Technology

LONDON: Britain’s main opposition Labour party said on Sunday it has joined a Facebook advertising boycott over allegations that the social network has failed to sufficiently curb hateful content. Hundreds of advertisers, including big-name consumer brands, have suspended advertising with the social media giant as part of the #StopHateForProfit” campaign. “All MPs in the Labour party use Facebook to get …

Thai researchers plan to begin human trials of a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus in November and are preparing 10,000 doses, a senior official said on Sunday, aiming for a vaccine that could be ready for use by late next year. Following favourable results in trials on primates, the next step is to manufacture doses for human trials, said …

SpaceX on Saturday delayed the launch of a rocket due to take 57 mini-satellites into space as part of plan to build an orbiting, global broadband internet system. The company tweeted that it was postponing the 10th Starlink mission “to allow more time for checkouts.” It said it was working to identify a new launch window. The mission had been …

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Friday said it suspended more than 50 white nationalist accounts for violating policies against violent extremism. “The accounts in question were suspended for violating our policies in relation to violent extremism,” a Twitter spokesman said, confirming a report by NBC News. The move came days after release of a report by nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and …

In the span of a few hours on Friday, Amazon banned and then unbanned the TikTok video-sharing app from employee mobile devices, calling the move a mistake. It was not immediately clear what led to the initial ban by Amazon. One person familiar with the matter said senior Amazon executives were unaware of the request to delete TikTok from employee …

CHICAGO: The coronavirus pandemic has exposed a clash among medical experts over disease transmission that stretches back nearly a century – to the very origins of germ theory. The Geneva-based World Health Organization acknowledged this week that the novel coronavirus can spread through tiny droplets floating in the air, a nod to more than 200 experts in aerosol science who …

LUXEMBOURG: YouTube is not obliged to reveal private information on the identity of people posting illegal content on its platform, an EU court ruled on Thursday. In a decision welcomed by the Google-owned video player, only the uploader’s postal address can be communicated, but not their email address, IP address or telephone number. Users of the platform had put two …

BARINGO: Alphabet Inc began offering the world’s first commercial high-speed internet using balloons to villagers in remote regions of Kenya’s Rift Valley on Wednesday. The service is run by Loon, a unit of Google’s parent Alphabet, and Telkom Kenya, the East African nation’s third largest telecoms operator. “Kenya is the first country … to have base stations high up in …

SAN FRANCISCO: Face­b­ook has made a series of decisions that undermined civil rights, including allowing posts from President Donald Trump that violate the values of the leading social network, an independent audit report said on Wednesday. The audit commissioned by Facebook in 2018 found the California giant had taken “important steps forward in building a long-term civil rights accountability structure” …

The world’s largest vaccine-maker GSK has put its vaccine booster technology to work in a potential new COVID-19 shot, to be developed with a Canadian biopharmaceutical company backed by tobacco company Philip Morris. Rather than developing its own vaccine in the global race to combat the pandemic, GSK has instead focused on contributing its adjuvant technology to at least seven …