Thailand’s private sector joins ‘Race to Zero’ ahead of global climate summit
Thailand’s business world got in training this week to cut carbon ahead of the UN’s COP 26 climate conference in November. The “Race to Zero: Meet the World’s Race to Zero Heroes for Climate Action” guided more than 400 public and private-sector organisations on practical steps towards the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.
Thailand’s business world got in training this week to cut carbon ahead of the UN’s COP 26 climate conference in November.
The “Race to Zero: Meet the World’s Race to Zero Heroes for Climate Action” guided more than 400 public and private-sector organisations on practical steps towards the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.
Led by the UN’s Global Compact Network Thailand (GCNT), the technical webinar helped businesses take transformational action in setting climate targets by bringing together experts, sharing best practices, and providing tools for transition to net-zero emissions.
Noppadol Dej-Udom, secretary-general of GCNT and chief of sustainability for Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, said the event will help the private sector step up against climate change, after the “code-red for humanity” warning delivered by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Business-as-usual was no longer an option, which is why GCNT has made building climate preparedness and adaptation among its members a top priority, Noppadol said.
Thailand’s private sector joins ‘Race to Zero’ ahead of global climate summit
Gita Sabharwal, UN Resident Coordinator in Thailand, explained that the private sector, which generates nearly 9 in 10 jobs and contributes to over 80 per cent of the country’s GDP, has an undeniable leadership role and responsibility. Although traditionally environmental spending is seen as a cost burden to the economy, a recently published IMF Paper suggests that green spending can be a green multiplier contributing between 2 to 7 times more than conventional multipliers. This is precisely why it is so critical to create an enabling environment for a green economy and business sustainability, she added.
“I am pleased that the private sector in Thailand is taking such bold initiatives to be climate champions, with some companies already aiming to be carbon neutral over the coming decade,” said Sabharwal.
Thailand’s private sector joins ‘Race to Zero’ ahead of global climate summit
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Said Jens Radschinki, Regional Lead of the UN climate change convention office in Bangkok: “Ambitious government commitments and country action is needed. To be consistent with the 1.5C-degree goal, global greenhouse gas emissions need to decline by around 45 per cent by 2030. Ahead of us lies a fundamental transformation of our economy, and private sector needs to play a key role in setting science-based targets to reduce GHG emissions.”
Businesses need a common baseline to keep their climate goals in reach, acknowledged Race to Zero members Moh Suthasiny from Happy Grocers and Dan Pathomvanich from NR Instant Produce. They shared their zero-emission targets as well as advice on raising ambition and concrete action.
Thailand’s private sector joins ‘Race to Zero’ ahead of global climate summit
First day of school indefinitely postponed for 140 million first-time students around the world – UNICEF
At least eight million of these young learners have been waiting for over a year.
Achild’s first day of school—a landmark moment for the youngest students and their parents around the world—has been delayed due to COVID-19 for an estimated 140 million young minds, UNICEF said in a new analysis released as summer break comes to end in many parts of the world.
For an estimated eight million of these students, the wait for their first day of in-person learning has been over a year and counting, as they live in places where schools have been closed throughout the pandemic.
In Thailand, too many young children entering the first grade have missed out on months of in-person instruction, and primary and secondary-age students are also absent from classrooms due to prolonged school closures in many parts of the country following the third and worst wave of COVID-19 that began in April.
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First day of school indefinitely postponed for 140 million first-time students around the world – UNICEF
“The first day of school is a landmark moment in a child’s life setting them off on a life-changing path of personal learning and growth. Most of us can remember countless minor details what clothes we wore, our teacher’s name, who we sat next to. But for millions of children, that important day has been indefinitely postponed,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “As classes resume in many parts of the world, millions of first graders have been waiting to see the inside of a classroom for over a year. Millions more may not see one at all this school term. For the most vulnerable, their risk of never stepping into a classroom in their lifetime is skyrocketing.”
The first grade sets up the building blocks for all future learning, with introductions to reading, writing, and math. It’s also a period when in-person learning helps children gain independence, adapt to new routines, and develop meaningful relationships with teachers and students. In-person learning also enables teachers to identify and address learning delays, mental health issues, and abuse that could negatively affect children’s well-being.
In 2020, schools globally were fully closed for an average of 79 teaching days. However, for 168 million students, after the pandemic began, schools were shuttered for nearly the entire year. Even now, many children are facing an unprecedented second year of disruption to their education. The associated consequences of school closures – learning loss, mental distress, missed vaccinations, and heightened risk of drop out, child labour, and child marriage – will be felt by many children, especially the youngest learners in critical development stages.
First day of school indefinitely postponed for 140 million first-time students around the world – UNICEF
Seven in 10 children and young people reported poorer mental health due to the impact of COVID-19 on their lives in a 2020 UNICEF-led survey in Thailand. Following school closures, more than half said they were worried about their studies, and future education and employment.
While countries worldwide are taking some actions to provide remote learning, at least 29 per cent of primary students are not being reached. In addition to lack of assets for remote learning, the youngest children may not be able to participate due to a lack of support using the technology, a poor learning environment, pressure to do household chores, or being forced to work.
In Thailand, nearly half of all households surveyed in a 2020 study by the National Statistical Office were not ready for online learning. Fifty-one per cent did not have access to devices for online learning; 26 per cent did not have internet access for online learning; and 40 per cent of parents and caregivers said they did not have time to oversee their children’s online learning.
Studies have shown that positive school experiences during this transition period are a predictor of children’s future social, emotional and educational outcomes. At the same time, children who fall behind in learning during the early years often stay behind for the remaining time they spend in school, and the gap widens over the years. The number of years of education a child receives also directly affects their future earnings.
UNICEF urges governments to reopen schools for in-person learning as soon as possible, and to provide a comprehensive recovery response for students. Together with the World Bank and UNESCO, UNICEF is calling for governments to focus on three key priorities for recovery in schools:
Targeted programmes to bring all children and youth back in school where they can access tailored services to meet their learning, health, psychosocial well-being, and other needs;
Effective remedial learning to help students catch up on lost learning;
Support for teachers to address learning losses and incorporate digital technology into their teaching.
“Your first day of school is a day of hope and possibility—a day for getting off to a good start. But not all children are getting off to a good start. Some children are not even starting at all,” said Fore.” We must reopen schools for in-person learning as soon as possible, and we must immediately address the gaps in learning this pandemic has already created. Unless we do, some children may never catch up.”
PAT sets up field hospital, community isolation centre in Khlong Toei
PAT executives greeted Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) executives, who were visiting the projects as their agency is responsible for installing the electricity system.
Afield hospital and community isolation (CI) centre are being set up at the Warehouse Stadium in Bangkok’s Khlong Toei area, under a Port Authority of Thailand (PAT) order.
On Monday, PAT executives greeted Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) executives, who were visiting the projects as their agency is responsible for installing the electricity system.
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PAT sets up field hospital, community isolation centre in Khlong Toei
The field hospital and CI centre will serve PAT staff and locals infected with Covid-19. The field hospital has 240 beds and the CI centre has 60 beds.
Along with MEA, several other organisations are supporting the projects, namely the SCG foundation, PTTOR, Metropolitan Waterworks Authority and Khlong Toei district office.
MEA deputy governor Jaturong Suriyasasin said that his organisation was grateful to take part in the projects, and was confident that electricity services in the hospital and CI centre will be sufficient.
Two sexual assault survivors spur Airbnb arbitration turnaround
For Sherry Dooley, Airbnb Inc.s announcement last week that it would no longer force guests into confidential arbitration to settle claims of sexual assault was disturbing. For Natalie White, it means she may get her day in court.
Both women filed lawsuits against the company in recent months claiming they were sexually assaulted inside properties rented on Airbnb. Dooley, a 55-year-old food-truck worker from Oregon, says she was raped by an intruder in an apartment in Colima, Mexico, in 2019. White, a 23-year-old medical student from New Jersey, says she was attacked by a host who tried to tear off her clothes in Los Angeles last year.
The women decided to speak publicly for the first time to call on the company to remove a longstanding forced-arbitration clause in its 10,000-word terms of service that neither of them said they were aware of when they used the platform. They said arbitration would silence their voices and keep the issue of sexual assault at Airbnb listings hidden.
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Airbnb said on Friday, after being informed of the women’s statements, that it would change its terms of service this fall to no longer require arbitration in cases involving the sexual assault or sexual harassment of guests and hosts. It also said it hasn’t enforced the policy since January 2019, although it didn’t make any announcement at the time or change the terms of service that its 150 million users must accept to register on the site.
That the company said it stopped using the binding arbitration clause in sexual abuse cases two years ago came as a surprise to Dooley. She agreed to shift her lawsuit into arbitration last September after a lawyer for the company threatened to file a motion in court enforcing the terms of service. “It kind of makes me angry,” said Dooley. “Feels like a runaround, and I’m the one stuck in the middle, being retraumatized over and over again.”
The announcement came after a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation of violent crimes, including rapes, at Airbnb listings. That story highlighted the lengths the home-share company will go to keep such incidents quiet — sometimes spending millions of dollars on settlement payouts and using the binding arbitration clause in its terms of service to block users from filing claims for damages in court. Only one case related to sexual assault had ever been filed against Airbnb in U.S. courts, the investigation found, after a review of electronically available state and federal cases since the company’s founding in 2008.
Ben Breit, an Airbnb spokesman, declined to comment about why the company waited until last week to announce it would update its terms of service to reflect the policy change. He said sexual assaults in Airbnb listings are “extremely rare.”
The use of forced arbitration has become a flashpoint in corporate America in recent years. The practice was established almost a century ago as a way for businesses to resolve conflicts without clogging the courts. By the 1990s, it had expanded to include consumer and employee disputes. Supporters say it’s a faster and cheaper way to settle disputes than through the courts. Critics say it favors companies because they get to set the terms and the outcomes are secret.
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Arbitration is “one of the ways large corporations exert power and control over survivors,” said Latifa Lyles, vice president for advocacy and survivor initiatives at the anti-harassment organization Time’s Up.Some companies distanced themselves from mandatory arbitration during the MeToo movement. Starting in 2017, Microsoft, Google, Facebook — and Airbnb — removed binding arbitration requirements for sexual assault and sexual harassment claims filed by employees. Uber Technologies and Lyft went even further, changing their terms of service to allow passengers and drivers to file such cases in court.
Uber’s change came in May 2018 after 14 women who claimed they’d been sexually assaulted by the company’s drivers wrote a letter to the board calling for the right to file claims in court. Chief Legal Officer Tony West said it wasn’t an easy decision. “We knew when taking these steps that we were taking on legal risk,” he said in an interview last week. Uber updated its terms of service to reflect the change because “we wanted to be absolutely clear that we meant what we said,” West said. Companies need to be “very public and very full-throated” about it to communicate to survivors that they have the right to sue.
Jeanne Christensen, a lawyer at Wigdor LLP who represented the 14 women, said she had hoped after Uber made the change that sharing-economy peer Airbnb would do the same. Airbnb’s business model, like Uber’s, is largely based on strangers meeting online and trusting one another enough to exchange money and connect offline.
Airbnb says it did follow suit in 2019. It just didn’t tell anyone, including its own safety team, the elite internal group that handles sexual assaults and violent crimes inside platform listings, according to two former safety agents. One, a former policeman who worked at the company from May 2018 to July 2020, said he raised concerns about the use of forced arbitration with management on numerous occasions. He said he had no idea Airbnb had stopped using the arbitration provision in sexual assault cases in 2019.
Neither did Dooley or her lawyer. Dooley said she used Airbnb to rent the upstairs unit of a two-story house in Colima, on Mexico’s central Pacific coast. The property had five-star reviews and was operated by a superhost, a badge of honor the company bestows upon its most experienced and trustworthy hosts. Dooley was asleep in the apartment when a man climbed an ungated exterior staircase and entered through a window that she said didn’t properly lock. The intruder threatened to stab her with a fork, attempted to sodomize her and “in a brutal fashion, repeatedly and forcibly raped her,” according to the lawsuit Dooley filed against Airbnb and the host in an Oregon state court in May 2020.
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The lawsuit says neither Airbnb nor the host properly investigated the security of the property. It says the company, which promotes itself as a safe platform, should have known that its “claims regarding safety were misleading and a misrepresentation of the truth.”Hours after the attack, Dooley said, she Googled “Airbnb and rape” and nothing came up. So, she emailed Airbnb Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky, telling him what had happened and asking for help. A representative from the safety team reached out soon after, offering to refund the cost of her trip, pay for her flight home and cover any health or counseling expenses, she said.
No one has been arrested, and local police are still investigating, according to Dooley’s Mexico-based lawyer Maria Del Carmen Mata Magallanes. Airbnb deactivated the listing, but it didn’t ban the host because “he is not accused of wrongdoing,” Breit, the company spokesman, said. A lawyer for the host didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Four months after the lawsuit was filed, and more than a year after Airbnb said it stopped enforcing the arbitration clause in sexual assault cases, a lawyer representing the company said Dooley had to take the matter to arbitration. “To be clear, it is Airbnb’s position that your client is required to arbitrate her claims,” Klarice Benn, an attorney at the Abbott Law Group in Portland, Oregon, wrote to Dooley’s lawyer, Robert Callahan, last September, according to an email seen by Bloomberg. Benn threatened to file a motion to compel arbitration if Dooley didn’t go along with the move.
Dooley agreed to shift the case to arbitration. Now, Callahan said, he and his client feel “played and deceived.” To him, the company’s message was clear. “Everything Airbnb did through its counsel was perceived as blocking our access to the courts and moving us to arbitration,” Callahan said. He said the company is using “Orwellian double-speak” when it says it hasn’t enforced the arbitration clause in court since January 2019. “They can’t say upfront that they changed this when their actions are just the opposite.”
Benn didn’t respond to emails, and Airbnb declined to comment about how it handled the case.With her lawsuit shunted to arbitration, Dooley’s claims, like those against many other online service providers, will never be heard in court. “I had no idea when I clicked on that terms of service that I was clicking away my rights,” she said.
Neither did Natalie White. She sued Airbnb last month in Superior Court in Los Angeles, as well as the host who rented her a one-bedroom apartment, claiming she was sexually assaulted there in February 2020. White, who lives in Atlantic City, New Jersey, says in her lawsuit that the host, an actor named Zafer Alpat, barged into the apartment as she was packing to leave, pinned her down, and licked and kissed her while she resisted.
Alpat was arrested and charged with assault to commit a felony and false imprisonment by violence. He has pleaded not guilty to both counts and faces a preliminary hearing next month, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Alpat declined to comment because of the pending litigation, his lawyer Daniel Titkin said in an email.
White said in a statement sent by her lawyer, Greg Kirakosian, that she rented a room through Airbnb believing it was safe to do so. “Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong,” she said in the statement, which was written before the company announced its change of policy. Private arbitration is “silencing my voice as well as the voices of other victims,” White wrote. “I beg you, do not silence our stories and our quest for justice.”
Kirakosian praised Airbnb for listening to White’s plea. But he said the company needs to go further. “Our ultimate objective,” he said in an email, “is for Airbnb to make fundamental changes to their policies toward prevention of, and protection from, sexual assault.”
Breit, the Airbnb spokesman, said the company worked hard to support White after she reached out. He said the host, who had raised red flags for cleanliness and personality conflicts with previous guests, was barred from the platform. As for her lawsuit, Breit said, the choice of whether to arbitrate or not will be left to her.
Published : August 19, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olivia Carville
Tencent sales grow slowest in two years as crackdown weighs
Tencent Holdings revenue increased at its slowest pace since 2019 after Chinas expanding tech crackdown hit its mobile gaming empire, overshadowing newer businesses from cloud to social ads.
Beijing’s months-long crackdown has ignited a trillion-dollar selloff in Chinese equities, up-ended online education and also pumped the brakes on growth across a swath of industries from advertising to car-sharing. This month, Alibaba Group Holding reported revenue that missed estimates for the first time in more than two years. Tencent’s sales rose 20% to 138.3 billion yuan ($21.3 billion) for the three months ended June, in line with the 138.2 billion yuan average forecast.
Growing scrutiny from Beijing and stiffening competition with the likes of ByteDance Ltd. has prompted China’s most valuable corporation to join arch-foe Alibaba in a spending spree, plowing a larger chunk of its profit into areas like cloud services, games, and short videos. While Tencent itself isn’t the target of any probe, its outsized influence in the modern Chinese economy has left it vulnerable as the crackdown quickly expanded from antitrust and e-commerce to data security and online content.
Net income was 42.6 billion yuan in the quarter, beating the 30.8 billion yuan projected thanks in part to a gain of more than 20 billion yuan on its investments around the world. Shares in Prosus, Tencent’s major shareholder, rose more than 4%.
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Last month, regulators ordered Tencent Music Entertainment Group to relinquish its exclusive licensing deals with label companies, and killed a Tencent-led merger of two rival game streaming platforms. State media then trained their sights on gaming addiction among China’s youth, spurring Tencent to introduce even-stricter child protections into its mobile titles. And portfolio startups like Yuanfudao and VIPKid may be forced to write down their valuations after Beijing banned tutoring firms teaching school subjects to kids from making profits.
Meanwhile, a recently launched campaign by the tech-industry overseer has reignited scrutiny over Tencent’s ubiquitous WeChat. The messaging, social media and payments service — which temporarily suspended new user registrations last month to undergo security upgrades — has long been criticized for walling off users from services operated by rivals such as Alibaba, one of the watchdog’s key points of contention.
And while President Martin Lau has said the company’s fintech arm remains focused on risk management when expanding into non-payment products, monetization could be limited if Beijing put one of its fast-growing divisions under scrutiny similar to Jack Ma’s Ant Group Co.
Tencent’s core gaming business increased sales by 12%, the slowest pace since the third quarter of 2019. It faces a tough comparison from a year ago, when it rode an internet boom during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. That division, which accounted for about half of China’s video game market in 2020, still largely revolves around aging franchises Peacekeeper Elite and Honor of Kings, at a time when up-and-comers like MiHoYo churn out new hits. In a bid to shore up its slate, Tencent has scooped up slices of 76 gaming firms so far this year, most of which are lesser-known indie development studios, according to data tracked by researcher Niko Partners. That compares with just 31 gaming investments last year.
“The Chinese mobile gaming space is witnessing a structural change whereby game developers are more inclined to publish games on their own instead of licensing their titles to third-party publishers such as Tencent,” Nomura analysts including Jialong Shi wrote in a note before the results. “The huge success of some independent game developers such as Lilith Games and MiHoYo in publishing their self-produced titles have likely inspired other small developers to follow suit.”
Online advertising revenue increased 23%, as internet services and consumer staples clients outweighed a drop in education-related spending. Fintech and other business services climbed 40%, reflecting increasing digital payment transactions, the company said.
Published : August 19, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Zheping Huang
Alibaba sets up harassment hotline as rape probe nears end
Alibaba Group Holding will set up a hotline and create a team dedicated to investigating sexual harassment complaints, after an employee accused her manager of rape and ignited a debate about misogyny across Chinas tech industry.
The e-commerce giant launched an investigation when an Alibaba employee accused her manager of sexually assaulting her after a night of heavy drinking while on a business trip in July. That inquiry has almost concluded and its results will soon be announced, the company said on its official blog Thursday. Alibaba has meanwhile established a committee to police its workplace environment, comprised of senior female executives including Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu and Chief People Officer Judy Tong, who was publicly censured Monday for the company’s mishandling of the incident.
The employee’s allegations, which went viral on China’s tightly controlled internet, have reverberated across the upper echelons of Alibaba and in C-suites across much of the country. The accused Alibaba manager has been fired, two senior executives at the e-commerce giant have resigned and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang has issued a remarkable mea culpa, calling the company’s handling of the incident a “humiliation.”
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In a nation that’s been slow to absorb lessons from the global #MeToo movement, the episode has triggered what many say is a long overdue examination of the ways Chinese women are too often treated at work: overlooked, objectified, forced to take part in male-dominated rituals like drinking with clients and brushed aside when reporting abuse. It comes at a time when much of China’s corporate world, particularly the tech industry, is under intense government scrutiny on issues ranging from anti-monopoly violations to the treatment of low-wage workers.
“The best reflection is action,” Alibaba said in a blogpost. “It is our shared responsibility to create a mutually respectful workplace environment.”
The newly formed committee will in turn steer an independent team responsible for investigating complaints and reports related to sexual harassment and assault. The company also vowed to revise its code of conduct and improve guidelines for employee engagement with customers and partners, to help employees draw clear boundaries between work and social interaction.
The Alibaba incident has highlighted pervasive mistreatment of female workers across companies in China, where the #MeToo movement has failed to take off as widely as in Silicon Valley or elsewhere. Zhang, in a lengthy pre-dawn memo Monday, described an outpouring of emotions on Alibaba’s intranet and vowed to step up protections for women across the company while addressing its failure to act.
Alibaba became the highest-profile symbol of abuses regarded as prevalent throughout Chinese businesses and at tech firms, rooted in a hard-charging environment that often prioritizes achievement over culture. The #MeToo movement first came to prominence there in 2018 when allegations against a professor at a Beijing university were published on social media. Since then, a number of allegations have been made against academics, environmentalists and journalists.
President Xi Jinping has pledged to fight workplace discrimination amid a shrinking workforce, even as the country cracks down on feminist activists and scrubs the web of sensitive #MeToo content. China bans job discrimination based on gender and stipulates the importance of equal opportunity. Yet a lack of enforcement means there’re few repercussions to discriminatory practices.
Published : August 13, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jonas Bergman
Apple unveils plans to scan phones for child pornography, sexual messages to minors
Apple unveiled a sweeping new set of software tools Thursday that will scan iPhones and other devices for child pornography and text messages with explicit content and report users suspected of storing illegal pictures on their phones to authorities.
The aggressive plan to thwart child predators and pedophiles and prohibit them from utilizing Apple’s services for illegal activity pitted the tech giant against civil liberties activists and appeared to contradict some of its own long-held assertions about privacy and the way the company interacts with law enforcement.
The move also raises new questions about the nature of smartphones and who really owns the computers in their pockets. The new software will perform scans on its users’ devices without their knowledge or explicit consent, and potentially put innocent users in legal jeopardy.
In a blog post on its website Thursday, Apple said there is a one-in-a-trillion chance of a person being incorrectly flagged, and it said each instance will be manually reviewed by the company before an account is shut down and authorities are alerted. Users can appeal the decision to Apple, the blog post said.
The software uses a matching technique, where photos stored on iPhones will be scanned and then compared with known child pornography. Before a photo can be uploaded to iCloud, Apple’s online storage service, it will be given a “voucher” ensuring that it is not child pornography.
This kind of matching system is similar to what has been in use for years by companies like Facebook. But in those systems, photos are scanned only after they are uploaded to servers owned by companies like Facebook. In Apple’s new system, photos and messages will be scanned on a user’s device, a new level of surveillance on what is known as the “client-side” that raised eyebrows among civil libertarians and privacy advocates.
In a response to the announcement, online advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it was concerned about the move because of future abuses that might occur.
“It’s impossible to build a client-side scanning system that can only be used for sexually explicit images sent or received by children,” the foundation said. “As a consequence, even a well-intentioned effort to build such a system will break key promises of the messenger’s encryption itself and open the door to broader abuses.”
The debate about Apple’s new effort began on Twitter Wednesday evening, when security experts began tweeting about the rumored announcement.
“Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal,” wrote Matthew Green, an associate professor of computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, on Twitter. “In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content. That’s the message they’re sending to governments, competing services, China, you.”
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Apple clashed with law enforcement when the FBI obtained a court order forcing Apple to help unlock an iPhone belonging to one of two shooters in a December 2015 attack at the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center that left more than a dozen people dead. The FBI wanted to unlock the phone so it could pursue possible leads of accomplices to the attack. But Apple refused, taking a moral stand. “The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a statement at the time. Now, privacy experts are accusing Apple of creating another type of potential backdoor for the kind of abuse Cook outlined in its stand against the FBI.
The new initiative won’t be limited to just photos. It will also scan messages sent using Apple’s iMessage service for text and photos that are inappropriate for minors. If minors receive, for instance, a photo identified as sexually explicit, it will appear to be blurred and the minor may be warned that if they click on the photo their parents will be notified.
The pushback from civil libertarians on the new initiative by Apple shows how privacy and security often have a complicated relationship. Apple’s decision to scan the photos on a user’s device, and not Apple’s own servers, is a way of protecting user privacy. Even Apple won’t be able to see what is being scanned until something is flagged as illegal. On the other hand, the worry posed by security experts is that software code Apple created, which will live on every iPhone, could be exploited by malicious entities to siphon personal data from users. In that hypothetical scenario, users would have lost their privacy anyway.
If Apple’s new scanning software is able to stop sexual abuse of minors from happening on its services, there are other services to choose from available for download on Apple’s App Store. In 2019, The Washington Post used a machine learning algorithm to scan publicly available App Store reviews for reports on unwanted sexual behavior on chat apps used primarily by minors. It found 1,500 reports in six apps.
Child predators often groom victims on apps like these, and then try to move the conversations to other platforms, such as Snapchat or Instagram.
In its response, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said Apple’s iMessage is less secure because of the new changes. “A secure messaging system is a system where no one but the user and their intended recipients can read the messages or otherwise analyze their contents to infer what they are talking about,” it wrote.
Moderna shot covid protection remains steady for months
Moderna Inc. said its coronavirus vaccine remained 93% effective through six months after the second shot, as it reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that beat expectations.
Afinal analysis of the company’s late-stage study, described in a statement on Thursday, suggests the vaccine’s protection remains stable for long after recipients complete the standard two-dose regimen. The 93% effectiveness level is just short of the shot’s initial efficacy of 94%.
Concern that the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines could wane has stoked talk of booster shots. Some countries have begun to offer vulnerable people third doses, though the head of the World Health Organization has called for a moratorium on such measures until more people in the developing world are inoculated.
Moderna’s latest efficacy data hasn’t been published in a medical journal and the company didn’t release further details.
Despite the apparent endurance of its vaccine, Moderna is exploring options for supplemental shots that could fend off emerging strains of the virus.
All three of the company’s booster candidates produced “robust antibody responses” against delta and other variants of concern in a phase 2 human study, Moderna said in its statement. The boosters are being tested at a 50 microgram dose, or half what is used in the current shot. That data has been submitted to a journal for publication, the company said.
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Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna also said it expected to complete its submission for full Food and Drug Administration approval for its vaccine this month.
The agency is already reviewing the submission for a rival messenger RNA vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, and is under growing pressure to complete the process quickly. With the delta variant sparking a new wave of cases, advocates say an approval could help convince more people to get a shot.
Moderna, which reported its first profit earlier this year, had net income of almost $2.8 billion in the quarter ending June 30 on revenue of $4.4 billion, almost all of which is from its covid-19 shot. Diluted earnings per share of $6.46 easily beat analysts expectations, according to a survey of analysts by Bloomberg, while revenue only slightly exceeded expectations.
The company said in the release it has signed $20 billion worth of coronavirus vaccine purchase agreements for 2021, up from the $19.2 billion it announced in May. For 2022, it already has signed agreements for $12 billion in vaccine sales with options for $8 billion more. Moderna didn’t increase its forecast that it will produce 800 million to 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses this year.
Moderna’s views for total sales of its coronavirus vaccine pale in comparison to the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership, which has a higher manufacturing capacity for its shot. Last month, Pfizer boosted its vaccine sales forecast for 2021 to $33.5 billion.
Moderna’s shares have quadrupled since the beginning of the year, and the company hit $100 billion in market value for the first time July 14. The stock was made part of the S&P 500 last month and is the index’s best performer this calendar year.
As the biotech seeks to grow further, it will look opportunities to acquire or license technologies that could enhance its platform. Moderna, which has more than $12 billion in cash and investments, will focus on nucleic acid technologies, such as mRNA, gene editing, and gene therapy, the company said in a presentation.
Moderna has also built out its suite of leaders to double down on its commercial franchise. In the last quarter, the company hired Paul Burton, a former Johnson & Johnson executive, to serve as chief medical officer, and Ogilvy’s Kate Cronin as chief brand officer.
Published : August 06, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Robert Langreth
Don’t miss this enlightening seminar! “Thailand Next Episode 1: Innovation Beyond Business”
This highly informative seminar, held on the occasion of Nation Multimedia Group’s 50th anniversary
Don’t miss this enlightening seminar!
We are conducting a significant online seminar titled “Thailand Next Episode 1: Innovation Beyond Business”.
This highly informative seminar held on the occasion of Nation Multimedia Group’s 50th anniversary, delves into innovation in daily life and business, a factor that will also drive Thai industries forward.
The virtual event will be held on August 19 from 1.30pm to 4pm.
AOT warns revenue will take another hit from domestic flight ban
Airports of Thailand (AOT) warned on Tuesday that the ban issued on domestic flights for Dark Red provinces would cause the company’s revenue to plunge further.
Nitinai Sirismatthakarn, AOT president, said the suspension of all domestic flights to and from 13 Dark Red-zone provinces from Wednesday would hit both passenger and flight volumes, especially for Bangkok’s Don Mueang and Suvarnabhumi airports.
“In mid-July, the volume of passengers at six airports dropped to an average of 10,000 per day – an 80 per cent contraction year on year,” he said, adding that this issue was a serious problem.
The decline in the number of passengers and flights had affected the company’s revenue and expenditure, he added. As a result, the company’s turnover has fallen from nearly 80 billion baht before the pandemic to 21 billion baht, said Nitinai.
“Although expenditure was reduced by the closure of airport construction camps to curb Covid-19 infections in line with government measures, the company expects to face a possible liquidity shortage from July next year,” he said.
The AOT board recently approved moves for up to 25 billion baht in borrowing, but Nitinai said the company would evaluate the situation over the coming season to see how much it needed to borrow. “The precise [figures of the] loan plan will be available by October this year,” he said.
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