United News of Bangladesh

As it celebrates more than 25 years in India, iPhone manufacturer Apple announced today that its first two stores in the country will open this week, marking the company's ambitious growth strategy. Apple will open two locations in Mumbai and Delhi, NDTV reported. "This week, as Apple celebrates more than 25 years in India, the company is marking a major expansion with the opening of its first Apple Store locations in the country, along with new environmental initiatives and a key milestone in the rapidly growing community of Indian developers," Apple said in a statement. Apple will open its first store in Mumbai on April 18, followed by the opening of its second official store in Delhi on April 20, said the report. Read More: 4 Best Apple Watch Ultra Clone Reviews   According to Apple, these stores have been intended to have a local look and feel. "India has such a beautiful culture and an incredible energy, and we are excited to build on our long-standing history -- supporting our customers, investing in local communities, and working together to build a better future with innovations that serve humanity," Apple CEO Tim Cook said. Apple shipments from India are expected to exceed USD 5 billion in the fiscal year 2022-23, accounting for over half of the total "Made in India" phone exports, the report also said. In 2017, the company started manufacturing iPhones in India through contract manufacturers. Read More: Apple Car: The Leaks and Rumors "Apple's work with Indian suppliers of all sizes supports hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country," the statement said. The company also stated that it works one-on-one with developers to help them take their apps from "good to great" at the iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in Bengaluru. "India's vibrant community of app developers now supports more than 1 million jobs. A testament to the tremendous growth of developers in India, App Store payouts to developers in the country have more than tripled since 2018," the statement added. Read More: Apple to use Sony’s state-of-the-art Sensor technology in iPhone 15 Series

Twenty-four students have been awarded certifications from “Huawei BUET ICT Academy” after the first batch successfully completed its four months training this week. BUET Vice Chancellor Satya Prasad Majumder, Pro VC Prof Abdul Jabbar Khan and director of Huawei South Asia Enterprise Partner Development and Management Department Zhangcheng handed over the certification to the students, said a press release today. Started in January this year, the training for the first batch was focused on routing and switching (IP Networks) and 5G (Cellular and Mobile Networks). Huawei Authorized Information and Network Academy (HAINA) coordinated the course and certification, said the release. Of the 24 students, 14 have completed training in routing and switching, and 10 have finished training on 5G. In addition, the participants got the opportunity to communicate with more than 3,000 global instructors. Further, the academy aims to cover 83 certification programmess on 19 different subjects in the next batches. “Academic knowledge itself is not enough for the students anymore. Thus, collaborating with Huawei will expose the students to practical scenarios and knowledge. Moreover, gaining international certificates benefits the students by opening a wide range of job opportunities and preparing them for future employment,” said BUET VC. “Huawei has been always devoted in developing a better ICT talent ecosystem in Bangladesh and equip them with relevant ICT skills. We are pleased to see the interest of youth showed for this academy. Congratulations to all the participants of the first batch who finished the training,” said Zhangcheng. It is mentionable that Huawei South Asia has been setting up ICT Academy in collaboration with different universities as part of their commitment to developing an ICT ecosystem. Huawei has recently established its 6th ICT Academy at CUET in Bangladesh to enhance ICT-related skills among young learners.

Teletalk Bangladesh Limited has signed an agreement with Huawei to upgrade Teletalk’s network to ensure better coverage in rural areas and 5G readiness. The signing ceremony was held at the city's Lakeshore Hotel Gulshan on Thursday, (April 13, 2023). A.K.M. Habibur Rahman, managing director of Teletalk Bangladesh Limited, Md. Khayrul Hasan, project director, Expansion of teletalk's Network up to Rural Areas and Network Readiness for 5G Services Project, Pan Junfeng (Peter), president of Huawei South Asia Representative Office and CEO of Huawei Bangladesh; Guo Yu, Account Director, Huawei, were at the signing event along with other officials from both companies. The project will ensure 4G coverage for the marginal people of Bangladesh. Huawei will facilitate Teletalk with new 4G sites, core network, IP network, charging and billing system modernization solutions. Pan Junfeng said “Digital connectivity is the key to transforming the country, and we continue to help the nation develop its ICT & Telecommunication sector. With that inspiration, we have been a responsible member of this ecosystem in Bangladesh with our latest and advanced technology. Previously, we partnered with Teletalk to launch 5G for the first time in Bangladesh. It was a great achievement. We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Teletalk Bangladesh Limited further. We hope this agreement will help the nation to increase the pace of achieving the vision of Smart Bangladesh.” “We want to diversify our network so that everyone nationwide can access high-speed connectivity; thus, we have taken on the major network upgradation project. We want to offer superior service to our subscribers at affordable costs. Huawei has fantastic technologies, solutions, and team to support Teletalk in meeting its ambitions, said Habibur Rahman. "Thus, we feel pleased to partner with Huawei and upgrade our network nationwide. We aim to finish the project by mid-2024, he added”        

Elon Musk has described running Twitter as "quite painful" and "a rollercoaster" in a live interview with the BBC. The multibillionaire also said if the right buyer came along, he would sell the company. Twitter was purchased by Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, last October for $44 billion. The interview took place at the company's headquarters in San Francisco and addressed his work habits, misinformation, and the huge layoffs. Musk acknowledged that the only reason he followed through with the Twitter takeover was because a judge was about to order him to buy the company. During the conversation with BBC, Musk tried defending his running of the company. When asked if he regretted purchasing Twitter, the second-richest man in the world said the "pain level has been extremely high, this hasn't been some kind of party". Talking about his time at Twitter, Musk said: "It's not been boring. It's been quite a rollercoaster." It has been "really quite a stressful situation over the last several months," he added, but he admitted that buying the company was the right decision. Around the beginning of 2022, Musk increased his stake in Twitter and offered to buy the company. However, after he attempted to back out of the agreement, Twitter sued him. Musk told the BBC that things are "reasonably well" and that "the site works" and that usage is growing. Due to his workload, he admitted, "I sometimes sleep in the office", and he also has a sofa area in a library "that nobody goes to." He also addressed his controversial tweets saying, "Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes." "I think I should not tweet after 3am," he added. Twitter is now "roughly breaking even" Musk said while discussing its finances, as majority of the advertisers have returned. It had not been easy cutting the workforce from just under 8,000 at the time he bought the firm to about 1,500, Musk added. He acknowledged that he did not personally fire everyone, saying, "It's not possible to talk with that many people face to face."The exit of many Twitter engineers following Musk’s purchase of the company has raised questions about the platform's stability. He admitted certain issues, such as site outages, but claimed that they had only lasted a brief period of time and that everything was presently great.

Alibaba, a Chinese technology giant, has announced plans to roll out its own artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT-style product called Tongyi Qianwen. In recent months, technology companies around the world have unveiled their own so-called generative AI chatbots. Earlier this year, Alibaba revealed it was working on a rival to ChatGPT, reports BBC. Tongyi Qianwen roughly translates as "seeking an answer by asking a thousand questions", although Alibaba has not given an English version of the name. Its cloud computing unit says it will integrate the chatbot across Alibaba's businesses in the "near future" but did not give details on its timeline. "We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing," Alibaba's chairman and chief executive Daniel Zhang said  as Tongyi Qianwen was launched. The company said Tongyi Qianwen, which is capable of working in English as well as Chinese, will initially be added to DingTalk, Alibaba's workplace messaging app. It will perform a number of tasks including turning conversations in meetings into written notes, writing emails and drafting business proposals, the company said. Alibaba said it will also be integrated into Tmall Genie, which is similar to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant smart speaker. Interest in generative AI has surged since the release of ChatGPT by Microsoft-backed OpenAI in November. ChatGPT can answer questions using natural, human-like language and it can also mimic other writing styles, using the internet as it was in 2021 as its database. Microsoft has spent billions of dollars on the technology, which was added to its search engine Bing in February. The US software giant also said it will embed a version of ChatGPT in its Office apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Alphabet's Google and Chinese technology group Baidu have also announced their own AI models and released similar chatbots.

Huawei has recently announced the winner of Digital Bangladesh Mela Quiz campaign that was arranged on Huawei Bangladesh Facebook page. The participant who has answered all 10 questions correctly and met other requirements have been selected as the winners as per the criteria announced for this quiz. The quiz campaign was organized in January of this year with an announcement that whoever answered all the questions correctly following the guidelines would be selected as the winner. The competition got more than 11 thousand responses against 10 quizzes. Md. Ali Hossain, from Nabiganj upazila of Habiganj, came out victorious as the sole winner of this competition after fulfilling all requirements. The winner has been awarded a GT3 Classic Smart Watch. Tanvir Ahmed, Head of Media, Huawei South Asia, said, “Technology will play a vital role in building our smart Bangladesh. "We always want to share our insights and knowledge for a better ICT ecosystem. With that inspiration, we share diversified information and resources for our audiences on all our social media platforms," he added.  

The Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum (BIGF) and its special body the Bangladesh Women IGF (BWIGF) Saturday organised a day-long training workshop on governance in the capital. The Bangladesh Women IGF works to ensure a gender perspective is included in the key debates around internet governance issues, such as content regulation, privacy, access, and freedom of expression. It also aims to increase women's participation at the BIGF and IGF and related fora, support capacity building of gender advocates, and promote more effective linkages between local, regional and global initiatives on gender and information society. Today's workshop helped the participants explore internet governance in different ways through several new ideas and discussions. At the event, Afroza Haq Rina MP, an adviser to the Bangladesh Women IGF, called for ensuring affordable internet for all women to improve their lives and livelihoods. Bangladesh Women IGF Secretary General Farha Mahmud Trina, former secretary Md Nasir Uddin Ahmed, AHM Bazlur Rahman, CEO of Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication, Khaza Md Anas Khan, country manager of GIGABYTE Technology, BIGF Secretary General Mohammad Abdul Haq Anu, Shahnaz Sharmeen, chief reporter of Nagorik TV, and Shahnaz Munni, chief news editor of News 24 TV, were present.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday it remains to be seen if artificial intelligence is dangerous, but that he believes technology companies must ensure their products are safe before releasing them to the public. Biden met with his council of advisers on science and technology about the risks and opportunities that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence pose for individual users and national security. “AI can help deal with some very difficult challenges like disease and climate change, but it also has to address the potential risks to our society, to our economy, to our national security,” Biden told the group, which includes academics as well as executives from Microsoft and Google. Artificial intelligence burst to the forefront in the national and global conversation in recent months after the release of the popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, which helped spark a race among tech giants to unveil similar tools, while raising ethical and societal concerns about technology that can generate convincing prose or imagery that looks like it's the work of humans. While tech companies should always be responsible for the safety of their products, Biden's reminder reflects something new — the emergence of easy-to-use AI tools that can generate manipulative content and realistic-looking synthetic media known as deepfakes, said Rebecca Finley, CEO of the industry-backed Partnership on AI. The White House said the Democratic president was using the AI meeting to “discuss the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards” and to reiterate his call for Congress to pass legislation to protect children and curtail data collection by technology companies. Italy last week temporarily blocked ChatGPT over data privacy concerns, and European Union lawmakers have been negotiating the passage of new rules to limit high-risk AI products across the 27-nation bloc. By contrast, “the U.S. has had more a laissez-faire approach to the commercial development of AI,” said Russell Wald, managing director of policy and society at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Biden's Tuesday remarks won't likely change that, but Biden “is setting the stage for a national dialogue on the topic by elevating attention to AI, which is desperately needed,” Wald said. The Biden administration last year unveiled a set of far-reaching goals aimed at averting harms caused by the rise of AI systems, including guidelines for how to protect people’s personal data and limit surveillance. The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights notably did not set out specific enforcement actions, but instead was intended as a call to action for the U.S. government to safeguard digital and civil rights in an AI-fueled world. Biden's council, known as PCAST, is composed of science, engineering, technology and medical experts and is co-chaired by the Cabinet-ranked director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Arati Prabhakar. Asked if AI is dangerous, Biden said Tuesday, “It remains to be seen. Could be.”

The Saudi Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (Etidal) found 6,004,218 extremist content on the social media platform Telegram between January 1 and March 30 this year. Furthermore, the two platforms have assisted in the closure of 1,840 channels that disseminate and promote extremist ideology and are affiliated with three terrorist groups (ISIS [Daesh], Al-Qaeda and Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham), reports Saudi Gazette. Read More: Never flagged as a danger, Nice attacker traveled unimpeded The Etidal team identified and monitored the three terrorist organizations' activity on Telegram in Arabic, it said. It discovered 2,773,902 pieces with extremist content on 477 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham channels, 1,807,215 such pieces on 1,040 Daesh channels, and 1,423,101 pieces on 323 Al-Qaeda channels. The Etidal monitoring team observed a peak in broadcasting activity on Telegram on January 9 this year, with 451,911 pieces of content shared and referenced to, and a peak in account creation on March 27, with over 101 channels launched in a single day, the report also said. Read More: Shamima Begum who joined ISIS as a teen loses UK citizenship appeal The cooperation between Etidal and Telegram continues for the second year in a row, increasing the total number of items deleted from February 2022 until now to 21,026,169; these included extremist content and 8,664 terminated terrorist channels.

Under pressure from the U.S. government, TikTok is now facing the music with the possibility of a nationwide ban if it defies a government order to sell to an American company — unless the popular social media app can convince a high-powered panel that its data security restructuring plan sufficiently guards against national security concerns. At the heart of this social media business and national security drama is the increasingly tense relations between the U.S. and China. The video-sharing platform with 150 million U.S. users is best known for quick snippets of viral dance routines and has been under scrutiny for years by federal authorities who say that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, could share sensitive user data with the Chinese government, or push propaganda and misinformation on its behalf. Having already banned the shipment of certain technologies to China, and recently passing new legislation banning the app on government devices, lawmakers want to pursue a nationwide ban on the app if the tech firm can’t be sold to an American buyer. Enter: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The little-known but potentially potent government agency known as CFIUS is tasked with investigating corporate deals for national security concerns and holds power to force the company to change. WHY IS CFIUS SCRUTINIZING TIKTOK? For at least two years, the U.S. government has tried to force TikTok ownership to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, though CFIUS’ review of the social media app goes back at least to 2019. Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin confirmed in 2020 that CFIUS was reviewing whether then-President Donald Trump could ban TikTok in the U.S. Its members agreed that TikTok cannot operate in the U.S. in its current form because it “risks sending back information on 100 million Americans,” Mnuchin said at the time. As geopolitical tensions between China and the U.S. have soared in recent months, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified last week before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was grilled about online safety and user privacy in a hostile hearing that did little to ease lawmakers’ concerns. Chew was repeatedly questioned about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on ByteDance but deflected. “TikTok is not available in mainland China, and today we’re headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore, but I’m not saying that the founders of ByteDance are not Chinese, nor am I saying that we don’t make use of Chinese employees, just like many other companies around the world,” he added. “We do use their expertise on some engineering projects.” WHAT IS CFIUS? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen oversees CFIUS, a committee made up of members from the State, Justice, Energy and Commerce Departments among others, which investigates national security risks from foreign investments in American firms. The committee screens business deals between U.S. firms and foreign investors and can block sales or force parties to change the terms of an agreement for the purpose of protecting national security. The committee’s powers were significantly expanded in 2018 through an act of Congress called the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, known as FIRRMA. In September, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that expands the factors that the committee should consider when reviewing deals – such as how the deal impacts the U.S. supply chain or risks to Americans’ sensitive personal data. SELL, BAN OR ORACLE? Defying CFIUS’ orders to sell ultimately could mean doing business with the company may violate the law. That would suck the life out of its business operations, such as banking, payroll, advertising, and app store services. But the company said it’s already mitigating national security concerns with a $1.5 billion mitigation plan called Project Texas that would route all U.S. user data to servers owned and maintained by the U.S. software giant Oracle. “When that process is complete, all protected U.S. data will be under the protection of U.S. law and under the control of the U.S.-led security team. Under this structure, there is no way for the Chinese government to access it or compel access to it,” Chew said. While CFIUS can adopt such mitigation agreements, it’s not clear if the committee will accept TikTok’s proposed alternative, said Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University technology law professor. If CFIUS rejects TikTok’s preferred solution, Chander said the federal agency should have an obligation to explain how it finds that plan to be insufficient given that it amounts to an enormous restructuring of the company. “TikTok proposes lots of well-paid, third-party auditors that would be doing this kind of routine monitoring,” Chander said. “This is an expensive proposition for TikTok but by no means would I treat this as window dressing.” Though Chew last week also insisted that the company was not interested in a sale, TikTok has considered it before. TikTok had advanced negotiations with Microsoft after the company was put against the wall by the Trump administration in 2020, facing either an outright ban and CFIUS’ divestment order. Microsoft said TikTok ultimately rejected their offer, and though TikTok later said it would sell to Oracle and Walmart, it doesn’t appear that Project Texas amounts to a sale, Chander said. Should TikTok agree to a sale in the future, not only would CFIUS have to approve that transaction, but the Chinese government – which has said it won’t support forced divestment – could also intervene. WHAT'S NEXT? Leaders in the U.S., European Union, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and Taiwan have also banned TikTok on government-issued devices and at least two countries have banned TikTok outright. Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership last year banned it on the grounds of protecting young people from “being misled,” while India imposed a nationwide ban on TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in 2020 over privacy and security concerns. The ban came shortly after a clash between Indian and Chinese troops at a disputed Himalayan border killed 20 Indian soldiers and injured dozens. Historically, CFIUS has focused on things like shipping and manufacturing when reviewing transactions for national security concerns, but it signaled deeper interest in popular social media when it ordered the dating app Grindr to divest in 2019, Chander said. The function of CFIUS was also in the spotlight last year after billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, plunging the microblogging platform into chaos. Yellen waffled on whether or not CFIUS would or could review that sale, given Musk’s investments in China as well as significant Saudi interest.