Month: December 2022

Taiwan’s government said on Saturday it would fine Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, for an unauthorized investment in a Chinese chip maker even after the Taiwanese firm said it would be selling the stake.

Taiwan has turned a wary eye on China’s ambition to boost its semiconductor industry and is tightening legislation to prevent what it says is China stealing its chip technology.

Foxconn, a major Apple Inc. supplier and iPhone maker, disclosed in July it was a shareholder of embattled Chinese chip conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup.

Late Friday, Foxconn said in a filing to the Taipei stock exchange its subsidiary in China had agreed to sell its entire equity stake in Tsinghua Unigroup.

Taiwan’s Economy Ministry said in response that its investment commission, which has to approve all foreign investments, will ask Foxconn on Monday for a “complete explanation” about the investment. 

“As for the fact that the investment was not declared beforehand, the amount will still be calculated in accordance with the formula and the penalty will be imposed in accordance with the law,” it said, without giving details. 

Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

People familiar with the matter have previously told Reuters that Foxconn did not seek approval from the Taiwan government before the investment was made and authorities believe it violated a law governing self-ruled Taiwan’s relations with China, which claims the island as its own. 

In a statement on Saturday before the economy ministry’s, Foxconn said as the year-end approached the original investment had “remained unfinalized.” 

Foxconn said that Xingwei, 99% controlled by its China-listed unit Foxconn Industrial Internet Co Ltd., had agreed to sell its holdings for at least $772 million to a Chinese company called Yantai Haixiu. 

Xingwei controls a 48.9% stake in a different entity that holds a 20% stake in the vehicle owning all of Unigroup. 

“In order to avoid uncertainties from further delays or impact to investment planning and the flexible deployment of capital, the Xingwei Fund will transfer its entire holding in Shengyue Guangzhou to Yantai Haixiu,” it said. “After the transfer is completed, FII will no longer indirectly hold any equity in Tsinghua Unigroup.” 

Tsinghua Unigroup did not respond to a request for comment. 

Taiwanese law states the government can prohibit investment in China “based on the consideration of national security and industry development.” Violators of the law could be fined repeatedly until corrections are made. 

Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., is keen to make auto chips, in particular, as it expands into the electric vehicle market. 

The company has been seeking to acquire chip plants globally as a worldwide chip shortage rattles producers of goods from cars to electronics. 

Taipei prohibits companies from building their most advanced foundries in China to ensure they do not site their best technology offshore. 

 
…

Negotiators at a United Nations biodiversity conference Saturday have still not resolved most of the key issues around protecting the world’s nature by 2030 and providing tens of billions of dollars to developing countries to fund those efforts.

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, is set to wrap up Monday in Montreal and delegates were racing to agree on language in a framework that calls for protecting 30% of global land and marine areas by 2030, a goal known as “30 by 30.” Currently, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas globally are protected.

They also have to settle on amounts of funding that would go to financing projects to create protected areas and restore marine and other ecosystems. Early draft frameworks called for closing a $700 billion gap in financing by 2030. Most of that would come from reforming subsidies in the agriculture, fisheries and energy sectors but there are also calls for tens of billions of dollars in new funding that would flow from rich to poor nations.

“From the beginning of the negotiations, we’ve been seeing systematically some countries weakening the ambition. The ambition needs to come back,” Marco Lambertini, the director general of WWF International said, adding that they needed a “clear conservation target” that “sets the world on a clear trajectory towards delivering a nature positive future.”

Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, expressed more optimism. Guilbeault told The Associated Press Saturday morning that he has heard “few people talk about red lines” and that means “people are willing to talk. People are willing to negotiate.”

“I’ve heard a lot of support for ambition from all corners of the world,” Guilbeault said. “Everyone wants to leave here with an ambitious agreement.”

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, told reporters Saturday afternoon that she was encouraged by the progress especially around committing resources but that a deal had not been reached yet.

“The negotiating teams have more work to do. They have to turn promises made into plans, ambitions and actions,” she said.

The ministers and government officials from about 190 countries mostly agree that protecting biodiversity has to be a priority, with many comparing those efforts to climate talks that wrapped up last month in Egypt.

Climate change coupled with habitat loss, pollution and development have hammered the world’s biodiversity, with one estimate in 2019 warning that a million plant and animal species face extinction within decades — a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected. Humans use about 50,000 wild species routinely, and 1 out of 5 people of the world’s 8 billion population depend on those species for food and income, the report said.

But they are struggling to agree on what that protection looks like and who will pay for it.

The financing has been among the most contentious issues, with delegates from 70 African, South American and Asian countries walking out of negotiations Wednesday. They returned several hours later.

Brazil, speaking for developing countries, said in a statement that a new funding mechanism dedicated to biodiversity be established and that developed countries provide $100 billion annually in financial grants to emerging economies until 2030.

“You need a robust and ambitious package on finance that matches the ambition of the Global Biodiversity framework,” Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde, the head of the Brazilian delegation, told the AP.

“This will cost a lot of money to implement. The targets are extremely ambitious and cost a lot of money,” he continued. “The developing countries will bear a higher burden in implementing it because most biodiversity resources are to be found in developing countries. They need international support.”

The donor countries — the European Union and 13 countries — responded Friday with a statement promising to increase biodiversity financing. They noted they doubled biodiversity spending from 2010 to 2015 and committed to several billion dollars more in biodiversity funding since then.

Zac Goldsmith, the U.K.’s minister for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment, acknowledged the focus cannot only be on popular protection measures like the 30 by 30 goal.

“The 30 by 30 is a headline target, but you can’t deliver 30 by 30 without a whole range of other things being agreed as well,” he said. “We’re not gonna have 30 by 30 without finance. We’re not going to have it unless other countries do as Costa Rica has and break the link between agricultural productivity and land degradation and deforestation. And we’re not gonna be able to do any of these things if we don’t address … subsidies.”

Even protection targets are still being squabbled over. Many countries believe 30% is an admirable goal but some countries are pushing to water the language down to allow among other things sustainable activities in those areas that conservationists fear could result in destructive logging and mining. Others want language referencing ways to better manage the other 70% of the world that wouldn’t be protected.

Other disagreements revolve around how best to share the benefits from genetic resources and enshrining the rights of Indigenous groups in any agreement. Some Indigenous groups want direct access to funding and a voice in designating protected areas that impact Indigenous peoples.

“Any protected areas that affect Indigenous peoples need to have the free prior informed consent of Indigenous peoples, otherwise there will be the same old patters of Indigenous peoples being displaced by protected areas,” Atossa Soltani, the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, an alliance of 30 Indigenous nations in Ecuador and Peru working to working to permanently protect 86 million acres of rainforest, said in an email interview.

The other challenge is including language — similar to the Paris Agreement on climate change — that creates a stronger system to report and verify the progress countries make. Many point to the failures of the 2010 biodiversity framework, which saw only six of the 20 targets partially met by a 2020 deadline.

“It’s very important for parties to see what others are doing. It’s important for civil society, people like you to track our progress or sometimes unfortunately lack thereof,” Guilbeault said. “It’s an important tool to help keep our feet to the fire. If it’s effective on climate. We should have it on nature as well.”

 
…

he World Health Organization warns billions of people who lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene are at risk of deadly infectious diseases. The finding appears in the WHO and U.N.-Water’s Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report issued this week.

Data collected from 121 countries show billions of people are facing a health crisis and states must act urgently to improve water, sanitation and hygiene, known as WASH. The report, the most comprehensive to date, finds most countries are not on track to achieve the U.N. sustainable development goal of providing water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Bruce Gordon is unit head, water, sanitation, hygiene and health at the WHO. While dramatic acceleration is needed, he says only 25 percent of countries are on track to meet their target for sanitation and only 45 percent for drinking water.

((GORDON ACT))

“This is against the backdrop of a tremendous amount of disease from diarrhea linked to ingestion of poor water, the root cause of poor sanitation. Lack of hand hygiene that impacts also on respiratory infections. And so, almost 2 million people are dying every year because of poorly managed water, sanitation and hygiene.”

((END ACT))

Gordon says countries need to recommit to the targets they have made to save those lives. He notes a major opportunity to do that will occur during an historic U.N. water and sanitation conference in March. For the first time in 50 years, he says, the global community will gather to review progress and make voluntary commitments to improve the water situation.

The report delves into the impact climate-related extreme weather events have on impeding the delivery of safe WASH services. Gordon says the report highlights the importance of climate resilience and adaptation to climate change.

((2ND GORDON ACT))

“And yet when we look at the policy response, whether it is climate resilient technologies which—there are simple things to avoid floods or to mitigate droughts. Simple risk management or simple technologies. These are not being put in place.”

((END ACT))

The WHO report calls on governments to dramatically increase investments to extend access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation services. It urges them to scale up support for WASH service delivery by putting in place monitoring systems, regulatory functions and capacity development.
…

The World Health Organization says climate change is behind an unprecedented surge in the number of cholera outbreaks around the world this year.

At least 30 countries have reported outbreaks of the deadly disease this year, about a third higher than normally seen.

Philippe Barboza, WHO’s team leader for cholera and epidemic diarrheal diseases, said most of the large cholera outbreaks have coincided with adverse climate events and have been visibly and directly affected by them.

“Very severe droughts like, for example, in the Horn of Africa, in the Sahel but also in other parts of the world,” he said. “Major floods, unprecedented monsoons, succession of cyclones. So, most again, most of these outbreaks appear to be fueled by the result of the climate change.”

No quick reprieve is in sight. The World Meteorological Organization predicts the so-called La Nina climate phenomenon will last through the end of this year. The pattern, which cools the surface of ocean waters, is expected to continue well into 2023. That will result in prolonged droughts and flooding and increased cyclones.

Consequently, health officials warn large cholera outbreaks are likely to continue and spread to wider areas over the next six months. Barboza said preventing disease outbreaks will be a challenge.

He said a global shortage of vaccine has forced the WHO to temporarily suspend its two-dose strategy and switch to a single dose approach. That allows many more people to be vaccinated against cholera. However, he said it shortens the period of immunity against infection.

“So, the situation will continue to prevail for the months to come,” he said. “There is no silver bullet, magic solution and the producers are at the maximum production. … So, there is no hope that the situation will improve in the coming weeks or months.”

Barboza said lack of data makes it impossible to accurately determine the number of global cholera cases and deaths. However, he noted information from at least 14 countries indicates the average fatality rate is above 1%. He said the cholera fatality rate in heavily affected Haiti is around 2%.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease caused by consuming contaminated food or water. Treatments include oral rehydration. People with severe cases need rapid intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Cholera can kill within hours if left untreated.
…

VOA Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman was among several journalists to be suspended from Twitter late Thursday.

Followers of the former White House bureau chief’s Twitter account were greeted with a blank screen and message saying, “Account suspended.”

Accounts for journalists from CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as some independent journalists, showed similar messages.

It was not immediately clear why those accounts were suspended. VOA’s email requesting comment from the media contact listed on Twitter’s company website was returned with a “delivery failure” message.

Many of the reporters have written articles or posted about changes made to Twitter by its new owner, Elon Musk.

In replies to tweets late Thursday, Musk said on the platform: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”

Musk added: “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” a reference to Twitter rules banning sharing of personal information, called doxxing.

Reuters reported that Twitter earlier suspended @elonjet, an account tracking Musk’s private jet in real time, a month after he said his commitment to free speech extended to not banning the account.

While some of those banned had reported on the incident, none had shared location information or content that could be described as doxxing, CNN’s “Reliable Sources” said in a newsletter.

Herman last reported for VOA News about the Twitter platform in September. On Thursday he was tweeting about the @elonjet case.

“I had been tweeting quite a bit on Thursday evening about this building drama, which had started out with the suspension of a so-called bot account that tweets the location of Elon Musk’s private jet,” Herman told VOA.

In his last tweet, Herman posted a link to a Post article and wrote, “More reaction to the Thursday night massacre of journalists on Twitter.”

Shortly afterward, his account was suspended. Herman said he could no longer send direct messages or like other users’ posts.

VOA in a statement late Thursday confirmed Herman’s account had been suspended and called on the social media platform to reinstate it.

“Mr. Herman is a seasoned reporter who upholds the highest journalistic standards and uses the social media platform as a news gathering and networking tool. Mr. Herman has received no information from Twitter as to why his account was suspended,” VOA spokesperson Nigel Gibbs said in an email.

“As Chief National Correspondent, Mr. Herman covers international and national news stories and this suspension impedes his ability to perform his duties as a journalist.”

A spokesperson for the Times said: “Tonight’s suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of prominent journalists, including The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, is questionable and unfortunate. Neither the Times nor Ryan have received any explanation about why this occurred. We hope that all of the journalists’ accounts are reinstated and that Twitter provides a satisfying explanation for this action.”

CNN in a statement described the suspensions as “impulsive and unjustified” and said it had asked Twitter for an explanation. The broadcaster said it would reevaluate its relationship with the platform based on that response.

Twitter is more heavily using automation to moderate content, over manual reviews, its new head of trust and safety, Ella Iwin, told Reuters this month.

At the time of Herman’s suspension, the veteran broadcast journalist had about 112,000 followers.

Herman told VOA late Thursday that he’d received a notice informing him the account was permanently suspended. The notice included a link for users wanting to appeal the decision. But when he clicked it, a message read: “No results. Please try searching for something else.”

The changes at Twitter are of interest to global audiences, Herman said.

“It is obviously a growing free press story and people are interested in that because it’s involving this huge social media platform, a man who is, I guess now, the second-richest person in the world,” he said. “And this is all happening in America, with our Constitution, First Amendment and democracy.”  

Some information for this article came from Reuters.
…

China is spending $143 billion to combat U.S. moves to cut off its supply of semiconductor technology. 

The funds will be used to provide financial subsidies and incentives to help China’s chipmakers develop and acquire semiconductor technology to withstand the U.S. move. 

This is one of three measures, analysts say, taken by Beijing to protect semiconductor companies supporting its vast electronics, automotive and military hardware industries.  

“China views semiconductors as a strategic resource. Therefore, it wants to become self-sufficient in all aspects of advanced chip design and manufacturing,” said Lourdes S. Casanova, director of the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell University. “These funds are meant to build China’s capabilities towards this goal.”

Washington issued an order in October barring U.S. companies from supplying semiconductor chips, chipmaking devices, and updates for past sales to Chinese companies. It also prohibited American citizens from working for Chinese semiconductor firms.  

The U.S. government Thursday broadened its crackdown on China’s chip industry by adding memory chipmaker YMTC and 21 “major” Chinese players in the artificial intelligence chip sector to a Commerce Department trade blacklist. YMTC’s suppliers will now be prevented from shipping U.S. goods to it without a license.  

The U.S. move is likely to hit not just China’s semiconductor industry, but dozens of other businesses as well, such as electronics, artificial intelligence, and automobile manufacturing that depend on U.S.-made chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD. The stakes are high. For instance, Chinese electrical vehicle makers controlled 56% of the global market in the first half of 2022. Such vehicles depend heavily on semiconductor chips. 

Analysts said the U.S. order may also force non-U.S. companies using American technology to cut off support for China’s leading factories and chip designers.  

China has initiated the process of challenging the U.S. order at the World Trade Organization.  Its Commerce Ministry has accused the United States of “generalizing the concept of national security and abusing export control measures, which hinders the normal international trade in chips and other products.” 

Non-US support 

The U.S. move would be much less effective if chipmakers in other countries, particularly in Japan and the Netherlands, take advantage of the market vacuum and step up their supplies to China. This is possible because the new $143 billion package will make it possible for Chinese firms to offer higher prices. The United States is lobbying both these countries to refuse Chinese purchase orders. 

China is likely to raise this issue during the expected visit of Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi to China later this month. This will be the first visit by the Japanese foreign minister to China.  

“Beijing will very likely discuss the issue. It will make it clear that stopping the supply of semiconductor technology would damage China-Japan relations,” said Dexter Roberts, author, and principal of Cold Mountain, an investment management company. 

Casanova said the Netherlands and other European countries will likely follow U.S. policy. “However, other countries have been more reluctant. For instance, both Mexico and Brazil did not ban Huawei as a possible supplier of telecom equipment in the 5G auctions in both countries,” she said.  

It is difficult to predict Japan’s response to the U.S. request, she said. China is Japan’s No. 1 trade partner, with 22%, followed by the U.S. with 18.5%. 

There are no reports of the United States trying to restrict Taiwan, its close ally, from dealing with the Chinese semiconductor industry. TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor company, is based in Taiwan.   

“China is the world’s largest importer of semiconductors since 2005 and China’s semiconductor industry relies mainly on imports from the Taiwanese TSMC,” Casanova said. 

Decoupling China’s semiconductor industry from the global supply chain may hurt U.S. consumers, besides taking away business from American companies that supply chips to Chinese firms.  

“As the U.S. continues to ratchet up efforts to slow the development of China’s advanced chips sector, there will be an impact on global and U.S. consumers who will inevitably pay higher prices. There may be supply shortages of the many products that use chips, from autos to mobile phones and electronic devices,” Roberts said. 

At the same time, the United States has realized that starving China of semiconductor technology will not be easy unless it is backed by other countries. In October, the Peterson Institute of International Economics, a Washington-based economic research organization, said semiconductor-producing countries are closely linked to each other in a supply chain. 

“Each of the five major global semiconductor producers—China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States—is also a large chip importer. Not all chips are equal, and no producer specializes in every chip category, leaving even the largest exporters reliant on imports,” it said.  

Despite the odds, the Biden administration has shown it is determined to delink the Chinese semiconductor industry from the global supply zone. The trade war in the chip industry is set to intensify because chips are central to China’s security and industrial growth plans, analysts said. 
…

Russian and NASA engineers were assessing a coolant leak on Thursday from a Soyuz crew capsule docked with the International Space Station that could have been caused by a micrometeorite strike.

Dramatic NASA TV images showed white particles resembling snowflakes streaming out of the rear of the vessel for hours.

The coolant leak forced the last-minute cancellation of a spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday and could potentially impact a return flight to Earth by three crew members.

Leak posed no danger

Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos and the U.S. space agency said the leak on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft did not pose any danger to the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station.

“The crew members aboard the space station are safe, and were not in any danger during the leak,” NASA said.

It said ground teams were evaluating “potential impacts to the integrity of the Soyuz spacecraft.”

“NASA and Roscosmos will continue to work together to determine the next course of action,” NASA said.

The TASS news agency quoted Sergei Krikalev, a former cosmonaut who heads the crewed space flight program for Roscosmos, as saying that the leak could have been caused by a tiny meteorite striking Soyuz MS-22.

“The cause of the leak may be a micrometeorite entering the radiator,” TASS quoted Krikalev as saying. “Possible consequences are changes in the temperature regime.”

“No other changes in the telemetric parameters of either the Soyuz spacecraft or the (ISS) station on the Russian or American segments have been detected,” Krikalev said.

NASA later added that the crew on the station “completed normal operations Thursday, including … configuring tools ahead of a planned US spacewalk on Monday.”

Soyuz MS-22 flew Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio to the space station in September.

It is scheduled to bring them back to Earth in March and another vessel would have to be sent to the space station if Soyuz MS-22 is unavailable.

Prokopyev and Petelin had been making preparations for a spacewalk on Wednesday when the leak was discovered.

“The crew reported the warning device of the ship’s diagnostic system went off, indicating a pressure drop in the cooling system,” Roscosmos said. “At the moment, all systems of the ISS and the ship are operating normally, the crew is safe.”

NASA said the leak had occurred on the “aft end” of Soyuz MS-22, which is secured to the space station.

International collaboration

There are currently four other astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the space station in addition to Rubio, Prokopyev and Petelin.

NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina were flown to the space station in October aboard a SpaceX spacecraft.

Space has been a rare avenue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington since the start of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine in February, and ensuing Western sanctions on Russia that shredded ties between the two countries.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of increased US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.
…

The United States is monitoring for new coronavirus variants as it braces for a potential outbreak of COVID-19 infections following Beijing’s easing of strict controls that kept the pandemic at bay in China.

“We have a very robust surveillance program that we use for travelers as people come in, in terms of identifying people who are infected, tracking variants,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus response coordinator, told VOA during a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “And if there are new variants that emerge, I’m confident that we will be able to identify them.”

Jha said the monitoring mechanism includes testing wastewater in the U.S. and through partners abroad.

China changes its approach

On Wednesday, Beijing announced major changes to its national pandemic response, moving away from its strict zero-COVID approach, which relied heavily on lockdowns and prompted protests across the country. The new guidelines no longer mandate health QR codes to enter public places and allow patients with mild cases to quarantine at home instead of in crowded government facilities.

A major COVID-19 outbreak in China would have unpredictable effects on the virus, said Xi Chen, Yale University professor of public health.

“The world’s most populous country includes a large number of immunocompromised people who can harbor the virus for months,” he told VOA. 

Those conditions, he said, “may produce variants of concern.”

However, Chen noted there may be a reduced risk of new variants spinning out of a Chinese outbreak.

“China has stuck with zero-COVID so long that its population has, by and large, never encountered omicron subvariants; people’s immune systems remain trained almost exclusively on the original version of the coronavirus, raising only defenses that currently circulating strains can easily get around,” he said. “It’s possible that there will be less pressure for the virus to evolve to evade immunity further.”

The World Health Organization has raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion citizens are not adequately vaccinated, particularly its elderly and vulnerable populations.

Beijing has ramped up its immunization efforts, on average more than 1 million shots each day. But with holiday travel coming and the time needed to build up immunity after vaccinations, the window is narrowing, Chen said.

“Perhaps the coming two weeks will be the last opportunity to avoid accelerated virus transmissions throughout China.”

As it braced for new infections, China began selling Paxlovid, an oral COVID-19 treatment made by American company Pfizer this week.

Jha said that the deal was reached without the administration’s involvement but said that the U.S. offered to help China with vaccinations stands.

“We have been the largest donor of vaccines in the world, almost 700 million doses,” he said. “We stand ready to help any country that needs help.”

Winter preparedness plan

On Thursday, the White House issued what it is calling its COVID-⁠19 Winter Preparedness Plan.

“We don’t want this winter to look like last winter or the winter before,” Jha said.

In a statement, the White House said that while COVID-19 “is not the disruptive force it once was, the virus continues to evolve,” and the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all up in recent days.

The White House said in addition to free testing sites that already exist, beginning Thursday, all U.S. households can order a total of four at-home COVID-19 tests that will be mailed directly to them free. Free at-home tests also will be made available at government-assisted rental housing properties serving seniors and food banks.

The administration also is outlining to all governors the actions they should take to prepare for increased cases and hospitalizations expected during the winter.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
…

A week after China dramatically eased its three-year-long zero-COVID policy of lockdowns and near-daily PCR testing, the country is experiencing its biggest wave of COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began in 2020.

But Ray Yip, an American epidemiologist and a former director of the China branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Professor Jin Dong-Yan, a virologist in the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Biochemistry, say the relatively mild nature of omicron, China’s high vaccination rate and people voluntarily staying home, could help China avoid a huge increase in deaths.

Yip, who is also a former head of the China office for UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jin, a respected virologist, explained to VOA’s Cindy Sui why the situation in China may not be as bad as feared.

These December 14 and 15 interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: What is going on in China’s hospitals?

Yip: Most hospitals in big cities right now are overrun, but they are overrun from basically people with symptoms that don’t have to go to the hospital, like fever and runny nose. The truth is, COVID is like any flu. Unless you’ve developed respiratory failure and you need to have higher-level care, you get better on your own. You just drink a lot of fluid and stay in bed. But in China, most people, most parents, believe every time your child or your family member has anything not well, you rush them to the hospital emergency room to get [an] IV. Half the people don’t know you can use something like ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and manage the fever yourself.  

So right now, is there an omicron outbreak in Beijing, in Shanghai, in every place? The answer is yes. But that doesn’t mean hospitals’ intensive care is overrun and the number of deaths of the elderly is shooting through the roof.

Jin: Most of the cases are mild. Some of them describe it as worse than the flu. That’s actually not very surprising because it’s just like the flu.

VOA: Could there be a lot of severe cases that we just don’t know about?

Jin: That’s not possible because the virus is very mild and the vaccination rate in the elderly is not very, very low. (According to government statistics, 86% of the elderly aged 60 or above have had two shots and 68% have had a third booster shot). It’s much higher than in February in Hong Kong (when a major outbreak occurred).

The rate of severe cases or deaths should not be that high … because 99.5% of the people will just have mild or no symptoms for omicron. It’s the same everywhere. As long as they do well in vaccinating the elderly and giving them oral antivirals, the number of severe cases and deaths can be avoided.

VOA: With so many new infections, is there a possibility that the same thing that happened in India will happen in China as omicron spreads, given that there are only 3.6 intensive care beds per 100,000 people in China?

Yip: I don’t think that will happen in China. Omicron doesn’t do that. Omicron causes symptoms of cold. It doesn’t cause pneumonia. It doesn’t make you have trouble breathing. It’s upper respiratory.

Jin: That’s completely different because it’s not the same virus and strain. That will not happen in Beijing. For most people, there won’t be need for respirators because it’s the same viral strain as in Inner Mongolia, and as you can see there are not that many deaths and severe cases there. The concept that the virus strain is particularly virulent and will kill a lot of people is wrong.

VOA: According to the government, 90% of the population has been vaccinated with two doses of Chinese vaccines, but a much lower percentage — 56% of the overall population, and just 40% of those 80 or older — have had a booster shot. Would there still be an increase in deaths among the most vulnerable people?

Yip: All those people having COVID now, they are not very old. So, the question is, will this become so pervasive, so rapid, that it will actually overwhelm the elderly population in a very short period of time? If that happens, then there are fears that what happened in Wuhan in the first few weeks in January 2020 will happen again, with bodies lying in the hallways, not enough hospital beds and respirators.

I really doubt these scenes will repeat themselves. My prediction is that even if China gets a very sharp curve, the outcome — in terms of overwhelming the hospitals and deaths — will not be as bad as what happened in Wuhan in 2020 because it’s a different virus. Omicron, even though it’s COVID, is much milder.

There will be 200,000 excess deaths, mostly elderly people. But if you spread that out over a huge country like China, that’s not huge.

Jin: There’s always a danger, but every country has to face that. It’s just that China is facing it all of a sudden. Sooner or later, there would be a tsunami, it’s not a big deal, but they do need to pay more attention to severe cases.  In reality, how they can deal with severe cases and identify them is difficult. If they can quickly deliver oral antiviral drugs to those who need it, or those with chronic underlying diseases, it will also save a lot of lives.

VOA: What can China do to avoid a large number of deaths?

Yip: They can minimize deaths by getting the elderly vaccinated and making sure everybody gets three shots. They can also soften the curve, by keeping the rise in cases spread out over a longer period of time. A sharp curve will result in many people getting very sick that might overwhelm the hospitals. But if there’s a gentle curve that goes up over a longer period of time, then the hospitals will be able to handle the caseloads.

With China’s curve, we just have to see. But my prediction is it may not be as bad as one assumes, and the reason for that is that most Chinese in the big cities are totally scared. Beijing right now is in a semi-imposed semi-lockdown. You can go anywhere you want, but people are not going, because everybody right now hears COVID is running amok. So, everybody is staying in their apartment, which is good. By doing that, they will actually make the curve more gentle, not as steep.

Jin: Actually, the most important thing is to educate the general public and explain the rationale of the new policy. They should tell people they don’t need to go to the hospitals, because if everyone infected goes to the hospitals, the hospitals will collapse at some point.

In terms of the curve, they want to have 60% of people infected in the first wave. That’s not possible if everyone stays home, because the virus will not spread anymore. It’s possible it’ll be like Taiwan and Singapore, they will see several waves. They hope to have 80% of the population infected in the second wave.

VOA: Is there a chance China might ride out this storm largely unscathed?

Yip: There’s a reasonable chance China actually might, if what I’m hoping or projecting comes true. As we mentioned earlier, a flatter curve allows the system to absorb the shock. We don’t know. I think you need to wait for another minimum of three weeks to tell. Omicron actually is the best thing that happened to the world. Without omicron, if the virus was still like the delta variant, the alpha, the Wuhan strain, you would be scared every place you go. Omicron immunized everybody. The whole continent of Africa was immunized by omicron.

Jin: We expect the severe cases will be low and they should be able to handle this.  If they cannot handle it, they should use other measures to flatten the curve. There are 101 measures to do this. They can close schools, shut down buses, metro systems, they can do everything.

VOA: So, if China also survives this omicron wave, would you agree with Chinese analysts’ assertions that China will have prevented millions of deaths with its zero-COVID policy, even though it has been blamed for hurting the economy and people’s livelihoods, while also restricting  freedom?

Jin: I think so because that’s the reality, because the most lethal waves are already over. Those are delta, alpha … They have saved millions of lives because they did the lockdown initially and it could have been much worse if they didn’t.

Yip: That is true. I’ll tell you why. China did this zero-COVID policy when the bad virus was around — the virus that killed a lot of people, the one you saw in India, in New York, in Italy, in many parts of the world. It killed a million Americans. Those were the older strains. So, China basically said, ‘I protect you during bad virus times, but we got a good virus now. I’m going to let you get infected. You will get sick. You will get a cold. But most of you, if you’re under 50, you have zero chance to die. If you’re over 60 and you’re immunized, you’re in good condition.’

So basically, China averted a major curve of COVID-related deaths. But I tell you, people in the West don’t like to hear that because it makes China look good. You should report it. What I’m telling you is based on epidemiology. It’s based on science. I’m not telling you based on politics. 
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China raced to vaccinate its most vulnerable people on Thursday in anticipation of waves of COVID-19 infections, with some analysts expecting the death toll to soar after it eased strict controls that had kept the pandemic at bay for three years. 

The push comes as the World Health Organization also raised concerns that China’s 1.4 billion population was not adequately vaccinated and the United States offered help in dealing with a surge in infections.

Beijing last Wednesday began dismantling its tough ‘zero-COVID’ controls, dropping testing requirements and easing quarantine rules that had caused mental stress for tens of millions and battered the world’s second largest economy.

The pivot away from President Xi Jinping’s signature “zero-COVID” policy followed unprecedented widespread protests against it. But, WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan said infections were exploding in China well before the government’s decision to phase out its stringent regime. 

“There’s a narrative at the moment that China lifted the restrictions and all of a sudden the disease is out of control,” Ryan told a briefing in Geneva.

“The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Thursday China has “institutional advantages” to fight COVID.

“We will certainly be able to smoothly get through the peak of the epidemic,” he told a regular news briefing in response to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby saying that the U.S. was ready to help if China requested it.

There are increasing signs of chaos during China’s change of tack – with long queues outside fever clinics, runs on medicines and panic buying across the country.

One video posted online on Wednesday showed several people in thick winter clothes hooked up to intravenous drips as they sat on stools on the street outside a clinic in central Hubei province. Reuters verified the location of the video.

The COVID scare in China also led people in Hong Kong, Macau and in some neighborhoods in Australia to go in search for fever medicines and test kits for family and friends on the mainland.

For all its efforts to quell the virus since it erupted in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019, China may now pay a price for shielding a population that lacks “herd immunity” and has low vaccination rates among the elderly, analysts said.

“Authorities have let cases in Beijing and other cities spread to the point where resuming restrictions, testing and tracing would be largely ineffective in bringing outbreaks under control,” analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Thursday.

“Upward of 1 million people could die from COVID in the coming months.”

Other experts have put the potential toll at more than 2 million. China has reported just 5,235 COVID-related deaths so far, extremely low by global standards.

China’s stock markets and its currency fell on Thursday on concerns of the virus spread.

China reported 2,000 new symptomatic COVID-19 infections for Dec. 14 compared with 2,291 a day. The official figures, however, have become less reliable as testing has dropped. It also stopped reporting asymptomatic figures on Wednesday.

Concern for elderly 

China, which has said around 90% of its population is vaccinated against COVID, has now decided to roll out the second booster shot for high-risk groups and elderly people over 60 years of age. 

National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng said on Wednesday it was necessary to accelerate the promotion of vaccinations, according to comments reported by state media.

The latest official data shows China administered 1.43 million COVID shots on Tuesday, well above rates in November of around 100,000-200,000 doses a day. In total, it has administered 3.45 billion shots.

But one Shanghai care home said on Wednesday a number of its residents have not yet been vaccinated and considering their underlying medical condition, it has barred visitors and non-essential deliveries while stockpiling medicines, tests kits and protective gear.

“We are racking our brains on how to ensure the safety of your grandparents,” the Yuepu Tianyi Nursing Home wrote in a letter posted on its official WeChat account page.

Beijing has been largely resistant to western vaccines and treatments, having relied on locally-made shots. Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid is one of the few foreign ones it has approved.

The treatment, however, has only been available in hospitals for high-risk patients, but signs have appeared in recent days that it may soon be made more widely available.

China Meheco Group Co Ltd’s stock jumped after it announced a deal to import the U.S. drugmaker’s treatment on Wednesday.

Economic conference

As the virus spreads, President Xi, his ruling Politburo and senior government officials began a two-day meeting to plot a recovery for China’s battered economy, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

China’s economy lost more steam in November as factory output growth slowed and retail sales extended declines, both missing forecasts and clocking their worst readings since May, data on Thursday showed.

Economists estimate that China’s growth has slowed to around 3% this year, marking one of China’s worst performances in almost half a century. 
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What’s a dust devil sound like on Mars? A NASA rover by chance had its microphone on when a whirling tower of red dust passed directly overhead, recording the racket.

It’s about 10 seconds of not only rumbling gusts of up to 25 mph (40 kph), but the pinging of hundreds of dust particles against the rover Perseverance. Scientists released the first-of-its-kind audio Tuesday.

It sounds strikingly similar to dust devils on Earth, although quieter since Mars’ thin atmosphere makes for more muted sounds and less forceful wind, according to the researchers.

The dust devil came and went over Perseverance quickly last year, thus the short length of the audio, said the University of Toulouse’s Naomi Murdoch, lead author of the study appearing in Nature Communications. At the same time, the navigation camera on the parked rover captured images, while its weather-monitoring instrument collected data.

“It was fully caught red-handed by Persy,” said co-author German Martinez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

A 1-in-200 chance

Photographed for decades at Mars but never heard until now, dust devils are common at the red planet. This one was in the average range: at least 400 feet (118 meters) tall and 80 feet (25 meters) across, traveling at 16 feet (5 meters) per second.

The microphone picked up 308 dust pings as the dust devil whipped by, said Murdoch, who helped build it.

Given that the rover’s SuperCam microphone is turned on for less than three minutes every few days, Murdoch said it was “definitely luck” that the dust devil appeared when it did on Sept. 27, 2021. She estimates there was just a 1-in-200 chance of capturing dust-devil audio.

Of the 84 minutes collected in its first year, there’s “only one dust devil recording,” she wrote in an email from France.

A helicopter named ‘Ingenuity’

This same microphone on Perseverance’s mast provided the first sounds from Mars — namely the Martian wind — soon after the rover landed in February 2021. It followed up with audio of the rover driving around and its companion helicopter, little Ingenuity, flying nearby, as well as the crackle of the rover’s rock-zapping lasers, the main reason for the microphone.

These recordings allow scientists to study the Martian wind, atmospheric turbulence and now dust movement as never before, Murdoch said. The results “demonstrate just how valuable acoustic data can be in space exploration.”

On the prowl for rocks that might contain signs of ancient microbial life, Perseverance has collected 18 samples so far at Jezero Crater, once the scene of a river delta. NASA plans to return these samples to Earth a decade from now. Ingenuity has logged 36 flights, the longest lasting almost three minutes.
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A hacker who reportedly posed as the chief executive of a financial institution claims to have obtained access to the more than 80,000-member database of InfraGard, an FBI-run outreach program that shares sensitive information on national security and cybersecurity threats with public officials and private sector individuals who run U.S. critical infrastructure.

The hacker posted samples purportedly from the database to an online forum popular with cybercriminals last weekend and said the asking price for the entire database was $50,000. 

The hacker made the disclosures to independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, who broke the story. The hacker called the vetting process surprisingly lax. 

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Krebs reported that the agency told him it was aware of a potential false account and was looking into the matter. 

InfraGard’s members include business leaders, information technology professionals, and officials of the military, state and local law enforcement, and the government who are involved in overseeing the safety of such things as the electrical grid, transportation, health care, pipelines, nuclear reactors, the defense industry, dams, water plants and financial services. Founded in 1996, it is the FBI’s largest public-private partnership, with local alliances affiliated with all its field offices. It regularly shares threat advisories from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security and serves as a behind-closed-doors social media site for select insiders. 

The database has the names, affiliations and contact information of tens of thousands of InfraGard users. Krebs first reported its theft on Tuesday. 

The hacker, going by the username USDoD on the BreachForums site, said on the site that records of only 47,000 of the forum’s members — slightly more than half — include unique emails. The hacker also posted that the data contained neither Social Security numbers nor dates of birth. Although fields existed in the database for that information, InfraGard’s security-conscious users had left them blank. 

However, the hacker, according to Krebs, claimed to have been messaging InfraGard members, posing as the financial institution’s CEO, to try to obtain more personal data that could be criminally weaponized. 

The AP reached the hacker on the BreachForums site via private message. The person would not say whether a buyer for the records had been found or answer other questions, but did say that Krebs’ article “was 100% accurate.” 

The FBI did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on how the hacker was able to trick it into approving the InfraGard membership. Krebs reported that the hacker had included a contact email address under the person’s control, as well as the CEO’s real mobile phone number, when applying for InfraGard membership in November. 

Krebs quoted the hacker as saying InfraGard approved the application in early December and the email account was used to receive a one-time authentication code. 

Once inside, the hacker said, the database information was easy to obtain with simple software script.
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National Health Service nurses in Britain will strike on Thursday in their first-ever national walkout as a bitter dispute with the government over pay ramps up pressure on already-stretched hospitals at one of the busiest times of year.

An estimated 100,000 nurses will strike at 76 hospitals and health centers on Thursday, canceling thousands of non-urgent operations, such as hip replacements, and tens of thousands of outpatient appointments in Britain’s state-funded NHS.

Britain is facing a wave of industrial action this winter, with strikes crippling the rail network and postal service, and airports bracing for disruption over Christmas.

Inflation running at more than 10%, trailed by pay offers of around 4%, is stoking tensions between unions and employers.

Of all the strikes though, it will be the sight of nurses on picket lines that will be the standout image for many Britains this winter.

“It is deeply regrettable some union members are going ahead with strike action,” health minister Steve Barclay said.

“I’ve been working across government and with medics outside the public sector to ensure safe staffing levels — but I do remain concerned about the risk that strikes pose to patients.”

Considered a national treasure

The widely admired nursing profession will shut down parts of the NHS, which since its founding in 1948 has developed national treasure status for being free at the point of use, hitting health care provision when it is already stretched in winter and with backlogs at record levels due to COVID delays

Barclay said patients should continue to seek urgent medical care and attend appointments unless they have been told not to.

The industrial action by nurses on Thursday and December 20 is unprecedented in the British nursing union’s 106-year history, but the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said it has no choice as workers struggle to make ends meet.

Nurses want a 19% pay rise, arguing they have suffered a decade of real-terms cuts and that low pay means staff shortages and unsafe care for patients. The government has refused to discuss pay.

The government in Scotland avoided a nursing strike by holding talks on pay, an outcome that the RCN had hoped for in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but Barclay is not budging.

The government has said it cannot afford to pay more than the 4-5% offered to nurses, which was recommended by an independent body, and that further pay increases would mean taking money away from frontline services.

The RCN has accused the government of “belligerence.” It said as late as Tuesday that the strikes could still be stopped if the government was prepared to negotiate.

Some treatments exempt from strike

Some treatment areas will be exempt from strike action the RCN has said, including chemotherapy, dialysis and intensive care.

Polling ahead of the nursing strike showed that a majority of Britains support the action, but once the walkouts are underway, politicians will be closely monitoring public opinion.
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Two Ethiopians have filed a lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company, Meta, over hate speech they say was allowed and even promoted on the social media platform amid heated rhetoric over their country’s deadly Tigray conflict.

Former Amnesty International human rights researcher Fisseha Tekle is one petitioner in the case filed Wednesday and the other is the son of university professor Meareg Amare, who was killed weeks after posts on Facebook inciting violence against him.

The case was filed in neighboring Kenya, home to the platform’s content moderation operations related to Ethiopia. The lawsuit alleges that Meta hasn’t hired enough content moderators there, that it uses an algorithm that prioritizes hateful content and that it acts more slowly to crises in Africa than elsewhere in the world.

The lawsuit, also backed by Kenya-based legal organization the Katiba Institute, seeks the creation of a $1.6 billion fund for victims of hate speech.

A Facebook spokesman, Ben Walters, told The Associated Press they could not comment on the lawsuit because they haven’t received it. He shared a general statement: “We have strict rules which outline what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram. Hate speech and incitement to violence are against these rules and we invest heavily in teams and technology to help us find and remove this content.” Facebook continues to develop its capabilities to catch violating content in Ethiopia’s most widely spoken languages, it said.

Ethiopia’s two-year Tigray conflict is thought to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The warring sides signed a peace deal last month.

“This legal action is a significant step in holding Meta to account for its harmful business model,” said Flavia Mwangovya of Amnesty International in a statement pointing out that the Facebook posts targeting its former researcher and the professor were not isolated cases.

The AP and more than a dozen other media outlets last year explored how Facebook had failed to quickly and effectively moderate hate speech in cases around the world, including in Ethiopia. The reports were based on internal documents obtained by whistleblower Frances Haugen.
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Law enforcement officials and financial services regulators have filed a raft of criminal and civil charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange company FTX, alleging wide-ranging fraud that eventually brought down the company, which was valued at $32 billion earlier this year.

The Department of Justice on Tuesday morning unsealed an indictment charging Bankman-Fried with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, actual wire fraud, money laundering, and violation of laws governing donations to politicians and political parties.

At the request of U.S. prosecutors, Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested on Monday evening at his home in the Bahamas, where the headquarters of FTX is located. The U.S. and the Bahamas have an extradition treaty, and Bankman-Fried is expected to be transferred to U.S. custody in the near future.

‘House of cards’

Earlier Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued its own set of civil charges, also accusing Bankman-Fried of “years-long fraud” that included hiding information from investors, diverting customer funds to a hedge fund he owned, using other customer funds to make political donations, and to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate.

“We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws.”

Also on Tuesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Bankman-Fried.

Rapid rise, rapid fall

In the short time since its founding in 2019, FTX grew to be one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, and Sam Bankman-Fried — often referred to as “SBF” — became one of the industry’s most recognizable figures. He was a regular speaker at business conferences, gave testimony before Congress, and was seen by many as a model cryptocurrency executive.

The list of investors who plowed billions of dollars into FTX is long and distinguished, including Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, Tiger Global Management, and Third Point Ventures.

Earlier this year, Bankman-Fried positioned his company as a savior for the broader crypto industry when a broad selloff of cryptocurrencies left many firms in the space reeling. FTX extended lines of credit to crypto lender BlockFi and crypto broker Voyager Digital in an effort to help them weather the storm. Both BlockFi and Voyager eventually filed for bankruptcy protection.

Signs of trouble

In September, news reports began raising questions about the relationship between FTX and Alameda Research, a hedge fund owned by Bankman-Fried which was supposed to be a completely separate corporate entity from FTX.

However, it gradually became clear that the two companies were actually closely connected. Media reports began to reveal that a large share of Alameda’s assets was tied up in an illiquid crypto token called FTT, which was issued by FTX. Over several days in early November, customers rushed to pull their money from accounts with FTX, sending the company into a massive liquidity crisis and forcing it to stop processing customer withdrawals.

After several days of attempts to arrange a rescue package, including a briefly considered sale of FTX to Binance, its largest competitor, FTX, Alameda, and more than 100 affiliated companies filed for bankruptcy.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department and the SEC alleged that Alameda actually had “virtually unlimited” access to funds held by FTX on behalf of its customers.

The charges against Bankman-Fried claim that Alameda illegally used those funds to invest in highly illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, as well as to make “undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.”

Before its collapse, cryptocurrency investors around the world had placed billions of dollars in their accounts with FTX. In large part because of transfers to Alameda, FTX is facing an estimated shortfall of $8 billion.

‘I made a lot of mistakes’

Against the advice of his attorneys, Bankman-Fried has given a number of interviews to news organizations since his company declared bankruptcy. His contention has been that, while he may have made mistakes, he never intended to defraud anyone.

In early December, Bankman-Fried told The Wall Street Journal that he could not account for money that FTX customers transferred to Alameda Research.

In an appearance at a conference sponsored by The New York Times, he said, “Clearly I made a lot of mistakes. There are things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I did not ever try to commit fraud on anyone. I was excited about the prospects of FTX a month ago. I saw it as a thriving, growing business. I was shocked by what happened [in November.]”

His claims contradict the allegations leveled by prosecutors in the indictment unsealed Tuesday, which accuse Bankman-Fried of “willfully and knowingly” defrauding investors and customers.

‘Utter failure’ of controls

Last month, control of FTX and its constituent companies was turned over to John Ray III, an attorney and corporate insolvency specialist who has been brought on to manage multiple companies facing bankruptcy, including the failed energy giant Enron in the early 2000s. His primary task will be to assemble all the remaining assets of FTX in an effort to recover some of the money its customers lost in the exchange’s collapse.

Ray appeared at a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, during which he described a company that lacked even the most basic corporate governance structures and was run by a small cabal ill-equipped for the job of running a multi-billion dollar corporation.

In prepared testimony, Ray said, “[N]ever in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever.”

In the broadest sense, Ray said, the company’s failure was the result of the “absolute concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems or controls that are necessary for a company that is entrusted with other people’s money or assets.”

Under questioning, Ray said that the asset recovery process will take months to complete, and will not make FTX customers whole. “At the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to recover all the losses here,” he said.

The committee had also expected to hear from Bankman-Fried on Tuesday, but the FTX founder’s arrest on Monday made that impossible.

Lawmakers angry

The allegations of fraud and mismanagement at FTX have raised calls in Washington for action by Congress to rein in the cryptocurrency industry, which operates under a poorly defined set of regulatory rules.

House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters on Tuesday said that she was “deeply troubled” by the revelations coming out about FTX. At the same hearing, U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, who will take over the chairmanship when Republicans assume control of the House next month, criticized Bankman-Fried but said that he still sees “promise” in digital assets.

Others were less tolerant of the industry, with Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat, calling the entire industry “a garden of snakes.”

Industry representatives urged lawmakers to tread carefully when it comes to establishing new rules for cryptocurrencies.

“Following the failure of FTX International, it’s understandable that lawmakers want to do something, but they should be wary of passing legislation in haste that would do more harm than good,” Kristin Smith, executive director of the Blockchain Association, wrote on Monday. “Instead, Congress should take its time to investigate the issues we’ve seen and work closely with the crypto industry to find solutions that benefit everyone.”
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A South African researcher has developed a way to remove contaminants from water used in mining that could help clean up the dirty industry. The award-winning ion exchange method not only cleans the water but captures polluting metals that can then be re-purposed.

At a Johannesburg laboratory, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand have developed a way to clean acid mine drainage (AMD).

AMD is the runoff of pollutants like sulfuric acid and heavy metals that secrete into waterways, affecting wildlife and rural mining communities.

AMD is often found at gold and coal mines, which are plentiful in South Africa.

Tamlyn Naidu is a post-doctoral research fellow involved in the project.

“What we wanted to do is minimize environmental impact for a lot of these communities that are afflicted by AMD. They have been born into mining communities, they work in mining communities, they’re either scared to report it or to complain about it, because this is their livelihood,” she said.

The ion exchange filtration system that Naidu and her colleagues have developed uses countless polystyrene beads, each the size of a pinhead, which the water passes through.

Unlike a coffee filter, which physically blocks coffee grounds from passing through with water, the beads grab the contaminants in the water chemically.

The passing water, which can be scaled up to clean 1,000 liters an hour, then comes out clear.

“This project though, does something extra. It also wants to extract from the water valuable materials. So what has been identified in some of these streams, especially coal mining streams, is that the acid that’s produced from the mine waters actually dissolves out some rare earth metals,” says Ed Hardwick, the owner of Cwenga Technologies, which is a partner in the research.

Rare earth metals are in huge demand globally because they can be used in new technology like electric vehicles. Being able to extract them adds a financial incentive to cleaning up AMD.

Naidu said she hopes this can empower communities by monetizing the extracted materials from the AMD.

“Ultimately, from this project, we want community members to be involved in something that’s easy for them to operate, that they can extract value from and start, you know, seeing the value that companies have been taking onto the land and taken away from them. And yeah, I guess adding to their quality of life,” she says.

A method to clean up AMD that can be monetized would be good news for the government and communities that are now burdened with the costly task.

“If this was going to be an incentive, it should be on the incentive of the state and that any monies that are obtained from the separation of those minerals that can be repurposed, that can be used, is then fed back into one rehabilitation, but also two, into creating sustainable economies for the communities that are impacted,” says Tarisai Mugunyani, an attorney with the Center for Environmental Rights in Johannesburg.

Researchers say they are hopeful their filtration system, which can be adapted to clean the unique chemistry of AMD at any site, will soon be adopted widely.

It has already gained international attention with Naidu taking the first prize for emerging talents breakthroughs at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin last month.

Naidu said several companies in mining and technology sectors have contacted her about becoming involved.
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