Technology & Science

SYDNEY — The Federal Court of Australia has ordered Apple to open iOS to rival app stores, direct downloads from websites and alternative payment systems for users with Australian Apple Accounts. Justice Jonathan Beach set out the orders in a 235-page remedies decision. Most changes take effect March 1, 2027, and Apple has until February 15 to ask for an extension to May 3. The orders also bar fees on purchases made through third-party stores and require Apple to readmit Fortnite and other eligible Epic apps. Apple won on some points. The judge rejected Epic's request for worldwide injunctions and let Apple keep security scanning and notarization requirements. Apple said it will ask for a stay and appeal. The decision follows the court's August 2025 finding that Apple misused its market power.

LONDON — Britain's Competition and Markets Authority on October 20 opened a consultation on a conduct requirement for Apple's iPhone contactless technology. Apple currently offers UK developers only the secure element route, for a fee. The CMA would require access through both main international standards, secure element and host card emulation. It says its evidence shows neither raises inherent security concerns. The regulator will not set a price but has proposed principles for fees, and it expects them to fall well below today's levels. The CMA says contactless makes up 39% of UK payments, and no rival wallet has launched in Britain, unlike in the EU. Apple objects, saying the CMA should not require lower privacy and security protections. The consultation closes November 17, and the CMA will decide afterward.

TAIPEI — Taiwan plans to tighten controls on advanced semiconductors and AI servers bound for China, bringing its rules closer to those of the United States. Economy Minister Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg that the government will add the items to its controlled export list. Under the proposed framework, shipping restricted AI hardware to China without authorization could become a criminal offense under the Foreign Trade Act, giving Taiwanese prosecutors a tool they lack today. CommonWealth Magazine notes that the plan is a proposal, not a blanket ban. As of October 19, the government had not announced an implementation date or the full list of covered products. The move matters because most advanced AI servers are assembled in Taiwan, and diversion through the island has been a persistent enforcement gap for Washington.

Meta raised the low end of its 2026 capital-spending forecast to between $135 billion and $145 billion, up from $130 billion to $145 billion. It also announced a new class of nonvoting shares. According to ABC News Australia's report, the shares could help finance acquisitions and attract talent without diluting Mark Zuckerberg's voting control. The company says its consumer agent Muse and a new series of models have helped justify the outlay. Some enterprises, however, are restricting the agent's access over security concerns. ABC also reported that Meta drew its largest-ever fine the same day, over Facebook privacy claims. Strong US tech earnings lifted Wall Street on Wednesday. Asia-Pacific markets fell on Thursday on concerns about the AI trade, with South Korea's Kospi down about 1.9%.

OpenAI said Wednesday it will bring ChatGPT Ads to 26 additional countries, taking the total to 89. Free and Go-tier users in places including Argentina, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa and Ukraine will start seeing them. The company says the ads are labeled, kept separate from ChatGPT's answers and do not influence them. That claim comes from OpenAI and has not been independently tested. CNBC reports the ad business reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in August. OpenAI began testing ads in the US in February, a move rival Anthropic mocked in a Super Bowl campaign while pledging to keep Claude ad-free. OpenAI said it will develop more ad formats, measurement tools and buying options, and is exploring ways for businesses to interact natively with ChatGPT users.

Connecticut's CART Act began taking effect Oct. 1. It protects employees of large frontier AI developers who report catastrophic-risk concerns, and it imposes duties on automated employment-decision tools. Its companion-chatbot rules start Jan. 1, 2027. Colorado's attorney general is taking comment through Oct. 26 on proposed rules for automated decision-making and conversational AI, including age assurance and protections for minors. The Pennsylvania House passed an AI chatbot safety bill, HB 2006, and an insurer-AI bill, HB 1925. Both are now in Senate committees. A New Jersey Assembly committee heard three AI bills on Oct. 19, covering content disclosure, liability and frontier-model risk. Massachusetts senators are weighing some of the strictest AI rules in the country inside an economic development bill still being negotiated. The Transparency Coalition counts 85 AI laws passed in 27 states this year. A law-firm survey says a Justice Department task force is challenging Colorado's law in court.

Notion announced that its AI agents can now work for more than 24 hours on a task, up from about five minutes. The release bundles rebuilt agent infrastructure, improved MCP support, a feature for connecting ChatGPT contracts and a new credit system that starts Nov. 2. Notion says that across more than 20 common use cases its Auto setting produced results comparable to Opus and Astra at an average of roughly 90% lower cost. That is the company's own figure, and its value depends on which models and workloads are the baseline. The details come from a Japanese independent AI newsletter summarizing the announcement, so the claims have not been tested by outside parties. How actual credit consumption compares with current spending will become clear after the pricing change.

OXFORD — Nature retracted a June 2025 paper on Sept. 2 that said rising atmospheric evaporative demand, or 'atmospheric thirst,' had made global droughts about 40% more severe. The Oxford-led authors found a timestepping error that misparsed dates. They also found that an outdated evaporation-model version was used in a figure, and that global averages were not area-weighted. They say they will resubmit a corrected paper. They also say the conclusions hold, with a somewhat lower figure. The paper had been cited 337 times, according to Retraction Watch. A conservative legal blog reports that Nature has since published a separate paper. It argues that a common method overestimates evaporation losses and that drought trends show no significant acceleration across about 99% of land area. That second paper's findings have not been independently checked here. The corrected Oxford version is not yet peer reviewed.

LONDON — A 150-year-old puzzle at Westminster Abbey may have an answer. A Roman limestone sarcophagus was recorded in 1869 with an inscription to a wealthy Briton named Valerius Amandinus. Its lid carries a Latin cross from the 10th or 11th century. Warwick Rodwell, the abbey's consultant archaeologist, reports in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Archaeological Association, published Oct. 21. A full skeleton was found when the coffin was opened for conservation in 2016. Carbon dating places the bones between 987 and 1052. Specialist analysis estimates the man was 35 to 49 years old and about 5 feet 9 inches tall. Rodwell argues he was a high-ranking monk, probably Abbot Ælfwig, who died around 1020. Ælfwig's successor Wulnoth, who died in 1049, also fits. No name was recovered from the bones, so the identification is an inference.

WASHINGTON — NASA will brief the public on the status of the Artemis program on Friday at 2 p.m. ET. Administrator Jared Isaacman, Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons will take part, according to SpacePolicyOnline. Artemis III, planned for 2027, will stay in Earth orbit. Its crew will rehearse docking with test versions of SpaceX's and Blue Origin's lunar landers. NASA finished stacking the Artemis III boosters, has installed all four core-stage engines, and plans a fuelling test at Pad 39B. NASASpaceFlight reports a target no earlier than June 2027. On Tuesday NASA also said it has awarded task orders to Astrolab and Lunar Outpost for the first crew-carrying lunar rovers, according to Xinhua. Blue Origin is to deliver them to the south pole by 2028.

MONTREAL — The James Webb Space Telescope has detected a concentration of heavy elements in gas surrounding Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Live Science reported Wednesday. The researchers, led by McGill University doctoral student Nicole Ford, published their findings Oct. 19 in The Astronomical Journal. It follows earlier work in The Astrophysical Journal in May. The team says the metals most likely came from supernovas. The gas's composition matches that of several nearby stars, which suggests the gas and stars formed at about the same time. The result may help explain how heavy elements spread through galaxies. It also deepens a puzzle: the black hole takes in far less material, and more slowly, than other supermassive black holes.