The panelists also briefly debated encryption, another area over which Barr has pressed the tech industry to change its modus operandi. Facebook in particular has drawn the ire of U.S. officials over its plans to secure its popular messaging platform. Kate Klonick, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York, urged caution. “This is a massive norm-setting period,” she said, with any alterations to one of the internet’s key legal frameworks likely to draw unexpected consequences. “It’s hard to know exactly what the ramifications might be.” 
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A federal judge in Texas has dismissed Chinese tech giant Huawei’s lawsuit challenging a U.S. law that bars the government and its contractors from using Huawei equipment because of security concerns.The lawsuit, filed last March, sought to declare the law unconstitutional. Huawei argued the law singled out the company for punishment, denied it due process and amounted to a “death penalty.”But a court ruled Tuesday that the ban isn’t punitive and that the federal government has the right to take its business elsewhere.Huawei, China’s first global tech brand, is at the center of U.S.-Chinese tensions over technology competition and digital spying. The company has spent years trying to put to rest accusations that it facilitates Chinese spying and that it is controlled by the ruling Communist Party.The lawsuit was filed in Plano, Texas, the headquarters of Huawei’s U.S. operations. It was dismissed before going to trial. Experts had described Huawei’s challenge as a long shot, but said the company didn’t have many other options to challenge the law.Huawei said it was disappointed and will consider further legal options.The Trump administration has been aggressively lobbying Western allies to avoid Huawei’s equipment for next-generation, 5G cellular networks. Administration officials say Huawei can give the Chinese government backdoor access to data, allegations that the company rejects.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also spoken out against Huawei, including during a talk with reporters in Brussels on Monday, turning U.S. opposition to Huawei into a bipartisan effort.
 
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Spain’s government approved Tuesday the introduction of new taxes on digital business and stock market transactions, following similar steps by other European countries.The Cabinet agreed at its weekly meeting to adopt the so-called Google tax and Tobin tax. The measures still require parliament’s approval.Finance Minister Mara Jesus Montero said the Google tax, which has angered U.S. authorities and brought a threat of tariffs by the Trump administration, will be levied only from the end of the year.By then, the government hopes an international agreement on digital business taxes will be in place. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which advises the world’s rich countries on policies, is currently trying to draw up the agreement.Montero said the government wants a “fairer” tax system, adapted to the new economic trends of globalization and digitalization.Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government is following other European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, in adopting a digital tax.The measure is an attempt to get around tax avoidance measures frequently used by multinationals. Big tech firms such as Google and Facebook pay most of their taxes in the European Union country where they are based and often pay very little in countries where they run large and profitable operations.Spain wants to place a 3% tax on online ads, on deals brokered on digital platforms and on sales of user data by tech companies that have a turnover of more than 750 million euros a year internationally and more than 3 million in Spain. It hopes to raise close to 1 billion euros a year in extra tax revenue.Other EU countries, such as France, Italy and Belgium, have already passed a Tobin tax. In Spain, the government aims to levy a 0.2% tax on share purchases involving companies worth more than 1 billion euros. That should raise more than 800 million euros annually, according to the government.A Socialist government first said it wanted to adopt the new taxes in January of last year, but an April general election foiled its plans.
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As some of the negative effects of life lived online become more apparent, “digital wellness” groups are promoting ways to maintain healthy lifestyles. Deana Mitchell reports 
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Women and minorities pursuing computer science degrees often feel alone and isolated, since the field is overwhelmingly dominated by men. While about 60 percent of all 2017 bachelor’s degree recipients in the U.S. were women, only about 20 percent of Computer and Information Science bachelor’s degree recipients went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). But an innovative program initiated by a global non-profit in partnership with universities across the U.S. has already made impressive gains in helping to boost those numbers. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Facebook warned of threats to innovation and freedom of expression on Monday, ahead of the release of a raft of rules by the European Union this week and in coming months to rein in U.S. tech giants and Chinese companies.The social media giant laid out its concerns in a white paper, and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was expected to reiterate the message to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager and EU industry chief Thierry Breton in Brussels on Monday.Referring to the possibility that the EU may hold internet companies responsible for hate speech and other illegal speech published on their platforms, Facebook said this ignores the nature of the internet.”Such liability would stifle innovation as well as individuals’ freedom of expression,” it said in the white paper.It suggested new frameworks that should be proportionate and necessary.Zuckerberg’s visit came on the heels of visits by Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and Microsoft President Brad Smith to Brussels last month.Vestager and Breton will announce proposals on Wednesday aimed at exploiting the bloc’s treasure trove of industrial data and challenging the dominance of Facebook, Google and Amazon.They will also propose rules to govern the use of artificial intelligence especially in high risk sectors such as healthcare and transport. 
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Women and minorities pursuing computer science degrees often feel alone and isolated, since the field is overwhelmingly dominated by men. While about 60 percent of all 2017 bachelor’s degree recipients in the U.S. were women, only about 20 percent of Computer and Information Science bachelor’s degree recipients went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). But an innovative program initiated by a global non-profit in partnership with universities across the U.S. has already made impressive gains in helping to boost those numbers. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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It seems inevitable that in this era of smart technology people would begin to think of ways to make their tech part of their body. Today, people have the ability to change themselves in new and unprecedented ways – and a 19-year-old Kai Landre is living proof. Anna Nelson has the story, narrated by Anna Rice
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to throw his support behind international reforms that would require Silicon Valley tech giants to pay more tax in Europe.
    
The billionaire social network founder is due to meet members of the European Union’s executive Commission in Brussels and speak at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
    
Zuckerberg is expected to tell the conference on Saturday that he’s backing plans for digital tax reform on a global scale proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
    
According to an excerpt of his speech provided in advance, Zuckerberg will say, “I understand that there’s frustration about how tech companies are taxed in Europe.”
    
Zuckerberg will tell the conference that he’s glad that that the OECD is looking at tax reform, which Facebook also wants.
“And we accept that may mean we have to pay more tax and pay it in different places under a new framework,” Zuckerberg will reportedly say.
    
The OECD plans would require digital and internet companies, including social media platforms, to pay more tax in countries where they have significant consumer-facing activities and generate profits.
    
The current system for taxing multinationals is based on where they are physically located, which sees internet companies such as Facebook pay the majority of their tax in the United States.
    
The situation is even more complicated in the European Union, where multinationals largely pay taxes on business done across the region in the one country that serves as their EU base, often a low-tax haven.
    
Tech companies have faced criticism for not paying enough tax in come countries. The U.S., meanwhile, has criticized the OECD plans, arguing they discriminate against big Silicon Valley companies.
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Facebook decided Friday to allow a type of paid political message that had sidestepped many of the social network’s rules governing political ads. Its policy change came days after presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg exploited a loophole to run such humorous messages promoting his campaign on the accounts of popular Instagram personalities followed by millions of younger people. The change involves what Facebook calls branded content'' — sponsored items posted by ordinary users who are typically paid by companies or organizations. Advertisers pay the influential users directly to post about their brand. No money for FacebookFacebook makes no money from such posts and does not consider them advertising. As a result, branded content isn't governed by Facebook's advertising policies, which require candidates and campaigns to verify their identity with a U.S. ID or mailing address and disclose how much they spent running each ad. Until Friday, Facebook tried to deter the use of paid posts through influential users as political messages. Specifically, it barred political campaigns from using a tool designed to help advertisers run branded posts on Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Friday's rule change will now allow campaigns in the U.S. to use this tool, provided they've been authorized by Facebook to run political ads and disclose who paid for the sponsored posts. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during his campaign launch of "Mike for Black America," at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, Feb. 13, 2020, in Houston.The Bloomberg campaign took the unconventional step of paying social media influencers — individuals with huge followings — to post Bloomberg memes using their Instagram accounts. Different versions of the sponsored posts from the Bloomberg campaign ran on more than a dozen influential Instagram accounts, each of which has millions of followers. That effort skirted many of the rules that tech companies have imposed on political ads to safeguard U.S. elections from malicious foreign and domestic interference and misinformation. Online political ads have been controversial, especially after it was revealed Russia used them to try to influence the 2016 presidential election. In response, Facebook has rolled out rules to prevent a repeat of that, though it has declined to fact-check political ads and refuses to ban even blatantly false messages. The Bloomberg campaign's memes showed the 78-year-old candidate, in a tongue-in-cheek awkward fashion, chatting with popular social media influencers with names likeTank Sinatra,asking them to help him raise his profile among younger folk. Can you post a meme that lets everyone know I’m the cool candidate?” Bloomberg wrote in one of the exchanges posted by an account called F Jerry, which has nearly 15 million followers on Instagram. The candidate then sent a photo of him wearing baggy chino shorts, an orange polo and a zip-up vest. F Jerry’s account then replied, Ooof that will cost like a billion dollars.'' Bloomberg responded by asking where to send the money. Looking to broaden audienceWith the sponsored posts, Bloomberg's campaign said it was reaching those who might not be normally interested in the day-to-day developments of politics. You want to engage people at every platform and you want them to feel like they’re not just getting a canned generic statement,” campaign spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said of the campaign’s strategy. The campaign declined to say how much it paid for the sponsored posts, or if it had more of them in the works. The posts did not appear in Facebook’s ad transparency library, which catalogs the political ads that campaigns buy directly from Facebook or Instagram and tells users how much was spent on them. Bloomberg’s campaign told The Associated Press on Thursday that Instagram does not require the campaign to disclose that information on the sponsored posts it ran earlier this week. 
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A federal judge in Washington has halted, for now, a major U.S. Defense Department cyber contract, blocking Microsoft Corp. from working on the Pentagon’s JEDI cloud-computing initiative pending the resolution of a lawsuit brought by rival Amazon.com.In October, Microsoft was awarded the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, which has an estimated worth of around $10 billion over the next decade. The JEDI project will process and store classified data to provide the U.S. military improved communications with soldiers in the field as well as artificial intelligence to speed up war planning and fighting capabilities.By November, Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, filed a lawsuit alleging the Defense Department unfairly judged its bid for the contract. Amazon believes the process was tainted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s animosity towards Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer and owner of The Washington Post newspaper, which Trump has regularly accused of bias against him.FILE – This April 12, 2016 file photo shows the Microsoft logo in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris, France.Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith said the JEDI contract cannot continue to be enacted “until further order of the court.” Judge Campbell-Smith’s full opinion was sealed.While Amazon scored at least a preliminary victory, it is required to create a $42 million security fund that will be used to pay for any damages if the court later finds the injunction was improper.Earlier this week, Amazon asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to allow them to question Trump and top Pentagon leaders, including former defense secretary James Mattis and Defense Secretary Mark Esper about any political interference from the White House in the awarding of the contract.“We believe that we will ultimately be able to move forward with the work to make sure those who serve our country can access the new technology they urgently require,” said Microsoft’s spokesman Frank Shaw, adding that he is disappointed by the ruling and believes the Pentagon’s decision-making process was fair.
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Organizers of the world’s biggest mobile technology fair insisted Thursday that they canceled the annual Mobile World Congress due to health and safety concerns over the virus outbreak in China. But the Spanish government disagreed, hinting that there was another motive for the cancellation.
“This is indeed a very difficult situation and a very difficult decision that we have taken,” Mats Granryd, director general of the GSMA, told reporters in Barcelona on Thursday, a day after they canceled the event.
“Our priorities have been very clear and very simple: The first is health and safety of everyone involved in the show and the second priority is the reputation of the MWC and this event here in Barcelona,” he said.
The decision to scrap the Feb. 24-27 event in Barcelona was taken after dozens of tech companies and wireless carriers dropped out over the COVID-19 virus, including major companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Sony, Amazon, Intel and LG. The companies cited concerns for the safety of staff and visitors.
But the Spanish government said in a statement Thursday it “believes it is not public health reasons in Spain that have motivated the cancellation.”
“There is no public health reason to not hold events of this type in our country,” the government added. It did not say what reasons it thought were behind the decision.
Spain has only two people infected with the virus, neither of whom is in Barcelona.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, sitting alongside Granryd, also said, “neither in Barcelona, Catalonia or Spain does any health concern exist today. There is no local reason” to cancel.
Granryd said the decision had nothing to do with the trade differences between China and the U.S., as suggested by one reporter who noted that some of those that had canceled were at events in Amsterdam.
“Absolutely not. Everyone I have spoken to, this is a health and safety issue concern, concern of travel, concern of having to put business-critical resources in quarantine for 14 days so it has nothing to do with anything else than the force majeure situation of having coronavirus disease spreading on the planet,” Granryd said.
John Hoffman, chief executive of GSMA, emphasized they were dealing with “business-critical people,” including 8,000 CEOs. He said “there was grave concern on disrupting their business not only now but into the future.”
Granryd said GSMA could not discuss the costs of the cancellation, as it was “early days.”
“It’s not about money,” he added.
Hoffman said they had considered a scaled-down event but “all of our buyers have indicated they would not attend.”
He said they looked at the data Wednesday and concluded that the “vast majority of those who planned to attend were not going to be there.”
He said it was not possible to postpone the event because it was impossible to know when the situation would change.
Describing it as “a very dark day,” Hoffman said that the group nevertheless looked forward to hosting the event again in Barcelona in 2021. Barcelona city hall and the national government welcomed this.
The show was originally expected to draw more than 100,000 visitors from about 200 countries, including 5,000-6,000 from China.
The decision stands to be a major economic blow to the city, which has been hosting the event for 14 years.
Colau said “the local impact will be very substantial” and that authorities will consult with those sectors affected to see how they can reduce the financial pain.
The show normally represents a huge source of revenue for hotels, restaurants and taxi companies. Authorities have estimated the show would generate 473 million euros ($516 million) and more than 14,000 part-time jobs for the local economy. 
 
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Social media giant Facebook on Wednesday removed two unconnected networks of accounts, pages, and groups “engaging in foreign or government interference,” one originating in Russia and the other one in Iran, both of which have alleged ties to intelligence services.Calling the behavior “coordinated” and “inauthentic,” Facebook’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said both operations were acting on “behalf of a government or foreign actor.”The Russian network primarily targeted Ukraine and its neighboring countries, while the Iranian operation focused mainly on the United States.The people behind the groups and accounts “coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action,” the social-media company said.In total, 78 accounts, 11 pages, 29 groups, and four Instagram accounts originating in Russia were removed.Facebook’s investigation “found links to Russian and military intelligence services” within the Russian network.The people behind the network would pose as citizen journalists and tried to contact policymakers, journalists, and other public figures in the region.They would post content in Russian, English, and Ukrainian “about local and political news including public figures in Ukraine, Russian military engagement in Syria, alleged SBU (Ukrainian Security Service) leaks related to ethnic tensions in Crimea and the downing of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine in 2014.”Similarly, six Facebook and five Instagram accounts were removed originating in Iran that engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”Some tried contacting public figures and they shared posts on such topics as the U.S. elections, Christianity, U.S.-Iran relations, U.S. immigration policy, and criticism of U.S. policies in the Middle East.About 60 people had followed one or more of the Iran-based Instagram accounts, the media company said. 
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