The Apple iPhone 7 went on sale in South Korea on Friday, seeking to fill a void left by arch-rival Samsung on its home turf following a damaging recall fiasco over the Note 7 smartphone.

A senior German politician said Friday that social media giants like Facebook should face penalties if they fail to tackle hate speech, after a surge in xenophobic comments linked to the migrant influx.

The fiasco of Samsung's fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 smartphones — and Samsung's stumbling response to the problem — has left consumers from Shanghai to New York reconsidering how they feel about the South Korean tech giant and its products.

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it would stop making the Note 7 for good, after first recalling some devices and then recalling their replacements, too. Now, like the makers of Tylenol, Ford Pintos and other products that faced crises in the past, it must try to restore its relationship with customers as it repairs the damage to its brand.

Samsung on Tuesday pulled the final plug on its troubled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, permanently discontinuing production of the flagship device that has been mired in a disastrous recall over exploding batteries.

Samsung Electronics took another hit Monday over its recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, acknowledging it was "adjusting production" of the device after major distributors stopped offering replacements because of continued safety concerns.

The South Korean electronics giant has struggled in the wake of its September 2 decision to issue a global recall for 2.5 million Note 7s because of complaints that the lithium-ion battery exploded while charging.

Major technology firms are racing to infuse smartphones and other internet-linked devices with software smarts that help them think like people.

The effort is seen as an evolution in computing that allows users to interact with machines in natural conversation style, telling devices to tend to tasks such as ordering goods, checking traffic, making restaurant reservations or searching for information.

Germany said Saturday it was still investigating the operation of the autopilot system on cars made by electric automaker Tesla, as German media reported an internal ministerial report called it "dangerous."

Facebook on Thursday worked to ramp up enthusiasm for its virtual reality line, unveiling new gear including a lower-end wireless headset prototype.

The company's Oculus virtual reality division is set to release in coming months a new "Touch" controller and a more affordable computer for powering virtual experiences using Rift headsets.

Yahoo on Wednesday rejected allegations of mass email surveillance amid an outcry from privacy activists over a report that it created a special scanning program at the behest of U.S. intelligence.

The report, which said the U.S. internet giant secretly scanned hundreds of millions of email accounts to help American intelligence, was "misleading," Yahoo said.

A Southwest Airlines flight leaving Louisville, Kentucky was evacuated Wednesday after a passenger's Samsung phone began emitting smoke. 

Flight 994 was evacuated on the runway prior to takeoff after a passenger's Samsung Galaxy Note 7 -- described as a replacement in Samsung's global recall of the device -- apparently caught fire, the airline said.