Associated Press

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GM exec: Cruise to start autonomous taxi service next year

General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle subsidiary plans to start running a fully autonomous taxi service in San Francisco next year. Doug Parks, GM’s product development and purchasing chief, told analysts Thursday that he has ridden in a Cruise vehicle with no driver and the company is very close to deploying the service. “The technology is […]

Group: Pandemic tech tools raise risk of everyday tracking

Tech tools like digital contact tracing apps and artificial intelligence that European governments rolled out to combat COVID-19 failed to play a key role in solving the pandemic and now threaten to make such monitoring widely accepted, a new report shows. The health surveillance technologies that many European countries deployed after the coronavirus pandemic erupted […]

GM reaches supply deals for electric vehicle motor magnets

General Motors has taken two more steps to make sure it has the raw materials for the transition from petroleum to battery power, this time lining up magnets for electric vehicle motors. On Thursday the company said it has a deal with MP Materials to supply rare earth metals and finished magnets for the motors […]

US expands Pfizer COVID boosters, opens extra dose to age 16

U.S. health authorities again expanded the nation’s booster campaign Thursday, opening extra doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to several million 16- and 17-year-olds. The U.S. and many other nations already were urging adults to get booster shots to pump up immunity that can wane months after vaccination, calls that intensified with the discovery of the […]

Companies rethink return-to-office plans amid omicron cases

Companies of all sizes are rethinking their plans to send workers back to the office as the new omicron variant adds another layer of uncertainty. Alphabet’s Google and the nation’s second largest automaker Ford Co. are among those once again delaying their return-to-office plans, while other businesses whose employees have already returned are considering adding […]

Report: Chinese hackers targeted Southeast Asian nations

Chinese hackers, likely state-sponsored, have been broadly targeting government and private-sector organizations across Southeast Asia, including those closely involved with Beijing on infrastructure development projects, according to a report released Wednesday by a U.S.-based private cybersecurity company. Specific targets included the Thai prime minister’s office and the Thai army, the Indonesian and Philippine navies, Vietnam’s […]

European activists fight for right to repair electronics

At a table scattered with tools and wires, volunteer repairers sit across from the owners of an assortment of inoperable electronics. The volunteers at a free “repair cafe” in Copenhagen disassemble and diagnose gadgets while the customers watch, each doing their part for the environment – one broken blender, radio or laptop at a time. […]

Crypto execs head to Capitol as Congress mulls regulations

Cryptocurrency executives went to Capitol Hill Wednesday to say their fast-growing industry understands more regulation is likely coming, but they don’t want it to squelch the next wave of the internet or send it offshore to other countries. Leaders from major crypto exchanges, mining and other related businesses testified for four-and-a-half hours before the financial […]

Zuckerberg, Chan to invest up to $3.4B for science advances

The company that runs the philanthropy of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, is investing up to $3.4 billion to advance human health over 10 to 15 years, according to a spokesperson for the organization. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, or CZI, announced Tuesday its new effort is aiming to “observe, measure, and […]

Major outage at Amazon disrupts businesses across the US

A major outage in Amazon’s cloud computing network Tuesday severely disrupted services at a wide range of U.S. companies for more than five hours, the latest sign of just how concentrated the business of keeping the internet running has become. The incident at Amazon Web Services mostly affected the eastern U.S., but still impacted everything […]