Category: General

In Malawi, health authorities say an outbreak of scabies around the commercial capital of Blantyre has affected more than 300 people. Scabies is a contagious, intensely itchy skin condition caused by tiny mites that burrow into the skin.

“We started seeing cases from June and we have seen that the cases have been increasing such that by the end of September we had seen 255 cases. But as I am talking now, as of October, the number has risen to 309 cases,” says Chrissy Banda, the spokesperson for Blantyre District Health Office.

Residents of Blantyre like Matilda Lamba say the outbreak is concerning, especially with records indicating that it is more prevalent in rural areas.

“Those people from villages they come in town. You know we buy things from then like agriculture commodities, we interact with them daily and right at the moment we are very afraid that we might catch the scabies,” she notes.

But Banda says people should not panic, saying efforts are under way to stop the outbreak. “In our facilities the treatment is there. We have a lot of scabicides; the treatment for scabies. So first thing, we identify the cases, and then we are treating the cases to make sure that we block the transmission.”

The scabies outbreak comes at a time when Malawi is starting to recover from COVID-19, currently registering low infection and death rates.

George Jobe, executive director of the Malawi Health Equity Network says although the scabies outbreak is scary, the good news is that its preventive measures are similar to those that prevent COVID-19, like hand washing and observing social distancing.

In the meantime, the ministry of health is advising institutions that deal with large groups to watch for cases of the skin condition and report suspected cases to health authorities.

Source: Voice of America

The past several weeks have been difficult for the social media behemoth Facebook, with a series of whistleblower revelations demonstrating that the company knew its signature platform was exacerbating all manner of social ills around the globe, from human trafficking to sectarian violence.

The tide shows no sign of receding. New revelations this week have demonstrated that the company’s supposed commitment to freedom of expression takes a back seat to its bottom line when repressive governments, like Vietnam’s, demand that dissent be silenced. They showed that Facebook knew its algorithms were steering users toward extreme content, such as QAnon conspiracy theories and phony anti-vaccine claims, but took few steps to remedy the problem.

In statements to various media outlets, the company has defended itself, saying it dedicates enormous resources to assuring safety on its platform and asserting that much of the information provided to journalists and government officials has been taken out of context.

In a conference call to discuss the company's quarterly earnings on Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that recent media coverage is painting a misleading picture of his company.

“Good faith criticism helps us get better,” Zuckerberg said. “But my view is that what we are seeing is a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company. The reality is that we have an open culture, where we encourage discussion and research about our work so we can make progress on many complex issues that are not specific to just us.”

The revelations, as well as unrelated business challenges, mean that Facebook, which also owns Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp, has a lot of things to worry about in the coming weeks and months. Here are five of the biggest.

A potential SEC investigation

Whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former product manager with the company, delivered thousands of pages of documents to lawmakers and journalists last month, prompting the wave of stories about the company’s practices. But the documents also went to the Securities and Exchange Commission, raising the possibility of a federal investigation of the company.

Haugen claims the documents provide evidence that the company withheld information that might have affected investors’ decisions about purchasing Facebook’s stock. Among other things, she says that the documents show that Facebook knew that its number of actual users -- a key measurement of its ability to deliver the advertising it depends on for its profits -- was lower than it was reporting.

The SEC has not indicated whether or not it will pursue an investigation into the company, and a securities fraud charge would be difficult to prove, requiring evidence that executives actively and knowingly misled investors. But even an investigation could be harmful to the company’s already bruised corporate image.

In a statement provided to various media, a company spokesperson said, “We make extensive disclosures in our S.E.C. filings about the challenges we face, including user engagement, estimating duplicate and false accounts, and keeping our platform safe from people who want to use it to harm others . . . All of these issues are known and debated extensively in the industry, among academics and in the media. We are confident that our disclosures give investors the information they need to make informed decisions.”

Antitrust suit

Facebook is already being sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which claims that between the company’s main site, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Facebook exercises monopoly power in the social media market. The agency is demanding that the three platforms be split up.

Facebook has publicly claimed it does not have monopoly power, but internal documents made available by Haugen demonstrate that the company knows it is overwhelmingly dominant in some areas, potentially handing the FTC additional ammunition as it attempts to persuade a federal judge to break up the company.

Legislative action

Congress doesn’t agree on much these days, but Haugen’s testimony in a hearing last month sparked bipartisan anger at Facebook and Instagram, especially over revelations that the latter has long been aware that its platform is harmful to the mental health of many teenage users, particularly young girls.

Several pieces of legislation have since been introduced, including a proposal to create an “app ratings board” that would set age and content ratings for applications on internet-enabled devices.

Others seek to make social media companies like Facebook liable for harm done by false information circulating on the platform, or to force the company to offer stronger privacy protections and to give users the right to control the spread of content about themselves.

Ramya Krishnan, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School, is one of many academics who have been pushing for lawmakers to require Facebook and other social media platforms to allow researchers and journalists better access to data about their audiences and their engagement.

“We've seen increased interest among lawmakers and regulators in expanding the space for research and journalism focused on the platform, reflecting the understanding that in order to effectively regulate the platforms we need to better understand the effect that they are having on society and democracy,” she told VOA.

Internal dissent

One of the most striking things about the documents released this week is the amount of anger inside Facebook over the company’s public image. The disclosures include reams of internal messages and other communications in which Facebook employees complain about the company’s unwillingness to police content on the site.

“I’m struggling to match my values to my employment here,” one employee wrote in response to the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, which was partly organized on Facebook. “I came here hoping to effect change and improve society, but all I’ve seen is atrophy and abdication of responsibility.”

The documents show that the company is losing employees -- particularly those charged with combating hate speech and misinformation -- because they don’t believe their efforts have the support of management.

Advertiser boycott

Last year the Anti-Defamation League organized a campaign to pressure companies to “pause” their advertising on Facebook in protest over its failure to eliminate hateful rhetoric on the platform. In a statement given to VOA, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, said it is preparing to do so again.

“Mark Zuckerberg would have you believe that Facebook is doing all it can to address the amplification of hate and disinformation,” Greenblatt said. “Now we know the truth: He was aware it was happening and chose to ignore internal researchers’ recommendations and did nothing about it. So we will do something about it, because literally, lives have been lost and people are being silenced and killed as a direct result of Facebook’s negligence.”

He continued, “We are in talks to decide what the best course of action is to bring about real change at Facebook, whether it's with policymakers, responsible shareholders, or advertisers,” he said. “But make no mistake: We've successfully taken on Facebook's hate and misinformation machine before, and we aren't afraid to do it again. It's time to rein in this rogue company and its harmful products.”

Source: Voice of America

Three U.S. retail giants have pulled products made by tech surveillance specialists Lorex and Ezviz, following revelations by the tech press that the companies are linked to human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang region, home to Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups.

According to reports from American online news outlet TechCrunch and video surveillance news site IPMV, big-box retailers Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe's terminated contracts with Lorex and Ezviz after the two news outlets questioned their partnerships.

In an email statement to VOA Mandarin, Home Depot said it has stopped selling products from both Lorex and Ezviz. "We committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical sourcing and we immediately stopped selling these products when this was brought to our attention," said the statement, which is also on the company website.

Best Buy told TechCrunch that it was "discontinuing its relationship" with both Lorex and Ezviz. Lowe's did not respond to a request from VOA Mandarin for comments, but a recent search shows neither Lorex nor Ezviz surveillance products are available on its website.

Lorex is a subsidiary of Dahua Technology. Ezviz is a brand of video surveillance cameras owned by Hikvision. Dahua and Hikvision were added to the U.S. government's economic blacklist in 2019 for supplying Beijing with technology it uses to surveil ethnic groups.

Yet because the 2019 sanction covered only sales to the U.S. federal government, Lorex and Ezviz remained free to sell to private-sector buyers.

The proliferation of Chinese companies in the surveillance equipment sector reflects Beijing's growing reliance on advanced technological tools to monitor the lives of its citizens in Xinjiang and to expand an already extensive surveillance infrastructure throughout China.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Xinjiang Bureau of Public Security uses what it calls the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, a system that gathers data on residents through iris scanners, digital cameras with face recognition, DNA samples and cellphone data.

In the China section of its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. State Department said that Hikvision and other tech companies are related to the development of a "Uyghur alarm" based on a face-scanning camera system.

The report said the Chinese government is conducting significant human rights abuses against Uyghurs, including "mass detention of more than one million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million subjected to daytime-only 're-education' training."

China, which contends that Uyghurs hold extremist and separatist ideas, denies the allegations, saying that Xinjiang's camps are "re-education" facilities aimed at combating terrorism.

Source: Voice of America

U.S.-based pharmaceutical company Moderna says a clinical trial shows that a low dose of its COVID-19 vaccine is safe for children between 6 and 11 years old.

The company says it inoculated more than 4,700 children with its two-dose vaccine about 28 days apart, with each shot about half the strength given to adults. Preliminary results show the antibody levels in the children were the same levels as those seen in young adults who received a full dose of the vaccine.

Moderna says the children suffered mild side effects from the vaccine such as fatigue, headache, fever and pain at the site of the injection. The number of test subjects was too small to detect any rare side effects such as myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, which has been detected mostly among boys and young men who received either the Moderna or the Pfizer vaccine.

The study has not been published by any peer-reviewed journal, but Moderna says it will soon present its findings to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other global drug regulators. The FDA is meeting Tuesday to review an application by Pfizer and its German-based partner, BioNTech, to offer its vaccine for children between 5 and 11 years old.

In a related development, Reuters is reporting that the African Union will purchase up to 110 million doses of the Moderna vaccine. The AU will receive 15 million doses before the end of the year, with another 35 million doses arriving in the first quarter of 2022 and up to 60 million in the second quarter.

The purchase was facilitated by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which is deferring delivery of 33 million doses it had purchased from Moderna to give the AU an opportunity to negotiate with the company.

"This is important as it allows us to increase the number of vaccines available immediately," AU coronavirus envoy Strive Masiyiwa said in an email, according to Reuters. "We urge other vaccine producing countries to follow the lead of the (U.S. government) and give us similar access to buy this and other vaccines."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has extended the coronavirus health rules for cruise ships until January 15, 2022. The current regulations, which were first imposed in March 2020 and include a requirement for ships to sail with at least 95 percent of passengers and crew fully vaccinated, were set to expire on November 1.

The CDC says when the current regulations expire in January, it will shift to a voluntary program for cruise ship operators to detect and control the spread of COVID-19 on their vessels.

In Hong Kong, chief executive Carrie Lam announced Tuesday that the city will tighten its coronavirus travel restrictions to bring it more in line with mainland China.

Lam told reporters the government will cancel most of the quarantine exemptions granted to certain groups of visitors coming from overseas and the mainland, with the exception of cross-border truck drivers. Diplomats, airline crews, business executives and airline crews are currently exempt from the city’s mandatory 14-to-21 day hotel quarantine period, one of the tightest restrictions in the world.

Lam defended the tightened restrictions, saying they are necessary to give authorities in Beijing the confidence to resume quarantine-free travel between the mainland and Hong Kong,

But a leading regional financial industry group, the Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said Monday that Hong Kong’s strict zero-COVID policy and quarantine requirements for international travelers is eroding the city’s status as a global financial hub.

Source: Voice of America

Global pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions are just a fraction of what’s needed to prevent catastrophic global warming, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Program.

The warning comes ahead of the critical COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow which begins next week.

World leaders pledged to restrict global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015. However, those promises are not being matched with policies, according to the United Nations Emissions Gap Report 2021, published Tuesday.

The report warns that new commitments to reduce emissions made in the run-up to the Glasgow summit — known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs — will reduce greenhouse gases by just 7.5% by 2030, compared to previous pledges. Restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require emissions cuts of 55 percent.

“Following an unprecedented drop of 5.4 percent in 2020, global carbon dioxide emissions are bouncing back to pre-COVID-19 levels,” the report says.

“A strong rebound in emissions is expected in 2021. Preliminary estimates suggest fossil energy CO2 emissions could grow by 4.8 percent in 2021… and global emissions in 2021 are expected to be only slightly lower than the record level of 2019.”

Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization, said Monday the world is on course for potentially disastrous climate change. “So far, we have heard lots of political support for enhanced ambition of mitigation, but the concrete pledges have still been missing, and at the moment, we are heading towards 2.5 to 3 degrees [Celsius] warming rather than 1.5 to 2 degrees.”

So what does that mean for the planet — and for humankind?

Scientists say climate change is already increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves. A recent report from Chatham House calculated that globally, heat-related mortality has increased by nearly 54% among the elderly since the turn of the century, reaching 296,000 deaths in 2018.

“We expect around about 400 million people to be experiencing heat waves to the extent that they're no longer able to work outside,” Chatham House report co-author Daniel Quiggin told VOA.

Heatwaves and droughts would have a big impact on global food security. Crop failures and the increased prevalence of pests and diseases — such as the locust plague in east Africa last year — would lead to soaring prices.

“Over the next 30 years, about 50% more food is going to be required due to more people being on the planet, but also expectations around eating more meat — particularly in countries like China and Southeast Asia and so on. But at the same time, under our assessment we anticipate that yields, harvests decline by around about 30%. That will only result in food price rises, making it more expensive so the poorest are unable or unlikely to be able to afford them,” Quiggin said.

Warmer temperatures lead to more intense tropical storms and flooding. Longer term, melting ice caps will lead to sea level rises, putting coastal cities at risk.

Extreme weather fluctuations also mean more intense and more prolonged droughts. Scientists say richer nations must deliver on their 2015 promise to help poorer nations pay for combating climate change and deal with its impacts.

“The big cascading impacts that we see coming out of drought, heat waves, agricultural drought, are migration, food insecurity for everyone, and the increased prevalence of pests and diseases. So, there's a vested interest for those wealthy countries to ensure the climate finance — that $100 billion per year that's been pledged for some time, since Paris [climate summit] and before, is actually delivered upon. And it's not being delivered upon at the moment,” Quiggin told VOA.

As world leaders prepare for Glasgow, the stakes for our planet — and for the human race — are getting higher; the impacts close to irreversible. Can a new global agreement be reached to slash emissions well beyond current commitments?

Summit host British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave his assessment Monday. “I'm very worried. Because it might go wrong. And we might not get the agreements that we need. It's touch and go, it's very, very difficult,” Johnson told an audience of children in London.

Scientists say the outcome of the Glasgow summit will likely affect each and every one of us, on a warming Planet Earth.

Source: Voice of America

The director-general of the World Health Organization said Sunday that unless countries use existing tools in the fight against the pandemic effectively, there will be no end in sight. “The pandemic will end when the world chooses to end it,” Tedros said addressing World Health Summit, a global forum held in Germany.

“We have all the tools we need — effective public health tools and effective medical tools. But the world has not used those tools well,” Tedros said, addressing participants drawn from 100 countries online.

The barriers to fulfilling WHO’s goal of vaccinating 40% of every country’s population against the coronavirus are “politics and profit,” the WHO chief said, “not production.”

“The countries that have already reached the 40% target, including all G-20 countries, must give their place in the vaccine delivery queue to COVAX and the African Vaccines Acquisition Trust,” Tedros said. COVAX is the international collaboration established for the equitable distribution of the COVID vaccine.

The WHO official also urged vaccine producers to “prioritize and fulfil their contracts with COVAX and AVAT [the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust]” and become “far more transparent about what is going where.” AVAT is an African Union initiative focusing on providing access to COVID-19 vaccines across Africa.

He urged vaccine manufacturers to “share know-how, technology and licenses, and waive intellectual property rights.”

“We’re not asking for charity,” Tedros said,” we’re calling for a common-sense investment in the global recovery.”

A report in The Washington Post says Americans living abroad are struggling to receive COVID vaccines, while many of their U.S. counterparts are starting to receive booster shots after receiving their first two vaccine doses.

Marylouise Serrato, executive director of American Citizens Abroad, told the Post, “You have Americans who are filing and paying taxes, and a promise by the administration that all Americans will get vaccinated, and yet that whole community has been left out of the equation.”

The White House “has insisted that it has no special responsibility to vaccinate Americans abroad,” the Post reported. At least 9 million Americans are living overseas, the report added.

A surge of British COVID cases has Dr. Edward Morris, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, concerned the National Health Service may not be able to provide “the care it needs to” for women giving birth, according to a report in The Guardian.

Morris also said the COVID surge has also resulted in the creation of an enormous backlog of cases of women who have had to postpone gynecological treatments.

The Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Monday that it has recorded 243.7 million global COVID infections and nearly 5 million global deaths. Almost 7 billion vaccines have been administered, according to the university’s data.

Source: Voice of America

“Coral reefs are amazing and beautiful, and we must conserve them,” Sam Purkis, chair of the department of marine geosciences at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, told VOA.

Although coral reefs only cover 0.1% of the ocean floor, they are a lifeline for the planet. With the most biodiverse marine ecosystem on earth, they contain 25% of all marine life, including more than 4,000 fish species.

Besides food, “corals provide economic, ecological and even cultural value,” where local communities living near the reefs bond over fishing activities, explained Robert Richmond, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory at the University of Hawaii.

“Corals also hold potential drugs from the sea, the vast majority of which we haven’t discovered yet,” Nancy Knowlton, scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said during an interview with VOA.

However, coral experts have sounded the alarm that the reefs could disappear, threatened by a number of factors, including pollution, overfishing and especially climate change.

The latest study on the status of coral reefs, released earlier this month by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, blamed climate change for killing 14% of coral reefs in just one decade.

“Large-scale bleaching events caused by elevated sea surface temperatures are the greatest disturbance to the world’s coral reefs,” the report said.

Despite the gloomy picture, coral reef experts say there is hope, despite significant coral losses worldwide.

“We still have corals that are healthy, but it requires a massive global effort to protect them,” said Elizabeth Mcleod, leader of The Nature Conservancy’s global reef work in Arlington, Virginia.

Richmond is also optimistic.

“Although coral reefs are severely threatened, they are not doomed,” he said. If we take “aggressive action against climate change, then we will have coral reefs as a legacy for the future.”

“We’re not going to be able to restore them back to pristine condition like they were 50 years ago,” added Jennifer Koss, director of the coral reef conservation program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “But through restoration, and by curtailing climate change, coral ecosystems have a chance to flourish again.”

The experts agree that curbing carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming is key.

“We need to significantly lower our emissions, so there is actually hope for coral reefs,” Madhavi Colton, executive director of the Coral Reef Alliance, in Oakland, California, told VOA.

The most striking impact of warmer ocean temperatures is bleaching, when corals turn eerily white.

“We’re seeing this drastic decline in coral cover,” said Purkis. “Unless conditions improve, many corals will die from bleaching because the organisms are weakened and usually catch a disease.”

Eliminating other stressors may help the reefs better withstand bleaching.

“If we combat stressors like overfishing and improve water quality, the reefs can better tolerate global changes and are more likely to survive and reproduce,” Colton said.

Discovering heat resistant corals may also be a game-changer.

“In the Red Sea, you find corals that have adapted and are resilient and responsive to the heat. So, these ‘super reefs’ have solved the problem, and we should figure out how they’ve done that and use them for restoration efforts,” said Stephen Palumbi, a marine biology professor at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station.

Local involvement can make a difference in protecting coral reefs.

In America Samoa, the local population is working on watershed projects that help preserve coral reefs, Koss said. Rain gardens were installed on land to hold back sediment that can smother the corals.

Various methods are being used in Indonesia to safeguard the reefs.

“The locals are watching for illegal fishing, and some communities are partnering with ecotourism groups to raise awareness about the importance of the reefs,” Mcleod said.

A reef restoration program has been particularly successful in the Pacific island nation of Palau.

Citizen scientists are using readily available materials like rebar and cable ties to make frames for heat-resistant coral nurseries, Palumbi said.

“We’ve been teaching community college students through peer mentoring and on Zoom how to do these experiments and get the results on Instagram. The young people are taking steps to secure their own future.”

Source: Voice of America

A Financial Times report says COVAX, the global collaboration established to ensure that poor countries have access to the COVID-19 vaccine, has “largely failed.”

“Wealthy countries have received over 16 times more COVID-19 vaccines per person than poorer nations that rely on the COVAX program backed by the World Health Organization,” the newspaper reported.

Millions of people in the world’s poorest countries have not yet received their first shots of the vaccine, while people in the wealthiest countries have access to booster shots, following their initial inoculations.

The disparity, The Financial Times warned, “could lead to a rise in cases and the emergence of more virulent strains, and hold back the global economic recovery.”

The World Health Organization’s director-general said Friday 82 countries are at risk of not meeting WHO’s goal of having 40% of every country’s population vaccinated against COVID by the end of the year. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “For most of those countries, it’s simply a problem of insufficient and unpredictable supply.”

Earlier this month, Britain reported its highest daily number of COVID-19 related deaths since March 9. A government advisor told a BBC television show Saturday that people should not wait for government mandates to begin initiating measures to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus.

Peter Openshaw, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, told BBC Breakfast, “I think hospitals in many parts of the country are barely coping actually” under the weight of COVID cases.

“The sooner we all act,” Openshaw said, “the sooner we can get this transmission rate down and the greater the prospect of having a Christmas with our families.”

British Prime Minister Boris continues to dismiss calls for renewed COVID-19 restrictions, saying there is nothing to indicate those moves will be necessary in the coming months, despite the fact Britain is experiencing a dramatic surge in COVID-19 infections.

Russia is preparing for or a weeklong workplace shutdown and the reimposition of a partial lockdown because of a surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Daily coronavirus deaths in Russia have been rising for weeks because of sluggish vaccination rates, casual attitudes toward precautionary measures and the government’s hesitance toward tightening restrictions. The country’s national task force on COVID-19 said only about one-third of Russia's 146 million people have been vaccinated, straining the country's health system.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that employees would observe “non-working days” from October 30 to November 7, during which they would still receive salaries. He said the period, in which four of the seven days are state holidays, could start earlier or be extended in certain regions.

The rollout of Russia's Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in Namibia was postponed Saturday by the country’s health ministry after the vaccine’s regulator in neighboring South Africa raised concerns about its safety for people at risk of HIV.

The regulator said it would not approve an emergency-use application for the vaccine at this time because some studies suggest that the delivery system, known as a vector, used to inoculate people with the Sputnik V vaccine can cause men to be more susceptible to HIV.

The vaccine’s manufacturer, Gamaleya Research Institute, said Namibia's postponement was not based on scientific evidence.

The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Sunday a global count of 243.3 million COVID cases and almost 5 million COVID deaths. The center said 6.7 billion vaccines have been administered.

Source: Voice of America

Very few companies can boast of having their name also used as a verb. Zoom is one of them. The popularity of the videoconferencing platform continues to grow around the world despite continued questions about whether Chinese authorities are monitoring the calls.

Since Zoom became a household word last year during the pandemic, internet users including companies and government agencies have asked whether the app’s data centers and staff in China are passing call logs to Chinese authorities.

“Some of the more informed know about that, but the vast majority, they don’t know about that, or even if they do, they really don’t give much thought about it,” said Jack Nguyen, partner at the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City.

He said in Vietnam, for example, many people resent China over territorial spats, but Vietnamese tend to Zoom as willingly as they sign on to rivals such as Microsoft Teams. They like Zoom’s free 40 minutes per call, said Nguyen.

Whether to use the Silicon Valley-headquartered Zoom, now as before, comes down to a user-by-user calculation of the service’s benefits versus the possibility that call logs are being viewed in China, analysts say. China hopes to identify and stop internet content that flouts Communist Party interests.

The 10-year-old listed company officially named Zoom Video Communications reported over $1 billion in revenue in the April-June quarter this year, up 54% over the same quarter of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic drove face-to-face meetings online. In the same quarter, the most recent one detailed by the company, Zoom had 504,900 customers of more than 10 employees, up about 36% year on year.

Zoom commanded a 42.8% U.S. market share, leading competitors, as of May 2020, the news website LearnBonds reported. Its U.S. share was up to 55% by March this year, according to ToolTester Network data.

Tech media cite Zoom’s free 40 minutes and capacity for up to 100 call participants as major reasons for its popularity.

Links to China?

Keys that Zoom uses to encrypt and decrypt meetings may be sent to servers in China, Wired Business Media’s website Security Week has reported. Some encryption keys were issued by servers in China, news website WCCF Tech said.

Zoom did not answer VOA’s requests this month for comment.

Zoom has acknowledged keeping at least one data center and a staff employee in China, where the communist government requires resident tech firms to provide user data on request. In September 2019, the Chinese government turned off Zoom in China, and in April last year Zoom said international calls were routed in error through a China-based data center.

“Odds are high” of China getting records of Zoom calls, said Jacob Helberg, a senior adviser at the Stanford University Center on Geopolitics and Technology.

“If you have Zoom engineers in China who have access to the actual servers, from an engineering standpoint those engineers can absolutely have access to content of potential communications in China,” he said.

Zoom said in a statement in early April 2020 that certain meetings held by its non-Chinese users might have been “allowed to connect to systems in China, where they should not have been able to connect,” SmarterAnalyst.com reported.

Excitement and caution

Zoom said in 2019 it had put in place “strict geo-fencing procedures around our mainland China data center.”

“No meeting content will ever be routed through our mainland China data center unless the meeting includes a participant from China,” it said in a blog post.

Among the bigger users of Zoom is the University of California, a 10-campus system that switched to online learning in early 2020. Zoom was selected following a request for proposals “years” before the pandemic, a UC-Berkeley spokesperson told VOA on Thursday.

Elsewhere in the United States, NASA has banned employees from using Zoom, and the Senate has urged its members to avoid it because of security concerns. The German Foreign Ministry and Australian Defense Force restrict use as well, while Taiwan barred Zoom for government business last year. China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan, which has caused decades of political hostility.

“For Taiwan, there’s still some doubt,” said Brady Wang, a Taipei analyst with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research, referring particularly to Zoom’s encryption software. “And in the final analysis, these kinds of [video app] choices are numerous, so it’s not like you must rely on Zoom.”

LinkedIn’s withdrawal from China announced this month may spark new scrutiny over Zoom, said Zennon Kapron, founder and director of Kapronasia, a Shanghai financial industry research firm.

“I think when you look at the other technology players that are currently in China or that have relations to China such as Zoom, there will be a renewed push probably by consumers, businesses and even regulators in some jurisdictions to really try to understand and pry apart what the roles of Chinese suppliers or development houses are in developing some of these platforms and the potential security risks that go with them,” Kapron said.

Source: Voice of America

There will be cars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday but no drivers in sight as racing teams mark a milestone in autonomous vehicle development.

Nine single-seaters will take part in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), a competition with a $1 million prize that aims to prove "autonomous technology can work at extreme conditions," said Paul Mitchell, CEO of co-organizer Energy Systems Network (ESN).

Cars will not race on the "Brickyard" track at the same time but will start one after the other -- with the winner being the fastest over two full-speed laps.

Teams are made up of students from around the world. Each group was given the same Dallara IL-15 car, which looks like a small Formula One vehicle, and the same equipment, which includes sensors, cameras, GPS and radars.

On race day, it is not drivers that will make the difference -- but about 40,000 lines of code programmed by each team.

The software kickstarts the engine and a powerful computer wedged in the bucket where the driver usually sits.

The MIT-PITT-RW team, the only one made up entirely of students without supervision, got their car only six weeks ago.

Engineering student Nayana Suvarna, 22, does not yet have a driving license but was nonetheless reluctantly designated as team manager.

"I didn't know anything about car racing," she said with a smile, "but I'm becoming a fan."

The MIT-PITT-RW's car hit 130 km/h in testing, but Suvarna believes it capable of overtaking 160 on Saturday.

'Generation of talent'

Other teams have gone much faster.

The car belonging to the PoliMOVE team, a partnership between the universities of Alabama and Politecnico in Milan, drove past the pits at around 250 km/h on Thursday.

But the car skidded at the next turn, spinning 360 degrees before coming to a stop on the inside lawn.

"It was a miracle we didn't crash," said Sergio Matteo Savaresi, professor at Politecnico.

There was no glitch to blame: only cold tires and a slight oversteer.

"We actually reached the very limit of the car," said Savaresi, who oversees the PoliMOVE team.

"A professional driver at that speed with tires like these would have done exactly the same."

The Robocar, made by manufacturer Roborace, has held the speed record for an autonomous car since 2019, clocking in at 282 km/h -- but on a straight course, not a circuit.

The concept of self-driving cars has captured imaginations since the 1950s, but the tech needed to make them a reality has been boosted over the past five years.

Most big car manufacturers are working on autonomous driving projects, often in collaboration with tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft or Cisco.

IAC participants do not see speed as the primary goal.

"If people get used to seeing cars like these going 300 kilometers per hour... and they don't crash," said Savaresi, they may eventually think that such cars are safe "at 50 kilometers per hour."

According to a Morning Consult survey published in September, 47 percent of Americans considered autonomous vehicles less safe than those driven by humans.

The race's other goal is to enable tech sharing.

Mitchell said several teams plan to make their code publicly available and open source after the competition.

"So, you're going to take some of the most advanced AI algorithms ever developed for autonomous vehicles, and put it out there for industry, for startups, for other universities to build on."

The project also aims to "develop a generation of talent," Savaresi said.

"The people who are competing in this challenge are going to go and start companies, they're going to go work for companies. And so I think the innovations from this competition will live on for many years."

Source: Voice of America