January 2022 – Page 7

January 6, 2022

TikTok couple goes viral after finding a clever way to survive I-95 traffic jam

Vehicles are stuck in gridlock in the morning on the Interstate Highway I-95 near Stafford, Virginia, U.S., January 4, 2022 in this still image obtained from a social media video. Susan Phalen/via REUTERS (Susan Phalen/via REUTERS / Reuters Photos)

A viral video from TikTok shows how a bread truck driver was able to provide much needed help to dozens of unsuspecting drivers who were stranded on I95 in Virginia for more than 24 hours due to snowy weather and freezing temperatures this week they ate nothing for 37 hours stuck on that frozen Virginia freeway, so they called the bread company whose truck was right in front of them, asking if they could have what was in it, ” said the narrator of the video. showing a photo of Casey Holihan and her husband, John Noe, and the Schmidt Baking Company truck.
“To their surprise, the driver of the truck was contacted and given the green light to start distributing bread to 50 starving motorists,” they added, as the video shows the gloved driver handing out bags of bread from the truck. Baltimore-based company truck.
It is not known how many people were fed by the gesture or how long the drivers were stuck in the roadblock before being rescued.
The blocked traffic prompted Virginia state transportation officials to shut down the entire freeway, including the mostly congested areas between exits 152 and 104.

The incident began Monday before pouring into Tuesday evening but, despite the chaos, there were no reported deaths, injuries, or serious accidents.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., shared on Twitter that he was stuck on the interstate and that it took him 27 hours to travel the 110 miles between Richmond and Washington.

Hundreds — if not thousands — of drivers were affected before their eventual help came from law enforcement vehicles, who were also impeded and delayed by the storm, and the generosity of Schmidt Baking company and its delivery truck driver.
There have been other reports of people helping stranded people, including a family who handed over oranges to the US Senator.
Governor Ralph Northam has declared a state of emergency, after initially choosing not to do so as another winter storm is expected to hit Virginia in the coming days.

Source: Tech Crunch

January 6, 2022

$315M Powerball winning ticket sold at a Sacramento 7-Eleven

Image Credit: (Renee Schiavone/Patch)

The winning ticket for the last Powerball was sold at a convenience store in Sacramento. According to the lottery site, the ticket was sold at 7 Eleven on Wyndham Drive.

The ticket price is $315 million.

The other winning ticket, which hit five out of five numbers, was sold to a Chevron in South Pasadena. This person made about $1.3 million. Powerball’s last big winning ticket was sold at an Albertsons in Morro Bay in October, for a price of $685 million.

This winner was able to choose between the 29-year paid annuity option or the $ 496 million cash option. Both reward options are subject to tax.

Source: Tech Crunch

January 5, 2022

Flurona: what we know so far about the rare new double infection

Image Credit(AP)

It sounds more like science fiction the more you hear it: The first case of Flurona, a new and rare double infection of coronavirus and influenza, was discovered in an unvaccinated pregnant Israeli young woman, according to doctors at Beilinson Hospital in the city from Petach Tikva out of the country.
Israel is currently seeing a surge in Omicron, with over 9,000 cases registered yesterday, and while there are no confirmed cases in the UK and the patient is experiencing mild symptoms, her two positive results have raised concerns about the possibility of a new double infection. How common is it? Could the falls in the UK? Could two infections cause a more serious illness?
From symptoms to look out for to how likely they are to spread, this is what we knew about Flurona so far.

How did flurona come about?

As the name suggests, flurona describes a rare double infection of both coronavirus and influenza. The term has emerged over recent days following the finding of a patient in Israel who tested positive for both diseases when she came into hospital on Thursday – the first recorded case in the world.

The young woman is pregnant and is reported to only have mild symptoms, but health officials have quickly started studying her case to determine whether the combination causes any greater severity of illness.

“She was diagnosed with the flu and coronavirus as soon as she arrived,” Professor Arnon Vizhnitser, director of the hospitals’ Gynaecology Department, told Jewish newspaper Hamodia.

“Both tests came back positive, even after we checked again. The disease is the same disease. They’re viral and cause difficulty breathing since both attack the upper respiratory tract.”

According to latest reports, the patient is expected to be discharged on Thursday.

What are the symptoms?

It is difficult for scientists to pinpoint an exact set of symptoms, but flurona’s most common effects are likely to be a combination of those of Covid and influenza.

The Israeli patient did reportedly exhibit breathing difficulties and since Omicron already exhibits many of the same symptoms as the flu or a cold, the main effects are likely to include a high temperature, fatigue, aches, sneezing, a dry cough and/or scratchy throat.

Prof Vizhnitser confirmed that both infections are viral and cause difficulty breathing. “The disease is the same disease,” he said. “They’re viral and cause difficulty breathing since both attack the upper respiratory tract.”

How likely is it to spread?

Much about the infectiousness and seriousness of flurona remains unknown, but doctors have confirmed that other cases are likely to emerge – a result of rising flu cases as restrictions ease along with the fast spread of the Omicron variant.

“We are seeing more and more pregnant women with the flu,” said Prof Vizhnitser. “It is definitely a great challenge dealing with a woman who comes in with a fever at childbirth.

“This is especially when you do not know if it’s coronavirus or the flu, so you refer to them the same. Most of the illness is respiratory.”

Source: Yahoo News

Source: Tech Crunch

January 5, 2022

Hackers Target Real estate websites with skimmer in latest supply chain attack

Threat actors used a cloud-based video hosting service to perform a supply chain attack on more than 100 real estate websites operated by Sotheby’s Realty that involved the injection of malicious skimmers to steal sensitive personal information .

“Others import videos, even their websites are embedded with skimmer codes,” researchers from Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks said in a report released this week.

The skimmer attacks, also called formjacking, relates to a type of cyber attack wherein bad actors insert malicious JavaScript code into the target website, most often to checkout or payment pages on shopping and e-commerce portals, to harvest valuable information such as credit card details entered by users.

In the latest incarnation of the Magecart attacks, the operators behind the campaign hacked Sotheby’s Brightcove account and deployed malicious code in the cloud video platform player by forging a script that can be loaded to add JavaScript customizations to the video player.

“The attacker modified the static script in his hosted location by attaching the skimmer code. On the next player update, the video platform reingested the compromised file and served it with the affected player.” the researchers said, adding that he had worked with the video service and the real estate company to help remove the malware.

The campaign is said to have begun as early as January 2021, according to MalwareBytes, with the harvested information — names, emails, phone numbers, credit card data — exfiltrated to a remote server “cdn-imgcloud[.]com” that also functioned as a collection domain for a Magecart Attack targeting Amazon CloudFront CDN in June 2019.

To detect and prevent the injection of malicious code into online sites, it is recommended that you perform periodic web content integrity checks, remembering to protect accounts from takeover attempts and pay attention to potential social engineering schemes.

“The skimmer itself is highly polymorphic, elusive and ever-changing,” the researchers said. “When combined with cloud distribution platforms, the impact of such a skimmer could be very significant.

Source: Tech Crunch

January 5, 2022

Squid Game’s Hwang Dong-hyuk & Kim Ji-yeon Lawyer Up; Yorn, Levine, Barnes To Rep In All Areas

Image Credit: Agostini/Invision/AP

A competitive chase by representatives to sign the architects of the global streaming hit Squid Game is ending with a surprise. Deadline hears that the law firm of Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich & Gellman has signed and will rep in all areas Squid Game creator, writer-director and EP Hwang Dong-hyuk and EP Kim Ji-yeon and their production company Siren Pictures Inc.

Partners Kevin Yorn, Gregg Gellman and Jared Levine will lead that rep team.T

he phenomenal success of Netflix’s Squid Game came seemingly out of nowhere, catapulting Hwang and the cast to global stardom and making them the hottest commodity in Hollywood. That created a stampede among the major agencies late last yearto sign Hwang and the actors, the vast majority of whom have no Hollywood representation. The courtship got underway when cast and creators came to Hollywood for a big press junket Netflix held. Several of the cast signed with agencies. It looks right now that the Squid Game EP duo will have the attorneys be their sole Hollywood reps, sources said.

Hwang hinted recently at a third season for the show, even before the second season gets the official green light. Season 1 was made on a modest budget, reportedly $2.4 million per episode ($21.4 million in total), while projected to generate $900 million value for the streamer, according to data cited by Bloomberg.

The cast and Hwang had no-frills contracts typical for local-language Netflix productions. Clearly the new reps will be out to change all that and help set up new series and films. “I’m not that rich,” Hwang told The Guardian last year. “But I do have enough. I have enough to put food on the table. And it’s not like Netflix is paying me a bonus. Netflix paid me according to the original contract.”

Source: Yahoo News

Source: Tech Crunch

January 5, 2022

Emma Watson pro-Palestinian post sparks antisemitism row

Watson’s Instagram post had nearly one million likes and more than 89,000 comments by Tuesday [File: Henry Nicholls/Reuters]

British actress Emma Watson’s official Instagram account expressed solidarity with the Palestinians in a new post, eliciting widespread support from pro-Palestinian users but also drawing sharp criticism from Israeli officials.

The account of the movie star, known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, on Monday shared a photo of a pro-Palestinian rally with the phrase “Solidarity is a verb.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Emma Watson (@emmawatson)

The picture was originally released by the Bad Activism Collective in May last year after Israel launched a deadly 11-day offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip, in which several celebrities interfered with the conflict with figures such as Bella Hadid and Susan Sarandon posting messages of support for the Palestinians.
In the caption, there is a quote from British-Australian activist Sara Ahmed, saying: “Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future.
Solidarity involves commitment and work, as well as recognition that even though we don’t have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we live on common ground. Watson’s Instagram bio says her account “has been taken over by an anonymous feminist collective.”
The post, which by Tuesday had nearly one million likes and more than 89,000 comments, was hailed by pro-Palestine social media users. Many thanked Watson for her support, while some added the hashtags #FreePalestine and #PalestineWillBeFree to their comments.

On the other hand, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, criticized the publication:
“Fiction may work in Harry Potter, but in reality it doesn’t work,” he wrote on Twitter. The wizarding world could eradicate the evils of Hamas (which oppresses women and seeks to destroy Israel) and the Palestinian Authority (which supports terrorism). I would be for it! ” he said.

His comments followed those of former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon.

“10 points from Gryffindor for being an antisemite,” Danon tweeted.

Several social media users slammed Danon for his comments.

Leah Greenberg, the coexectual director of the indivisible project, a non-profit organization, which was founded in 2016 in response to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, released the allegations of Danons and said that they were “a perfect demonstration of liberation absolutely cynical and bad-faith weaponisation of antisemitism to shut down basic expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

Palestinian journalist and activist Mohammed El-Kurd, who played a crucial role in raising international awareness about the forced eviction of Palestinians in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, responded saying that Watson’s “simple statement” had left “Zionists everywhere … in a frenzy”.

Source: Tech Crunch

January 4, 2022

A record 4.5 Mi)ion Americans quit their Jobs in November,

A record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This pushed the layoff rate to 3%, equivalent to the peak in September. Workers were more likely to quit their jobs in the hospitality sector, which had by far the highest exit rate at 6.1% in November, as were those in the health care sector.
Figures in transportation, warehouses and utilities also increased.

Workers have continued to quit work at a historic rate. Low-wage industries directly affected by the pandemic continued to be the source of much of the increase in quits, ”said Nick Bunker, research director at Indeed Hiring Lab, in comments by e -mail.
The big question for 2022 is whether this momentum will persist. The high quits rate Data for November released on Tuesday does not yet take into account the arrival of the Omicron variant on US shores, which has pushed infections on the rise. and put many workers at risk of contracting the virus in the workplace.

Case in point, the UCLA Labor Center said in a report also released on Tuesday that nearly a quarter of fast food workers in the Los Angeles area have contracted Covid in the past 18 months. Less than half of them had been informed by their employers that they had been potentially exposed to the virus.
Including layoffs and discharges, the total number of terminations was 6.3 million in November.
Hotels and restaurants saw the biggest increase in departures, while also seeing the biggest drop in open jobs, the data showed. America had 10.6 million jobs to fill in November, down slightly from just over 11 million jobs opened in October. Available jobs in the United States peaked at 11.1 million last July.

Positions in finance and insurance, as well as in the federal government, increased in November.

Hires were little changed at 6.7 million and that paints a positive picture of the labor market:

“People who quit are taking other jobs, not leaving the workforce,” said Heidi Shierholz, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute in a tweet Tuesday. “On net, the labor market is gaining a ton of jobs every month.”

Source: Tech Crunch

January 4, 2022

Beware of fake Telegram Messenger App Hacking PCs with Purple Fox Malware

The Telegram messaging app Trojan installers are used to deploy the Windows-based Purple Fox backdoor to compromised systems. That’s according to new research published by Minerva Labs, which describes the attack as different from intruders that typically exploit legitimate software to release malicious payloads.

“This threat actor was able to keep most of the attack under the radar by breaking the attack down into several small files, most of which had very low detection rates by the [antivirus] engines, the last step leading Purple Fox rootkit infection, said researcher Natalie Zargarov.

First discovered in 2018, Purple Fox comes with rootkit capabilities that allow the malware to be planted beyond the reach of security solutions and evade detection. A March 2021 report from Guardicore detailed its worm-like propagation feature, enabling the backdoor to spread more rapidly.

Then, in October 2021, Trend Micro researchers discovered a .NET implant dubbed FoxSocket distributed in partnership with Purple Fox that uses WebSockets to contact its command and control (C2) servers for a more secure way to establish communications.

“The capabilities of the Purple Fox rootkit make it more capable of achieving its goals in a more stealthy manner,” the researchers noted. “They allow Purple Fox to persist on affected systems and deliver additional payloads to affected systems.

Last but not least, in December 2021, Trend Micro also shed light on the later stages of the Purple Fox infection chain, targeting SQL databases by inserting a malicious SQL common language runtime (CLR) module to achieve a persistent and stealthier execution and ultimately abuse the SQL servers for illicit cryptocurrency mining.

The new chain of attacks observed by Minerva begins with a Telegram installer file, an AutoIt script that publishes a legitimate installer for the chat app, and a malicious downloader called “TextInputh.exe”, the latter being executed to retrieve the next malware from the C2 server.

Then the downloaded files block the processes associated with the different antivirus engines, before moving on to the final step of downloading and running the Purple Fox rootkit from a remote server which is now down. installers providing the same version of the Purple Fox rootkit using the same attack chain, ”Zargarov said.

“ Some appear to have been delivered by email, while others, we assume, were downloaded from websites phishing. The beauty of this attack is that each step is separate for a different file, which is unnecessary without all of the files.

Source: The Hacker News

Source: Tech Crunch

January 4, 2022

Mars looks like a delicious dessert in stunning spacecraft image

The red planet looks good enough to eat in this Trace Gas Orbiter image of a crater.

ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a breathtaking new photo of a two-and-a-half-mile-wide ice-covered crater on Mars affectionately nicknamed “Red Velvet.”
Spotted by Digitaltrends, the image was captured by the Trace Gas Orbiter taking photos of the surface of the red planet, examining gases in the atmosphere, and serving as a communication link between landers and other devices on the surface and on planet Earth.
The orbiter is officially a collaboration between ESA and Russian space agency Roscosmos and the photo, originally taken on July 5, 2021, shows a nearly four-kilometer-wide perspective of the surface and the covered crater ice near the north polar region of Vastitas Borealis on Mars.
Like a splash of icing sugar on a rich red velvet cake, this scene from ESA / Roscosmos Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter Captures The contrasting colors of brilliant white water against rusty red martian soil, “the ESA describes .

The ESA says the crater is partially filled with water ice more prevalent on the north-facing slopes since that region receives fewer hours of sunlight throughout the year with the dark sections on the crater edges likely containing volcanic materials like basalt, giving it a sort of scorched looking appearance.
The presence of water on the planet is a big deal for space exploration, since bringing the precious liquid would be too heavy to carry all the way to the planet on a potential future manned mission. The presence of the ice means the liquid could be melted down and used for drinking water or fuel. The problem, according to the ESA, is that most of these deposits that have been found exist near the polar regions of the planet, and most missions want to land near the equatorial regions. Naturally, the next step is to seek out ice below the surface of the planet with missions like the upcoming Marce Ice Caper, or the last option is to take the hydrated minerals from the soil and bake them to release any water they might contain.

Source: Tech Crunch

January 4, 2022

World's richest man gets $32BILLION richer: Elon Musk's worth climbs to $304billion as Tesla stock soars after car maker rolled out nearly a million vehicles in 2021

Elon Musk and his son X Æ A-Xii at a Time Person of the Year event on 13 December 2021 in New York City(Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIME)

The richest man in the world started the richest new year with Tesla founder Elon Mask adding $ 32.6 billion to his net worth, bringing his fortune to $ 304.2 billion. first person to do it.

According to Forbes, the controversial social media billionaire who is also the founder of commercial space company SpaceX remained at the top of the world’s richest list for the new year. In second place and $ 103.6 billion behind Musk is Bernard Arnault, CEO of the French fashion empire LVMH. Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos is in third place, Forbes said.

The surge in the Tesla share price has again been attributed to South Africa’s growing wealth.
The electric car maker said it delivered more than 936,000 cars in 2021, beating analysts’ forecasts, but also said the company had recalled 475,000 of its cars built between 2014 and 2021. Forbes said

Shares of Tesla had risen more than 13% when the market closed, with the company’s market cap once again surpassing the $ 1 trillion mark after falling below that level last month. As Tesla’s CEO, Musk, named Person of the Year 2021 by Time Magazine, owns around 15.6% of the company’s shares.He has Continued to sell shares, ending the year after offloading 3 million shares on the open market to face taxes on the approximately 5.7 million stock options he exercised at the same time.

If true, this would place him among the biggest ever individual tax payers in the history of the US, although this only represents roughly 0.0036 percent of his worth.

He reportedly sold 15.7 million Tesla shares over the course of 2021 – worth more than $16 billion before tax.

Musk’s fortune jumped more than $200 billion over 2020 and 2021. In 2021 alone, he added $116 billion to his net worth.

This, Forbes said, is the biggest one-year gain by any billionaire since the news outlet began tracking the wealth of high net-worth individuals.

Musk is set to earn another windfall later this month when Tesla reports its fourth quarter earnings. If the company meets certain operational and valuation goals, the world’s richest man is set to become even richer.

2021 was an eventful year for Musk, marked by a hosting appearance on Saturday Night Live, a break-up with girlfriend Grimes, and his self-coronation as ‘Technoking’ of Tesla.

Musk made huge waves last month as he sold off many billions worth of his Tesla stock in a move purportedly dictated by a poll he posted on Twitter.

Tesla’s soaring stock price has again been credited for Musk’s growing wealth. Tesla delivered more than 936,000 vehicles last year, a record figure that represents an 87 percent increase from its 2020 delivery count. Pictured: A Tesla factory in China (file photo)

In reality, at least some of the stock sales were driven by mandatory taxes as he exercised stock options that will expire in August.

He has sold $16.4 billion worth of shares since early November when he said he would sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock if Twitter users agreed, which they did.

But Musk in September had set up a prearranged plan for stock sales related to options expiring next year, and Tesla in a filing on Tuesday said the program was complete.

Musk said last week that he would be done selling shares after his programmed sales ended, meaning that the selloff is now complete.

The final trades, reported on Tuesday, included exercising an option on 1.6 million shares and selling 934,090 of those shares to pay for taxes.

In total, Musk has sold 15.7 million shares in Tesla late in this year, approximately the 10 percent stake the billionaire had pledged to sell.

He exercised options granted in 2012 to buy nearly 23 million shares at $6.24 each, a fraction of Tesla’s share price, which stood at $1069.33 in late trading on Thursday, the final trading session of the year.

Tesla delivers a record 936,172 electric cars in 2021 despite supply chain issues

Tesla delivered more than 936,000 vehicles last year, a record figure that represents an 87 percent increase from its 2020 delivery count despite a number of hurdles the electric carmaker faced during the past year.

The Austin, Texas-based company announced its fourth-quarter production and delivery results Sunday – just days after it recalled nearly half a million Model 3 and Model S cars to address issues that increase the risk of crashing.

And last February, Tesla told workers it would temporarily halt some production at its car assembly plant in California as it faced a semiconductor shortage.

Workers on a Model 3 sedan production line in Fremont were told their line would be down from February 22 until March 7, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

Despite the challenges Elon Musk’s electric car empire faced during the past year – including chip shortages and whistleblower scandals – demand for the sleek, futuristic cars has only grown.

The amount of cars delivered last year dwarfs company figures from yearend 2020, when 499,550 vehicles were shipped to customers.

Of the sales made last year, Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y rides accounted for 911,208 – or 97 percent – of the 936,172 vehicles delivered. Its most budget-friendly Model 3 sedan retails for $46,490 and up, while the Model Y midsized SUV starts around $61,000.

It delivered 24,964 of its pricier Model S and Model X vehicles; its only full-sized SUV, the Model X is tagged about $110,000 while the flagship Model S starts about $100,000.

Tesla in 2020 delivered 57,039 of its Model S and X vehicles in 2020, and 442,511 Model 3 and Model Y cars.

It delivered 112,000 vehicles in 2019.

Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said the latest numbers are ‘jaw-dropping’ given the ongoing global chip shortage affecting the automotive industry.

Ives said the production increase was likely boosted by growing demand from car buyers in China, as well as broader enthusiasm for electric vehicles.

Musk also chimed in on the accomplishment, tweeting: ‘Great work by Tesla team worldwide!’

Tesla’s brand image took some hits last year, most recently last week when it recalled 356,309 Model 3 vehicles made between 2017 and 2020 due to problems with the rearview camera and 119,009 Model S vehicles due to front trunk problems.

Tesla warned that for the specific Model 3 vehicles, opening and closing the trunk could damage the cable harness attaching the rearview camera, causing the camera to suddenly fail.

And the Model S issue could stop the front trunk from latching, allowing it to swing up while the vehicle is in motion.

According to Tesla, only about one percent of the Model 3 cars have the flaw, compared with 14 percent of the Model S vehicles.

Tesla shares have fallen from their record highs, reached two days prior to Musk’s infamous Twitter poll, but are still on pace to end the year up 54 percent from January 1.

The company has this week come under fire after it announced that it has opened a showroom in Xinjiang.

The move has attracted criticism from U.S. rights and trade groups, making it the latest foreign firm caught up in tensions related to the far-western Chinese region.

Xinjiang has become a significant point of conflict between Western governments and China in recent years, as U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps there.

China has rejected accusations of forced labour or any other abuses there, saying that the camps provide vocational training and that companies should respect its policies there.

The U.S. electric car maker announced the showroom’s opening in Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi, on its official Weibo account last Friday. ‘On the last day of 2021 we meet in Xinjiang,’ it said in the post.

On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy organization, criticised the move, saying that Tesla was ‘supporting genocide’.

The United States has labelled Chinaâs treatment of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang as genocide. The United States and a few other countries plan a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February over the issue.

‘Elon Musk must close Teslaâs Xinjiang showroom,’ Council on American-Islamic Relations said on its official Twitter account referring to Tesla’s founder.

Similar criticism came from a U.S. trade group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The carmaker operates a factory in Shanghai and is ramping up production there amid surging sales in China.

A slew of foreign firms in recent months have been tripped up by tensions between the West and China over Xinjiang, as they try to balance Western pressure with China’s importance as a market and supply base.

In July, Swedish fashion retailer H&M reported a 23% drop in local currency sales in China for its March-May quarter after it was hit by a consumer boycott in March for stating publicly that it did not source products from Xinjiang.

Last month, U.S. chipmaker Intel faced similar calls after telling its suppliers not to source products or labour from Xinjiang, prompting it to apologise for ‘the trouble caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners and the public’.

Although some have been trying to reduce their supply chain exposure to the region, especially as Washington bans imports such as Xinjiang cotton or blacklists Chinese companies that it says have aided Beijing’s policy there, many foreign brands operate stores there.

Tesla has also found itself under scrutiny from the NHTSA auto regulator, which is probing its autopilot system over safety concerns.

The automaker has also agreed to update its software to prevent drivers from playing video games on the car’s system while the vehicle is in motion, following a government safety investigation.

Source: Daily Mail Online

Source: Tech Crunch