Graveyard of the bikes: China's failed share-cycle scheme from above

Issued on: 21/04/2021 -

Damaged or abandoned low-cost shared bikes in China often end up in 'graveyards' like this one STR AFP

Beijing (AFP)

Handlebars tight in snaking rows of colour, thousands of abandoned bicycles line an open field outside the city of Shenyang, relics of a shared bike mania that has overwhelmed China's cities.

The turquoise, blue and yellow bicycles, arranged in long lines, some piled on top of each other, bear the logos of the companies that dominate China's bike-sharing sector -- Hellobike, Didi and Meituan.

Low cost-shared bikes, which users can unlock using apps and park virtually anywhere, burst onto Chinese streets in the middle of the last decade with investors rushing to fund bike startups like the now-defunct Ofo and Mobike

But the two-wheelers soon took over pavements and spilled over into bike lanes and streets, parked haphazardly by users who sometimes simply tossed the bikes into shrubbery, creating a headache for urban authorities and pedestrians.

Many bikes suffered damage or were stolen, while some were even repurposed into makeshift barricades when Covid-19 broke out last year.

The problem is a familiar one to cities around the world battling to round up stray bikes, from metro stations in Washington DC to the bottom of Melbourne's river.

Aerial photographs from the suburbs of Shenyang, Liaoning province, show a bicycle graveyard, one of many which began appearing as early as 2018 as tech start-up darling Ofo imploded, defaulting on debts as its users claimed back rental deposits.

Mountains of damaged bikes belonging to other companies have also been discarded rather than repaired, in contrast to the "green" image usually associated with urban cycling.

The bikes now jostle for space on Chinese streets with hordes of shared electronic scooters, which have also made their appearance elsewhere in the world including Paris and California.

Chinese cities have vowed to curb the chaotic fleets of bikes, with Beijing saying it will remove 44,000 bikes from the city centre this year in order to cap bike numbers at under 800,000, according to state media.

© 2021 AFP

South Korea court dismisses 'comfort women' case against Japan

Issued on: 21/04/2021 -

The issue of wartime sex slavery has been at the core of frosty ties between Seoul and Tokyo in recent years Jung Yeon-je AFP/File



Seoul (AFP)

A South Korean court on Wednesday dismissed a case brought by a handful of World War II sex slaves and their families against the Japanese government, saying Tokyo enjoyed "sovereign immunity" over the issue, reports said.

The ruling comes after the same court in January ordered Tokyo to compensate a dozen women forced to serve Japanese troops -- euphemistically labelled "comfort women" -- marking the first civilian legal victory against Tokyo in South Korea.

The different verdict could pave the way for an improvement in frosty ties between the neighbours, analysts said.

The comfort women question and other issues stemming from Japan's 20th-century colonial rule over Korea has bedevilled their relations, despite a 1965 treaty which declared claims between them and their nationals had been settled.

Tokyo and Seoul are both major US allies, democracies and market economies, but their rift -- which has worsened significantly in recent years -- presents US President Joe Biden with a foreign policy headache as he seeks to build a common front on China and nuclear-armed North Korea.

The Seoul Central District Court dismissed Wednesday's case after "reaching the decision that sovereign immunity must be applied to the Japanese government", Yonhap news agency reported.

"Diplomatic conflict will be inevitable in the process of sentencing and enforcing if the exception of sovereign immunity is recognised," the court said according to Yonhap.

The victims suffered "immense pain", it added, but said the issue should be solved through "efforts including diplomatic negotiations".

One plaintiff, a former comfort woman now in her 90s, was shaken by the ruling and left the courtroom before the hearing ended.

"This is really outrageous," Lee Yong-soo told reporters outside.

"But whether the result is good or bad, I will take the case to the International Court of Justice."

Her lawyer Lee Sang-hui said the plaintiffs and legal team would discuss whether to appeal, adding: "I would like to express my regret once again that the ruling was made contrary to the direction toward guaranteeing individual human rights."

- Improving ties? -

Analysts said the ruling will be a "plus" for improving ties between South Korea and Japan, whose disputes have spread to affect trade and security in recent years.

Biden held his first summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the weekend and will meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in next month.

"Diplomatically, it could serve as a pillar for taking relations in the direction for improvement," said Lee Won-deog of Kookmin University.

But while the decision will be welcomed by Japan, the professor said it could heighten South Korean resentment over the comfort women issue.

Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II.

The Japanese government denies it is directly responsible for the wartime abuses, maintaining that the victims were recruited by civilians and that the military brothels were commercially operated.

© 2021 AFP

EU unveils AI rules to temper Big Brother fears



Issued on: 21/04/2021 

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said rules are needed to ward off abuses in the artificial intelligence sector Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD AFP/File


Brussels (AFP)

The EU unveils a plan Wednesday to regulate the sprawling field of artificial intelligence, aimed at making Europe a leader in the new tech revolution while reassuring the public against "Big Brother"-like abuses.

"Whether it's precision farming in agriculture, more accurate medical diagnosis or safe autonomous driving -- artificial intelligence will open up new worlds for us. But this world also needs rules," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her state-of-the-union speech in September.

"We want a set of rules that puts people at the centre."


The Commission, the EU's executive arm, has been preparing the proposal for over a year and a debate involving the European Parliament and 27 member states is to go on for months more before a definitive text is in force.

The rules are part of the EU's effort to set the terms on AI and catch up with the US and China in a sector that spans from voice recognition to insurance and law enforcement.

The bloc is trying to learn the lessons after largely missing out on the internet revolution and failing to produce any major competitors to match the giants of Silicon Valley or their Chinese counterparts.

But there have been competing concerns over the plans from both big tech and civil liberties groups arguing that the EU is either overreaching or not going far enough.

- 'High-risk' -

The draft regulation, seen by AFP, will create a ban on a very limited number of uses that threaten the EU's fundamental rights.

This would make "generalised surveillance" of the population off-limits as well as any tech "used to manipulate the behaviour, opinions or decisions" of citizens.

Anything resembling a social rating of individuals based on their behaviour or personality would also be prohibited, the draft said.

Military applications of artificial intelligence will not be covered by the rules, and special authorisations are envisioned to cover anti-terrorism activities and public security.

Infringements, depending on their seriousness, may bring companies fines of up to four percent of global turnover.

To promote innovation, Brussels wants to provide a clear legal framework for companies across the bloc's 27 member states.

To this end, the draft regulation says companies will require a special authorisation for applications deemed "high-risk" before they reach the market.

High-risk systems would include "remote biometric identification of persons in public places" as well as "security elements in critical public infrastructure".

Other uses, not classified as "high risk", will have no additional regulatory constraints beyond existing ones.

- Difficult balance -

Google and other tech giants are taking the EU's AI strategy very seriously as Europe often sets a standard on how tech is regulated around the world.

Last year, Google warned that the EU's definition of artificial intelligence was too broad and that Brussels must refrain from over-regulating a crucial technology.

Alexandre de Streel, co-director of the Centre on Regulation in Europe (Cerre) think tank, said there is a difficult balance to be struck between protection and innovation.

The text "sets a relatively open framework and everything will depend on how it is interpreted," he told AFP.

Tech lobbyist Christian Borggreen, from the Computer and Communications Industry Association, welcomed the EU's "risk-based approach" to regulating AI.

"It would be a wise and strategic approach," he said.

But for some civil liberties activists the new rules do not go far enough in curbing potential abuses in the cutting-edge technologies that look set have a far-reaching impact on everyday life.

"It still allows some problematic uses, such as mass biometric surveillance," said Orsolya Reich of umbrella group Liberties.

"The EU must take a stronger position... and ban indiscriminate surveillance of the population without allowing exceptions."

© 2021 AFP

Myanmar junta has 'no heart for humanity', says Karen leader as ethnic groups join forces

Issued on: 20/04/2021 - 

© France 24 screengrab

Text by:FRANCE 24|

Video by:FRANCE 24

Unrest continues in Myanmar where more than 700 civilians have been killed since the February 1st military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi. The protest movement is developing on the political front with opponents of the military junta announcing the formation on Friday of a National Unity Government, including members of Suu Kyi’s ousted Cabinet and representatives of ethnic minority groups and other allies.

The Karen National Union in the east, on the border with Thailand, has offered shelter to fleeing protesters in the territory it controls.

Major-General Nerdah Mya, head of the Karen National Defence Organisation, spoke to FRANCE 24 about the developments in Myanmar. A leader of the Karen National Liberation Army, the oldest guerilla group still fighting in Myanmar, he described the situation in the country as "very critical" and called on the international community to act immediately to end the killing. He stressed that the people of Myanmar are not giving up the fight and discussed efforts to coordinate with other ethnic groups and democratic forces to bring an end to the military regime.

"We have been fighting for self-determination and freedom and an autonomous state for people for so many years. It has been more than 17 years already. And we are also working together with other ethnic groups who have the same goals and objectives like us," the major-general told FRANCE 24. "We are holding hands and fighting against the current military regime," he says. "They are so brutal. They have no heart for humanity."


To watch the interview, click on the player 

ET TU BRUTUS
Chad President Idriss Deby Itno killed in clash with rebels: Military

The announcement came just hours after electoral officials had declared Deby, 68, the winner of the April 11 presidential election, paving the way for him to stay in power for six more years.

I GUESS THAT WAS A BIT MUCH FOR SOME



Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno (Picture: AP)

Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno, who ruled the central African nation for more than three decades, died Tuesday of wounds suffered on the battlefield during a fight against rebels, the military announced on national television and radio.

Chad's Idriss Deby, a longstanding French ally in the troubled Sahel

Issued on: 20/04/2021 

In this April 20, 2016 file photo, then Chadian president Idriss Déby at a meeting with then US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power at the presidential palace in N'Djamena, Chad, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. © Andrew Harnik, AP

Text by:FRANCE 24


Idriss Deby Itno, who was on course for a sixth term as Chad's president before he died from injuries sustained in battle, had earned a reputation as a stalwart French ally in the fight against jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel – despite accusations of authoritarianism.


The 68-year-old son of a herder would have been one of the longest-serving leaders in the world, after provisional results showed him winning re-election this week.

But his shock death cut his 30-year political career short and will likely throw Chadian politics into disarray.

Classic path to power

Deby, from the Zaghawa ethnic group, took the classic path to power through the army, and relished the military culture.

Last August, the National Assembly named him field marshal, the first in Chad's history, after he led an offensive against jihadists who had killed nearly 100 troops at a base in the west of the country.

Dressed in a dark-blue silk cape embroidered with oak leaves, and clutching a baton, Deby dedicated the tribute to "all my brothers in arms".

As a young man, he enrolled at the officers' academy in the capital N'Djamena before heading to France, where he trained as a pilot.

He returned in 1979 to a country in the grip of feuding warlords.

Deby hitched his star to Hissene Habre and was rewarded with the post of army chief after Habre came to power in 1982, ousting Goukouni Weddeye.

He went on to distinguish himself fighting Libyan-backed rebels over mountainous territory in the north of the country.

But in 1989, he fell out with his increasingly paranoid boss, who accused him of plotting a coup.

Deby fled to Sudan, where he assembled an armed rebel group, the Patriotic Salvation Movement, which rolled into N'Djamena unopposed in December 1990.

In 1996, six years after he seized power and ushered in democracy, Deby was elected head of state in Chad's first multi-party vote. He won all succeeding elections.

The main opposition withdrew its participation in 2006 and 2011, irked by a change to the constitution enabling the former soldier to renew his term, and the elections in 2015 were marked by accusations of fraud.

French friend

Deby was solidly backed by former colonial power France, which in 2008 and in 2019 used military force to help defeat rebels who tried to oust him.

"We safeguarded an absolutely major ally in the struggle against terrorism in the Sahel," French Defence Minister Florence Parly told parliament in 2019.

Deby supported French intervention in northern Mali in 2013 to repel jihadists, and the following year stepped in to end chaos in the Central African Republic. Experts consider Chadian soldiers the strongest in the G5 Sahel – the regional bloc transformed into a military alliance at Paris’ behest in 2017, bringing together forces from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

In 2015, Deby launched a regional offensive in Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger against Nigeria-based Boko Haram jihadists, dubbing the Islamic State affiliate "a horde of crazies and drug addicts".

One of Deby's political rivals, Saleh Kebzabo, had protested against France's backing and urged the world to recognise the regime's "dictatorial nature".

Deby's power base, the army, comprises mainly troops from the president's Zaghawa ethnic group and is commanded by loyalists.

It is considered one of the best in Sahel. According to the International Crisis Group think tank, defence spending accounts for between 30 and 40 percent of Chad's annual budget.

'Bullying society'?

In 2018, Deby scrapped the position of prime minister to assume full executive authority.

"Everything is centralised around the presidency – he uses all the weapons of absolute power while bullying society," Roland Marchal at the Centre of International Research at the Sciences Po school in Paris told AFP.

Marchal said Deby had a reputation for a hot temper and notorious mood swings, although a close aide said he had "great listening ability and analytical skills".

Accused of iron-fisted rule during his long reign, Deby banned opposition demonstrations, made arbitrary arrests and severed access to social networks, raising regular objections from human rights groups.

The late president also named relatives and cronies to key positions, and failed to address the poverty that afflicts many of Chad's 13 million people despite oil wealth.

The country ranks 187th out of 189 in the UN's Human Development Index (HDI).

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

From Myanmar to Afghanistan: are we seeing the end of western interventions?

Demonstrators carry placards and flash the three-finger salute during an anti-military coup protest yesterday in Mandalay, Myanmar. EPA

A coup is launched against a democracy barely 10 years old. The brutal military junta that takes over murders hundreds of its citizens. It even stoops to shooting children; a baby loses an eye as a result. The country is near united in opposition to the new regime, as shown by the mass civil disobedience that is crippling the economy. There is no ambiguity: the cause of righteousness is clearly on one side.

In the days of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, even of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, the call might have gone out for the West to act – to send in external armed forces to rescue the country from dictatorship and build a new liberal democracy.

Yet when the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meets in Jakarta this Saturday to discuss the situation in Myanmar, the junta leader Min Aung Hlaing will be in attendance and the talk will be of sanctions and dialogue. The acting foreign minister of the shadow government formed to represent the overthrown parliament has asked the international community for “co-ordinated political, financial and security measures” to support his country’s people, but for nothing more visceral.

Despite many warnings that Myanmar is on the brink of a Syria-style civil war, the former American ambassador to Naypyidaw, Derek Mitchell, said in an interview with Bloomberg this week that “there’s little more that the West can do”.

Mr Mitchell, now president of the National Democratic Institute, may well be right. The fact that almost no one appears to be suggesting the use of external force, however, makes one ask: has the doctrine of liberal interventionism been so thoroughly discredited that it is not just dead, but has gone extinct?


The worry is that western exceptionalism is alive and all too well

Liberal interventionists were in the ascendance around the turn of the millennium. Britain’s military expedition in 2000 helped bring a close to Sierra Leone’s civil war, while then UK prime minister Tony Blair’s role in Nato’s air campaign in support of Kosovo the previous year was so well received locally that “Tonibler” became a popular name for young boys born in the soon-to-be-independent state.

With their neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration, liberal interventionists backed regime-change wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, convinced that they not only had the right to overthrow governments they deemed barbaric and illegitimate, but that they had a moral duty to export democracy and western values, even at the barrel of a gun.

Today, we hear nothing of such liberal interventionist ideas. Even the related notion of the “Responsibility to Protect” adopted by the UN in 2005, under which the Security Council could authorise force to prevent atrocities and protect civilians, has virtually disappeared from regular parlance. (This has been raised in the context of Myanmar, but China and Russia would almost certainly veto any military proposals.)

Other powers are more than willing to insert themselves in other countries – most obviously Turkey, Russia and Iran in Syria – but their interventions have clearly been in pursuit of their own interests, not idealistic (if wrong-headed) goals.

There are also still plenty of liberal hawks. From the Biden administration to Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, there is no shortage of leaders who warn of a “polarisation between authoritarian regimes and autocracies, and the liberal democracies that we love”, as Mr Morrison put it last week. UK parliamentarians speak darkly of the “dangers” they believe are posed by Russia and China. The black-and-white mindset which views western-style liberal democracy as the only legitimate form of governance remains untroubled by nuance, history, or knowledge of – let alone respect for – local cultures.

But moving from the observation that different countries have different value-systems to saying that they must, by necessity, clash, or making clear that the US will defend treaty allies in the Asia-Pacific, falls far short of arguing for liberal interventionism.

From the vantage point of 2021, it is easy to see why very few prominent proponents are left for this once-fashionable doctrine. The catastrophes wreaked by regime-change interventions on Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan – the last described so eloquently by Sulaiman Hakemy and Hussein Ibish in these pages recently – cannot be painted as exceptions to the rule. Empirically, they are the rule.

But it took a while for the facts to dim the reckless warmongering of liberal interventionists and the neo-conservatives who sought ends so similar as to make no difference between them. In his book After the Neocons, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama describes a lecture given by the late US columnist Charles Krauthammer at the American Enterprise Institute in 2004, entitled American Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World. Mr Fukuyama wrote that the war in Iraq was “treated … as a virtually unqualified success”.

“I could not understand why everyone around me was applauding enthusiastically, given that the United States had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was bogged down in a vicious insurgency, and had almost totally isolated itself from the rest of the world by following the unipolar strategy advocated by Krauthammer.”

Seven years later, Britain’s Mr Cameron and France’s Mr Sarkozy appeared to have learned very little when they cheered Nato’s ousting of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. I warned in these pages at the time that “although the gamble appears to have paid off, it was, like similar ventures in the past, one taken hastily, instinctively (on the basis that ‘something must be done’), with no serious thought for what happened afterwards nor even the vaguest notion of how long it would last”. Now, sadly, we do know what happened afterwards.

Perhaps it has taken the forthcoming allied withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the US military spent not far short of $1 trillion and lost 2,448 military personnel, and where up to 40,000 civilians have died, with precious little gained, to have provided the writing on the headstone for liberal interventionism.

I would hope that this misguided doctrine might rest undisturbed and unconsulted for decades to come. The worry is that the western exceptionalism that underpinned it is alive and all too well. There are many, armed with the unwarranted moral superiority they award themselves, who are itching for conflict as much as the unlamented liberal interventionists. These nostalgists for a US-led unipolar world may in future prove just as deluded – and just as dangerous.

Sholto Byrnes is an East Asian affairs columnist

 for The National/UAE
Updated: April 20, 2021 

 BACK

UK Vaccine Taskforce head lifts lid on Novavax deal

Richard Staines

April 19, 2021

The UK’s unique offering as a life sciences research hub helped convince US biotech Novavax to develop its COVID-19 jab there, according to the head of the country’s Vaccines Taskforce. 

Last August the UK government finalised a deal with Novavax to purchase 60 million doses of the NVX-CoV2373 vaccine, which will also be manufactured in the country at a plant owned by FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies in Stockton-on-Tees.

That plant could produce up to 180 million doses annually and a GlaxoSmithKline facility 30 miles away in Barnard Castle will soon be ready to fill and finish the vaccines.

The vaccine is currently under review by the MHRA and could prove to be a vital part of the effort to vaccinate the whole UK population against the virus, providing enough shots to vaccinate a further 30 million people.

Clive Dix, head of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce, told pharmaphorum in an interview that he was able to persuade Novavax to base research, development and manufacturing in the country because of its efficiency at getting trials up and running.

The vaccine has also been added to a “mix and match” study to see if it can be used as a follow-up shot in people who have already received the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine.

Dix said: “I sat in the (virtual) room with them and said ‘we will help you develop the vaccine faster, help with manufacturing and get you faster regulatory approval’, that was our offer and we contracted with them.”

“If you look at the development, we signed 15,000 people in six weeks in a trial set up by the NHS. It spotlighted the UK as a place to do clinical development.”

“Speed is everything in clinical development. It is really important and we have seen a lot of pharma companies interested in the UK. We have highlighted how good it is – it always has been but not everyone has noticed it.”

UK Vaccine Taskforce head lifts lid on Novavax deal - (pharmaphorum.com)

SCHADENFRUEDE

After calling COVID ‘dirty lying scam’, 

Ted Nugent says he’s been battling coronavirus: ‘I thought I was dying’


Michigan rocker Ted Nugent said he tested positive for COVID-19. (Photo by Cory Morse | MLive)

By Edward Pevos | epevos@MLive.com
4/20/2021

Just days after he went on a video rant of debunked COVID-19 myths, Ted Nugent says he’s tested positive for COVID-19 and his symptoms have been pretty bad.

The Michigan rocker went on Facebook Live on Monday, saying that’s when he tested positive after battling flu symptoms for nearly two weeks.

“I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days and I thought I was dying,” Nugent said in his live video. “I was tested positive today. I’ve got a stuffed up head, body aches. My God, what a pain in the a--. I literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days. But I did. I crawled.”

Nugent then went on to use racist language about the virus before giving debunked reasons why he hasn’t taken the vaccine.

Nugent’s Facebook video announcing he has COVID-19 comes after he posted a video on his Facebook page on April 7 saying he wasn’t scared of COVID-19 as he ranted about one debunked myth after another, including why the country didn’t shut down for COVIDs one through 18.

“I ain’t scared of nothing,” Nugent said on Facebook on April 7. “This year’s tour is canceled again. Dirty lying scam. Smoke and mirrors. COVID-19 freaks.”

“I guess I would ask you, because I’m addicted to truth, logic and common sense and my common sense meter would demand the answer to. Why weren’t we shut down for COVID one through 18? COVID 1-18 didn’t shut anything down, but whoa, COVID-19, even though it’s 99.8% survivable. Why didn’t we shut down for the AIDS epidemic or the flu or influenza every year?”

“They’ve claimed 500,000 people have died from COVID-19. BS!”

Nugent went on to say that medical professionals have been made to put COVID-19 as the cause of death no matter what the cause of death was, which has also been debunked.

COVID-19 was named by The World Health Organization for the disease which is causing the novel coronavirus outbreak. COVID-19 stands for “corona,” “VI” (for virus), and “D” (for disease). The “19″ is for 2019, the year in which the virus was first identified. There is no COVID one through 18.

According to the CDC, more than 564,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States.

Arm will likely become a cog in a US monopoly: UK Govt to investigate NVIDIA acquisition on national security grounds

By Martyn Warwick
Apr 20, 2021

cogs in a machine (wikimedia)

Competition regulator initiates "Phase One" inquiry

Government investigation will be separate and concurrent

No binding NVIDIA promises on jobs or keeping Arm in the UK

From the "Switzerland of the global microchip market" to a microchipped American poodle

The UK government has intervened, on public interest grounds, in the ongoing saga of the proposed US$40 billion acquisition of the phenomenally successful microchip designer Arm, (which is headquartered in Cambridge in the East of England and is a company registered in the UK) by the graphics chips company NVIDIA of California in the US. The government cites "potential" national security issues and the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Oliver Dowden, has written officially to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to instruct it to initiate a "Phase One" investigation into the take-over.

The acquisition has been contentious since it was first announced in September last year and the CMA is due to publish a report on its findings into the competition and jurisdictional implications of the take-over by July 21 this year. The report will also cover any national security issues that might arise were any divisions or units of Arm to be relocated to the US - or elsewhere overseas. Now, the UK government itself will conduct an investigation into the potential national security issues highlighted by the mooted buy-out. It will run separately but alongside and concurrently with the CMA probe.

The Secretary of State commented, "Following careful consideration of the proposed takeover of Arm, I have today issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice on national security grounds. We want to support our thriving UK technology industry and we welcome foreign investment but it is appropriate that we properly consider the national security implications of a transaction like this. The Phase One investigation will ensure specific considerations around competition, jurisdiction of a transaction like this." Should the investigation advance to Phase Two, the process will be long and laborious. The mills of the government grind slow but they grind exceeding small.

Arm was a British success story until it was sold to Softbank of Japan at the knockdown price of $32 billion when the value of the British pound plummeted as the country voted to leave the EU. Most of the transaction was paid in NVIDIA shares. Arm chips power billions of smartphones around the world, as well as many other edge devices. The company's licensing-based business model is to create CPU architecture designs that other organisations including Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung etc., customise for their own purposes. Softbank kept Arm more or less at arm's length and independent until September 2020 when, racing to shore-up its battered balance sheet in the wake if the We Work debacle, it hurriedly it sold to NVIDIA.

Promises, promises…

NVIDIA, extremely bullish about its perceived coup, promised at the time that Arm would remain headquartered in the UK "until at least September 2021". That deadline, now less than six months away, has gone forever. Expectations are that it will be at least 18 months before any final decision will be made. Meanwhile the company continues to pledge that it will employ more British workers (there are presently 3,000 in the UK out of a total of 6,500 worldwide) and that the brand will remain unsullied. However, whereas Softbank made legally binding commitments to back up its promises, NVIDIA has done no such thing and reassuring words are plentiful - and cheap.

Hermann Hauser, Arm's co-founder said the buy-out "will be a disaster for Britain", adding that the promise to maintain and even expand the number of British jobs is "meaningless and will turn the country into 'a vassal' of the US." He added, "If Arm becomes a US subsidiary of a US company, it falls under the CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) regulations. This could mean that if the hundreds of UK companies that incorporate Arm products in their devices want to sell and export their output to anywhere in the world "the decision on whether they will be allowed to do so will be made in the White House and not in Downing Street." Brits have not forgotten when Kraft bought Cadbury the iconic confectionary and chocolate company, and within months reneged on solemn promises it had made not to cut jobs or close plants.

Mr Hauser added that the future for Arm would be as bleak as it would be preordained. He told the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee of the British parliament that once acquired, Arm would be swallowed-up to become a cog in the machinery of the next enormous technology monopoly company to emerge in the US

Arm’s business model is based not on making revenue per chip but on volume and on the promise that the company will continue to treat all its customers in a neutral manner. More than 180 billion Arm-designed ships have been shipped since the company was founded some 30 years ago. The business model, in combination with Arm's position of neutrality in the production and supply chain has resulted in it being, admiringly, referred to as "the Switzerland" of the global semiconductor market. Worries are that if the acquisition is allowed to go ahead it will become more like a Puerto Rico.

TAKE OFF, EH
INGENUITY HELICOPTER NEXT FLIGHT: NASA ISN'T DONE WITH THE MARS COPTER

The short but successful flight will set the stage of future exploration of other planets. But what happens to Ingenuity now?

PASSANT RABIE

NASA’S INGENUITY HELICOPTER just went where no other aircraft has gone before.

The 19-inch-tall helicopter flew from the surface of Mars, marking humanity’s first powered, controlled flight on another planet. Those 39.1 seconds of flight set the stage for a new way to explore Mars — and worlds beyond.

Ingenuity is set to take on at least four more test flights on the Red Planet over the next month as engineers start to think of developing future aircraft beyond Earth. Here’s what you need to know about the Mars helicopter’s future plans.

The first flight took place at around 3:30 a.m. ET. Ingenuity lifted off about 10 feet from the Martian ground, hovering for about 30 seconds. The helicopter then descended back down and landed once more on the planet’s rocky surface, with the entire flight lasting for a little under 40 seconds.

ARE THERE MORE FLIGHTS FOR THE MARS HELICOPTER INGENUITY?

April 19 was the first of a series of test flights planned for Ingenuity.

Over the course of 30 Martian sols, a team of NASA engineers will test out Ingenuity's ability to fly. (A sol is the equivalent of a day on Mars, lasting about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.)


The Perseverance rover dropped off the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars and watched it fly for the first time.NASA


MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a briefing after the flight that the goal of the Ingenuity helicopter is to deliver data to the engineers designing future generations of helicopters destined for Mars.

“Beyond this first flight, over the next coming days, we have up to four flights planned — and increasingly difficult flights, challenging flights — and we are going to continually push all the way to the limit of this rotorcraft,” Aung says.

The helicopter could fly for up to 90 seconds at a height of 10 to 15 feet, traversing distances of almost 980 feet horizontally in that time.

Ingenuity isn’t built to sustain the harsh Martian environment for long, so after the 30 day period, Perseverance will leave its companion behind to die.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR INGENUITY?

Although brief, those flights are meant to help space engineers understand whether or not it is possible to explore Mars from an aerial perspective.

NASA has landed five rovers on the surface of Mars, the latest one about the size of an SUV that roams around the surface of Mars on its four wheels. But being able to send a helicopter to Mars would give scientists a new perspective on the Red Planet. Subsequent helicopters will carry a suite of instruments, whereas Ingenuity has just a camera aboard.

And even beyond Mars, engineers are eyeing a few worlds in our Solar System with a substantial atmosphere that could support aerial flight. There’s already a proposed mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, and NASA has performed some modeling of if helicopter flight might work on Venus, though its intense heat could kibosh near-term plans.

Titan has a thick atmosphere, in addition to showing signs of potential habitability which makes it an ideal destination for future exploration.

“This is exactly the way we build the future,” Michael Watkins, JPL director, says at the press conference. “I think you'll hear a lot more about the scientific promise of the rotorcraft on Mars as part of other planets, and as part of the Science Mission Directorate portfolio.”



LIFT OFF
NASA: MARS HELICOPTER BRINGS US INTO “THE THIRD DIMENSION”

The little helicopter proved it could make history by flying on another planet.

PASSANT RABIE

4.19.2021 

ON MONDAY MORNING, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter lifted its scrawny legs 10 feet off the Martian ground. The four-pound helicopter wasn’t in the air for long, but in less than a minute, it made history.

Those mere 39 seconds marked the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet in all of space exploration history, a major feat that will set the stage for a new way for humanity to explore other worlds. The Wright Brothers flyer — of which there’s a piece aboard Ingenuity — lasted only 12 seconds and still changed the world forever.





Ingenuity took off at around 3:30 a.m. ET. Ground control received word of the flight’s success shortly after, unveiling first images at 6:46 a.m. ET from flight headquarters at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.

Ingenuity downlinked its data through its Martian companion, the Perseverance rover, which communicates to mission control via the Deep Space Network. In a press conference on Monday, JPL director Michael Watkins discussed how it opens up a new era of exploration.

“What the Ingenuity team has done is given us the third dimension,” Watkins says. “They freed us from the surface now forever [in terms of] planetary exploration.”

The Perseverance rover captured this footage of Ingenuity taking its first flight on Mars .NASA

Ingenuity’s takeoff was not guaranteed. The team behind the helicopter designed the aircraft specifically to fly on Mars and tested it in a simulator before sending it off, but there was no way to know that it would actually work until it flew from the Red Planet.

Paul Byrne, associate professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University, who is not involved in Perseverance, explains that a lot of things had to go right for Ingenuity to take off from Mars.

“What we saw this morning was no less than an incredible feat of human, well, ingenuity!” Byrne tells Inverse. “The sheer number of technical things that had to go right for that first flight — safe launch, safe delivery to the Martian surface, safe deployment from Perseverance, the ability of the helicopter to survive the cold Martian nights, the fact that there's no ground-in-the-loop and everything has to be automated and commanded ahead of time — is remarkable.”

Ingenuity flew to a maximum altitude of 10 feet and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds, according to NASA. The helicopter then touched back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight.

The flight was autonomous, preprogrammed by the team at JPL since they cannot fly the helicopter from Earth in real-time considering that the data has to travel millions of miles between Earth and Mars.

On Mars, Ingenuity was piloted by its onboard guidance and navigation system. According to Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, it was an intricate technical feat.

“We all have a hard time finding that right line between crazy and innovative and it turns out we're often wrong with that line,” Zurbuchen says during the press conference. “This was a crazy idea that was being developed and this team put that idea into reality.”

Ingenuity landed on Mars on February 18, tucked inside the Perseverance rover.

Ingenuity’s initial flight was originally slated for April 8 but suffered some delay after the helicopter shut itself down unexpectedly during a high-speed rotor spin test.

In order to set it back on track, NASA’s engineers modified and reinstalled Ingenuity’s flight software to correct what Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung describes as “an intricate timing issue.”

The helicopter is only 19 inches tall and weighs about four pounds, with two four-foot-long carbon-fiber rotors spinning in opposite directions.

“What will we be flying on Mars in 24 years' time? I can't wait to fi