Tech-battery.com| Wholesale Phone,Tablet,Camera ,Tool ,Laptop Battery, Adapter and Accessories store in US

Donald Trump’s social-media platform, Truth Social, has launched, in a limited form, on the US Apple App Store.

The app had similarities to Twitter, commentators noted – Mr Trump was banned from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube last year.

And some early users had difficulties registering accounts.

Project lead and former congressman Devin Nunes said it was expected to be fully operational by the end of March.

Some of those trying to register had been told: “Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist,” the Reuters news agency reported.

Created by the year-old Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), Truth Social had previously been made available to about 500 beta testers.

Last week, Donald Trump Jr shared a screenshot of his father’s first “truth” on the social network: “Get ready. Your favourite president will see you soon.”

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Truth Social has already had one update for “bug fixes”, according to the App Store, and is now on version 1.0.1.

Last autumn, pranksters discovered a test version of the app website and, according to the Washington Post, adopted the username donaldjtrump.

Twitter banned the former president following the 6 January 2021 US Capitol riot, saying he had broken its rules on the glorification of violence.

And commentators have highlighted, among other things, Truth Social buttons that resemble those relating to Twitter’s reply, retweet and “like” functions.

Big tech
On its website, Truth Social describes itself as a “‘big tent’ social-media platform that encourages an open, free and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology”.

Mr Trump wants Truth Social to champion “free speech” and eschew the “censorship” of sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

It is a common view among conservatives Silicon Valley social-media companies are curtailing free speech by removing posts and users.

“We cannot use any of the big tech companies,” Mr Nunes, who resigned from Congress in December to become TMTG’s chief executive, told the conservative Newsmax network.

“So we’re having to build this from scratch.”

Frozen out
Mr Nunes has vowed Truth Social will be a “censorship-free experience”.

But any social-media platform on the App Store, and Google Play, has to remove content that breaks the rules.

And a truly uncensored platform would soon be frozen out.

At his zenith on Twitter, Mr Trump had more than 88 million followers.

But none of the other alternative platforms presenting themselves as censorship free, such as Gettr, Parler, Gab and Rumble, has attracted audiences comparable to those of the big social networks.

Companies such as Twitter “have had years to develop their platforms and build their audiences”, points out Darrell West, a senior technology innovation fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

“I just think he’s going to discover it’s a lot harder than he realises,” he said.

“If this were easy, I think he would have done this six months ago.”

‘Very difficult’
Last year, Apple and Google removed Parler from their stores, for failing to take down posts they said threatened violence and contained illegal activity.

It was allowed back but only once it had agreed to Apple and Google’s terms of service.

“There simply is no way to avoid big tech,” Mr West says.

“Even if he has his own platform, if he’s violating their terms of service, they could basically push his app out of their app store, which would make it very difficult for him to build an audience.”

‘People worry’
Gettr, which also advocates “free speech” and looks like Twitter, was founded last year by Mr Trump’s former adviser and spokesman Jason Miller.

“It’s not like there’s the dummies’ guide to creating a social-media platform,” he told BBC News.

“You’ve got to find good talent.

“And quite frankly, there are a lot of people who are just scared… because people worry what it’s going to be like if I have something on my resume that challenges one of the big tech companies.”

Truth Social will also have to be robust enough to repel hackers.

“We have so many people who don’t want to see us be successful… even foreign governments and other bad actors,” Mr Nunes said.

Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, are voting again on whether to join a union.

It follows a ruling from the US National Labour Relations Board (NLRB), that Amazon had interfered with the previous election.

More than 6,000 workers are eligible to vote to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).

Workers have until March 25 to vote, and results will be counted at the end of March.

Two other Amazon warehouses in Staten Island are also preparing to hold elections.

‘Objectionable behaviour’
The first election in Bessemer attracted worldwide attention, as it would have been Amazon’s first US union.

But workers at the BHM1 warehouse in Alabama rejected a move to unionise, by a margin of two to one.

As the new vote got under way, the RWDSU said: “Workers’ voices can and must be heard fairly, unencumbered by Amazon’s limitless power to control what must be a fair and free election.”

The NLRB ordered the new election in November.

Its report into how the election had been conducted found that Amazon had:

held meetings six days a week, 18 hours a day, intended to dissuade workers from joining a union
employed private paid consultants to attend these meetings
used text messages and written flyers on bathroom walls and television screens, to dissuade workers
installed a box for voting within view of multiple video surveillance cameras – which gave the impression that it was the official polling location – which Amazon controlled, and had knowledge of who participated
The RWDSU added: “We are deeply concerned that the decision fails to adequately prevent Amazon from continuing its objectionable behaviour in a new election.”

Algorithm decisions
In response Amazon said: “Our employees have always had the choice of whether or not to join a union, and they overwhelmingly chose not to join the RWDSU last year. We look forward to our team in BHM1 having their voices heard again.”

Union membership in the US is low – just 6.3% of the private sector workforce, according to the US Department of Labour.

Amazon workers in Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Poland are unionised. Issues which the unions representing them look into include work-rate demands, injuries and the increasing use of algorithms in deciding how workers perform.

The US government is investigating reports of Tesla cars braking unexpectedly on motorways.

The so-called “phantom braking” problem is being looked at by US regulator the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

It received 354 complaints in the past nine months and its investigation will cover approximately 416,000 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from 2021-22.

Drivers say the issue occurs using the Autopilot driver assistance system.

The feature gives the vehicle control over some elements of braking and steering when driving, although it is not a substitute for a human driver.

Despite the name, Tesla recommends drivers remain vigilant and supervise their vehicle, noting the Autopilot ADAS system “does not make the vehicle autonomous”.

Tesla is currently under investigation by the NHTSA over two other matters.

In December 2021, it disabled its Passenger Play feature that allowed games to be played on its touchscreen while the car is in motion, leading to an open investigation covering an estimated 580,000 vehicles.

And last August, the NHTSA started to look into the role of the Autopilot system in 11 crashes involving emergency vehicles, covering approximately 765,000 Tesla cars.

The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has begun a “preliminary evaluation” into Tesla over the complaints. This is the stage before the agency could officially issue a recall of the vehicles.

It says there have been no crashes, injuries or fatalities as a result of the incidents.

“The complaints allege that while utilising the ADAS features including adaptive cruise control, the vehicle unexpectedly applies its brakes while driving at highway speeds,” the report says.

“Complainants report that the rapid deceleration can occur without warning, at random, and often repeatedly in a single drive cycle.

“ODI is opening this preliminary evaluation to determine the scope and severity of the potential problem and to fully assess the potential safety-related issues.”

The NHTSA makes customer complaints publicly available on its website, so consumers can compare vehicle safety.

In one complaint from 11 February 2022, the driver says: “Heavy braking occurs for no apparent reason and with no warning, resulting in several near misses for rear end collisions… this issue has occurred dozens of times during my five months and 10,000-mile ownership.”

In another dated 3 February 2022, the user complains of “phantom braking for no apparent reason”, stating that their car suddenly decelerated from 73mph down to 59mph “in two seconds”.

The BBC has approached Tesla for comment.

Investors are being urged to vote against a $99m (£73m) pay package awarded to Apple boss Tim Cook last year.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) said it has “significant concerns” over the size of the award, up from $14.8m the year before.

Mr Cook, whose net worth is reportedly more than £1bn, received the pay in shares, salary, and for other costs.

The BBC has contacted Apple for comment.

In a letter to shareholders, the ISS said there are “significant concerns” over the “design and magnitude” of the package. “Half of the award lacks performance criteria,” ISS said.

Mr Cook, 61, who has often spoken publicly about his concerns over equality and human rights issues, said in 2015 that he would give away his entire fortune before he dies.

According to ISS, Mr Cook’s pay was 1,447 times more than the wage of an average Apple employee.

His package included $630,600 in personal security costs and $712,500 for personal use of a private jet. ISS said the cost of such perks “significantly exceeded” comparable companies last year.

Last year, a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing showed that Mr Cook donated almost £7.4m worth of Apple shares to charity, without naming the recipient.

The company behind the iPhone, iPad and MacBook became the first company to hit a $3tn (£2.2tn) stock market value in January before dipping to its current value of $2.8tn (£2.1tn).

Shareholder returns are now more than 1,000% since Mr Cook took over in 2011.

Apple is due to hold its annual meeting for shareholders in the first week of March. However, shareholder votes are only advisory, while Apple’s board decide on pay packages.

At last year’s meeting, 95% of shareholder votes supported Apple’s executive compensation programme.

Growing opposition
Companies in the US, and UK, are facing stronger shareholder opposition over pay and compensation.

General Electric, IBM and Starbucks failed to win a majority of shareholder backing for executive pay in 2021. US oil firms ExxonMobil and Chevron also saw shareholder revolts from climate activists last year.

Millionaires ask to pay more tax
Asset manager Blackrock, Exxon’s second largest shareholder, doubled its votes against executive pay proposals in the Americas in early 2021, compared to 2020.

In the UK, more than twice as many FTSE 100 companies faced shareholder revolts than in 2020, condemning executive pay-outs when many employees faced added financial hardships in the pandemic.

President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats have called for higher taxes on the billionaires and big business to help pay for a major social spending package. The proposal would raise about $16bn by limiting deductions for executive compensation.

The tax hike plan would pay for federally funded paid family leave, expanded education budgets and climate change problems.

Google’s plan to limit data tracking on its Chrome browser has been extended to cover apps on its Android-based smartphones.

Its so-called Privacy Sandbox project aims to curb the amount of user data that advertisers can gather.

Rival Apple now forces app developers to ask permission from users before tracking them.

The news will be a blow to firms like Meta, which rely on putting their code on apps to track consumer behaviour.

Meta said this month that Apple’s changes would cost it $10bn (£7.3bn) this year. Google’s Android operating system is used by about 85% of smartphone owners worldwide.

No detail
Third-party cookies, which use people’s browsing history to target adverts, will be phased out on Google’s Chrome browser by 2023.

In a blog, Google said it was now extending what it calls its Privacy Sandbox to Android apps, and working on solutions that will limit sharing users’ data and “operate without cross app identifiers, including advertising ID”.

These identifiers are tied to smartphones and are used by apps to collect information. Google said that it will keep them in place for at least two years, while it works “with the industry” on a new system.

“We’re also exploring technologies that reduce the potential for covert data collection, including safer ways for apps to integrate with advertising SDK (software developer kits),” it added.

The tech giant did not detail how it plans to do this.

Apple decided in April last year that app developers had to explicitly ask for permission from users to use IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers). Data from advertising company Flurry Analytics, and published by Apple, suggests that US users are choosing to opt out of tracking 96% of the time.

Google’s blog did not name Apple, but referred instead to “other platforms” which it said “have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers”.

“We believe that – without first providing a privacy-preserving alternative path – such approaches can be ineffective,” it added.

Google, unlike Apple, relies on advertising revenue.

Google’s attempts to create alternatives to third party cookies on its Chrome browser have not gone entirely smoothly.

Its first proposal -a system called Federated Learning of Cohorts (Floc) – was disliked by privacy campaigners and advertisers alike.

Floc aimed to disguise users’ individual identities by assigning them to a group with similar browsing histories.

Real-time bidding
Its successor, Topics, was announced recently and aims instead to group users in topic clusters selected out of about 350 categories such as fitness or travel. When someone visits a website, Topics will show the site and its advertising partners three of their interests from the previous three weeks.

The Competitions Market Authority has been scrutinising Google’s transition to more privacy-focused systems and said of its plans to extend them to Android apps: “We will continue to monitor this closely and engage with Google on the nature and detail of its proposals.”

The average app includes at least six third-party trackers that are there solely to collect and share online data, according to a report commissioned by Apple last year.

And any one data broker is estimated to have data on up to 700 million consumers, according to research firm Cracked Lab.

Regulators, such as the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, are investigating the advertising ecosystem, especially the way ads are sold – known as real-time bidding – which automatically places billions of online adverts on web pages and apps every day.

Apple plans to introduce a number of changes to make it harder to misuse AirTags to track someone.

The button-sized devices are designed to work with Apple’s ‘Find My’ network to locate lost items.

The company said its changes to the device will make suspicious tags easier to find, and alert users earlier that an AirTag may be travelling with them.

In January, a number of women told the BBC they had been followed using AirTags.

Apple launched AirTags in April last year. The small, circular devices can be attached to luggage or keys – anything you could lose.

But the devices can be misused to track people by being hidden in a car, or on a personal item such as a bag.

As part of the changes to make misuse harder, Apple said every user setting up their AirTag for the first time will see a message warning that using the device to track people without consent is a crime in many regions around the world.

Currently, iPhone users (and Android users who download an app) receive “unwanted tracking” alerts if an unknown AirTag moves with them.

Apple announced that people will be alerted earlier that an unknown AirTag is travelling with them.

And when people are warned of “unwanted tracking” by an AirTag, users of iPhone 11, iPhone 12, and iPhone 13 devices will be able to use “precision finding”, to see the distance and direction to an unknown AirTag when it is in range. Previously only the owner of the AirTag could do this.

More noise
Currently iOS users can send an unwanted tracking alert to make the suspect AirTag play tones and Apple has said tags will use louder tones in the future to make the tag easier to locate.

The company said it will also add to a feature that makes an AirTag that hasn’t been with the person who registered it for an extended period of time, play a sound when moved.

In theory this could reveal the presence of an AirTag to a stalking victim, but recent reports revealed that AirTags with the internal speakers deactivated had been listed for sale online.

To counter this, when the sound is triggered and the AirTag is detected moving with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, an alert will also appear on that device.

Apple also said it will also update its support article on unwanted tracking with additional information and resources.

Apple AirTags are incredibly good at finding things. They can track your items down to 0.1 feet.

But that accuracy means that, in the wrong hands, they can be used as sophisticated tracking tools.

This isn’t theoretical, as the BBC reported last month, there’s evidence that people are using AirTags to follow people.

The AirTags themselves are relatively new, and it’s clear that Apple hasn’t yet worked out how best to protect people.

For example, it took six months after AirTag’s launch for the company to bring out an app that would alert Android users to an unwanted AirTag.

The new updates that Apple plans to come out later this year – precision finding and AirTags that emit louder noises – are what campaigners have been calling for.

But with these iterative updates, there will be questions over whether Apple launched the product too early.

2px presentational grey line
Apple said it designed “products to provide a great experience, but also with safety and privacy in mind”, adding that it was “committed to listening to feedback and innovating to make improvements that continue to guard against unwanted tracking”.

It also noted that “based on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare; however, each instance is one too many”.

Amber Norsworthy lives in Mississippi with her four children.

It had just turned 3pm when she got home on 27 December. She received a notification on her phone.

“My phone made a ding that I’d never heard before”, she says.

The notification told her that an unknown device had been following her movements.

Ms Norsworthy, who’s 32, went on to the ‘Find My’ app on her iPhone.

“It showed me my whole route. It said ‘the last time the owner saw your location was 15:02’ and I was like, ‘that’s now, I’m at home’.”

She rang the police, who told her they didn’t know what to do. She has yet to find the device, which she believes is somewhere in her car. She says Apple Support was able to confirm it was an AirTag. “I watch my surroundings very closely now,” she says.

The BBC has spoken to six women in the US who say they have been tracked using Apple AirTags.

The button-sized devices are designed to work with Apple’s ‘Find My’ network to locate lost items. But there have been multiple reports in the US of the devices being used to track people.

Apple told the BBC: “We take customer safety very seriously and are committed to AirTag’s privacy and security.”

The company also says AirTags have better security features than rival products. However, there is growing evidence that they are being used for criminal activity across the US.

Apple launched AirTags last April. They’re small, smooth and circular – and took inspiration from other tracking products on the market, like Tile.

The idea is that they can be attached to luggage or keys – anything you could lose. You can track an item to within 0.1ft. But in the wrong hands, they can be used for a different purpose.

“If you create an item which is useful for tracking stolen items, then you have also created a perfect tool for stalking,” says Eva Galperin, Director of Cyber-Security at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“I have personally talked to several people who have found AirTags in their possession,” she says.

Apple was aware, long before it released AirTags, that they could be used for criminal activity. On releasing them, Apple said that “AirTags are designed to track items not people”.

They created a series of safeguards that, they said, would protect people from being tracked.

People with an iPhone would be alerted if an unregistered AirTag was moving with them. And the AirTags would make a beeping noise when separated from an owner for a period of time.

In December, the company also released an app which Android users can download. Tracker Detect allows users who aren’t on the iOS operating system to be notified of a rogue AirTag.

But for several reasons, many people believe these safeguards don’t go far enough.

Anna Mahaney is from Georgia. She was alerted to an unknown device after she’d gone to the shopping mall.

“I was pretty freaked out and I went to try to disable it. Every time I did that, it said it couldn’t connect to the server.” She went to an Apple Store, where they suggested she should turn off her location settings.

When she went to the local police, they told her there had been another similar report in her area. She believes the device is somewhere on her car.

The BBC has spoken to six women who all say they have been tracked with AirTags. One said she had found an AirTag taped to the inside of a bag. Others haven’t been able to locate the tags.

All of them have questions about whether Apple is doing enough to stop their products from tracking people.

Apple says AirTags will make a beeping sound between 8-24 hours after a device is detected moving with an unregistered phone. But it’s easy to register an AirTag, and then disable it.

Anna Mahaney says Apple Support told her this could be why she hasn’t been able to find the AirTag: “It looks like what could have happened in my case was that the person that owns the AirTag tracked me until I got home, and then they turned off the AirTag.”

This isn’t the only potential loophole in Apple’s AirTag safeguards. Apple’s app, designed for Android users to find an unwanted AirTag, has been downloaded by a tiny percentage of Android phones

The BBC asked Apple for figures on how many times the app has been downloaded on Google Play, Android’s default app store. Apple didn’t say, but Google Play puts the figure at around 100,000 downloads. To put that into context, there are around 3 billion active Android devices around the world.

Apple says that if you don’t have an iPhone, people will be notified with another safeguard – a beeping sound that plays after an unwanted AirTag is detected. But there are problems with this too.

“AirTags emit a 60 decibel beep. and it’s really easy to muffle.” says Eva Galperin. “I could muffle it just by closing it in my fist. I could muffle it by putting it between two couch cushions. It’s impossible to hear by putting it, say, under your car bumper.”

And the noise will only begin to play after eight hours. Critics argue that by then it is too late.

In Bloomingdale Illinois, one police force has warned local residents about AirTags: “We thought it was important to notify the people in our community that this is somewhat of an issue.” says Frank Giammarese, director of public safety at Bloomingdale Police.

“Technology is great but unfortunately… some people have misused that.”

There is an argument that Apple is being unfairly targeted. It’s easy to buy tracking devices on the internet.

The BBC asked its major competitor, Tile, what it was doing to protect the public from being tracked with its devices. Tile replied that it was “developing a solution” which would identify an unknown device near people. But that solution hasn’t been released yet.

The counter-argument is that AirTags are just very good at being located by a registered iPhone. The ‘Find My’ network uses almost a billion Apple devices around the world – and their Bluetooth connectivity – to create accurate and long-range tracking.

“I want Apple to require these devices to ask permission before you can be followed,” says Anna Mahaney. “With ‘Find My Friends’, if my husband wants validation, I have to okay that and give it to him. I cannot rationalise why a stranger can follow me and I don’t have to give consent.”

Amber Norsworthy believes AirTags should not be sold until Apple can work out how to better alert people: “They should stop selling them for a period of time until they can work out some safety boundaries.”

Eva Galperin believes Apple needs to create better safeguards: “I want them to work with Google in order to give Androids the same level of detection automatically in the background, as they already have for iPhones.”

The BBC put these criticisms to Apple, who said: “We take customer safety very seriously and are committed to AirTag’s privacy and security…If users ever feel their safety is at risk, they are encouraged to contact local law enforcement, who can work with Apple to provide any available information about the unknown AirTag.”

Shares in Japanese technology giant Sony have slumped in Tokyo trade after Microsoft said it plans to buy mega games company Activision Blizzard.

The deal worth $68.7bn (£50.5bn), would be Microsoft’s biggest ever buyout and the largest deal in gaming history.

It would see the US firm owning popular gaming franchises including Call of Duty, Warcraft and Overwatch.

The deal would be a major step for Microsoft’s Xbox gaming brand in its battle against Sony’s PlayStation.

It also comes a year after Microsoft bought another influential gaming company, Bethesda for $7.5bn.

Buying the troubled but successful Activision would turn Microsoft into the world’s third-biggest gaming company by revenue, behind China’s Tencent and Sony, marking a major shift for the industry.

Microsoft said the Activision-Blizzard deal would help it grow its gaming business across mobile, PC and consoles as well as providing the building blocks for the metaverse.

The purchase of the Call of Duty maker comes as Microsoft is also aggressively expanding its Game Pass subscription service.

“We’re investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all,” Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Microsoft plans to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7bn
In the battle for popularity with gamers, Sony’s PlayStation 5 is widely seen as having the lead over Microsoft’s fourth generation Xbox models.

In recent years, Sony has strengthened its network of in-house games studios and delivered a string of exclusive hits including in its Spider-man franchise, which has left its US rival playing catch-up.

The Japanese firm is also a pioneer in virtual reality and this month teased some details its next generation headset.

However, it faces tough competition in that area from non-traditional rivals such as Facebook owner Meta Platforms, which is investing heavily in its metaverse offering.

Sony Group’s shares closed 12.8% lower in Tokyo on Wednesday, which helped to pull down the benchmark Nikkei 225 index by 2.8%.

The 10 biggest US airlines have warned that the impending switch-on of 5G mobile phone services will cause “major disruption” to flights.

They said the start of Verizon and AT&T 5G mobile phone services, planned for Wednesday, would cause a “completely avoidable economic calamity”.

Airlines fear C-band 5G signals will disrupt planes’ navigation systems, particularly those used in bad weather.

The warning was issued in a letter sent to US aviation authorities.

The chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines were joined by others in saying: “Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies”, including vaccine distribution.

The BBC has seen the letter outlining their urgent concerns. It was sent to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, as well as the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the chair of the Federal Communications Commission and the director of the National Economic Council.

The BBC understands that negotiations are continuing at the highest levels of the US government about what has been described as a “very fluid situation”.

Why your new phone could disrupt flights and ground planes
Top US phone firms agree delay of 5G rollout
Boeing and Airbus warn US over 5G safety concerns
The airlines want 5G signals to be excluded from “the approximate two miles of airport runways at affected airports as defined by the FAA on 19 January 2022”.

“This will allow 5G to be deployed while avoiding harmful impacts on the aviation industry, travelling public, supply chain, vaccine distribution, our workforce and broader economy.

“We further ask that the FAA immediately identify those base stations closest to key airport runways that need to be addressed to ensure safety and avoid disruption,” they added.

These concerns were recently highlighted by the two big planemakers, Airbus and Boeing, in a rare joint warning.

The group of airlines said: “Airplane manufacturers have informed us that there are huge swathes of the operating fleet that may need to be indefinitely grounded.

“In addition to the chaos caused domestically, this lack of usable wide-body aircraft could potentially strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas.”

In an update on Sunday, the FAA, which oversees aviation safety across the US, said it had cleared “an estimated 45% of the US commercial fleet to perform low-visibility landings at many of the airports where 5G C-band will be deployed”.

The FAA added that it had approved “two radio altimeter models that are installed in a wide variety of Boeing and Airbus planes”.

“Even with these new approvals, flights at some airports may still be affected,” the regulator said.

“The FAA also continues to work with manufacturers to understand how radar altimeter data is used in other flight control systems. Passengers should check with their airlines if weather is forecast at a destination where 5G interference is possible.”

Phone companies have spent tens of billions of dollars on upgrading their networks to deploy the 5G technology, which brings much faster internet services and greater connectivity.

There have been several delays already because of the aviation concerns, with launch dates in December and earlier this month both being pushed back.

US wireless industry group CTIA has previously said 5G is safe and accused the aviation industry of fearmongering and distorting facts.

“A delay will cause real harm. Pushing back deployment one year would subtract $50bn in economic growth, just as our nation recovers and rebuilds from the pandemic,” said CTIA chief executive Meredith Attwell Baker in a blog post in November.

Novak Djokovic has arrived in Serbia after being deported from Australia.

The top men’s tennis player was deported after losing a visa battle that centred on the fact he is unvaccinated.

Supporters gathered at the airport in Belgrade, waving the national flag and chanting “we love Novak”.

“This is a shame what they did to Novak in Australia,” one supporter said. “This is a shame what the world has come to.”

“I myself am vaccinated, double-jabbed, but I think no-one should be forced to do something… he was judged and sentenced for his freedom of choice,” he added.

This year’s Australian Open tournament, which has been overshadowed by the player’s visa troubles, began in Melbourne on Monday.

Djokovic had been scheduled to play later in the day, but his dramatic deportation ended his hopes of winning a record 21st Grand Slam title.

Under Australia’s immigration laws, Djokovic, 34, cannot be granted another visa for three years.

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said he may be allowed entry sooner under the “right circumstances”.

“[The ban] does go over a three-year period, but there is the opportunity for them to return in the right circumstances and that would be considered at the time,” he said in an interview with the Australian radio station 2GB on Monday.

What has Djokovic said about vaccines?
ANALYSIS: What next for Djokovic?
Australian law does provide for compelling or compassionate reasons for the three-year visa ban to be waived.

This would potentially allow Djokovic to take part in the Australian Open tournament next year.

But questions have also been raised over Djokovic’s participation in the French Open, the next Grand Slam tournament on this year’s calendar.

France’s parliament has just given its final approval to a law requiring people over the age of 16 to have a certificate of vaccination to enter public places, including sports venues.

France’s sports ministry said on Monday it would not grant exemptions to its latest rules on vaccine passes, which it noted apply to professional players as well as spectators.

But a spokesperson also said the situation might change before the event is held in May.

How did the 10-day saga reach a climax?
Djokovic was forced to leave Australia after judges upheld a decision by Immigration Minister Alex Hawke to cancel his visa on public health grounds.

The decision marked the end of a tumultuous period where the Serb fought to stay and defend his title.

He was originally granted a medical exemption to enter Australia by two different independent health panels – one commissioned by Tennis Australia, the other by the state government of Victoria – after testing positive for coronavirus in mid-December.

But the player’s attempt to enter the country without being vaccinated stoked public anger.

The Australian Border Force then detained him on 5 January for not meeting coronavirus requirements and his visa was revoked.

A judge overturned that decision last Monday, but the government stepped in several days later to revoke the visa yet again.

The legal battle reached its conclusion on Sunday when judges upheld the government’s decision, leaving Djokovic with no other option but to leave the country.