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By Deborah Mary Sophia and Shubham Kalia (Reuters) -Amazon's cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world's most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. After more than six hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 10:00 a.m. ET (1400 GMT). But AWS acknowledged it was still experiencing elevated errors. "We can confirm significant API errors and connectivity issues across multiple services … We are investigating," AWS said in the latest update on its status page. To aid the recovery, AWS said it was putting in place limits on the number of requests that can be made on its platform. While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day. ISSUE ORIGINATED FROM AWS SITE KNOWN FOR PREVIOUS OUTAGES AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS is the largest cloud provider in the world, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud. AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered previous outages in 2021 and 2020. Asked for comment, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Junade Ali, a software engineer, cyber expert and Fellow at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said the issue appeared to be with one of the networking systems AWS uses to control a database product. "As this issue can usually be resolved centrally … unless there are further issues identified, the issue should be able to be mitigated over the coming hours," he said. HOURS LATER, A ROCKY RECOVERY Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. Snapchat, for instance, last had over 7,700 reports on Downdetector, up from about 4,000 reports earlier, but still lower than the peak of more than 22,000. AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS. Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, along with Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal's President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work. OUTAGE EXPOSES RISK OF DEPENDENCE ON HANDFUL OF PROVIDERS In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were also facing issues, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and how reliant they now are on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch causing havoc with business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, Director of Research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. While there has been no indication yet of a potential cyberattack behind Monday's outage, the scale of the disruption has fed speculation. "When anything like this happens, the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable," said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos. "AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset." (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Joe Bavier)

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By Ateev Bhandari and Arasu Kannagi Basil (Reuters) -Evernorth, a new crypto venture backed by digital asset firm Ripple, said on Monday it will list on the Nasdaq through a merger with blank-check firm Armada Acquisition Corp II and is expected to raise more than $1 billion in proceeds. The digital asset treasury will focus on accumulating XRP, a token linked to Ripple and the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to data from CoinGecko. The move comes months after Wall Street's top regulator ended a high-profile crypto lawsuit, which accused Ripple of selling unregistered securities to institutional investors. Under a crypto-friendly Trump administration, Ripple is looking to scale institutional adoption and presence of the XRP token in capital markets. The deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2026, will create the largest XRP publicly traded XRP treasury company, Evernorth said. As scores of companies continue to wrap crypto assets into equity, concerns are mounting over the spillover impact of a correction in the equities markets. Earlier this month, crypto assets suffered from their largest selloff ever after U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his trade war with China. "I lost track around how many (asset holding plays) are there around Ethereum," Evernorth CEO Asheesh Birla, a former Ripple executive, told Reuters in an interview. Birla added that he will be stepping down from Ripple's board as he joins Evernorth's. Japanese firm SBI, which was previously affiliated with SoftBank, is providing $200 million of the raise in exchange for equity. "We will look at acquisition opportunities," Birla said, adding that Evernorth will be hiring and building out an investment team as well. The deal also saw participation from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and digital asset firms Pantera Capital and Kraken, which have a track record of funding such strategies. (Reporting by Ateev Bhandari and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

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By Jeff Horwitz NEW YORK (Reuters) -Meta researchers found that teens who report that Instagram regularly made them feel bad about their bodies saw significantly more “eating disorder adjacent content” than those who did not, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters. The posts shown to those users featured “prominent display” of chest, buttocks, or thighs, “explicit judgement” about body types and “content related to disordered eating and/or negative body image.”  While such material is not banned on Instagram, the researchers noted that parents, teens and outside experts have told Meta they believe it is potentially harmful to young users.  Meta surveyed 1,149 teens over the course of the 2023-2024 academic year about whether and how often they felt bad about their bodies after using Instagram. Then they manually sampled the content those users saw on the platform over a three-month period. The study showed that for the 223 teens who often felt bad about their bodies after viewing Instagram, “eating disorder adjacent content” made up 10.5% of what they saw on the platform. Among the other teens in the study, such content accounted for only 3.3% of what they saw.  “Teens who reported frequent body dissatisfaction after viewing posts on Instagram… saw about three times more body-focused/ED-adjacent content than other teens,” the authors wrote, referring to eating disorders, according to a summary of the research reviewed exclusively by Reuters. In addition to seeing more eating disorder-adjacent content, researchers found, the teens who reported the most negative feelings about themselves saw more provocative content more broadly, content Meta classifies as “mature themes,”  “Risky behavior,” “Harm & Cruelty” and “Suffering.” Cumulatively, such content accounted for 27% of what those teens saw on the platform, compared with 13.6% among their peers who hadn’t reported negative feelings.  META RESEARCHERS EXPRESSED CONCERN The researchers stressed that their findings did not prove that Instagram was making users feel worse about their bodies. “It is not possible to establish the causal direction of these findings,” they wrote, noting the possibility that teens who felt bad about themselves could be actively seeking out that material.  The Instagram research, a redacted replica of which is published here and has not been previously reported, demonstrated that Instagram exposed teens who “report frequently experiencing body dissatisfaction" to high doses of content that Meta’s own advisors “have expressed support for limiting,” the writeup said. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the document reviewed by Reuters demonstrates Meta’s commitment to understanding and improving its products.  “This research is further proof we remain committed to understanding young people’s experiences and using those insights to build safer, more supportive platforms for teens,” Stone said, noting the company’s recent announcement that it would attempt to show minors content in-line with PG-13 movie standards.   In the study, Meta said that its existing screening tools – which were designed to catch violations of platform rules – were incapable of detecting 98.5% of the “sensitive” content that the company believes might not have been appropriate for teens. The finding was “not necessarily surprising,” the researchers wrote, because Meta had only recently begun work on building an algorithm to detect the potentially harmful content they were examining. 'ASSOCIATION' BETWEEN CONTENT AND 'FEELING WORSE ABOUT ONE'S BODY' The study, which is marked, “Do not distribute internally or externally without permission,” is the latest internal research that demonstrates an “association” between viewing fashion, beauty and fitness content and “reporting feeling worse about one’s body,” the document states. The research was conducted as part of Meta’s efforts to understand interactions between users and its own products, which rely on algorithms to determine which content to show to users.  In the United States, the company has faced state and federal investigations of Instagram’s effects on children as well as civil suits by school districts alleging harmful product design and deceptive marketing of its platforms as safe for teens.  Those suits have prominently cited past leaked internal research from Meta in which researchers expressed their belief that the platform’s content recommendations might be harmful to youth with existing body image issues.  Since July of this year, Stone said, the company has reduced the amount of age-restricted content shown to teenage Instagram users by half.  CONTENT WARRANTED TRIGGER WARNING Jenny Radesky, a University of Michigan Associate Professor of Pediatrics who reviewed Meta’s unreleased research at Reuters’ request, called the study’s methodology robust and its findings disturbing. “This supports the idea that teens with psychological vulnerabilities are being profiled by Instagram and fed more harmful content,” Radesky said. “We know that a lot of what people consume on social media comes from the feed, not from search.” Past internal research at Meta “has demonstrated an association between frequency of reporting feeling worse about one’s body” and consuming Instagram fitness and beauty content, the writeup says.  Meta’s researchers wrote that teens, parents, pediatricians, external advisors and Meta’s own Eating Disorder & Body Image Advisory Council have urged Instagram to limit how much of that content it shows to teenagers, warning that it “may be detrimental to teen well-being, specifically by precipitating or exacerbating feelings of body dissatisfaction.” Such content falls afoul of Meta’s rules against content that overtly promotes eating disorders. The report included samples of problematic content including images of skinny women in lingerie and bikinis, fight videos and a drawing of a crying figure scrawled with phrases including “how could I ever compare” and “make it all end.” One of the example posts showed a closeup of a woman’s lacerated neck.  Though the content did not violate Meta’s rules, the researchers found it disturbing enough that they issued a “sensitive content” warning to colleagues reading their work. (Reporting by Jeff Horwitz in Oakland, Calif. Editing by Kenneth Li and Michael Learmonth)

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By Deborah Mary Sophia and Shubham Kalia (Reuters) -Amazon's cloud services unit AWS was recovering on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world's most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. After roughly three hours of disruptions, systems were gradually coming back online as of 6:00 a.m. ET (1000 GMT), with AWS saying it was seeing "significant signs of recovery" for some impacted services. "Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests," it said in the latest update on the outage posted on its status page. ISSUE SHOULD BE RESOLVED IN COMING HOURS, EXPERT SAYS AWS provides on-demand computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS competes with Google and Microsoft's cloud services. Asked for comment on the outage, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Junade Ali, a software engineer, cyber expert and Fellow at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said the issue appeared to be with one of the networking systems AWS uses to control a database product. "As this issue can usually be resolved centrally … unless there are further issues identified, the issue should be able to be mitigated over the coming hours," he said. INITIAL SIGNS OF RECOVERY Ookla, owner of outage tracking website Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. Issues on some apps and websites, including Snapchat, Roblox, streaming site Max and PayPal's Venmo were showing signs of easing, according to Downdetector. Snapchat last had over 4,000 reports on Downdetector, down from an earlier peak of more than 22,000, while reports on Roblox dropped to less than 500 from a peak of over 12,600. Other services, however, remained affected, with thousands of reports for social media app Reddit and financial platform Chime on Downdetector. AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS. Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, along with Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal's President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work. OUTAGE EXPOSES RISK OF DEPENDENCE ON HANDFUL OF PROVIDERS In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were also facing issues, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and how reliant they now are on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch causing havoc with business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, Director of Research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. While there has been no indication yet of a potential cyberattack behind Monday's outage, the scale of the disruption has fed speculation. "When anything like this happens, the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable," said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos. "AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset." (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Joe Bavier)

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London (PA Media/dpa) – People who have lost their vision because of a common but untreatable age-related condition are now able to read again thanks to a pioneering electronic eye implant. The tiny Prima device is just 2mm by 2mm and has half the thickness of a human hair. Fitted under the layer of light-sensitive tissue in the eye called the retina, it allows patients to see letters, numbers and words through an eye that was previously blind. Some can now even do crosswords and read the tiny text on prescriptions using the so-called “prosthetic vision”. This breakthrough has never been achieved before, and represents a “paradigm shift” in artificial vision, experts said. They are also hopeful the technology could one day be available on the NHS. The world-first trial involved 38 patients across 17 sites in five countries, including the UK, France, Italy and the Netherlands. All had a condition known as geographic atrophy (GA), which is an advanced stage of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD causes changes to the macula, the central part of the retina which plays a key role in sight. GA, which affects about five million people globally, can progress to full sight loss as the central macula melts away. Experts in the UK estimate that around one in four people who are legally blind have GA from AMD. Those involved in the study had lost the central sight in the eye being tested and had only limited peripheral vision remaining. The procedures took place at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London around three years ago in under two hours. Surgeons removed the clear, jelly-like substance from inside the eye in what is known as a vitrectomy. A trapdoor under the centre of the retina was then created, where the tiny 2mm by 2mm chip was posted. To see words and write, patients wear augmented-reality glasses, which contain a video camera. This is connected to a small computer attached to their waistband, which includes a zoom feature to make text bigger. The video camera in the glasses projects scenes as an infra-red beam across the chip, which activates the device. Artificial intelligence in the waistband computer then processes the information, which is converted into an electrical signal. This signal passes through the cells in the retina and optical nerve into the brain, where it is interpreted as vision. Mahi Muqit, senior vitreoretinal consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, told the PA news agency this has been “life-changing” for patients. “I have all these patients who are blind, and when you see them, they want to know is there anything that can restore vision,” he said. “And the answer has always been no. “We’ve got some patients who are now reading books, their quality of life is much higher. “Some of them are writing, doing crossword puzzles, things they enjoy.” The chip was activated about a month after the operation, with patients then undergoing intense rehabilitation to help them interpret the signals and learn to read again. The pocket computer also helps to refine the signals which are being sent to the brain and turn them into formed objects and letters. “You have to realise you’ve got blind patients who are depressed and socially isolated, who are now able to start to function and pick up things that they used to enjoy,” Mr Muqit told PA. “In the history of artificial vision, this represents a new era. “Blind patients are actually able to have meaningful central vision restoration, which has never been done before.” The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest 84% of patients on the trial were able to read letters, numbers and words while using Prima, and on average, could read five lines on a vision chart. Before the device was fitted, some could not even see the chart. While the chip is permanent, patients can wear the glasses for as long or as often as they like. Mr Muqit said: “There’s no pain, there’s no safety issues, inside or outside, because the device only switches on once you put the glasses on. “There’s absolutely no time limit, they can use it every day, as long as they like.” Sheila Irvine, one of Moorfields’ patients who took part in the trial, now reads her prescriptions, does crosswords and reads the ingredients on tins. She said that prior to the operation, her vision “was like having two black discs” in her eyes, “with the outside distorted”. “There was no pain during the operation, but you’re still aware of what’s happening,” Ms Irvine added. “It’s a new way of looking through your eyes, and it was dead exciting when I began seeing a letter. “It’s not simple learning to read again, but the more hours I put in, the more I pick up.” The developers of Prima, US-based medtech company Science Corporation, are now working to secure regulatory approval for the device. Mr Muqit told PA he is hopeful this kind of technology could one day be available on the NHS. “I would have to say, it’s a whole paradigm shift,” he said. “You talk to surgeons in the UK that I’m colleagues with, and they’re all very excited by this particular technology. “You know that this technology will be scalable.” The following information is not intended for publication pa dpa coh

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(Reuters) -Arm Holdings said on Monday it is expanding its Flexible Access licensing program to cover its Armv9 edge AI platform, aiming to attract startups and device makers developing on‑device AI by lowering entry barriers and accelerating design cycles. The Flexible Access program allows companies to use its chip design tools and training for little or no cost, enabling them to build and test new chip concepts. Companies including hardware firms Raspberry Pi, Hailo and SiMa.ai have participated in the program, Arm said. WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Opening up the licensing program strengthens Arm's ties with AI startups and on‑device AI providers that might otherwise be priced out by costly licenses, positioning Arm to embed its technology across emerging AI devices. CONTEXT Arm is expanding to fortify its position in the burgeoning edge AI market, where it faces growing competition from rivals such as Nvidia, Intel, as well as newer players. Companies from self-driving vehicle makers to retail inventory software developers are adopting edge AI, which runs artificial‑intelligence models on devices such as smartphones and laptops to process data on the spot rather than sending it to the cloud. BY THE NUMBERS Arm said more than 300 companies have joined the program, with 400 chip designs completed and ready for manufacturing. Earlier this month, Qualcomm shifted its flagship chips to Arm's v9 architecture, sources exclusively told Reuters. MARKET REACTION Arm's shares rose 4% to $172.23 after the news. Up to last close, the stock had gained 34.2% this year. (Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru, Stephen Nellis and Max Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

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London (PA Media/dpa) – Patients with vision loss caused by a common but untreatable condition are able to read again thanks to a groundbreaking eye implant, but what is the device and how does it help? – What is the Prima device? Prima, developed by US medtech company Science Corporation, comprises a tiny chip, measuring about 2mm by 2mm and the same thickness as a human hair, as well as augmented reality glasses and a pocket computer. – How was it implanted? Patients had the clear, jelly-like substance from inside the eye – known as a vitrectomy – removed. Surgeons then created a trapdoor under the centre of the retina, the light-sensitive lining at the back of the eye that converts light into electrical signals, which are then sent to the brain via the optic nerve to be processed as vision. – How does the device work? The chip switches on when patients put the augmented reality glasses on. Scenes picked up by the video camera in the glasses are beamed across the chip, while artificial intelligence in the pocket computer processes the information and converts it into an electrical signal. This signal is then beamed back through the cells in the retina and optical nerve in the eye and through to the brain, where it is interpreted as vision. – Who has the device been designed for? The device has been developed specifically for people with a condition known as geographic atrophy (GA), which is an advanced stage of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD causes changes in the part of the eye known as the macula, the central part of the retina which plays a key role in sight. According to the NHS, it usually affects people in their 50s and while the exact cause is unknown, it has been linked to age, smoking, being overweight, and high blood pressure. GA is estimated to affect five million people worldwide, with experts suggesting that one in four UK patients who are registered blind have GA from AMD. – How long does the operation take? The procedures that took place at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London took less that two hours. – What happens after the procedure? The chip is activated after around a month. After this, patients underwent intense rehabilitation with low vision specialists and technicians at Moorfields. Initially, all they see is lights triggered by the device. Experts help the patients to align the device, while the pocket computer refines the signals to turn the flashing lights into formed objects and letters. After a few months, they start to see things which are actually in front of them, rather than just flashing lights. – Can patients wear the device all the time? The chip is a permanent fixture in the patient’s eye and is activated when they put on the augmented-reality glasses. There is no time limit, and they can wear the glasses every day for as long as they like. – How many people were on the trial and what were the findings? Some 38 patients from across 17 countries took part in the study, which started around three years ago. This includes people in the UK, France, Italy and the Netherlands. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, show 84% of patients were able to read letters, numbers and words while using Prima, and on average, could read five lines on a vision chart. Before the device was fitted, some patients could not even see the chart. – Could this be used on people born blind? Experts suggest Prima would not be useful in people born blind. The chip is essentially like placing an electronic photoreceptor in the eye, but the retina needs an optic nerve to work. In those born blind, the optic nerve is not really working so putting something in the retina will not pass signals to the brain. However, they are hopeful this type of technology could one day be used to restore vision in people with other conditions. The following information is not intended for publication pa dpa coh

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London (PA Media/dpa) – A woman who described herself as an “avid bookworm” before losing her sight is now able to read again and do crosswords after taking part in a world-first study. Sheila Irvine was one of the UK patients included in a clinical trial to test bionic eye implant PRIMA. The device helps those with geographic atrophy (GA), an advanced stage of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), to read and write again. A tiny 2mm by 2mm chip was fitted behind Irvine’s retina at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. She now wears augmented-reality glasses with a video camera, which the chip uses to beam information to a pocket computer. The computer processes the information into an electrical signal that is sent to the optical nerve and to the brain. Irvine said she took part in the trial to help people in the future, and can now do crosswords and read the ingredients on tins thanks to the pioneering technology. “I wanted to take part in research to help future generations, and my optician suggested I get in touch with Moorfields,” she said. “Before receiving the implant, it was like having two black discs in my eyes, with the outside distorted. I was an avid bookworm, and I wanted that back.” Irvine said she felt no pain during the operation, which took place in 2022. “I was nervous, excited, all those things,” she added. “There was no pain during the operation, but you’re well aware of what’s happening. “It’s a new way of looking through your eyes, and it was dead exciting when I began seeing a letter. It’s not simple learning to read again, but the more hours you put in, the more I pick up.” Irvine is now enjoying challenging herself with reading. “The team at Moorfields have given me challenges, like ‘look at your prescription,’ which is always tiny,” she said. “I like challenging myself, trying to look at the little writing on tins, doing crosswords. “It’s made a big difference. Reading takes you into another world, I’m definitely more optimistic.” Irvine was diagnosed with AMD more than 15 years ago but says she has not let the condition stop her life. She said: “At first, I noticed I couldn’t judge things when I was driving – I kept hitting the pavement. I was told I had age-related macular degeneration. “I cried all day long when I sent my driving licence back over 15 years ago, but then I said to myself, ‘move on and get on with things’. “I can’t see TV very well, but I still have it on in the background. I don’t let anything stop me. I’ve got lots of friends, and I socialise quite a bit, we catch up down the pub." The following information is not intended for publication pa dpa coh

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(Reuters) -The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Monday it has opened a preliminary probe into about 2,000 Waymo self-driving vehicles after reports that the company's robotaxis may have failed to follow traffic safety laws around stopped school buses. The probe is the latest federal review of self-driving systems as regulators scrutinize how driverless technologies interact with pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. NHTSA said the Office of Defects Investigation opened the review after flagging a media report describing an incident in which a Waymo autonomous vehicle did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus with its red lights flashing, stop arm deployed and crossing control arm extended. The report said the Waymo vehicle initially stopped beside the bus then maneuvered around its front, passing the extended stop arm and crossing control arm while students were disembarking. A Waymo spokesperson said the company has “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release.” The company added "driving safely around children has always been one of Waymo's highest priorities. In the event referenced, the vehicle approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible and drove slowly around the front of the bus before driving past it, keeping a safe distance from children." NHTSA said the vehicle involved was equipped with Waymo's fifth-generation Automated Driving System (ADS) and was operating without a human safety driver at the time of the incident. Waymo has said its robotaxi fleet numbers more than 1,500 vehicles operating across major U.S. cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin. The Alphabet-owned company also plans to expand internationally, with launches in cities including Tokyo and London in coming years. (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

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(Reuters) -The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Monday it has opened a preliminary probe into about 2,000 Waymo self-driving vehicles after reports that the company's robotaxis may have failed to follow traffic safety laws around stopped school buses. The probe is the latest federal review of self-driving systems as regulators scrutinize how driverless technologies interact with pedestrians, cyclists and other road users. NHTSA said the Office of Defects Investigation opened the review after flagging a media report describing an incident in which a Waymo autonomous vehicle did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus with its red lights flashing, stop arm deployed and crossing control arm extended. The report said the Waymo vehicle initially stopped beside the bus then maneuvered around its front, passing the extended stop arm and crossing control arm while students were disembarking. A Waymo spokesperson said the company has “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release.” The company added "driving safely around children has always been one of Waymo's highest priorities. In the event referenced, the vehicle approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible and drove slowly around the front of the bus before driving past it, keeping a safe distance from children." NHTSA said the vehicle involved was equipped with Waymo's fifth-generation Automated Driving System (ADS) and was operating without a human safety driver at the time of the incident. Waymo has said its robotaxi fleet numbers more than 1,500 vehicles operating across major U.S. cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin. The Alphabet-owned company also plans to expand internationally, with launches in cities including Tokyo and London in coming years. (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

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