Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Monday called off a highly anticipated launch of its powerful new Starship rocket, delaying the first uncrewed test flight of the vehicle into space.

The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, originally was scheduled for blast-off from the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica, Texas, during a two-hour launch window that began at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).

But the California-based space company announced in a live webcast during the final minutes of the countdown that it was scrubbing the flight attempt for at least 48 hours, citing a pressurization issue in the lower-stage rocket booster.

Musk, the company’s billionaire founder and chief executive, told a private Twitter audience on Sunday night that the mission stood a better chance of being scrubbed than proceeding to launch on Monday.

Getting the vehicle to space for the first time would represent a key milestone in SpaceX’s ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately to Mars – at least initially as part of NASA’s newly inaugurated human spaceflight program, Artemis.

A successful debut flight would also instantly rank the Starship system as the most powerful launch vehicle on Earth.

Both the lower-stage Super Heavy booster rocket and the upper-stage Starship cruise vessel it will carry to space are designed as reusable components, capable of flying back to Earth for soft landings – a maneuver that has become routine for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.

But neither stage would be recovered for the expendable first test flight to space, expected to last no more than 90 minutes.

Prototypes of the Starship cruise vessel have made five sub-space flights up to 6 miles (10 km) above Earth in recent years, but the Super Heavy booster has never left the ground.

In February, SpaceX did a test-firing of the booster, igniting 31 of its 33 Raptor engines for roughly 10 seconds with the rocket bolted in place vertically atop a platform.

The Federal Aviation Administration just last Friday granted a license for what would be the first test flight of the fully stacked rocket system, clearing a final regulatory hurdle for the long-awaited launch.

If all goes as planned for the next launch bid, all 33 Raptor engines will ignite simultaneously to loft the Starship on a flight that nearly completes a full orbit of the Earth before it re-enters the atmosphere and free-falls into the Pacific at supersonic speed about 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of the northern Hawaiian islands.

After separating from the Starship, the Super Heavy booster is expected to execute the beginnings of a controlled return flight before plunging into the Gulf of Mexico.

As designed, the Starship rocket is nearly two times more powerful than NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS), which made its debut uncrewed flight to orbit in November, sending a NASA cruise vessel called Orion on a 10-day voyage around the moon and back.
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Japanese video games group Sega has offered to buy Angry Birds maker Rovio, valuing the Finnish company at over $770 million, the companies said Monday.   

“Combining the strengths of Rovio and Sega presents an incredibly exciting future,” Alexandre Pelletier-Normand, CEO of Rovio, said in a statement, which added that Rovio was recommending shareholders to accept the offer.   

The offer, which represents a 19% premium over Rovio’s closing share price on Friday, is part of the Sonic the Hedgehog maker’s “long-term goal” of expanding into the mobile gaming market, Sega CEO Haruki Satomi said.   

“Among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially high potential,” he added.   

In 2022, Rovio, which employs over 500 people, saw a revenue of $350 million, and an adjusted net profit of $34.5 million.   

Rovio launched the bird slingshot game in 2009 and it soared rapidly to become one of the most popular games on Apple’s App Store.   

In 2016, the “Angry Birds” movie, produced by Sony Entertainment, was a huge success and grossed $350 million worldwide.   

Rovio also manages Angry Birds theme parks in several countries and oversees the publication of children’s books about the famous birds in a dozen languages.   

Following the global success of Angry Birds, Rovio has remained heavily reliant on its flagship game, struggling to develop another similar hit.   

After years of success tied to its Angry Birds mobile games, Rovio hit a rough patch in 2015 and laid off a third of its staff.   

Sega is aiming to open the offer period in early May, hoping to complete the deal in the third quarter, the company said. 
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Floating in the port of Los Angeles, a strange-looking barge covered with pipes and tanks contains a concept that scientists hope to make waves: a new way to use the ocean as a vast carbon dioxide sponge to tackle global warming.

Scientists from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have been working for two years on SeaChange — an ambitious project that could one day boost the amount of CO2, a major greenhouse gas, that can be absorbed by our seas.

Their goal is “to use the ocean as a big sponge,” according to Gaurav Sant, director of the university’s Institute for Carbon Management (ICM).

The oceans, covering most of the Earth, are already the planet’s main carbon sinks, acting as a critical buffer in the climate crisis.

They absorb a quarter of all CO2 emissions, as well as 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases.

But they are feeling the strain. The ocean is acidifying, and rising temperatures are reducing its absorption capacity.

The UCLA team wants to increase that capacity by using an electrochemical process to remove vast quantities of CO2 already in seawater — rather like wringing out a sponge to help recover its absorptive power.

“If you can take out the carbon dioxide that is in the oceans, you’re essentially renewing their capacity to take additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” Sant told AFP.

Engineers built a floating mini-factory on a 30-meter-long boat which pumps in seawater and subjects it to an electrical charge.

Chemical reactions triggered by electrolysis convert CO2 dissolved in the seawater into a fine white powder containing calcium carbonate — the compound found in chalk, limestone and oyster or mussel shells.

This powder can be discarded back into the ocean, where it remains in solid form, thereby storing CO2 “very durably… over tens of thousands of years,” explained Sant.

Meanwhile, the pumped water returns to the sea, ready to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Sant and his team are confident the process will not damage the marine environment, although this will require further testing to confirm.

A potential additional benefit of the technology is that it creates hydrogen as a byproduct. As the so-called “green revolution” progresses, the gas could be widely used to power clean cars, trucks and planes in the future.

Of course, the priority in curbing global warming is for humans to drastically reduce current CO2 emissions — something nations are struggling to achieve.

But in parallel, most scientists say carbon dioxide capture and storage techniques can play an important role in keeping the planet livable.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) could help to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 as it offsets emissions from industries which are particularly difficult to decarbonize, such as aviation, and cement and steel production.

It could help to tackle the stocks of CO2 that have been accumulating in the atmosphere for decades.

Keeping global warming under control will require the removal of between 450 billion and 1.1 trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2100, according to the first global report dedicated to the topic, released in January.

That would require the CDR sector “to grow at a rate of about 30 percent per year over the next 30 years, much like what happened with wind and solar,” said one of its authors, Gregory Nemet.

UCLA’s SeaChange technology “fits into a category of a promising solution that could be large enough to be climate-relevant,” said Nemet, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

By sequestering CO2 in mineral form within the ocean, it differs markedly from existing “direct air capture” (DAC) methods, which involve pumping and storing gas underground through a highly complex and expensive process.

A start-up company, Equatic, plans to scale up the UCLA technology and prove its commercial viability, by selling carbon credits to manufacturers wanting to offset their emissions.

In addition to the Los Angeles barge, a similar boat is currently being tested in Singapore.

Sant hopes data from both sites will quickly lead to the construction of far larger plants that are capable of removing “thousands of tons of carbon” each year.

“We expect to start operating these new plants in 18 to 24 months,” he said.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to take its most daring leap yet with a round-the-world test flight of its mammoth Starship.

It’s the biggest and mightiest rocket ever built, with the lofty goal of ferrying people to the moon and Mars.

Jutting almost 120 meters into the South Texas sky, Starship could blast off as early as Monday, with no one aboard. Musk’s company got the OK from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday.

It will be the first launch with Starship’s two sections together. Early versions of the sci-fi-looking upper stage rocketed several miles into the stratosphere a few years back, crashing four times before finally landing upright in 2021. The towering first-stage rocket booster, dubbed Super Heavy, will soar for the first time.

For this demo, SpaceX won’t attempt any landings of the rocket or the spacecraft. Everything will fall into the sea.

“I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. It won’t be boring,” Musk promised at a Morgan Stanley conference last month. “I think it’s got, I don’t know, hopefully about a 50% chance of reaching orbit.”

Here’s the rundown on Starship’s debut:

Supersize rocket

The stainless-steel Starship has 33 main engines and 7.6 million kilograms of thrust. All but two of the methane-fueled, first-stage engines ignited during a launch pad test in January — good enough to reach orbit, Musk noted. Given its muscle, Starship could lift as much as 250 tons and accommodate 100 people on a trip to Mars. The six-engine spacecraft accounts for 50 meters of its height. Musk anticipates using Starship to launch satellites into low-Earth orbit, including his own Starlinks for internet service, before strapping anyone in. Starship easily eclipses NASA’s moon rockets — the Saturn V from the bygone Apollo era and the Space Launch System from the Artemis program that logged its first lunar trip late last year. It also outflanks the former Soviet Union’s N1 moon rocket, which never made it past a minute into flight, exploding with no one aboard.

Game plan

The test flight will last 1 ½ hours and fall short of a full orbit of Earth. If Starship reaches the three-minute mark after launch, the booster will be commanded to separate and fall into the Gulf of Mexico. The spacecraft would continue eastward, passing over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans before ditching near Hawaii. Starship is designed to be fully reusable, but nothing will be saved from the test flight. Harvard astrophysicist and spacecraft tracker Jonathan McDowell will be more excited whenever Starship lands and returns intact from orbit. It will be “a profound development in spaceflight if and when Starship is debugged and operational,” he said.

Launch pad

Starship will take off from a remote site on the southernmost tip of Texas near Boca Chica Beach. It’s just below South Padre Island, and about 32 kilometers from Brownsville. Down the road from the launch pad is the complex where SpaceX has been developing and building Starship prototypes for the past several years. The complex, called Starbase, has more than 1,800 employees, who live in Brownsville or elsewhere in the Rio Grande Valley. The Texas launch pad is equipped with giant robotic arms — called chopsticks — to eventually grab a returning booster as it lands. SpaceX is retooling one of its two Florida launch pads to accommodate Starships down the road. Florida is where SpaceX’s Falcon rockets blast off with crew, space station cargo and satellites for NASA and other customers.

The odds

As usual, Musk is remarkably blunt about his chances, giving even odds, at best, that Starship will reach orbit on its first flight. But with a fleet of Starships under construction at Starbase, he estimates an 80% chance that one of them will attain orbit by year’s end. He expects it will take a couple of years to achieve full and rapid reusability.

Customers

With Starship, the California-based SpaceX is focusing on the moon for now, with a $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface as early as 2025, using the upper stage spacecraft. It will be the first moon landing by astronauts in more than 50 years. The moonwalkers will leave Earth via NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, and then transfer to Starship in lunar orbit for the descent to the surface, and then back to Orion. To reach the moon and beyond, Starship will first need to refuel in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX envisions an orbiting depot with window-less Starships as tankers. But Starship isn’t just for NASA. A private crew will be the first to fly Starship, orbiting Earth. Two private flights to the moon would follow — no landings, just fly-arounds.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week released proposals for the most aggressive vehicle emission standards in the country’s history, with the expectation that electric cars will account for two of every three cars being produced in the U.S. by 2032. Keith Kocinski reports.
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The first image of a black hole captured four years ago revealed a fuzzy, fiery doughnut-shaped object. Now, researchers have used artificial intelligence to give that cosmic beauty shot a touch-up.

The updated picture, published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, keeps the original shape, but with a skinnier ring and a sharper resolution.

The image released in 2019 gave a peek at the enormous black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, 53 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. It was made using data gathered by a network of radio telescopes around the world, showing swirling light and gas.

But even with many telescopes working together, gaps remained in the data. In the latest study, scientists relied on the same data and used machine learning to fill in the missing pieces.

The resulting picture looks similar to the original, but with a thinner “doughnut” and a darker center, researchers said.

“For me, it feels like we’re really seeing it for the first time,” said lead author Lia Medeiros, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey.

Medeiros said the team plans to use machine learning on other images of celestial objects, including possibly the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
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ChatGPT could return to Italy soon if its maker, OpenAI, complies with measures to satisfy regulators who had imposed a temporary ban on the artificial intelligence software over privacy worries.

The Italian data protection authority on Wednesday outlined a raft of requirements that OpenAI will have to satisfy by April 30 for the ban on AI chatbot to be lifted.

The watchdog last month ordered the company to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The authority said it didn’t want to hamper AI’s development but emphasized the importance of following the European Union’s strict data privacy rules.

OpenAI, which had responded by proposing remedies to ease the concerns, did not reply immediately to a request for comment Wednesday.

Concerns about boom grow

Concerns are growing about the artificial intelligence boom, with other countries, from France to Canada, investigating or looking closer at so-called generative AI technology like ChatGPT. The chatbot is “trained” on huge pools of data, including digital books and online writings, and able to generate text that mimics human writing styles.

Under Italy’s measures, OpenAI must post information on its website about how and why it processes the personal information of both users and non-users, as well as provide the option to correct or delete that data.

The company will have to rely on consent or “legitimate interest” to use personal data to train ChatGPT’s algorithms, the watchdog said.

Regulators question legal basis

The Italian regulators had questioned whether there’s a legal basis for OpenAI to collect massive amounts of data used to teach ChatGPT’s algorithms and raised concerns the system could sometimes generate false information about individuals.

San Francisco-based OpenAI also will have to carry out a publicity campaign by May 15 through radio and TV, newspapers and the internet to inform people about how it uses their personal data for training algorithms, Italy’s watchdog said.

There’s also a requirement to verify users’ ages and set up a system to filter out those who are under 13 and teens between 13 and 18 who don’t have parental consent.

“Only in that case will the Italian SA (supervisory authority) lift its order that placed a temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users’ data … so that ChatGPT will be available once again from Italy,” the watchdog said on its website.
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A Biden administration proposal would force U.S. automakers to sharply increase their production of electric cars and trucks over the next decade, lending greater urgency to the effort to build raw material supply chains that reduce the industry’s dependence on China.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced a proposed rule that would place stricter limits on the average tailpipe emissions of vehicles built in the United States. The proposal would reduce the allowable limit by so much that automakers would have no way to comply unless about two-thirds of the vehicles they produce by 2032 are emission-free electric vehicles.

Automakers have generally recognized that EVs represent the future of the industry, but Wednesday’s proposal would greatly accelerate the trend. The proposal, which will be open to public comment before it is finalized, would greatly reduce a leading cause of air pollution in the U.S., as well as the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

“By proposing the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks, we are delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s promise to protect people and the planet, securing critical reductions in dangerous air and climate pollution, and ensuring significant economic benefits like lower fuel and maintenance costs for families,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

The proposal, which would apply to new light-duty vehicles made in 2027 and beyond, would be the strictest environmental standard the federal government has ever applied to automobiles. If it does force the industry to make EVs account for two-thirds of production, it could also exceed President Joe Biden’s previously articulated target of making 50% of new cars either plug-in hybrids or completely emission-free by 2030.

Supply chain questions

Well before the EPA released its proposed rule Wednesday, the Biden administration had been moving to strengthen the EV market in the U.S. and to build a pipeline for raw materials that would reduce the auto industry’s reliance on China for key raw materials.

Accomplishing that reduction will be no small task. According to an analysis by the International Energy Agency last year, China produced three-quarters of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, the key component in the majority of EVs on the road.

China also has a dominant hold on much of the market for the components of those batteries, including lithium, cobalt and graphite. According to the IEA, more than half of the world’s capacity for processing and refining those materials is located in China.

According to the IEA, as of last year, the U.S. accounted for only 10% of EV production worldwide, and just 7% of production capacity for batteries.

Infrastructure projects

Last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-related spending, included the creation of large tax breaks restricted to EVs made at least partly in the U.S. The tax breaks are meant to extend over several years, but the restrictions become tighter as time goes on, creating incentives for manufacturers to “onshore” production to the U.S.

Tax breaks specific to the batteries used in EVs require that the raw materials used to assemble them come from domestic sources or from countries with which the U.S. has existing trade agreements.

Other pieces of legislation meant to spur investment in the U.S., including a major bipartisan infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act, also contain money and incentives that will help build out electric infrastructure in the U.S.

Achievable goals

Luke Tonachel, senior director for clean vehicles and buildings with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told VOA that building an EV supply chain centered on domestic production and imports from friendly countries is ambitious, but achievable.

Tonachel said the necessary raw materials are available from U.S. allies, but that the capacity for processing them needs to be built domestically. He said the creation of that capacity is already underway.

“There are robust incentives for building out that battery manufacturing and supply chain here in the U.S.,” he said, adding that he believes the administration’s time frame is feasible, especially now that the new standards have created certainty about future demand for EVs.

“It is realistic,” he said. “These are technologies that are known. We can certainly get more economies of scale as we ramp up production.”

Automakers tentative

Industry representatives said achieving the administration’s goal will require that a lot of disparate efforts be successful at the same time, not all of which are under their control. For example, a nationwide network of charging stations and the increased capacity to meet new demand for power will be essential to driving customer demand.

“It’s aggressive, and a lot of pieces have to work perfectly together,” Genevieve Cullen, president of the Electric Drive Transportation Association, told VOA. “Aside from the technology piece, the market piece has to work, and supply chain speed is part of that. Consumer incentives are working to help bring them into the equation, and we need to keep expanding infrastructure at a pace that meets, and perhaps exceeds, the needs in the beginning so that people feel the confidence that they need to switch to battery electric.”

John Bozzella, president of the trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said in a blog post Wednesday that the administration’s plan is “aggressive by any measure” and that its success would depend on more than just automakers being able to ramp up production.

“To some extent, the baseline policy framework for the transition has come into focus,” Bozzella said. “But it remains to be seen whether the refueling infrastructure incentives and supply-side provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the CHIPS and Science Act are sufficient to support electrification at the levels envisioned by the proposed standards over the coming years.”
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Broadcaster National Public Radio said Wednesday it would no longer post its news content on 52 official Twitter accounts in protest of the social media site labeling the independent U.S. news agency as “government-funded media.” 

NPR is the first major news organization to go silent on Twitter. The social media platform owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk at first labeled NPR as “state-affiliated media,” the same tag it applies to propaganda outlets in China, Russia and other autocratic countries. 

Twitter then revised its label to “government-funded media,” but NPR said that, too, was misleading because NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. NPR says it receives less than 1% of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  

NPR chief executive John Lansing said that by not posting its news reports on Twitter, the network is protecting its credibility and would continue to produce journalism without “a shadow of negativity.” 

In an email to staff explaining the decision, Lansing wrote, “It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards.”  

He said that even if Twitter were to drop any description of NPR, the network would not immediately return to the platform. 

“At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter,” Lansing said in an article posted by NPR. “I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.”

Twitter has also labeled Voice of America, a U.S. government-funded but independent news agency, and the BBC in Britain, as “government-funded media,” a description more commonly employed in describing state-controlled propaganda outlets. VOA has not dropped its use of Twitter but said its description of the news outlet left the impression that it was not independent. 

Bridget Serchak, VOA’s director of public relations, said, “The label ‘government funded’ is potentially misleading and could be construed as also ‘government-controlled’ — which VOA is most certainly not.” 

“Our editorial firewall, enshrined in the law, prohibits any interference from government officials at any level in its news coverage and editorial decision-making process,” Serchak said in an email. “VOA will continue to emphasize this distinction in our discussions with Twitter, as this new label on our network causes unwarranted and unjustified concern about the accuracy and objectivity of our news coverage.” 

VOA is funded by the U.S. government and is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, but its editorial independence is protected by regulations and a firewall. The BBC said it “is, and always has been, independent.” 

Press freedom advocates have also objected to Twitter’s labeling of NPR, VOA and the BBC.

“The confusion between media serving the general interest and propaganda media is dangerous, and is yet further proof that social media platforms are not competent to identify what is and is not journalism,” Vincent Berthier, head of the technology desk at Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement. 

Liam Scott contributed to this report.
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Billionaire Elon Musk has told the BBC that running Twitter has been “quite painful” but that the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year.

In an interview also streamed live late Tuesday on Twitter Spaces, Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style.

“It’s not been boring. It’s quite a rollercoaster,” he told the U.K. broadcaster at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.

It was a rare chance for a mainstream news outlet to interview Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX. After buying Twitter for $44 billion last year, Musk’s changes included eliminating the company’s communications department.

Reporters who email the company to seek comment now receive an auto-reply with a poop emoji.

The interview was sometimes tense, with Musk challenging the reporter to back up assertions about rising levels of hate speech on the platform. At other times, Musk laughed at his own jokes, mentioning more than once that he wasn’t the CEO but his dog Floki was.

He also revealed that he sometimes sleeps on a couch at Twitter’s San Francisco office.

Advertisers who had shunned the platform in the wake of Musk’s tumultuous acquisition have mostly returned, the billionaire said, without providing details.

Musk predicted that Twitter could become “cash flow positive” in the current quarter “if current trends continue.” Because Twitter is a private company, information about its finances can’t be verified.

After acquiring the platform, Musk carried out mass layoffs as part of cost-cutting efforts. He said Twitter’s workforce has been slashed to about 1,500 employees from about 8,000 previously, describing it as something that had to be done.

“It’s not fun at all,” Musk said. “The company’s going to go bankrupt if we don’t cut costs immediately. This is not a caring-uncaring situation. It’s like if the whole ship sinks, then nobody’s got a job.”

Asked if he regretted buying the company, he said it was something that “needed to be done.”

“The pain level of Twitter has been extremely high. This hasn’t been some sort of party,” Musk said.
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China’s internet regulator has unveiled a proposed law that will require makers of new artificial intelligence, or AI, products to submit to security assessments before public release.

The draft law released Tuesday by the Cyberspace Administration of China says that content generated by future AI products must reflect the country’s “core socialist values” and not encourage subversion of state power.  

The draft law also said AI content must not promote discrimination based on ethnicity, race and gender, and should not provide false information.  

The proposed law is expected to take effect sometime this year. The regulations come as several China-based tech companies, including Alibaba, JD.com and Baidu have released a flurry of new so-called generative AI products which can mimic human speech and generate content such as images and texts. The innovative feature has surged in popularity since San Francisco-based OpenAI introduced ChatGPT last November.  

Some information for this report came from Reuters, Agence France-Presse.
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The Australian government is asking major banks and other institutions to take part in ‘wargaming’ exercises to test how they would respond to cyber-attacks. It follows recent mass data theft attacks on several large companies, which compromised the data of millions of Australians.     

Australia is preparing for potential cyberattacks on critical services including hospitals, the banking system and the electricity grid.  

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil Tuesday warned that recent high-profile hacks on the telecommunications and health insurance sectors, which have affected millions of people, “were just the tip of the iceberg”.   

The government is setting up a series of drills with large organizations to help them respond to security breaches.   

Anna Bligh, chief executive of the Australian Banking Association, an industry body, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Tuesday that cyber security drills organized by the government will make the sector more resilient. 

“How would the whole system cope if one of the very large companies were taken down by a cyber threat?” Bligh asked. “The sort of scale and sophistication of the threat is now moving into something that we haven’t seen before. So, it is a very timely move.  This is now potentially a significant threat to the national security of the country.”   

A major Australian financial services company revealed Tuesday that criminals who stole sensitive customer information last month have demanded a ransom.   

The cyberattack on Latitude Financial resulted in the theft of 14 million customer records, including financial statements, driver’s license numbers and passport numbers.   

The company said that in line with government policy it would not pay a ransom to prevent the data being leaked or sold online.   

The Australian government is considering an updated Cyber Security law that would impose new obligations and standards to protect data across industry and government departments.   

However, officials have warned that cyber criminals are becoming more professional, powerful and effective. 
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A Kuwaiti media outlet has unveiled a virtual news presenter generated using artificial intelligence, with plans for it to read online bulletins.   

“Fedha” appeared on the Twitter account of the Kuwait News website Saturday as an image of a woman, her light-colored hair uncovered, wearing a black jacket and white T-shirt.   

“I’m Fedha, the first presenter in Kuwait who works with artificial intelligence at Kuwait News. What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions,” she said in classical Arabic.   

The site is affiliated with the Kuwait Times, founded in 1961 as the Gulf region’s first English-language daily.   

Abdullah Boftain, deputy editor-in-chief for both outlets, said the move is a test of AI’s potential to offer “new and innovative content.”   

In the future Fedha could adopt the Kuwaiti accent and present news bulletins on the site’s Twitter account, which has 1.2 million followers, he said.   

“Fedha is a popular, old Kuwaiti name that refers to silver, the metal. We always imagine robots to be silver and metallic in color, so we combined the two,” Boftain said.    

The presenter’s blonde hair and light-colored eyes reflect the oil-rich country’s diverse population of Kuwaitis and expatriates, according to Boftain.    

“Fedha represents everyone,” he said.   

Her initial 13-second video generated a flood of reactions on social media, including from journalists. 

The rapid rise of AI globally has raised the promise of benefits, such as in health care and the elimination of mundane tasks, but also fears, for example over its potential to spread disinformation, threats to certain jobs and to artistic integrity.   

Kuwait ranked 158 out of 180 countries and territories in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2022 Press Freedom Index. 
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Electric car maker Tesla Inc. plans to build a factory in Shanghai to produce power-storage devices for sale worldwide, state media reported Sunday.

Plans call for annual production of 10,000 Megapack units, according to the Xinhua News Agency and state television. They said the company made the announcement at a signing ceremony in Shanghai, where Tesla operates an auto factory.

The factory is due to break ground in the third quarter of this year and start production in the second quarter of 2024, the reports said.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to requests for information.
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A mayor in Australia’s Victoria state said Friday he may sue the artificial intelligence writing tool ChatGPT after it falsely claimed he’d served time in prison for bribery.  Hepburn Shire Council Mayor Brian Hood was incorrectly identified as the guilty party in a corruption case in the early 2000s.

Brian Hood was the whistleblower in a corruption scandal involving a company partly owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia.  Several people were charged, but Hood was not one of them. That did not stop an article generated by ChatGPT, an automated writing service powered by artificial intelligence. The article cast him as the culprit who was jailed for his part in a conspiracy to bribe foreign officials to win currency printing contracts.

Hood only found out after friends told him. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. He then used the chatbot software to see the story for himself.

“After making the inquiry, it generated five or six paragraphs of information.  The really disturbing thing was that some of the paragraphs were accurate, and then were other paragraphs that described things that were completely incorrect.  It told me that I’d be charged with very serious criminal offenses, that I’d be convicted of them and that I had spent 30 months in jail,” he said.

Hood said that if OpenAI, a U.S.-based company that owns the chatbot, does not correct the false claims, he will sue.

It would be the first defamation lawsuit against the automated service.

However, a new version of ChatGPT reportedly avoids the mistakes of its predecessor. It reportedly correctly explains that Hood was a whistleblower who was praised for his actions. Hood’s lawyers say that the defamatory material, which damages the mayor’s reputation, still exists and their efforts to have the mistakes rectified would continue.

A disclaimer on the ChatGPT program warns users that it “may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts”.  The technology has exploded in popularity around the world.

OpenAI has yet to comment publicly on the allegations.

Google has announced the launch of its rival to ChatGPT, Bard.  Meta, which owns WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, launched its own AI chatbot Blenderbot in the United States last year, while Baidu, the Chinese tech company, has said it was working on an advanced version of its chatbot, Ernie.
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Samsung Electronics said Friday it is cutting the production of its computer memory chips in an apparent effort to reduce inventory as it forecasted another quarter of sluggish profit. 

The South Korean technology giant, in a regulatory filing, said it has been reducing the production of certain memory products by unspecified “meaningful levels” to optimize its manufacturing operations, adding it has sufficient supplies of those chips to meet demand fluctuations. 

The company predicted an operating profit of $455 million for the three months through March, which would be a 96% decline from the same period a year earlier. It said sales during the quarter likely fell 19% to $47.7 billion. 

Samsung, which will release its finalized first quarter earnings later this month, said the demand for its memory chips declined as a weak global economy depressed consumer spending on technology products and forced business clients to adjust their inventories to nurse worsening finances. 

Samsung had reported a near 70% drop in profit for the October-December quarter, which partially reflected how global events like Russia’s war on Ukraine and high inflation have rattled technology markets. 

SK Hynix, another major South Korean semiconductor producer, said this week that it sold $1.7 billion in bonds that can be exchanged for the company’s shares to help fund its purchases of chipmaking materials as it weathers the industry’s downswing. SK Hynix had reported an operating loss of $1.28 billion for the October-December period, which marked its first quarterly deficit since 2012. 

“While we have lowered our short-term production plans, we expect solid demand for the mid- to long-term, so we will continue to invest in infrastructure to secure essential levels in clean room capacities and expand investment in research and development to strengthen our technology leadership,” Samsung said. 

Samsung last month announced plans to invest $227 billion over the next 20 years as part of an ambitious South Korean project to build the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing base near the capital, Seoul. 

The chip-making “mega cluster,” which will be established in Gyeonggi province by 2042, will be anchored by five new semiconductor plants built by Samsung near its existing manufacturing hub. It will aim to attract 150 other companies producing materials and components or designing high-tech chips, according to South Korea’s government. 

The South Korean plan comes as other technology powerhouses, including the United States, Japan and China, are building up their domestic chip manufacturing, deploying protectionist measures, tax cuts and sizeable subsidies to lure investments. 
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The last time humans were on the moon was in 1972. Now NASA is preparing to set foot back on the moon in 2025, if all goes as scheduled. VOA’s Alexander Kruglyakov spoke with the crew that will take part in the first of those missions: a planned flight around the Moon in November 2024.
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Darknet users, beware: If you frequent criminal marketplaces in the internet’s underbelly, think again. Chances are you’re in the FBI’s crosshairs. 

The FBI is cracking down on sites that peddle everything from guns to stolen personal data, and it is not only going after the sites’ administrators but also their users.  

A recent surge in ransomware attacks and other malicious cyber activities has fueled the effort to shut down services that cater to online criminals.  

But shutting down the marketplaces has proven ineffective. With each takedown, a new iteration pops up drawing users with it. Which is why the FBI is eyeing both the operators and users of these sites.   

“We’re not only trying to attack the supply side, but we’re also attacking the demand side with the users,” a senior FBI official said during a Wednesday briefing on the agency’s takedown of Genesis Market, a large online criminal marketplace. “There’s consequences if you’re going to be using these types of sites to engage in this type of activity.” 

The darknet, the hidden part of the internet that can only be accessed by a special browser, has long been home to various criminal marketplaces and forums. 

One type of criminal marketplace there specializes in buying and selling illegal items, such as drugs, firearms and fraudulently obtained gift cards. 

Another type of market trades in sensitive data, such as stolen credit cards, bank account details and other information that can be used for criminal activity. These sites are known as “data stores.”  

In recent years, a new breed of cyber criminals has emerged. Known as “initial access brokers,” these criminals specialize in selling access to compromised computer networks. Among their customers: ransomware gangs.  

The takedown on Tuesday of Genesis Market, a 5-year-old criminal marketplace described by officials as an “initial access broker,” offers a window into this type of cyber-criminal activity. 

It also shows how the FBI is increasingly going after users of criminal marketplaces and not just their administrators.  

U.S. officials said Genesis Market was not only a seller of stolen account access credentials but was also “one of the most prolific” initial access brokers operating on the darknet.  

Describing it as a “key enabler of ransomware,” the Justice Department said Genesis Market sold “the type of access sought by ransomware actors to attack computer networks in the United States and around the world.”  

The site went dark on Tuesday after the FBI, working with law enforcement agencies in nearly 20 countries, including the U.K. and Canada, took it offline and arrested nearly 120 people. 

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland hailed the operation as “an unprecedented takedown of a major criminal marketplace that enabled cybercriminals to victimize individuals, businesses, and governments around the world.” 

Genesis is one of two popular cyber-criminal marketplaces taken down by the FBI in the past month.   

In March, the FBI shut down Breach Forums, a criminal forum and marketplace that boasted more than 340,000 members. On the Breach Forums website, users discussed tools and techniques for hacking and exploiting hacked information, according to the Justice Department. 

“We’re going after the users who leverage a service like Genesis Market, and we are doing that on a global scale,” the FBI official said. 

To take down Genesis Market, the FBI and its international law enforcement partners seized its servers and domains.  

In doing so, the FBI was able to obtain information about 59,000 individual user accounts, a senior Justice Department official said during the briefing.  

The information included usernames, passwords, email accounts, secure messenger accounts and user histories, the official said.  

“And those records helped law enforcement uncover the true identities of many of the users,” the official said.  

The users ran the gamut from online fraudsters to ransomware criminals.  

Some of the users were in the U.S., officials said, declining to provide any other details about them. They were among the 119 people arrested around the world in connection with Genesis Market takedown.  
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The push to legally restrict children’s access to social media in the United States is gaining steam. So far, however, researchers say there are both negative and positive aspects of minors using the platforms, as VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias found out.
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Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips — which are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets — as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February.

China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under President Donald Trump, has been cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons.

Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.”

Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year.

Investing in self-reliance

The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology.

China’s loudest complaint: It is blocked from buying a machine available only from a Dutch company, ASML, that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon chips on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Without that, Chinese efforts to make transistors faster and more efficient by packing them more closely together on fingernail-size slivers of silicon are stalled.

Making processor chips requires some 1,500 steps and technologies owned by U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers.

“China won’t swallow everything. If damage occurs, we must take action to protect ourselves,” the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jian, told the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad.

“I’m not going to speculate on what that might be,” Tan said. “It won’t just be harsh words.”

The conflict has prompted warnings the world might split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation.

“The bifurcation in technological and economic systems is deepening,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said at an economic forum in China last month. “This will impose a huge economic cost.”

U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong, and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes, and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses.

Chinese industries will “hit a wall” in 2025 or 2026 if they can’t get next-generation chips or the tools to make their own, said Handel Jones, a tech industry consultant.

China “will start falling behind significantly,” said Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies.

EV batteries as leverage

Beijing might have leverage, though, as the biggest source of batteries for electric vehicles, Jones said.

Chinese battery giant CATL supplies U.S. and Europe automakers. Ford Motor Co. plans to use CATL technology in a $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan.

“China will strike back,” Jones said. “What the public might see is China not giving the U.S. batteries for EVs.”

On Friday, Japan increased pressure on Beijing by joining Washington in imposing controls on exports of chipmaking equipment. The announcement didn’t mention China, but the trade minister said Tokyo doesn’t want its technology used for military purposes.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, warned Japan that “weaponizing sci-tech and trade issues” would “hurt others as well as oneself.”

Hours later, the Chinese government announced an investigation of the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, Micron Technology Inc., a key supplier to Chinese factories. The Cyberspace Administration of China said it would look for national security threats in Micron’s technology and manufacturing but gave no details.

The Chinese military also needs semiconductors for its development of stealth fighter jets, cruise missiles and other weapons.

Chinese alarm grew after President Joe Biden in October expanded controls imposed by Trump on chip manufacturing technology. Biden also barred Americans from helping Chinese manufacturers with some processes.

To nurture Chinese suppliers, Xi’s government is stepping up support that industry experts say already amounts to as much as $30 billion a year in research grants and other subsidies.
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U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence (AI) is dangerous, but underscored that technology companies had a responsibility to ensure their products were safe before making them public. 

Biden told science and technology advisers that AI could help in addressing disease and climate change, but it was also important to address potential risks to society, national security and the economy. 

“Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,” he said at the start of a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. When asked if AI was dangerous, he said, “It remains to be seen. It could be.” 

Biden spoke on the same day that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, surrendered in New York over charges stemming from a probe into hush money paid to a porn actor. 

Biden declined to comment on Trump’s legal woes, and Democratic strategists say his focus on governing will create a politically advantageous split screen of sorts as his former rival, a Republican, deals with his legal challenges. 

The president said social media had already illustrated the harm that powerful technologies can do without the right safeguards. 

“Absent safeguards, we see the impact on the mental health and self-images and feelings and hopelessness, especially among young people,” Biden said.  

He reiterated a call for Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to put limits on personal data that technology companies collect, ban advertising targeted at children, and to prioritize health and safety in product development. 

Shares of companies that employ AI dropped sharply before Biden’s meeting, although the broader market was also selling off on Tuesday.  

Shares of AI software company C3.ai Inc. were down 24%, more than halving a four-session winning streak of nearly 40% through Monday. Thailand security firm Guardforce AI GFAI.O fell 29%, data analytics firm BigBear.ai BBAI.N was down 16% and conversation intelligence company SoundHound AI SOUN.O was down 13% late on Tuesday.  

AI is becoming a hot topic for policymakers. 

The tech ethics group Center for AI and Digital Policy has asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to stop OpenAI from issuing new commercial releases of GPT-4, which has wowed and appalled users with its human-like abilities to generate written responses to requests. 

Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Murphy has urged society to pause as it considers the ramifications of AI. 

Last year the Biden administration released a blueprint “Bill of Rights” to help ensure users’ rights are protected as technology companies design and develop AI systems.  
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An exhibition currently on display in Poland uses virtual reality to show the level of destruction Russia’s war has brought on Ukraine. For some visitors, the VR videos that can be viewed at the “Through the War” display have been overwhelming. Lesia Bakalets reports from Warsaw. Daniil Batushchak.
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