The company already has an established network in Southeast Asia covering six high-growth logistics markets including Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.

This new capital will be invested to further improve technology and operational capabilities to help Ninja Van continue its drive to offer hassle-free delivery methods to businesses of all sizes, Lai said.

Ninja Van has achieved strong growth driven by the booming Southeast Asia e-commerce sector and currently manages millions of deliveries a month.

It could now offer an even better service by increasing its staff to more than 1,000 professionals, Lai said.

The company is currently working with established, blue-chip investors such as the Abraaj Group, ACE Capital, B Capital Group, DPDgroup, Monk’s Hill Ventures and YJ Capital.

Ninja Van started operations in Singapore in 2014.

The office will serve as a regional hub for YITU to bring its AI and facial-recognition solutions to customers and partners in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau and Oceania markets, the company said.

It will also serve as a platform for the company to work with private and public organisations in the region that are looking to deploy intelligent solutions for the digital age.

Lin Chenxi, co-founder of YITU, said that it saw immense potential in Singapore as a market for AI development and innovation, and a springboard to introduce its solutions to the region.

Ang Chin Tah, Director of Infocommunications and Media from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), said that YITU’s strong capabilities in AI and computer vision made it a valuable addition to Singapore’s growing AI ecosystem.

YITU would develop new solutions across different domains such as security, finance, healthcare, and transportation, in the process creating “exciting new” jobs in the AI sector, Ang said.

The Singapore office will serve as a sales, marketing and operations centre, with plans to establish a Research and Development (R&D) hub by end 2018

The NATIONAL Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) has set goals to help drive Thailand beyond its current middle-income status through application of science and technology under the agency’s three-year plan (2018 to 2020), which focuses on a bio-economy and digital economy strategy.

Under the focus on bio-economy, the agency has developed the national biological database, nicknamed “Bio-bank”, which collects and digitises bio-information including plant (seed, cell, and tissue cultures), animal, microbe, and human genomes, said Narong Sirilertworakul, president of The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA). Bio-bank was established to support industrial research and biotechnology development.

The bio-bank is set to build the fundamental infrastructure of a bio-economy.

The agency has set its own budgets of Bt1.72 billion to develop the bio-bank over three years – 2018 to 2020.

But bio-bank’s, task goes beyond collecting basic biological information, to using genome-sequencing processes to turn the raw database of biology into value-added biological data in an electronic format.

The Thailand bank already has information on 80,000 strains, including 12,000 species of microbes, 7,000 species of seeds, 1,000 species of rice, and 800 species of herbs.

The NSTDA will work with partners, including local and global research institutes such as Beijing’s Genomics Institute (BGI), as well as some medical schools in Thailand, to develop data for the bio-bank.

“We will use big data analytics and gene editing to improve and to create new seeds, strains, and species to add into the bio-bank,” said Narong. In parallel with this project, NSTDA will also establish the “plant factory” to scale up herb planting to industrial levels under controlled conditions, in order to improve the quality of herbs and to turn herbs into functional ingredients for medical and cosmetic industries.

“With this role, we aim to drive Thailand to become the world supplier for functional ingredients for food and cosmetic industries, included functional food, bio-cosmetics, and bio-pharma,” said Narong.

The combined impact of the bio-bank, gene editing, and the “plant factory”, should help Thailand become a world supplier for the functional-ingredient industry.

Moreover, the agency also works with research partners on research-and-development projects that reflect the local needs. Examples include R&D on health, beauty, and medicine to serve the goal of sustaining a healthy ageing society.

But it doesn’t end there.

National computing centre

The agency also focuses on the digital economy. It is establishing the nation’s High-Performance Computing centre as part of the national infrastructure in order to help researchers, governmental organisations, and businesses to easily perform big-data analysis for any applications.

The agency prepared a budget of Bt130 million for three years, from 2018 to 2020, for setting up and running the national HPC centre.

“The national HPC centre can help the government and stakeholders to do big-data analysis,” said Narong. “For example, it helps to do big-data analysis on closed-circuit television’s (CCTV) information analytics, transportation, and the welfare-card scheme’s poor information,” said Narong.

Apart from the national HPC centre, the agency will also apply research resources to new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors in order assist stakeholders to benefit from using science and technology in bringing about the digital transformation.

Narong added that between the bio-economy and there digital economy lies an abundance of opportunities for new business for the country by utilising the benefits of the bio-bank and the national HPC centre to create new services that help increase the country’s competitive advantages. For example, it can help agriculturists to do precision agriculture.

EECi and Thailand 4.0

The NSTDA agency follows the government’s “Thailand 4.0” policy, which aims to enhance Thailand’s competitive capabilities and develop the country sustainably with benefits from research and development in science, technology and innovation. NSTDA also provides services that promote and leverage science, technology and innovation among private businesses and industries.

Though NSTDA’s role in relation to Thailand 4.0 is to focus on the bio-economy and digital economy, the agency’s main focus is more general – to support science and technology research and development, to transfer research and technology to industry and science, to develop science and technology human resources for the country, and to establish and provide the national science and technology infrastructure including the Thailand Science Park and Innovation Hub in the Eastern Economic Corridor of Innovation (EECi).

The EECi aims to become the “Innovation Ecosystem” of Asean, operating under a concept of industrial growth in Thailand based on the creation of innovation.

The EECi is working to become a new economic area that attracts an abundance of research and innovation. It will be generously equipped with infrastructure and industrial analytical testing services.

The EECi will increase the competitive capacity of Thai industries in global markets while enhancing the quality of life of people living in the area. As an important tool in the government’s “Thailand 4.0” policy, it will focus on addressing the problems facing both industries and communities.

The NSTDA has since 2002 successfully operated the Thailand Science Park – the country’s first fully-integrated research and development hub – in Pathum Thani province north of Bangkok.

More than 80 organisations, companies and research institutes have now set up research units in the Thailand Science Park.

Gareth Pereira, principal of communications, media and technology at ATKearney, a global management consulting firm , said that underinvestment (in Asean region) is aggravating the cybersecurity threat. Cybersecurity risk across the Asean region will continue to increase as the countries are more digitally interconnected.

Currently, companies in Asean face an exposure of US$750 billion from cyberattacks and underinvestment in tackling the threat is aggravating risks across the region.

He also recommended that Asean region need to spend between US$67 to 171 billion over the next 8 years until 2025, to improve its cyber resilience.

The region spends an average of 0.07 per cent of its collective GDP on cybersecurity annually. It is almost half of the countries’ cybersecurity spending or 0.12 per cent of their GDP.

In Thailand, spending in cybersecurity is 0.05 per cent of GDP, slightly above the average investment among Asean countries.

Asean region would need to increase spending to between 0.35 and 0.61 per cent of GDP between 2017 and 2025, to be in line with the best in class benchmark (based on spending levels as percentage of GDP for Israel) at 0.35 per cent of GDP. The research estimates that this translates to US$171 billion in collective spending needed across Asean during the period.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s cybersecurity spending is estimated at US$23.3 billion over the next 8 years, or 0.35 per cent of GDP.

According to Frost & Sullivan, IDC, and Gartner, in 2017, Thailand spent US$212 million in cybersecurity and expected to spend $243 million in 2018. Without urging, it is expected that Thailand’s cybersecurity in 2025 will be US$511 million or 0.07 per cent of its GDP.

Vatsun Thirapatarapong, managing director of Cisco in Thailand and Indochina, said that as digital adoption grows across the region, the cybersecurity threat will increase. To be ready to tackle the issue, countries need to build the next wave of cybersecurity capability including developing the next generation of cybersecurity professionals and strengthening the local cybersecurity industry.

In Thailand, The Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA) aims to expand the country’s cybersecurity workforce to 12,000 by 2021.

“At Cisco, we are helping to build a cybersecurity workforce by providing practical security courses through the Cisco Networking Academy,” he said.

According the research report, the cybersecurity threat landscape is evolving rapidly due to the emergence of new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and the shortage of skilled and qualified cybersecurity professionals globally.

The end points in an IoT network often tend to be unsophisticated devices such as household gadgets, making it easier for attackers to hack the network. IoT attacks are already prevalent in Asia.

However, Pereira said that a combination of nascent policy preparedness, absence of a unifying regional governance framework, shortage of skilled talent, underestimation of risk and lack of adequate investment are among the factors that are contributing to the heightened risk.

Therefore, the role of the government is the facilitator to encourage the industries to invest in cybersecurity through the establishment of strategy, legislation, governance and operational entities.

The world’s biggest social network’s comments were the latest response to persistent criticism for its role in allowing the spread of misinformation, reinforcing “filter bubbles” and facilitating harassment of dissidents and activists.

“Now, we’re as determined as ever to fight the negative influences and ensure that our platform is unquestionably a source for democratic good,” said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s head of global politics and government outreach, in a statement.

Facebook civic engagement chief Samidh Chakrabarti said in a blog post the social network was “far too slow to recognize how bad actors were abusing our platform” and that the company is now “working diligently to neutralize these risks.”

The “hard questions” blog post was part of an effort by Facebook to reboot its image after last week’s announcement indicating it would call on its users to “rank” the trustworthiness of sources as part of an effort to stem the flow of false news.

“While I’m an optimist at heart, I’m not blind to the damage that the internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy,” Chakrabati said.

He added that Facebook is constantly working to balance the value of openness and transparency with efforts to stop manipulation.

“Many human rights organizations commonly use Facebook to spread educational messages around the world,” he said. “The wrong kind of transparency could put these activists in real danger in many countries.”

Chakrabarti added that Facebook is also struggling with “hate speech,” and limiting the spread of violent propaganda while remaining an open platform.

“Policing this content at a global scale is an open research problem since it is hard for machines to understand the cultural nuances of political intimidation,” he said.

“And while we are hiring over 10,000 more people this year to work on safety and security, this is likely to remain a challenge.”

In an accompanying guest blog post, Harvard professor Cass Sunstein said one of the difficult questions for social media and democracy is how news feeds are personalized.

“What social media platforms do is to make certain kinds of targeting and certain kinds of self-sorting, and especially self-sorting among hundreds, thousands, or millions of strangers a lot easier — easier than it has ever been,” Sunstein wrote.

“The good news is that social media platforms are hardly a finished fact to be categorically assessed. They are very much a work in progress.”

“Rapid warming after stopping geoengineering would be a huge threat to the natural environment and biodiversity,” said co-author Alan Robock, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Half-a-century’s worth of warming could rebound in a handful of years, dooming many amphibians, mammals, corals and land plants to local or global extinction, according to the findings, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

So-called solar radiation management — still untested — would inject billions of tiny particles into the upper atmosphere to bounce a bit of sunshine back into space, lowering Earth’s surface temperature a notch or two.

Sometimes nature does the same: more than 15 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide thrust into the stratosphere by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines cooled the planet by more than half a degree Celsius (one degree Fahrenheit) for about two years.

Advocates of the controversial technology say it could provide a quick and cheap fix for dangerous global warming, which has already begun to wreak havoc.

With an increase of only 1 C (1.8 F) so far compared to pre-industrial times, the world has already seen an upsurge of deadly heatwaves, droughts, and storms amped up by rising seas.

The 197-nation Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, enjoins the world to cap global warming at “well under” 2 C, and even 1.5 C if possible.

But efforts to achieve these goals by reducing greenhouse gas emissions have stalled, leading scientists and policy makers to seriously consider engineered solutions seen only a decade ago as far-fetched.

For the study, led by University of Maryland professor Christopher Trisos, scientists tested solar geoengineering scenarios in computer models.

They assumed that planes will spray five million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year into the stratosphere at the equator over a period of 50 years, from 2020 to 2070.

‘Termination shock’

Humanity, meanwhile, continues to curb carbon pollution, but not quickly enough to cap global warming on its own.

The models show Earth’s average surface temperature dropping by about 1 C, effectively erasing the increase since the mid-19th century.

But how will wildlife cope, the scientists asked, if Sun-dimming were to stop abruptly, leading to a temperature increase ten times faster than if geoengineering had not been deployed?

The researchers calculated how quickly animals and plants would have to move to stay within a hospitable climate.

Many creatures, they found, would be unable to migrate quickly enough, especially amphibians and land mammals. Plants have even less capacity to migrate.

It gets worse: In many cases, wildlife would have to go in one direction to find a liveable temperature but a different one to find the right amount of rainfall.

Harvard professor David Keith, author of “A Case for Climate Engineering,” did not challenge the potential dangers for biodiversity, but told AFP he could not imagine the world’s nations abruptly halting solar radiation management — a scenario sometimes called “termination shock”.

“A decision to suddenly terminate would have to be near unanimous,” he told AFP. Any country who decided doing so was against its interest “could continue geoengineering unilaterally.”

Solar engineering unproven

All this speculation assumes that solar engineering is feasible, which has yet to be proven.

“If solar radiation management is unworkable, we need to know now,” commented Ben Kravitz, a climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington and an expert on geoengineering.

“What terrifies me is that people are gong to start relying on it, and then we find out later that it is not going to work and we are already locked in,” he told AFP by email.

But that doesn’t mean solar geoengineering should be taken off the table, he other scientists caution.

Even the study authors agreed. “Given current emissions trajectories, it would be irresponsible not to study the potential benefits and costs of proposed climate engineering,” they wrote.

Keith and Harvard colleague Frank Keutsch plan to conduct preliminary atmospheric tests in the Arizona desert this fall, but any conclusions are years away, they said.

“It will be really hard to hit 1.5 C or 2 C without solar radiation, management,” said Kravitz. “Not impossible, but very hard.”

The cryptocurrency hype in Thailand has stepped up following an announcement from listed Thai firm Jaymart’s J Venture subsidiary, of the country’s first ICO to raise Bt660 million from the public. The firm said last week it will issue 100 million JFin digital tokens for sale from March 1-31. The funds will be used to develop a digital lending platform using blockchain technology.

Charl Kengchon, managing director, Kasikorn Research Centre (KResearch), said there are three major kinds of cryptocurrency, but most people pay attention to decentralised cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, which are the most popular.

According to Charl, cryptocurrencies are regarded as an innovation for mobilising public funds but companies preparing ICOs need to provide the public with the most comprehensive and reliable data similar to those raising funds via IPOs, which are common among stock investors.

While cryptocurrencies are innovative for fund mobilisation, he said, there are still debates around the world on a suitable regulatory framework, since it is not yet conclusive whether these units are assets that should be regulated by agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It is not illegal for companies to announce ICOs, he said, but investors need to know that there are no rules and regulations on ICOs yet.

If cryptocurrencies are going to be used as a medium of exchange as some people have tried to do with bitcoin and other digital tokens, these units need to be convenient, have a low cost and, most importantly, have price stability.

However, decentralised cryptocurrencies do not have price stability, as evidenced by the high volatility of bitcoin, he said, adding that another type of cryptounits are those issued by banks and financial institutions which have clear objectives on their use. The third type of cryptocurrencies are those issued by central banks to increase efficiency in financial transactions and serve as digital wallets for consumers.

While cryptocurrencies provide an innovative approach for fund mobilisation, he said, there are still debates raging around the world about developing a suitable regulatory framework since it is not yet conclusive whether these units should be considered assets that should be regulated by agencies such as Securities and Exchange Commission. For companies announcing ICOs, he said, it is not illegal to do so but there are no rules and regulations on ICOs yet.

In his opinion, there is no clear fundamental value inherent in decentralised cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and similar digital tokens from an economic perspective, but the underlying blockchain technology is valuable to the economy.

He said the blockchain technology increases security of financial transactions while its cost is very low and blockchains can be applied in many kinds of financial activities such as payments and fund transfers.

Bitcoin and other decentralised cryptocurrencies are the best known and most traded internationally with no central governing authority and wildly fluctuating prices. Owners of these units are also anonymous and so they are often used for money-laundering and other illegal activities.

“I have a habit of turning bad anniversaries into good anniversaries by doing beautiful things that outshine bad events,” he tweeted.

Dotcom has been battling extradition to the United States since police raided his mansion near Auckland six years ago on January 20.

The FBI alleges Dotcom’s Megaupload file-sharing service netted more than US$175 million in criminal proceeds and cost copyright owners more than US$500 million by offering pirated content.

The German-born New Zealand resident has denied any wrongdoing and accused US authorities of pursuing a vendetta against him on behalf of politically influential Hollywood studios.

“Today, 6 years ago, the NZ Govt enabled the unlawful destruction of Megaupload and seizure of my global assets,” he tweeted.

“I was arrested for the alleged online piracy of my users. Not even a crime in NZ. My lawyers have served a multi-billion dollar damages claim against the Govt today.”

His website was an early example of cloud computing, allowing users to upload large files onto a server so others could easily download them.

At its height in 2011, Megaupload claimed to have 50 million daily users and that it accounted for four percent of global internet traffic.

Dotcom, who turns 44 on Sunday, said by getting married on the anniversary of the raid, he was turning January 20 into a “day of joy”.

He separated from his first wife Mona three years ago and announced last year he would be marrying Elizabeth Donnelly, 21 years his junior.

“Getting married and getting justice. What a wonderful day,” he tweeted on Saturday.

The change to the Facebook news feed comes as the online giant seeks to address charges that it has failed — along with Google and Twitter — to prevent the spread of bogus news, most strikingly ahead of the 2016 US election.

In a Facebook post, co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the network would seek to “prioritize news that is trustworthy, informative, and local.”

“There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today,” Zuckerberg said. “Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them.”

The new “trusted sources” ranking, which starts next week, would aim to “make sure the news you see, while less overall, is high quality” and “helps build a sense of common ground” rather than sow division, Zuckerberg said.

To do so, he said, Facebook decided to rely on member surveys as the most “objective” way to rank trust in news sources.

“We could try to make that decision ourselves, but that’s not something we’re comfortable with,” Zuckerberg said. “We considered asking outside experts, which would take the decision out of our hands but would likely not solve the objectivity problem.”

The new ranking system, he said, would hopefully separate news organizations that are only trusted by their readers or watchers, from ones that are broadly trusted across society.

“This update will not change the amount of news you see on Facebook,” he said. “It will only shift the balance of news you see towards sources that are determined to be trusted by the community.”

The latest move comes a week after Facebook announced a major update to its user feed that highlights what friends and family share on the network, over advertisements, celebrity and media posts.

The company cast the change as part of a refocus on “community” — prioritizing social interactions and relationships — while acknowledging it would likely result in people spending less time on the platform.

The nation will step up its push to commercialise fifth-generation mobile communication technology, with 5G-ready smartphones likely to come out in late 2019, experts said.

The comments came as the country aims to get pre-commercial 5G telecom equipment ready by the end of this year, to lay a foundation for large-scale testing of 5G applications and services in 2019.

Wang Zhiqin, an expert with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said, “Given that the first version of 5G standards will come out in June this year, we expect system equipment, including base stations and network gears, will be able to achieve the pre-commercial level by the end of 2018.”

“But it will take a longer time to develop 5G-ready chips, and 5G smartphones will only be possible after June 2019,” he said on the sideline of a conference on Tuesday. Wang is deputy head of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a think tank affiliated with MIIT.

China is striving to accelerate the research and development of 5G, as the super-fast technology is forecast to drive 6.3 trillion yuan ($979 billion) of economic output in the country by 2030.

On Tuesday, MIIT unveiled the technical requirements for third phase 5G tests and encouraged companies to conduct more research into the integration of chips, systems and other instruments.

China Unicom, the country’s second-largest telecom carrier, said it plans to conduct 5G tests in seven areas, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Xiongan.

Wen Ku, director of the telecom development department at MIIT, said more efforts will also be made to promote R&D in low, medium and high-frequency bands, and to accelerate the push to test different 5G applications.

Kalvin Peng, head of R&D at Ericsson Northeast Asia, said pre-commercial 5G services require the interconnection of different gadgets and systems.

“It is easier to adjust the systems to match the first version of global 5G standards than to adjust hardware. And once companies are determined to test chips, it will take a huge amount of money. As a result, 5G chips will come out very slowly,” Peng said.

The Swedish telecom service provider is working closely with China Mobile, the largest telecom carrier in China, on 5G research. In December, the two sides finished all tests on a 5G core network laboratory initiative.

Ericsson said it expected there will be at least 1 billion 5G users in the world by 2023, with mobile data traffic surging eightfold by that time.

On Wednesday, the company unveiled a solution to meet consumers’ rising demand for better indoor connectivity. The new gadget, dubbed Ericsson 5G Radio Dot, is designed for enhanced mobile broadband and to boost indoor network coverage.