Tech

Japan's 'flying car' gets off ground, with a person aboard August 30, Tokyo (AP) — The decades-old dream of zipping around in the sky as simply as driving on highways may be becoming less illusory. Japan’s SkyDrive Inc., among the myriads of “flying car” projects around the world, has carried out a successful though modest test flight with one person...

August 27 (AFP) - Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and widespread school closures, at least one-third of students affected around the world lack access to virtual education, according to a UN study released Wednesday. In all, an estimated 463 million children lack the equipment or electronic access to pursue distance learning, said the report from UNICEF. "The sheer number of children...

Bengaluru, India, August 26 (Reuters) - On June 9, an Indian health education minister posted an infographic on Twitter showing COVID-19 infections and deaths in the city of Bengaluru were running about half the rate in New Zealand, a country acclaimed globally for reining in the disease. The city — which has more than double the population of New Zealand...

August 14 (CNET) - As I write this, the precious metals and fossil fuels used to create and power the server farms and other infrastructure that will eventually blast these words onto your retinas are being converted to information. Eventually all those digital bits will actually outnumber all the atoms on Earth, according to one theoretical physicist. "We are literally...

August 10 (BBC) - Twitter has approached TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to express an interest in buying its US operations, according to sources. Video-sharing platform TikTok has been at the centre of fierce debate in recent weeks and takeover talk. Last week US Donald Trump ordered firms to stop doing business with TikTok within 45 days over security concerns. Tech...

August 8 (AFP) - The head of Russia's space agency said Friday that Roscosmos wants to return to Venus and bring back soil samples and build spacecraft that will surpass Elon Musk's rockets. Last week America's first crewed spaceship to fly to the International Space Station in nearly a decade returned safely to Earth, splashing down in the Gulf of...

Washington, August 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday unveiled sweeping bans on U.S. transactions with China’s ByteDance, owner of video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent, operator of messenger app WeChat, in a major escalation of tensions with Beijing. The executive orders, which go into effect in 45 days, come after the Trump administration said this week it was...

August 6 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Wednesday took down a post by U.S. President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus. The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. “This video...

Shanghai, August 4 (Reuters) - China will not accept the “theft” of a Chinese technology company and is able to respond to Washington’s move to push ByteDance to sell short-video app TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft, the China Daily newspaper said on Tuesday. The United States’ “bullying” of Chinese tech companies was a consequence of Washington’s zero-sum vision of “American...

August 2 (Sky News) - Chinese video-sharing app TikTok has responded to Donald Trump's threat of a US ban by declaring: "We're not planning on going anywhere." In a video aimed at the app's supporters, TikTok spokesperson Vanessa Pappas said it was "here for the long run" and called people to "stand for TikTok". It followed a suggestion from the...