VOA Mandarin: Trump’s new AI policy seeks to loosen regulations, support innovation, defeat China

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to repeal President Joe Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence security, setting the stage for deregulation for AI companies by nominating pro-business, pro-startups Silicon Valley leaders. The nomination of Jacob Helberg, an outspoken China critic, for a key State Department post indicates Trump’s intention to lead over China in AI, according to analysts. “We’re likely to see quite a great focus on countering China when it comes to AI – beating China, when it comes to having the most advanced AI capabilities,” says Ruby Scanlon, a researcher on technology and national security at Centermore

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Albanian PM says TikTok ban was not ‘rushed reaction to a single incident’

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Tirana, Albania — Albania’s prime minister said Sunday the ban on TikTok his government announced a day earlier was “not a rushed reaction to a single incident.” Edi Rama said Saturday the government will shut down TikTok for one year, accusing the popular video service of inciting violence and bullying, especially among children. Authorities have held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents since the November stabbing death of a teenager by another teen after a quarrel that started on social media apps. Ninety percent of them approve of the ban on TikTok. “The ban on TikTok for one year in Albaniamore

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Albania to shut down TikTok for 1 year, says platform promotes violence among children

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TIRANA, ALBANIA — Albania’s prime minister said Saturday the government will shut down the video service TikTok for one year, blaming it for inciting violence and bullying, especially among children.  Albanian authorities held 1,300 meetings with teachers and parents following the stabbing death of a teenager in mid-November by another teen after a quarrel that started on TikTok.  Prime Minister Edi Rama, speaking at a meeting with teachers and parents, said TikTok “would be fully closed for all. … There will be no TikTok in the Republic of Albania.” Rama said the shutdown would begin sometime next year.  It was notmore

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US slow to react to pervasive Chinese hacking, experts say

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As new potential threats from Chinese hackers were identified this week, the federal government issued one of its strongest warnings to date about the need for Americans — and in particular government officials and other “highly targeted” individuals — to secure their communications against eavesdropping and interception. The warning came as news was breaking about a Commerce Department investigation into the possibility that computer network routers manufactured by the Chinese firm TP-Link may pose a threat to the millions of U.S. businesses, households and government agencies that use them. Also on Wednesday, Congress took long-awaited steps toward funding a programmore

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US Federal Reserve cuts interest rate but adjusts expectations for future

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The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday lowered its target interest rate but signaled it might take longer than previously expected to bring inflation down to the central bank’s target rate of 2% per year. That means there will likely be fewer rate reductions in 2025 than had been projected. The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee lowered the target range of the federal funds rate, a benchmark that is used to set rates for everything from mortgages to credit card loans, by one-quarter of a percentage point to between 4.25% and 4.5%. The reduction was widely expected, but FOMC members updatedmore

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Bluesky could become target of foreign disinformation, experts warn

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washington — Experts on cybersecurity and online foreign influence campaigns are urging social media company Bluesky, whose app has exploded in popularity in recent weeks, to step up moderation to counter potential state-sponsored influence efforts. Over the past month, Bluesky, a microblogging platform with its roots in Twitter, has seen one of its biggest increases in new user registrations since it was publicly released in February. Over 25 million are now on the platform, close to half of whom joined after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Rose Wang, Bluesky’s chief operating officer, said in a recent interview that Bluesky does notmore

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US cyber watchdog seeks switch to encrypted apps following ‘Salt Typhoon’ hacks

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. cybersecurity watchdog CISA is telling senior American government officials and politicians to immediately switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging following intrusions at major American telecoms blamed on Chinese hackers.  In written guidance released on Wednesday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said “individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions” should “immediately review and apply” a series of best practices around the use of mobile devices.  The first recommendation: “Use only end-to-end encrypted communications.”  End-to-end encryption — a data protection technique that aims to make data unreadable by anyone except its sender and its recipient —more

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Top US Senate Republican urges Supreme Court to reject TikTok appeal

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WASHINGTON — Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a bid by TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance to block a law intended to force the sale of the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on national security grounds. The court has scheduled arguments on the case for January 10. McConnell in a brief filed with the court called the companies’ arguments “meritless and unsound. … This is a standard litigation play at the end of one administration, with a petitioner hoping that the next administration will provide a staymore

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Senators urge US House to pass Kids Online Safety Act

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A bipartisan effort to protect children from the harms of social media is running out of time in this session of the U.S. Congress. If passed, the Kids Online Safety Act would institute safeguards for minors’ personal data online. But free speech advocates and some Republicans are concerned the bill could lead to censorship. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more. Kim Lewis contributed to this story. …

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Congo files criminal complaints against Apple in Europe over conflict minerals

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Paris — The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple subsidiaries in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, lawyers for the Congolese government told Reuters.  Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres of civilians, mass rapes, looting and other crimes, according to U.N. experts and human rights groups.  Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodiesmore

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EU investigates TikTok over Romanian presidential election

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LONDON — European Union regulators said Tuesday they’re investigating whether TikTok breached the bloc’s digital rulebook by failing to deal with risks to Romania’s presidential election, which has been thrown into turmoil over allegations of electoral violations and Russian meddling. The European Commission is escalating its scrutiny of the popular video-sharing platform after Romania’s top court canceled results of the first round of voting that resulted in an unknown far-right candidate becoming the front-runner. The court made its unprecedented decision after authorities in the European Union and NATO member country declassified documents alleging Moscow organized a sprawling social media campaign tomore

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Biden, Harris thank donors, urge them to stay engaged after tough loss to Trump

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday thanked deep-pocketed Democratic donors who raised record sums in last month’s election loss to President-elect Donald Trump and urged them not to lose hope and to remain politically engaged. Biden and Harris, along with their spouses, in remarks at the Democratic National Committee holiday reception sought to buck up key donors who the Democratic Party needs to stay committed as it tries to pick up the pieces. Republicans scored a decisive victory taking the White House and Senate while maintaining control of the House in an election where donorsmore

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Hackers demand ransom from Rhode Islanders after data breach

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Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday.  In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money.  The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday.  Hackers gained accessmore

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US court rejects TikTok request to temporarily halt pending US ban

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WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on the app. TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban. The companies had warned thatmore

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Australia to charge tech companies for news content if they do not pay

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SYDNEY — Australia’s center-left government said on Thursday it planned new rules that would charge big tech firms millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms. The move piles pressure on global tech giants such as Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google to pay publishers for content or face the risk of paying millions to continue operations in Australia. “The news bargaining initiative will … will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia,” Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones told amore

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UN digital program seeks to empower Africa’s public workers

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NAIROBI, KENYA — The United Nations, Microsoft and Kenya’s Ministry of Information last week launched a digital and artificial intelligence center in Nairobi to train African public servants and accelerate the development and use of online services. Officials said the program — the Timbuktoo GreenTech Hub and Africa Centre for Competence for AI and Digital Skilling — aims to improve the skills of 100,000 government workers. U.N. Development Program Regional Director Ahunna Eziakonwa said at the launch that better digital skills and resources will enable Africa to achieve technological progress. “An inclusive public sector digital transformation drives efficiency and effectiveness andmore

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US sanctions Chinese cybersecurity firm for ‘malicious’ activities

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WASHINGTON — The United States slapped sanctions on a Chinese cybersecurity company and one of its employees Tuesday, accusing it of compromising more than 80,000 firewalls in a 2020 attack. The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that it had sanctioned Sichuan Silence Information Technology Company and an employee named Guan Tianfeng over the April 2020 attack, which targeted firewalls around the world, including critical infrastructure in the U.S. Over a three-day period, Guan exploited a vulnerability in a firewall product and proceeded to deploy malware against some 81,000 businesses around the world with the aim of stealing data, includingmore

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From VOA Mandarin: Trump 2.0 and the future of the CHIPS Act

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The Biden administration is shoring up its CHIPS Act funding agreements before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. Trump has previously disparaged the CHIPS Act and called for higher tariffs instead of subsidies to incentivize companies to build semiconductor factories. What would be the future of TSMC under the Trump administration? See the full story here. …

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