Four Palestinian high school friends are heading to California this week to pitch their mobile app about fire prevention to Silicon Valley’s tech leaders, after winning a slot in the finals of a worldwide competition among more than 19,000 teenage girls. For the 11th graders from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, …
Nina Tomasieski logs on to Twitter before the sun rises. Seated at her dining room table with a nearby TV constantly tuned to Fox News, the 70-year-old grandmother spends up to 14 hours a day tweeting the praises of President Trump and his political allies, particularly those on the ballot …
A new era in American spaceflight was unveiled Friday, with NASA presenting the flight crews that will carry out the first test flights and operational missions aboard commercial spacecraft to be launched from U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttle’s retirement in 2011. The test flights of …
Remembering to take medications can be challenging for some people. But one day an implant may replace medications that need to be taken orally in certain cases. One lab in Houston is developing refillable implants placed under the skin to potentially deliver life-saving medicine at a low cost for various …
A Pakistani engineer has designed a system to help developing countries avoid fuel imports by making ethanol with the millions of tons of straw that are wasted each year. Faith Lapidus reports. …
The U.S. “remains deeply concerned with China’s long-standing restrictions on freedom of expression online,” a State Department official said Thursday, reacting to Google’s reported plan to relaunch its search engine in China. “We strongly object to all efforts by China to force U.S. companies to block or censor online content …
Apple made history Thursday when it became the first publicly listed U.S. company to be valued at $1 trillion. The tech giant’s share price climbed well over 2 percent in mid-session trading, boosting it about 9 percent higher since Tuesday, when it announced better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and a buyback of …
One day after Facebook shut down 32 fake social media accounts that spewed politically divisive messages, U.S. lawmakers were warned that Russian efforts to confuse and polarize the American people are as robust and pernicious as ever. VOA Senate correspondent Michael Bowman reports both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are concerned. …
The U.S. Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the U.S. military. The legislation, part of the Pentagon’s spending bill, was drafted after a Reuters …
A little-known dispute over 3D-printed guns has morphed into a national legal debate in the last week, drawing attention to a technology that seems a bit of sci-fi fantasy and — to gun-control advocates — a dangerous way for criminals to get their hands on firearms that are easy to …
3-D printers are being used extensively in industry, research, teaching and hobbies, printing with metal, plastic and even edible material such as dough. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are experimenting with another kind of 3-D printing — with yarn. VOA’s George Putic reports. …
Google declined Wednesday to confirm reports that it plans to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, where its main search platform was previously blocked, along with its YouTube video platform. “We provide a number of mobile apps in China … [to] help Chinese developers, and have made significant …
How long does it take a robotic hand to learn to juggle a cube? About 100 years, give or take. That’s how much virtual computing time it took researchers at OpenAI, the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab funded by Elon Musk and others, to train its disembodied hand. The team paid …
Efforts to influence U.S. voters ahead of the 2018 midterm elections in November appear to be well underway, though private companies and government officials are hesitant to say who, exactly, is behind the recently discovered campaigns. Facebook announced Tuesday it had shut down 32 Facebook and Instagram accounts because they …
As tech giants expand in San Francisco, homelessness and job displacement for locals continues to rise. Deana Mitchell explores one program, created by a formerly homeless man, that’s helping to merge the two worlds for local job seekers. …
Satellites and drones are driving efforts by Indian states to map informal settlements in order to speed up the process of delivering services and land titles, officials said. The eastern state of Odisha aims to give titles to 200,000 households in urban slums and those on the outskirts of cities …
America’s dream of space exploration took its first official step 60 years ago Sunday when President Dwight Eisenhower signed a law authorizing the formation of NASA – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Although humanity had been staring at the stars and wondering since they were living in caves, it …
The U.K. government should increase oversight of social media like Facebook and election campaigns to protect democracy in the digital age, a parliamentary committee has recommended in a scathing report on fake news, data misuse and interference by Russia. The interim report by the House of Commons’ media committee, to …
A sleek futuristic train that travels through a special tunnel and covers the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes. This was the dream of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX in 2013. And every year he’s getting closer to making that dream a reality. Late July …
Twitter’s share price fell more than 20 percent Friday after the social media giant reported a drop in active users. Twitter said it had 335 million monthly users in the second quarter of the year, which was down a million from the amount of monthly users in the first quarter …
Facebook said it had deleted hundreds of offensive posts since a law banning online hate speech came into force in Germany at the start of the year that foresees fines of up to 50 million euros ($58 million) for failure to comply. The social network received 1,704 complaints under the …
The Latest on the aftermath of Facebook’s release of user growth and expectations for the company ahead (all times local): 4:50 p.m. The 19 percent loss in Facebook’s stock chopped $119 billion off its market value. It was the company’s worst trading day since going public in 2012, and among …
Social media giant Facebook, which has weathered storms about privacy and data protection, is now looking at cooler growth following a years-long breakneck pace. Shares in Facebook plummeted 19 percent to close at $176.26 Thursday, wiping out $100 billion. It was believed to be the worst ever single-day evaporation of market value …
Google launched a network of free Wi-Fi hotspots in Nigeria on Thursday, part of its effort to increase its presence in Africa’s most populous nation. The U.S. technology firm, owned by Alphabet Inc, has partnered with Nigerian fiber cable network provider 21st Century to provide its public Wi-Fi service, Google …
Facebook shares dived nearly 20 percent early Thursday after it signaled it expects weaker growth, pushing the Nasdaq decisively lower. About 25 minutes into trading, the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index was at 7,840.20, down 1.2 percent, falling from Wednesday’s record close. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6 percent to …
Video games are so popular that one US company is betting that it can lure players to leave the comforts of gaming at home and travel to local arenas to play for bragging rights and maybe even some cash. Michelle Quinn reports. …