Honda has been hit by a suspected ransomware attack, BBC News reported. Global production was halted Monday, and it had not restarted at its main plant in Ohio, nor in Turkey, India or Brazil, at the time of this writing.

Honda can confirm that a cyber-attack has taken place on the Honda network,” the Japanese car-maker said in a statement. It added that the problem was affecting its ability to access its computer servers, use email and otherwise make use of its internal systems. “There is also an impact on production systems outside of Japan,” it added. “Work is being undertaken to minimise the impact and to restore full functionality of production, sales and development activities.” The firm – which makes motorcycles, cars, generators and lawn mowers, among other products – said one of its internal servers was attacked externally.

IBM announced it will no longer develop or sell facial recognition software in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, Computing reported. Big Blue revealed the decision in a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday.

In a letter to the members of the US Congress, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that the company would no longer sell general purpose facial recognition software and would also oppose use of such technology for racial profiling, mass surveillance, violations of basic human rights or any purpose “which is not consistent with our values and principles of trust and transparency”. IBM’s decision to quit the facial recognition services has come at the time when US faces countrywide demonstrations over the tragic death of George Floyd, a black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis.

The Swiss coronavirus contact tracing app looks set to be released later this month after the country’s Parliament gave its approval Monday. SwissCovid is based on the Apple/Google framework.

The SwissCovid app, whose use is voluntary, uses Bluetooth short-range radio and technology from Apple and Google to detect when a user has spent time close to another app user. It stores the data on the user’s mobile phone for 21 days, allowing notification of close encounters with infected people. Around 30% of smartphones in Europe run on Apple’s iOS operating system, with nearly all of the rest using Google’s Android. Together they host 99% of the world’s smartphones.

The Xbox Series X is on its way and we were meant to be hearing the hype at E3 this week. But, like Apple, Microsoft has not let the coronavirus pandemic deter it from releasing new products, and Xbox chief Phil Spencer spoke to BBC News about unveiling it at this time.

You can buy a console, buy some games, and it can literally provide your family with hundreds of hours of entertainment. Even when we went back and looked at 2008-09, in that recession, to see what the impact was on gaming – gaming did OK. It was durable. We want to make sure we’re providing the right value to customers. Price is going to be important. But our strategy is centred around the player, not the device.