Tech Roundup: Google Watchlist, Russia Internet & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

1. Russia successfully tests a country-wide alternative to the global internet, involves restricting the points at which Russia's version of the net connects to its global counterpart, giving the government more control over what its citizens can access.
2. Egyptian regulators give green signal to Uber's US$ 3.1 billion acquisition of local ride sharing company Careem; mandates that Uber drop exclusivity deals with partners and intermediaries, cap its fare increases (beyond inflation) to 10 percent for its most common Uber X and Careem Go tiers, and limit surge pricing to 2.5 times the normal rate and no more than 30 percent of trips each year.
3. France's Constitutional Court rules that customs and tax authorities can review citizens' public profiles, posts and photographs on social media for evidence of undeclared income or inconsistencies.
4. Snapchat to launch Bitmoji TV, a personalised cartoon show featuring a user's avatar and their friends in regularly-scheduled adventures, starting in February 2020.
5. Chinese tech giant Tencent debuts Tencent Meeting, a Zoom-like cloud-based video conferencing service, as it continues its push into enterprise services.
6. China launches two more satellites for BeiDou satellite-based positioning system capable of offering centimetres-level accuracy by the end of 2020; effort comes as it seeks to reduce its reliance on U.S.-owned Global Positioning System (GPS) in both in telecommunications and for its military.
7. Chinese state-sponsored hacking group, dubbed APT20, has been found bypassing two-factor authentication (2FA) in a recent wave of cyberattacks targeting government entities and managed service providers.
8. Facebook Messenger now requires a Facebook account to sign up, removing the option to use a phone number; says a vast majority of users log in through Facebook.
9. Google Search adds built-in 'Watchlist' to bookmark movies and TV shows via mobile through the web or Google app for Android and iOS.
10. Ethiopia launches its first observatory satellite into space from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Xinzhou, Shanxi Province, China; to be used for agricultural, climate, mining and environmental observations.
11. Apple stops supporting RSS feeds in its News app for iOS and macOS; found to "fetch, then reject those feeds and fail to display them, silently without any message or error."