When Mark Zuckerberg announced ambitious plans to build the "metaverse" — a virtual reality construct intended to supplant the internet, merge virtual life with real life and create endless new playgrounds for everyone — he promised that "you're going to able to do almost anything you can imagine."

That might not be such a great idea.

Wang Yaping has become the first Chinese woman to conduct a spacewalk as part of a six-month mission to the country's space station.

Wang and fellow astronaut Zhai Zhigang left the station's main module on Sunday evening, spending more than six hours outside installing equipment and carrying out tests alongside the station's robotic service arm, according to the China Manned Space agency.

A LGBT advocacy group in China that has spearheaded many of the country's legal cases pushing for greater rights is halting its work for the foreseeable future.

LGBT Rights Advocacy China announced it was ceasing all activities and shutting down its social media accounts in an announcement on social media Thursday.

U.S. authorities on Wednesday put the Israeli maker of the Pegasus spyware on a list of restricted companies, taking aim at software central to a scandal over surveillance of journalists and officials.

Yahoo Inc. is leaving the China market, suspending its services there as of Monday amid what it says is an "increasingly challenging" business and legal environment.

Foreign technology firms have been pulling out or downsizing their operations in mainland China as a strict data privacy law specifying how companies collect and store data takes effect.

Facebook said it will shut down its face-recognition system and delete the face prints of more than 1 billion people amid growing concerns about the technology and its misuse by governments, police and others.

"This change will represent one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology's history," Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence for Facebook's new parent company, Meta, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

Around 2,500 Amazon employees at seven sites across Germany were on strike Tuesday and unions warned stoppages could continue up to Christmas.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and French President Emmanuel Macron have discussed the Israeli-made spyware said to have targeted Macron's phone, an Israeli diplomatic source said.

Like many companies in trouble before it, Facebook is changing its name and logo.

Facebook Inc. is now called Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, to reflect what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday is its commitment to developing the new surround-yourself technology known as the " metaverse." But the social network itself will still be called Facebook.

The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after then-President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot.

It had been three days since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for more than eight minutes until the 46-year-old Black man lost consciousness, showing no signs of life. A video taken by a bystander had been viewed millions of times online. Protests had taken over Minnesota's largest city and would soon spread throughout cities across America.