USA

The US may have just put its controversial travel ban into effect but it s also relaxing its restrictions for at least one lucky Middle East city. Passengers from the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi will now be able to take their laptops with them in plane cabins. That is, as long as they're flying nonstop to the US aboard long-haul airline Etihad, which is the only carrier with direct flight to the US in Abu Dhabi anyway.

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Phone calls are being made this week - and for the next several week - by robots pretending to be the IRS. This is part of a scam that's been going on for at least a couple of years in this exact format. The phone call will come to any number - I just got a call on my mobile phone on an unlisted number, mind you - and it'll sound something like this: "Hello, we have been trying to reach you. This call is officially a final notice from the IRS, Internal Revenue Service."

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The White House has ordered an investigation into hacking done to disrupt the 2016 Presidential Elections here in the United States. This order from President Obama came not long after Trump's most recent Time Magazine interview in which he said he does not believe the U.S. intelligence community in their assessment that Russia attempted to affect the outcome of this year's Presidential Election. Word of an investigation directed by President Obama came through Lisa Monaco, the Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, earlier today.

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In the Android smartphone market, few names outside of brands like Samsung, LG, and other international giants make it to headlines. China’s Xiaomi, of course, remains the exception, sparking interest and even demand in countries outside of its focus markets like China and India. Interest in Xiaomi’s smartphones in the US, however, might be waning as the company continues to drag its feet in a Western expansion. Company VP of International Hugo Barra, formerly a Google exec, reassures fans that Xiaomi still has the US in its sights. That said, it is in no rush to get there and wants to time things right or risk actually doing more harm than good to Xiaomi’s image.

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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA has been one of the most debated laws affecting the tech industry. While the intention to protecty copyright in this modern age is commendable, the DMCA has often been waved around by giant companies, like record labels, as a threat to those who make even the slightest error in using, say, music in a YouTube video. That law happens to also impose restrictions in security research, which digital rights advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation or EFF is now challenging by suing the US government.

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The HTC 10 might be off to a good start, but already HTC is revealing its warts, slowly and piecemeal. Jeff Gordon, a.k.a. urbanstrata on Twitter and HTC senior manager for global communications, is replying to eager inquiries on the social network and, along the way, is revealing some curious and disappointing tidbits about the flagship smartphone, like, for example, its lowly IP53 rating. And perhaps to the dismay of the US market, Gordon reveals that the US won't be getting the 64 GB model at all.

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It's been a while since Huawei made available a flagship level smartphone directly in the US. Sure, it has had a few Android handsets these past years, like the P8 Lite and, more recently, the GX8. Those, however, fall squarely on the mid-range category. Soon, however, one of the top Chinese OEMs might once again make its presence felt in the US and, this time, in a big way. Company consumer electronics chief Richard Yu revealed that Huawei plans to launch a flagship smartphone in the country later this year.

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Chinese smartphone OEMs already have a hard time breaking into the US market, but ZTE might soon find itself in more trouble than just smartphone sales in the US. According to some documents allegedly seen by Reuters, the US Commerce Department is about to impose some rather heavy restrictions on the company that will basically make it almost impossible for ZTE to get supplies from US companies. This export restriction will be a sanction against ZTE for allegedly violating the export control on shipping US technologies to Iran in 2012.

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Huawei might not be so insane after all. Initial rumors have hinted that Huawei will make a big announcement next month at CES 2016 where it will outline its plans for a US expansion. At the same time, it will launch the mid-range Honor 5X, the first from its Honor brand to go to the US. Now others sources are saying that Huawei will have another smartphone to woo US consumers next year, the high end Mate 8, the metal-clad flagship the company just unveiled last month.

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It seems that Huawei is finally ready to strike it big and make its formal entry into the US market. At lesat that's what the hints and rumors are saying about the company upcoming big announcement at CES 2016 in just a few weeks. Honor president George Zhao hinted as much, saying that it has something big to reveal about its US plans at the week-long event. What those plans will be are, of course, still a mystery, though there are some whispers that it will start with a certain Honor 5X.

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While Xiaomi has expressed interest in the US market, it hasn't exactly been wholehearted in entering it as far as smartphones go. Its first products in the country try to test the waters by selling accessories and toys instead. The company recently re-affirmed that it is indeed considering formally joining the smartphone game and it seems that it might actually be further along than anticipated. One of its phones, the Redmi 2 Pro, has just made its way through the FCC, hinting perhaps at an eventual launch.

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In an overwhelming number of votes, the US Senate has given the thumbs up to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, more popularly known as CISA, though it definitely has less flattering nicknames. While the bill will still have to go through a joint committee of House and Senate, the show of majority support is already quite telling. Naturally, privacy interest groups are raising their voices high in continued opposition, calling the bill a huge step backwards in the fight for privacy rights and an ineffective weapon against cybercrimes.

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