Norway is considering whether to join other western nations in excluding China’s Huawei Technologies from building part of the Nordic country’s new 5G telecommunications infrastructure, its justice minister said on Wednesday. The Norwegian government is currently discussing measures to reduce potential vulnerabilities in its telecoms industry ahead of the upgrade. State-controlled operator Telenor, which has 173 million subscribers across eight countries in Europe and Asia, signed its first major contract with Huawei in 2009, a deal that helped pave way for the Chinese firm’s global expansion. Telenor and competitor Telia currently use 4G Huawei equipment in Norway and are testing equipment from the Chinese company in their experimental 5G networks. “We share the same concerns as the United States and Britain and that is espionage on private and state actors in Norway,” Justice Minister Tor Mikkel Wara told Reuters on the sidelines of a business conference. “This question is high priority … we want to have this in place before we build the next round of the telecom network.” Asked whether there could be actions taken against Huawei specifically, Wara said: “Yes, we are considering the steps taken in other countries, that is part of it – the steps taken …

Cyberattacks on elections, public infrastructure and national security are increasingly being seen as the new normal, according to a global survey on cybersecurity. And in some of the world’s largest economies, people think their governments are not prepared. The survey of more than 27,000 people across 26 countries conducted by the Pew Research Center found less than half of the respondents, 47 percent, believed their countries are ready to handle a major cyber incident. A median of 74 percent thought it was likely national security information would be accessed.  Sixty-nine percent said they expected public infrastructure to be damaged. And 61 percent expected cyberattacks targeting their country’s elections. Israel and Russia ranked as among the most confident populations, with more than two-thirds of survey-takers in those countries saying their governments are prepared for a major cyber incident. The three sub-Saharan African countries in the survey — Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa — were generally optimistic, with more than half of those polled saying their nations were prepared for a cyber incident. Brazil and Argentina were the least confident, with just nine percent of Argentineans responding their government was prepared. In key economies such as Germany and Japan, more than half …

The CES 2019 gadget show opened its doors Tuesday, with tech companies from giants to tiny startups showing off their latest products and services. In recent years, CES’s influence has declined as Apple, Google and other major companies throw their own events to launch new wares. Still, more than 180,000 people from about 150 countries are expected to attend. The sprawling event spans 11 official venues, plus scores of unofficial ones throughout Las Vegas. The four-day show in Las Vegas opened after two days of media previews.  Here are the latest findings and observations from Associated Press reporters on the ground. Cutting through the babel Google has transformed CES into a Disney-like theme park – complete with singing animatronic macarons – to showcase new features of its voice-enabled digital assistant. This includes an “interpreter mode” that enables some of Google’s smart home devices to work as a translator. It’s being piloted at a hotel concierge desk near the Las Vegas tech conference and rolls out to consumer devices in several weeks.  Voice assistants are getting pretty good at translating speech into text, but it’s a thornier challenge in artificial intelligence to enable real-time translation across different languages. Google’s new feature …

Facebook has violated Vietnam’s new cybersecurity law by allowing users to post anti-government comments on the platform, state media said on Wednesday, days after the controversial legislation took effect in the communist-ruled country. Despite economic reforms and increasing openness to social change, Vietnam’s Communist Party retains tight media censorship and does not tolerate dissent. “Facebook had reportedly not responded to a request to remove fan pages provoking activities against the state,” the official Vietnam News Agency said, citing the Ministry of Information and Communication. In a statement, a Facebook spokeswoman said, “We have a clear process for governments to report illegal content to us, and we review all these requests against our terms of service and local law.” She did not elaborate. The ministry said Facebook also allowed personal accounts to upload posts containing “slanderous” content, anti-government sentiment and defamation of individuals and organizations, the agency added. “This content had been found to seriously violate Vietnam’s Law on cybersecurity” and government regulations on the management, provision and use of internet services, it quoted the ministry as saying. Global technology companies and rights groups have earlier said the cybersecurity law, which took effect on Jan. 1 and includes requirements for technology …

The companies founded by blacksmith John Deere and candle-and-soap-making duo Procter & Gamble may not be the hip purveyors of new technology they were in 1837. But they’re first-time exhibitors at this year’s CES gadget show, along with other unlikely newcomers such as missile-maker Raytheon, outdoorsy retailer The North Face and the 115-year-old motorcycling icon Harley-Davidson. The four-day consumer-electronics show opens Tuesday with some 4,500 companies exhibiting products and services and more than 180,000 people expected to attend. It’s the place startups and established tech giants alike go to unveil everything from utilitarian apps to splashy devices. So what are these legacy companies doing here? “Every company today is a technology company,” said Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes CES. Shapiro said many companies already send executives to Las Vegas each January to gauge trends, so it’s not surprising that they eventually unveil their own new technology as well. It’s also part of a more fundamental economic shift as consumers increasingly expect to buy not just goods and services, but a personal experience, which often skews digital, said Dipanjan Chatterjee, a brand analyst at Forrester Research. “We’re still doing old-fashioned things: Ordering clothes, buying detergent, getting …

Hundreds of thousands of visitors will attend the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, hoping to catch a glimpse of the future.  And the future, it turns out, is going to be chatty and connected. Attendees will see more voice-activated assistants, such as the Amazon Alexa speaker, but in many more gadgets, cars and appliances. And these devices will be connected, gathering data about users and offering customized services.  These new products represent a shift in the tech industry. Over the past 30 years, tech firms have focused on connecting people. Now they are connecting things, said Steve Koenig, vice president of research at the Consumer Technology Association.  The age of consumer data  “We are coming to the end of the connected age,” Koenig said. “We are fast approaching the data age of consumer technology.”  Not surprisingly, online privacy and data security will continue to be main concerns in 2019, he added.  Two of the biggest drivers of tech today are smart speakers and video doorbells with “intelligent imaging” that can identify a family member’s face versus a stranger’s, Koenig said.  Smart speakers are expected to grow 7 percent in revenue in the U.S. in 2019, according to …

More than 4,000 exhibitors from 155 countries are in Las Vegas this week for the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the year’s biggest conventions for companies to show off their latest technology. Michelle Quinn got a look at some of the products that are hoping to make a splash. …

One of China’s major cities has reached an environmental milestone: an almost entirely electric-powered taxi fleet. The high-tech hub of Shenzhen in southern China announced at the start of this year that 99 percent of the 21,689 taxis operating in the city were electric. Last year, it still had 7,500 gasoline-powered taxis on the roads. A few can still be found, but electric ones far outnumber them. The metropolis of 12.5 million is the second to achieve this feat in China and the largest. The northern China city of Taiyuan, with a population of 4.3 million, has had only electric taxis since 2016. Shenzhen “has taken the lead among major Chinese cities,” said Cui Dongshu, the secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association. Shenzhen’s bus fleet has been all-electric since 2017. It’s one of 13 pilot cities promoting alternative-energy public transport to cut smog and develop the alternative energy industry, the Shenzhen Municipality Transport Committee said.  Beijing and other Chinese cities are served by legions of electric scooters, bicycles and three-wheeled delivery vehicles that help reduce emissions – and sometimes startle pedestrians with their near-silent operation.  Shenzhen’s 20,000-plus electric taxis will reduce carbon emissions by about 850,000 tons a year, …

One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you change channels. Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command. With every additional smart device in your home, companies are able to gather more details about your daily life. Some of that can be used to help advertisers target you — more precisely than they could with just the smartphone you carry. “It’s decentralized surveillance,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based digital privacy advocate. “We’re living in a world where we’re tethered to some online service stealthily gathering our information.” Yet consumers seem to be welcoming these devices. The research firm IDC projects that 1.3 billion smart devices will ship worldwide in 2022, twice as many as 2018. Companies say they are building these products not for snooping but for convenience, although Amazon, Google and other partners enabling the intelligence can …

Tesla broke ground Monday on a new factory for its electric cars in China, the first of its factories to be located outside the United States. Chief Executive Elon Musk appeared at a ceremony alongside local officials on the outskirts of Shanghai to mark the start of the project. He said the goal is to finish initial construction by summer and start production by the end of the year. Tesla will build its Model 3 vehicles at the site and says it hopes to eventually have a production capacity of 500,000 vehicles per year. The factory is wholly owned by Tesla, a departure from usual Chinese policy for foreign businesses. The new factory comes as the United States and China negotiate trade issues that have led each side to impose higher tariffs on the other’s goods, including the automotive sector. By having a factory in China, Tesla will not have to worry about consumers there facing higher prices on cars imported from the United States. …

The trade group behind the Consumer Electronics Show set to start the Tuesday forecast that US gadget love will grow despite trust and privacy issues hammering the tech world. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) predicted that US retail revenue in the sector would climb to a record high $398 billion this year. “There are so many cool things happening in the consumer electronics industry right now,” said CTA vice president of market research Steve Koenig. “We are fast approaching a new era of consumer technology.” Trends gaining momentum, and expected to be on display on the CES show floor, included super high resolution 8K televisions; blazingly-fast 5G wireless internet, and virtual aides such as Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa woven into devices of all kinds. The CTA forecast revenue growth in the US for smart phones, speakers, homes and watches along with televisions, drones, ‘in-vehicle tech,’ and streaming services. Amid trade wars, geopolitical tensions and a decline in public trust, the technology sector is seeking to put its problems aside with CES, the annual extravaganza showcasing futuristic innovations. The January 8-11 Las Vegas trade event offers a glimpse into new products and services designed to make people’s lives easier, fun …

Every January, tech insiders head to Las Vegas, Nevada where the biggest tech companies show off their latest devices at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Smaller start-ups also vie for attention at one of the largest tech gatherings of the year. Tina Trinh meets with a Brooklyn startup as they prepare to head west. …

Thousands of Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, now have safe drinking water thanks to a combination of green technology and sunlight. Cox’s Bazar has plenty of refugees. More than 900,000. Most have arrived in Bangladesh since August 2017, when violence and persecution by the Myanmar military triggered a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees.   The refugees are living in squalid conditions across 36 different locations in Cox’s Bazar. Water is scarce in most locations. But sunshine is plentiful. Over the past six months, the U.N. refugee agency and partners have been putting into operation solar-powered safe water systems. The UNHCR reports the first five systems are now running at full capacity. It says the new safe water systems run entirely on electricity generated through solar panels. UNHCR spokesman, Andrej Mahecic, says this new network is providing safe water to more than 40,000 refugees.  “Using the solar energy has allowed the humanitarian community to reduce the energy costs and emissions,” said Mahecic. “So, there is a clear environmental impact of this. Chlorination is also a life-saver in refugee sites of this scale. The recent tests revealed that most contamination of drinking water occurs during collection, transport and storage at the …

People relied on the most popular mobile weather app to track forecasts that determined whether they chose jeans over shorts and packed a parka or umbrella, but its owners used it to track their every step and profit off that information, Los Angeles prosecutors said Friday.  The operator of The Weather Channel mobile app misled users who agreed to share their location information in exchange for personalized forecasts and alerts, and they instead unwittingly surrendered personal privacy when the company sold their data to third parties, City Attorney Michael Feuer said.   Feuer sued the app’s operator in Los Angeles County Superior Court to stop the practice. He said 80 percent of users agreed to allow access to their locations because disclosures on how the app uses geolocation data were buried within a 10,000-word privacy policy and not revealed when they downloaded the app. “Think how Orwellian it feels to live in a world where a private company is tracking potentially every place you go, every minute of every day,” Feuer said. “If you want to sacrifice to that company that information, you sure ought to be doing it with clear advanced notice of what’s at stake.”  App defends practices …

The Chinese Jade Rabbit 2 rover is making tracks on the soft, snowlike surface of the far side of the moon. The rover drove off its lander’s ramp and onto the lunar surface late Thursday, about 12 hours after the Chang’e-4 spacecraft made the first-ever landing on the moon’s far side. China’s space agency posted a photo online, showing tracks the rover left as it departed from the spacecraft. “It’s a small step for the rover, but one giant leap for the Chinese nation,’’ Wu Weiren, the chief designer of the Lunar Exploration Project, said on state broadcaster CCTV, adapting American astronaut Neil Alden Armstrong’s famous message “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind,” when he stepped onto the lunar surface July 20, 1969. “This giant leap is a decisive move for our exploration of space and the conquering of the universe,” Wu Weiren said. First to the far side The Jade Rabbit 2 rover has six individually powered wheels, so it can continue to operate even if one wheel fails. It can climb a 20-degree hill or an obstacle up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) tall. Its maximum speed is 200 meters per hour. …

Behind Apple’s disconcerting news of weak iPhone sales lies a more sobering truth: The tech industry has hit Peak Smartphone, a tipping point when everyone who can afford one already owns one and no breakthroughs are compelling them to upgrade as frequently as they once did. Some manufacturers have boosted prices to keep up profit, but Apple’s shortfall highlights the limits of that strategy. The company said demand for iPhones is waning and revenue for the last quarter of 2018 will fall well below projections, a decrease traced mainly to China. Apple’s shares dropped 10 percent Thursday on the news — its worst loss since 2013. The company shed $74.6 billion in market value, amid a broader sell-off among technology companies, which suffered their worst loss in seven years. Apple’s news is a “wake-up call for the industry,” said analyst Dan Ives of research firm Wedbush Securities. And it’s not just Apple. Demand has been lackluster across the board, Ives said. Samsung, long the leading seller of smartphones, has been hit even harder, as its phone shipments dropped 8 percent during the 12 months ending in September. “The smartphone industry is going through significant headwinds,” Ives said. “Smartphone makers used …

Forget vending machines, PepsiCo is testing a way to bring snacks directly to college students. The chip and beverage maker says it will start making deliveries with self-driving robots on Thursday at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Students will be able to order Baked Lay’s, SunChips or Bubly sparkling water on an app, and then meet the six-wheeled robot at more than 50 locations on campus. Other companies have been using self-driving vehicles to deliver food. Last month, supermarket operator Kroger announced it would start delivering groceries in a driverless vehicle from a store in Scottsdale, Arizona. The robots used at the University of the Pacific will move at speeds of up to 6 miles per hour, according to Robby Technologies, which makes the robots. Three workers on the campus will be refilling the robots with food and drinks and replacing the batteries with recharged ones when they go dead. At first three robots will be used, but then grow to a fleet of five over time. The robots, which weigh 80 pounds and are less than 3 feet tall, drive on their own and stop when someone is in front of it, Robby says. PepsiCo says …

A Chinese spacecraft Thursday made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon in the latest achievement for the country’s growing space program. The relatively unexplored far side of the moon faces away from Earth and is also known as the dark side. A photo taken by the lunar explorer Chang’e 4 at 11:40 a.m. and published online by the official Xinhua News Agency shows a small crater and a barren surface that appears to be illuminated by a light from the probe. Chang’e 4 touched down on the surface at 10:26 a.m., the China National Space Administration said. The landing was announced by state broadcaster China Central Television at the top of its noon news broadcast. Growing ambitions in space The landing highlights China’s growing ambitions as a space power. In 2013, Chang’e 3, the predecessor craft to the current mission, made the first moon landing since the then-Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976. The United States is the only other country that has carried out moon landings. The work of Chang’e 4, which is carrying a rover, includes carrying out astronomical observations and probing the structure and mineral composition of the terrain. “The far side of …

This year marks the 50th anniversary of mankind’s first steps on the moon, so it is fitting that there are a number of exciting projects pushing us back into space. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports on some of 2019’s biggest stories in space. …

Apple on Wednesday cut the revenue forecast for its latest quarter, citing fewer iPhone upgrades and weak sales in China, and its shares tumbled in after-hours trade.    The company forecast $84 billion in revenue for its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 29, which is below analysts’ estimate of $91.5 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Apple originally forecast revenue of between $89 billion and $93 billion.    “While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater China,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a letter to investors. “In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.” Wednesday was the first time that Apple issued a warning on its revenue guidance ahead of releasing quarterly results since the iPhone was launched in 2007.  Sharp drop   Apple shares, which had been halted ahead of the announcement, skidded 7.7 percent in after-hours trade, dragging the company’s market value below $700 billion.    A slew of brokerages reduced their first-quarter production estimates for iPhones after several component makers in …

Shares in Tesla dropped as much as 9 percent on Wednesday on worries of future profitability, after the electric car maker cut U.S. prices for all its vehicles to offset lower green tax credits, while falling short on quarterly deliveries of its mass-market Model 3 sedan. Analysts questioned whether the $2,000 price cut on all models signaled lowered demand in the United States, and ultimately whether the move would undermine nascent profitability at the Silicon Valley automaker, which has never posted an annual profit. “In our view, this move could suggest that what many bulls assume to be a substantial backlog … for Tesla may be less robust,” wrote Bank of America analyst John Murphy in a client note. Chief Executive Elon Musk, who has often set goals and deadlines that Tesla has failed to meet, surprised investors by delivering on his pledge to make Tesla profitable in the third quarter, for only the third time in its 15-year existence. But the company is unprofitable for the first nine months of 2018, and cash flow remains a concern for investors. Pressure to deliver on promise Musk has been under intense pressure to deliver on his promise of stabilizing production for …