Intel announced on Tuesday that it’s dropping out of the 5G smartphone market, with the statement coming just hours after Qualcomm and Apple made a six-year licensing agreement as part of a royalty settlement.

On Saturday, Microsoft confirmed to TechCrunch that some users of the company’s email service had been targeted by hackers. A hacker or group of hackers had first broken into a customer support account for Microsoft, and then used that to gain access to information related to customers’ email accounts such as the subject lines of their emails and who they’ve communicated with.

The European Union Blockchain Observatory and Forum released a report entitled “Tokenisation of physical assets and the impact of IoT and AI” this week. The report, authored by Dr. Tim Weingaertner, a professor at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences & Arts – School for Information Technology, features the “digital twin” concept, which refers to a digital replica of the physical world. This mirror world would be consist of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, big data, tokens representing physical objects, blockchain as a trusted ledger and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, launched its first commercial mission on Thursday from Florida in a key demonstration for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company in the race to grasp lucrative military launch contracts.

A group of astronomers who run a globe-girdling network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope have obtained the first ever direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow, marking a historic breakthrough for science.

A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Griffith University in Australia have constructed a prototype quantum device that can generate all possible futures in a simultaneous quantum superposition - similar to Schroedinger's famous cat, which is simultaneously alive and dead.

The European Union announced the launch of the International Association of Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) on its official website on 3 April. The charter has been signed by more than 100 members including IBM, Accenture and Deutsche Telekom. Among the blockchain-related members are also Iota, Ripple, ConsenSys, and the Sovrin Foundation.

Toyota Motor Corp. announced Wednesday it will allow royalty-free access to its nearly 24,000 patents for hybrid and other vehicles using electrification technology, in a move analysts say will help keep the technology relevant by encouraging competitors to enter the market.

BMW has big plans for its iNext electric and fully autonomous vehicle, but making the car will require a streamlined, coordinated, and automated manufacturing system — something Microsoft wants to help them build. Thus, on Tuesday during the Hannover Messe, the companies announced a partnership to launch a new open-sourced industrial manufacturing platform called the Open Manufacturing Platform, or OMP.

On Thursday, Facebook unveiled new tools designed to counter foreign interference in the run-up to the vote to elect new members of the EU Parliament and increase transparency around political advertising across Europe in general.