From Amazon spying on little kids to 50 years of cell phones – Here's your April 4 news briefing

To start off, we're looking into:

Amazon's Alexa under fire

The backstory: In 2019, children's advocacy groups, including Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy, called for an investigation into Amazon's smart speakers with virtual assistant Alexa. They accused Amazon of keeping voice recordings for too long and keeping personal data even when users try to delete it.

Amazon has a special Echo speaker and subscription service for kids with kid-friendly apps and books. But when the complaint was made, Amazon said that these products follow the rules of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

The development: Now, the FTC is reportedly considering suing Amazon over allegations that its Alexa-powered speakers have been collecting data from children under 13 years old without their parent's permission, which is a big no-no under the COPPA rules. The regulators believe that Amazon didn't do enough to make sure that parents were OK with their kids' data being collected and that most of the kids' apps on Alexa didn't have a privacy policy.

If the government decides to take legal action against Amazon, things could get pretty rough for the company. Other companies have been hit with fines of over US$50,000 for each violation of the privacy law in the past. But, so far, neither Amazon nor the regulators have released any official statements about the issue.

Hong Kong’s airline woes

The backstory: Hong Kong, the bustling tourist destination that once drew hordes of visitors from mainland China was hit hard by COVID. The travel restrictions put in place in 2020 devastated the city's bars, restaurants and shops and the tourism industry as a whole.

More recently: Mainland Chinese visitors have been flocking in through ferries, coaches and high-speed rail since the borders fully reopened in February. But there's a hiccup in the travel industry due to worker shortages at the Hong Kong airport, which has caused a slow recovery of flights. This has left airlines struggling to meet the high demand from mainland travelers.

The development: According to travel data company Cirium, Cathay Pacific, the flag carrier airline of Hong Kong, flew more than 110 return flights per week to 15 mainland cities last month. But the number of available seats is only two-thirds of what it was back in 2019. The top five destinations from Hong Kong were major cities like Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Beijing and Hangzhou, which means not many mainland Chinese visitors are coming to Hong Kong from beyond the Greater Bay area.

Ultramassive black hole discovered

The backstory: Scientists have been working on an astronomy technique called “gravitational lensing,” which uses a galaxy as a kind of magnifying glass to see how light would bend from other objects in space. This allows them to see objects that would’ve been hard to find, like inactive black holes. Usually, scientists can find black holes by detecting the light and radiation given off when matter is pulled in by one, forcing it to heat up and release energy. But inactive black holes don’t really do that, so they’ve been hard to spot if they’re really far out there in space. But, their gravitational pull can still bend light, and scientists can look at how the light is bent to find and measure them.

The development: A study done at the University of Durham and published by the Royal Astronomical Society shows the first black hole detected by gravitational lensing. This isn’t just any black hole, either; it’s an “ultramassive” black hole. It’s 30 billion times the size of our sun and 33 billion times the mass. So, pretty big. In fact, this is one of the biggest black holes ever found by astronomers. Astronomers currently believe that black holes have a theoretical size limit of 40 billion times the size of the sun, so this is definitely up there.

To end, we'll look into:

50 years of cell phones

On April 3, 1973, the first successful cell phone call was made by a man named Martin Cooper in Manhattan. Cooper was an engineer for Motorola at the time and decided that the first call should be made to his competitor, Joel Engel, at Bell Labs (owned by AT&T).

"And I said, 'Hi, Joel, it's Marty Cooper.' And he said, 'Oh, Hi, Marty.' And I said, 'Joel, I'm calling you from a cell phone. But a real cell phone, a handheld, personal, portable cell phone,'" recalled Cooper, 50 years later. "As you could tell, I was not averse to rubbing it in."

The first commercially sold cell phone based on Cooper's prototype was sold in 1984 and would cost US$11,700 if bought today. Well, cell phones have changed a lot since then. For one thing, the telephone book that Cooper used to access the phone number of Engel has gone by the wayside at this point, that's for sure. And they're smaller than they were back in those early days, too.

Ben Wood, who runs the Mobile Phone Museum in the UK, explains: "There was no messaging, no camera. Thirty minutes of talk-time, 10 hours to charge the battery, about 12 hours of stand-by time and a 6in (15cm) antenna on the top." It also weighed about four times as much as an iPhone 14.

Now, we really can't go anywhere without our cell phones. But Cooper isn't really that impressed by them. He says, "I think today's phone is suboptimal. It's really not a very good phone in many respects. Just think about it. You take a piece of plastic and glass that's flat - and you put it against the curve of your head; you hold your hand in an uncomfortable position; when you want to do these wonderful things that it can do, you have to get an app [first]."

In other news ...

📈Stocks: MSCI’s global gauge of stocks is up 0.44% at 2803.63 at the time of writing.

• Dow Jones gained 0.98% to 33,601.15.
• Nasdaq Composite lost 0.27% to 12,189.45.
• S&P 500 rose 0.37% to 4,124.51.
• Hang Seng Index climbed 0.04% to 20,409.18.

🧠Some quick factors to bear in mind:

• Energy stocks were the stars of the S&P 500, thanks to a surprise announcement from  OPEC+ that it was cutting oil output targets. The news made the S&P 500 energy sector index surge about 5%.
• Wall Street was getting jittery about inflation due to the possibility of higher oil prices.
• According to CME Group's Fedwatch tool, there's a 56% chance that the Fed will raise rates by 25 basis points at its May meeting but a 44% chance that rates will stay the same.
• Tesla slid over 6% after the company announced disappointing news that Q1 electric vehicle deliveries only grew by 4%.
• China stocks rose slightly on Monday as investors were both hopeful about the Fed pausing its interest rate hike plans but also worried that a surge in oil prices could cause inflation to rise again.
• Elon Musk is reportedly planning a trip to China to meet with the Chinese Premier Li Qiang, which boosted Tesla's Asian suppliers, with most of them seeing their stocks rise.
• The Caixin/S&P Global manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) fell to 50.0 in March, which is lower than the 51.7 economists expected.

👄Some comments and chatter:

• “The actual cut itself was less of a surprise, given the large increase in global inventories and recession concerns, likely increased by the recent banking struggles. Higher oil prices are likely to provide a modest boost to inflation, providing more of a dampening effect on the economy,” said Stephen Ellis, Morningstar energy strategist, referring to the OPEC+ announcement.
• “This current macro backdrop isn’t conducive for a meaningful stock market rally: The economy is recession bound as the consumer is clearly weakening, lending is about to get ugly, energy cost uncertainty will remain elevated for a while, and monetary policy is finally restrictive and about to break parts of the economy,” said Ed Moya, OANDA senior market analyst.

🛢Oil: Oil prices shot up over 6% after OPEC+ announced plans to reduce production. With this, US crude rose 6.3% to US$80.42, and Brent gained 6.3% to US$84.93 per barrel.

👛Bitcoin: At the time of writing, Bitcoin is down 0.92% at US$27,918.00.

🗺Russia responds to Finland joining NATO: Finland is expected to officially join NATO on Tuesday. In response, Russia will beef up its own military, especially near its western and northwestern borders.

📩Finland election: After a close election, the center-right National Coalition Party will lead Finland. The National Coalition Party (NCP) won 48 of 200 parliamentary seats, PM Sanna Marin's Social Democrats won 43, and the anti-immigration Finns Party got 46 seats. Petteri Orpo, the leader of the NCP, will take over from Marin.

🧕Yogurt thrown on women not wearing hijab in Iran: Still protesting the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, many women refuse to wear hijabs or cover their hair. A viral video from Iran has spread all over the internet, showing ​​a man throwing yogurt at two women not wearing hijabs in a shop. On Saturday, President Ebrahim Raisi said that the hijab is the law in Iran. Both the man who threw the yogurt and the two uncovered women have been issued arrest warrants.

📄Malaysia ends mandatory death penalty: There are 34 different crimes punishable by death in Malaysia, and 11 of those have a mandatory death penalty. On Monday, Malaysia's parliament voted to get rid of the mandatory death penalty altogether. This measure has to go through the country's upper house, but it's expected to pass there.

📸French minister poses for Playboy: Marlène Schiappa, the French minister for the social economy, posed for the cover of Playboy magazine. Even though she was fully clothed, the move was controversial. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told Schiappa that her decision "was not at all appropriate, especially in the current period," probably referring to the social unrest in France over pension reforms.

💵Yuan in Russia: China's currency, the yuan, has ousted the US dollar as the most traded cash in Russia. This comes after a ton of sanctions on Russia have made it hard for the country to bank in dollars and other currencies the Kremlin considers from "unfriendly" countries.

🍟McDonald's prepares for layoffs: Back in January, Mcdonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski announced that the company would be going through some restructuring and that there would be layoffs. This week, from Monday through Wednesday, McDonald's is closing its corporate offices as hundreds of workers are laid off. Employees will be notified virtually if they've been let go.

✂Apple job cuts: In more layoff news, Apple is planning to cut a few roles within its corporate retail teams. These will be the first internal job cuts since it started looking to cut costs last year.

📱iPhone 17 rumors: Low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) is a backplane technology that lets a display dynamically change its refresh rate without needing any additional hardware. For the iPhone 17, an analyst is saying that all models will feature LTPO always-on display technology. This would allow for under-panel Face ID and other features that have only been available on Pro models.

📺Ultimate wrestling?: Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a well-known mixed martial arts league owned by Endeavor Group. The group plans to buy World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and combine the two into a "sports and entertainment powerhouse." WWE shares dropped almost 10% after the news.

👩‍🚀NASA's moon mission astronauts revealed: A rocket will go around the moon for NASA's Artemis 2 mission in November 2024. This will be the first time humans have been to the moon since 1972. The agency just released the names of the four astronauts who will go up in the capsule: Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch will fly for the US, while the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen will rep Canada.

🐟Deepest-ever fish caught on camera: For the first time, scientists have caught fish 5 miles below the ocean's surface and filmed fish deeper underwater than even that. Two snailfish were caught in traps in Japan, and the team recorded an unknown snailfish species 8,336 meters deep in a trench off of southern Japan.

🎶YouTube Coachella: Streaming website YouTube plans to livestream all six Coachella stages at the festival this year. The platform, owned by Alphabet, signed a 4-year deal with Goldenvoice, the festival's organizer, giving it exclusive Coachella coverage through 2026. So, if you can't go in person, you can at least watch from home!

⬆Wow, such increase: Musk's at it again. Cryptocurrency Dogecoin rose as much as 30% after Twitter users realized their home buttons had been replaced with the Doge dog meme. The home button is usually represented by Twitter's blue bird logo.

📷Indigenous tattooist model: An Indigenous tattooist in the Philippines that has kept a form of art known as batok alive is now a Vogue cover model. She's the oldest model to appear on the cover of the magazine, at the age of 106. She's pretty gorgeous, too.

Written and put together by Joey Fung, Vanessa Wolosz, Shebby Farooq and Christine Dulion