The Australian government recently passed a landmark law restricting access to social media<\/a> for under-16s. It is now doing something similar with search, with a new ruling<\/a> requiring search engines to implement a variety of measures to enhance online safety for Australian children. Measures include developing policies to handle online pornography and self-harm material, implementing age assurance measures, applying default safety settings for account holders identified as children, and providing parental controls.<\/p>\nThe new rules only apply to search engines that are part of a service \u2013 so Google and Bing \u2013 rather than standalone search engines. From next year, Australian\u2019s signing up for a Microsoft or Google account will need to go through age assurance checks. If the account holder is identified as a child, the strictest search settings will be applied by default to filter out potentially harmful content. For search engines, compliance measures must be in place by no later than six months after the law comes into effect.<\/p>\n
Chinese students are claiming that AI tools used by schools and universities to detect AI-written content are falsely accusing them of cheating. So, you guessed it, they\u2019re turning to AI tools to get around them.<\/p>\n
Australia<\/p>\n
\n- Up to 6 million people\u2019s personal data has been exposed in a cyberattack against a third-party customer service platform used by Australian airline Qantas. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- After introducing a law to age restrict social media, Australia is pursuing something similar for Google and Bing search engines, bring in age assurance for new Google and Microsoft account holders and requiring the providers to filter content by default for children. Source<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
China<\/p>\n
\n- China and the US reached a deal that will see the resumption of shipments of Chinese rare earth minerals to the US. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- And the US has lifted some restrictions on the export of chip-design software to China. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Chinese search giant Baidu began making its previously proprietary LLM Ernie open source on June 30th, a move which builds Chinese AI momentum and places pressure on US competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic which remain proprietary. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- The Canadian government has ordered Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Hikvision to cease operations in Canada, citing national security concerns. Hikvision has called the Canadian governments concerns \u201cunfounded.\u201d Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- The French government has accused Chinese threat actors of hacking several ministries via Ivanti server flaws. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- An analyst has predicted that China will have 30% of the world\u2019s global foundry production capacity by 2030, making it the biggest semiconductor producer globally. It is expected to trade places with Taiwan which currently holds the highest output capacity at 23%, followed closely by China at 21%. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Chinese students are using AI tools to get around AI detectors, which they say wrongly accuse them of cheating. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Scientists from the University of Hong Kong are reportedly experimenting with 3D printing of functional organ tissue. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- A study by Chinese researchers has found that GenAI chatbots in call centres are often more trouble than they\u2019re worth, with operatives having to intervene constantly to correct mistakes. Source<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
India<\/p>\n
\n- India needs a law to regulate how people talk about the judiciary and courts online, said a retiring judge, who believes that posts by people ignorant of the judicial process risk undermining the law. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Streamer JioStar has been granted exclusive rights to broadcast India\u2019s cricket tour in England, after it sued four other websites for broadcasting illegally. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Advertisers running securities and investments ads on Meta services in India, will need to verify the person or organisation benefiting from and paying for the ad by providing their SEBI registration information. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Apple assembler Foxconn, has told more than 300 Chinese employees working in India to return home, for reasons that are not yet clear. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Voters in Bihar\u2019s municipal elections have been permitted to cast their preferences via an Android app. The stated aim is to improve voting rates, but the move has raised privacy and data protection concerns. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Encrypted email Proton Mail has been found to be non-compliant with IT Act by the Karnataka High Court as it doesn\u2019t not have a server in India. However, Proton Mail\u2019s lawyer disputed that having an Indian server is required by the law. Source<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Japan<\/p>\n
\n- Japanese carrier SoftBank announced its intention to beam broadband services from airships, or to give them their proper name, High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) vehicles, from 2026. The aim is to ensure that broadband is available in the event of an emergency which disrupts terrestrial networks, and to expand coverage of its 5G networks into rural areas. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Japan\u2019s NTT Data Group has filed an IPO, seeking to raise approximately $864 million for its Singapore datacentre REIT. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Chipmaker Renesas Electronics says it is \u201cdoubling down\u201d on producing gallium nitride (GaN) power devices as analysts predict the GaN revenue for power applications will grow by 36% annually. Source<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
South Korea<\/p>\n
\n- South Korea\u2019s stock market rose 30% in the first half of 2025. Much of that growth came after newly elected President Lee Jae-myung pledged support for stablecoin backed by the national currency. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Samsung inadvertently (or otherwise) apparently leaked pictures of its upcoming \u201cmultifold\u201d device. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Samsung\u2019s last Korean rival LG has now completed its exit from the smartphone market which it announced in 2021. LG will no longer offer support, new parts or software updates for its devices. Source<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Elsewhere in Asia<\/p>\n
\n- North Korea:<\/strong> US officials arrested a US national suspected of running a fraudulent scheme to insert remote North Korean IT workers in US tech companies to earn money for the North Korean regime. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Taiwan:<\/strong> Taiwan is developing offshore wind resources in the contested Taiwan straits to power its semiconductor industry. Source<\/a><\/li>\n
- Pakistan:<\/strong> Microsoft is leaving Pakistan, relying on partners in the country to serve customers there. Source<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plus: Chinese students use AI to get around AI detectors Image: Australia to age-assure Google & Bing Welcome…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[26405,3774,4740,24442,74,745,12580,1567,9996,170,252,2161,23134,15243,30723,158,67,132,68,15336],"class_list":{"0":"post-37943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-age-verification","9":"tag-asia","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-baidu","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-computing","14":"tag-foxconn","15":"tag-india","16":"tag-indonesia","17":"tag-japan","18":"tag-microsoft","19":"tag-samsung","20":"tag-singapore","21":"tag-south-korea","22":"tag-taiwan","23":"tag-technology","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-vietnam"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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