Police seize $80m of bitcoin! Now, where's the password?

FEBRUARY 07, 2021

REUTERS

A representation of virtual currency Bitcoin and small toy figures are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken January 7, 2021. Reuters

FRANKFURT - German prosecutors have confiscated more than 50 million euros (S$80 million) worth of bitcoin from a fraudster. There’s only one problem: they can’t unlock the money because he won’t give them the password.

The man was sentenced to jail and has since served his term, maintaining his silence throughout while police made repeated failed efforts to crack the code to access more than 1,700 bitcoin, said a prosecutor in the Bavarian town of Kempten.

“We asked him but he didn’t say,” prosecutor Sebastian Murer told Reuters on Friday (Feb 5). “Perhaps he doesn’t know.”

Bitcoin is stored on software known as a digital wallet that is secured through encryption. A password is used as a decryption key to open the wallet and access the bitcoin. When a password is lost the user cannot open the wallet.

The fraudster had been sentenced to more than two years in jail for covertly installing software on other computers to harness their power to “mine” or produce bitcoin.

When he went behind bars, his bitcoin stash would have been worth a fraction of the current value. The price of bitcoin has surged over the past year, hitting a record high of $42,000 in January. It was trading at $37,577 on Friday, according to cryptocurrency and blockchain website Coindesk.

Prosecutors have ensured the man cannot access the largesse, h

Played by Jet Li and Jackie Chan, who was Wong Fei-hung for real? Tracing the life of the martial arts legend

FEBRUARY 06, 2021

PUBLISHED By RICHARD JAMES HAVISSOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Jet Li as Wong Fei-hung in Once Upon a Time in China 2 (1992), directed by Tsui Hark.

Wong Fei-hung is the most famous of all the exponents of southern-style Chinese martial arts, and his exploits have passed into legend. There have been around 100 films about him, 77 of which feature actor Kwan Tak-hing, who became synonymous with Wong during the 1950s and 1960s .

Radio plays, pulp novels, newspaper story serialisations, and television series have been devoted to his life. At one point, no less than seven newspapers were running serialised novels about Wong at the same time.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

The martial arts master became known to international audiences in the 1990s when he was played by Jet Li Lianjie in Tsui Hark’s supremely successful Once Upon a Time in China film series .

In spite of his status as a folk hero, very little is known about Wong and his life. Indeed, much of Wong’s history has been coloured by the fictional exploits attributed to him. As a line in American director John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance goes, “When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend,” and this has certainly occurred in Wong’s case.

“Wong Fei-hung was much revered in his lifetime, but little is actually known about him,” said Woshi Shanren, who wrote novels about the martial artist in the 1940s and 1950s. Even the sole photograph purported to be of him turned out to be a picture of one of his sons.

In-depth research by Yu Mo-wan, published in a 1981 essay, The Prodigious Cinema of Wong Fei Hung , did establish some basic facts about his life. Since then, other facts have come to light.

Wong was born around 1847 in or near Foshan in China’s Guangdong province. His father, Wong Kei-ying, was one of the famed Ten Tigers of Canton, a collective name given to the best martial artists in Guangdong in the mid-19th century.

The Ten Tigers were all said to trace their lineage back to the Buddhist fighters of the Southern Shaolin monastery. If such a place existed, it was said to have been in Fujian province, southeast China, and was a counterpart to the original Shaolin Monastery in northern Henan province.

Wong Kei-ying is said to have studied under the legendary Luk Ah-choi, a former abbot of the Southern Shaolin monastery and an expert in northern-style “flower” kung fu. and the southern hung ga style. Luk saw Kei-ying performing martial arts and acrobatics on the street as a child and offered to teach him. (Wong Fei-hung himself later became one of the Ten Tigers, possibly when he was in his twenties, but he was not one of the original members, as is sometimes said.)

Wong Kei-ying became known for his prowess in hung ga kung fu, and taught martial arts to the military. Notably, as his wages were low, he also worked as a physician – a herbalist and possibly an expert in bone-setting (dit da ) – and founded the Po Chi Lam apothecary in Guangdong.

Wong Fei-hung inherited his father’s medical skills as well his martial arts prowess, and would run a Po Chi Lam apothecary later in his life.

Wong Fei-hung was taught kung fu – mainly hung ga style – by his father from around the age of five, and would travel to different villages in Guangdong with him to perform kung fu in the streets and sell medicine to make a living. The tale of how Wong initially became famous during one of these sales expeditions with Kei-ying is narrated in an article by hung ga grandmaster Frank Yee.

Jackie Chan as Wong Fei-hung in a still from Drunken Master (1978). 

INSPIRATION MY DRUNKEN MOP TAI CHI

When he was around 13 years old, Wong angered another martial artist, Hung Gwan-dai, who was also giving a demonstration in the street, because his exhibition was drawing a bigger crowd. Hung Gwan-dai challenged Kei-ying to a fight, but Kei-ying instructed his young son to take up the challenge instead.

A pole fight ensued, and the young Wong quickly beat the challenger by using the eight-diagram pole technique, a long-pole system that is a favourite of hung ga exponents. This match made Wong Fei-hung famous all over Guangdong.

Wong also became well-known for his skill at lion dancing, something demonstrated in the films about him. “Wong Fei-hung, who was one of the province’s best lion dancers, was known around Guangzhou as the ‘King of the Lions’,” writes Yu Mo-wan

.

Kwan Tak-hing (front) in the title role in The Story of Wong Fei-hung, Part One: Wong Fei-hung's Whip that Smacks the Candle (1949).

Wong went on to distil and formalise the hung ga system, which had been invented by Hong Xiguan, another Shaolin hero. “He was an expert in the Hung school of Shaolin martial arts, and an expert in the Iron Wire Fist, the Five Forms Fist, the Tiger Vanquishing Fist, and the Shadowless Kick,” writes Yu. The Shadowless Kick is a side kick, popularised but probably not invented by Wong, in which a fighter kicks his opponent three times in succession while in the air.

Wong was married four times, and had four known children, but there is only information about his fourth wife, Mok Kwai-lan. Mok, who married the ageing Wong in 1915 when she was 23, was a renowned martial artist in her own right. She practised mok ga , a Shaolin style that emphasises close fighting techniques, and Wong incorporated some elements of that into hung ga after they met.

Mok outlived Wong by many years, dying at the age of 90 in 1982. She moved to Hong Kong in 1936, where she ran an apothecary and a bone-setting operation, and taught hung ga . She had married Wong so late in his life that she could not provide much information about his personal history, researchers have said. The TVB television series Grace Under Fire was loosely based on her life.

Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan in a still from Once Upon a Time in China (1991).

There is a famous, but possibly apocryphal, story about how the two met. In 1911, Wong was giving a kung fu demonstration when his shoe flew off and hit the watching Mok in the face. A furious Mok picked up the shoe, broke through the crowd, and slapped Wong in the face, saying that he should be more careful, because next time he might make a similar mistake with a weapon and injure a member of the audience.

The two met again after Mok’s uncle, who was also her guardian and martial arts instructor, sought out Wong to apologise for her behaviour. Romance bloomed, and Mok and Wong married.

Like his father, Wong also trained the army in martial arts. He worked as the martial arts instructor for the 5th Regiment of the Guangdong army, and later the Guangzhou Civilian Militia. Towards the end of his life, he taught martial arts, and ran a Po Chi Lam apothecary in Guangzhou, and another in Foshan.

According to Yee, Wong became impoverished when his house and apothecary burned down during anti-government riots in Guangzhou in 1924. Wong became ill and died in either 1924 or 1925 or perhaps even 1933. He is reputed not to have lost a single fight in his life.

#WAGETHEFT   #UBERUNIONNOW

I just need to survive,' Canadian Uber Eats drivers say wages being squeezed during pandemic

(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
Published Sunday, February 7, 2021 

TORONTO --

 $3.99

It's enough to buy a loaf of bread or two litres of milk, but far from Ontario's $14.25 minimum hourly wage.

And yet Uber Eats couriers working in the province say they're earning as little as $3.99 per trip before tips, months after the food delivery service implemented a new pay policy in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I'm making so little now that I'm thinking what is the point of even getting out there if I'm just going to make this much and it's getting worse?” said Spencer Thompson, a Toronto man who has been dropping off meals for Uber Eats since 2016.

He spent hours tabulating his 2020 pay and discovered what so many of his fellow couriers have long suspected: their wages are shrinking at a time when people are relying on food delivery more than ever before.

Thompson, for example, made about $10 per trip - sometimes involving multiple stops - in January 2020, but by December, that had sank to as low as $3.99 per trip before tips.

The 60 per cent drop came in a year where Thompson worked in Toronto's downtown core nearly every day of the week during the lunch and dinnertime windows, where pay tends to be higher. He averaged two or three trips an hour.

Couriers like Thompson, who are not formally employed by Uber but use its platform to pick up work, worry the situation could worsen and they'll be left with few other job alternatives as COVID-19 continues to spread, unemployment remains high and companies increasingly see the benefits of the gig economy.

“We can't let this go on and we can't let this happen because if we do, then the future will be all work like this,” said Brice Sopher, an Uber Eats courier and organizer with the Gig Workers United union, who recalls making $9 or $10 per trip at the start of 2020, but now averages half that.

While couriers like Sopher and Thompson have long warned of the gig economy's low pay, no job security and lack of coverage for injuries and sicknesses, their concerns became even more alarming after last June.

That was when Uber scrapped its earnings structure offering couriers fixed amounts based on pick ups, drop offs, distance and time and a series of bonuses for using the service during busy periods or in high-demand neighbourhoods. By taking advantages of bonuses and more rewarding orders, Thompson would land as much as $12.15 per trip before tips at the start of 2020.

The new system Uber brought in lowered base fares - totals couriers are offered to deliver an order that fluctuate based on time, distance, pickup and drop-offs - and started including a trip supplement to account for lengthy wait times at restaurants or distances couriers travelled to get there.

At first, the lowered base fares didn't seem so bad because the company would offer high “boosts,” which multiplied courier earnings if they delivered food in areas seeing a surge in demand, said Sopher.

Under the new system, some workers were even making a little more than before, but slowly the boosts decreased, he recalled.

“They did it little by little, so that you wouldn't notice,” he alleged. 'But you would have this sneaking suspicion.“

The changes made tips more important than ever before, but customers are notoriously unreliable when it comes to tipping couriers, said Thompson. Some will be generous, while others avoid the extra handout altogether.

Uber, whose Eats service was first piloted in Toronto in 2015, said in an email to The Canadian Press that it made changes to its wage structure, including reducing base fares, to better reflect each trip's total time, effort and distance and include travel to the restaurant.

The changes also involved upfront pricing, which shows couriers the guaranteed net amount they'll earn for a delivery before they accept the trip, alongside other details like the restaurant name and drop off locations. This allows drivers to decline trips that they feel are priced too low.

A $3.99 trip, the company said, is extremely short in duration and one priced at that amount with two stops is quite rare but can happen.

“Uber Eats is committed to transparency in pricing: before a delivery person accepts a trip, they are able to see the expected earnings for each trip. And, as always, 100% of tips go directly into their accounts,” the company said in an email.

Sopher said he was disappointed with the changes because he and other couriers used to work 20 hours a week last spring and make $500, but now earns $300 over the same time span.

It's not easy work either, he said. Being on a bike for long periods can be exhausting and visiting so many homes and restaurants puts couriers at more risk of picking up COVID-19.

“I feel enraged because it's really profiteering during a pandemic,” he said.

“It's what we've seen with a lot of major companies and with essential workers this pandemic really being told that they're expendable workers. It's pretty demoralizing.”

Sopher wants Uber to revert to pre-pandemic pay policies, while Thompson prefers a guaranteed minimum trip rate.

Thompson recently enrolled in a web development course in hopes of finding a more stable income source that will allow him to pursue his love of acting on the side.

He loves being out on his bike and is determined not to stop fighting for fair pay, but even he has a breaking point.

“I need to have something that can pay me much more per unit time and still give me time to do auditions, and I realized this is not a sustainable paid job,” he said.

“I just need to survive.”

 

Haiti's president alleges coup conspiracy, says 20 arrested

 

Police officers detain demonstrators during a protest to demand the resignation of Haitian President Jovenel Moise in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021. ( AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)

Evens Sanon, The Associated Press
Published Sunday, February 7, 2021 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haitian President Jovenel Moise announced Sunday that police have arrested more than 20 people he accused of trying to kill him and overthrow his government, including a Supreme Court judge who has the support of opposition leaders demanding that Moise step down.

Moise spoke at Haiti's airport in Port-au-Prince, flanked by the country's prime minister and the police chief as he prepared to leave for the southern coastal town of Jacmel for the opening ceremony of its yearly carnival, which is being held amid the pandemic.

“There was an attempt on my life,” he said.

Moise said the alleged plot began Nov. 20 but did not provide further details or any evidence except to say among the people arrested is a judge and an inspector general with the police. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Joseph Joute said authorities found several weapons and a speech that Supreme Court Judge Yvickel Dabrezil had allegedly prepared if he were to become provisional president. Dabrezil is one of three judges that the opposition favours as a potential transitional president.

Justice Minister Rockefeller Vincent accused the inspector general of being in touch with high-ranking security officials at the National Palace over an alleged plot to have the president arrested.

Andre Michel, one of Haiti's top opposition leaders, held a press conference hours after the arrests and called for civil disobedience and demanded that Moise be arrested. Michel, an attorney, said it was illegal to arrest Dabrezil because he has automatic immunity.

Reynold Georges, an attorney who once worked as a consultant for Moise's administration but has since joined the opposition, denounced the arrests in an interview with radio station Zenith FM.

“We ask for his release immediately,” he said of Dabrezil, adding that the court system should shut down until he's free.

Georges also called on people to rise up against Moise.

The arrests come on the day that opposition leaders claim Moise should resign, saying that his term ends on Sunday. Moise has repeatedly stated that his five-year term ends in February 2022. Former President Michel Martelly's term ended in 2016, but a chaotic election forced the appointment of a provisional president for one year until Moise was sworn in in 2017.

The opposition has organized recent protests demanding that Moise step down, and normally congested streets in Haiti's capital and elsewhere remained empty on Sunday except for some 100 protesters who gathered in Port-au-Prince and clashed with police. Historians noted that exactly 35 years ago, former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife fled Haiti with help from the U.S. government amid a popular uprising. Duvalier died in 2014.

Meanwhile, Moise appears to have the support of the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Ned Price, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said Friday that the U.S. has urged Haiti to organize free and fair elections so that Parliament can resume operations, adding that a new elected president should succeed Moise when his terms ends in February 2022.

However, a group of seven U.S. legislators sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday saying that Moise has lost credibility and they called for a Haitian-led democratic transition.

Moise is currently ruling by decree after dissolving a majority of Parliament in January 2020 after no legislative elections were held. He is planning an upcoming constitutional referendum in April that critics say could award him more power, while general elections are scheduled for later this year.

After arriving in Jacmel, Moise broadcast an address that lasted more than an hour. He spoke largely about the infrastructure projects that his administration has accomplished, but also called on the opposition to work with him.

“It's not too late,” he said, rejecting accusations that he is on his way to becoming a dictator. “I'm not a dictator. Dictators are people who take power and don't know when they're leaving. I know my mandate ends on Feb. 7, 2022.”

Associated Press writer Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to 

Why cheap wind power is making Quebec's big, old dams more valuable as a 'battery,' say experts

© Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press La Romaine, seen under construction in 2017, is expected to be Quebec's last big hydro project due to rising costs, but the province's existing reservoirs can serve as enormous batteries to plug the gaps in cheaper intermittent power.

You might think that what with having Canada's largest hydroelectric capacity, providing almost 100 per cent of the its electricity, including exports, a new $600-million wind power project is the last thing Quebec would need.

That was exactly what experts were saying when Premier François Legault cancelled Apuiat, a private but government-supported wind project in Northern Quebec in 2018.

But now as the province relaunches the project, power experts say an investment in wind will actually increase the value of Hydro-Québec's existing hydroelectric infrastructure.

Beyond providing clean electricity amid growing demand, they can act like enormous grid-scale batteries, addressing the Achilles heel of intermittent, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar: what do you do when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine?
A change of heart

There is a lot of politics in Legualt's change of heart, but a contributing factor is the election of U.S. President Biden and his new green agenda, said Pierre-Olivier Pineau, chair in energy sector management at Montreal's Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC).

As recently as last summer, the Quebec premier downplayed the chances of restarting the Apuiat wind project because of the province's continuing glut of electric power.

"I want to be very clear," Legault told Radio-Canada last July, "We still have a [power] surplus at Hydro-Québec, so we're not yet ready to launch."

However, there is the prospect of a growing need for low-carbon electricity — for export to the U.S. and elsewhere, and for use at home to power electric vehicles and other efforts to decarbonize.

Add to that, the price of wind power plunging and the price of building new hydroelectric dams on the rise, and last week the outlook changed.

"After many months of work with our Indigenous partners, I am proud to present a win-win project for the Innu communities, for Québec and for the planet," said Legault in announcing the relaunch. "This is excellent news for the entire wind energy sector, in which costs have come down considerably."

© Lyle Stafford/Reuters Wind turbines near Emerson, Man. Wind power is now cheap but intermittent. Power from hydro dam reservoirs can be saved to fill the gaps when the wind doesn’t blow.

The project will be half owned by Boralex, a Quebec company that has grown into a global green energy giant, with the other half owned by north shore Innu communities.

"For the first time, across our nation, we are the master builders of a large project of benefit to the Innu and to Quebecers," said Mike Mckenzie, chief of the Innu community of Uashat mak Mani-utenam, in last week's announcement that the project was back on track.

The wind development will provide much-needed stimulus to the Quebec economy and smooth relations between the Innu communities and Quebec City.

But according to Richard Carlson, director of energy policy for the national NGO Pollution Probe who has a long history of studying the electricity market, the project will also draw attention to the untapped wealth of Quebec's existing hydroelectric infrastructure as a precious system of power storage and provide a working example for other parts of Canada, including British Columbia and Manitoba.

"In places like B.C., Manitoba, Quebec, Norway, Sweden, those are really reservoir systems," said Carlson, referring to the kind of hydroelectric power where a dam can hold back vast quantities of water.

"You have control over when you use that water."

Wind cheaper than building new dams

The cost of wind and solar power have fallen so much over the last decade that they are much cheaper than building new hydroelectric dams — "The cost declines have been astounding," said Carlson — but they have the disadvantage of being intermittent.

"The sun doesn't shine at night," he said someone always tells him on Twitter when he mentions solar's cost advantages, "As if I weren't aware of that."

The advantage of combining less-expensive intermittent power with Quebec's existing system of hydroelectric power dams is that it allows the power utility to use up the cheap wind power as it is produced while the water behind the dams is retained, at the ready.

"You're saving the more valuable [hydro] electricity for when it's needed and using lower-cost forms of electricity when they are available," said Carlson.

 

© Aaron Lynett/Reuters Canada’s Horseshoe Falls in winter. Unlike Quebec’s reservoir dams, most Ontario hydroelectricity is run-of-river and must be used immediately or wasted.

In places not as lucky as Quebec, including Ontario, there are hydro systems that consist of a constant flow of water through the Great Lakes or down a river that must be used to produce electricity immediately or wasted.

That is why Ontario built the Sir Adam Beck pumped storage facility at Niagara Falls and why it is considering others, including a multi-billion-dollar TC Energy proposal near Collingwood, about 140 km north of Toronto.

"The TC Energy pumped hydro project would be a way to replicate [the Quebec system] with a much-higher cost," said Carlson.

Despite his many contacts with Quebec's electricity system, Pineau at HEC was caught by surprise by the announcement of the wind project.

Pineau said he thinks one reason for the deal was to help Hydro-Québec polish its image in the U.S. where it has been criticized for failing to respect First Nations rights. Another, he said, was to stimulate Quebec's wind industry that is currently hungry for contracts.

'A battery in itself'

Even though Hydro-Québec's dam-building costs have been some of the lowest in the world, Pineau expects no more will be built, because they are so much more costly than wind and solar are now.

But they still confer a particular advantage to Quebec as electricity demand rises.

"Quebec is particularly well positioned ... to store it and export it," said Pineau. "Hydro-Québec is a battery in itself with its dams."

Just as Norway has been described as Europe's battery, Quebec could play a similar lucrative role in a northeastern North America as it becomes increasingly dependent on cheap, intermittent, green power sources.

"Quebec is a great place for this, but there's also huge opportunities for using hydro power from B.C. to help Alberta and hydro power from Manitoba to help Saskatchewan decarbonize," said Carlson. "So it's not just a Quebec story but there are ways of using this across Canada."

Follow Don Pittis @don_pittis

Why Italy's olive crisis presents an ecological opportunity

Marco Carlone and Daniela Sestito CGTN
Europe 01:28, 04-Feb-2021

VIDEO 02:15 Why Italy's olive crisis presents an ecological opportunity - CGTN

Shadow has become rare in Salento, the southernmost part of Apulia, Italy. The thousands of farmers who live and work on the tip of Italy's heel are well aware of this. In the summer, when temperatures can reach 45 degrees Celsius, shadows provide them with a precious and vital refuge from the sun.

This resource, taken for granted by many, is so vital to them that in January 2020 an association called Manu Manu Riforesta! was set up, with the aim of gradually thickening the foliage of the local vegetation and bringing shadow back to the lands of Salento.

A little over 150 years ago, the situation was different.

"In the early 1800s there were forests and pastures in Salento that were home to a much greater variety of plant species," says the association's chairwoman Ingrid Simon.

Born in Vienna, Simon has put down roots in Salento for more than 20 years. "The association was set up to recreate the biodiversity of an agroforest and restore the coexistence of woodland species, orchards, vegetable gardens and Mediterranean scrub," she says.

Many indigenous plants have been drastically reduced to make space for cultivation that dominates the Salento landscape: the olive tree. Salento's olive trees have been a fundamental resource for the local economy. They are so numerous they've become a cultural symbol for the region.

A devastating disease

For 10 years now, however, the spread of a bacterium, Xylella Fastidiosa, has disrupted the appearance – and the economy – of this area.

According to one of Italy's main olive growers' consortiums, Italia Olivicola, olive production has decreased by 9.5 percent from the beginning of the emergency to 2019, resulting in a 390 million euros ($468.8 million) loss in three production seasons in Salento alone.

Today, the area affected by the bacterium includes around 22 million plants.

The plague is clearly visible. Driving along one of Salento's provincial roads bordered by orderly olive groves you see dozens of severed trunks and cut foliage: thousands of centuries-old trees reduced to hollow sheaths.



Recent olive harvests have been declared the worst in Italy's history. /AP/Alessandra Tarantino

Reforestation extends beyond this generation

"It is necessary for the agricultural and natural environment to coexist without conflict," says biologist Rita Accogli, who works in the botanical garden of the University of Salento. She collaborates with Manu Manu Riforesta! by selecting the most suitable varieties for the different soils for them to work on.

The association began by crowdfunding to buy seed parcels and planting them in a small plot of land, loaned to them by a Salento farm.

"This land is known as Kurumuni," says Ada, who works with the association, which in the ancient Griko-Salentino dialect translates as "sprout."

Among the clumps of Kurumuni land, the association planted oak, laurel and fig trees, pomegranate shrubs and rosemary bushes, alongside the now-dry olive trees.

"Since the association was founded, the reaction from those who live in the area has been enthusiastic," says Ada. "Some people have started to donate seeds, plants or even their own land. Many, privately, had already started replanting acorns from the old oak trees."


Shade for Salento's farmers is hard to find. /Marco Carlone and Daniela Sestito


Simon explains that reforestation times do not coincide with those of a single human generation. "We want to follow those growth rhythms that have been forgotten with contemporary agriculture: slowly, 'manu manu' as they say in Salento dialect."

"The forest, in terms of biogeochemical cycles, such as the carbon cycle, is essential," observes biologist Leonardo Beccarisi, who collaborates with the association. But it is also essential to preserve it as an ecosystem.

"It would be impossible to return the olive-grove landscape to its original form. But it is also essential to communicate the importance of the woodland element, which the people of Salento, sometimes unaware of the past of their territory, consider an almost exotic component."

Rich and poor nations clash over patent waivers on lifesaving vaccines

Toni Waterman in Brussels CGTN

Europe 02:38, 05-Feb-2021

The UK has administered more than 10m vaccine doses. /AFP

The world's richest nations have shot down a proposal by India and South Africa to temporarily waive patent protections on potentially lifesaving coronavirus vaccines and treatments.

According to a Geneva trade official, Canada, the UK, Switzerland and Japan voiced their opposition to the waiver during an informal meeting of the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Council on Thursday, saying there was "no concrete indication" that intellectual property (IP) rights have been a barrier to accessing medicines and technologies.

Representatives from the European Union argued that vaccine scarcity could be fixed through a combination of licensing and expanding manufacturing capacity.

Supporters of the proposal stressed that manufacturing capacity in the "Global South" was being underutilized. They called the vaccine shortfall "artificial" and claimed it was part of a scheme to "perpetuate monopoly power using IP," said the trade official.

Several countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, India, and Venezuela, also "harshly criticized" the European Union for introducing curbs on vaccine exports.

"The measure was characterized as serious and alarming and indicative that those countries that continue to oppose most vociferously the IP waiver are indeed the ones that have secretly bought up their way to available production and continue to collude with pharmaceutical companies under the veil of secrecy," said the trade official.

Last year, as global scientists worked around the clock to develop COVID-19 vaccines, officials from the world's richest countries vehemently touted equitable access, many promising to supply hundreds of millions of doses to the world's poorest nations. They also struck multiple bilateral deals with pharmaceutical companies – six for the EU – and plowed billions of public money into the companies to accelerate vaccine development and offset risk.

But now the vaccines have arrived, the gulf between the haves and have nots is spreading. According to analysis from The Economist Intelligence Unit, rich nations such as the UK, U.S., Israel, and those in the EU are likely to achieve "widespread vaccination coverage" by late 2021, but the world's poorest countries will not hit that same benchmark until at least 2024.

"We cannot continue to engage in endless discussions, while in the real world millions of lives are lost to the coronavirus pandemic," the South Africa delegate said during the meeting.

On Wednesday, the WHO-led COVAX facility said it hoped to ship 335 million doses to low- and middle-income countries by the end of June.

Robot room service: South African hotel goes hi-tech in COVID-19 era

A hotel in South Africa is using robots to counter some of the challenges of COVID-19.

Micha, Lexi and Ariel are on hand to help guests check in, find out more information about on-site facilities and deliver room service requests, as ordered via the hotel's app.

Osman Baig  04-Feb-2021

Three robots work at the South African hotel. /AFP

Guests can even chat to the robots, whose AI-powered technology is designed to continuously improve their knowledge and interaction skills.

Nikhil Ranchod, the co-founder of CTRL Robotics says: "The chatbot is pretty interesting, because these robots have quite a catchy personality. They sort of help out with the smaller things ... and where staff would usually be running up four floors delivering a meal, delivering two meals ... now we've got the facility where they can control the robots themselves and send it off."


Robots deliver room service at the hotel. /AFP

Hotel Sky in Sandton, north of Johannesburg, had put the technology in place before the pandemic, but is now embracing it as a way to minimize human contact in a country hit hard by COVID-19.

The hotel's general manager, Herman Brits, says the venture also raises morale. "It just creates such a nice vibe and excitement for the staff ... They have the opportunity to be part of this journey, and being the innovators in South Africa of this hospitality trend."

Source(s): AFP

VIDEO Robot room service: South African hotel goes hi-tech in COVID-19 era - CGTN

The Answers Project Podcast: 

Will soldiers become obsolete?

Arij Limam


29:51 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1606030

From the need for a global currency, to what else is out there in the universe, CGTN Europe's brand new podcast tries to find answers to some of the world's most burning ethical, scientific and philosophical questions.

In the first episode of The Answers Project, journalists Stephen Cole and Mhairi Beveridge, with the help of expert guests, discuss the future of warfare and question whether soldiers will ever be replaced by robots on the battlefield. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

It's not a stretch to say the wars of tomorrow will be faster, more high-tech and less human than ever before. But will things like science fiction-esque "slaughter bots" become a reality? Can robots ever handle the multi-faceted role that human soldiers play in conflict, crisis and peacetime?

"This is soldiers effectively being replaced by robots. And it's a topic that lots of people are concerned about," Mhairi Beveridge notes as she introduces the inaugural episode of CGTN Europe's latest podcast The Answers Project.

"If intelligent robots take over the role of soldiers in the future and they're increasingly driven by powerful artificial intelligence (AI), will man or machine be in charge and, more importantly, who should be in charge?" she asks.

While completely autonomous gun-wielding robot soldiers are not currently running around battlefields or training, Beveridge says the technology is really not far off, as today robots can programmed to pick up things or follow sensors.

"My son is in the British army at divisional headquarters. They are very, very aware of artificial intelligence," co-presenter Stephen Cole observes.

"They're aware of quantum computing, the capabilities of cyber chemical weapons coding, robotics defense, computer-generated vulnerabilities. They know this is the future of warfare and they are creating entire brigades to deal with this," he adds.

The forensic toolkit helping defeat the pangolin poachers
Jim Drury

VIDEO 10:23

The forensic toolkit helping defeat the pangolin poachers - CGTN


06-Feb-2021

UK scientists are pioneering the transfer of forensic science techniques used in crime investigations to the African and Asian savannahs, in a bid to stop pangolin poaching.

They are the most illegally trafficked mammals in the world, with 2.7 million pangolins poached every year.

The new method involves lifting fingerprints from the scales of the animals using gelatin lifters. It has been pioneered by University of Portsmouth forensic scientists Brian Chappell and Jac Reed.

The technique is universally used by forensic practitioners to lift footwear marks, fingerprints and trace materials from objects in criminal investigations.

The gelatin lifter is easily applied to the scale, removed and scanned using a specialist scanning system. Preliminary trials with the UK's Border Force have shown the method is significantly contributing to the disruption of illegal trafficking of the animal.

The project initially looked at how to apply forensic techniques to assist rangers working with trafficked commodities such as rhino horn and ivory.

Reed realized it could also be used to collect fingerprints and trace evidence from pangolin scales.

"What we've done is repurposed an established technology for use in a different environment," Reed told CGTN Europe. "If you go directly into somewhere like the savanna and you've got a ranger in their truck and they come across a carcass, the first thing they're going to think of is not, 'how can I protect my scene?' It's, 'how quickly can I get in and out of the scene,' because there may be poachers still in the area and that puts them at great peril."



These pangolin scales, seized in Indonesia, would have 

been used for illegal traditional medicine. /Getty Images

Through partners ZSL (Zoological Society of London) and the Wildlife Conservation Society, researchers have collaborated with wildlife crime enforcement and anti-trafficking personnel in Cameroon, Kenya, Benin and India. The technique has been formally recognized and promoted for use by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and Interpol.

"The use of any forensic technique as part of a wildlife crime investigators' toolkit has got to be a good thing. It's low cost and certainly its utility within the particular operating environment is quite considerable," Chappell told CGTN Europe.

All eight pangolin species are protected under national and international laws, with two listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.

The scaly anteater is traded for its meat, while its scales are used in traditional medicine. Last year, 14 tons of pangolin scales were seized in Singapore alone.


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