19 June 2019 The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has arrested a leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s (PML-N) youth wing for uploading hateful content against state departments on social media

The crime wing in-charge Mr. Iqbal while talking to a private news agency said that Waleed Butt who was previously the president of the PML-N’s youth wing in Gujranwala was posting hateful content in social media against the state institutions of Pakistan. He further added, “Butt had used inappropriate language against the judiciary, army officers and Prime Minister Imran Khan”. A first information report (FIR) against Butt was registered at the sub-circle of the FIA Cyber Crime Circle in Gujranwala on Monday, on the complaint of a local citizen named Ameer Hamza. The FIR was registered under Sections 11 and 20 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (Peca). This cybercrime law had faced a massive criticism by civil rights campaigners and was termed as ‘draconian’ when the law was passed by the Nawaz Sharif-led PML-N government. Nokia, Ericsson and SK Telecom have all teamed up to work on 6G

While 5G is primed to have an immense impact on the way we work and stay connected, it is bound to be surpassed by the next big thing: 6G. And what’s more, three of the biggest names in the telecom industry have already decided to collaborate on it. Scandinavian telecom vendors Nokia and Ericsson have reportedly entered into a partnership with South Korean company SK Telecom (SKT) to work on research and development for 6G. As one of the top telecom operators in the world and also the first to switch on a commercial 5G network, SKT clearly hopes to stay ahead of the curve and pioneer the future of connectivity technology. A hacker conference speaker has been removed over his abortion views

A US politician has been removed from the list of speakers at the Black Hat hacker conference following protests over his views and voting record. Republican Will Hurd was due to be a keynote speaker at the high-profile conference in Las Vegas in August. His inclusion prompted protests and threats of a boycott from some ethical hackers due to attend the conference. The protests centred around his anti-abortion stance and his wider voting record. ———————————————————————————————————————— 18 June 2019 Facebook is going to unveil a plan to bring cryptocurrency payments into the mainstream today

The world’s biggest social network is expected to outline details of a virtual currency launching next year that it hopes will avoid the rollercoaster volatility associated with “blockchain” technologies such as bitcoin. Facebook is setting up a consortium called “Libra” which, according to the Wall Street Journal , has been joined by more than a dozen companies including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber. The companies, along with venture capitalists and telecommunications firms, will reportedly invest around $10 million each into the consortium. WhatsApp is threatening to take legal action against spammers

The world’s largest messaging app with a user base of over 1.5 billion, WhatsApp has been facing problems like spamming or bulk messaging for spreading fake news and selling products for quite a while now. WhatsApp says no more. The Facebook-owned company will now take legal action against users who send too many messages. WhatsApp has already mentioned these rules when a user agrees with the Terms & conditions of the service. WhatsApp users are barred from contravening those rules according to an agreement they signed and now the company has pledged to pursue other punishments, too. Samsung says that it’s TVs should be regularly virus-checked

A how-to video on the Samsung Support USA Twitter account demonstrates the more than a dozen remote-control button presses required to access the sub-menu needed to activate the check. It suggested users should carry out the process “every few weeks” to “prevent malicious software attacks”. The suggestion surprised cyber-security specialists, who said the public would be unlikely to go to the trouble.
———————————————————————————————————————— 16 June 2019 Twitter has banned state-backed propaganda accounts from Iran, Russia, Spain and Venezuela

The US platform said it had taken the material off its network, but would make it available to researchers and investigators studying online threats. Tech firms have been accused of allowing political propagandists to use social media to hijack elections, poison online debate and smear their opponents. But Twitter, in a blog post by head of site integrity Yoel Roth, said “transparency is core to our mission” and vowed to fight “misleading, deceptive, and spammy behaviour”.
Selena Gomez says thats Instagram ‘would make me depressed’

Selena Gomez says she deleted Instagram from her phone because it made her feel “depressed”. Speaking ahead of the release of her new film, she said social media negatively affected her self-esteem. The 26-year-old told Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest, “it would make me feel not good about myself, and look at my body differently”.The singer added that despite having more than 152m Instagram followers, she doesn’t go on it much. Google plans to roll out a tool that lets Android users view moving animals in augmented reality through their device’s camera

It currently only works with some animals but could be expanded to include objects and brands in future. It was unveiled last month at the firm’s annual event for developers who create apps for Android devices.Devices which currently support it include specific models by Huawei, Samsung, LG and One Plus. Apple also supports a wide range of Augmented Reality applications and while some iPhone users appear to be able to access this feature, others cannot.
———————————————————————————————————————— 15 June 2019 Students from Iqra University have designed electricity generating tiles

The device produces electricity when you walk on it, a concept of energy harvesting using wood and artificial glass. The device converts kinetic energy into electricity and according to the students, if the tiles are installed in an area of 300 meters, they can generate enough electricity to charge 7 to 8 batteries of UPS in just 2 hours. While the same project has been done in foreign countries, like the SolarCityproject by Elon Musk which integrates solar panels within roof tiles to generate electricity and then we have the Pavegan system which integrates the same concept used by these students on a commercial level. A Pakistani entrepreneur has won the GIST Tech-I Award for “Outstanding Entrepreneur from an Emerging Economy”

Syed Abrar, Founder of Azaad Health, a Pakistan based healthcare startup, has won the award for “Outstanding Entrepreneur from an Emerging Economy” at U.S. Department of State’s GIST Catalyst Competition 2019 hosted at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in The Hague, Netherlands, June 3-5. Abrar was one of the 30 finalists at the competition, representing 18 different countries, competing in five categories of Food and Agriculture, Connectivity, Energy, Health, and Water.
Huawei has delayed the launch of the Mate X folding handset until September, having originally planned to launch it this summer

The firm said it wanted to conduct extra tests following screen problems reported by early reviewers of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold. Both firms had unveiled the devices in February but Huawei said it now wanted to be “cautious”. Samsung currently has no release date for the Fold. Huawei confirmed to the BBC that the Mate X is expected to launch in September 2019. “We don’t want to launch a product to destroy our reputation,” it told the media. “The Mate X was always going to come later than Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, but the Korean phone-maker’s problems have certainly given Huawei more breathing space,” said Ben Wood from CCS Insight.
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14 June 2019
Facebook to buy stake in Indian e-commerce start-up Meesho

Facebook is buying a stake in Indian e-commerce start-up Meesho, Ajit Mohan, the head of the United States tech giant’s Indian business said on Thursday, looking to deepen its reach in one of the world’s biggest internet markets. Meesho, a digital platform on which re-sellers of everything from jewellery to mobile phones reach prospective customers via social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, already has about two million entrepreneurs focused on India’s smaller towns and cities, the vice-president and managing director at Facebook India told Reuters . India plans to establish its own “very small” space station in the next decade

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K. Sivan said on Thursday that the ambitious project would follow a successful launch of a manned space flight scheduled by 2022. “Our space station is going to be very small… useful to carry out experiments,” Sivan told reporters in New Delhi. “We are not having a big plan of sending humans on tourism and other things,” he added. A space station is capable of hosting crew members for years on end, and provides facilities for experiments and support vehicles to dock. The Chinese ambassador has warned Britain over blocking Huawei

China’s Ambassador to London Liu Xiaoming warned the British government that if Huawei is blocked from developing 5G networks then it will hurt Chinese trade and investment relationship with the United Kingdom (UK). “It will send a very bad message not only to Huawei but also to Chinese businesses,” Ambassador Liu Xiaoming told the BBC . He added that blocking Huawei would lead to “bad effects not only on trade but also on investment.”
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13 June 2019
Huawei cancels laptop launch because of US trade blacklist

Huawei has ditched a product launch for the first time since the US placed it on a trade blacklist. It was reported that the Chinese tech firm had intended to unveil a new laptop as early as this week. However, its consumer device chief Richard Yu told CNBC that it had become”unable to supply the PC”. “[It’s] unfortunate,” he added via a WeChat message to the business news network. He added that the product itself might have to be scrapped. “[It] depends on how long the Entity List will be there,” he wrote.
Chernobyl selfies lead to warning from show’s writer

Some people visiting the site in Ukraine, where the world’s worst nuclear accident happened in 1986 , have been taking pictures smiling at the abandoned power plant – one person posted a semi-naked picture. Craig Mazin said it’s “wonderful” that a “wave” of people have been visiting. But he’s asked people to remember “that a terrible tragedy occurred there”. Estimates of the number of people affected vary hugely – the Chernobyl Forum says fewer than 50 died following exposure to radiation, but there could eventually be up to 9,000 deaths linked to the disaster. Uber picks Melbourne as first international test site for flying taxi service

Uber Technologies said it will use Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, as the first international test site for the group’s planned flying taxi service. The United States ride sharing firm had previously chosen Dubai as the first test site outside the US for its UberAIR service but reopened its request for proposals last month after launch delays in the Middle Eastern city.
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12 June 2019
Data of around 100,000 passengers compromised through cyber-attack on US border patrol database

A hacker named “Boris Bullet-Dodger” stole the information of around 100,000 passengers through a cyber-attack on the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). A US CBP official said on Monday that one their subcontractors were under a “malicious cyber attack” which exposed images of passengers coming in and out of the country. The authorities came to know about the breach on May 31. According to a CBP spokesperson, the compromised data including photos of travelers faces and licenses plates were transferred to the subcontractor’s network without receiving any authorization from the authorities. However, the authorities claim that the stolen data did not contain any identifying information of the passengers and that the passport and travel documents are also safe. Amazon insists that Human staff will always be needed

The company said it had deployed more than 200,000 warehouse robots working in around 50 of its locations. But despite Amazon investing heavily in advanced robotics, Tye Brady said the firm’s centres would never reach the point where they could be fully automated. “Not at all. One ounce of my body just doesn’t see that,” he said. “The way that I think about this is a symphony of humans and machines working together, you need both. “The challenge that we have in front of us is how do we smartly design our machines to extend human capability.” Ocado has invested £17m in developing so-called “vertical” farms

The firm, which delivers food bought online from Waitrose, is planning to grow herbs and leafy greens next to its distribution centres. It has made two investments in indoor farming. One is a joint venture with 80 Acres, a US vertical farm business, and Priva, a Dutch firm that provides climate control technology. It has also bought a stake in Jones Food in Scunthorpe. Ocado’s chief executive Tim Steiner said he wanted vegetables grown on the farms to be delivered to kitchens within an hour of being picked. “We believe that our investments today in vertical farming will allow us to address fundamental consumer concerns on freshness and sustainability, and build on new technologies that will revolutionise the way customers access fresh produce,” he said.
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11 June 2019
China is creating a system to protect its technology, as the US continues to restrict the access of Chinese companies to American technology

The People’s Daily newspaper said on Sunday that the system would build a strong firewall to strengthen the nation’s ability to innovate and to accelerate the development of key technologies. “China … will never allow certain countries to use China’s technology to contain China’s development and suppress Chinese enterprises,” the main paper of the ruling Communist Party said, without directly referring to the United States. No details have been released about what China is calling a national technological security management list. The plan was announced on Saturday evening in a brief three-paragraph dispatch by the official Xinhua news agency. A man who was involved in a major hack attack of telecoms firm TalkTalk has been sentenced to four years in prison

Daniel Kelley, 22, from Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, pleaded guilty in 2016 to 11 charges including involvement in the attack where the personal data of more than 150,000 customers was stolen. Kelley will serve his sentence in a young offenders institution. He was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Monday. Email addresses and bank details were taken after TalkTalk’s website was breached in 2015, with the total cost to the company from multiple hackers estimated at £77m. Kelley’s hacking offences also involved half a dozen other organisations, including a Welsh further education college, Coleg Sir Gar, where he was a student. He hacked the college “out of spite” before targeting companies in Canada, Australia and the UK – including TalkTalk which has four million customers. The 22-year-old has Asperger’s syndrome and has suffered from depression and extreme weight loss since he pleaded guilty to the 11 hacking-related offences in 2016, the court heard. Survey shows that internet users around the globe distrust social media companies, with 75% of those surveyed citing Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms as contributing to their lack of trust of the internet

While cyber criminals, cited by 81pc of those who distrust the internet, remained the leading source of distrust, a majority in all regions — 62pc globally — indicated that a lack of internet security was also a critical factor. In terms of the effects of user distrust, nearly half (49pc) of those surveyed who distrust the internet said their distrust had caused them to disclose less personal information online, while 40pc reported taking greater care to secure their devices and 39pc said they were using the internet more selectively. Conversely, only a small percentage of people reported making use of more sophisticated tools — such as using more encryption (19pc) or using technical tools like Tor (The Onion Router) or virtual private networks (VPNs) (12pc) — to protect themselves online. Eight out of 10 (78pc) people surveyed are concerned about their online privacy, with over half (53pc) more concerned than they were a year ago, marking the fifth year in a row that a majority of those surveyed say they feel more concerned about their online privacy than the previous year.
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10 June 2019
US lawmakers believe that Boeing delayed a fix to the 737 Max safety alert, which may have caused two plane crashes

In a letter to Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration and a Boeing subcontractor, Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) said they’d obtained information suggesting that even though the plane maker knew the safety alert wasn’t working when it began 737 Max deliveries in 2017, it decided to wait until 2020 to implement a fix. The warning light tells flight crews when an angle-of-attack sensor is giving false readings. The faulty sensor was linked to both the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October and the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March. As part of an ongoing investigation of the crashes by the House transportation committee, which DeFazio chairs, the lawmakers are asking Boeing to disclose when the company knew the light was defective and when it informed airlines.
Microsoft has deleted a database of 10 million images which was being used to train facial recognition systems

The database was released in 2016 and was built of online images of 100,000 well-known people.The database is believed to have been used to train a system operated by police forces and the military. The deletion comes after Microsoft called on US politicians to do a better job of regulating recognition systems. Microsoft told the Finance Times the database was no longer available, because the person who curated it had now left the company. Last year Microsoft President Brad Smith asked the US Congress to take on the task of regulating the use of facial recognition systems because they had “broad societal ramifications and potential for abuse”. More recently, Microsoft rejected a request from police in California to use its face-spotting systems in body cameras and cars. Animal rights activist confronts Jeff Bezos on stage due to one of Amazon’s suppliers’ treatment of their chickens

Priya Sawhney evaded event security, as well as some of Mr Bezos’ personal detail, which costs a reported $1.6m (£1.25m) per year. “Jeff, you are the richest man on the planet,” Ms Sawhney said, holding a flower. “You can help the animals.” Mr Bezos and Jenny Freshwater, another Amazon executive on stage at the time, sat calmly as the woman was removed. The Direct Action Everywhere animal rights group said it was protesting against what it claims is poor treatment of chickens at a farm in Petaluma Poultry, a California farm that supplies chicken and turkey to Amazon and others. “Animal abuse is the crime here, not animal rescue,” Ms Sawhney said in a press release published quickly after the incident. ————————————————————————————————————————
9 June 2019
Facebook has suspended app pre-installs on Huawei phones

Facebook Inc is no longer allowing pre-installation of its apps on Huawei phones, the latest blow for the Chinese tech giant as it struggles to keep its business afloat in the face of a US ban on its purchase of American parts and software. Customers who already have Huawei phones will still be able to use its apps and receive updates, Facebook told Reuters. But new Huawei phones will no longer be able to have Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram apps pre-installed. Smartphone vendors often enter business deals to pre-install popular apps such as Facebook. Apps including Twitter and Booking.com also come pre-installed on Huawei phones in many markets. Twitter Inc declined to comment and Booking Holdings did not respond to a request. Top G20 finance officials agreed that there was a need to tax internet giants like Google and Facebook
