Articles by David Vranicar

Lon Snowden, the father of famed leaker Edward Snowden, and the family's lawyer have obtained visas to travel to Russia, where Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum as the U.S. seeks to extradite him on federal charges Speaking on ABC News' This Week, the senior Snowden and the lawyer did not divulge many details of the trip, but Lon Sn...

Baidu, a Chinese Web company and operator of the country's top search engine, will reimburse users for scams carried out by websites that appear in its search results This is an extension of a scheme Baidu launched in May, when it promised to compensate consumers who were scammed -- but only up to about US$800, and only if the scamming site had pa...

Comedian and writer Andy Borowitz has risen to pretty heady comedic heights. His Borowitz Report, a satirical chronicle of daily news -- one election season headline read, "Weather Forces Romney to Shift Lying to Other States" -- was picked up by The New Yorker and is frequently the Most Popular item on the high-brow site Not everyone, however, ge...

Movie star Jackie Chan, the Chinese kung fu aficionado who has appeared in more than 150 films, is taking loads of flak for posts on Chinese social media Chan first riled Chinese netizens when he posted a photo of a picturesque Beijing skyline with the caption, "I took the picture myself. Who says Beijing doesn't have blue sky? Look how blue the s...

Hot air, maybe. But it's Edward Snowden, so it's news. Pavel Durov, the 28-year-old Russian CEO of social network site VKontakte, has offered Snowden a job as a security software developer. VKontakte is akin to Facebook and has 100 million active users, mostly from Eastern Europe....

In what amounts to a serious environmental breach or a continuation of China's anti-Apple PR blitz -- or both -- Chinese regulators are scrutinizing a pair of Apple suppliers in China over pollution allegations The factories in question, located in Kunshan, an electronics manufacturing hotbed about 40 miles west of Shanghai, are reportedly dumping...

Glorious Mission Online, a first-person shooting game launched in China and codeveloped by the People's Liberation Army, lets gamers defeat Japan in the fake quest to take back real islands The game includes the real-life plot in which China and Japan fight over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, which sit in the East China Sea and have promptedterritoria...

Not for the first time, Justin Welby, the head of the Church of England and the archbishop of Canterbury, took a jab at UK-based online lender Wonga, claiming he told Wonga's CEO, "we're trying to compete you out of existence." The Church of England is in the process of forming its own quasi-lending agency -- the "Anglican Mutual Credit Union" -- f...

Two men from near London, a 21-year-old and 29-year-old, have each been sentenced to two months in jail following contempt of court convictions for misusing the Internet while serving on a jury The 21-year-old posted a Facebook message during a sex offense prosecution, saying that he wanted to "f*** up a paedophile." The 29-year-old, meanwhile, us...

Australia has recommended changes to copyright law that would allow Aussie citizens cheaper access to IT hardware, software and digital downloads after a parliamentary inquiry found no good reason for prices to be so high Down Under The inquiry sought to unearth why IT prices were so much higher in Australia than elsewhere. The probe kicked off las...

Britain is simultaneously investigating and praising Chinese telecommunication firm Huawei OK, so the UK didn't out and compliment Huawei. Less than a week after British authorities launched a cybersecurity review of the company, however, Prime Minister David Cameron said that British telecommunications company TalkTalk had shown "great leadership"...

Long known for its out-and-out censorship, Beijing now appears to be filling Chinese social media with pro-government messages The new tack was on full display after the Thursday indictment of fallen Communist Party member Bo Xilai, who was busted for corruption and abuse of power in 2012....

Lawmakers in Finland will vote on a crowdsourced legislative proposal that, if approved, would change the nation's copyright laws Last year, Finland's constitution was modified to allow citizens to submit proposals to Parliament, so long as said proposals obtained 50,000 supporters within six months. One of the proposals to garner the requisite sup...

In a nod to developing nations like India and Brazil, Facebook will unveil plans for "Facebook for Every Phone," which is designed to make Facebook accessible on technologically humble feature phones Facebook, which already boasts more than 1.1 billion users, now wants to target the 100 million people worldwide who access the site on feature phones...

It turns out that Germany, Europe's most outspoken critic in the wake of U.S. snoopingrevelations, has itself used a National Security Agency spying program and collaborated with the NSA on surveillance Takes one to know one....

A group of countries in Latin America seems to have successfully blocked online retail giant Amazon from using ".amazon" as an Internet address suffix A committee from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees top-level domain names, recommended that .amazon be precluded from the list of possible top-level domains....

Jack Ma, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, said that China's move to violently squelch Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989 was "the most correct decision," adding that "a leader needs to make this kind of decision." The remarks -- made to the South China Morning Post in May and posted to the out...

Devout followers pay heed: The Catholic Church is offering indulgences for those who take the righteous step of following Pope Francis on Twitter The granting of indulgences, a centuries-old practice, is believed to reduce the time that one must spend in purgatory. Traditional means of obtaining indulgences include, among other things, making confe...

European Union justice commissioner Viviane Reding implored EU member states to get on board with Germany's call for tougher and more unified data protection laws German chancellor Angela Merkel spent the weekend clamoring for EU-wide regulations that would force more transparency from Internet companies. Merkel complained that companies incorporat...

Ma Ailun, a 23-year-old woman from northwest China, died after being electrocuted by her iPhone, according to relatives. Ma died while using the device, which was charging at the time, according to reports. Local police confirmed that electrocution was the cause of death, but stopped short of pinning blame on the iPhone....