Day: December 18, 2020

In recent weeks, Chinese regulators have cracked down on some of the country’s biggest and most powerful technology companies, illustrating the immense market power of these companies, which has drawn concern from the government. On Monday, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), China’s top market regulator, fined three of the country’s largest technology companies, including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and social-media juggernaut Tencent, for failing to disclose acquisitions of smaller competitors. Last month, China Securities Regulatory Commission halted the record initial public offering of Ant Group, one of China’s dominant digital payment platforms backed by Alibaba. It then announced new draft rules targeting monopolistic practices on the country’s digital platforms.  FILE – Signs of Alibaba Group and Ant Group are seen during the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, Nov. 23, 2020.Analysts who spoke to VOA said these moves reflect the Chinese government’s rising concern over financial technology and e-commerce companies that are using unfair competitive practices to undermine traditional payments and financial service companies. There is also a concern that the companies could pose a systemic risk to the economy.  First fine On Monday, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, a unit of Tencent Holdings, and an affiliate of express delivery company SF Holding were fined $75,000 (500,000 RMB) each for breaching China’s anti-monopoly law.  SAMR said in a statement that the online economy has become increasingly controlled by a few companies. “Complaints about platform monopoly have been on the rise, indicating competition risks and problems in the online economy,” it said.  FILE – Zhang Mao, minister of China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, attends a news conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, China, March 11, 2019.This marks the first fine towards the country’s internet giants since the enforcement of the anti-monopoly law in 2008.  Lu Suiqi, an associate professor of finance at Peking University, says the government has been turning a blind eye to monopoly issues for the past decade, because developing the digital economy was an important part of China’s industrial policy.  “Now these companies have become too strong, they have been using inappropriate means to drive their competitors out of the market,” Lu said. “They have grasped an excessively high market share and there’s a lack of healthy competition, which is bad for the overall economy.” Some 70% of the top 30 Apps in China belong to either Alibaba or Tencent. The two companies are each believed to oversee a payment and financial tractions ecosystem with a market value around $1.5 trillion (10 trillion RMB).  Li Chengdong, founder of the Beijing-based Dolphin think tank, says that the explosive growth of internet firms has made governments around the world vigilant. In the United States earlier this month, attorney generals from 48 states sued Google and Facebook, accusing them of illegally conspiring to shut out smaller rivals. Analysts say there is a similar dynamic happening in China. 38 States Sue Google Over Antitrust Complaints It is the third major lawsuit against the tech giant since October “It’s very common in China for big internet giants to crack down on small- and medium-size start-ups,” he said, adding only more strict regulation and enforcement can put the economy back on track.  Rebalancing away from technology?  Meanwhile, experts recommend China needs to rebalance its economy between e-commerce and brick and mortar stores to achieve more sustainable growth.  Tomson Tang, vice chairman of China Electronic Commerce Association, says China’s e-commerce has developed rapidly over the past 20 years in terms of users and the value of transactions, at the cost of hundreds and thousands of brick and mortar stores.  “The policy and regulations couldn’t catch up with the speed at which e-commerce develops. That include systematic problems on issues around monopoly, which is bad for the real economy,” he told VOA. However, he said the digital economy is a key element for China to maintain overall economic momentum down the road. The government needs to use regulations to make sure that market opportunities created should be open to all participants and cannot be monopolized by a few large companies.  Beijing’s antitrust watchdogs last month announced draft rules targeting monopolistic practices on the country’s digital platforms, which analysts say will have negative implications for major internet companies with dominant positions across segments.  Paul Triolo, a China digital economy fellow at the Washington-based think tank New America, says although the tech giants must comply with the tightening regulations, they might succeed in bargaining with authorities on how the regulations are implemented.  Tang predicts that in the next two to three years, China will establish a national digital economy bureau to oversee all internet companies. “Without such an authority to supervise, coordinate and enforce regulations, it would be difficult to grasp the financial data and structures of these internet giants, thus impact the implementation of the new anti-monopoly law,” he said.  
 
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U.S. lawmakers briefed on the massive cybersecurity breach that has impacted government agencies and the private sector are calling for the country to act, warning that so far, all evidence is pointing to Russia as the culprit. The admonitions, from both Republicans and Democrats, follow warnings from U.S. cybersecurity officials that the scope of the hack is potentially much bigger than originally thought, encompassing multiple software platforms going back at least as far as March of this year. FILE – Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., asks a question during a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing in Washington, July 30, 2020.”The full extent of the cyberhack [sic] is still unknown but we already know it is unprecedented in scale & scope,” the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Marco Rubio, tweeted Friday. “The methods used to carry out the cyberhack are consistent with Russian cyber operations,” Rubio added, warning that once officials can attribute the intrusion with complete certainty, “America must retaliate, and not just with sanctions.” The full extent of the cyberhack is still unknown but we already know it is unprecedented in scale & scope, in all likelihood ongoing & at a level of sophistication only a few nation-states are capable of.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) FILE – Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., addresses the news media in Alexandria, Va., Nov. 3, 2020.”An incident of this magnitude and lasting impact requires an engaged and public response by the U.S. government,” Senator Mark Warner said in a statement issued Friday. “It is extremely troubling that the president does not appear to be acknowledging, much less acting upon, the gravity of this situation.” Indications of a cyber intrusion first went public earlier this month when the private cybersecurity firm FireEye announced its systems had been penetrated and that sensitive information had been stolen. The hack was later traced to updates for network management software from a Texas-based company called SolarWinds, which the hackers exploited to get into the networks of at least 18,000 users. In an updated alert issued Friday, the cybersecurity unit of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned the hackers had been exploiting the SolarWinds software update going back to at least March. The SolarWinds logo is seen outside its headquarters in Austin, Texas, Dec. 18, 2020.But the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) further warned the problem was not contained to SolarWinds. “CISA has evidence of initial access vectors other than the SolarWinds Orion platform,” the alert warned, saying the agency is investigating instances in which other platforms were used to access critical networks. “This threat poses a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal and territorial governments, as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations,” CISA said. “This is a patient, well-resourced and focused adversary that has sustained long duration activity on victim networks.” Research by tech giant Microsoft, made public Thursday, indicated the hackers precisely targeted at least 40 organizations. The vast majority were in the United States, but companies in Canada, Mexico, Britain, Belgium, Israel and the United Arab Emirates were also attacked. FILE – Microsoft President Brad Smith speaks during a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, Sept. 13, 2019.”This is not ‘espionage as usual,’ even in the digital age,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote on the company’s blog. “This is not just an attack on specific targets, but on the trust and reliability of the world’s critical infrastructure.” Former U.S. government officials also worried about the impact of the hack. “The scope of it is large but exactly how large remains to be seen, and exactly how severe remains to be seen,” Michael Daniel, who served as a special assistant to former U.S. President Barack Obama on cyber issues, told VOA’s Russian Service. “The damage could be very, very significant to U.S. national security and to our economic security,” he said. Yet despite the warnings from current and former government officials, and private security firms, as of late Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump had yet to comment on the breach. Instead, Trump’s Twitter feed was full of unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud, praise for the distribution of coronavirus vaccines and threats to veto the $740 billion defense spending bill, which drew the ire of some key lawmakers. I will Veto the Defense Bill, which will make China very unhappy. They love it. Must have Section 230 termination, protect our National Monuments and allow for removal of military from far away, and very unappreciative, lands. Thank you! https://t.co/9rI08S5ofO
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2020″This year’s National Defense Authorization Act provides critical tools and authorities to help defend against and disrupt malicious cyber activity and effectively hunt for threats and vulnerabilities on the federal cyber network,” the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said in a joint statement late Friday. “The NDAA is always ‘must-pass’ legislation,” Republican Jim Inhofe and Democrat Jack Reed added. “But this cyber incident makes it even more urgent that the bill become law without further delay.” NEW: Senate Armed Services Committee statement on #SolarWindsHack
“significant, sophisticated, and ongoing cybersecurity intrusion against the United States… has the hallmarks of a #Russia|n intelligence operation” per @JimInhofe@SenJackReedpic.twitter.com/2d5KqPrECR
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) December 17, 2020Already, officials have determined that the hackers gained access to systems for the departments of Energy, Treasury and Commerce, though the Energy Department said networks related to nuclear security appeared to have been spared.  “At this point, the investigation has found that the malware has been isolated to business networks only and has not impacted the mission essential national security functions of the department,” spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said in a statement Thursday.  DOE UPDATE ON CYBER INCIDENT RELATED TO SOLAR WINDS COMPROMISE pic.twitter.com/l9X1AH4VJw
— DOE Press Staff (@EnergyPress) December 17, 2020U.S. President-elect Joe Biden called the cybersecurity breach “a matter of great concern.” “I want to be clear: My administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government — and we will make dealing with this breach a top priority from the moment we take office,” he said in a statement Thursday, shortly after the latest CISA alert was issued. “Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation,” he added. Biden is set to be inaugurated as the 46th U.S. president on January 20. Russian Service’s Danila Galperovich contributed to this report.
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The Swiss government Friday ordered all bars, restaurants, cultural venues and sports facilities to close next week because of a surging number of coronavirus cases.At a news conference, Health Minister Alain Berset said the new restrictions, which take effect Tuesday, are necessary because the situation in health facilities ”is not tenable in the long term.”The government will also restrict the number of people who can be inside stores, which must close after 7 p.m. and on Sundays and public holidays.While the closures include restaurants and bars at ski resorts, the federal government is leaving it to Switzerland’s 26 cantons — or states — to decide whether to close skiing facilities.But Berset cautioned they should “think carefully” about their decision “because hospitals are full and putting a lot of people on snow slopes can lead to an increase in accidents and we need to be very careful.”The Swiss health minister’s cautionary stance is a reversal from earlier this month. As other European nations announced plans to close their ski facilities for at least the first several weeks of the season, he said Swiss resorts would be allowed to stay open if they put in place safety measures such as masks, proper hygiene, social distancing and limited capacity for bars and restaurants.At the time, he said he realized the stance could raise regional tensions, but said “We are a sovereign country and can decide ourselves what the facts are on our territory.”The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Switzerland has risen over the past two weeks from 43 cases per 100,000 people on December 3 to 50 cases per 100,000 people on Thursday.  
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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, second lady Karen Pence, Thursday received their first COVID-19 vaccinations live on television, in an effort to reassure the public the vaccine is safe and effective. Pence and his wife received the vaccine Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus. Pence told the medical staff member administering the shot, “I didn’t feel a thing. Well done.” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams received the inoculation shortly after vice president and his wife. Following the vaccination, Pence spoke to reporters, calling it a “historic week,” referring to the vaccine rollout. He said he and his wife were “more than happy to step forward before this week was out to take this safe and effective vaccination that we have secured and produced for the American people.” Doctors advised all three people that they must return in 21 days for the second dose of the vaccine and that they may feel some soreness around the injection site. President-elect Joe Biden told NBC news he expects to get the vaccine sometime next week. Pence is receiving the vaccine just days after the first shipments were delivered to health care facilities across the country and given to frontline workers and nursing home residents. It also comes as the U.S. has set records this week for daily coronavirus cases and deaths. Late Thursday, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel endorsed for emergency use a second COVID-19 vaccine produced by U.S. drug maker Moderna. The FDA is expected to follow that recommendation and quickly approve the vaccine. It comes on the heels of approval last week for Pfizer’s vaccine. The disease caused by the virus has killed more than 300,000 people and infected more than 16.3 million in the U.S. alone, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. 
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Thailand says a local laboratory’s pact with Britain’s AstraZeneca will make the Southeast Asian country the regional hub for supplies of what’s likely to be one of the leading vaccines against COVID-19 as governments scramble to lock in supplies.Bangkok-based Siam Bioscience signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca late last month to make 200 million doses of the British pharmaceutical firm’s COVID-19 vaccine, AZD1222, said Nakorn Premsri, director of Thailand’s National Vaccine Institute.Thailand’s Public Health Ministry and the local conglomerate SCG, with its packaging and chemicals divisions, also joined the deal.Nakorn said most of the doses would head abroad.”Thailand will secure only 26 million doses. We may ask for more, but it will not be a big part, so maybe more than half of that [200 million] can be exported,” he told VOA.”It’s in the letter of intent that we made together with Siam Bioscience, AstraZeneca, SCG and Ministry of Public Health that it will be distributed within the ASEAN region,” he added, referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.In a brief statement to VOA, AstraZeneca’s Thailand office confirmed the broad outlines of its plans.”The Ministry of Public Health, SCG, Siam Bioscience and AstraZeneca share the focus on broad, equitable and timely access to an effective COVID-19 vaccine in Thailand and Southeast Asia region. AstraZeneca has been working with Siam Bioscience through technology transfer to expand AZD1222’s global manufacturing capacity,” it said.AstraZeneca’s vaccine, developed in collaboration with Britain’s Oxford University, is still pending approval in Britain. Officials there say regulators could reach a decision by early January.In the mixNakorn said AstraZeneca has already started sharing the technology Siam Bioscience will need to make its vaccine and that production could begin in the second quarter of next year. If all goes well, he said, inoculations could start by the middle of the year.Because those taking AstraZeneca’s vaccine will need two doses each, the 26 million jabs Thailand has reserved will be enough for 13 million people, about a fifth of the country’s population. How the rest of the doses are rolled out across Southeast Asia, a region of over 650 million people, will be up to the British firm, said Nakorn.A few other ASEAN countries besides Thailand have already announced plans to source vaccine from AstraZeneca, but it’s not clear how many of their doses will be arriving via Siam Bioscience.AstraZeneca’s Thailand office refused VOA’s request for an interview.COVID-19’s toll on the region has been mixed.Despite reporting the first case outside of China, in mid-January, Thailand has managed to keep a lid on the pandemic, thanks to tight border controls, with only 4,281 cases and 60 deaths recorded to date. Laos, Cambodia and tiny Brunei have all reported well under 1,000 cases each.Others have fared much worse.The Philippines and Indonesia have recorded over 450,000 and 640,000 cases, respectively, the most in Southeast Asia. Malaysia and Myanmar are in the midst of their worst waves of infection yet, with well over 1,000 new cases a day.Countries in the region are not waiting for the AstraZeneca-Siam Bioscience pact for deliverance, though.Some of them have announced plans or deals to source from a combination of suppliers including U.S. pharmaceutical leaders Moderna and Pfizer, whose COVID-19 vaccines have already been approved by Washington. A few say they plan to pad their stocks with vaccines from China and Russia as well.Six ASEAN members have also signed up to COVAX, a global plan co-led by the World Health Organization for rich countries to help buy doses of COVID-19 vaccine for the poorest.Pros and consStill, AstraZeneca’s plans to turn Thailand into a regional production hub is a boon for the country’s neighbors, said Khor Swee Kheng, a global health specialist and independent consultant to the WHO based in Malaysia.With this deal, “Southeast Asia has greater assurance of vaccine supplies in a global race that is currently dominated by rich countries.” he said.”Two, production facilities that are physically nearer to Southeast Asian countries will aid in logistics. Three, this arrangement can be leveraged for further Southeast Asian collaboration in regional vaccine manufacturing and stockpiling.”AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine also has the advantage of holding on to its potency for at least six months in a standard refrigerator. That compares with about one month for Moderna’s offering and only a few days for Pfizer’s. For most of its time, Pfizer’s vaccine must be stored at an ultra-cold minus 70 Celsius.As countries shop for vaccines, Khor said that gives AZD1222 an edge in tropical countries and those with limited cold storage facilities, though he added that governments will also be weighing safety, efficacy, availability and price.Farming out production also raises its own hurdles.”Regulatory approval for the vaccine produced by Siam Bioscience depends on a few variables,” said Khor.“One, how much of the production process is done in Thailand in Siam Bioscience facilities versus AstraZeneca facilities? Two, how much technology transfer and patent transfers have occurred between AstraZeneca and Siam Bioscience? This information is not yet available publicly.”If Siam Bioscience takes on much of the burden, regulatory bodies may insist on approval of not only AstraZeneca’s work but separately of its Thai partner’s contributions as well.
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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to get the coronavirus vaccine on live television Friday. His vaccination comes as surveys reveal some Americans are reluctant to receive the vaccine because of safety and efficacy concerns.The coronavirus surge in California’s Los Angeles County is so dire that the county’s public health department posted on Twitter: “Every hour, on average, 2 people are dying of COVID-19 in LA County.”The U.S. television network CBS reported there are so few hospital beds available in intensive care units in Los Angeles that some coronavirus victims are waiting up to seven hours in ambulances for beds.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 10 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 18 MB720p | 33 MB1080p | 70 MBOriginal | 85 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioFrench President Emmanuel Macron has joined the list of world leaders who has tested positive for the coronavirus. Macron has left Elysée Palace and is temporarily working at an official residence in Versailles.Dr. Hans Kluge, the regional director of the World Health Organization’s European office, has urged people to stay home during the holidays. He said in a statement that it is “not worth the risk” of contracting the virus.Kluge also said the pandemic has created a “growing mental health crisis in Europe.” He added, “From anxieties around virus transmission, the psychological impact of lockdowns and self-isolation, to the effects of unemployment, financial worries and social exclusion – the mental health impact of the pandemic will be long term and far reaching.”There are more than 75 million global COVID-19 cases, according to John Hopkins University.The United States has 17.2 million cases, followed by India with almost 10 million and Brazil with 7.1 million cases.
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The United States is expanding its rollout of the newly approved COVID-19 vaccine to hundreds of distribution centers where thousands of health care workers are expected to be vaccinated. More from VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
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Technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has facial recognition technology that can specifically pick out members of China’s Uighur minority, surveillance industry researcher IPVM said in a report. Alibaba itself said it was dismayed a unit developed software that can tag ethnicity in videos, and that the feature was never intended to be deployed to customers. The report comes as human rights groups accuse China of forcing more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs into labor camps in the region of Xinjiang and call out firms suspected of complicity. FILE – Residents line up inside a vocational training center in Artux, in western China’s Xinjiang region, Dec. 3, 2018. Critics say China uses some of these facilities as detention camps for forced labor.China has repeatedly denied forcing anyone into what it has called vocational training centers and has also said Xinjiang is under threat from Islamist militants. Still, sensitivities have prompted caution among Chinese internet firms that often self-censor to avoid running afoul of a government that strictly controls online speech and that last month published draft rules to police livestreaming. Report’s findingsU.S.-based IPVM in a report published Wednesday said software capable of identifying Uighurs appears in Alibaba’s Cloud Shield content moderation service for websites. Alibaba describes Cloud Shield as a system that “detects and recognizes text, pictures, videos and voices containing pornography, politics, violent terrorism, advertisements and spam, and provides verification, marking, custom configuration and other capabilities.” An archived record of the technology shows it can perform such tasks as “glasses inspection,” “smile detection,” whether the subject is “ethnic” and, specifically, “Is it Uighur?” Consequently, if a Uighur livestreams a video on a website signed up to Cloud Shield, the software can detect that the user is Uighur and flag the video for review or removal, IPVM researcher Charles Rollet told Reuters. IPVM said mention of Uighurs in the software disappeared near the time it published its report. Alibaba’s responseAlibaba in a statement said it was dismayed that Alibaba Cloud developed facial recognition software that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery, and that it never intended the software to be used in this manner. The feature was trial technology not intended for customers. Alibaba did not mention Uighurs in its statement. “We have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering,” an Alibaba spokeswoman told Reuters. Alibaba is listed on both the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges. It is the biggest cloud computing vendor in China and the fourth biggest worldwide, showed data from researcher Canalys. Earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers sent letters to Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. following reports of their computer chips being used in the surveillance of Uighurs.  
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The head of the U.N. Migration Agency said the coronavirus pandemic has affected people worldwide, including migrants — many of whom have gotten ill, lost jobs or been stranded in destination countries.  “As usual in all crises, migrants are the first ones to lose jobs,” International Organization for Migration (IOM) Director General Antonio Vitorino told VOA ahead of International Migrants Day on Friday. “The World Bank forecasts, for instance, a drop in remittances to the countries of origin of around 20% this year, which will have a terrible impact in the living conditions of the countries of origin of those migrants.”  FILE – Antonio Vitorino, Director General of the International Organization for Migration, attends a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 29, 2019.He said virus-related lockdowns, travel restrictions and border closures have also stranded about 3 million migrants all over the world.  The IOM estimates there are 272 million migrants globally. A little less than half are women. The United Nations considers a migrant to be anyone who changes their country, regardless of the reason. But most move to seek economic improvement.  According to IOM data, India has the largest number of migrants living abroad — 17.5 million — followed by Mexico (11.8 million) and China (10.7 million). The United States remains the top destination country, home to more than 50 million migrants. FILE – Migrant laborers returning to the city for work undergo COVID-19 tests in New Delhi, India, Aug. 18, 2020.Migrants are often thought of as being undocumented workers, but the vast majority legally reside in destination countries and work in all fields, from unskilled labor to highly specialized sectors.COVID-19 has particularly affected migrants working in the informal economy — many have lost jobs or work permits. They do not have the resources to manage financially through long lockdowns and quarantine periods. If they catch the virus, they often lack access to public health care or are afraid to use it if they are undocumented.  Others have found themselves on the front lines of the virus response, as factory or grocery store employees, truck drivers, or health care workers.  As some countries begin approving the first COVID-19 vaccines, Vitorino said the migrant community must not be excluded from receiving them.  “It is the responsibility of governments to guarantee that all that are present in their territory, whether nationals or non-nationals, migrants irrespective of their legal status, have access to vaccines,” he said. “Because in practical terms, the pandemic has shown us that nobody is safe till everyone is safe.”  Sadly, the pandemic has not stopped traffickers and other criminals seeking to exploit migrants.  FILE – Migrants wait on board the German charity Sea-Watch 4 rescue ship before being transferred to GNV Allegra, where they will be in quarantine as part of anti-coronavirus measures, at sea near the Sicilian city of Palermo, Italy, Sept. 2, 2020.“There are four times more arrivals in Italy this year through the Mediterranean, one of the most dangerous routes, than last year,” Vitorino said of those who try to cross on boats and rafts. “Or if you look to the Gulf of Aden, there are 130,000 people who are crossing the Gulf both ways to reach the (Arab) Gulf countries, and they did not stop because of the pandemic.”  More than 3,100 migrants have died trying to reach destination countries this year. Drowning is the most common cause.  Vitorino said that migration is a natural human phenomenon that must be done in safe, dignified and regular ways.  “It has always existed, and it will go on existing in our world,” he said.  
 
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