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Toyota Heading to Moon with Cruiser, Robotic Arms, Dreams

Toyota is working with Japan's space agency on a vehicle to explore the lunar surface, with ambitions to help people live on the moon by 2040 and then go live on Mars, company officials said Friday.

The vehicle being developed with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is called Lunar Cruiser, whose name pays homage to the Toyota Land Cruiser sport utility vehicle. Its launch is set for the late 2020's.

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Bentley Says First Luxury Electric Car Due 2025

German-owned luxury car brand Bentley said Wednesday that its first all-electric vehicle will be ready by 2025, as it unveiled major investment on becoming a fully carbon zero company.

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Human Rights Watch Says Lebanese Staffer Hit with NSO Spyware

Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that one of its senior staff members was targeted last year with spyware designed by the Israeli hacker-for hire company NSO Group.

The New York-based rights group said the software was used against Lama Fakih, the director of its Beirut office who also oversees its crisis response in several countries, including Syria, Myanmar, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and the United States.

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Israel's Attorney General Orders Probe of NSO Spyware Claims

Israel's attorney general said Thursday he was launching an investigation into Israeli police's use of phone surveillance technology following reports that investigators improperly tracked targets without authorization.

In a four-page letter, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said he had not yet found evidence substantiating the claims in the Israeli business daily Calcalist, which said police monitored the leaders of a protest movement against then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mayors and other citizens without court approval. But Mandelblit said many questions remained unanswered, and that he was forming an investigative committee headed by a top deputy.

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19-Year-Old Woman Sets Record for Solo Global Flight

The 19-year-old Belgian-British pilot Zara Rutherford set a world record as the youngest woman to fly solo around the world, touching her small airplane down in western Belgium on Thursday — 155 days after she departed.

Rutherford will find herself in the Guinness World Records book after setting the mark that had been held by 30-year-old American aviator Shaesta Waiz since 2017.

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Airlines Worldwide Rush to Change Flights over U.S. 5G Problem

Airlines across the world, including the long-haul carrier Emirates, rushed Wednesday to cancel or change flights heading into the U.S. over an ongoing dispute about the rollout of 5G mobile phone technology near American airports.

The issue appeared to particularly impact the Boeing 777, a long-range, wide-body aircraft used by carriers worldwide. Two Japanese airlines directly named the aircraft as being particularly affected by the 5G signals as they announced cancellations and changes to their schedules.

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Israel Lawmakers Outraged over Claim Police Used NSO Spyware on Israeli Citizens

Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday called for a parliamentary inquiry into the police's alleged use of sophisticated spyware on Israeli citizens, including protesters opposed to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following a newspaper report on the surveillance.

Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist reported that in 2020, police used the NSO spyware Pegasus to surveil leaders of protests against Netanyahu, who was then prime minister. It said police also hacked the phones of two sitting mayors suspected of corruption and numerous other Israeli citizens, all without a court order or a judge's oversight.

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Liberals in EU Parliament Seek Inquiry into Abuse of Spyware

European Parliament lawmakers have called for a committee to investigate rights abuses by European Union governments using powerful spyware produced by Israel's NSO Group.

Meanwhile, the Polish Senate formally approved the formation of a committee to investigate evidence that three critics of the country's right-wing government were hacked with the spyware. Sen. Marcin Bosacki, who will lead the inquiry, said the step was needed "due to the deepest concern for our democracy and the future of the Polish state."

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Polish Leader Admits Country Bought Powerful Israeli Spyware

Poland's most powerful politician has acknowledged that the country bought advanced spyware from the Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group, but denied that it was being used to target his political opponents.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, said in an interview that the software, Pegasus, is now being used by secret services in many countries to combat crime and corruption. He noted that Pegasus represents a technological advancement over earlier monitoring systems, which did not allow the services to monitor encrypted messages.

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'End-of-Life': Old BlackBerries No Longer Work from Tuesday

Nostalgic for those mobile phones with a physical keyboard? Brace yourself, because as of Tuesday many models of the once-indispensable BlackBerry devices will no longer work.

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