United News of Bangladesh

Despite the Trump administration’s hopes, Apple is unlikely to begin producing iPhones in the United States, even with tariffs on Chinese-made goods now as high as 145%. Since launching the iPhone 18 years ago, Apple has relied heavily on its manufacturing base in China, where it built an intricate supply chain dating back to the 1990s. Moving production to the U.S. would require billions in investment, take years to establish, and significantly raise costs — potentially tripling the retail price of an iPhone and hurting demand for its flagship product. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives dismissed the idea, saying an iPhone currently selling for $1,000 could cost over $3,000 if produced in the U.S. He suggested the earliest Apple could feasibly make such a shift would be around 2028. “The price jump would be staggering,” he noted. Apple declined to comment on the matter. However, CEO Tim Cook may address the issue during the company’s earnings call on May 1. The tariffs, which have coincided with a 15% drop in Apple’s share price and a $500 billion loss in market value since April 2, are expected to be a major discussion point. Given the heavy dependence on overseas manufacturing, analysts expect Apple may eventually pass on some of the tariff-related costs to consumers. For now, Apple can afford to hold the line on prices thanks to its booming services business — which earned $96 billion last year and remains unaffected by the tariffs — according to Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee. While Apple pledged in February to invest $500 billion and hire 20,000 workers in the U.S. by 2028, none of that commitment includes domestic iPhone production. Instead, the company is focusing on AI infrastructure, including a data center in Houston. China, ASEAN media and think tanks urged to embrace AI, address its challenges White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to Apple’s investment as a sign of potential manufacturing in the U.S., saying, “If Apple didn’t think it was possible, they wouldn’t have invested so much.” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick echoed that belief, predicting that the tariffs would push assembly jobs to American soil. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook has long expressed doubts about the U.S. labor force’s readiness for iPhone manufacturing, citing a shortage of skilled tooling engineers. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields. In the U.S., I’m not sure we could fill a room,” Cook said during a 2017 event in China. Despite Trump's earlier attempts during his presidency to bring iPhone production to the U.S., his administration eventually exempted iPhones from the tariffs. During that period, Apple began diversifying its manufacturing by shifting some iPhone production to India and moving parts of other operations to Vietnam. In 2019, Trump toured a Texas plant assembling Mac computers — a facility actually opened under the Obama administration. He later took credit for the site, tweeting, “Today I opened a major Apple Manufacturing plant in Texas that will bring high paying jobs back to America.”

Ireland’s data protection authority has launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X, focusing on how it uses personal data from European users to train its AI chatbot, Grok. The Data Protection Commission announced Friday that it’s examining whether X legally processed publicly available user posts from European residents to help develop the Grok large language models (LLMs). “The goal of this inquiry is to assess if the personal data was lawfully used for training Grok’s LLMs in line with EU data protection rules,” the commission said in an online statement. Large language models are trained on massive datasets, including online content such as blogs, articles, and essays, to develop the capabilities of generative AI systems. Since X’s European headquarters is located in Dublin, the Irish commission serves as the lead regulator under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR gives regulators the authority to issue fines of up to €20 million or 4% of a company’s global annual revenue for serious breaches. X has not responded to a request for comment.          

Morocco's social security agency said troves of data were stolen from its systems in a cyberattack this week that resulted in personal information being leaked on the messaging app Telegram. The North African kingdom’s social security fund administers pensions and insurance benefits to millions of private sector workers, from assembly line laborers to corporate executives. It said in a statement Wednesday that preliminary investigations suggest the leak resulted from hackers bypassing its security systems, AP reports. The agency did not say who was thought to be responsible for the leak while also claiming that many of the documents posted were “misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete.” The hackers who posted the documents on Telegram said the attack was in response to alleged Moroccan “harassment” of Algeria on social media platforms, pledging additional cyberattacks if Algerian sites were targeted. Moroccan media have attributed the attack to Algerian hackers, describing it as an episode in a larger cyberwar between the two countries. Relations between Algeria and Morocco have recently deteriorated to historic lows. The countries have withdrawn their ambassadors, closed their embassies and respective airspaces. Algeria's support for the Polisario Front, a pro-independence movement fighting Morocco over the disputed Western Sahara, is among the roots of the tensions. A machine using ultrasound and AI can gauge the fattiness of a tuna fish Some of the leaked information touches on deeply sensitive issues in Morocco. Among the leaked documents is salary information that, if accurate, would reflect vast inequalities that continue to plague Morocco despite its strides in economic development. The trove includes unverified financial data on executives of state-owned companies, political parties, figures associated with the royal family's holding company and charity fund, and the Israeli liaison office in Rabat. Morocco's National Commission for the Protection of Personal Data said on Thursday that it stood ready to investigate complaints from people targeted in the leak. Mustapha Baitas, Morocco’s government spokesperson, linked the attack to what he said was growing support for Morocco in the conflict from the international community — something he said “disturbs the enemies of our country to the point of attempting to harm it through these hostile actions.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this week said he supported Morocco’s plan for the disputed territory, a statement Algeria criticized on Thursday. During his first term in office, President Donald Trump shifted Washington's longstanding position in 2020 to back Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory. President Joe Biden’s administration neither reversed nor openly supported the policy.

Seafood lovers know the fatty marbling is what makes tuna sashimi and sushi so tasty, so for the industry, it's the fish's level of fattiness that's used to judge its quality and pricing. Usually, several people assess how fatty a tuna is by cutting the tail with a giant saw-like knife, an operation that takes about 60 seconds per fish. But now a machine called Sonofai uses ultrasound waves to do the job in 12 seconds, operated by a person without prior knowledge of how to carve fish. Fujitsu, the Japanese company behind the technology, invited reporters this week for a demonstration of Sonofai, a word blended from “sono” referring to “sound,” “f” for Fujitsu, and “ai,” or artificial intelligence. The name refers to its components but also stands for “son of AI.” A conveyor belt transports a whole frozen tuna fish, about a meter (3 feet) in size, into a machine that beams ultrasound waves. Sensors pick up the waves to draw a zigzagging diagram on a screen to indicate the fish’s fattiness. Fatty meat absorbs fewer sound waves than lean meat and AI sorts real data from misleading “noise,” or irregularities. Trump's Social Media ‘Buy’ tip pays off as markets rally following tariff delay Hisashi Ishida, president of Sonofai, the startup behind the technology, who also heads Ishida Tec Co., which makes food-manufacturing equipment, says it’s safer, more sanitary and efficient. “Fatty fish tastes good, feels better on your tongue and is called ‘toro,’ ” he said. “Overseas needs are growing because sushi culture is now appreciated around the world.” Beef has a grading system for fat and expected flavor, but being able to gauge the quality of tuna is new, according to Hideto Okada, who oversees AI at Fujitsu. Sonofai uses the same technology as medical ultrasound scans where high-frequency inaudible sound waves are absorbed or bounced back to create video-like images of things that aren’t visible, like a fetus inside a mother’s womb. Unlike the CT scan or X-ray, it doesn’t use radiation, which can harm tissue. Chris Edwards, a medical doctor and professor at Queensland University of Technology, who trains sonographers, or health-care professionals who specialize in ultrasound, has studied how ultrasound can be used to see the fattiness of a human liver, linked to diabetes and other health problems. “They can look at one fish and compare it to another and say ‘Oh, that one’s definitely got more fat than that one,’” he told The Associated Press in an interview. But Sonofai won't be at your neighborhood sushi chef. Microsoft hits pause on some AI data centre projects, including $1b Ohio site Fish-processing outfits and fishing organizations are the likely buyers. The machine is set to go on sale in June for about 30 million yen ($207,000) each, at first in Japan but expanding to the U.S. and other places later. They'll also work on future upgrades to test for freshness, firmness and other characteristics of tuna and other fish varieties.

Microsoft has announced it is “slowing or pausing” certain data centre construction projects, including a $1 billion development in Ohio, amid signals that the surge in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure may be levelling off. The company confirmed it is halting early-phase work on rural sites it owns in Licking County, near Columbus, Ohio. Two of the three properties will now be retained for agricultural use, AP reports. “In recent years, demand for our cloud and AI services grew more than we could have ever anticipated and to meet this opportunity, we began executing the largest and most ambitious infrastructure scaling project in our history,” said Noelle Walsh, Microsoft’s president of cloud operations, in a LinkedIn post.  Walsh added, “Any significant new endeavour at this size and scale requires agility and refinement as we learn and grow with our customers. What this means is that we are slowing or pausing some early-stage projects.” While the tech giant has not disclosed details of other affected sites beyond Ohio, it had already paused later phases of a major data centre development in Wisconsin last December.  Earlier this year, analysts at TD Cowen noted Microsoft had been scaling back some international expansion and cancelling data centre leases in the US. Industry watchers have linked these adjustments to shifts in Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Microsoft fires employees protesting AI technology contracts with Israel “OpenAI was moving in one direction” by focusing on more powerful AI systems requiring vast computing capacity, while “Microsoft may not have been moving that same direction,” said Craig Ellis, research director at B Riley Securities. In January, Microsoft and OpenAI revised their agreement, which had made Microsoft the exclusive provider of OpenAI’s computing infrastructure. The updated deal allows OpenAI to develop its own capacity, primarily for training and research. Despite the pause, Microsoft still intends to spend over $80 billion globally on AI infrastructure in this fiscal year, which ends in June. The company says it has already doubled its data centre footprint in the past three years. “While we may strategically pace our plans, we will continue to grow strongly and allocate investments that stay aligned with business priorities and customer demand,” said Walsh. The decision disappointed some local officials in Licking County, which has also drawn investment from Google, Meta, and chipmaker Intel — although Intel has delayed its planned factory to 2030.

Instagram users under 16 won't be able to livestream or unblur nudity in direct messages they've received without parental approval, owner Meta Platforms said Tuesday as it widened its safety measures for teenagers. The social media company also said it was extending safeguards for users under 18 to Facebook and Messenger. Microsoft fires employees protesting AI technology contracts with Israel Meta launched its teen account program for Instagram in September to give parents more options to supervise their children's online activity amid a growing backlash against how social media affects the lives of young people. The latest changes will roll out first to users in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, before going out to global users in the following months. Under the changes, teens under 16 are blocked from using Instagram Live unless parents give permission. They also need permission to “turn off our feature that blurs images containing suspected nudity” in direct messages, Meta said in a blog post. In another major update, Meta said it's extending the teen account safeguards to its Facebook and Messenger platforms.  China’s schools to teach AI to children as young as six These will include protections already in place for teen Instagram users, including setting teen accounts to private by default, blocking private messages from strangers, strict limits on sensitive content like fight videos, reminders to get off the app after 60 minutes and notifications that are halted during bedtime hours. “Teen Accounts on Facebook and Messenger will offer similar, automatic protections to limit inappropriate content and unwanted contact, as well as ways to ensure teens’ time is well spent,” Meta said. The company said at least 54 million teen accounts have been set up since the program launched in September. Source: With input from agency 

China is introducing artificial intelligence (AI) education to children as young as six in a bold move to nurture the next wave of tech innovators. Starting this September, primary and secondary schools in Beijing will offer at least eight hours of AI lessons each academic year, according to a Fortune report. Young students will learn about chatbots, basic AI tools, the technology’s fundamentals, and its ethical implications. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission announced that schools may integrate AI lessons with existing subjects such as science or IT, or teach them as standalone courses. The city also plans to establish a comprehensive AI curriculum, build a supporting education and training framework, and promote the subject nationwide. This initiative follows China's increasing investment in AI, especially after the rapid rise of DeepSeek, co-founded by Zhejiang University graduate Liang Wenfeng. The eastern university also produced Unitree’s founder Wang Xingxing, reinforcing hopes that early exposure to AI will yield a new generation of tech giants. Instagram bans livestreaming for under-16s without parental consent Beijing’s efforts are part of a broader national strategy. In December, the Ministry of Education selected 184 schools to pilot AI-focused programmes, aiming to set a model for wider implementation. Education Minister Huai Jinpeng called AI the “golden key” to advancing China’s education system.

Instagram users under 16 won't be able to livestream or unblur nudity in direct messages they've received without parental approval, owner Meta Platforms said Tuesday as it widened its safety measures for teenagers. The social media company also said it was extending safeguards for users under 18 to Facebook and Messenger. Meta launched its teen account program for Instagram in September to give parents more options to supervise their children's online activity amid a growing backlash against how social media affects the lives of young people. The latest changes will roll out first to users in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, before going out to global users in the following months. Under the changes, teens under 16 are blocked from using Instagram Live unless parents give permission. They also need permission to “turn off our feature that blurs images containing suspected nudity” in direct messages, Meta said in a blog post. In another major update, Meta said it's extending the teen account safeguards to its Facebook and Messenger platforms, Microsoft fires employees protesting AI technology contracts with Israel These will include protections already in place for teen Instagram users, including setting teen accounts to private by default, blocking private messages from strangers, strict limits on sensitive content like fight videos, reminders to get off the app after 60 minutes and notifications that are halted during bedtime hours. “Teen Accounts on Facebook and Messenger will offer similar, automatic protections to limit inappropriate content and unwanted contact, as well as ways to ensure teens’ time is well spent,” Meta said. The company said at least 54 million teen accounts have been set up since the program launched in September.

A pro-Palestinian protest by Microsoft employees interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration Friday, the latest backlash over the tech industry’s work to supply artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military. The protest began as Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman was presenting product updates and a long-term vision for the company's AI assistant product, Copilot, to an audience that included Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer. “Mustafa, shame on you,” shouted Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad as she walked toward the stage and Suleyman paused his speech. “You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.” “Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” Suleyman said. Aboussad continued, shouting that Suleyman and “all of Microsoft” had blood on their hands. She also threw onto the stage a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people, before being escorted out of the event. New Jersey criminalizes deepfake media under new law A second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted another part of the celebration during which Gates, Ballmer and current CEO Satya Nadella were on stage — the first public gathering since 2014 of the three men who have been Microsoft's CEO. An investigation by The Associated Press revealed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother. In February, five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with Nadella for protesting the contracts. While the February event was an internal meeting, Friday's protest was far more public — a livestreamed showcase of the company's past and future. Some employees also rallied outside the event Friday. “We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard," said a statement from the company Friday. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.” Microsoft founder Bill Gates reminisces about a 50-year-old computer code that transformed technology Microsoft declined to say whether it was taking further action. Aboussad told the AP she hasn't yet heard anything from the company but she and Agrawal both lost access to their work accounts after the protest and have not been able to log back in, a possible indication that they were being fired.

President Donald Trump said Friday he is signing an executive order to allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. for another 75 days, giving his administration more time to finalize a deal to bring the platform under American control. The White House had been close to striking a deal to separate TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new company majority-owned by American investors, with ByteDance retaining a minority stake, a source familiar with the talks said. However, progress was abruptly halted Thursday when Beijing reacted to Trump’s announcement of sweeping new global tariffs, including against China. ByteDance informed the White House that China would not approve any deal until broader negotiations on trade and tariffs take place, the source added. While Congress had set a January 19 deadline for TikTok’s divestment on national security grounds, Trump extended it unilaterally to this weekend to keep negotiations alive. Several U.S. firms had expressed interest in investing in TikTok. The potential deal, months in the making, was being finalized with help from Vice President JD Vance’s team and included support from current and prospective investors, ByteDance, and U.S. officials. It included a 120-day period to finalize details. Trump’s team was confident of Beijing’s support until the new tariffs shifted the political landscape. On Friday, Trump said the deal is still achievable during the extension period. “My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress,” Trump wrote on his platform, explaining the need for extra time. ByteDance confirmed it has been in talks with the U.S. but said no agreement has been finalized and any deal must be approved under Chinese law. TikTok, headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, has reiterated its commitment to user safety. Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Ministry insists it does not require companies to provide data from abroad. This marks the second time Trump has delayed enforcement of the 2024 law requiring TikTok's divestment, a law supported by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court on national security grounds. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a co-author of the TikTok bill, criticized the delay, urging immediate compliance with the law. “Bidders are lined up, and the clock is ticking. No more excuses,” he said. Although the executive order to delay enforcement has raised concerns, legal experts say a lawsuit is unlikely due to the challenge of establishing legal standing to sue. Cornell University’s Sarah Kreps said maintaining the status quo is legally less vulnerable, though concerns persist. Experts like cybersecurity CEO Chris Pierson warn that if ByteDance retains control of TikTok’s algorithm or data, the security risks remain unchanged. The law allows one 90-day delay if a deal is pending and Congress is notified, but Trump’s move doesn’t meet those conditions, said legal scholar Alan Rozenshtein. He argues Trump’s extension is effectively a refusal to enforce the law, not a legal extension. Public opinion on TikTok remains divided. A recent Pew survey found one-third of Americans support a ban, down from 50% in 2023, with concerns about data security driving most of the support. For creators like Terrell Wade, who has 1.5 million TikTok followers, the uncertainty is wearing. “Each new deadline feels less serious,” he said, though he continues building his presence on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. “I just want clarity,” he said, “so we can move on from the constant uncertainty.”