WhatsApp to let users message without their phones

WhatsApp is testing a new feature that will let people message without using their phone for the first time.

At present, WhatsApp is linked to a user’s phone. Its desktop and web apps need that device to be connected and receiving messages.

But the new feature will let users send and receive messages “even if your phone battery is dead”.

Up to four other devices – like PCs and tablets – can be used together, WhatsApp said.

To begin with, the new feature will be rolled out as a beta test for a “small group of users”, and the team plans to improve performance and add features before enabling it for everyone.

End-to-end encryption – a key selling point for WhatsApp – will still work under this new system, it said.

Several other messaging apps already have such a feature, including rival encrypted app Signal, which requires a phone for sign-up, but not to exchange messages.

But the feature has long been requested by WhatsApp users – of which there are a reported two billion.

‘A rethink’

In a blog post announcing the move, Facebook engineers said the change needed a “rethink” of WhatsApp’s software design

That is because the current version “uses a smartphone app as the primary device, making the phone the source of truth for all user data and the only device capable of end-to-end encrypting messages for another user [or] initiating calls”, the company said.

WhatsApp Web and other non-smartphone apps are essentially a “mirror” of what happens on the phone.

But that system has significant drawbacks familiar to many regular users, as the web app is known to frequently disconnect.

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It also means that only one so-called “companion app” can be active at a time – so loading WhatsApp on another device will disconnect a WhatsApp web window.

“The new WhatsApp multi-device architecture removes these hurdles, no longer requiring a smartphone to be the source of truth, while still keeping user data seamlessly and securely synchronised and private,” the company said.

On a technical level, the solution was giving every device its own “identity key”, and WhatsApp keeps a record of which keys belong to the same user account. That means it does not need to store messages on its own server, which could lead to privacy concerns.

But Jake Moore, a security specialist at anti-virus-company Eset, said that no matter how robust the security is, having messages on more devices could still be a concern.

“There will always be a malicious actor looking to create a workaround,” he said.

“Domestic abusers and stalkers could now have the potential of using this new feature to their advantage, by creating additional endpoints in order to capture any synchronised private communications.”

He also said that social engineering is an “ever-increasing” threat, and the responsibility lies with the user to keep an eye out for potential misuse.

“It is therefore vital that people are aware of all the devices that are connected to their account,” he warned.

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Massive Wind-Whipped Wildfire Prompts More Evacuations In Southeast Oregon

The Bootleg Fire has already destroyed 21 homes and could merge with another blaze that also grew explosively amid blustery conditions.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Firefighters scrambled on Friday to control a raging inferno in southeastern Oregon that’s spreading miles a day in windy conditions, one of numerous conflagrations across the U.S. West that are straining resources.

Authorities ordered a new round of evacuations Thursday amid worries the Bootleg Fire, which has already destroyed 21 homes, could merge with another blaze that also grew explosively amid dry and blustery conditions.

JOHN HENDRICKS VIA AP

In this photo provided by the Oregon Office of State Fire Marshall, flames and smoke rise from the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon on Wednesday.

The Bootleg Fire, the largest wildfire currently burning in the U.S., has now torched an area larger than New York City and has stymied firefighters for nearly a week with erratic winds and extremely dangerous fire behavior. Early on, the fire doubled in size almost daily and strong winds from the south on Thursday afternoon yet again pushed the flames rapidly to the north and east.

The fire has the potential to move 4 miles (6 kilometers) or more in an afternoon and there was concern it could merge with the smaller, yet still explosive Log Fire, said Rob Allen, incident commander for the blaze. That fire started Monday as three smaller fires but exploded to nearly 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) in 24 hours and was still growing, fanned by the same winds, Allen said.

Firefighters were all pulled back to safe areas late Thursday due to intense fire behavior and were scouting ahead of the main blaze for areas where they could make a stand by carving out fire lines to stop the inferno’s advance, he said.

Crews are watching the fire, nearby campgrounds “and any place out in front of us to make sure the public’s out of the way,” Allen said. He said evacuation orders were still being assessed.

NATHAN HOWARD VIA AP

Firefighter Garrett Suza, with the Chiloquin Forest Service, mops up a hot spot on the North East side of the Bootleg Fire.

The Bootleg fire is affecting an area north of the Oregon-California border that has been gripped by extreme drought. It was 7% contained as of Thursday, when authorities decided to expand previous evacuation orders near Summer Lake and Paisley. Both towns are located in Lake County, a remote area of lakes and wildlife refuges just north of the California border with a total population of about 8,000.

It has periodically generated enormous smoke columns that could be seen for miles — a sign that the blaze is so intense it is creating its own weather, with erratic winds and the potential for fire-generated lightning.

Meanwhile, a fire near the northern California town of Paradise, which burned in a horrific 2018 wildfire, caused jitters among homeowners who were just starting to return to normal after surviving the deadliest blaze in U.S. history.

Chuck Dee and his wife, Janie, returned last year to Paradise on the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada to rebuild a home lost in that fire. So when they woke up Thursday and saw smoke from the new Dixie Fire, it was frightening, even though it was burning away from populated areas.

“It made my wife and I both nervous,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The Dixie Fire was tiny when it began on Tuesday, but by Thursday morning it had burned 3.5 square miles (9 square kilometers) of brush and timber near the Feather River Canyon area of Butte County northeast of Paradise. It also moved into national forest land in neighboring Plumas County.

There was zero containment and officials kept in place a warning for residents of the tiny communities of Pulga and east Concow to be ready to leave.

The Dixie Fire is part of a siege of conflagrations across the West. There were 71 active large fires and complexes of multiple fires that have burned nearly 1,553 square miles (4,022 square kilometers) in the U.S., mostly in Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

NATHAN HOWARD VIA AP

Dee McCarley hugs her cat Bunny, whom she took with her while evacuating from the Bootleg Fire on Wednesday.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have swept the region, making wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the American West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

In the Pacific Northwest, firefighters say they are facing conditions more typical of late summer or fall than early July.

A wildfire threatening more than 1,500 homes near Wenatchee, Washington, grew to 14 square miles (36 square kilometers) by Thursday morning and was about 10% contained, the Washington state Department of Natural Resources said.

About 200 firefighters were battling the Red Apple Fire near the north-central Washington city renowned for its apples. The fire was also threatening apple orchards and an electrical substation, but no structures have been lost, officials said.

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‘A blaring siren’ for Democrats after ruling halts DACA

Immigrants and advocates are urging Democrats and President Joe Biden to quickly act on legislation to protect young immigrants after a federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled illegal an Obama-era program that prevents the deportation of thousands of them brought into the U.S. as children.

Plaintiffs have vowed to appeal the decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program illegal, barring the government from approving any new applications, but leaving the program intact for existing recipients.

Calling the ruling a “blaring siren” for Democrats, United We Dream Executive Director Greisa Martinez Rosas said they would be solely to blame if legislative reform doesn’t happen.

“Until the president and Democrats in Congress deliver on citizenship, the lives of millions will remain on the line,” Martinez Rosas said.

Hanen ruled in favor of Texas and eight other conservative states that sued to halt DACA, which provides limited protections to about 650,000 people.

The program has faced a roller coaster of court challenges since former President Barack Obama instituted it in June 2012. The Trump administration announced it was ending the program in September 2017, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the administration hadn’t ended the program properly, keeping it alive once more.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a statement Friday evening, vowed that Democrats will continue to push for passage of the DREAM Act, and called on Republicans “to join us in respecting the will of the American people and the law, to ensure that Dreamers have a permanent path to citizenship.”

In Friday’s ruling, Hanen wrote that the states proved “the hardship that the continued operation of DACA has inflicted on them.”

He continued: “Furthermore, the government has no legitimate interest in the continuation of an illegally implemented program.”

Biden has already proposed legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without authorization. He also ordered agencies to make efforts to preserve the program.

Supporters of DACA, including those who argued before Hanen to save it, have said a law passed by Congress is necessary to provide permanent relief. Hanen has said Congress must act if the U.S. wants to provide the protections in DACA to recipients commonly known as “Dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act.

The House approved legislation in March creating a pathway toward citizenship for “Dreamers,” but the measure has stalled in the Senate. Immigration advocates hope to include a provision opening that citizenship doorway in sweeping budget legislation Democrats want to approve this year, but it’s unclear whether that language will survive.

Suing alongside Texas were Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia — states that all had Republican governors or state attorneys general.

They argued that Obama didn’t have the authority to create DACA because it circumvented Congress. The states also argued that the program drains their educational and healthcare resources.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, which defended the program on behalf of some DACA recipients, argued Obama did have the authority and that the states lacked the standing to sue because they had not suffered any harm due to the program.

Thomas Saenz, president of MALDEF, said Friday that plaintiffs will file an appeal.

“Today’s decision then once more emphasizes how critically important it is that the Congress step up to reflect the will of a supermajority of citizens and voters in this country. That will is to see DACA recipients and other young immigrants similarly situated receive legislative action that will grant them a pathway to permanence and citizenship in our country,” Saenz said.

Hanen rejected Texas’ request in 2018 to stop the program through a preliminary injunction. But in a foreshadowing of his latest ruling, he said he believed DACA as enacted was likely unconstitutional without congressional approval.

Hanen ruled in 2015 that Obama could not expand DACA protections or institute a program shielding their parents.

While DACA is often described as a program for young immigrants, many recipients have lived in the U.S. for a decade or longer after being brought into the country without permission or overstaying visas. The liberal Center for American Progress says roughly 254,000 children have at least one parent relying on DACA. Some recipients are grandparents.

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a progressive organization, expressed disappointment at Friday’s ruling, saying in a statement that DACA has been a big success that has transformed many lives.

“Today makes absolutely clear: only a permanent legislative solution passed by Congress will eliminate the fear and uncertainty that DACA recipients have been forced to live with for years. We call on each and every elected office to do everything within their power so that DACA recipients and their families and communities can live free from fear, and continue to build their lives here,” Schulte said.

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75 children killed, 1,000 detained since Myanmar coup: UN experts

UN Child Rights Committee says children exposed to indiscriminate violence, random shootings and arbitrary arrests under military government.

Dozens of children have been killed and hundreds arbitrarily detained in Myanmar since a coup more than five months ago, UN rights experts said, as the political turmoil in the country continues amid a health emergency brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UN child rights committee reported on Friday that it had received “credible information” that 75 children had been killed and approximately 1,000 arrested in Myanmar since February 1.

“Children in Myanmar are under siege and facing catastrophic loss of life because of the military coup,” committee chair Mikiko Otani said in a statement.

Myanmar’s residents have taken part in mass protests but have been met with a brutal military response since the coup which deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Children are exposed to indiscriminate violence, random shootings and arbitrary arrests every day,” Otani said.

“They have guns pointed at them and see the same happen to their parents and siblings.”

The committee is made up of 18 independent experts who are tasked with monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Myanmar signed onto in 1991.

The experts said they “strongly condemned the killing of children by the junta and police”, pointing out that “some victims were killed in their own homes”.

They included a six-year-old girl in the city of Mandalay, shot in the stomach by police, the statement said.

Children as ‘hostages’

The experts also slammed the widespread arbitrary detention of children in police stations, prisons and military detention centres.

They pointed to the military authorities reported practice of taking children hostage when they are unable to arrest their parents, including a five-year-old girl in Mandalay region whose father helped organise anti-military protests.

On Friday, Myanmar Now news website also reported that two minors, aged 12 and 15 were among seven villagers from Mandalay region’s Sintgaing township, who were detained and charged with possessing explosives.

The experts also voiced deep concern about the considerable disruptions in essential medical care and school education across the country.

Access to safe drinking water and food for children in rural areas had also been disrupted, they said.

They pointed out that the UN rights office had received credible reports that security forces were occupying hospitals, schools and religious institutions in the country, which were subsequently damaged in military actions.

They highlighted numbers from the UN children’s agency UNICEF indicating that one million children across Myanmar were missing out on key vaccines, while more than 40,000 children were no longer receiving the treatment they need for severe acute malnutrition.

“If this crisis continues, an entire generation of children is at risk of suffering profound physical, psychological, emotional, educational and economic consequences, depriving them of a healthy and productive future,” Otani warned.

As of Friday, the human rights monitor The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) in Myanmar reported that since the coup in February, at least 912 people have been killed, 6,770 have been arrested and 5,277 currently detained or sentenced while 1,963 are wanted by security forces.

COVID-19 surge

Meanwhile, Myanmar media are reporting that Win Htein, a revered senior leader of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), has been charged by the military government with sedition, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The 79-year-old leader, who has been in detention in the capital, Naypyidaw, since February, pleaded not guilty to the charge, his lawyer was quoted as saying by Myanmar Now news website.

The crackdown takes place against the backdrop of an emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has ravaged the country’s healthcare system.

In the country’s largest city of Yangon, hospitals have been reportedly running out of oxygen supplies and people have been single-handedly trying to save their family members from succumbing to the disease. There have also been reports of coffins being sold out due to the surge in COVID-19 deaths.

According to reports, more than 200,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 in the country, with more than 4,300 deaths, although medical experts say that real numbers could be much higher.

SOURCE: AFP, AL JAZEERA

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US sanctions Chinese officials over Hong Kong democracy crackdown

Latest move in response to Beijing’s clampdown is seen by analysts as symbolic as business community still wants market access.

The United States has imposed sanctions on seven Chinese officials over Beijing’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. This is Washington’s latest effort to hold China accountable for what it calls an erosion of rule of law in the former British colony.

The sanctions, posted by the US Treasury Department on Friday, are aimed at individuals from China’s Hong Kong liaison office, used by Beijing to orchestrate its policies in the Chinese territory.

The seven people added to Treasury’s “specially designated nationals” list were Chen Dong, He Jing, Lu Xinning, Qiu Hong, Tan Tienui, Yang Jianping, and Yin Zonghua, all deputy directors at the liaison office, according to online data.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Chinese officials over the past year had “systematically undermined” Hong Kong’s democratic institutions, delayed elections, disqualified elected legislators from office, and arrested thousands for disagreeing with government policies.

“In the face of Beijing’s decisions over the past year that have stifled the democratic aspirations of people in Hong Kong, we are taking action. Today we send a clear message that the United States resolutely stands with Hong Kongers,” Blinken said in a statement.

The Treasury Department referred to a separate updated business advisory issued jointly with the departments of State, Commerce, and Homeland Security that highlighted US government concerns about the effect on international companies of Hong Kong’s national security law.

Critics say Beijing implemented that law last year to facilitate a crackdown on pro-democracy activists and a free press.

The advisory said companies face risks associated with electronic surveillance without warrants and the surrender of corporate and customer data to authorities, adding that individuals and businesses should be aware of the potential consequences of engaging with sanctioned individuals or entities.

The actions were announced just over a year after former President Donald Trump ordered an end to Hong Kong’s special status under US law to punish China for what he called “oppressive actions” against the territory.

The United States has already imposed sanctions on other senior officials, including Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and senior police officers, for their roles in curtailing political freedoms in the territory.

Hong Kong officials previously called those US sanctions “hostile acts of hegemony”.

Earlier on Friday, Xia Baolong, the director of China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, was quoted by Hong Kong Free Press as saying that sanctions will “only evoke our anger”.

“You would only lift a rock and drop it heavily on your own feet. The long river of history has proven countless times that victory must belong to the indomitable Chinese people!” Xia said in a speech.

Also on Friday, Hong Kong’s national security police searched the University of Hong Kong’s student union, after the government and university officials denounced students for allegedly sympathising with a man who stabbed a police officer in early July.

Broken commitment

President Joe Biden said at a news conference on Thursday that the Chinese government had broken its commitment on how it would deal with Hong Kong since it returned to Chinese control in 1997.

China had promised universal suffrage as an ultimate goal for Hong Kong in its mini-constitution, the Basic Law, which also states the city has wide-ranging autonomy from Beijing.

Since China imposed the national security law to criminalise what it considers subversion, secessionism, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces, most pro-democracy activists and politicians have found themselves ensnared by it or arrested for other reasons.

Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s most vocal pro-democracy newspaper, was forced to end a 26-year run in June amid the crackdown that froze the company’s funds.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a news conference in Beijing before the actions were formally announced that the US should stop interfering in Hong Kong and that China would make a “resolute, strong response”.

The US has already imposed sanctions on other senior officials, including Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and senior police officers, for their roles in curtailing political freedoms in the territory [Isaac Lawrence/AFP]

A source told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that the White House was also reviewing a possible executive order to facilitate immigration from Hong Kong but that it was still not certain to be implemented.

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is preparing a visit to Japan, South Korea and Mongolia next week. The State Department’s announcement of her trip made no mention of any stop in China, which had been anticipated in foreign policy circles and reported in some media.

A senior State Department official told reporters on Friday that Washington was still in talks with Beijing over whether Sherman would visit China.

The US government on Tuesday also strengthened warnings to businesses about the growing risks of having supply-chain and investment-links to China’s Xinjiang region, citing forced labour and human rights abuses there, which Beijing has denied.

“We hope that any additional US actions related to Hong Kong will remain targeted, and that Washington will avoid policy choices detrimental to Hong Kong’s people,” Anna Ashton, the vice president of government affairs at the US-China Business Council, said about the advisory issued on Friday.

The South China Morning Post newspaper also said that the latest decision was greeted with a “collective shrug” from analysts.

The Hong Kong-based news publication quoted former US Consul General in Hong Kong Richard Boucher as saying: “Every time there’s some news of China putting more pressure on Hong Kong, there’s commensurate pressure on the US side to do something. But they’re running out of things to do.”

Other analysts were also reported as saying that the move is more symbolic, as the US is “caught between pressure to respond to Beijing’s clampdown and a business community still seeking market access.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA, REUTERS

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